Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. It is, um, I call this meeting of Arapahoe County planning commission of June 2nd, 2026 to order. We will now call, call the roll.

Chair Miller.

Present.

Commissioner Howe. Present. Commissioner Lasses.

Present.

Commissioner Saul.

Present.

Commissioner Salve.

Present.

Commissioner Wolf.

Present.

And Commissioner Corrin is absent and excused. Mr. Chair, we have a quorum.

Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody. Tonight's Planning Commission is available live in person or live through a call-in number. We're also streaming this meeting on our website, arapahoegov.com. Please note that the website broadcast is delayed 20 to 30 seconds. If you're not in the meeting room and would like to speak regarding any public hearing item, please use the call-in number to participate live via phone. Call 855- All right. First we have the approval of minutes. I would like to do the approval of the minutes as a consent agenda item where we can vote on all three of them all at once. If nobody has any changes to anything, we can do that.

A question did come up for me. What if you're absent, then how do you deal with the consent agenda? and you have to abstain. Sorry.

No, no, that's actually legitimate. I was going to go, but go ahead.

So typically with a consent agenda, we have multiple things that are identified on an agenda that's already been published in that way. It's certain we can look at it in the future if we have multiple items. And then if that were the case, we had multiple things on a consent agenda, we'd probably have to pull that item to make sure that those that could vote would vote, make sure we had enough votes for all of them. Since we didn't notice it all as bulk, I would encourage just quick voice votes in succession for each one.

Yep. The other thing to also keep in mind is, according to our bylaws, that if you didn't make it to a meeting, you can actually listen to the audio of the meeting, and then you will have the ability to vote at the very next meeting on anything that happened in the prior meeting. So just want to make certain, like some of those things I didn't even know. You just have to read the bylaws. So, all right. So since it's kind of been stated that we'll do it this way, what we'll do is we'll just do a vote of affirmation. We'll just do one at a time if that works out okay. All right? All right. All right, so first we'll consider the minutes for April 7th, May 5th, and May 19th. So.

Chair Millers, Commissioner Latsis, I'd like to make a motion.

Thank you.

For the, was it the April 7th meeting minutes, I would like to move for approval as submitted.

Do I get a second?

Oh, come on. I'm going to dial on second. Thank you. Very good. Commissioner Saul seconds.

All in favor of accepting the, just so I get it right, April 7th minutes, say aye.

Aye. Abstain.

Very good.

Aye.

All right. Ayes have it. Let's go on to May 5th.

Chair Miller, this is Commissioner Save. I would like to have these minutes as they stand with the modification.

Did everybody understand the modifications?

Perhaps you could explain it again.

Yep, absolutely. Do you want to, whoever made the modification, do you want to say real quick? Thanks. It has to do with, they have to do a meeting.

Cat Hammer, senior planner with Arapahoe County. When I was writing the staff report and reviewing the video, there was a little discrepancy between the added condition of approval and what was actually said. So that was the minor adjustment that was made.

Very good. Thank you. All right. Do we have a second?

Commissioner Lass is second.

Very good. All in favor of accepting the minutes of May 5th as they are, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Abstain. I was absent.

We have an abstain. They are approved. Commissioner Lattice was absent. Thank you. All right, so now we'll consider the minutes for May 19th. Do we have any changes? Someone wants to make a motion?

Commissioner Sauve, I make a motion that we accept the minutes from May 19th as is.

Very good. Do we have a second?

Commissioner Lantz is second.

All in favor of accepting the minutes as they are from May 19th say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Very good. Those are done. All right, so the next item we have is supposed to be for an election for the replacement of Chair Pro Tem. I would accept a motion from anybody who would like to move that to the end of the meeting so we can get going with the folks that are waiting.

Yes, Chair Millers, Commissioner Latz, as I move that we adjust the agenda to elect our Chair Pro Tem after the public hearing.

Is there a second?

Commissioner Save seconds.

Very good. Thank you. All in favor of moving that agenda item to the end of the meeting, say aye.

Aye.

Anybody opposed? Very good. Let's get down to the real stuff. All right. Here's everything I have to say. Hold on. All right, next on the agenda is our public hearing. The public is invited to participate in the public hearing this evening. Public hearing items are quasi-judicial in nature. The Planning Commission must limit their consideration to the matters that are actually in this record, including staff recommendations, the applicant presentation, public comment from the hearing, and those received before the hearing. Before we begin, does any member of the Commission have a conflict of interest to disclose or a prohibited interest in any matter before the Commission tonight? Alright, seeing none, we'll move on. All right, tonight we are scheduled for one public hearing. For this case, staff will introduce and provide a staff presentation. The presentation from the applicant will follow. After that, the Planning Commission will receive public testimony on the matter. I'd like to remind everybody that presentations, comments, and questions are to be directed towards us, the Planning Commission, and not to the presenter or the gallery. All right, so our first case is LE-25-005, Box Elder Diversion Dam Location and Extent. The Planning Commission will now consider this case. Lower County Attorney confirmed that the Board has jurisdiction in this manner.

Good evening. With regard to this matter before the Planning Commission at this time for public hearing, specifically case number LE252005, the location and extent for the Box Elder Diversion Dam, the record contains evidence consistent with the requirements of Chapter 5, Section 2 of the Urupa County Land Development Code, indicating the notice was provided via publication, signage, and mailing. The Planning Commission has jurisdiction to proceed with the public hearing this evening.

Very good. Thank you.

Good evening, Chair, Commissioners, Cat Hammer, Senior Planner with Arapahoe County Public Works. The case before you is Box Elder Diversion Dam Location and Extent Application. The applicant, Rangeview Metropolitan District, is requesting approval of this application for a diversion dam and stream gauge on the Box Elder Creek within a 1.5 acre easement on the Colorado State Land Board property. The proposal also includes the construction of this inflatable bladder dam to divert Rangeview's surface water rights on the creek. The dam would function by inflating to span the creek, allowing water to flow by gravity into a buried pumping vault. Approximately 600 feet of new 16-inch transmission line is also proposed with this application. The location and zoning, most of the area around this is zoned A1 and unplatted and owned by the state of Colorado. The property of the north is zoned A1, unplatted, but is not owned by the state of Colorado and is currently agricultural and includes the use of a solar facility. The property of the northwest is zoned I2 and unplatted. The Sky Ranch 1041 was approved by the Board of County Commissioners in 2017. In 2025, there was a technical amendment to that 1041 application to allow for additional infrastructure to transfer water to the proposed water treatment plant that was illustrated in the original 1041. Significant infrastructure has been constructed by Range View across the central portion of Arapahoe County to help support the water needs of the Sky Ranch development, including a reclamation facility, a supply facility, a well field, storage ponds, and wells and pipelines. Background, this is a water right that has been part of Range View's water right portfolio since the mid-1980s. Specifically, the diversion was approved in Range View's water decree by the Colorado Division I Water Court Judge. Once a diversion is approved in a decree, it's lawfully allowed to be constructed to divert water rights for beneficial use according to the decree pending other construction permits. According to the applicant, all construction permits have been granted for this project and all major water right holders are aware of this proposed diversion. This is the picture of a comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan, sub-area plan, addresses relationship between water quality and discharge from treatment plans and streams as it affects water quality as stated in the following goals and policies. Encourage the reuse of water by water suppliers and individuals, support provisions for new wastewater treatment facilities in designated growth areas, work with districts to plan for new wastewater treatment facilities. This application is consistent with the sub-area plan and the comprehensive plan. Per the Land Development Code, it covers policy and regulatory aspects of a location and extent, but it does not have specific approval criteria. But it may be approved by the Planning Commission upon two findings, that the public utility, no road, park, public way, ground, or space, building, or structure, and no major facility of a public utility shall be constructed or authorized in unincorporated areas of the county unless The proposed location and extent has been submitted and approved by the Planning Commission. So this application warrants this type of review. And routine extensions of public utility lines and minor modifications are exempt from this procedure, but this application is not a routine extension of a public utility or minor modification. Referral comments staff received during the referral process are summarized in your packet and were included in the agenda. There are no outstanding referral comments. Staff is, this is not true, sorry, there's an error in my presentation. Staff is recommending two conditions of approval based on comments received from CPW. So they provided comments and suggestions to staff regarding high priority habitats for a number of species, wetlands, raptors, and migratory birds, and weed management and reseeding. The timing of construction condition of approval was to protect those HPA's high priority habitats, and there's also a condition of approval requiring, indicating that the applicant should do a raptor nest survey, and both of these shouldn't be an issue based on the applicant's proposed timing of construction. So those are included for safe harbors as two conditions of approval. In regards to the other items that CPW made comment on, the applicant did provide a wetland delineation that was conducted, and the Army Corps of Engineers has approved a nationwide permit to work in the floodplain. As far as the weed management and reseeding, this applicant will be required to follow the standards for reseeding and best management practices will be employed per the grading erosion and sediment control standards of the county. Staff finds this application generally conforms to the Arapahoe County Comprehensive Plan and Sub-Area Plan, and staff finds that the application meets the Arapahoe County Land Development Code zoning regulations and procedures stated in 5-3.3 for consideration and approval of a location and extent application under the Land Development Code. On the screen here, you'll see those two conditions of approval that staff is recommending based on Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commons. I stand for any questions from the commissioners, with the exception of water rights. That's not my specialty, so I will ask the applicant to address those questions.

Any questions at this time? Seeing none, we're good. Otherwise, yes, I do have questions, but we'll do them after the applicant.

Let me just get this set up for the applicant. And it won't let me do that. We'll try one more time or else, okay, there we go, full screen.

