Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to our uh was it August now? August 12th Balttown Council meeting. We're starting with a work session here on uh public works and uh police station and an update on that and some really good information. So, uh, I don't know which of you will start, but I'll turn it over. Okay.

Yeah. Sorry. Um, thank you. Um, I'm going to make the presentation today and Lieutenant Munch and Justin Foreman are going to be here to answer questions um, as we kind of walk through. Um, so today we're presenting kind of a holistic strategic planning approach to moving the muchneeded police and PD station forward. Um this presentation is a general overview of the town real estate assets, the current uses and some opportunities. It is not exhaustive. It's just a step forward in collecting some data to make some future presentations or some future decisions um as well as to help us be transparent about the project um as we move forward. So, um, some information which you may already know, but just to kind of share it out. Um, currently, um, public works operates off of five locations plus the, um, water plant. Um, and it's important to understand the vehicle, machinery, and storage needs of, um, public works. As we look forward um into 10 to 20 years, we know the population of town is going to change just with some basic um development that's going on right now between Lake Modern and the tree farm. We're looking at the possibility of having 700 plus new residents in the next three years besides development that's coming in this side of town. Um so here we just have a quick map. Um we'll go through each of these properties quickly. Between block 7 in Willlets, the Rugby Office, we're calling it um the umbrella site, public works West, um the annexation site on West Soprus, Fuel Lane, the water plant,

and then um of course the undersized police department station right now. So we'll go from uh kind of the easiest down the list, if you will. Um this is a photo of the water treatment um facility and short answer here is there really no no changes proposed for that. There are no changes that can be made there. So this is really not uh discussion for things that can be changed around or moved. It it is what it is. Um so there's one. Um second is the block seven space in Willlets. Uh this is 1,800 square ft of vacant storefront contributing to the other vacant storefronts in Willlets. Um it's currently serving as storage that's not available on other public works locations. Um bicycles, we cycle, Christmas decorations, sort of random random items. Um and there are opportunities here to monetize that space either by leasing it, selling it. We know that there's interest in it. Um $35 a square foot uh per year is sort of the average lease rate. It's not the lowest or the high end for spaces there. So just on a real wrote generalized calculation. Um if we were just to decide to lease that out, you know, that's $63,000 a year potentially. Uh right now it's just an expense. We just pay HOA dues on that property. Um ultimately, uh moving forward with some other use on that space, we need to replace and find storage space for the items that are in there. That's that's a real need. Um that one really has a couple different items to it where um we'll talk probably at a different meeting about activating some more um movement in the retail and commercial spaces in Willlets, but um it's would be important for the town to contribute to that as well. Contribute

to what? To contribute to having an active front storefront there and not being another vacant vacant retail space.

The next one is the Rugby Field office. Um, this is right next door obviously to the Rugby Field. It does have restrooms on the other side of the building. It's a converted garage of 500 square ft into office space. currently has three staff members and a nursery and a storage equipment space next door. Um the opportunity here is our 16- unit affordable housing development which is um has gone through sketch plan review and will coming be making the round soon for preliminary review. Um we are affectionately calling it the pitch view 16. some rugby lingo in there, some lakefront lingo. Um, ultimately their options there are to relocate the office, the nursery and the shed to a centralized location or just the nursery and the shed somewhere. Um, you know, there again, these are all just there's a lot of moving parts and these are not decided options, but something that could happen in that space because it's really not useful for anything else is it could be storage space for the the items that are at the well, it's block seven location. So, there's a trade-off there. You kind of keep moving everything down a little bit. It that space really doesn't have use for anything else. So, there's a thought there.

Could we do anything with the land itself? the land where the under the under the shed and well right now this the sketch plan approval for that 16 unit affordable housing includes the shed. So we need to regardless of what happens we need that space for that building for drywall um to maintain the storm water drainage off that building. Um, so that that will have to move. And the office, I guess, or um, you know, I guess the office is part of the restroom building. So

So yeah, it's still got Yeah, it's sort of a Yeah, it's just a kind of a funky space. Mhm. Um, so maybe storage, you know, there there are other definitely other things we can think about for it. Um, and then we get over to this side of town to the annex on West Soprus Drive. Um, that's a 30,000 square foot heated storage space. Um, the vehicles listed here are all vehicles and equipment that have to be in a heated storage space. They can't freeze. So, I don't know what the verier is, but I like that word. Um, the sweeper, what that is? Yeah, like a vac truck. Vac.

Yeah, vac. um the boom truck, the ventra, um our drinking fountains that come out of the parks in those locations during the winter, irrigation supplies for the Basalt River Park, um sandbags um on pallets for flooding. Um we did have um the town's real estate agent kind of do a quick and dirty valuation of that property if it was to be um sold, cleared, and demoed and sold as a residential lot. in somewhere in the $500 to $700 $700,000 um range is the value there. It's notable um because certainly that could be something that helps pay for the beginning of facilities at the umbrella site or another location. So, um that's a notable use. The FU location um is where the the main public works facility is right now. That's a halfacre site, 4,700 square ft of office and condition space. Um, we know that that office space is it's really substandard and needs to be replaced um sooner than later. There's a heated five bay garage, storage shed, backup generator. Um, well number nine is there. And currently this is the main delivery location um for supplies that public works uses particularly for the water treatment. Um you know there's some scenarios in here that we don't believe are the best scenarios but it just is kind of brainstorming here about where to go. Um this site is similar in size to the umbrella site. Not both of the locations there just the umbrella site. Um so that site's about uh 1.65 acres. So they're similar. Um this is not a great spot for a police department because it is a dead end and

there's a need for access here as well as all the congestion that happens at um the intersection as it's built now without kind of having that redundant um second access there. Um but you know there's you know if we're just going through technically what could happen on paper, those are options. One thing that's appealing about this site is that obviously it doesn't need an annexation process and any development here, whether it's expanding existing uses or rebuilding um office spaces or new garages um would be relatively quick. Um it just be a town process. Um a second option here is to maintain this as a public works facility. um and just kind of have it in the mix as we look at all of the uses on the other properties for what really is the best thing here. One little idea that um is floating around there is once the police department potentially will move out of the Elkrun um location, those office spaces will be available for other uses. That could be office space for public works. And then where this um job trailer is could be more storage space. There are all these kind of pluses and minuses that probably need some real investigation on whether that's the most efficient use of the property or not.

