Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Jump right in because it's 2.30 and I know that we have a lot to talk about today. So first off, is it okay to approve the minutes from last month's meeting?

Yes, I'm good with them.

Council Member Jackson, you good? Yes. Thank you. All right, then we're going to jump right in because the first subject is one of my favorites to talk about right now, food trucks.

Yes. On 2nd, thank you.

Um, so, yeah, I, I'm Eric Gates. I'm with the planning department. This is a presentation to go over food truck regulations and Aurora, their benefits that they provide to the city. Some of the difficulties and issues we've had with food truck operations and some recommended solutions and improvements to the code for these issues. Presentation was put together by myself. Trevor Vaughn, manager of licensing. Josh King in code enforcement, who couldn't be here today, unfortunately. And then Cindy Perry with business development. And then Councilmember Lawson was the sponsor on this item. Thank you, Councilmember Lawson.

Hey, Eric.

Yep.

Councilmember Lawson is on if we could give the floor to her to introduce the item. Sorry. Yeah, thank you.

So, thank you committee for allowing me to bring this chair to the committee and to discuss this issue. I understand that food trucks and I'm not anti business or anything like that. But the food trucks that I've been getting many complaints in my ward specifically on how food trucks are being not curtailing to the issues. Like, the, the licensing just being everywhere. Big lots if everyone knows where that is on chambers and Hamden. That has been a really big concern for food trucks in the area with the amount of food trucks that are there. The allowing some compliance issues that have occurred within since the food trucks have been allowed. And I understand it's the property owner who is allowing this because it's their property. But there has to be some consistency on the issue in terms of following the compliance being, you know, Because it is adjacent to nearby neighborhoods. And also just following the rules. And I think there's too many in this particular area, in this retail center. I can, you know, I didn't bring all of the complaints that I've received. I know that there are some in Ward 5 and particularly who like the food trucks in the area because they think they bring business to an area that is kind of blighted. And Hamden and Chambers is blighted. So the reason I wanted this to be brought forth is to maybe look to see if there's some kind of compromise and how food trucks were dealing with food trucks, especially in retail centers, specifically when they're just pop up anywhere like along chambers and smoky hill. There was a food truck that just was there. And when Trevor went to go and look at it and ask them, they didn't have approval of the owner. So there's some many issues with this. I really think that there should be a limit amount of limit on the amount of food trucks that are what maybe I don't know, looking at the presentation, how in a retail center, depending on the size. The one at Hamden and Chambers, I know that there's been a lot of issues and I've gone in there myself in different types, different day, the weekend, the evening, and I've seen some things that have not been in compliance. So that's my introduction. I thank you for allowing for me to bring this forward and for discussion. And hopefully we can come to some kind of compromise if this could move forward or not. That's all I have to say, Laura.

Thank you. Okay, Eric. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry to jump ahead to be there. Um, so, yeah. Getting into the presentation, so I'll just start with a brief overview of the current standards for food trucks in the. So currently all food trucks must have a license from the city. Aurora and the state of Colorado. They can only operate between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. There are a number of standards related to the location of operation as well. So they must be 175 feet away from any restaurant entrance, unless given permission from the property owner or their designee. They must also operate 50 feet away from any single family property unless they're operating an accessory to a business for patrons of that business and don't have a generator or violet or noise standards. And then for any other private or school property, they need to have written permission from an owner or representative. for city-owned property they're generally only allowed in the right-of-way unless approved or authorized by the city manager and they must be if they're in the right-of-way be in a legal parking space and serve customers from the side opposite of the right-of-way they are required to remove trash generated within 25 feet of the truck wherever they operate and maintain a trash receptacle. And then finally, current use-specific standards do reference some code that has since been repealed in the UDO, but the trucks ultimately would still need to comply with our general noise standards. So next, I just wanted to go over each of the presenters' roles in the regulatory process here in Aurora for food trucks, starting with business development. So I'll hand it over to Cindy.

Good afternoon. So from a business development perspective, we're looking at food trucks in particular as a potential incubator. They've been noted for their placemaking abilities, but in this particular role, we're We're understanding that there have been some complaints from businesses that are being impacted. So, you know, we're here to help voice kind of both sides of the business story.

Thanks, Cindy. And then for planning, we primarily are dealing with reviewing the food truck operation and location for just a general UDO compliance. We would also be managing and generally taking the lead on any UDO code updates as they go through the city approval process in relation to food truck and specific standards. Next, I'd hand it over to Trevor for licensing's role.

Okay. Thanks. Yeah, Trevor Vaughn in licensing, and I think our primary role is just making sure that these trucks are appropriately licensed and working actually pretty closely with code enforcement in regards to enforcing the same elements just resource-wise and that they're located and have proper property permission to be on site. And so I've got some slides that I'll go through as we get there.

And then, like I said, Josh with code enforcement couldn't make it, but, you know, code enforcement's generally involved in the actual day-to-day enforcement of our policies for the food trucks responding to any, you know, concerns that we may get called in as well. So next, I'll hand it back over to Cindy just to discuss some of the benefits that food trucks do provide.

Yeah, so as I mentioned in my opener, food trucks, when they're operating optimally, are a wonderful tool for placemaking. They attract foot traffic, which can help a center. They often serve as a community gathering space. They do provide potential tax revenue. And here in Aurora, we logged about $850,000 in revenue for 2025 from existing food trucks. And also, as I mentioned, it's a great tool for incubating future brick and mortar projects. and partnering with SBDC and other partners to kind of encourage that entrepreneurial growth within Aurora.

Cindy. So yeah, with that said, we do want to start getting into some of the difficulties we've seen with the current standards. So from planning's perspective, generally the code just speaks to the operation of the food trucks. And as a result, there's no clear delineation between a temporary food truck and a truck that is operating within our required timeframes, but being kept in the same location permanently. The code doesn't specify where they should be stored after operation. And then The food truck definition is also fairly loose. It makes it difficult at times to clearly define what is or isn't as as the definition puts it designed and equipped to serve food and beverages. So, for example, as a car with a cooler. Designed to sell prepackaged items. And then finally, we have seen an increasing interest from the development community to have sites dedicated to a rotating selection of food trucks with permanent seating and gathering areas, what we will be calling food truck plazas, and I'll describe those in a little more detail further on. But right now, the code only really contemplates food trucks as a temporary accessory use. I will hand it over to Trevor. Trevor, just let me know when you want me to swap slides.

