Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Commissioner Walls, over over to you to start when ready.

Great. Thank you, Brandon. Good evening, everyone. It is Wednesday, 12/10/2025. I now call this regularly scheduled virtual meeting of the Aurora Planning and Zoning District Planning and Zoning Commission to order. I'll now call the role of commissioners. Commissioner Jetschuk?

Present.

Commissioner Bush? Present. Commissioner Riley? Commissioner Banca?

Present.

Commissioner Hogan?

Present.

And commissioner Walls is also present. At the moment present. Sorry. Commission I called your name. Commissioner Geyser? Sorry. I apologize. Present. The pledge of allegiance will not be said tonight as this meeting is virtual. We'll move on to the approval of the minutes from 11/25/2025. Did you all receive a draft of the minutes? Had an opportunity to read them? Are there any amendments or corrections to the minutes? Seeing none, the chair moves to approve the minutes as presented without objection. Is there a second? I so second. Thank you, Commissioner Bush. It's been moved and seconded to approve the minutes from November 25 as presented without objection. Is there any discussion on the motion? Without discussion, is there any objection?

Without objection, the minutes from the twenty fifth will be approved. Tonight, we've got one item of general business, item eight a. The chair moves to approve the agenda as presented without objection. Is there a second? Thank you, commissioner Benck. It's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda as presented without objection. Is there any discussion on the motion? Without discussion, is there any objection? Without objection, the agenda will be approved. I'll now read a summary of our policies and procedures for this evening's meeting.

Please make sure your home or computer microphone is on mute unless you're speaking. The Planning and Zoning Commission meeting is a quasi judicial hearing. There's no swearing in of those who will give testimony, but it is presumed that all parties are telling the truth. When addressing the commission as an applicant or their representative, please state your first and last name as well as the organization that you're representing, and you may additionally state if you are an Aurora resident. If you're addressing the commission as a member of the general public for public testimony, please state your first and last name and if you are an Aurora resident. For each agenda item, there will be an initial presentation by city staff. Afterward, commissioners may ask questions

of staff. Discussion of agenda items by commissioners will

be conducted only following a motion and a second. Following the staff presentation, the applicant or their representative may choose to make a presentation or answer questions. The applicant will have ten minutes for their presentation. Commissioners may ask questions of the applicant. Members of the public that have signed up to speak will each have three minutes to speak on the agenda item during this public comment period. It is asked that only new information be presented. The same arguments should not be repeated. Commissioners may ask questions of the public following their comments. After public comments, the applicant will have five minutes to address any public comments. Commissioners may ask questions of the applicant.

The chair will ensure all commissioners have no further questions of the applicant or staff. Chair will then call for the question. After a motion has been made and seconded, the commissioners will then discuss the case amongst themselves. After the discussion, the chair will call the question. Commissioners are finders of fact and will vote based on their evaluation of the evidence presented as compared to code section one forty six.

All rulings by the Planning and Zoning Commission are normally final. Exceptions are zoning map amendments, zoning code amendments, and comprehensive plan amendments that need city council approval. Decisions by the commission can be appealed to city council by presenting a written appeal to the city manager within ten calendar days of the public hearing. City council also has the discretion to call up any case whether an appeal has been made or not. Notices for this virtual meeting were published, posted to the city website, and then development projects were posted with signs on the properties.

Notices were also mailed to adjacent landowners per city requirements. Without consent, we'll move on to our first agenda item, which is eight a, the Aurora Places Comp Plan Amendment. Throughout the city, our case manager this evening is Daniel Krzyzynowski, the applicant in the city of Aurora. Daniel, the floor is yours. Noting for the minutes, we are now joined by commissioner Riley. Commissioner Riley, you can hear and your microphone is working.

Yes.

Great. We've established a full quorum this evening. Go ahead, Daniel.

Thank you. This item is, an amendment to the city's comprehensive plan to amend our planning and annexation boundary. This is not something that comes before the commission or council very often, so I'll provide a little refresher on what this is and how we use it before handing off the presentation to representatives from Aurora Water to talk about the why this, why now portion of the presentation. The planning annexation boundary or the boundary is a planning tool that the city uses to guide our very long range growth and development. Cities in Colorado are required to look beyond their existing boundaries to areas that may be considered for annexation in the future and do planning for these areas to understand how they can be served.

This boundary is that that area that we do some of these land use planning, infrastructure planning, public facilities planning to ensure that if these areas are next to the city, we will be able to provide services to them. This is, like I said, it's just a tool. Each individual annexation comes before city council, and city council makes their determination on whether to approve the annexation on an individual basis. But what this boundary does, it defines those areas where we would accept an application for annexation. Hope that answers a little bit of, why we do this.

I think the last time this has been brought before the committee was 2022, and previous to that, 2016. So this boundary is something that has moved around over the years, based on our growth projections and desires and, direction from, city council. At this point, I'm gonna turn over the presentation to Alexandra Davis with Aurora Water. She and her colleagues will provide a little bit more detail into what this amendment is sort of based in, why now, and why the amendment, areas are identified.