My name is Brent brilliant. Hello planning commission. Um, I have a pleasure today, uh, be here to, um, present range views, location and extend application for their box elder Creek diversion dam project. Let's start off by acknowledging our strong project team. One that I've enjoyed working with on this project. The last couple of years, um, range view will be the owner of this project. Um, pure cycle is our engineering construction manager. We use KT Engineering for surveying and then JVA Consulting Engineers for structural engineering work as well as an overall QC review of this overall project. To give you a refresher of who Rangeview Metro District is, Rangeview is a water wastewater provider in the area in the Arapahoe County east of Aurora. You can see on the top of the image is I-70, on the bottom is County Line Road, and we provide wastewater services primarily to the Sky Ranch subdivision at the top of the image here in pink, as well as to the Lowry Ranch property, the lower pink box, 40 square miles, and we primarily serve the Dole Sage Ridge facilities to the dad's landfill and the Rappahoe County Fairgrounds. This area of the county is expected to have significant population growth in the next 25 years. And as that population grows east, we're charged with making sure that the water wastewater needs of those residents are met. And we do that by continuously increasing infrastructure, whether it's water sources, storage, distribution or treatment infrastructure. Today we're focusing on a water source project, specifically one that range views on the water rights for 40 years now. It's a renewable water project, surface diversion dam on Box Elder Creek. If you're not familiar, Box Elder Creek starts near Elizabeth, Colorado, south of this image. The drainage basin flows north about six miles east of Aurora Reservoir on the Lowry Ranch property here. Continues up in Adams County east of DIA and then joins the South Platte River in Weld County. Range View is in a unique position as a water utility because they've owned these surface water rights within their service area. A lot of times now, water utilities in the metro area, it's harder to get renewable water supply. It's very challenging. Oftentimes, water utilities have to go 60, 70 miles outside their service area, obtain new water rights, pump that in. It's very infrastructure intensive and costly, which affects water rates. So looking at this water right in Rangeview's backyard, we'll zoom into this blue rectangle here. You can see an aerial image with what we're proposing today. They're the location of this surface diversion, a half mile south of East Quincy Avenue at that starred location. Overall, this infrastructure, I'll get into the details of it, but a high level is an inflatable bladder dam. That dam inflates when Rangeview is in priority when there's excess water in the system. And that surface water will then fall into an intake where it's pumped through an existing 16-inch pipeline that parallels East Quincy Avenue. It's then stored in a storage pond, the Lowry Ridge Storage Pond. Let me see if I can point to it right there. At that point, it can be treated in the proposed water treatment facility, which is that blue rectangle. That's a different application that'll come before you in the future. We're starting the initial design of that before it's distributed to meet the growing demands in Arapahoe County. As Kat mentioned, the surface diversion will be constructed on a one and a half acre easement obtained by the, or received by the Colorado State Land Board. Rangeview's current water supply sources are comprised of 45% surface water. They obtain that water from their partnership in the South Metro Water Supply Authority-WISE partnership, and then 45% groundwater pumped from wells within their service area. The remaining 10% is reclaimed water. We're able to recapture our treated wastewater at Sky Ranch, treat that to a high standard, recycle it a second time, something that we look to continually grow, and we can use that water for irrigation or augmentation purposes. By constructing this infrastructure, we can grow our surface water for 45% to 70%. And the intent there is just to grow these renewable supplies to conserve groundwater for drought planning purposes. This is highly encouraged lately. This is where water utilities are going, conserving groundwater. increasing renewable supplies. It's encouraged at the state level, at the local government level. If you look to your water study you guys approved two years ago with those exact same two goals. I want to pause before getting into the meat of this, um, kind of cat started to highlight this, um, range view already owns these water rights and has the ability, already has the ability to divert surface water from box elder Creek. Um, they obtained that ability 40 years ago when they acquired their water rights, uh, their surface water rights decree on box, all their Creek on the Lowry ranch property. Um, again, water rights are administered and forced by the DWR and the division one water court in the South Platte basin. Again, those are the appropriate jurisdiction to make water right claims or arguments. They're the police of the water system in Colorado, and if there's injury, that's the appropriate people to contact. Today, what we're asking for your approval of is the ability to construct infrastructure specifically through this location and extend application. Again, it's administered by Arapahoe County, which is why we're here. is appropriate land use application to approve construction of infrastructure such as roads, parks, in this case public utilities. So again, Range View already has the ability to divert surface water. We're asking for your approval specifically just for construction of infrastructure. So to get into some of the details, this is an aerial image of Box Elder Creek just upstream of the proposed diversion structure location. This faces northwest. You can see East Quincy Avenue running diagonally through the image. This is very characteristic of the Box Elder Creek system when there are flows. It's an intermittent stream, meaning there's only surface flows present seasonally. Typically, when there are surface water flows, they're typically low in the 0 to 10 CFS range, or cubic feet per second is how we measure surface flows. Although, you know, several days of the year, we might get 20, 30, 40 CFS at a time. It really depends on how much precipitation happens upstream in the corridor. This year it's been dry, lower stream flows, although we do also experience periodic floods. You know, every five or ten years when there's a heavy rainfall, we might see several hundred CFS flow through here. It's when these periods where we have larger flows that range view will be in priority and we'll be able to take that water off the top with the surface diversion and place it for beneficial use. This water is, you know, this is kind of characteristic of surface flows in Box Elder Creek. Typically a few inches deep by 10 to 20 feet wide and it kind of meanders through these wide sandy channels. The riparian corridor supports flora and fauna that can go months without surface flows. There's no fish in this stream because it goes dry six months of the year so fish can't survive. Just a couple more characteristic photos. Again, it's an intermittent stream, so we're typically dry on Lowry Ranch from June through January, and then we have surface flows typically the next six months, January through June. When Range View began the process of designing and permitting this facility, the biggest question is what this surface diversion would look like and where it would go. SO WE WENT THROUGH A DIFFERENT SITE SELECTION AND EVALUATION PROCESS. THE FIRST CRITERIA WAS THAT IT HAD TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF SECTION 9, WHICH IS SHOWN HERE IN THIS IMAGE. SO IT HAD TO BE CONSTRUCTED WITHIN A HALF MILE SOUTH OF QUINCY AVENUE, AND THAT'S JUST A REQUIREMENT OF RANGEVIEW'S WATER RIGHT DECREE AND A REQUIREMENT OF DWR. After that, we were looking for a stable, straight, channelized location. As an engineer, I very much always look for efficiency in design. I'd rather build a 60-foot wide diversion as opposed to a 300-foot wide diversion. And that would be the case. In the middle portion of this image, you can see those wide, sandy channels, which is why we're looking for a channelized location, because it minimizes infrastructure and disturbance within the floodplain. There are also some siding challenges. Again, number one, low flows. It's very hard to divert surface water that's only a few inches deep. Ideally, you'd want to have one or two feet of surface water to have it fall into an intake, hence the diversion dam portion of the project. There's wide channels, sandy soils, and portions of meandering stream. Like this big bend here, you want to avoid sections like that where a future flood could divert around the infrastructure you just built. So after all those evaluations, the start location is the best place for for this surface diversion and that's where we've proceeded with design and permitting. This is a site plan of the three pieces of infrastructure we're looking for approval today. Boxholder Creek, this is the low flow channel at that start location. The low flow channel kind of goes from the bottom right portion of the image to the top center following that blue arrow. The most prominent piece of infrastructure is the diversion dam. It's an inflatable dam. You can think of it, I'll show you a picture in a couple slides, as an inner tube bike tire. So it's rubber, it's black, and it inflates to three foot in diameter to raise water levels. That bladder dam is installed perpendicular to the low flow channel, and it's attached to a concrete pad that's poured at grade. It's about 20 by 60 feet wide there. It's kind of that speckled color shading. Once there's excess water in the stream, range views in priority, we're able to inflate the bladder dam, allow the water levels to rise, and it'll fall into an intake. The next piece of infrastructure is a buried vault. So the water falls into a buried vault where two pumps are situated. Those pumps then pump water into the new portion of pipeline to the existing transmission main that parallels Quincy Avenue and then is stored in the Lowry Pond on the top of the hill. In addition to the vault, there is an electronic flow meter. We have to record and capture every drop of water we divert from the system. That's a requirement in our water decree. We have to report that daily and submit reports of those flows or diversions monthly to DWR, and that's a requirement of our decree. The last piece of infrastructure is this sheet pile gauging structure, this V that you see kind of downstream, another term and condition of our water right decree. we have to on a daily basis record how much surface flow is going through the creek. And so what we do is we just install sheet piles down into grade until, down into the subsurface until it's at grade. You wouldn't know that it's there after it's installed. And the only purpose is to stabilize the stream corridor so that erosion or future floods don't start to erode the channel. And what you do is you just measure the water level across the V. You put it into a calculation and it gives you surface flow. So we'll be monitoring that every day. Here's an aerial image taken earlier this year, kind of with the footprint of these two facilities. We can see the sheet pile V and then the inflatable bladder dam footprint. The vault would be over to the left in the image out of the low flow channel. Here's an example of what it will look like. So you can see the concrete pad there, that black rubber three foot diameter bike tire that goes across the stream. These are very advantageous for small creeks. So this is an installation that occurred in Newton, Kansas. The benefit here is historically, water resource engineers used to just construct a concrete wall across the stream channel to increase water levels. That's super intrusive, that prevents natural flow paths, and is harmful to flood events. With this inflatable bladder dam, wind range is a priority when there's excess water in the system, we can choose to inflate the bladder dam and take intake water at that point. If there's high water levels, it'll automatically deflate as a safety mechanism and to keep that floodway open. Overall, this facility will be designed to divert up to 10 CFS. Any flows above that would automatically propagate downstream. The image on the bottom left I just wanted to include, I think it's interesting. You can see those two little circular disks, that's just a pipeline in the concrete. One of those pipes fills the bladder dam with air, the other one removes it, and you can just see how flat that bladder dam lies in the deflated position. By no means are we reinventing the wheel with this bladder dam installation. This is becoming more and more commonplace. This is the Parker Water Project on Cherry Creek. They installed the bladder dam across Cherry Creek many years ago to divert their surface water rights on Cherry Creek, arguably the most regulated water body in the state of Colorado. They divert their water rights using a bladder dam and then they store that water in Ruder Hess Reservoir. I was able to tour this facility a couple years ago and they were just thrilled with the performance of the Blatter Dam. Although this facility is much larger than what we're proposing, our footprint will fit in that orange box. So we're about 20% of the size of Parker's project. This is the overall project timeline. We started design of this facility two years ago and then began permitting it in the middle of last year with this location extent approval. Again, we also applied for a nationwide permit with the Army Corps of Engineers and were granted that permit for construction work in the floodplain. This is the last permit necessary before construction could proceed. It's timing out very well. with Box Elder Creek beginning to dry up in the next few weeks and then we would have a six month construction window of dry stream that's typical for Box Elder Creek with the hopes of starting up these facilities in the beginning of 2027 and bringing this renewable water into this portion of the county. I'll just close by reiterating some of the importance and value of this water right. Again, this is a renewable water resources right in Rangeview's backyard, in the county's backyard. We don't have to go to a different county to access these water rights. It's right here. That results in lower pumping costs, very energy efficient water right. We're now pumping water 60 miles. It's also a very high water quality. Instead of looking at South Platte water or Arkansas River water that has a lot of industrial users or has been reused and returned to the river many times, there's not a lot of constituents of concern. It's a very clean water because of that regard. I'm going to kind of give you some impact of this facility. One day of diversions at 10 CFS will cover 80 Arapahoe County homes annual water demand. So one day, 80 homes for an entire year. This supports several different comprehensive goals in the county. Kat mentioned some of these, but again, between the comprehensive plan and the water study, it increases renewable water supplies, decreases our reliance on groundwater, looks at addressing adequate long-term supplies for all of our communities in Arapahoe County, and closes potential gaps in the future between supply and demand. So with that, I'd Appreciate your consideration of approval for this infrastructure. I want to thank Kat and Joseph for their help with this application, always wonderful. Working with Arapahoe County staff, we did have a couple of questions come up in the last couple of days that I might preemptively address. One is, once this diversion is installed, are you just going to sweep the river and take all the surface water? The answer to that is no. And frankly, we have to operate by the terms of our water right decree. Although we've had this water right for 40 years, it's still considered very junior in the system. So typically senior water rights were obtained in the late 1800s, 1900s. On the South Platte River, there are dozens of, whether it's municipalities, ditch companies, from Greeley to Sterling. When they place a call on the river because they're not receiving enough water, we'll have to divert the dam and allow water to continue to bypass meeting those downstream water rights. Only when there's excess water in the system is range view in priority and we're able to divert that water. So most of the time this would be in the deflated position. Water will continue downstream only when all the senior water right holders are met would we be able to divert. The next question is, will this damage the environment? The answer is very similar to what I just said. Because of our water right being 1986, we're a junior water right. It's gonna be only used in periods of high precipitation when there's excess water in the system. A lot of times, this will continue to flow as natural, which is one of the benefits of that inflatable bladder dam. Also, I'd like to remind you that Box Elder Creek already has six months of dry conditions. That's Mother Nature. Every six months when it's dry, there is a huge die off of flora and fauna. And then finally, our diversion is only up to 10 CFS. Anything above that would automatically flow down through the riparian corridor and meet others' water needs. So with that, I'll end. Thank you very much for your time. Looking forward to answering any questions.