We had I learned today that that Pitkin County would be interested in acquiring the the existing the police department is they would be interested in acquiring that should it become available. Just I just learned that today. So or yesterday was relatively recent. Yeah. Imagine they want some mid valley space. Yeah. Some besides what they've already got. I actually directed him them to another location here in town that could serve us better. Yeah. Okay. [Music]

And then we get to what we're currently calling um public works west. um office space here. Um but really the main need for public works is is storage. So 15 plus plow plow blades, um the Sunday market trailer, VMS boards, um brush piles, rock piles, our irrigation equipment, the sign shop. Um we have our compost shed there for the community. Um park furnishings, six to eight work trucks, and then our various um other tools. Um so not all of the things that are on the other sites will fit on this site. That's just kind of a it's there's too many things going on. And so figuring out the most efficient uses to try to put on a single site is something that we want to explore a little bit more and figure out is this the best site for all the heated storage. Should it be other things um context about whether delivery vehicles can make it in and out of this site or the future um the current site plan as it's been shown um don't really work well for things like delivery of salt um and other uses here. So, um, there's just a little bit more comprehensive investigation that needs to be done. Whether it's useful to have this site continue to have the police department on it is is um important and whether we can adjust that site plan to be a little bit more efficient and have some of those uses take advantage of other properties we have. For example, the community meeting room. Depending on what goes on on 2E, there's a possibility for having the community

academy, not the citizen academy, community academy happened there. Um, and that would alleviate some of the um, parking that was kind of shown on that preliminary plan here and create some more opportunity for separation between the police and public works um, facilities, which is really important to have that defined perimeter um, between those two facilities. So, there just there's just a little bit more we need to get through there. Um, got a question while we're going through this. If I mean,

it seems like there's more homework that needs to be done and some things like if we're going to get out of the current building where the the police station is in order to get some of those, you know, really requirements. Like I look at there's things that are like we need to do this. There's other things that are like nice to have and maybe there's some things in the middle. It seems like so far for instance this is the only spot you can really meet a lot of those police needs effectively. Yeah.

So I'm I guess my question would be when you say you you guys are investigating are you going to go through it kind of look at it in a way like almost like a not to geek out like a linear programming way where you're like you got all these different variables or some things that have to be met or some things don't. like I mean this this site I think for the police station in particular it sounds like this is the ideal spot and you know we already have some existing heated space so I don't know I guess I want to understand how you're thinking about

um clarifying this when you do that investigation. Mhm. So there there are certainly some things in the um in the police department aspect that can be modified a little bit, but probably more importantly and and a little easier to grab on to the needs for public works. Um and I feel funny talking for Justin, but I'll he can step in in a second here is that really he's identified that they need more storage than office space. So that existing plan that we've looked at before has a lot of office space for public works in it. That's something that we can value engineer down and out. We can move it to another site. We can set it somewhere else. And that really changes the context of that building and that site plan. So that that's huge without sacrificing some of the things that we really need to retain and recruit police to stay in our in our community. Um, so that's that's some of the the shifting that we have going on back and forth.

That's a good example because that frees up capacity essentially. It's anywhere where wherever it's going to be, right? So then you can try more try something else.

Exactly. Exactly. And and not to make assumptions or jump ahead, but whatever happens potentially on 2E where there is sufficient parking for a community space, 30 spaces of parking for a a community space on this site is a lot of real estate when we're competing for two different needs on the property. So, that's just something to kind of think about as we go through and to really for us to spend some more time wrapping our arms around what that looks like for both properties. Could we please do a analysis of community space because I've heard that we need endless community space and we have the Eagle County building, we have the library. Taka does community stuff. We have the schools.

Sorry, Colorado Mountain College over there. Yeah, we have this building over here. Some stuff gets used in here. Like, can we just get a calendar of every community space and hear how many things they're turning away or how like I just feel like there's this endless goal to have community space and I just don't feel like we're activating all of our community space. And I could be totally wrong. They could all be booked solid and then yeah, we need more community space, but I I just feel like we have all these buildings here already.

Mhm. You know, like another pl a great spot for the community space could be the old growing years building that's sitting empty right now. They have their own parking lot. They have their own, you know, so I just I feel like we're we're on this quest and I just wonder what is the what are we really turning away? What what events are not being needed in this quest for community spaces? that and that's a broader set of questions and even for the scope of this I feel like even if there is a huge need for community space it's a lower priority in this exercise you know what I mean like

I mean if this if you're going to rate things like evidence chain of custody having places to store etc etc it's like you got to that's what this site was you know what we went through all the work for this for you going to say something Rick

well just did cra just went through a PUD process and they they did do a dive into what was available in this Mid Valley area already as community space as part of their land use. So the stuff the stuff's done if you want to know what it is. Um you know they've been asking to get together but my understanding that they went ahead and figured that out and that's how they came up with the design for their space that they want to do 10,000 square foot building. So you know there's a lot of redundancy in this conversation. And I think that that's what makes it so hard to sort through. Um, and all these properties have been acquired over the last, you know, 30 years or longer. And some were intended. Parcel 2e was a police station and public works facility, you know, when it was first uh exacted from the developer. So things change, but um you know the stop the side the southside parcel is still functional and I think that the public works space that we acquired down there by the by original road is is probably the future place for central location for both and if there this space in willlets that's a storefront doesn't make any sense at all to me. I mean, we just sell it, you know, from under it. I We can't be landlords in a retail space, at least in my opinion. So, I'd just take that off the table.

Put a real estate for sale sign on. If Pickin's interested, just, you know, they're always looking down here. I I there would be another buyer for the uh space in Metal London. So, I mean, I know that. So, at least I knew relatively recently. Uh, I I don't want to cut you Michelle off, but I I mean I'm just really interested in what both Aaron and Justin

have to say and you know almost in a like best case scenario you know like Justin what would you have what you know in your dream vision for public works and the same with Aaron you know like do we need a community space at the police department or is it fine to use other you know like you you guys are the ones that know your departments best. start. Yeah, sure.

You know, from a um public works perspective, u staff certainly and myself uh want a place uh to call home that they're proud of, but it's really these operational needs uh that we're just now getting a a grasp on, right? It's hard to look at uh back hose and mowers and dump trucks and brush piles and and you know, you look at all the space required and we're um like Michelle alluded to earlier, it's hard when we start carving out different pieces of these properties. So we're, you know, we're in the these beginning phases of, you know, what are pieces of equipment that are have to and what are not or if say we don't have a um a rock pile, we're going to pay more fees from the gravel pit, right? Because we're having to order more, have it get trucked in. So we're also trying to balance um operations and and what equipment we need um and what we need at the ready, right? that we um th those are the the key features to us. Uh and I think Erin and I have have started a lot of conversations of um between the two uh you know departments. I think we can live with that um space currently. Uh it it will be tight, right? We'll the majority of our uh items will be on the back end the the garages the um all the storage area and the parking and a lot of their work will be inside the building. Um but I think another thing that um we should consider um or council should consider is is you know with a with a community space and um if we want to have this as a spot where we could have an IMT uh incident command system right if there's ever um certainly we do

not want to have one of those uh but is that important enough to the council and the community uh in this you know that's certainly one of the things certainly for trainings and things like that. Uh but we saw as a bonus as being able to um host uh one of those events.