Thank you, Daniel. Good evening, all commissioner. My name is Alexandra Davis. I'm an assistant general manager for Aurora Water. I run the water supply and demand division. And with me tonight is also Marshall Brown, the general manager of Aurora Water. And I am here to talk to you about water supply and demand. I'm going to share a PowerPoint with you, so please let me know if this does not work. I have never had the pleasure of coming before the commission, so I wasn't sure of the extent or expertise of your understanding around Aurora's water supply. So if this is a little basic for you, I apologize.

But hopefully it will be interesting. Oh, that did not go forward. Let's see. There it goes. Aurora's water supply was begun our water department was begun in the nineteen fifties when Denver Water decided to draw a blue line around its service area and and not expand its service area anymore.

At that time, Aurora was small and growing, and the city council and citizens knew they wanted to get bigger. So they started the Aurora's water system. As you may know, in Colorado, water is allocated through what's called the prior appropriation doctrine. The prior appropriation doctrine is a a system of first in time, first in right. So the earlier date you have associated with your water rights, the more likely you are to get actual water supply.

So for example, the water rights were started to be appropriated in the mid eighteen hundreds. And by 1950, most of the senior water in the system had already been what we call appropriated. So Aurora's ability to get water has relied on not only developing supplies, some new water supply with water rights dated in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, but also acquiring senior water rights from agriculture. We have a very diverse and robust renewable water supply system. As you can see in this map, we have a water system and water rights in the Upper Colorado River.

We have water rights in the Upper Arkansas River Basin. We have water rights in the Lower Arkansas River Basin, which we move upstream to the Otero Pump Station. The Otero Pump Station and pipeline is a 56 mile pipeline that brings our Colorado River and Arkansas River water over to the Upper South Basin, where water is then deposited in Spinney Reservoir, which also captures our Upper South Platte Basin water rights, and moves those down to the city through Straucha, through the Rampart pipeline. And we also have our North Campus which is a series of wells and gravel pits and pipeline and a big pipeline that moves water up to our Binnie treatment plan plant known as the Prairie Water system. So the Prairie Water system allows us to reuse a lot of our water rights that we get from the Upper South plot and from the Arkansas and Colorado systems, as well as pick up our water rights in the Lower South Plot.

It is a a large, complicated, and very robust water system and diverse, which allows us some protections. One of the important things to understand is the idea of a system being over appropriated. So a system is over appropriated when there's more demand on the system demand for water, than there is water to meet that demand. The Arkansas River is over appropriated on most days, probably three hundred and sixty out of three hundred and sixty four days, sometimes always over appropriated. The Colorado River system is technically not necessarily over appropriated in the state, but if you've been paying attention to some of the headlines on Colorado River, you know there's a a lot going on there that we'll talk a little bit about in the future.

The South Platte system is in an average watery year is over appropriated all except for about four to seven weeks of the year. The rest of the time, there is more demand than there is water available to meet that demand. Because water is very variable, water availability is very variable in Colorado as you probably know if you've lived here for any extent of time. You know, we can have very big winters with lots of snow. We can have a winter like this one which is shaping up to be awfully dry.

So there's large variability in the state around water availability. And some years our water rights yield twice as much as they do in other years. And so storage becomes very important to smoothing that out to enable us to capture water in those drier years to have it available in the wetter years. We have about a 156,000 acre feet of water storage available, space available. That one acre foot if you think of a football field minus the end zones filled with about a foot deep of water, that's about an acre foot of water, and it serves up to three to four homes on average annually.

So storage is very important to us, and we have 12 different reservoirs that we use. Infrastructure is is critical to capturing and then moving the water to Aurora. So think about the lower the having water down here in the Rocky Ford area. We have about ten, twelve thousand acre feet a year that we yield, and we have to move it first all the way up through reservoirs upstream and then through a pipeline and then through more reservoirs all the way down to the city. So infrastructure is expensive, and it's critical to being able to access the water that we need.

Another thing that's very important in water supply and demand is data, and we are constantly looking at a lot of different data. This is we look at these charts every month to see this is, you know, what's going on in Colorado vis a vis drought. Is it dry? Warming in Colorado has a significant impact on water supply because as the earth, you know, the soil dries out, it requires more water. So streams will flow less.

Precipitation, of course, is critical. We're get average precipitation more or less? We also look at temperature because temperature is as I just said, warming is really critical to what's going on in terms of whether our water rights will yield water or not. So this is some of the data that we look at regularly as we're looking as we're looking at what's been happening and as we're looking at what's coming. One of the important projects that the water department does every five years is the integrated water master plan.

The water department provides drinking water. It also deals with storm water and wastewater. And this integrated water master plan allows us to look ahead to understand all the infrastructure needs and the water supply needs. One, to maintain our existing system for our existing customers, for the 400,000 people who live in Aurora right now, that system of not only what I was showing you earlier, all the the water infrastructure necessary to get the water to the city, but then once we get it to the city, the infrastructure necessary to clean the water and then to deliver it to everyone's homes, all that infrastructure has to be maintained at a high at a high standard in order to ensure reliable drinking water every day for our citizens as well as dealing with stormwater and wastewater. And we know there's growth.