All right. Do we have any questions for the applicant?

I'll start down here. Commissioner Lantz, I was just curious, what is the maintenance life cycle on one of those bladders?

Sure. You know, I would anticipate, I don't know the exact answer. I would anticipate in the 20 to 30 year timeframe. The other unique nice part about it though is the bladder component isn't incredibly expensive. So like let's say that a flood does happen and there's a puncture, that's patchable, right? So it does have a very long life. The rest of the components I would say are 50 years to 100 years, whether that's a pipeline or the concrete vault. You know, pumps typically have a design life of 10 to 15 years. So kind of in that frame, depending on the piece of infrastructure we're talking about. The sheet pile would be 50 to 100 years.

Thank you. I have a question. Go ahead. This is Commissioner Wolf. How often do you anticipate that the bladder will be inflated and you'll divert water?

Sure. It's a very complicated question because it 100% depends on how much water is not only in Box Elder Creek, but also on the South Platte, right? So in times when there's a lot of, darn, talking with my hands too much, a lot of water flowing in the system, like let's say 2023, if you can remember that time period, there was significant rainfall in the spring. Box Elder Creek was massively flowing and all the water needs downstream were being met. In that case, it could be you know, every day for a couple months. This year, it's been extremely dry. We've kind of, we've, you know, we've been gauging Box Elder Creek now for the last several years, and it's been about half flow of normal. This year, there'd have been probably two days where we could have diverted just because it's dry and all the downstream water right users are placing calls on the river, and that's where the water's going. right okay thank you and then the last question i have is is it remotely monitored and inflated or is that something where someone has to physically go it will be remotely monitored so rangeview has an extensive scada system which just allows our water operators to you know turn on pumps remotely monitor that device. It also has a backup sensor so that if for some reason there's a lightning strike or there's a disruption to our SCADA system, it will automatically deflate if water levels rise too high as a secondary backup precaution. Thank you. Yep.

Can you back up your slide to where the, it shows the picture of the bladder and the concrete it sits on?

Yep.

Thank you. So that concrete that goes across that area, how deep is that concrete? It's eight inches. Pardon me? Eight inches. Eight inches. Yes. And that's... enough, I guess, then it's not going to wash out underneath?

No, yeah. And so in addition to the pad is eight inches, there's like a little footing on each side just to prevent scouring. And that's sufficient. You know, that's not a heavy load. So what we're, in the slide two, I didn't really talk about it. We'll also put some riprap on the edges, just kind of stabilize the structure.

Okay. And because because just because there's no surface water doesn't mean there's not water flowing because it's just sand. So there's actually lots of water underneath that. Is that correct? Yep. Okay. Do you monitor any of that water or you're just looking for the surface?

No, this is just a surface water, right?

Okay. So, um, in, in previous You guys actually put water, Rangeview puts water into the creek. Correct. And that comes from your pond.

It comes from a couple different sources. It could be from Denver Basin groundwater. It could be returned, treated effluent that we can use for augmentation purposes. Either of those two sources. It could be Wisewater. So we have a variety of water uses we can use for augmentation purposes.

Does that water go in upstream or downstream from this?

Just downstream.

So it'll be downstream from where this is?

Yep. It's at Quincy Avenue. It's one of our locations.

So then how does that water that you put in the creek get accounted for?

It's metered. Okay. So another electric flow meter. You know, maybe a point of clarification, though, this is a surface water right. There's not an augmentation requirement for this application and this infrastructure.

Okay.

All right. Anything else? All right. Thank you very much. Yep, that's fine. Jared, Samuel, Susan, Rachel, Susan. I think I can read all the names. I'm gonna give it a try. If I mess this up, I am sorry, but we'll just give this a good try on this. All right, so. So the Planning Commission will now hear from any members of the public who wish to testify on this matter. Please refer to the card. There was a card on the table that kind of gave you some rules. We'll start with those in attendance who signed in. If you are attending via telephone, would you please, and you would like to speak regarding this agenda, please press star three on your telephone pad. All right, so just basically the rules are you guys got three minutes. If you just mention what's most important to you about it first, then you don't run out of time. If somebody's kind of already said something that you want to say, by all means, come back up and you can summarize that or you can just add to it. If it just repeats over and over again, it just repeats over and over. I'm just trying to help you guys get as much information to us as you can, all right? So I'm gonna use this list, but by no means, if we get to the end of the list and you haven't spoke, you can, but you will be held pretty strongly to the three minutes. All right, that's the rules of engagement. All right, so we're gonna start with Mark Harding. Oh, I'm sorry. Yep, you're right. Hey, you're in favor of that. No, that's fine. All right, Dina Dorn.

I haven't spoke for a long time, so I tried to put it in order, but with different things that were commented, I made notes, so it might seem a little haphazard at the moment, but

Just because you get to be first then, you know, you get to set how everybody else is. I do. You need to mention your name and your address so we know that you actually work or live in the area. So please, go ahead.

So my name is Dena Dorn. I live on 970 South Bonney Lane. So the Box Elder Creek goes right through our property. So I've had 50 years in October to have experience with this creek. it's a whole ecosystem and when we talk about oh it's only a few inches that actually we know that it actually goes 20 feet down or lower like we've had it drilled and they couldn't find the bottom and so just because it's dry for six months doesn't mean that you know oh and nothing's died right because it's been dry for six months well it's because there's water there's water underneath and so we have so many trees and it's grown since I was little and I think part of, that's a big part of it is we do get water and it's more than inches. My son swims in it, I have a grandson now, he comes and plays in it and they swim in it. I mean it's within a few feet and they dig a little bit and they can do more but it's more than inches. And so I think that's a big part of it. It's also the part of it that he was talking about, you know, what they're putting back into the water. And so I looked into the Army Corps of Engineers, and so they said they can work in the floodplain, but what did they say about the water that they're putting back in that's coming down, right? Because we all have animals, horses, cows. There are eagles, hawks, owls, mice, voles, coyotes, fox, wild turkeys, raccoons, porcupines, skunks. I mean, the vegetation itself is different because we're on the plains, so it's not going to look like the mountains, but it has its own ecosystem, and it all runs together, and these eat this and this, and it's working. And the coyotes, you know, we have more coyotes, and then we have less. So anyway, I think that that's a big part of it for all of us. There's also the thing, the water does run. There is a huge, yeah, I'm not following it at all. But there is a huge wildlife refuge north of us that the creek runs right through as well. And so I know that that's a big part for them. And I don't know how it would change their ecosystem and I wasn't able to talk to anyone there and how they use the creek at that point before I could come talk with you guys. So that's a really big deal too. I think that what we're dealing with is we hit this some years ago when they were gonna do Prosper Farms and they told us that the one mile space that we had for, that they weren't gonna build on was gonna be for all the animals. And so... Thank you. And so now they're messing with the creek, which is actually on the one-mile spot that they said all the animals was going to live on. And so there's just a whole lot to it. And when you look at it, we're looking at decades, because I'm going to be 50, of memories and ecosystem and grass and animals. And it's just a really big deal for all of us. And we're worried about the health of the water. And thank you.

Thank you. Bill Coyle.

Hi, my name's Bill Coyle. I live at 11 Cavanaugh Road, Bennett, 80102. I have decreed water rights that are senior to Range View's water rights. Every time this board approves one of their projects, it injures my wells, and I don't think that the board has jurisdiction. I think it's a water issue that has to be settled with the water court and for some reason these things always get approved and my wells go down towards the end of the season and Um, I have cattle that, um, that graze on the creek bottom and, um, it, if, if you allow this damming of the, of the creek, it's going to affect the whole, as, uh, the previous speaker said, the whole ecosystem and the grass that's available for the cattle and the trees for the shelter for the cattle and, uh, And that's about it. So thank you.

Thank you. Anthony.

Hi, my name is Anthony.