Okay, will do. All right, so some of the issues we're encountering with regards to the complaints we're hearing about and what we see out there in the world is regards to the large congregations of food trucks in specific locations and some of the impacts that kind of come along with that and also in relation to their permanency when they're locating there, even though they're really designed to be temporary in nature, including no limit on the number of trucks at a location. But also, there's not necessarily a real clear path to how to have kind of that large congregation, which is what Eric referred to as some type of path for plazas or parks, which we do see in A lot of other cities throughout the country, there's usually some standards around that and what those look like to ensure health, safety, and fit within the community. There is some limits in our current code on operating timeframe, which I mentioned in regards to they're kind of setting up permanently and not necessarily returning regularly to the commissary. State food code for food trucks. says they shall return regularly, and I use quotes regularly because that's the standard that's in the food code. The problem with regularly is it's not defined as to what that means. Is that daily, weekly, monthly, yearly? It's just not made clear in the state food code. And so what we're seeing is these trucks sometimes never leaving the site. And we've also seen in some circumstances where I think trucks have sat for a year or longer without ever moving from the site. Along those lines, and we'll often see some structures being constructed along with the food truck, fire safety issues, not just from the permanency, but also when they locate in these large groups, they're oftentimes locating too close together or blocking hydrants and causing some fire hazards. And then also wastewater issues, because if they're not leaving the site, they're not properly dumping their wastewater back at the commissary like they're supposed to be into something that has a grease trap or grease interceptor. and just some general appearance issues along with it. So talking about needing some clear regulations and path for pods and plazas. We have a book that the American Planning Association put together that we were looking at as a team where we see some very common themes with regards to regulation of food trucks and numbers on locations and how plazas work. And so there are some choices there for council to consider. They do appear to draw positive activity, as Cindy touched on. Really, these are positive activity generators, usually more than not. They bring some people to an area, particularly if you look late in the evening through East Colfax, where the food trucks are located. They're oftentimes lighting their locations. There's not a lot of questionable activity kind of going along with them. They add some natural surveillance and can really, as Cindy mentioned, be place-generating activity. Next slide. So some examples of kind of what we see. This was a food truck. You can see they just put up some tent structure for dining, kind of these permanent structures. And there's their water supply. Not really the right way to do things, but just from that permanency and having dining and not clear standards. They just start constructing this stuff. That was not necessarily allowable, but just kind of highlighting that. Go ahead and go to the next slide. Here's another site. This is currently in Operation 1800 South Havana. We probably have some fire issues here. We do because of the spacing between them. We've got some license issues with a number of these weren't licensed. This is a property owner that is charging rent here and finds that there are good cash flow, but obviously some concerns here with traffic flow, parking, even impacts beyond the site and the ability for trucks to relieve regularly because they're so close together, you couldn't even get in there to tow them out. We know that these are not moving location. Go ahead and go to the next slide. This is our chambers in Hampton location. where these are licensed food trucks there. We did issue notice for them to space out a little bit. Getting an echo here. I muted them, whoever it was. And so we had some issues here with a few trucks unlicensed. I think the owner of the site or the place manager here is doing better about checking them. But again, really allowing a large number of trucks to locate here. We have had some complaints from neighboring restaurants, you know, potentially impacting their business, and I think neighbors as well, just putting this out here as an example. Go ahead and go to the next slide. So when you talk about some of these permanency where when they're not leaving, they're kind of putting some of these structures or tables in place here. We haven't had site plan amendments or anything for these structures. So I think what we would recommend Council look at is making these elements move more regularly, actually in a nightly basis, to address some of this. Go ahead and go to the next slide. This is the wastewater issues. This is one we saw where this truck, because it just kind of parked there, went ahead and opened up their wastewater tank, which is violations of a number of codes and was dumping directly into the storm drain. We do also hear about some issues with these trucks dumping in car washes and such like that, and obviously a real concern when they're not regularly leaving the site that they're properly dumping their wastewater. Go to the next slide. This was a situation down at Chambers and Hampton where the school bus was brought in. This was not a food truck. It was brought in for dining purposes, and they started using this as basically like a dining car, which really I don't think was the intention of the food trucks at that point. Ideally, they would hopefully transition to owning a restaurant in one of our retail spaces. But as far as the appearance here, this was just brought in there, and we did instruct them to remove that. Go to the next slide. So covering for Josh here, as I mentioned, we work closely with code enforcement and enforcing the requirements around food trucks. We have a specialist here in licensing that's kind of the lead and basically has begun to memorize the food trucks off the top of her head and whether they're licensed and have permission to be there. She's very good at that. Part of the issue code enforcement sees that they regularly deal with is storage of these vehicles in residential areas, a very common complaint that they receive. They're allowing them to be stored in residential areas. The way the code's written, it talks about commercial vehicles. So if they just simply screen out the name on the side of the truck or if there's no name on it, then under the code, it's being allowed within that residential area, despite it essentially being a commercial vehicle. They've seen some situations with blocking traffic while operating, especially if they're setting out tables and chairs or if they're in a bad spot. And just what I mentioned is about the clarity and policy for outdoor seating setups, as you saw there, the construction of some structures, placement of picnic tables, which are a little bit more permanent than perhaps the portable setups with a fold-out table and chairs. So just seeking, I think, clarity on Council's policy regarding those setups. Okay. Thanks, Eric.

Thanks, Trevor.

So, next, I will hand it back to Cindy to discuss, you know, some of the difficulties we see from the business development side of things and for the operators themselves.

Yeah, I think the first two bullets on this slide really address common themes that we've been hearing even through our retail strategy, which is how we're communicating our processes and the process in general. Is there a checklist? So there seems to be potentially a lack of awareness of what their requirements are. And we talked a lot about it on this call, but potentially you know, clarifying some of the issues that we've seen to make those code requirements more clear and to work better for more groups. Licensing, it's not easy, right? These are typically not sophisticated businesses. They don't have consultants. So, you know, understanding the variety of licensing is often a challenge. So, Occasionally, the inclination is to just ignore it and not deal with it. And, you know, I think Trevor mentioned this. The majority of operators, quite frankly, are fantastic. And they are really wanting to do the best work. And those are not the people that are coming to us and asking us, how do we do this? What do we need to do? Um, we did something wrong. How do I fix it? So there are some, some actors out there that that may not be ideal. And I think, you know, by by addressing some of the. Code issues, um, we can, we can tighten that up. I already mentioned sales tax. That's an opportunity. Um, clearly there is competition with with brick and mortar and potentially the, the code can protect. those businesses that have invested a lot more dollars in brick and mortar. But, you know, again, back to what our role is, we really want to create an environment where we kind of grow our own here. And if we have talented restaurateurs, this is sometimes a great avenue food truck. And then they move into brick and mortar and we have That ecosystem in place, but we want to be very sensitive to not compete or or hinder our existing brick and mortar.

Thank you Cindy.