So we need to be able to plan and understand what projects we need in order to have the infrastructure as well as the water supply for that growth. So our 2024 integrated water master plan did a couple things which is which are important to understand in the request before you tonight. First, it looked at our ongoing conservation. Aurora, the city of Aurora has one of the and the Aurora Wab Department has one of the most robust conservation programs in the West, in the Western United States. It is remarkable what our conservation team has done and the multitude of different ways in which we seek to reduce demand from commercial, industrial, residential areas to get people to use what they need.

As you are probably well aware of, Aurora was the first city in the state to ban nonfunctional turf. Nonfunctional turf is usually Kentucky bluegrass. It is a crop that consumes an enormous amount of water but provides very little benefit to the citizens. And so we have been working quite diligently to reduce the amount of nonfunctional turf in the city because it can have a huge impact on how much water we need for our existing customers as well as how much water we're gonna need in the future. This map is missing a little bit of pink.

This area down to the, I think that would be your left corner, that is also should there should be a lot of red down here. The red areas are areas that are served by the the water supply is served by other entities. So we have a range view, a water district, we have this big map here is the Lowry Ranch, which is owned by the state land board, and they have a contract with Rangeview to serve that. This red area up here is Denver water. So these are areas that we do not expect to serve, and in our planning, did not include as providing any water supply to going forward.

So the green the gray is where development has already occurred, where there's already water use going on that we are serving. The green is land that is within the city's current boundary, and the yellow is the area within the planning area boundary. And we looked at, you know, continuing service in the gray, providing service in the green, and providing service in the yellow. For our projected water demand, we will need a significant significantly more water than we need today. Right now, our water our water needs are about 93, 94,000 acre feet of water.

That water is the amount of water we need in order to produce at the treatment plant the 55 to 56,000 acre feet of water that our citizens consume right now. So included in that number of 93,000 acre feet is the water delivered to the customers, is about 55 to 56,000 acre feet. The losses in our systems, which is very low by industry standards, four ish percent, and anything under 10% I understand is considered quite low. Our our source of supply system demand, so we have other golf courses, etcetera. We have some extraterritorial commitments.

You may have heard or know about the WISE project where Denver and Aurora agreed to, help certain South Metro, entities in South Metro, Castle Rock, Parker, other communities get off of nonrenewable groundwater. We have contractual commitments to Roxboro and to Dominion that were entered into many, many years ago. And we have evaporation and stream losses. This is an important figure, this reservoir evaporation and stream losses. So in 2012, those losses were about 10% of our water supply.

So thinking about moving that water from Rocky Ford, from the Upper Colorado River through turquoise, through Twin Lakes, over into Spinney, from Spinney down to Strancha, all of that water movement and sitting in reservoirs, you lose a lot of water. Because of climate change and warming, that system loss is almost doubled. And as I'll comment in a minute, we expect it to increase more. So with a system loss of about 20% and these other demands and losses, we need almost twice as much water to deliver the water that we actually consume. Looking ahead, we see this graph is very helpful.

Here's where we are. Right now, we are, doing fine. We can meet all of our our customers' demands, and, we have a little bit of buffer for the near future. So the black line is, of course, demand. The blue, the dark the light solid blue is our existing system supplies.

The speckled blue is our supplies from reuse. So you may be familiar with our prairie water system, which was the first reuse system in the state of Colorado. It's something that Aurora should be very, very proud of. They we had a big drought if people were here in 2002. And by 2006, Prairie Waters was well underway.

And it's a system that allows us to reuse all of our reusable water, 100%. So it's very significant to our water supply capability. And the orange, the speckled orange is our growth into prairie water. So prairie water is the size to be larger, and as we use more water, we'll have more water to reuse, and that's in the speckled orange. And then the dark orange are the projects that we and the supply that we are going to need to acquire in order to meet future growth.

So I'll talk about in a minute. One of the things you can see on this is that our existing supply is going to continue to be reduced due to climate warming. And right now we're looking at approximately 13%, but those numbers are already changing in our estimation. We also have some leased water supplies that according to several different contracts and IGAs, we have access to until the early twenty forties when those leases expire, and we may or may not be able to renew those at that time. So this orange, this dark orange is very important, and and I'll get to that dark orange in a minute.

One of the places where Aurora really sets the bar is in its innovation around water supply. We have continued the agency, the department, the city has continued to do a lot of things to to be as creative as possible in finding new supply. So Prairie Waters, I've talked about quite a bit already. The London Mine was an acquisition of a water supply up in Fairplay, up in the Fairplay South Park area. Water that people were very concerned about because it was coming out of a mine.