Uh, I live on Alameda. I've got about a mile of the Creek bottom there. And, uh, This is my family. I've got my wife and three kids. It's actually our anniversary today, but this is pretty important. But anyway, lived here my whole life. My kids would be six generations. I actually just retired from my job that I was selling for 22 years to farm, ranch, and raise my family out there. You know, this water thing is just terrible for all of us. And it was so good to see everyone come to this. I really appreciate everyone. Got a lot of friends and everything here. You know, what it's going to do to the water, I'm a rancher and farmer. And we have shallow wells that are dug and that's how we water our cows. So they're only like 20, 30 foot deep. And I mean, you can look down and see water. So a lot of our crops are sub irrigated on there because the water table is so high. So when that water table drops, those crops just, they're not going to live. We, uh, we put up a lot of alfalfa every year. That's, we get two or three cuttings on, which is all dry land, which is great. But, uh, You know, I just, I really want to pass the ranch on to my kids, and I think that with all this water getting taken away, I'm just not really going to have the chance to maybe do that. And, you know, I just, I think really what this meeting is about, it's about water, but it's really about money, you know? I mean... Do you board members, I mean, do you guys care about us and our families and our kids? Or do you guys just care about the money more, you know? And that's, that's, I think what you guys need to think about when you make your decision today is do you care more about money or our families here? Thanks. Thank you.

Brent. 3, 4, 5, 0, 1. Oh, there we go. That's right. That was Brent.

I didn't get your last name very good.

All right. Maggie Keith.

Hi, my name is Maggie Keith and I own 30, sorry, I got all nervous. I own 3280 South Ulm Street, and I currently live at 3020 South Ulm Street with my in-laws. I've lived there for about eight years now. And I think the concerns that I have is that me and my husband, we bought our land on 3280 South Ulm, which is not too far from the diversion dam. Pretty close. We're just, just there. north of Quincy. And we paid probably $150,000 more for that 40 acres than we would have if we would have just bought bare land. But we paid a lot more, like all of our money, to buy this land because it's beautiful and because it has the creek. And because of the trees and the water that flows through, And I think that the concern is not that we understand that Pure Cycle and Rangeview owns the water rights, but the concern is that they're being held accountable with how they're taking it and how much they're taking. And I have several concerns about them mentioning, because we've lived there for eight years, the creek continuously flows on our property. We also have fish and so I question some of their data and one of the things that if you talk to people that live on the road and on the creek that everybody has a little bit different of a story with the creek because there are parts where it goes underneath and there are parts that it flows and we happen to have part that flows and it really changes the land. And so if they're diverting more than they should, and if they haven't been flow monitoring enough on the creek to really know what's historical and what's actually accurate, could they take too much? Could it end up affecting our property values that we've spent all this money on? Could it end up affecting our livelihoods? We grow hay like a lot of people do. We branch. We do all the things. And we just have concerns that we understand that they have water rates are so kind of absurd in the state and I'm sure you guys all know that but we just have concerns about the accountability that's there because these municipalities they can kind of do whatever they want and they get lots of passes and so they just need to be held accountable and I don't know enough about water law to make sure that they are having to monitor things but That's the concern, and the concern is that the data is not great. Because like I said, we do have fish. We also have elk, which is crazy. We definitely have bald eagles and all sorts of things that no one says is out there. But they are, and we are the ones who live out there and see it every day. And that's all I have to say.

Thank you. Looking for Tom Westron. I was going to say, I saw a little piece on the end there. I was going to add it, but I thought, better not.

I scribbled just a little bit there. That's right.

Thank you, Tom.

My concern is with ecological effect. How much water is not going to go down that creek anymore? It's dry right now probably, but you go just north of Quincy a little bit and there's water running. So it's going underneath and keeps flowing north. But how much water is going to go after the dam is put in? is there going to be how deep is the dam going to be? Is it going to stop all the water and all the water is going to have to go over the dam into the bladder or is there some going to get by another way? That's my big concern is that right there. Thank you.

Thank you. So now I need Tom Feeney.

My name is Tom Feeney. I live on South Ulm Street, which the word street's kind of a misnomer, but anyway. I guess one of my questions is that one of the major reservoirs in Park County or in the state of Colorado is being drained because of evaporation. And it seems to me like we're creating something else here that's going to be in that category. And back in March of last year, when we all met about what Rangeview wanted to do on drilling a bunch of wells in the alluvium aquifer, it was said that the proposed pipeline will follow existing utility corridors from the proposed well field to the existing Lowry Range storage pond. And is that not something that can be used for doing what they want to do now instead of creating another evaporation place? So anyway, like some of these other people have said, the wildlife issue is, I mean, we have deer and elk and antelope and a lot of other things there. If I remember right, several months ago there was an article in the I-70 Scout about a proposed project west of the Kiowa Bennett Road and north of Quincy. And there was going to be a wildlife study done to see how it was going to affect the movement of wildlife. And I've heard nothing about a wildlife study about what it's going to do without water. And I subscribe to a magazine called CAF News, and there was an article in there that said the most powerful weapon in the world is water. And when we think about that, there wouldn't be any of us in this room if there wasn't any water. So anyway, thank you.

Daryl Mueller. Okay. Jeff Hummel.

I'm Jeff Hummel. I live on Holmes Street. I guess my one question is, if X amount of water flows through here, what percentage are you taking? Thank you.

Jerry Francis.

Yes, my name is Jerry Francis, and I suppose none of you live east of Gun Club Road, right? In that area? Okay. But what I wanted to do on this is I'd like to invite you out before you make the vote, and I'd make arrangements to take you around and show you Box Elder Creek. There's pools that are established there that stay year round. Our livestock drink out of them, the animals drink out of them, and the trees, cottonwood trees takes a lot of water. I don't know if you've made the study on that or not, but they're good to keep the climate clean and the oxygen. And I'd like, if you'd like to come out, call me, I would take you on a tour of that creek, every one of you. If you guys want to come out before you make the vote. Is that fair? That's working. Call me up. I don't know if you know my number or not. You want my number now or you want it later?

We'll, we'll, we'll deal with it later. Okay.

I'd like to see you come out before you vote and just let me take you down the Creek and show you what's there. And then you make your opinion. You know, I know you can't have it in town, but that's why you go to country and that's why you raise these cattle. And you'd like to see these deer and antelope Rome and other things coming down the Creek. And I believe there's a leopard frog on that Creek. We fought this fight with select energy. I don't know if you remember that or not. They wanted to take our service water and use it for fracking and they backed out of it. So if you come out and take a look, give me a holler. I'd love to take you and show you. Okay.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, Lisa Barber.

My name is Lisa Barber. I actually live three miles as a crow flies from Box Elder Creek, but I was raised on Box Elder Creek. I've got Dena Beach just a few years. My parents, my main concern is my parents' water well. They built their well in 1972. I've done some research through the Denver Water downtown. Um, they had a couple of well permits, um, that expired. So their original 1972 well permit still is in effect. It's 30 feet deep. Um, it's personal and agricultural use. It's my understanding that, well, they say that the water, surface water being taken away from the aquifer, or it isn't going to affect the aquifer. They're in the Denver aquifer, 30 feet to 715 feet. They're at 30 feet. They're at the top of the aquifer. I believe the surface water can affect their well. My mom is on a limited income. It's about $50,000 to drill a new well down in the next aquifer. I'm concerned about that, but we do have cattle and a sub-irrigated alfalfa field that makes benefit from the surface water. You're also talking about this water helping, this dam helping 80 homes. What about the homes that are there now? There's the Creek runs six months. Yeah. But the other six months it's dry. So we, we need that six months of water when it does come, we need it coming down for our Creek. And I've, I've seen lots of wildlife. You talk about, um, no one said anything about the pollinators. We have lots of pollinators, alfalfa fields, um, those kinds of things. That's, that's, what's important to me. So, I also was in the fence post, a cartoon that I made copies of for the board. It's a picture of a cow standing. sitting in front of a bucket that says water allocation on the side is a fountain says big city expansion and it's a water fountain the cow oh and the cow is saying guess i'll just chew slower this year

Dwayne Bartley.

He deferred to me, his wife. I'm Nicole Bartley. I live on Elm Street.

I have to make it official. I can't stand that long.

He's going in for a hip replacement in two weeks. Is that acceptable?

That's fine. Yeah, no, that's fine.

Awesome.

Awesome. But you speak for yourself, not for him. I speak for myself. Yeah, you can't speak twice.

We think the same thing anyway, so it's okay. 33 years of marriage, it's the same thing. Same thing.

I'm with you.

22 years on Bockfelder Creek, it's the same thing. So just a quick note, all the people here have noted that apparently in all this work that was done, no evaluation was made of anything downstream. All of the assessments by CPW were all of the area right there around where the dam is going. Nobody has evaluated what's going to happen downstream. Now, I do understand and thank you. You were very clear in how much is going to be pulled off and how that's going to be regulated and all of that and where your water rights lie and that you must abide by the water rights that precede yours that live downstream.

Speak towards me.

Sorry. So all of that is extremely helpful. It was extremely helpful that that information was provided. But my question then comes to the county. They said that this year they may have gotten two days. And he said that if it's at 10 cubic feet per second, that that would feed 80 homes, I believe was the number, 80 homes for a full year. Yay. So that means if he actually got the full amount this year on those two days, would he really get the full amount on those two days? In fact, we can only do two days. He'd feed 160 homes per year. OK, maybe that sounds great. But 160 homes is the tiniest drop in the bucket. Why would the county approve doing this for that little of an effect? Why would they put that kind of money into doing this for that little of an effect? Wouldn't it be better to say that rather than put all this money, all this investment in this, let's look at all these people who are downstream. It just doesn't make good money sense. It makes me question their numbers. Why would they do this if they're only going to feed 160 homes with it? if they get the full 10 cubic feet per second. Just a thought.

Thank you very much. Jared Keith.