Um, so, yeah, so, um. Getting into next steps, in the interest of addressing current issues that we see and that we receive complaints about as quickly as feasible, we are proposing to split up code updates for food truck regulations into two phases. The first phase would address food trucks as they're currently allowed to operate as temporary uses. So in general, these changes would aim To limit the number of trucks per lot and provide greater guidance for the storage outside of operating hours. This also includes clarifying signage screening, commissary requirements, and residential storage requirements. So in your packet, you received a document with proposed amendments to our current food truck standards and language as written in the UDO. So the following two slides are going to detail the specific recommendations we have for code changes. So first, we proposed to update the definition of food trucks itself to provide clarity on what counts as a food truck. Those changes aim to limit trunk and so-called hot box operations and to prevent mobile dining rooms like the school bus example Trevor had shown. This aims to limit, or sorry, and And then we also propose to limit trucks to one truck for 15,000 square feet of parcel parking area outside of specific temporary use permit allowances and the proposed food truck plaza use, which again, I'll discuss a little bit more in detail later. And then we also propose to limit trucks to one per 200 feet right away when they're not operating on a private parcel. Continuing on, we recommend requiring greater accountability from the property owners who are allowing these food trucks on their property. That would mean that they could also be cited for food trucks not being moved to storage each night or allowing excessive numbers following the code update. We recommend requiring trucks to be moved to a screened storage location each night and removing all associated equipment from the operating location. We recommend adding language requiring trucks to be attended at all times when not stored. And then finally, we would recommend prohibiting the storage of food trucks in residential neighborhoods as residential homes can't be used as commissary. So, and then on this side, we have some alternative regulatory changes to consider. These aren't really in our main recommendations, but they are measures that we've seen in other municipalities. And so we just wanted to give you that as something additional to think on. If you're not satisfied with our initial recommendations. So, for example, an alternative to the one truck per 15,000 square feet of parcel parking area would just be a simple two trucks per parcel limit. That would be regardless of the parking lot size or parcel size. Another common regulation is a limit on consecutive days or days per year that any individual food truck can operate on the same parcel. So for example, limiting trucks to no more than five consecutive days or a certain number of days per year on the same lot. It's worth noting that could be difficult to regulate on the ground. But again, we do see it in other places. And while we don't have any regulation or recommendations for our current residential and restaurant setbacks. This is another potential avenue for reducing impacts to neighborhoods or brick and mortar businesses that you may consider. So yeah, these alternatives were included as comments in that draft markup, not as the actual red line recommendations. And getting into the second phase of updates would be to establish a new permanent use category for food truck plazas. So food truck plazas are something we've seen in other municipalities, like Austin, Texas, for example, has quite a few of these. um they are areas with permanent or they are permanent sites built for a rotating variety of food truck vendors they include permanent outdoor seating areas for customers permanent bathroom facilities a lot of the time potable water and hookups for food trucks and a commissary so the image on the slide is an example of one of those plazas We've already seen some interest from the development community in developing sites that would fit this category, but right now finding a path for approval is difficult due to the lack of any kind of standards for a permanent food truck use in the UDO. So, if we do pursue code changes to allow food truck clauses, there's a number of things to consider. What zone districts should they be allowed in? What guest parking requirements will be needed? What landscaping, including site border and internal landscaping, should be required? Who will handle waste management? How will fire life safety needs be met? And if we allow this as an accessory use to existing buildings and existing brick and mortar uses. Can certain facilities like bathrooms and kitchens be shared. And how will share parking be counted and then what.

Uses and districts can be accessory to if we go that route as well.

So while our analysis and recommendations for food truck clauses aren't as far along as the changes that we proposed for Phase 1, we do have the following general recommendations, and we do recommend allowing these as a way to offset those additional restrictions that we proposed in Phase 1. So we recommend requiring permanent on-site bathrooms, allowing on-site storage if a commissary and screen storage yard is provided, requiring a waste management plan with the site plan, establishing customer parking minimums, and establishing minimum setbacks and buffers for the trucks themselves from property lines. And the new use would need to consider traffic flow, lighting, noise impacts. And then finally, any architectural standards would need to be applied to the structures on the site that are permanent, like any awnings or bathroom facilities, that sort of thing. And then coming to the end here, this is our current goal timeline for these updates. So we, we would aim to further refine and finalize that this 1st ordinance language in May. With the goal of getting through the city adoption processes. In June and July, and then that 2nd ordinance on the food truck plazas would need some public outreach and we'd hope to have that conducted. and get a draft ordinance created by the end of summer. And then from there, we'd aim for city adoption of the food truck plaza use by the fall or by the end of the year. So based on all of this, and I know there was a lot here, some of the questions we have for PED, are there other existing issues that have not been discussed? Are there other potential regulatory improvements you'd like us to research? Um, and then should staff pursue the attached code amendment changes to address current issues with food truck operations currently allowed in the city. And should staff graph regulations to allow. The establishment of food truck clauses as a permanent lane use.

Thank you and that's all I have.

All right, thank you so much for that presentation. So. I have a lot of comments on this, so I'm not going to go first. I will first ask Council Member Bergen, do you have any thoughts or feedback on this?

I do. Thank you, Chair. First of all, I acknowledge that there are some issues obviously, especially in Ward 5 that are happening that need to be addressed. My question for Trevor is on those where I guess I wanted to know what number of code enforcement complaints have you received and what is the result of those complaints? I mean, do you shut them down? Do you give them warnings and has it helped?

Uh, yeah, as far as number, I'm trying to think about how usual, how often we see it. I don't know that I have a good count on it or a good way to sum that up. I'll have to take a look, but, um, Kind of depends on the site. You know, that particular site at Chambers and Hampton, I know we've been getting quite a bit of complaints on it. I think mainly around the appearance of it. You know, sometimes what people report is, hey, there's a truck here. Is it licensed? I did one today, and it was appropriately licensed in there. It kind of depends on the part of the city, too, is what we found out is whether people complain about it or not. There seems to be a little bit more acceptance of it in the northwest part of the city and northeast.

Trevor, do you actually have the number of complaints and what the result was? No, I don't have a count. Yeah, and I'm actually in agreement with some of the recommendations. I do have concern, obviously, as Cindy Perry mentioned, a lot of the times these are incubators for people to start. as entrepreneurs and then end up actually having a brick and mortar restaurant. So I understand that part of that side of the equation where revenue and so forth. So we don't want to stifle business. But then I also understand Council Member Lawson's point about compliance and the complaints that she gets. But I think we're going off with new code without even understanding how many complaints we have and what have we done about it. So my My concern is if you didn't enforce, if you didn't go out and code enforcement, not tax and licensing, but code enforcement, if they did not address the issue, how are we supposed to know that that would have not solved it?

I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by that question.

So if you get complaints and it goes through the, I assume council requests get put in. And so, and maybe council Lawson might know the answer, but if a council request goes in on a complaint, have you felt like code enforcement actually did what they were supposed to do? Did they issue a warning? Did they shut them down? Did they, or is it just recurring and they're not really addressing the issue?