We spent two years negotiating agreements that protected Aurora from any environmental liability while accessing a steady supply of water from the mountains. The turf ordinance, as I mentioned, was groundbreaking. It was the first of its kind, and the state followed up with its own turf ordinance for the entire state after seeing what Aurora did. Our partnership in the Rocky Ford area, we recently acquired a farm that I'll talk about a little bit more in a minute that's going to help us meet the water supply that we have left in the Arkansas Basin. Direct potable reuse is a big project that we are working on to allow us to fully reuse our water with without having to to incur stream losses from metro wastewater down to the Brighton area.

We have just recently, the council adopted our large water user guide, which ensures that large commercial or industrial users coming to Aurora are required to meet these very strict standards. And if they cannot do what they whatever business it is that they wanna do within these standards, then they don't get to come to Aurora. They have to meet these allocation standards. And then we have very progressive fee structure and allocations to help our existing customers not only use just what they need, but also to ensure that the value of water is being appreciated. So we the the department and the city have been, as as you are probably aware, very innovative in figuring out how to reduce demand and increase supply in some very creative areas.

And these supply opportunities are drying up. Well, that was a bad pun. Sorry. It's true. They are drying up. So as you know, our mountain supply is Upper South Platte, Arkansas, and Colorado River. The Arkansas Basin, we have several agreements. The city of Aurora has several agreements that were entered into almost two decades ago regarding that limit our ability to acquire more water out of the Arkansas. We are limited to 10,000 acre feet that we can then access three years out of 10 under certain conditions until 2048. And there's nothing to say that after 2048 this will become any easier.

In fact, it will likely be a lot harder. So that partnership, that CNA partnership that I mentioned, the farm acquisition provided about 7,500 acre feet of that 10,000 acre feet left in Arkansas for us to access. And we are working on and close to finalizing two more agreements that will get the remaining 2,500 acre feet. So by the 2026, we will have accessed all of the 10,000 acre feet that we have left to access out of the Arkansas River Basin. The Colorado River Basin, the Colorado River is as you are well aware, a massive river that runs through seven states and into Mexico, and is in deep crisis right now.

It is significantly over appropriated. There is a deep disagreement on what the allocation of that river is going to look like going forward and how that river is going to be managed. In the state of Colorado, there are other attempts to make sure that anyone who is a trans mountain diverter such as Aurora who's taking water out of the Colorado River Basin is restricted in the future. The West Slope entities are very keen not to allow any more future diversions out of the Colorado River. We have one more project planned, and we have an agreement around that project.

But it will be very difficult to implement that project Even though we are we are continue to be committed to implementing that project, technically it could be up to 10,000 acre feet, but highly likely it's going to be far less than that if we can get it done. The Upper South Platte area, there are no more opportunities there. The cities have bought all the all the agricultural rights including Aurora. There's really no more water to be had out of the Upper South Platte. So the Arkansas, the Colorado, and Upper South Plot are areas that really we've tapped out all of our opportunities there.

So the Lower South Plot is what's left, And the Lower South Platte water supplies are more expensive because they you have to move them upstream, so you have pumping costs, you have more infrastructure costs. They have a much lower water quality, so there's a much higher treatment cost associated with Lower South Platte water. And there is incredible competition going on because Aurora is not the only city in this situation. There are numerous municipalities in the Front Range, in the South Platte Basin that are also have been experiencing a lot of growth, that are looking for those water supplies to meet their future growth. So the the South Platte is complicated.

We have done a plan on the self plot where we listed, where we went through every single opportunity that we could think of. We brainstormed with consultants and all of our experts and we created five different scenarios around what we could possibly develop out of the Lower South Platte in terms of water supply. Portfolio e was the most complex and inclusive of those five portfolios. It is aspirational. It will be very difficult to accomplish everything that's in portfolio e.

If we can, it would be amazing but it is it is definitely aspirational. So we seek to, you know, acquire another 20,000 acre feet of water from the South Platte and that would require significant infrastructure to move that water up as well as the cost of acquiring that water to begin with. Water rights are very competitive, very expensive right now to acquire about 27 to $31,000 per acre foot depending and to acquire that water that we are looking for in portfolio e, which is that dark red orange band on the previous graph, we're looking at almost 700,000,000. And the capital cost of the infrastructure would be 1 to 2 and a half billion dollars. So not only is there a lot of competition, the water quality is not great, it's aspirational, but it's also enormously expensive, which of course is born by developers and ratepayers.

This capital improvement plan is the product of our integrated water master plan which helps us determine what capital, what projects do we need to maintain our current infrastructure and supply, and what projects will we need to develop that new supply for new for growth for the future people. As you can see, the water resources side is a huge part of that capital improvement. It is clearly almost half. So again, extremely expensive going forward. Water contribution is extraordinarily important going forward.

It won't be enough to meet the future, but it could certainly help us meet the now. Or so as you saw in the graph, there was that decrease from climate change. Well, this conservation because conservation is a one to one ratio for every acre foot we save, we don't need the two acre feet that we had originally needed to bring it over because we have the water in our system. So conservation is going to continue to be extraordinarily important to maintaining our current system and our current supply and meeting our current needs. But it won't it won't get us to the future.