Hello, thank you guys. Jared Keith, 3020 South Elm Street. Commissioner Wolf, I think you asked a really pertinent question, which is how often is this going to be inflated? And the answer was it's complex. Sure, I understand that, that it is complex. But a few things that the presenter did bring up was that this bladder is not going to be up when the creek's dry. And there's also safety in place for when the water level gets too high. The bladder will not be up. So what that means is that this diversion dam is not going to help in times of low water. And this diversion dam is also not going to help in times of flooding. The only times... that really it will be taking the most amount of water is the time that it is most important for the agriculture and the people who live just north and downstream from this. So we are left in a spot where the times that are most beneficial is when the highest amount is going to be pulled. So really what this is is this is a competing needs between small farms and suburbs. And we've seen that Colorado and Denver in particular has known that sprawl is continually going. And even the presenter said that one of the main directives is the incremental improvement of what they have. And it's always a little more and a little more and a little more. And this is one more example of that. People who have spoken today have brought up all of the ecological concerns, or many of them. The presenter said, yes, that this creek can be dry for six months at a time. and all of the grasses and trees don't die, that's true. However, when it comes to migratory animals coming through, whether that be birds, mammals, the reptiles that are there as Jerry had said that there are places that say wet year round. We also have video of that there are fish in the creek. And one of the main ecological points is there were no fish in the creek that are needed for environmental impact study. So my concern is the due diligence that has been done up to this point doesn't match with my life that's been over 30 years now living out there. And it seems like continuing saga across America is small farms fighting against just the growth that keeps coming incrementally, making it a little harder, a little harder, a little harder, while it is an incremental improvement for people who have financial interests. And in addition to that, as my wife said, we have bought land most recently in the area and we paid significantly more because of the riparian air zone that flows through our land. And so when we take into account the amount of property value damage that is done for everyone downstream of a small project as the presenter used those terms. This is big for many people. It's big for us, but a small thing for the people who have a vested financial interest. And I think that that really resonated with me. Thank you. That this is very small for the people who are going to financially benefit from this, but a major blow to the people who have lived there and use this as part of our daily livelihood. So thank you. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

Samuel Hello, my name is Samuel Duncan. I live at 1500 South Holmes Street Watkins, Colorado I have lived most of my life here along Box Elder Creek, and I love it I'm lucky to live somewhere surrounded by nature and wildlife I know my parents bought this property to give me and my brother a legacy we can pass on to our future children You'll have a stammer will go away and the trees will rot and die.

Thank you. Susan?

That was my son, by the way. And my other son showed up late. That is, they are my legacy. My name is Susan Donka. I am the property owner of 1500 South Elm Street. I'm going to go off way into right field from what everybody else has been talking about here today. One of you, I believe it was you, Commissioner Miller, asked this range view, same gentleman, how long was it going to take for them to come back to you asking for more water? And the answer is exactly 453 days. That meeting was back in March of 2025. What I want to talk about today is Arapahoe County's Land Development Code. For single family residents, your requirement under that code requires 25% turf to be laid, which specifically states Kentucky bluegrass. but it shall be limited to 500 square feet. Kentucky bluegrass requires 18 gallons per square foot annually. That is 9,000 gallons for one yard. That is a minimum of 500 square feet. This does not include any of the other plants and trees that this code requires. For the development that they plan, I'm just rounding it to 1,000 homes. Sky Ranch, I don't know how many homes are up there, but it's a lot. Just for easy numbers sake, because I don't do math well, for 1,000 homes, that's 9 million gallons just for the grass. Have you guys been to Sky Ranch? Any of you? Have you seen the obscene amount of landscaping that they do there? It's disgusting. The amount of non-native grass that is being watered there is incomprehensible. We live in a semi-arid climate. We need more native plants and grasses for these new homes. The development code needs to change. If you guys want Kentucky bluegrass, move to Kentucky for Pete's sake. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Rachel Miller.

Good evening. How are you guys?

I am Rachel Miller. I live at 1450 South Bonnie Lane, and the creek runs through the backside of my property. We moved to Watkins in 2012, but we have a pretty interesting background because we came from Elizabeth. And what's interesting there is my husband, his family homesteaded that property in 1859 that is on Running Creek, and that is what converts to Box Elder as you go from Albert County over to Arapahoe County. So it is absolutely beautiful. The area is full of trees, 100-foot cottonwood trees, and it looks like a park. It literally does. So when you talk to these people and they're talking about their property values, behind their houses it looks like a park. I mean, it's incredible. And there's so much water that flows through there. And yes, it is only six months out of the year, but it originates out of a live spring that is in Elizabeth, and it flows all the way down the creek. So whether proposing this dam to go in, it's going to really impact all the houses that are north of there. And I just really didn't see that in the diagram that they put up. But he's talking about 10 cubic feet per minute, I believe, or 10 cubic feet. That's 74 gallons of water. minute that they're gonna draw off that Creek guys that's a huge water trough that's a big water trough that we would use to just water livestock and if you're gonna pull that off in a minute I mean I don't know how long that is actually gonna be I think one thing I'm a little concerned with the study that they've put out is they're they're saying it's hard to determine when you're going when they're gonna pull water but that really impacts all the residents down the creek and I just it would be interesting to know hey I think it's important to ask these questions. If you're going to pull water, how often are you going to pull water? What times of year? You know, like I said, some years that creek is running amazing and it will run from starting around January. And I've seen it run all the way through August when we've had really big water years and really big flood years. But then there's other years where it seems like the last several years, minus the big flood in 2023, our water has been decreasing quite a bit on that creek. And I don't know where it's going because sometimes we haven't quite had the drought to Justify where that water is being moved, but it's not making it down the creek like it did when we moved there in 2012 So I just asked this group you know to kind of consider as you're going through this How much water is going to be pulled you know we know that they have the rights how much is going to be allowed to flow through? On a continual basis because we just don't seem to have very good concrete numbers here I mean like I said we have the 10 The 10 cubic feet, is that per minute? Is that per second? I think there's just a lot of questions as residents that we have just to say, hey, how much are you going to take? We recognize that you have these water rights and that you do have the ability to divert it, but how much are you going to take and how much are you going to impact the folks that are further downstream from you? Because it's going to have a very large impact.

30 seconds.

Yeah. And so, you know, I think it's very important to kind of just address those issues. One thing I was going to add for those people that maybe don't have an agriculture background, that land down there is sub-irrigated. What that means is I can dig down two feet and I'm in water. I know that sounds crazy, but if you continue to pull the surface water off, it's going to impact that sub-irrigated ground that's underneath. Literally, we can dig down four or five feet in just places in normal areas there and we are sitting in water. All of that beautiful landscaping, all the trees, all of the wildlife, it will die there. And like they did mention, we do have elk, we have deer, we have a lot of wildlife that comes through that creek and is there year-round.

So that's all I wanted to add.

Like I said, my husband was a homesteader on that creek in 1859. Thank you. Thank you.

Susan Sadler.

I'm Susan Sadler, and I'm a retired teacher, so I'm going to use the A-B equipment to make sure everyone can hear. There were a lot of comments early on that I couldn't understand, so some of my concerns are reiterating what others have said, may have been in part addressed by early comments that I just couldn't hear. I live at 570 South Bonney Lane. That's downstream from the proposed dam. We have 20 acres that extend down to the creek. And the pictures that you saw at Quincy are nothing like the creek where we live. I know that there was a comment earlier on, come see. If you're willing to have a look, I'm happy to show you. A video of the creek. I was trying to video a rainbow, but if you'd like to see the creek and the trees, I'm happy to share that. Is that legal?

Just hang on to it for now. But yes, I can see it from there.

Okay. So the scant dead trees that you see at Quincy are nothing like the trees on our property. We have on our property over 200 cottonwood trees that are fed by the very shallow groundwater. I call it groundwater. It's surface water. It's water that's there even when the creek is running dry. And so that water sustains those cottonwood trees. My biggest concern and my biggest opposition to the plan for the construction that you're approving is that it has not been made clear to me that there's a monitoring of the surface water, the groundwater downstream from the proposed facility. It needs to be monitored because these hundreds of trees die. That loses an ecosystem that has been there for hundreds of years. And we just can't let that happen. Thanks.

Thank you. All right, so before I kind of wrap up inside here, I'm through the list. Is there anybody else here that would like to speak whose name is not, who didn't sign up? All right, seeing none. All right, let's see. Miss Ava, are there any callers who would like to speak regarding this item?

Sorry, Commissioner Miller, trying to find my microphone.

Very good.

We do have, we have two callers on the line, but only one caller pressed star three. So, oh, and he just jumped out of the queue. I don't know what happened there. He was in the queue and he just jumped out. Could the two callers on the line please press star three now to get into the queue? Otherwise, it will be implied that you are just here listening. Okay, I have one caller on the line. Your last four digits are 1081. I believe it's Mr. Burleson.

That's correct. Can you hear me now?

Yes, and you are live with planning.

Thank you. I am Lee Burleson. I live in 2581 South Flint Ridge Court, Bennett, 801 4 South, 64 West, about three miles north of Quincy. The property that I own is a lot that runs east and west, and I go through the creek. The one thing that I wanted to make the guys that are judging this stuff be aware of is I've got live water. I have live water year-round, live springs. The creek will dry up going into my property. I have pools that sit there, and water trickles out of them to the north. And I was wondering if there's been any EIS subject done, any EIS work for the impact of the live springs in Cottonwoods for the most part.

Thank you.

Are you all, you're all set, Mr. Plummer?

Yeah, I'm... Oops. Oops.

Okay, and there was one other caller, but they did not press star 3. So we can presume that person is just listening in. Unless caller with last four digits, 2551, wants to speak, please press star 3 now. Otherwise, we'll assume that you are just listening in. All right. With that, the other caller did not press star 3. So I believe that concludes all of our callers, Mr. Chair.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Ava. All right. So one last chance. Is there anybody in the room who would like to testify who hasn't already? If you've already testified, you can't do it again. Is there anybody else? All right. Thank you very much. All right. Then we're going to go ahead and close public testimony at this time. Were you able to understand the last caller and what they were actually asking? I don't want to go too far down the list without addressing what he was asking.

Are we able to pick that up?

There's like a lot of background noise for me.

Yes. Chair Miller, what I heard was he was asking if there was any environmental impact study done.

Okay. All right. Are there any comments or questions that the commissioners would like to have answered or addressed by staff? And we'll start down there again.

Yes. Thank you, Chair Miller. Commissioner Latz, I have some questions for the applicant.

I'll see if I can take them. Mark will add them back up in case I don't have the answer. There we go.

Why don't we both get up here? Sure.

Might as well get your steps in today. So the first one is, can you...

share with us a little bit more information about the cpw studies that you did and what was the radius of that study you know how far north did it go particularly sure you know we do perform environmental impact studies on every one of our projects on box elder creek you know this study primarily was in the section although when we do uh get our nationwide permits on the fish and wildlife service is consulted as part of that you know rb corp engineer review So that extends well beyond the scope of the project, looking at the whole corridor, you know, all the property on the Lowry Ranch, as well as downstream as well. Okay. Can you give me, like, was it a one mile? You know, I don't know what exact details the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, you know, what they do internally with staff on their review. So I'm not sure what they do on their end. Okay.