Uh thank you. Yeah, I think you know what was done by the architectural plans was obviously best case scenario for us. Um and it it fit all of our needs and everything that we identified which is nice. Um, as Justin said, the community room, I don't I don't consider it just a community room. I would say I would more call it a multi-use room. Um, and I I think back to the Lake Christine fire and we used station 42 and Elabel as a as a kind of a command post and it was it was busy. Um, being able to break off and we even used town hall for kind of law enforcement and evacuation site. So using that as a as a as a general space not only for for an IMT purpose but um you know Justin mentioned training um it's hard to find a secure location for to bring in a specific police training. Um we're not able to hold those. It's kind of nice to call it our own and and have ownership when we we can bring those in and have a secure

sounds like y'all need a gathering space for your own purposes more so than a community purposes. Yeah. Double as that when needed, but it's like it's a training and conference room type of space. Like I said, a multi-use room I like to kind of refer to it as. Um but yes, the the architectural plans were wonderful. I mean, we're very pleased with what we see. So, I I can't complain about those. They're they're great.

We got to have conf conference room training space. I mean, that's an that's a um requirement just like anything. I mean, like cuz right now we're you would you have to go find somewhere to do it. Um any kind of building that does where work happens like should have a space where everybody can get together and have a meeting or whatever. I mean, it's just it's kind of table stakes. Yeah. especially if you're going to build it. Um they like raft like just got that at their place in Glenwood. Oh, we can all be our offices here and we all go into the and have a meeting. I mean it's so necouble is a community space of some sort like for community police academy stuff like that. I don't know. So

what do you how important is the location to you Eric and the police department? uh the location we've identified that it it would be great to serve kind of let's call it both ends of the uh Oldtown and Willlets um being able to if you're just you know that exit out onto Highway 82 we could take a quick right and get to Oldtown very quick um or take a left on East Valley Road and be in Willlets in in 10 seconds. So being able to serve both ends of town uh while right now we're kind of stuck on that far east side uh and it's extended arrival times to to Willlets if we're dealing with that. So

it's it's it's nice. It's a very great location. While it's not perfectly in the middle, it is very centrally located. So what do you guys do for fuel? We use the Shell station bulk guys. Yeah. The commercial is fuel envisioned in your public works facility. Uh in the conceptual plan that I've seen it it's not shown on there. Is that something you'd consider?

I I think in the past that was something that public works did have on site. Uh albeit not a lot. Um um but it's been pretty convenient to just use the shell right there. police department as well. Same. Yeah, same. Use the shell shell locations in town. Yeah. And it's a it's a shell gas. It's good anywhere. If your guys are going to take somebody to Eagle, you can get the shell and gypsum. Yeah, there's a shell down the street from the jail actually. So, yeah. Well, diesel and things like that are I guess they have that over there in bulk, too. Yeah.

I I I think if we're in um emergency situation, right, uh from the past couple years, it's probably a different conversation. We should think about some emergency storage just in case. Uh but for the day-to-day, um it's it's serving just fine. I feel like this location, this PWX X West or I'm just always going to call it Umbrella, um, is a, you know, kind of home run, no-brainer for police. It's right off the highway, easy accessibility, emergency services in between Oldtown and Willlets, like you said, Aaron. Um, I think the bigger question here is how do we really efficiently provide public works with what they need? And kind of I think, you know, if we're going to put police here and public works here, which makes sense, then obviously we will be keeping, you know, most of the other public works spaces. But how can we better utilize them if they can have some offices in the police building? I mean, I think we needed to get rid of the block seven space 5 years ago. It just seems like an absolute dead weight. Um, so that's a no-brainer, you know, and just then in the few few lane, if we don't need that office there, maybe that becomes space for some piles, you know, like you said, Justin, I mean, I just I think that we can get creative with the existing spaces and it sounds like that's what we're going to have to do. Um because I do think that this is ideal for police and then you know also giving public works hopefully what they need to

for the services where they're they're kind of covering a lot of ground on the regular plowing and stuff you know for both sides of town just like the police station. So you know you can hopefully I mean wouldn't it be cool if you had like another little storage bonus lot over in Willlet somewhere but we don't. Um yeah, lot to think about. My Yeah, my question is is I wonder like it it feels to me like this, you know, this conversation is three years too late.

Uh 10 years too late. You know, it's a trajectory as the town grows, the population grows, we need more more police. We're going to need more public works. We're going to need more public service, you know, services to provide, you know, and if the trajectory of the town continues even even at a smaller pace, then are we just, you know, are we just catching up to now? Because the reality of this project being inhabited is what, three years at best case scenario, four years down the road, five, six years down the road. And then are did we design and build something? And the immediate conversation after folks move in is going to be like, okay, now where else? What else? You know, where else can we put some more stuff? And I so I kind of wonder like you know to me I feel like that's kind of the biggest key because we you know we can build it and open it up but my feeling is um that we're already behind and I don't know if that's a shared sentiment with everybody but it it feels like maybe we need to be thinking in possible phases or or even for further down the future and the ability just to get it approved this year and built in five. Maybe it's part one is this and part two is that

and and I think to do that it might be separation of you know the the facilities because what I'm hearing is we if we built everything and had it great it'd be good but it wouldn't be still enough for today. I I feel I mean I totally agree. Um it's almost like a band-aid over a bullet hole, but I feel like for police this might be a long-term solution that might accommodate plenty of future growth. My concern is public works. Yeah.

In that we're just like still kind of pigeoning public works into like this back corner of the to police department and how long is that really going to last? is this does not seem to me like a valid long-term solution for public works. Justin, I know you you you kind you came in relatively recently or have been reassessing and it sounds like you're seeing that the need is different like you've identified that less office space, more work space for lack of better way to put it.

Are you through that exercise yet or are you still trying to figure out what that is? And I'm assuming I mean I I hope that you're thinking about the long term as well like what are we going to need you know 10 to 20 years down the road like deer saying not just now um and and you too Aaron but um are I guess it seems like this is evolving and it's changing from what the concept was before for public works.

Uh I would agree with that. Um and to answer your question about are we through that exercise? No we're not through that. we um I need some help from W or we need some help from W to or some other consultant and we're just now putting the pieces together of all the equipment and the sizes of them and their footprint and kind of uh best locations of where they're going to get stored. Um and uh you touched on operations. We're we're trying to figure out this puzzle piece so we're not also wasting a bunch of time moving equipment around like we kind of are today, right? We're we're going up to the annex for this season and we're swapping it down here. Oh, wait. You know, this happened, we need the sweeper, you know, so trying to maximize those efficiencies. Um so you know compartmentalizing that whole operations with maintenance fuel shop meaning space equipment assets resources that uses subcontractors you know all that other stuff. I mean, I feel I feel your pain because I've been watching us struggle with this particular piece of the pie for a long time and it is, you know, one of the priorities for the elected officials is to make sure that our streets are taken care of and our assets are protected and snow's removed and all that. And I think uh to deer's point, that's got to come back to the table in a more rapid way, not take too much time. I don't know who Wald is. I hope they have experience in doing what you need because you know you'll end up with a 100 pieces of equipment and you'll be wondering and I don't know how many police cars we have right now. 68

14 14. So five years ago we had six or whatever it was. Yeah. So 14 cars. So that that really tells the story of what the space looks like. And I don't know if you have your do your own repairs and maintenance, oil change, lube change, all that stuff or that's somebody comes and takes care of, you know, the cat backhoe or whatever the heck it is. Yeah. So, um the town used to have a mechanic. Uh we no longer so we use um um primarily diesel dock. Yeah, we use diesel dock for the the larger pieces of equipment. Uh but then basalt quick lube um

they do that as well for the other departments for your tire changes. getting farmed out too because we don't have the capacity, resources, or manpower to do it ourselves. Yep. Yep. Or Wagner comes in or Bobcat comes in and and works on them in our shops. And I I want to be um conscious of time. I know we got 10 minutes scheduled and a couple more slides including um or at least in the packet a letter from W. So maybe um we might need to schedule some more time for this, but it's not, you know, I I definitely want to understand kind of what the time frame is. I'm sure everybody else does too.