Conservation includes these, you know, sustainability, beautiful new plants, no turf, getting rid of the lawn, which leads us to our policy recommendations. Because what our integrated master plan told us is there's a point at which we cannot meet the the estimated future growth. So when we looked at in our integrated water management plan master plan, when we looked at all of the demands that would be created under the current planning area boundary, if the current planning area boundary was built out, we would not have enough water. Even if we accomplished portfolio e, we would not be able to meet all of those demands. So we are very concerned about creating expectations by having land in the planning area boundary where people will believe those landowners would believe that they will have an opportunity to annex into the city and receive water service from the city of Aurora.

And at some point, there won't be an ability to meet that demand. So we are asking the council, we are asking you to now reset those expectations by strategically trimming the planning area boundary to make our future more feasible in terms of water supply. You can see the other the other policy recommendations that are going to the council, but the important one with planning commission, of course, is strategically trimming the planning area boundary. And you can see this is the area, this red area, this large red area is area that is includes service from another provider, but the other map, this is all yellow. And so this is all area in the planning area boundary that has not yet been annexed that we feel would be most advantageous to cut out of the existing planning area boundary.

Are there any questions? Would you like me to go back? Yes. Commissioner Geyser.

Commissioner Geyser, go ahead.

Yeah. I was a city council member of City County Of Broomfield. So I was very familiar with their plan and the struggle they went through with Rocky Flats and and that problem. And I also sat on, as a county commissioner, on the state water planning. What percentage of water in Aurora can be used to extinction, and what percentage of water is reused?

Great question. So we have about 95% of our water supply can be reused to extinction. We have a few water rights that are single use water rights, But most of our water all all of our water from the Colorado River, all of our water from the Arkansas, and a significant portion of the water that we have from agricultural rights that we've changed to municipal use is all reusable. So approximately 95%, and that's why Prairie Waters is so important because the Prairie Waters project is how we pick up all that water and reuse it. We bring it back into our system.

Well, that's a great statistic. But what percentage of that you are you actually reusing?

Right now, prairie water is runs at about seven to 10 MGD, so million gallons per day. Maybe Marshall knows exactly that percentage. It it varies depending on the water year. So if it's a very wet water, if it's a very wet year, Prairie Waters is expensive to run. It's expensive to treat that water to pump it up.

So if we have very full reservoirs, if we have a lot of mountain train as we call it, water that we're bringing over from the cloud in Arkansas, we will reuse less because at this point we have excess supplies. And I say that, you know, there's some buffer right now. We have we're not using everything. In the future, we will be using everything all the time, and we won't we will be using prairie waters to to the most degree possible. But right now, it really depends on the water year as to how much we're pulling up through Prairie Waters.

Yeah. So our daily demands, just to add a little bit of additional information, our daily demands vary from about 30 to 35,000,000 gallons a day up to about a 100,000,000 gallons a day. In the winter, we're down around the 30 to 35, so the Prairie water system can meet a a fairly high percentage of that demand. In the summer, it's not quite as high. We are working on expanding.

The bottleneck in the system right now is up on the river where we're pulling the water out out of riverbank filtration wells, and so we have additional wells being constructed right now that will increase the capacity. The other thing we do with some of that water when we don't need it for ourselves is we do lease it to other entities. So we lease it in its raw form, to back to farms or agricultural entities, and then we'll bring it into our system later when we have the demand and the and the infrastructure. And we lease some finished water also to through our Wise partnership, to Castle Rock and Parker and South Metro entities that are primarily on groundwater. So we're trying to take full advantage of that water supply, but we currently don't need all of it in our system quite yet, and we don't have the infrastructure built entirely to get it all into our system.

And

and what effect does I know with the other states that are downstream, what you know, wanting to get more of our water, what effect will that all have on our water supply?

Great question. Are you considering are you thinking Nebraska or the set or the Colorado River Basin states or both?

We have both.

Yeah. So the the South Platte Compact, which of which Colorado and Nebraska and Wyoming signed to deal with to share the South Platte River and the North Platte River has currently has recently come into view because Nebraska has been feeling that that Colorado is not meeting its compact obligations. I think the state is very clear. The state of Colorado is very clear that we are meeting our compact obligations. There's an interesting administrative piece.

So right now the South Platte compact only impacts division two. I miss Division 2 which is is the lowest every basin is divided into divisions. And at the bottom of the right before the South Platte crosses the border, there's the division two. I'm pretty sure it's division two. And the South Platte compact obligation does not extend upstream of that division.

So right now, Aurora and the cities outside of that division have no obligation to provide water to meet the compact obligations. We believe that that is one of the potential threats that Nebraska is seeking is to change that aspect of the compact. They're also talking about the compact allows the development of a canal called the Perkins Canal. And that canal was actually started about a hundred years ago, and it was never finished because it was a bad idea then, and it's still a bad idea because the soil wells are so sandy. So we're paying close attention and we're involved in conversations around with the state.