It looks like in our report it says it was one acre survey.

That was the wetland delineation study.

Okay.

So that's not what I was referring to.

Okay, because for pronghorns and that sort of thing, an acre wouldn't really capture that. Can you also address how you manage evaporation with your water storage?

Sure, yeah, unfortunately evaporation is something we contend with as a renewable water source. Renewable water supplies are very valuable because it's a source aside from groundwater and that is a more finite water source that we try to conserve. On the flip side of that, you have to contend with evaporation, and you do that by kind of limiting your surface area in storage. You can do that operationally, whether it depends on how much storage you have in place, how much surface area there is for evaporation. And we try to find that balance between renewable supplies and groundwater, and that's unfortunately one of the downsides of renewable water sources. Do you measure that?

We do, and I'd add a little bit more color. So one of the comments from the public was, you know, can we take this up to the Lowry Ridge storage pond? That is where it goes. So we take the diversions, we take it up to the Lowry Ridge storage pond. And one of the things that you like to do on surface water diversions are to bring that surface water diversion into your storage vehicle and then run that through your plant and get that directly into your distribution system. And so we'd like to have that be the first source of supply because it is at risk, right? It is exposed to that evaporative content. So what we want to do is have that be our first flow through to minimize that effect. And so that would be how we would take it into our water treatment plant. We treat it, put it directly into the distribution system to minimize that. But we do monitor the state division of water resources as you report monthly how much surface area you have exposed in your water reservoir and account for by month the evaporative coefficient that you have on that. So it's a quantification and that's part of your augmentation plan. That's part of your water right that you have to make that water back up to the system.

Great. Let's see. One more, and then I'll share. So can you speak to the concern that we heard as far as the effect of capturing the water on the groundwater? Because obviously there's a high water table out there, and it's feeding a lot of those thirsty cottonwoods, et cetera. So can you speak to how diverting your water right will affect the downstream groundwater and levels, et cetera?

Yep, you bet. And that kind of will capture a number of questions that a lot of the public... Just speak over top of the mic. Sorry. A number of questions that the public had. You know, water, there's nothing that elicits emotions more than water in Colorado, and rightfully so. There's just two types of water that occur here. Not enough to go around and too much to get rid of. And this is the type of water right. Our water right is a 1980 water right. It is an extremely junior water right. The delineation for junior water rights are typically 1900. And so this is what is often referred to as a flood flow water right. So we will only be diverting when all downstream users have full water supply. All of the water rights prior to 1988 will have had all their water rights met. So the remarks were made about, well, Gee, if you're not going to divert that much water, why would you make this type of investment? Well, it is a water right that you want to capture those flood flows, right? You need to capture water when it's available, when there's surface water. Be able to impound that. Be able to take that water and put that into your system. That's what this investment is for. That's what this water right's for. And so all of the downstream users would be, would not be impacted by this water right because In order for us to be in priority and be able to divert it, there is a lot of water in the system. We would get called out. Mr. Coyle came up and testified his water right is senior to ours. He calls us out. He has a senior water right that's protected by the Water Court. Colorado Water Administration is tip of the spear on the complexity and the administration of water rights. And so we have a very sophisticated system of reporting. We report daily. We report monthly. We report the amount that we take. We report the amount that we put back. We report the amount of the water quality. We report the diversion structures. Those are inspected by the state. They're inspected not only when they're constructed, when they're designed, and when periodic inspections throughout so that they're operating correctly. So it is as a robust regulatory climate as you can possibly imagine. And so while I respect everyone and I appreciate everyone's ability to come in and talk about what their concerns are, the state understands those. They've incorporated all of those comments through the last 200 years to be able to administer water rights in a way that tries to prevent those injuries and so this is that type of water right that is a very junior water right that will only divert when there is a lot of water in the system so all of the ponds and the springs, the natural springs that flow to this will all still flow. Because if that creek is dry, the downstream users are calling that out. We're not going to be able to divert. Wouldn't be able to divert anyway because there's not any surface water on the creek. And so you can't, it's a surface water diversion structure. We're not taking it out of the alluvium. It's really administered from that physical flow at the surface. But that's a good question.

Thank you.

Any questions down here?

I was just going to ask about, I know we talked about the diversion. I'm commissioner how, um, the diversion for surface water. Um, if there were any extra that you guys would not be sweeping anything additional.

And so, you know, that's the nature of a junior water right, right? So all calls, all... And a 1988 water right is really a flood flow water right. You know, you wouldn't see diversions that would be in priority unless that were flowing at a significant level. You know, we talked a little bit about flows. Historically, in 2023, there was almost 700... cubic feet per second flowing in Box Elder Creek. And it was several days of that diversion. And this is the type of structure where you say, oh my gosh, why don't you water guys go get that water? That's what this application does.

Hold on.

Hold on. Hold on. We're getting there.

Hold on. A follow-up question. So the Commissioner Wolf's question on when it would be inflated, 2023, I'm just using that as an example, would be a time that it might be inflated more often than 2025. That's correct. Thank you.

This is Commissioner Save, and I'm not sure if this is for the applicant or for Cat, but there were a lot of concerns expressed by the public regarding the ecosystem, the effect of the ecosystem. And I also know that one of the conditions of approval, if that's where we head, is that, let's see here, well, there's a condition of approval around the ecosystem. So can you comment for both? the commissioners and for the public, the level of rigor that went into assessing what would happen with the ecosystem and a little bit of insight as to how you came up with that condition.

Yes, this is Kat Hammer, senior planner here. Staff sends out referral agencies to Colorado Parks and Wildlife and relies heavily on their input in regards to their specialty and expertise. So there was a letter included in your application and posted online, I think it was about six or seven pages long, that I would say to summarize, Colorado Parks and Wildlife talked about what they see in this area and provided suggestions. They did indicate this was a high, I had it in my slide. High priority habitat and made some suggestions there, and that was reflected in our conditions of approval. So staff does rely heavily on that agency because that is their area of expertise. Thank you.

Question over here.

I do have a question. So when you guys are diverting the water, um, if it was one of those, Oh, thank you. Sorry, commissioner Wolf. So when you are diverting the water, I know that it's really a complicated equation of how much will be diverted. Is there any estimate of like what percent of the total water would be diverted?

It'll be highly variable, right? It could be, you know, if it's flowing at a flood flow at, you know, 100 CFS, 700 CFS, we can only divert 10 of them. Okay. And so it would be a very small amount.

Right. Okay. That's what I was trying to get at. Thank you.

Did you install anything? No, not right now. Okay. All right, I tell you what, I will ask all the questions that were being asked. I know that some of them don't necessarily pertain to what we're doing here today, but since the people asked, I think it's worthy to try to answer the best we can. So one of them was, one question that somebody had was treated water inbound. So do you guys want to address just, I mean, I know it's not part of this application, but if you wish to speak about what you do with water that you do put into box over.

Yep. And so that's another one of those highly regulated components, water quality. And that was, you're right, I was going to circle back on that one and say, you know, what type of water, when you're augmenting, what type of water quality are you augmenting with? And those water qualities are typically better water quality than the native stream water quality. So you have to be at or better than what the native water quality is. The state regulates that.

And I'd go one step further and say that when we discharged the Creek, it almost has to be more pristine than drinking water in a lot of cases, especially with our wastewater affluent. But the standard there is so high. It's not just, is it, is it a cleaning constituents? But, you know, I think again, you know, we all, we talked to the last application. It has to support growth of microorganisms, minnows, all that type of stuff. It's a very, very rigorous testing process for that water that we've discharged back to the stream.

Very good. All right, so there was a whole bunch of questions about water rights and water courts and how that approval happens. I'm not even certain I know what question I'm trying to ask here, but maybe this will maybe even be a little bit for staff. But everybody, I mean, I'm going to guess that there's a lot of people in the room that probably don't have water rights, but they have, but the water affects them. And so how does that, I mean, I'm going to ask the bad question. How does that affect them? If they don't have any water rights, how does that affect them? I mean, they're trying to maintain the views that they have.

And a legitimate question, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You sort of say, listen, whether I have a water right, whether it's an irrigation water right like Mr. Coyle, he's protected by a seniority system, and the Division of Water Resources administers that system, and they send out notification, this is the call on the river. and the call on the river is very senior or the call on the river is free. If you have any diversion structures, you can take it because there's so much water in the system. And then you have sort of the alluvial wells, you have the springs, you have the cattle that will drink out of the ponds that accrue on this stuff. And those are typically unaffected by the surface water flows, the diversion structures. If there's no surface water flows, these springs will still be there. And we're not diverting those springs. If there's physically no water there and it's physically not in priority, which is not going to be in priority very often, but when it is, we'd like to be able to divert. And so those injuries are a component of the system as a whole in the seniority of water rights. They don't become available unless all the other water users are satisfied. And if those water users are calling out, the same springs and ponds and flows are affected by the downstream users as much as they are the upstream users.

I'm trying to picture this just a little bit so maybe you can help. You have your diversion dam And there's flow in the water. I mean, it's going down the creek. I mean, so are you going to stop that surface water from flowing any further so that you end up collecting all of it? Or is it a, we're going to catch about 50% and the other 50% still goes? I mean, I'm just throwing numbers. I'm just trying to visualize this.

That's exactly right. It's a visualization. And the issue is because of the junior nature of it. In order for us to be able to be in priority, there's a lot of water. And so it's only going to be some of the water. Is it going to be 10% of the water? Is it going to be 50% of the water? You don't know. But there's water there. And the water needs have been met by everybody else downstream.

Right. And because we've talked about that there is flow that you don't see, correct?

Yes.

Okay. So when we have that flow that's still going, because we have testimony of people saying that they actually have water downstream, even though you can show pictures that there is no water. And I think that this has to do with sand buildup, silt and all that, correct? So you might have an elevation in your creek area that is higher than further down where they have less silt that has been washed down. Am I visualizing that correctly? So they can still have water, this creek can be flowing, so even downstream this creek can be flowing with water on the surface even if you don't have surface water.

And the subsurface flow will even flow when there's no surface water.