Yeah, no, we address the issue either licensing or code enforcement very frequently. It is my staff that goes out on that. And a lot of times it's like, hey, is this thing licensed? And so the resolution is, yes, it is. Or they did go out and get permission to be. Sometimes we get it from property owners themselves where, hey, this food truck had showed up out here unpermitted and we chased them off. A lot of it is proactive enforcement. Actually, we'll go out and say, hey, you got a license. Where's your permission to be here? You know, kind of what's going on. And so we do bring it to conclusion. I will say there was one issue that I have separated from this dealing with a very sophisticated out-of-state vendor that you may have seen news about in Denver with the bleach that we dealt with them. They were sophisticated enough to know how to get away with being bad guys and have done it in multiple states. But I kind of think that's a separate issue. Usually when we make contact with these, we're able to get them into compliance.

Okay. So is the primary, I guess the primary complaints is they're not supposed to be there or they're allowed to be there by the property owner who owns them? owns property, but they're just doing, they're like not managing the waste or they're, what's the real problem? Is people not liking the amount of people that are showing up?

Yeah, and I'll turn it over to Council Member Lawson here in a second, but I think generally that's what's happening and why I said, you know, part of where in the city sometimes matters. is that I think there's concerns with particular, as far as what it looks like, how it is, but I think there's also some safety concerns that we have with the setups from the standpoint of like where I showed you with 1800 South Havana, where there's not a good traffic flow with it. We know the trucks don't leave and we've heard from the health department, the longer they sit there, the higher the likelihood of health violations, but not just health violations, but then, you know, the wastewater issues, the appearance issues, the start construction of these structures that kind of go along with it, some fire safety issues that just start to develop over time. And so then we're trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Yeah. And I, I, they should, I think that was the whole intent is that they come in temporarily and then they leave. Right. And then, and it sounds like some of them are just staying permanently.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And I think that's kind of, kind of the primary issue that's generating a lot of the complaints is, you know, first of all, the large numbers and the fact that they just don't leave. And so, you know, is it really, it's not really a temporary use at that standpoint and how do we handle that?

Okay. Okay. Um, I mean, like I said, I'm good with making some changes. I want to make sure we don't stifle competition, but I certainly understand we got to address issues that are causing safety issues. There's certainly the wastewater is really concerning and that type of thing. And I like the idea of the plazas. I know that's going to take a lot longer to deal with. So I'll let somebody else go.

Council Member Jackson.

Thank you chair. Yeah, I just wanted to quickly make sure I understood the complaints. Are you seeing them coming from residents from the property owners? I'm just curious, like, why residents would complain about food trucks taking up like a parking lot if. They're just patronizing it. And I speak from experience with what happened at La Plaza. I did see the food trucks kind of take over the parking lot and things like that. Parking became difficult. But I'm just trying to understand better what the issue is with food trucks maybe being more stationed in parking lots. Is that coming from private property owners?

Yeah, I usually the private property owners can address the issues right on their own property and should, you know, and, and say, Hey, you came in, you aren't supposed to be here. Uh, we definitely see circumstances where they just pull in without permission. Um, but again, you know, the property owner can take care of that. They're usually just notifying us that, hey, I chased this truck off. La Plaza is a good example of that. You know, I think we, in a lot of these circumstances, have just taken kind of a soft, somewhat soft approach enforcement-wise because, you know, there might be some residents that say we don't like the appearance of it. But again, it's, you know, whether they, you know, they have some choices whether they go onto that site or not. So I think generally, it's usually about the appearance of those trucks. And the rest of it is kind of things we see almost more victim, I don't want to say victimless crimes, but I think we see community risk that's with that, not necessarily something that's generating a complaint, just trying to head off what we talk about, the wastewater issues, the food safety, the fire safety, traffic concerns, traffic flows to the lots. And so sometimes you'll get complaints on that, but I think You know, to your point, Councilmember Jackson, I think you're right on. It's like, you know, other than the appearance, oftentimes people aren't going to call about those types of concerns.

Okay, thank you for that. And then a couple more questions. I appreciate kind of the strengths of food trucks. I think they're fun. You know, they can bring a lot of vibrancy to communities, a lot of different food options. Obviously, we can collect taxes off of it. So I am just worried about the rapport that may be going in. I hear that we were more lenient in the beginning and now we're kind of pulling back. um and and now enforcing rules which is always hard um to kind of do it in that in that order of operation so i just really want us to be you know who is our point person is there somebody who who is a spokesperson for the food trucks um in aurora is there you know a business we're seeing consistently trying to get some sort of relationship going just to make sure they understand and with that maybe having a grace period is there going to be a grace period of rolling out these regulations how long will that grace period be how do we make sure that the community is up to date and so they're not having to be shut down and have fines that come on later on um so just some of that kind of transitional period um is is what's on my mind and just understanding what the complaints around food trucks are because um i know we did have i i'm not um Getting the same emails that council member Lawson is and I know that there were some folks that came to public invite to be heard who were pretty vocal about supporting food trucks. So I'm just wanting to understand the complaints better to make sure the rules and regulations we create are appropriate for those complaints.

So chair, if I may. Janine Rustad, the Director of Planning and Business Development. I'll take the part of your questions and comments about rapport with food trucks owners. We have basically a two-prong approach. We have the Small Business Development Center that has a number of clients that are food trucks. So trying to ramp up our work with them through the SBDC to make sure they're aware of licensing changes and any code requirements. And then, of course, working with the property owners is Cindy Perry, our business development manager, and her team in the retail division. So it's a two-pronged approach. And Trevor, we haven't talked yet about grace period, but that is something we can look into.

Thank you. And that's all my questions.

Okay, I'm going to jump into some of my questions because I have quite a few. So I've been doing a lot of research on food truck parks, and I looked at a lot of cities that have some really great best practices, Portland, Raleigh, Madison, Austin as well. And I'm curious where the city came up with the idea for 15,000 square foot parking requirement per truck. When I looked up what the average was, it was one truck per 2,500 square feet, two to four trucks for 10,000, five to eight for 20,000, and 10 to 15 per 40,000. So I feel like the 15,000 is excessive. And in fact, it looks a little bit like it's sort of a ban without being a ban because it would be really hard for more than one truck to operate. And often these trucks pair together. You know, you might have a Mexican food truck with another you know, ethnic food truck. And so I am concerned about the 15,000 square foot notification. I think that's just a little bit excessive. When we look at current setbacks, it's 50 for residential and 175 for restaurants. That's pretty average when I did my research, 100 square foot from schools. So I think we're probably good there. When we looked at the hours of operation, I also had a couple of questions about that. 7 to 10 Monday through Friday. That seems fine, but I'm curious if we thought about making it a little bit later on weekends, like 11, just to be a little bit more friendly for the businesses. And there are a lot of standards as far as how far trucks should be from one another. I think it looks like the suggested standard based on everybody I researched was about 10 to 25 feet In between per truck, so I wondered if we could look at something like that. I know the 1 on Havana. Obviously, they're a little closer than that. Um, but. I feel like that's an opportunity as well and then, um, you know, we talk about, um, licensing and all the things following rules. Um, and I have suggested this before, but I'm going to suggest it again. I feel like we should potentially look at doing a food truck day. We could do it maybe twice a year where these food trucks could come, they could get licensed, they could do all the things that they need to do, make sure that they're good to go, pass any inspections they need. If we have it all in one place and make it easier for the business owner, they might be more willing to show up and participate in something like that and stay up to date on all of their requirements. So those were my initial thoughts. As far as food truck plazas, I got a lot of them. I think my concern is If it's going to take a while for food truck plazas to be implemented because we have to come up with all the codes, but we limit their ability to sort of survive over the summer by placing a lot of requirements on them without offering an alternative, I worry that we could be limiting business as well. So I think there's a lot of things to potentially think about when it comes to this. And then we have some raised hands, so...