Obviously, the state is the entity that deals with Nebraska and with the compact allegations. And right now, there is a lawsuit that's been fired filed by Nebraska. And the state of Colorado filed a response saying that that lawsuit was premature. So the supreme court is determining the US supreme court is determining whether to accept Nebraska's complaint. Chances are they will.

It will be long and arduous litigation in front of the Supreme Court. But we are paying attention to that and working with the state. So in direct answer to your question, it's very hard to say what the impacts would be. Right now there are no impacts of Nebraska's position, but should they prevail on changing, you know, on this idea that we're out of compliance, The state might have to take different actions, and it's hard to see what those would be right now.

Thank you. I'm very impressed with all of your work.

For some cleanup, Marshall, since this is a public hearing, could we have your name and department or title for the record, please?

Sure. Marshall Brown, general manager of Aurora Water.

Any further questions for the presenters before we move on to staff? Commissioner Riley and then commissioner Hogan. And I'll remind you, please keep your questions narrowed to our actual agenda item, please, which is the adoption of the comp plan amendment. Thank you.

Okay. So the assessment here will surely cause concern with residents, businesses, and developers. I did go to a town hall where you presented at councilwoman Lawson's town hall. What what what is your intent on making this information more available to folks in Aurora?

I see Marshall's yeah. Good morning, Marshall.

So we are getting out into town hall meetings. Obviously, this will this is going through a public process now. Part of our challenge in communicating is our water supply is in good shape for our existing customers. Part of the reason we're doing this or proposing this amendment is to ensure that we're always able to provide water to our existing customers, including future customers that we will grow into and keeping the cost apportioned to the appropriate parties. So we're we are we do a lot of other education forums.

We get out Forest of Faucets, various different forums with the public. But this focused conversation we are taking to ward member council meet or the council member ward meetings, taking it through this public process. We also have the Citizen Water Advisory Commission, which is comprised of citizens from Aurora. We've taken the discussion there. We've taken the discussion to water policy, and it will go through the rest of the council process study session and regular as well.

So it's also available online. So it's available in a few places that we're trying to get out into. And if anybody has any suggestions of other means or forums that we could take advantage of, we're open to that as well.

Thank

you. Commissioner Hogan?

My question is actually for Daniel. Hello, Daniel. And it's just this. While water obviously is a key factor in setting growth boundaries, is there anything else that you guys consider in creating these growth boundaries, or does water dictate the comp plan?

Obviously, providing public services, public infrastructure, including water, but not limited to water, streets, roads, public safety, facilities are all part of what the public sort of the package of public services required for this area. Obviously, if commercial residential development doesn't have a adequate and safe water supply, that's not really the most appealing neighborhood. So it, you know, it does play a large part in this. I would say in development of the map and in identification of those areas that will be reduced in in in this proposal. We did take into account not only just the the the water capacity and and the ability to serve those areas, but we are trying to be strategic around retaining those areas that we saw near term growth potential, growth of employment, or economic development opportunities, and retained those within the boundaries that we could take advantage of those as Aurora continues to grow and really identify those areas that were maybe sort of a lower priority or a lower impact as those areas to be removed from the boundary.

So I I would say it was it's not just a water, an exercise in sort of water planning. We did take into considerations, how and where, the boundary was adjusted using, a number of different criteria. Does that answer your question?

Yes. So I take it by either your staff report or your presentation tonight that you concur based upon water usage and other mitigating factors that it is in the best long term future of our city to reduce these boundaries at this time. Is that correct?

That's correct. It's staff's recommendation to approve this proposal. We work planning department works closely with Aurora Water all the time on planning for their infrastructure. It's a, you know, a key element in in land use planning and development planning. So we're we're we've been coordinating throughout this process, and we're coordinating here in terms of sort of land use and infrastructure coordination.

One more question, chair Walsh.

I I think let's go ahead and let Daniel wrap up with the staff presentation, and then we'll actually get to questions. We got a little bit out of order and kind of confused with the way that this hearing goes. So, Daniel, the floor is yours. Continue.

Just a just a couple points before we, turn this back over for more questions or enter into that public hearing. The criteria for approval for our comprehensive plan amendments listed in your staff reports, it is defined by the UDO, and it's in the staff report, and it's staff's recommendation, right, and our finding that the proposal meets this criteria. Two notes on procedure that are kinda unique to this type of request. The first is that the Planning and Zoning Commission holds public hearing on the item and that any recommendation that comes from the planning and zoning commission needs to be approved by two third votes of the entire membership, not a simple majority. That's unique to comprehensive plan amendments.

And I'm happy to, answer any further questions. I know our water, staff, can answer any further questions on their part.

Okay. Questions for the commission from staff? For staff. Okay. Go ahead, commissioner Hung Min. You're muted, commissioner.

One question, please, for Daniel and Marshall. How often do you review this, and how often will you make adjustment? If Marshall was gifted with a whole lot more water, how how often do you review the plans?