Yeah. If we can we can kind of start to um wrap this up a little bit. The um but just for anybody who's watching to be aware of what our needs are for the police department. I'll run through that really quickly as already noted, but um evidence and processing, evidence processing and storage, um locker room and locker and restroom facilities for 14 staff that's separate from the public. um interview rooms, conference room, um space for positive interaction lobby, um the secure perimeter, exercise kitchen and break room. Um and all of those things currently don't exist, not even in a small way, but just don't exist at all. Um so those are some of the the things that we're trying to get to. Um the next slide is sort of next steps. So, as this group is, um, we've been able to get together and kind of put these needs together and actually make a laundry list of what equipment we have, what we need, why we need it, where we are, and holistically look at all of the properties and see if there's any tradeoffs between any of them that can be considered or if that was wishful thinking or where we are or what the opportunities are. um we'd like to take that back to the consultant, have them analyze that a little bit more, and then come back and kind of give an update. Um because basically once we're able to study the opportunities and constraints of all the prop properties and our needs, we'll have a better sense of what the timeline is, what the land use processes are, what the budgets are, and and just generally where we're going. um with the hope that we can do some phase development so that we can get some part of the facility done sooner than later. So

So when when are you guys coming back to us? Let's put a stick in the ground here. Sorry, I didn't say it at the mic. When are when are you guys coming back? Yeah. Um so honestly, we just had kind of our I hate to call it a kickoff meeting. I'll call it our phase two meeting. Reboot meeting. Reboot meeting. Thank you. which was really productive. It was it was

um and so I don't have a timeline from Wool right now. We basically kind of wanted to make sure that council was okay with us having this discussion about these other properties maybe moving around or changing and there are no decisions on that now, but just as long as that's an acceptable form to kind of go forward with is really helpful direction. I yeah I mean I I think said it we want to make sure we or use we have these assets like they're just sitting around like we uh we need to do something.

I think we'd seek to have it to the answer your question by the end of the year. I mean it's not a the proposal that they issued was not a big number. So they're not they can't they can't be on the der wheel forever spinning the clock $17,000. So I think a lot of it to be frank with you is going to be making decisions about you know where where our assets are going to be. I think that's really the gating question. You know where where is the police department is is that going to ultimately be an original road and that's where we're going to go with. I mean I think one of the the challenges we've been dealing with frankly is that we bought that property down at original road and we started making it the public works facility before the police department. So we got a little bit of the cart before the horse. So and even the consultant said that to us. Wool to answer your question, they do this for other municipalities. It's they do national work. So I think um the gating question is getting these um answers to these questions. I think ultimately um the new town manager will be championing this to the finish line. It'll be a multi-year project. And I think um you know additionally we should be looking at this on two tracks. One in which we actually can get a sales tax increase passed with the uh citizens because it was a $33 million price tag and 2027 and we don't have 33 million and you know even our capacity to borrow is somewhere in the 10 to12 million range. We have $56 million in free reserves. So we only have half the bogey covered. So, we'd have to have some sort of relief from some sales tax. And if we just because you ask for a sales tax increase doesn't mean you're going to get it. And if you don't get it, you're going to have plan B. Plan B would be something less than what's desirable. And then that is really where it it comes down to really what's a want and really what's a need and what can you actually afford. So there's there's more hard decisions that need

what you're giving up, pardon me. Yeah. What are you giving up? Yeah. You know, I think um and I don't I don't just be dow about it. I mean, you could also say you don't get a sales tax increase. You could also redirect some of the sales tax you're currently collected to this effort. You know, you can make cuts out. You can make cuts elsewhere. So, anyway, I just I think that's a way to look at it. Not the only way, but that's a way. So,

it's been mentioned a couple times in the presentation and and by Michelle, but Aaron, I'd like your take just I look I really like umbrella for the police station for a lot of reasons, but the few lane location um is it at all feasible or are there pretty severe accessibility? I think the access Yeah, I think the accessibility is the hard part. um being at the end of a dead end street um and no visible and no visibility as well as what I worry about I don't know if you've seen the high school traffic

um morning lunchtime and afternoon um and being able to while we while we can use our lights to respond to emergency um we are then dealing with trying to get around high school students and um just that's a that's a scary situation. Um, yeah. I just kind of want to make sure that we're kind of maybe in some agreement that we're taking that off the table as an option

because it was kind of presented as an option a couple times in the presentation. But yeah. Yeah. And I I think the point there, it's kind of like some of the other properties is literally anything's possible. we need to really have the consultant kind of help study the pros and cons of some of the easier discussion items there um to really help us weigh out what's what's going to work best

we shoot for the end of the year I can sign this proposal if that's the direction of council I mean and move on with the process and I mean if we don't continue to discuss this we're going to go nowhere fast instead of being five years behind we'll will be like the Pitkin airport or or the uh what what else are they trying to do the jail? The jail should have done like 10 years ago. Okay. Be done. It'll be done a decade from now. I think you should sign the proposed loan and Yeah. I feel like for the for the $20,000 that that they're proposing, it's probably money very well spent to really understand this problem and get to the best solution. Okay.

Cool. There you go. Well, thanks for uh all the info. Any anything else you guys have? Thanks for the time. Thank you. Thank you for the support. Yeah, happy to. All right, so we're going to take a uh a break till 6 o'clock. Um so we're going to shut down here and we'll see you all at 6 if you're watching. Thanks a lot. What's up, dude?

All right, welcome back. We are going to uh jump into our regular uh town council meeting. We had a work session earlier with an update on the public works and police station project. Um before I call the meeting to order, just want to remind everybody if you want to join online, you can go to basalt.net. Uh go to the agendas tab. you'll find the uh the meeting packet for uh August 12th and in there there's Zoom instructions if you're watching online and you want to jump on so you can make uh public comments and all of that stuff. Um so that's there. So I will call the meeting to order and uh Pam will you please call the role? Absolutely. All right, let's begin with Deer Schindler

present. Angela Anderson is absent this evening. Rick Stevens here. Hannah Berman here. Angel Duprey Buchart here. Ryan Slack here and David Knight here. Most of the A team is present. Thank you.