Would you like us, excuse me, to address?

Yes, please. Especially the 15,000 that seem like an outlier.

Well, if you're comparing to the jurisdictions that allow the food truck pods or the more organized, I'm very familiar with the Portland, Oregon, where they would use vacant lots versus ongoing business enterprises. So, and Eric and Trevor jump in at any time, some of that is looking to to limit, still allow them, but limit and protect existing businesses, making sure that we are not exacerbating the complaints that have been brought forth to Council Member Lawson. So it is the two-step process of making sure that we're protecting businesses, addressing the issues and concerns with code, and then taking that second step to do the food truck pods. With the time... the timeline for looking at the food truck pods. This is one of several code projects that the current planning team has. So we need to make sure that they're keeping up with their caseloads of development review and then dedicating the time to do engagement with businesses because we would want to go, for instance, to BAB to talk about any code amendments for the food truck pods. Eric and Trevor, if you have anything to add on those issues.

Yeah, on the number per parcel, we did see some examples of that. I think what we saw kind of common was you'd often see two per parcel. And actually that 15,000 square feet is actually less restrictive. And using Chambers and Hampton as an example, that big lots parking lot, that's over 75,000 square feet, that parking lot. So you're already talking, I was just Taking a look at it, five or six trucks there. I didn't really count that one out parcel. Just based on that 15,000 square foot requirement. So if you did two per parcel, then they'd only have two there. Whereas 15,000 square feet kind of then grows with the size of the parcel. So that was the thinking behind that was to try to not do a one size fits all. Just make it make it relative to the parcel. But regardless, you know, I think all the things you mentioned are valid feedback. One thing that just helps us is just having clear direction as far as what council's policy is, as far as how you want this implemented and how you want to do it.

And just I assume that for these these regulations, they would not apply or there would be exceptions for things like Havana nights or our own Aurora Fest and that sort of thing where we bring them together.

Yeah, permitted events. So if you think when we do permits, you know, and forgive me for bringing up the temp use permit process, but I mean, at least when you're looking at temp use permit process, you're looking at things like traffic flow and all of that, and you're not as concerned necessarily about permanency and kind of what gets built around there. You're thinking about it as that event and as a controlled event. So that's where we're clear and we'll be clear in the code that those permitted events are the exception to that.

Okay. And then I think that was it. I had something, but I forget now. So when I remember, I'll ask it. But for now, we have a bunch of people with their hands up. So first up was Council Member Lawson.

Thank you, Chair Wiles. I just wanted to address the question regarding the complaints. And I find it kind of interesting that city staff did not bring those statistics because as much as I've been complaining about the food trucks that have been coming from constituent complaints, I think we should have had those here. I would have brought them myself, but what we're hearing is from residents. It's not just appearance. It's not just appearance. It's loud music staying over the timeframe. the getting in and out of the rows of food truck. I've even been in there and almost got my car hit multiple times. And I go over there in the evening. Sometimes I go over there on a weekend to kind of see what's going on, what's happening. Trevor, you failed to admit that a while ago there was some illegal activity going on. And I'm not just talking about with the food truck that you're talking about where police did have to go out because of some illegal human trafficking, things that shouldn't be going on. I think the owner, there has been a lot of not licensing. So it's not just appearance. And the reason why those food trucks move from the corner of chambers is because of the complaints of just getting in and out of that particular area. So I'm focused on Ward 5, but I know this is occurring over in Ward 4, and there are food trucks moving in a lot of different areas. Neighbors, there might be some people who love them. The individuals that came to the council meeting, yeah, they love them. But there's people in that Meadowood neighborhood that complain to me all the time. At my town halls, I hear about it. So it's not just me just going in. I've even filed some complaints, some CRs, because of what I've seen. and the time from not following what their compliance. I mean, like I said, some of them stay open past 10 o'clock. And I mean, if they're supposed to be closed at 10 o'clock, then close at 10 o'clock. Be a good neighbor to the residents that surround this area. So that's what I've been hearing. I've submitted a ton of council requests And I think it's just to not bring that information here about the amount of complaints that I have presented. And just from my own experience with the food trucks, I think that that was just kind of something that should have been brought to this committee. So that's what I've been hearing from the constituents and other people who are on here may be hearing from different constituents. But that's what I'm hearing. The activity that goes on that maybe police and everything can't go, but the loud music, doing all this stuff, that's not being a friendly neighbor. At all to people who live in the surrounding area. So that's why I think there should be a limit and also to Parker road and Parker road and Quincy here Parker road. They have only 2 at the Denver mattress company. That's how many they have. And it works pretty well. I'm not saying having two, but just be good neighbors and follow the rules. And also to not have so many and be able to so people when they navigate and go to the Dollar Tree or whatever they need to do, they're able to navigate without people just getting hit or your car getting hit. And that's some of the stuff I've experienced. So thank you for letting me speak, Chair.

Absolutely. Next up was Mayor Pro Tem Coombs.

Sorry, had a little trouble getting to my mute button.

So a couple questions that I had were just related to a few of the specifics that were mentioned, namely the prohibition on residential parking. So I understand the issue of folks needing to go back to commissary for, you know, cleaning and supplies and all the other things they need to do. However, not all commissary locations are going to have truck parking that folks can also store their vehicles. And so some folks may be storing their food truck. In fact, I've certainly lived in neighborhoods where this has taken place, their food truck at their home. And it's not creating a disruption to the neighborhood, right? Folks just know like that's my neighbor's work truck essentially. So I think that, there could be some real issues with basically saying if you run a certain type of business, you can't park in your own neighborhood. So I would just want us to think a little bit about what those impacts might be to the business owners if we were to completely forbid parking in neighborhoods when not operating. And then the other one was just with the mobile dining cars. I wonder if there's some opportunity, rather than saying these may not exist, that those kind of adaptive reuses of, you know, old buses, right? There was, Wampost used to have a bus that they used to sell plants out of. And so maybe we look at more, how can we put some standards in place versus an outright ban for those types of uses? And then for the plazas, I'll reserve my questions for when that comes forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Council Member Bergen. Thank you. I got to get off my phone and get on the real thing. Just a follow-up. I want to say thank you to Council Member Lawson for her comments. It helped me understand the complaints that were coming in. And those were certainly troubling. My question is on, I mean, I think there should be some regulations on, especially in the residential areas, for sure. If a metro district or an HOA sponsor an event, do they, did you say they get a special license to do that? Is it like a special event license, Trevor?