Correct. That's kind of what I'm saying. So you could have a no surface water situation and they would still have water flowing downstream because of silt. Alluvial underflow. Correct. I use silt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So the next question that came up was fish, because somebody said that there's fish. And of course, the Parks and Wildlife say that there's fish. even though it doesn't really come up in there. It says that a diversion dam could negatively impact the native fish community by altering hydrology, which I think is what we were just talking about, and reducing the available habitat, and by acting as a barrier to movement, which is interrupting the colonization process. We don't have that as a term, so then my question is, that was one of their studies, or it's one of their comments, so.

I have to think that is kind of a boilerplate answer to some of the referral comments because there are probably fish downstream in Box Elder Creek. Maybe they're familiar at the confluence of the plat where it flows more continuously. Where we're at, it's dry six months out of the year, so I don't know where that comment really came from. I maybe should have followed up, but I've studied the creek system for a decade now. I've never seen the living fish.

so maybe this question that is better for staff because it's it's i mean we address mule deer and pronghorn and wetlands and raptors but we didn't seem to want to address the frogs the frogs we didn't address the frogs we didn't address like native fish and and i might also add you know if there if and and i absolutely believe you know the testimony of that there are fish

in ponds. There may be fish in these ponds that are there almost year round because they have springs. Or there may be fish that somehow migrate into the system when there are high flows in the river. There can't be fish in a dry stream breath. But there can be fish in ponds. It can be when the river is or when the creek is flowing. And if it flows for an extended period of time, you know, fish have a way of getting in there from, you know, goose feet and things like that. They carry eggs and things like that. We find fish that migrate into our pond, our reservoir, that has no connection to the stream by birds coming in and bringing eggs and those sorts of things. There are that occur, and if they are, they occur from those high flows. They would continue to occur because, again, we're at a high flow water diversion water right.

So then the next question is if people have questions about accountability and who's going to hold you guys accountable for what you take or you don't take.

That is DWR. And again, they are, boy, you do not misreport. They audit very strenuously. They inspect strenuously. This is probably the most robust water system in the planet.

Okay. So then there was questions about 80 homes and the math. Do you guys want to do that math one more time for us?

Yeah.

Thanks.

And they were correct in the sense that this year there's not a lot of flow. This is exactly why this infrastructure is important because in a typical year we'll be using this renewable supplies and we'll be conserving groundwater. In those times of drought, this is when we can rely on those groundwater rights that we've conserved in a typical year because this infrastructure is in place. And so that's the value of this infrastructure. He's right on drought year. We're not going to be using this very often, but that's not the normal year. And we're really aiming towards conserving groundwater for these times of drought that we're experiencing right now.

As a water provider, we're in no way, right? I mean, you can't rely on non-renewable groundwater and you can't defer renewable groundwater for the impacts. And, you know, I would say from a provider standpoint, one of the things that I would say we're most proud of is that we use every drop of water. I mean, we have every single... drop of water that we send into a house comes to our wastewater reclamation plant and we're reusing a hundred percent of that what's watering the community is that reuse water that's treated effluent water and so that high high stewardship of water we had the pleasure of taking a dozen folks from engineering through our wastewater treatment plant which is unique in the country there's only a half a dozen of these in the country that treat 100% of that water. And we bring that back. We have a dual distribution system throughout the community. And our parks and our irrigated open space areas are watered from that reuse water supply. So our stewardship of water is just as voracious as the testimony you heard today.

Okay, very good. Any last questions? Thanks, General.

Commissioner Latsis. So when do you know that you are able to divert water? So is that something the state lets you know? I would imagine somebody's got to tell you it's open and available.

There's a website, and the water commissioner updates the call on a daily basis. And you can go to the website and see what the priority date is and how that reflects to your water right if you can divert.

It's usually on a daily basis, not hourly, but on a daily.

Thank you. Did I catch all the questions? I know you were helping me. So I think I just have a couple questions for staff. I don't think I've got anything more. You?

There was one more. Sorry. Commissioner Latsis again. I wrote down my note was to re-explain the depth of the facility because I know there were some concerns about how deep does the concrete structure go and how does that potentially affect groundwater? Okay.

Again, the bladder is three feet tall, so that's how high the water would impound behind it. And again, it won't affect alluvial underflow. Groundwater continued to pass below the structure and move downstream. That's the concrete pad. This way, this way, this way, this way.

Stay with us. Stay with us.

I thought you mentioned inches versus like feet deep and deep footings or caissons or anything like that.

But the thrust ratio of that on the bladder is the smart guys in the room figure that out on the calculator.

Great. Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Um, staff, I just have like one question in here. They were just, there was questions about the land development code and the use of Kentucky bluegrass. Do you guys want, we can, we can always change land development code later, but Ken Hammer, senior planner, Rappaport County.

Um, the County actually just recently adopted land use regulation or landscaping regulations. I think it was late 2024, maybe early 2025, which prohibits the use of Kentucky bluegrass. I'm sorry, say that again? Our recently adopted land use regulations prohibit the use of Kentucky bluegrass.

Okay.

And I also want to mention that our landscape regulations are for common areas and single-family neighborhoods and such like that, but a single-family home would be exempt from the landscape regulations. They aren't required to plant one tree or do anything. It's just communities kind of. Okay.

Yeah, if you want, yeah, I mean, if it just settles that to, I mean, because it's really not something that's really going to be addressed here, but if you want to go right ahead and do it real quick.

Yeah, and while she's pulling that up, Jason Reynolds with planning. So, contrary to what Ms. Hammer just said, the code also says, quote, in single-family detached, single-family detached cluster, two-family and townhome residential development, turf shall be limited to 25% of the total combined yard area or a maximum of 500 square feet on a lot, whichever is less. So that 25% is an absolute maximum. If someone wants to do 0% turf, they may.

Okay, then my next questions are underneath the terms of our conditions of approval. You do have construction should, and you do have applicant should. Those aren't really very definitive. Is there a reason why we don't want definitive there? We're just kind of being kind of casual?

I'll defer to the county attorney on that.

So it really gets down to authority. The... It is not uncommon to see conditions like this that are more aspirational in nature because in those situations it's because the county really doesn't have authority to mandate those items. So the best we can do is strongly encourage the applicant to do those things to comply with the referral entity, in this case the CPW, and try to work that out with them in a cooperative and cooperative manner. But there are very limited instances, well, I don't know about very limited, but there are limited instances within our land development code where preservation of wildlife is actually a related approval criteria. And this particular application being a location and extent application that's really governed by state statute as opposed to any additional requirements or approval criteria that we can additionally tack on to this. So it's really a matter of our limited authority.

Any other questions? Comments?

Please.

Gives me time to think, thanks.

I'm commissioner how I just wanted to say everyone's testimony tonight was so heartfelt and the commitment to your water on your property. I hear. And again, I think it was beautifully presented testimony. I think. these steps for renewable water and conserving water are necessary systems. And so it's a tough decision. I just wanted to make that comment.

Very good.

All right. Could I add something to this?

We're all closed on public comment. Yeah. All right. I guess we're kind of like we were a couple weeks ago. We can approve. We can deny. We just have to have a really good reason. We can do continuance if we think we have to have anything more. We have options. Those are the options that they put out here for us. So if there is a continuance, we do our time constraint. But I guess I am open. for a motion.

Commissioner Miller, this is Commissioner Save. And I'm going to launch the first step here. In the case of LE25-005 Box Elder Diversion Dam location and extent, I have reviewed the staff report, including all exhibits and attachments, and have listened to the applicant's presentation and any public comment as presented at the hearing, and hereby move to approve this application based on the findings in the staff report subject to the following conditions, number one and number two.

So motion was made by Commissioner Suave. Is there a second?

Commissioner Lotz is second.

All right. Is there discussion on this motion? Please go ahead.

Yeah, this is Commissioner Sade again. I just wanted to reiterate what Commissioner Howe has said, that I really appreciate the comments that you guys have made, and I know the journey that it's taken for you to come here tonight. And I also appreciate the detail of the comments that the applicant has provided and all of the thoughtful answers that you've given. And so I will be voting for this given that it is very challenging subject.

I am going to sit here and be the, and say, I'm, I'm, I'm okay with to, to, Just to say no on this, because I just think that we've got like vague language on the conditions that I'm not even certain then that they should even be in there. If it's going to be that big, I don't think we brought in the whole part of the, um, Colorado wildlife, uh, recommendations. We we've heard that there is a lot of wildlife and the things on the, on the, on the stream. So I think we still have some issues. So I would be more of a denial, but that's where I am standing at this point. I will pause. All right, then if there is no further discussion, Ms. Ava, can you please conduct the roll call?

Commissioner Howe. Aye. Commissioner Lasses.

Aye.

Commissioner Saul. Aye. Commissioner Salve.

Aye.

And Chair Miller. Oh, I'm sorry, Commissioner Wolf. I've got one more.

Aye.

Sorry, Commissioner Wolf.

Aye.

And Chair Miller?

Opposed.

And the motion passes on a vote of five to one.

All right. Thank you, everybody. We're going to move into some other stuff, but you're welcome to stick around if you want to see how it's done. Otherwise, thank you all for showing up. give the room just a little bit of yeah time sorry

Okay, yeah, I didn't get into the details. That's what that was.

Thank you for coming in. I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong.

No, no. Lisa, I don't want to call any of you.

Yeah. I'll text you later. Yep. I have been looking at your letter that you sent me.

I'll give it back. So yes, that's the whole thing.

Very good, we're back on board here, sorry. All right, so tonight we gotta do elections of a replacement chair pro tem. Make this really easy. Are there any nominations? Does anybody want to campaign for it?

Well, I won't campaign.

It's already your job. I don't know if you guys noticed, but her name is Pro Tem on the website already.

I didn't know it was already on the website. How did that happen? I don't know. But anyway, I would be willing unless there's somebody else that's dying to do it.

Well, you know, I'm willing to test the theory that that's like an ejection seat to get out of here. But otherwise, I would like to nominate Lynn.

I agree with Commissioner Latsis. I'd also like to nominate Commissioner Somme.

It's already listed.

Okay, I tell you what.

Do you accept the nomination?

I accept that nomination.

Very good.

All right. Don't bail out on any really huge...

All yours, man, I'm out. All right, let's just vote by affirmation all in favor of Lynn Suave of being the pro tem. All say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Very good, that's for the record.

Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. Big money.

Hey, we got the team back together. All right, announcements. We got any announcements?

Yes, we had announcements. This is Molly. Hi. June 16th, we have the Strasburg Superior Plan Comprehensive Plan Amendment. And then on July 7th, we have the Remora Pipeline Connection. And that is it.