All right. Next up, we have item two, our consent agenda. That consists of item 2A, the minutes from July 22nd, 2025. Item 2B, a special event activity permit for motors on Midland. Item 2 C, resolution number 35, series of 2025. It's a resolution of the town council of Basalt, Colorado, approving participation in opioid settlement with Purdue and the Sackler family. Uh item 2D is resolution number 36 series of 2025, a resolution of the town council of Basalt, Colorado, approving a stipulation and easement agreement with the Basalt sanit sanitation district in Eagle County District Court case number 2025 CV300071. Um, I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented.

So moved. There second. Second. Couple seconds. Uh, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Thank you very much. Um, next up we have Thank you, Amy. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Amy. Thanks for your dedication. Of course.

Nailed it. Next up, we have item three, which is a call to the public. And just a reminder, uh, limit your comments to three minutes. Address your comments directly to me. Identify yourself by name and address when making your comments, and make sure you sign in at the back of the room with that info. Um, please be courteous, civil, and constructive if uh if you can. And uh we'll make no decision or take action except to perhaps direct Doug. Um, so with that I will open up the call to the public if anybody would like to come up to the podium. Looks like that's uh no there's no takers on that here. There are no takers and then online I don't see anybody

attendees.

So um moving right along then the mayor and council report comments. Item number four. Um, I just wanted to thank all of our emergency services, police departments, sheriff departments, fire departments. Um, the national night out was awesome. Um, huge turnout. Uh, and we had a blast. The kids had a blast. Um, and it was just so nice to see everybody mingling. And so, thank you for doing that and putting that on. And hopefully it was a a success for everyone. Um, it was good fun. I'd like to extend gratitude obviously once again to Justin and his team. Um, you know, town's looking great. They're always out cleaning trash cans and trees. And I saw Chris Spiser on a Sunday sweeping up rocks on the new uh the new Nordic garden, alpine garden. Gave him a shout as he was like climbing down into the new vault, which looked awesome. Um, and then also Matt with the uh wreck department. Uh, summer's wrapping up. kids are going back to school. Uh he had, you know, baseball, softball, tons of camps. Um so it's awesome that we're able to have this wreck department and keep our kids busy in the summer. And you know, I'm sure everyone's seen the kids riding bikes around town, Gary's camp and Deb and it's just we're so blessed to have so many different options for our kids in this town and so just just we're super grateful for that. So

thanks. Anybody else? Uh, just wanted to say thanks to CPW for closing the range down during stage two. I know that's appreciated and noticed and uh, you know, hopefully we get rain soon. In the meantime, the the vigilance is uh, important. Um, okay. With that, I will move on to item five, our interim manager report.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Mayor, I have like uh three things I'd like to review tonight. One is an update on the Lake Christine work being done on the restoration or restoring of the dam, the work on Two Rivers Road that should have been completed uh in July, but they ran into work ran into uh when they're doing some soil sampling. I don't I I won't be able to speak uh too intelligently about what they found, but basically it wasn't firm enough to support the work that they were doing. So it added a variable of complexity to the the work and consequently a delay. So that's going to run um for the balance of the month. And what we asked the GC to do is extend the lights. I mean right now it's red, you know, red and white. And then as people coming into town on school days, we're going to have an extended green so the traffic will flow better and then on the way out and the school's out it'll be green as well. So, I know that Erin and uh Justin there's a weekly construction meeting with the team and they'll be at this me meeting this coming week and they'll decide exactly what the duration of the time will be. So, we'll figure it out and um that's what that's what um update on that matter. Uh secondly, I'll just ask u Jeff the mobile home park as you know is a go um for closing. uh due diligence is continuing, inspections and whatnot. And I know a big part of the uh offer was getting a deed restriction on the property so we're not faced with this discussion years from now. And really that's all I'm going to let uh Jeff has been working with April and the team uh on constructing the language. So I'll ask Jeff to give us an update in that regard.

Sure. Thanks. See, so one of the conditions that council had I think all of the governments had making the grants home park purchases what it would be acceptable deed restriction to restrict the um the property to to use as workforce housing generally and so I've been working on that deed restriction using in part some things that this had used on other similar projects and so we're pretty close to have microphone please

so we're pretty close to having a um a draft completed that will ultimately need to get approved by by thistle as well because the the way this is all working is the governments are making their grants to West Mountain. West Mountain is making a a loan to the residents for the purchase which is forgivable. And so the restrictive covenant gets inserted as a condition of West Mountain making that loan. And so West Mountain would be the entity tasked with enforcing the uh restrictive covenant with picking county being kind of a secondary enforcement body. Um the deed restriction has I keep saying deed restriction restrictive covenant. I'm saying the same thing. The title of the document is restrictive covenant but it requires um resident occupancy. It requires to be a member of the local work workforce. there is a um an AMI restriction to be income qualified as well. And I'll say that's a piece that we're kind of still sorting out within the deed restriction as part of the loan from Thistle. They have their own um uh income or affordability requirements and those will exist during the term of the loan. Um, so there's some question as to whether to maintain those within the restrictive covenant or to make something have something that's a uh more simple approach or maybe even thistle would change its requirements to be more easily manageable by West Mountain. So that's kind of a piece that's still in conversation. There's a right of first refusal and you end up foreclosure and um a few other a prohibition on short-term rentals. A few other things to kind of try to maintain that housing as uh owner occupied uh employee occupied workforce housing. So that's

getting pretty close. I think our next steps in the purchase are um after is all all the local governments after they approve their appropriations to get money to West Mountain to meet a early September deadline. But right now everything's um coming together looking on track.

Thanks thanks for those updates. And then last uh but not least is the uh issue of parking has come up on Midland. It's been quite a at least I've been hearing a lot about it. Um first from residents and citizens complaining about people parking in the loading zone during off hours. There was considerable feedback in that regard. And u the way the ordinance is written just for everybody's reminder is that there is no dispensation as to time of day or day of week as to loading zone. So the the ordinance is all at all times. So we have been enforcing the loading zone restriction at at all times. And now there's a group of people that are our citizens uh that are taking the opposite view that we shouldn't be doing that. And I would just add that um so couple paths forward. One is that the loading zone obviously is during the day is used for Cisco and other people dropping off food and whatnot to the restaurants, but during after hours, I think it's important to have the loading zone free and clear of traffic because we had a health event the other day at one of the establishments and there was a problem getting the EMS vehicle in and out where they needed to be. There was another one over at Alpine Bank. uh the same same situation was during the day. But that's really really why we're keeping that space clear. The other, you know, the other uses are is that there are instances where people uh say you're taking your elderly parent to to dinner or say your spouse or whatever and they're not as mobile, you could use a loading zone to drop them off in front of either Temperno or Cafe Bernard's or Heathers or wherever, go to the restaurant and then get the person situated and go park the car. So, I ask another use of the loading zone uh during off hours and it's appropriate to do so. Um, you know, and there's it doesn't have to be an elderly parent. You can set somebody have a broken bone.