Yeah, just a temporary use permit for, you know, big events. You got it. Yeah.

Okay. And then on the parking, I know I get complaints on trucks that are parking in residential neighborhoods that are, so they're probably, you know, operate that business, but then they store them in the neighborhood and we do get the complaints that they're parking on the streets and not moving. But I appreciate all the discussion. Thank you.

Council member Hancock. Thank you chair.

To council member Lawson's point about these food trucks, I'm all for entrepreneurship. I'm here for it every day. But what I'm seeing are food trucks popping up in unusual places. And as I had expressed to you, Trevor, I sent you some photos. of food trucks popping up in storage places and parking lots in the back off the street off 225. I'm concerned about how we're able to monitor and regulate these places because it was after 11 o'clock when I drove by this place, it was popping over there. And so I'm very interested in making sure, and it's right smack into in the middle of condominium area and a business area. So I'm concerned about us being able to monitor and regulate these things so that we don't have incidents that occur. And there's no bathrooms, there's no place to dump the water. you know, there's sanitation issues and all of that. And they've set up picnic tables and lights, like it's semi-permanent. So, you know, I think it's important for us to take a look at these things and to consider, you know, the outreach to the neighbors, the businesses, the impact that is going to happen there, all the things that everybody has already said. But I agree with some of the questions that have been posed. And I've been to Austin and Portland and other places where And the food truck scene is amazing. You have some great opportunities for eating and collaboration and community and all those things. I certainly don't want to shut that down. But I think it's important as soon as we get somebody that has E. coli or some other kind of food borne thing, then it's going to be a problem for everybody. So I think us getting ahead of it and managing it and monitoring it is very important. Thank you.

Thank you. I would be curious to see, too, maybe complaints by ward if that information is possible. I know my ward is dying for additional food trucks. And part of that is because we don't have anything out here. And so food trucks fill a need for us to have alternatives or options for dining. So I would be curious by ward what that looks like. Also, I know when I was on Buckley the other day, we were talking about food trucks. Um, and they also are like, we would love to see more in the surrounding area because we're limited for restaurant options. So I think there's, um, a lot of opportunity for us to sort of look at this and figure out what the best way, um, to move forward is. I feel like the proposal as is needs some, we need to do some work on it. Um, just to, first of all, I think we need our questions answered so that we can make an educated decision, um, before we move forward. Any thoughts from Council Member Bergen or Council Member Jackson?

Thank you, Chair. I think some of the suggestions are good that were brought up in the phase one. Just, I mean, I think I understand now a little bit better on how many food trucks, if it's in relation to a large area. I think the main thing is what, if we do make these changes is enforcement. I mean, cause it doesn't do any good to put these requirements in place and then, and then not really, um, enforce it. So the noise, I mean, I don't know that goes through police versus code enforcement. I imagine, um, those noise complaints, um, about loud music, um, certainly any kind of illegal activity will go through police, the traffic, um, I think that does need to be addressed in terms of access in and out. So maybe location of where those, you know, even in those large parking lots, like where they actually are positioned, I think that makes sense. So that as council member Lawson said, you know, people can actually navigate their way through to the destination that they were aiming for. So, I mean, I think I'm pretty good. I don't know. after today, after hearing all the comments, are we chair, are we just expecting to have like a more finalized version?

Um, I would like to see some of the suggestions worked into what currently is proposed. Um, I think there was some stuff that we still have questions on. I don't have the presentation up right this second, but, um, When we're talking about operating hours, how many trucks per square foot, just I think we might need to adjust some of those a little bit to fit the conversation. Same thing with setbacks. Do we want to increase those a little bit as far as the residential space? So I think there's just some outstanding things that we could still adjust on it.

So would it be helpful, just so we have direction on what you want to see coming forward? So we'll get complaints, we'll get them broken down by ward. For operating hours, we want to be respectful that a lot of times there are nearby residences um we can do a little uh analysis of local jurisdictions not the food cart food truck pods but just these individuals to see what they do uh to try to benchmark where we are similar to what we've done with other projects if that would be useful um i think so like i said i could see i think seven to ten makes sense for monday through friday i'm just wondering if there's some wiggle room for you know friday saturday

type of thing where people are generally out later and maybe eating later, therefore would be visiting the trucks later. So that was just my thought with the hours of operation.

May I say something about the hours?

I think, I mean, I understand like seven to 10, but I think that actually invites people just staying all day and not moving. And maybe, I don't know if that's part of the problem is that you're saying, 7 a.m. till 10 p.m., and then they're not, they're just staying five days a week or seven days a week. So I almost, I get like breakfast food trucks. Is there any way to differentiate like breakfast food trucks, lunch food trucks, and dinner food trucks? Or do they all, you know, or do the food trucks do all three? I don't know. So maybe just some more information on that. I am concerned, and I think you mentioned 200 feet when it's not on private property. Again, not being right by residences. Early in the morning or late at night, I think that would be important to make sure that we protect our residential neighborhoods.

Thank you. Council Member Jackson, sorry, you've had your hand up.

No, you're good. I agree that I think some of the feedback that we're giving should be incorporated. I do struggle with the no more than two food trucks per parcel, just because you do usually see food trucks grouped together. I wonder if we're worried about residential interference, if that can be written into there, because there are some areas out in Ward 2 where Maybe it's a destination spot for people who are working or driving to work out there, and it's literally just food trucks. I think that could open up a space where you could have more than two per parcel, and they might need to even be closer together because there'll be less space alongside the roads and things like that. So I just think there's got to be more More research done. I don't think we're vote. I looked at the questions that were asked at the end of the presentation and I think we're just we're identifying these existing issues from the presentation.

Trevor, did you have a question?

No, I just a follow up comment to council member Bergen's comments about the hours of operation. There are some that kind of vary their operations, but I think you're, you're fairly accurate in that. It does, in a lot of these circumstances, invite them to be there during those time periods, the whole time periods, while, you know, and just operating at those locations rather than varying it. What we did see in a number of jurisdictions, particularly locally, you know, Denver and Boulder, was a four-hour limit. The problem there would be enforcing that would be very difficult because you're out there having to try to track it. So it'd be probably pretty reactive to address that. Some places use a number of days limit. We've seen that locally as well. So you can operate in the same spot for X number of days, and then you need to move or switch the trucks out. We hadn't proposed those. I don't think those were necessarily around kind of the complaints that we hear I think generally kind of what we're hearing lately is more around and our concerns more around the congregation of them and them never leaving from the site, you know, to address the things that they address. Just to clarify, there is not a two per parcel. That was something we'd seen. As a result, we were proposing one per 15,000 square feet of parking area, so it was more dynamic with that. You know, Chambers and Hampton, that would be, you know, I said five to six food trucks there. which seemed a little bit more controlled. Otherwise, for a food truck pod, we'd talk about that proposal about here's how you need to lay that site out in order to manage those number of trucks and perhaps as a result to having that more permanency with those locations.