I guess I'll leave the the the water planning portion to Marshall. I will just sort of briefly say as far as amending the plan annexation boundary, that's that can be done as needed. That's something, that, we amend, you know, periodically, every so so many years as opportunities or or needs, dictate. That's really an action by city council, and they can take that on whenever they'd like to. As far as sort of the water planning, I'll leave that to to Marshall and Alexandra.

Yeah. So our our planet it's a great question, actually. So thank you, commissioner Hogan. The process we go through is about a five year planning cycle where we dive in in-depth for our integrated water master plan, look at our supplies. And in the process, we coordinate, as Daniel mentioned, with planning very closely to look at zoning and and density assumptions, etcetera, associated with those future growth areas.

So that's on a five year cycle. I will note that as we went through the process this year to to compile these recommendations that are before the commission this evening, we did note a couple of interesting things that we are in discussions on right now. So one of those is that the density assumptions that we've used historically, both in planning and in water, are evolving right now. So we're seeing additional height and density interests coming in, and the assumptions we've used in the planning process are

a little more

historically based. So we're in discussions right now about do we need to make adjustments to our planning process that could ripple into additional recommendations or it may not as we get through that process. The other thing we noted that's kind of interesting in our existing planning area boundary is we have a lot of areas that are built out into other jurisdictions that are in our planning area boundary. They also have other water service providers for those areas. So we're in discussion about a few of those areas as well, and it may result in some recommendations for further adjustment associated with those.

So if you think about, for example, the Copperleaf neighborhood, currently not in Aurora. It's partially built out. It's further developing now. It's on somebody else's water supply. So we're having conversations about some of those areas, and do they make sense to leave in our planning area boundary or maybe not. So we could see recommendations coming sooner than that five year cycle is, I guess, my point there.

Great. Thank you. Further questions for staff? Okay. Seeing none, Stephanie, do we have any members of the public sign up to speak on agenda item 8A?

No, chair. We do not.

Okay. At this time, I will close this portion of the public hearing on eight a and entertain a motion. Okay. On agenda item eight a, the chair rises for the comprehensive plan amendment based on the staff recommendation, the presentation, and discussion at this evening's public hearing. I move to recommend approval to the Aurora City Council the amendment to the Aurora Places comprehensive plan to reduce planning and annexation boundary because the proposal complies with the criterion code section one forty six dash five dot four dot one a three and the provisions of the code section one forty six dash five dot three of the UDO for the reasons stated in the staff report.

The chair has risen to recommend the approval of agenda item eight a. Is there a second? Thank you, commissioner Riley. It's been moved and seconded to approve eight a. I'll open the floor for discussion on the motion.

This is commissioner Jacek. I think this is very wise. And looking forward with the small lots, is that possibly going to increase the density and increase the water usage? So I think we're right on on top of this early, which is a good thing for Aurora.

I agree with commissioner Jacek. I think it's incredibly prudent of staff to bring this forward and, balancing sort of the future economic value in growing the city versus the health welfare of the citizens as code section one forty six requires and what we have today in keeping pricing at an understandable level and also keeping a healthy watershed. So I appreciate staff for bringing this forward. Commissioner Geyser.

Yes. I'm very impressed with the Royal Water Department. They've done a great job in looking at the water supply into the future, and I think this is very smart in order to contain some of the areas that we can't provide water for.

Thank you, commissioner. Further discussion on the approval of agenda item eight a? Seeing none, I will call the roll. Commissioner Jacek? Approve. Commissioner Bush? Approve. Commissioner Geyser? Approve. Commissioner Reilly?

I approve.

Commissioner Banca?

Approve.

Commissioner Hogan?

Approve.

And commissioner Walls also votes to approve. With the unanimous vote, we have met the two thirds threshold. Agenda item eight a is approved. Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you all.

Stephanie, do we have any members of the public signed up to speak on non agenda items?

No, chair. We do not.

Okay. I will move into our comments by commissioners, any miscellaneous items of business. First and foremost, I would like to recognize commissioner Geyser. This will be his last meeting with the Planning and Zoning Commission, and my hat is off to you, Bob. It's been an absolute pleasure serving with you.

This commission and the city of Aurora have benefited immeasurably by your addition to the commission. With your experience as as a council member, with your experience in development, the council that you have added to our commission, it can't be measured. It will continue to be measured years from now, years into the future. So my hat is off to you. I hope that we can continue to live up to your example as a commission, and thank you for for teaching me personally, just by the comments that you make and the questions that you ask and your view and scope of development. So thank you so much for serving with us, Bob.

I wanna thank you all for serving with me. It's been a great privilege to serve with you, and I think that the Planning and Zoning Commission is in good hands. I look forward to, to many years, of you continuing, your service. And thank you very much for everything that you've done. I appreciate, especially staff, for all the work that you've done and you continue to do. My hats off to you for the great job that you do every day.

Further comments or announcements by commissioners? Commissioner Riley.

Yeah. I just noticed, upcoming in our next meeting, there's a lot of Ward 2, matters that we're gonna discuss. I'm just, again, trying to be educated. It's still new. What prompts so many issues from ward two to come up for us to look at next period?

I'll defer to Brandon.