I mean, that happens from time to time here in in the the mountains that that would be another use for it. So, uh I would just since there was that a lot of chatter uh that I at least I heard was I was looking for uh some direction that do do we continue doing what we're doing uh or do we amend the ordinance for there to be some sort of dispensation as to time of day or day of week the existing ordinance. So I just throw that as a consideration as a couple pass forward or simply we could ignore the ordinance and not enforce it at all. So, you want us to want to do it now? Talk about it now a little bit. Excuse me. Talk about it now a little bit then

if you would. I mean, I I I just would like to get some clarity because I get a lot of feedback.

I'll be happy to contribute. Um, we spent we voted to spend 9.8 million on an improvements and we funded another six or seven. And I didn't think our intention was to have eight or nine cars parked in the middle of Midland Avenue when the intent was to get cars out of there to free up pedestrian movements. What I've noticed is from walking back and forth a number of times is if you're from Temperno, you're trying to cross the Heathers, you cannot see the oncoming traffic in the other lane because it's blocked by vehicles in the middle of the road and people are just randomly crossing anyways without using the crosswalk. So I think the solution you've come up with as far as enforcing it in the evening hours because people are just parking there. They're not just dropping and picking up, you know, picking up to go is is the right answer. Um we can't work and I I would suggest that in light of the fact that we spent the amount of money we did with these improvements that they should be enjoyed by the people that can walk around and enjoy them. But right now it's it's difficult and I you know I'll sit there and watch it. It's uh it's not not a good situation.

I feel like from an emergency services access point of view alone, it needs to be enforced in the sense of keeping people from parking there for long periods of time. Cuz yeah, if you just look at it, there's nowhere else for a fire truck or an ambulance to go other than those loading zones. I I think the code's 14 ft. I don't know about that, but yeah. I mean, if you're parking in the loading zone, then it can't be used for loading and unloading, which is what it's there for. It's including all the people, you know, who need to get dropped off. I'm, you know, I'm going to I'm sensitive to the musicians who are in Heathers. They got to load in and out their gear.

They can do that. I don't think there's a problem with that. No, no. But I'm saying like I don't want people parking in those spots and they can't load out or load in. I mean that's I'm as a drummer carrying gear around. I mean if you got to carry a gear a block I mean that's like a lot of trips. So that's why I love so we should absolutely enforce it. I was just looking for some sort of, you know, I guess consensus that what I'm doing is really what we should be doing and if they need to course correct and we could course correct. So should be aware if there's some complaints then that's give them tickets. I saw some it was awesome.

I drive out all the time and when you drive through a tunnel of cars it's it's a pain in the butt. It's not appreciate it's still early too, you know. It's still early. It's this hasn't gone a whole summer. It's like people people will get used to it. Um they just, you know, if it's not known right away, they'll be educated. Right. Right. Word will spread. Right. Well, it's good. You know, the businesses have liked the enforcement. We got a lot of good feedback. We are going to have Chris Matera survey the merchants on Midland. I mean, that's really one of the reasons we did it to begin with was support our businesses. So, so we'll get that feedback. was shared at the time. So, okay, that's all I have. So, thank you.

All right. Thanks, Doug. Next, uh we'll go into our presentations. Our first one is item 6A, Confluence Early Childhood Education, Strong Start, Bright Future Campaign Information, uh with Maggie Dornia. Am I saying that right? Yes, you perfectly. Great. Should I sit or have a seat? Yeah, get comfortable. Just talk to them.

Okay. Get a little closer. Okay. All right. Um, thank you, mayor, counselors, and staff. Um, good evening. Thank you for having me here to talk to you about our ballot initiative for more affordable, accessible early childhood education um, from parachute to Aspen. Um, I'm Maggie Tuscornia. You said my name well. Um, that doesn't always happen. It's a tough one. Um I have been leading the Confluence Early Childhood Education Coalition for um two a little over two years now. And the coalition it has been um a cross-section of leaders from education, nonprofits, parent leaders, business leaders from Parachute to Aspen who've been working since 2017 uh to improve access and affordability of early care and education for children ages birth to five. And um we're excited to say we are now officially on this November's ballot with a ballot initiative uh called strong start bright future for our kids. Um I uh I'm a parent of two little ones. I have a 2-year-old and a four-year-old. And so just to come to this work as uh a parent navigating the challenges of working full-time and and securing reliable and affordable child care um and have come to really just appreciate and understand the the critical importance of this this window of birth to five at this age window for our kids and setting them up for success and how critical that is and then you know for the well-being of our families, our communities our economy at really at every level. Um, uh, next slide. So, thank you to this council and the

town for all of the support that you all have given to this to this issue. Um, so I don't really have to explain this too much, I don't think, but um, just briefly really why we're we're focused on this birth to five age range is because we know from extensive research just how um how access to for kids to quality early childhood care and education sets them up um to be better prepared for kindergarten, to read earlier, to live healthier lives, um, to have better developed life skills to go on to attend college and earn higher wages. Um so really just at every step stage they're they're set up for for better success. Um so it's just absolutely critical for for our kids to have this access. Um and then of course we know that parents who have access to reliable um and safe child care means that they can effectively engage in the workforce and keep our our businesses going, our hospitals, our schools um really critical community infrastructure for for our our our communities as a region. Um next slide. So unfortunately we don't have um the access and affordability that we would like to see um in the region. So we have licensed staffed capacity for just 44% of our kids ages birth to five. Um and that's it's most severe for infant and toddler care the shortage and um in the Colorado River Valley which is closer to 29%. Um it's also if you know families are fortunate enough to get a spot it's extremely expensive um and unaffordable

for most working families. Uh with the median tuition for two kids in care between 2500 and 3,800 per month. Um an average of $17,000 per year for one kid. Um higher than CU tuition CU Boulder tuition. Um so it's just incredibly expensive. It's also on the, you know, on the flip side, it's extremely expensive to establish and operate childare programs. Um, so it's it's difficult for our providers to retain and recruit staff um and have our teachers living livable wages um or having live livable wages um and to cover that that cost is extremely difficult.