Very good. That's going to take place here. Go ahead.

That's going to take place here?

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I'm not going to take hold of it.

Okay.

I want to find something, but I don't want to have like a big, we'll have a study plan. When there's nothing going on, we'll have a study plan out. All right. So one thing that I would like to try to bring forward a little bit is a review of our bylaws. You know, we can put together a committee. We don't have to do this now, but I would like everybody just to get a copy of the bylaws. They are on the website. And just read them over and just see if there's anything in there that you're like doesn't make sense, something that we need to add, whatever you want to take a look at. There are examples of other bylaws inside the county that you can take a look at. They're all listed on that same page, so you can see if there's anything in there that you're like, hey, we need that. All right? And then we can bring that up as a topic another time. Does that work out okay?

Yeah. So, Chair Miller, quick, maybe... Just a quick highlight there, because I know there are a couple things specifically you were interested in. Maybe we should make sure that we raise those up to the top as far as looking through bylaws.

Yeah, yeah. So I have a copy of them here, and I kind of highlighted a lot. So maybe I'll just... So one of them was the whole consent agenda. If we're not going to have one... We probably don't need the verbiage in there. But if it's just something we've gotten out of the habit of doing, then we need to bring that back in. Most of the time, all we're doing is just voting on minutes. That's really the majority of it. When you look at what consent agendas can be, it can be paying bills or something like that. You know, just some stuff that just automatically, you know, we just vote and be done. So there's like things like that. So if you understand consent agenda, maybe we need to either bring it back in or we just make everything an item. So another one is I don't find anything in here on the term limits for anybody. It's written on the website, but the website doesn't really, shouldn't really. be what tells us how we run our board. So maybe some things like that. So what are our term limits? How long are they? We know how we get appointed, but it's like maybe all that verbiage needs to be in here. So those are just some of the things when you review it. Take a look at it. There was a commissioner a while back that was like, hey, we need a raise. It's like, well, that can be part of it in here. I mean, we can make that as part of what we're supposed to do. Jason's like, you're taking my budget. I will tell you, whatever we do has to be presented to the Board of County Commissioners. They do have the final say. So they may or may not take up what we do. You have anything you want to add to that comment or statement? I think I did all right.

No, I would just, when you were talking about the consent agenda, I mean, that's typically reserved for non-controversial items. A night like this where you have three different minutes from three different meetings, that's the kind of thing that could be placed on a consent agenda, but then we knew we had an amendment potential to one, so it would have to be pulled off. It has to be pulled off. And then you vote on it later, or handle it separately at least. And I think that's the kind of thing that administratively... staff can probably discuss that and kind of look out for those things in the future to try to just write up the script that way and present the agenda that way. I don't know if that's something that really needs to be worked into the bylaws at all, but I think it sounds like there's some direction that maybe that's considered streamlining.

We just don't write it that way. I was looking at other people's agendas, and it's in their agendas. I mean, that's what I said. If you ever want to peruse whatever other boards for the county... read their bylaws and read what their agendas are. I mean, it's kind of interesting. Some are pretty simple like ours. But some just say consent agenda, and it just says minutes of the meeting. And maybe that's all it is. Maybe just a verbiage change on our page is all. Yeah, I think that's it.

I think we've streamlined in recently, just like in the last year, late last year, some of the verbiage within the script that we typically go with, making sure that you have the availability of voice votes as opposed to having to do a roll call vote for everything, which is faster and just streamlines things and kind of helps meetings move along. But obviously, on the actual land use cases, they do like to have roll call votes as well. But I feel like things have streamlined a little already. But yeah, I think I'm certainly open to working with you on bylaws. I would encourage people to mark them up, bring them back, and we can add that as an agenda item and have an open discussion about it. If we have a committee, we need to be careful about open meetings laws. I wouldn't want a committee of more than two.

Which is how we would do it. We would vote for a committee of two. And then it's hard for those people to get input from others. That's how it would be handled.

But otherwise, yeah, it's all good.

Yeah, like I say, you know, it's like I know, yeah, you can go back and just listen to the audio of any of our meetings that you didn't attend, and then you can vote on anything coming forward after that. So that includes the minutes of the meeting. So it does exist that way. It's the way I read our bylaws. Yes. So you don't always have to be like, you know, especially if we'd have had something controversial here and you weren't in attendance, but then you come in next time, all you would have to do is just listen and you can be a part of the vote.

Especially when an item's being continued. Yeah, especially if it's being continued. If you miss an item, a meeting, and there was an item that was continued, do you always want to go back and review it so you can participate at the next meeting?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, just because you missed the minutes or whatever. I mean, you can listen so you can vote on the minutes. You can just be like, yeah, no, I'm good. All right. Anything else?

Yes. Sorry. She's taking over. Jason, I wanted to have you give us kind of a brief overview of the Airbnb regulations that were recently approved by BOCC. And I would normally just call you or ask you, but I have a feeling that us other commissioners would like to know. And in specific, I wish I had brought the document, but There's a few stipulations such as that if there is noise that the owner will be notified within 15 minutes and the 180 days still applies and then there's a grandfathering thing. But how are these going to be enforced? I mean, I know that's not BOCC's issue, but they came up with these provisions And I'm just really curious how that gets implemented.

Can I ask something? Commissioner Salve, when you say you went 15 minutes, can you review what you're questioning tonight, the 120 days?

No, two things that I brought up. There's a provision that the owner can only have the Airbnb operate in 180 days in one year. So the question is, who manages that? How does that get orchestrated?

Wasn't that the either or? Yeah. If you own the property, because I was at the meeting where they adopted them.

Oh.

So 15 minutes, yeah. 180 days. It was not a thing. But you have to own it. That's because it was an either or. If you are the owner of the short-term rental, there wasn't a 180-day limit on it. Yeah, so that was when we were looking doing the study session They were going to do an either-or either you had to own it and I think live in some portion and whatever So they wanted to maintain like homeownership property ownership unless it was like a multi-family Well, and then that gets into the grandfathering at which they're calling legacy or we are calling legacy.

So Then I would I'm assuming if you if you are legacy then the 180 days and the have to be called would apply. Is that incorrect?

Yes.

Okay. Bring it on. There we go. Thank you. Any other questions?

So apologies for the direct response. So I'll first address what we're calling the legacy applications. So if somebody is able to demonstrate that they are currently operating a short-term rental, and I believe it's within the past six months, the actual verbiage is in the ordinance, and it's many pages. that I do not have fully committed to memory, but if they are able to prove that they're operating a short-term rental now, they may continue to operate it under the legacy definition, even if they are not the resident, or rather the property is not their primary residence. So I think you heard from a lot of investors at the Planning Commission hearing who operated short-term rentals that were not their primary residence. So this legacy provision provides an opportunity for those who have existing short-term rentals to apply for licenses with Public Works and Development to establish those uses as licensed short-term rentals. Those legacy short-term rentals are allowed to continue and they may continue to renew their licenses. However, upon transfer of ownership, the legacy designation expires. So if I had a legacy short-term rental and I sold that property to Mr. Hader, he would only be able to offer it as a long-term rental or 30 days or more at a time. Or if he wished, I suppose, move into it. So that's the legacy. Some of the discussions we had about how to control impacts on neighborhoods, we had discussed, is there a limit on the number of days that something could be rented? There is not a limit on the number of days that somebody can rent the property as a short-term rent on a short-term basis in the ordinance. And then I believe the third question was about 15 minutes. I think that's referring to the where someone has a designated local responsible agent And basically, it's about responsiveness to complaints. And somebody must be able to respond to that complaint within 15 minutes of the complaint being lodged. And that's similar, actually, to the county's on-call policy. So it's, you know, once contacted by the renter or affected party, they need to respond promptly under the license.

Jason? If there is a problem, then the neighbors would call the sheriff and then the sheriff would call? How did?

Yeah, so we have contracted with a company called Host Compliance. They're actually a subsidiary of Granicus who manages our agendas. Like if you've ever looked at agendas for the Board of County Commissioners or Planning Commission, that's run on a Granicus platform. So they're affiliated with Granicus. But the name of the entity is Host Compliance, and we'll have on the website, here's the number to call if there are any short-term rental complaints. And Host Compliance staffs the phones 24-7 and would be able to contact the... licensee or the local responsible agent if we do receive a complaint. Now if it's something that's starting to get you know very obnoxious that it may be appropriate to contact the Sheriff's Office but you know many of the complaints can be handled potentially through the host compliance number.

Well, and Jason, I appreciate you elaborating all this. And just so you guys know why I'm bringing all this up is there is an Airbnb in our neighborhood. And on the website, it's called the Happy Hour House. And it's used for weddings. And there was a recent fraternity party. And noise went on to 3 AM. When it's in your neighborhood, you're a little more sensitive to the issues.

And we crafted the ordinance intending to respond to the types of complaints we'd heard about activities like that. And there was in another neighborhood, I think it was more in the Holly Hills area, at least one listing that was advertising themselves as sort of like an event center similar to that where there were a lot of just larger gatherings of people for whatever event, whether baby shower or softball team. Yeah.

Jason and I spoke at the last meeting regarding this and I think these are great for that reason. I think it's just unfair. I think the short-term rentals that exist for other reasons make it through, but there has to be something in place for just scenarios like that. It's unbelievable.

Well, and just incidentally, too, the house has a two-car garage, and they converted the garage into a game room. And that's where all the noise and the music come from. And that makes it more attractive as the happy hour house. Wow. Yeah, poorly insulated probably. Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. Anyway, thank you.

You're welcome. I see a legacy license going on. Bye-bye. Yeah. Reject it. We'll have to be quieter. Yes.

So we're kind of okay with this little bit of a format as long as we're not speaking about future cases, correct? And anything that may come in front of the board. So as long as we stick to those kinds of rules, we should be good to be able to just kind of ask some general questions and understand a few extra things.

Yeah, you know, administrative business is routinely on the agenda. If you know of something in advance, it's always helpful to list that particular item just for public notice so people can – listen in if they have interest as well. And if something gets into the matter of more of a policy decision that you're working on, like if you wanted to, if you were to start digging into the bylaws tonight, then my encouragement would be like, let's wait on that. Let's put it on the agenda so people would know what's going on. But the case law basis, like those things that kind of flow from what's on your agenda is fair game. Okay.

All right. Very good.