All right. Thank you. It's a hot topic today, so not sure we solved anything yet, but I do think we have some suggestions that maybe we can... do some more digging and then come back in the next meeting or the meeting after and hopefully have something that we can move forward to a council meeting. Next up, oil and gas.

Thank you Chair Wiles and good afternoon council members. My name is Jeffrey Moore. I'm the manager of the city's energy and environment division. Let me share my slides here and I'll make this very brief. This is a clarifying Ordinance that we're bringing forth everyone seeing the slides.

I take that as a yes. Very good. Thank you.

All right. The gas advisory committee was established by council in 2015 to provide advice to council on matters related to oil and gas development in the city also provides a place for residents to come and learn more about only gas in the city and provide feedback as well. The committee currently meets quarterly. There are three categories of members on the committee. The first is five citizens of Aurora, meaning residents, and those must be residents of Aurora. The second category is three representatives of the oil and gas industry that has operations in Aurora. And then third is three individuals who are surface or property mineral owners that typically that is filled with representatives of the development community. Um, the council resolution on committees, uh, which was passed last year, resolution 2025, 78, um, reiterated city code, which says that unless specifically stated, otherwise that all board and commission members must be residents of the city. As the ordinance was originally written and created this committee, it did not specifically state that industry members and landowner members did not need to be residents. even though that was the original intent. Obviously, the first category is residents. The second two categories by their type were not intended to be residents specifically. So we believe there's some uncertainty in the categories of membership, and we just want to clarify that. Again, it was not the original intent of the ordinance to require the industry representatives or property owners, which again, generally is developers, representatives of developers to be residents of the city. The proposed amendment will clarify these exceptions by making them explicit. That way we will be in compliance with city code and the resolution, and also provide certainty to the volunteers who serve as members of the committee. And the two things highlighted in yellow there are literally the only changes that are being made. The industry representatives in B are not required to be residents of Aurora. And then for C, surface or property owners, we would add, while preference will be given to Aurora residents and companies located in Aurora, Surface of property owners are not required to be residents of Aurora or in the case of a company not to be located in Aurora. And that is it we'd love to know if you have any questions, or if we may move this forward to a council meeting.

Great, thank you council member Bergen or council member Jackson. Do you guys have any feedback?

I'm good with moving it forward.

I'm okay with moving it forward. I have no questions. Okay, and it looks like Brad Pierce, you had a question?

Yeah, this is Brad Pierce, chair of the Oil and Gas Advisory Committee. We did review the changes proposed by staff, and we voted unanimously to approve those changes. So just wanted to reinforce what Jeffrey Moore said, that we're in support of other changes. One other little tiny thing, we do have a vacancy on our committee still for an industry person. and my first quarter report of the activities of our committee is included in your packet. That's all I have for you. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. And I'm for moving it forward. So I think we're unanimous there, so it can move forward to council.

Thank you so much.

Great. Thank you.

Next up, our retail strategy.

Should I start us off, Janine or Cindy?

Yes, please go ahead.

I won't say too much. I just want to say that the staff has done a tremendous job in the three meetings that we had with our stakeholders. And so obviously we just recently finished our last stakeholder meeting with the committee and had a lot of really good discussion, a lot of good recommendations for us. to move forward on an implementation plan that hopefully will help us bring some more vibrant retail and restaurants to our city. So I'll turn it over now.

Thank you very much. So my name is Cindy Perry and I am the manager of business development in planning and economic development or business development. So real quick, we're going to give a quick update on the Retail Strategy Steering Committee, kind of what the buzzwords were and what comes next. And then just kind of an added bonus today, we're going to give a brief sales tax update for 2025 using our finance department's data. I don't know if anybody from finance is on the call, but if there are detailed questions, we can tag team on that. So in terms of the retail strategy, we completed the three steering committees just this month. We already have a draft implementation plan that the team is looking at internally. That implementation plan is kind of a roadmap, if you will, and it's It's very detailed tasks that align with the framework that city council authorized back in January. And it's based on a lot of the feedback that we heard from our steering committee. The intention is to update that annually. It is not a plan that sits on the shelf. We'll come back, review it, see what's working, see what needs to be tweaked as we go through that.

So, I think this is really kind of the meat and potatoes.

These are some of the key themes that we heard from our steering committee. Clearly, there's a whole bunch more, but these really rose to the top. Efficient and predictable process. I think process and clarity of process was a key theme. That includes development review, licensing, permitting. Just to give an example of some of the action items that may come out of that, you know, we'll convene a working group of internal and potentially some external stakeholders to really refine what revisions may be kind of that low hanging fruit for early years and then kind of a longer term play. Plus a whole bunch more in the implementation plan. We kind of heard some of this in the food truck discussion, but clean and safe, whether it's reality or perceived is very important to brokers, developers, and to the business community and to the consumer. So really refining programs and messaging that help us to address that. An example might be to have a tenant round table and identify you know, what those pain points are. We've talked about crime forms and a whole bunch of other ideas that came directly out of that. Marketing and communications is, you know, something that's really important for any business. And if you think of Aurora as a business, we have to message in the same way. So we have some work to do to continue to build our business brand. some of the ideas that came out of the committee or targeted social media strategy. How are we telling our story? What are some of the wins and successes? And are we reaching the right audience? So we have a business audience and we have our consumer audience. And those types of messaging are very, very different. So we're not waiting around on this one. We're already meeting with communications, I think, tomorrow, in fact. So we really want to get the ball rolling on some of these ideas as soon as possible. We're going to ICSE next month. I was just checking to see if it was this month. So next month we'll be at ICSE, which is the International Shopping Center group. It's multinational. So, you know, making sure that we have our messaging on brand for those national tenants. We would have a different message for kind of our more localized Colorado-based partners. Another topic of conversation, not surprisingly, is yeah, incentives are great, you know, so they're really valuable to close gaps. We're seeing a lot more gaps in today's economic environment, but incentives don't always have to be financial. So, you know, putting together a package for future council consideration for incentives was also important to the committee. So where do we go from here? I already mentioned that we have a draft implementation plan. We're going to vet this very carefully with our internal and even external partners. The plan itself does identify all of the partners that would be involved in a particular task, and we want to make sure that we don't get out ahead of that. So we're vetting that early on. The plan will assign a lead staff, likely from the business development team, Doesn't mean that we're doing all of that work, but. You know, I see our responsibility in this division to make sure that we maintain momentum on all of the action items and that, you know, we're, we're managing that workflow. And then we would absolutely love to present an annual report to city council to kind of summarizing those accomplishments, update the status and make any tweaks at this time at that time. We really want to tie in key performance indicators with this plan to make sure that what we're doing is leading to results. I will frame that statement with business development takes time, but we can track progress very early on. There should be some really early wins. We hope to track that and bring those reports back to this committee and to council. So I'll do a real quick sales tax briefing. And again, this is from finance data. So the good news is that sales tax year over year is up 4.7%. The challenge with that is cost of living and inflation exceeds the revenue that we're seeing. So while positive, we still have a lot of work to do in terms of increasing that revenue. This particular slide shows after sales tax incentives and before sales tax incentives. So what that means is if we're attracting an interesting concept, and I mentioned those financial incentives to help close that gap, The sales tax that says before sales tax is the 317, and 306 million is after we take those incentives into consideration. So we have seen growth. Our goal is to increase that growth trajectory. This slide kind of shows, you can look on the left side of the column, and you've got Green for going up, red for maybe not so much in the different categories. You know, there are unique situations each year for categories. So, you know, we look at these as trends, not as, oh, my gosh, or, you know, we don't have to continue to work with eating and drinking places because they're doing great. We use this to help inform our programs and policy recommendations to council. I'll give you an example. Beer, wine, and liquor stores. Surprisingly, people aren't drinking as much as they used to. We have seen a different trend in that category. This might be a great opportunity for our team to partner with SBDC and do you know, very, very direct outreach to those, we call them NAICS codes, but those business categories that we see some kind of upward or downward trends. Same holds true for, you know, ones that are doing great, like clothing, you know, clothing stores. So we want to make sure that we're touching on all of the different, you know, businesses and, you know, get a gauge of what their experience is. So restaurants and lodging, this kind of pulls that out. This is a popular question that we get. And there are some downward trends in restaurants. It's tough. It's tough right now. So the reality is, or how we approach this is, let's get with restaurants and find out, is it the regulatory environment that's impacting them? Is it the labor market? They can't hire quality workers. people and retain them so their customer service is declining. So it's really incumbent upon our team working with SBDC to get out there and understand what those issues are so that we can come up with programs that counter what the businesses are experiencing. So that's all I have for today. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much. Council Member Bergen?