Um next slide. So, we are committed to taking a regional approach to this issue because we know that our working families are crossing county and municipal lines every day on their commutes and we want to see them have options and um the the possibility of of choosing whether they can find care closer to home, closer to work, somewhere convenient in between. um which we see of course in this region with a lot of our providers as um you know kids getting dropped off on on their commutes and so we really want to see access improved throughout the region. Uh next slide. So the way that we've identified to do this in a regional way is through an early childhood special tax district, which is a type of special district that was authorized by the state legislature in 2019. And we would if this passes, it would be the first such type of district in in the state. And it would encompass all of Garfield County, all of Pitkin County, and this portion of of Eagle County that's in the Roaring Fork school district. Uh, next slide. So, in terms of what the service district would fund, um, it's really in envision to tackle accessibility and affordability. So, tuition assistance to help families afford care, grants to providers to help increase the number of slots available to improve make quality improvements, um improve teacher wages and teacher supports, outreach and navigation of services to make sure that families are um finding the care that meets their needs, and then um admin costs and evaluation of the program. Um, I I just want to note that the district would is not intended to establish and operate child care programs, but rather um fund

and coordinate with the programs and providers that are already doing amazing work um and really get that funding out the door as efficiently as possible um to support our providers and families. Next slide. So, the the plan proposes a 0.25% 25% sales tax to fund the program. It um would exclude the essential everyday items of gas, groceries, medications, diapers, feminine hygiene products. So all of that would be um exempted and the tax would raise an estimated $10 million annually. the the district would be overseen by a a voter-elected five member board of directors and each of them would represent a a geographical portion of the district that you can see on that that seat map. Um, next slide. So, yep, that's uh that's where we are. We are just thrilled to be finally going to ballot after working on this for so many years. Uh and officially launching our campaign, strong start, bright future for our kids. We also had to get through a lot of legal hoops to get to this point. We got unanimous votes of approval from all three boards of county commissioners in March um from Garfield, Pitkin, and Eagle counties. And we gathered over a thousand signatures in May and filed with the district court in June. and had our public hearing at the end of July to officially get on the ballot. So, that's how we got to where we are. Um, so I'd love to hear your questions. I also um you know, we would we would love for you to consider an endorsement of the ballot measure and um if not as a council, as individuals.

Well, congratulations for getting this far. Thank you. Thanks for the all the info and uh I'd be supportive of doing that. uh a resolution. Um but any questions or comments uh the rest of the board? Well, one comment um talking with you guys. It's district 4 is our area and we haven't had anybody that's expressed any interest or have we in running for that seat. I did check with the Yeah, the designated election official said um we do have a someone who has self-nominated for for seat four. Um, and it's yeah, Jason Shrout from Habitat for Humanity. Okay, great.

One other quick one was um trend we're seeing a little bit is that the mid-level professionals are are going home to have to raise a family because they're finding it difficult to do it in the Roaring Fork Valley or the I7 corridor. And that's a big talent drain for future leaders. resource for elected officials and management that we need to operate in in the businesses we have. So when you have a you know young couple say well we're going to go back to Michigan because we want to raise a family it really hits you where it hurts. So, we want to try to hopefully keep them here, but we'll see.

100% behind a very strong resolution to support this. Thanks, Rick. Thank you. Are you guys only supporting uh uh physical facilities or are at home care able to be supported by you guys too? It would be it would support the mixed delivery system that we have in place. So, homebased, school-based, private, nonprofit, all of the range of providers we have. I just feel like sometimes it gets kind of it has to be in this one structure. So, I appreciate you covering all the bases. Yeah, thank you for that question.

No, that's awesome. I of course support it. Yeah, this is something I've been a part of the coalition for and something I hear a lot from friends who, you know, have been married a couple years and have stable housing, but they can't afford to pay 1,700 bucks a month. So, they're holding off on having a kid even though they're really excited about being a mom. And even though finances are a part of the equation, I feel like they're becoming a disproport disproportionate part of the equation for for young families here. And I feel like there are so many anecdotes of I used to share like, oh, I talked to this one woman who called her called Blue Lake to get on the preschool waiting list before calling her husband to tell him

she was pregnant. And I've said that a couple times now and I've had multiple women come up to me and be like, "No, I did that, too." Like, I think we should have a system that is functional enough that you can tell your husband first. Um, so I'm really supportive of this, tackling affordability, tackling the quantity of spots that we have available. Um, and fully fully support it. Thank you. Is there any idea just this is out of curiosity of the percentage of the uh revenue that this would generate every year that would go to each of these four categories tuition assistance, grants, outreach, evaluation, and admin? While we we'll have recommendations for the board, it will up be up to the board to determine that um that proportion that would go to

and I can see the tuition assistance need and want being overwhelmingly high and but same with the grants to providers and so it's just I know be interesting to see how it shakes out. And then further how is the tuition assistance decided? Is it just purely an income and need-based scale? And what qualifications are taken into account? And

the way that the service plan is written now, it's based on um income and family size. The board could decide to add to that requirements. Um but that's how that's, you know, a sliding scale tuition assistance program is how it's envisioned to be. And um yeah, you can't you just can't tackle affordability without also addressing capacity. You can't just attract do capacity, build a center and not deal with how are we going to staff it? How are how is it going to be affordable for families? So, it's really going to be a mix of all of these things. And it also it needs to be nuanced enough to address our our differing um needs throughout the region since we know

um it can look different. And is it right that the vast majority would go towards tuition subsidies kind of as projected in the service plan even though the board can determine the exact amounts. It's how the the sample yes um budget is written. Um but it will be up to the board. They could change that. We also hear how difficult it is to open a daycare, small, eight kids, you know, 10 kids and get to get licensed and have trained staff and a place to do it, whether it's in home or wherever and it's so formal to try to get through that process. A lot of people are discouraged and they do it on the sidelines, right, which is what happens. So some some of this I hope goes to looking at the regulatory issues, helping people streamline that a little bit so they can actually open one.

Yes, licensing assistance is one way. Um I think we can also tackle capacity um as well as looking at the the staffing side um and advocacy for our providers to the state level. All right. Well, thanks for for coming out and talking to us and uh yeah, we're happy to support it sounds like and yeah, so we'll Yeah, we'll be in touch, I guess, if we'll figure that out as far as you're kind of our point of contact. Okay. Yeah. So, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Maggie. All right. Next up, we have item 6B, picking county update presentation on Whitewater Park. Uh, James and Lisa. Lisa Tasker. Come on, you can come up. Uh, thank you. Yeah, we do have Lisa Tasker here this evening from Picking County as well as Sam uh from Blue Green Architects, Landscape Architects. Um they are here to give an update on the Whitewater Park improvements uh that Picking County would like to make uh this uh fall.

Hi, good evening. Um yeah, Lisa Tasker. Um we've been here before in front of you guys uh with I am with the Picking County Healthy Rivers Program. Um and I'm here as we just said with Sam Balcom. He's actually got a very quick sort of um uh review um because I feel like really we've already presented this entire plan to you guys a few times and nothing has changed. But what has really changed is that we now are under contract and we are very excited that we are all set to start this project after a number of years of really you know trying to get it going. We during COVID we we went ahead and put an RFP out and we had people that were interested but no one put a bid in. So we've been through some different iterations of this. So we're very excited to really get to this last piece of the Whitewater Park um which is going to be a huge improvement to that very empty steep bank that is right next to the park. Um, and Sam's going to go ahead and just kind of go through his his uh slides that are in the packet and just give you a quick review of what it's going to look like. And also, the main thing is tonight is we'd really just like to be here to answer any questions. And I we'll also give you a little bit of a um I'll just tell you right now the schedule right now is set for starting September 2nd and the end date is November 27th. So for the fall and then in the spring we're going to do the landscaping and the irrigation. And that is basically a month-long process. It starts the first part of April and ends the first part of May. That's the gold construction's um schedule right now. We just got an update yesterday on that. So that's very new. All right, go ahead,

Sam. Sure. Thank you. So I think James did a great job of itemizing the the program. So we'll get to that in the plan, but I mean it's seating and viewing areas. We've reconfigured the parking a bit, accommodating ADA, uh the requisite drainage improvements, and then we have an a restroom at at the top. And then of course the landscaping and the irrigation. And just as a reminder, this is it's not just a park. Um there is a method to the madness here. And it's Do you want to show them for them or Yeah, thanks. Yeah, this is it.