Chair, through you. You know, I think Ward 2 is generally North East Aurora. And so it's just simply, you know, when all the new subdivisions that are encompassed by that council ward are are just the most active in development right now ranging from all the Painted Prairie, the Windler, the Aurora Highlands, Green Valley Ranch, all those, as well as the industrial projects out there as well.

Okay. And this is just a function of the applications that are moving through the process that happen to be ready for upcoming commission meetings. Correct?

Correct. Yeah.

Alright. Thank you very much.

Mhmm. Further miscellaneous comments of items of business or announcements by the commission? K. Seeing none, we'll move on to our planning division manager report. Brandon, the floor is yours.

Thank you, chair. Three three items we've approved administratively over the last couple weeks. I'll address briefly. Pinewood multifamily located roughly behind the Champ Ford there, so kind of the Northeast Corner of Havana and Alameda, kind of a block in. 49 units there, of a infill of an existing complex that's already there.

Cottonwood Creek, at the other end of the spectrum, way out in Jewel at Jewel And Hayesmount, 259 unit sort of filing. So lots lotting of 259 single family type products. And Painted Prairie, Northwest Corner Of 56th And Piccadilly, kind of on right next to that multifamily complex that is there is another townhome development, 204 units there. So those are the three approved there. I don't have any any further updates for you all.

Look forward to, seeing you all next week, for for the holiday gathering. Otherwise, if there's any questions, I would happy I'd be happy to answer them.

Any questions for Brandon? Go ahead, Becky.

Brandon, I think last month, were going to contact the city clerk's office, let us know who on planning commission is going to run. We know that we have one space to fill, but there should be at least two people that are up. Correct?

Yeah. My apologies. I don't have that information handy. Stephanie happens to, so I'll have to circle up on that. Basically, you want to know what positions are up for renewal essentially in addition to to Bob's. Correct?

Would be two. I know the answer if I can Yeah. In there. Happy to. And commissioner Bush is up for renewal, and he's also reapplied. So and we've let our our team know as well. So just just to

you, Stephanie.

Thank you.

And when do you anticipate because we do have a new council, and the system is not as well, it will be a new system possibly. Will counsel will commissioner Bush be asked to apply or simply asked to be reappointed?

I don't have much more information probably than than you do in in that regard. I think we're still waiting to see where where the dust settles in in that regard of exactly procedurally how they they want to handle interviews of people who have applied and things of that sort and people who are asking for renewal.

Mhmm. And I would note to it if it's okay that we did receive the application from commissioner Bush, and the the clerk's office does have it. So alrighty.

And then can you also confirm the length of our terms and when we are termed out? I believe there's three years with three terms.

Three year terms. Three cons three terms is is the general rule. Yes.

Thank you.

Mhmm. Commissioner Venka?

Well, I had two questions, and thank you, Becky. Your last question was one of them. This is a this I probably should've asked while water was here and I didn't, but maybe somebody in, you know, staff would be able to tell me. So when you have a 250 unit apartment building, does that require more water than the same amount of space if it were single family housing?

Yeah. I don't have I don't wanna misquote anything or make any presumptions, so I would have to follow-up with you on on those questions.

Okay. I just a random thought that came to mind.

K. Further questions for Brandon? Alright. Thank you, Brandon. We will move on to our city attorney report. Lina, the floor is yours.

Good evening, commissioners. So the only thing I have this evening is to just let you all know that I am working on those changes to your bylaws. So if it is Becky that is our vice chair again or whoever the vice chair is, hopefully get on the January study session so we can go over those changes and then bring that forward in a January January or February meeting for you all to vote on.

Perfect. Thank you. And and I think since elections won't have happened by the January meeting, I think, commissioner Hogan, it's still under your purview to plan study session for January. So questions for Lina? Commissioner Hogan?

Lina, when is when will we get any legislative updates?

So the legislative session is, I believe, started, and we are starting to see things already. So as I have bills that are related to land use, I will present those at my appointed time in the meeting. So right now, there's nothing that's come up. But as things come through, I will be sure to let you guys know. Thank you.

Further questions for Lina?

Oh, I'm sorry. I I did miss I'm so sorry, chair. I did misspeak. There was one piece of legislation I did forget about. Something similar to the Yigbee bill, if you remember that from last year, the the yes in God's backyard bill.

This is similar to that with schools being able to build on, I believe it's parcels of land that they own that are less that are five acres or less. I do not believe at this point that the bill has been presented. It is still in draft format, but we were able to receive a an a view of it. We're able to look at it prior to it being presented on the floor. So that bill that concept is coming back around again this session. So we'll see where that goes, if it is any more successful than the Yigbee bill was last year, but that is one that I have seen. Sorry. I'd I'd completely forgot about that.

No worries. Any questions about that from the commission? Okay. Thank you, Lina. A final opportunity for announcements. Seeing none, I move that we adjourn this evening's meeting. Do I have a second? Thank you, Commissioner Reilly. Meeting adjourned. Have a great evening, everyone.

Alright. Bye.