Yeah, I just wanted to add on there some of the things from the three meetings that did come up. Process, of course, was huge on the development, just getting things done faster. One of the things was maybe doing a fast track on similar use businesses. And I think I might have mentioned that last meeting. And then also on the clean and safe area, you know, making changes to lighting, to cameras, facade improvements was very big, especially on some of the vacant retail strip centers. So I think staff is going to be working on implementation plan for how can we help those businesses with facade improvements, whether that be an incentive or whatnot. And then the marketing kept, that came up pretty strongly, as Cindy mentioned, that We market the city, but we don't necessarily market ourselves very well or specifically to the industry to show them what's available and where they might be a good fit for us. So I think that's huge that we're going to work on that. And SBCD, I think, also came up with a lot of opportunities for us to help educate. And then I just want to mention, I am on the Management and Finance Committee. And we get the sales tax report every single month. And unfortunately, year to date, we are down 2.9%. So not necessarily going in the right direction. Industrial and electronics, which was really good in 25, is actually not good in 26. So hopefully the economy will turn around and we'll see improvement there. But just wanted to give some context. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Jackson, do you have any comments?

Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, staff and Council Member Bergen for taking lead on this presentation. And the data is really interesting. With hearing that our sales tax is down this year, is there kind of a tiered approach to this of like, if sales tax is where we want it, these are the things that we'd like to move forward. If sales tax isn't where we want it, if it continues to decline, how are you all preparing to make those adjustments based on revenue from sales tax?

Yeah, I think we look at this data quarterly and Council Member Bergen has a little advanced preview for Q1. I haven't seen those numbers yet. So, for example, right now we are in a down economy. We're hearing that finance is tough. So I think our strategy recommendation would be now is the time to really start marketing for when the economy rebounds. So we want to be the first ones that the business community or tenants think of when the financing frees up. If we're in a fantastic economy, I think we really focus on... I don't want to say elevating, but making sure that our businesses are of high quality and that we are growing the quality of our existing businesses. So it just kind of depends on what the situation is.

Thank you. That was my only question.

All right. Thank you so much. We appreciate the update and all the work that you guys are doing to attract new businesses to come to our city. Just remember Ward 2 is the best, so they should move to my ward. Just a little plug there.

Next up, it looks like we have housing UDOs updates.

Yeah, we just have a couple minutes left. Do you want me to pull up my slides real quick? Let's see, but in general, It's been a busy month communicating as I wait for that to pull up. As you know, we had a council study session on April 6, and I thought that went well, and we got good feedback. from the council. And there's a lot of things to consider with those policy discussions that we introduced to you all. And so, you know, with regard to that, we are working on what I call kind of a companion piece to effectively that presentation. And so, you know, with the presentation, you certainly have the benefit of the presenter talking and providing background about those things. And so that's The purpose of the companion piece is to have a lot of that background and direction of how we got to where we got with some of those proposals so that you can sit with you and you can think about what those mean. And when people ask questions, you'll have a little more context to that. So hopefully, that'll be coming out next week in that regard. We also met with the home builders, kind of gave them a high overview of the proposal. Or of the process and proposal, and certainly, um, um. We have a representative from that group on our development round table as well. And so they're certainly familiar with our work there. Um, we were able to produce a follow up, uh, memo, uh, for the counts for the questions we did receive on April 21st. And so. those relate to the direct questions that we received at or after that study session. Um, and we also made that presentation at planning commission as well. So kind of getting everybody up to speed with where we are. And, you know, so that said again, I'm, I'm looking forward to being able to release the companion piece soon and also, uh, You know, if there's any questions or concerns or things, I think we're always open to setting up a quick call, a quick meet in person to chat about these issues or these proposals as there's a lot of considerations. And so we're happy to talk through, talk about concerns, talk about questions you're getting. And so please feel free to ping myself and we can set up a time to do that. So that's what I have in our abbreviated time.

Thank you so much. No questions. So I'm going to move forward to asking about the next meeting because I didn't see any updates further down the agenda. So May 27th at 2 p.m. Does that work for everyone? Especially for Council Member Bergen and Jackson.

That works for me.

That does work for me. Is that going to be the set ongoing meeting? What is that, the fourth Wednesday or one, two, three, four?

That's what I have the recurring meeting as, the fourth Wednesday when I looked at my calendar.

And that works pretty much for me for the year except for June 24th. Some of us will be at CML. at the conference. Okay.

We'll start working on June dates as an alternative now so that we don't get to end of June and then we're trying to squeeze one in. So council members Bergen and Jackson, if you guys could send over some alternative times for June, then we can try and get that scheduled ahead of time so that we're not scrambling at the last minute.

Okay. But then for the rest of the year, I can count on that fourth Wednesday. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Absolutely. All right. Well, it's four o'clock and in the interest of everybody's time, we'll adjourn the meeting. Thank you for coming and we'll see you next month. Thank you.