Oh. Oh, this is it. Okay. Sorry.

So the goal is All right. Great. So you're rolling through. Great. And so everyone can see this, but just to reiterate is the goal is to improve user experience and access to the whitewater park, but this also increases the recreational use. Um, and that's an important component and requirement of the associated water right. So this just connects everything back to Pitkin County Attorney's Office that started this. My goodness, what 2006? I mean, the vision for this. So, this has been a long time coming and it's it's a benefit for everyone. Um, park experience, water use, preservation of water into the future, which is amazingly important. So, we're able to achieve this in a really fun way that further benefits the community. So, if we flip to the next next slide, this is where we are. We're on Two Rivers Road. And we have completed the boardwalk on the right side and the revamped boat ramp there at the end. So this is the the last piece that really connects the two existing wave features that you see there by the mouse. Um it's a trail. We're adding shade. We're adding benches. We're adding seating. We're adding segments of a boardwalk and then a concrete pedestrian trail that connects. Starting at the parking lot on the left, we have our accessible um parking. We have a bike rack. We do have a future changing and restroom on the far left. And this this is a connecting all the way down to the existing boardwalk that you see on the lower right of your screen there. Uh the next couple of sheets, these again are unchanged, but they're still fun to look at. Um it's an interactive park. It's scalable. When there's no one there,

it's not going to feel empty. But when there are people there, it's going to uh kind of scale appropriately, if you will. It's a a wall of of beams, a farmer's beam stone that people can sit on. It's kind of like red rocks, but a little cooler. Um, in that respect, uh, you can picnic, you can bird watch, you can watch people in in the water. Um, all of the above and more. So, a flexible space. We have a couple of segments of boardwalk. This is going to tie into that existing boardwalk section that's already been completed. And then the last uh sheet, jumping down to materiality. It's very much of the place. We've got the wooden boardwalk. We have some gabian seating. just really straightforward uh gravel materials and uh concrete for for the trail because it's all about durability, usability, um low maintenance and of the place.

So with you know at this time we're happy to answer questions. I think Lisa hit on the important part which is it's starting the day after Labor Day and it's finishing uh mid-spring. So, we're super excited to uh to be back in front of you all and talking about this. As far as as far as like kind of the the diagrams, it looks like nothing is built higher than the split rail fence, which is good. Yes. So, we're as far as that kind of view plane, it's everything's going to be there below um still.

Correct. Correct. Um what we are doing it's it's it's very much below. We're carving out some of that with this wall and the soil nail wall so that you can have an appropriate experience down there without the noise of traffic or even by you know cyclists going past. Um yeah, it it the intent is to make it comfortable for everyone and enhancing that pedestrian and vehicular circulation separation. That's cool. Rick, uh you mentioned soil nail wall.

Yes. So, you've not you had asked prior to have the road moved over and be able to lay it back and have you figured out that it needs a soil nail wall to retain the slope in order to construct it. Is that is that a new addition? Because I didn't hear soil nails before. It has been in and out of the project over the years. Um, so it's it's not new new in that sense. I think as everyone knows, the road has shifted. We're in a great spot there. The soil nail wall is going to effectively retain the road and all of that soil so that this can be added.

So, will that make that space available, that additional width open for parking or for how how will that fit into the project since you're going vertical with a wall? Sure. So, not necessarily for parking, but if we go back a couple of slides and look at these sections, um, what it allows us to do is have the be the stacked beam walls, the planting areas, and the trail. So, the beam walls in front of the soil there. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. So, the bottom right there is the visual. So, you're not using that whole 14 or 15 extra feet you got. Correct. Okay. Correct.

So, will that be landscaped? It will. Yeah, it will be. It will be landscaped. The soil nail wall allows us to basically drop it apart. Otherwise, we're looking at the angle um that's required and it it would just make the space so narrow. Wouldn't be an effective use. Okay. Who's the contractor? G. Gould. Right. Is there any other adjustment to the wave or is the wave done? Um, no, not at this point. No, not during this project. Any any future adjustment to it or is it It's pretty much

We we have um engaged a number of folks to get feedback and that's an ongoing conversation always. So, um and we still have the same um uh contractor and engineers uh river restoration. They're still involved and they're still part of that conversation. So, it's an it's an ever evolving thing and it does tend to happen that at risks um at Whitewater Parks there are slight adjustments that tend to be made over time because you're dealing with an active river. Of course. Yep. So, yeah, I hope that helps, Ryan. But yeah,

I was reading uh the both lanes of traffic open the majority of the time. What kind of impact are we looking at for the road as far as uh any using the road itself any closures etc? It's impacts have been minimized to your point. We're maintaining the the use of the lanes um at all times. I think although okay from time to time there may be heavy machinery that's moving something but this is not going to really nothing like disrupt Yeah. or shut it down for any extended period of time. and G is very much um aware of that issue too. So, okay.

Other questions? We'll keep us posted as we get into the fall. Yeah. No, this is amazing. We You have no idea. I mean, this is made this many years. It's it's a phenomenal thing. And the price got doubled and that was our last um trip up, but we managed to get past. Knock on wood for that. I know. Exactly. So, thank you all very much. Appreciate your time. Yeah. Thanks for the presentation. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Right. Next up, we have uh item 6C, which is our second quarter financial review with Doug on his finance director hat.

All right, changing seats here. Same hat. No hat. So, here we go. um pull this up. So, as a consistent with past quarterly presentations, this first page you'll see is simply a graphical illustration of all our elements of income and expense. In the blue is our sales tax. Red is property tax. And then we have our um cats and dogs of revenue expense represented in the lower percentages. Um to the right is the expenses of the general fund. You'll see the public works police lead the way this basically half expenditures of the general fund followed by administration and planning. So this is again just graphically illustrating those expenses. We go to the next page. Just a couple comments here. Um, again, I can in the packet, you know, it's very small print, so it's hard to see. I can always give you the bigger version here if you guys want it. But a couple things I wanted to point out, can you um the sales tax, if you look at our number currently through the first six months, we were at 3 3,419. That's the general fund portion. Last year uh 2024 we were at 3,ion419. So we are dead even to last year and we had budgeted a 4% increase in sales tax. So we are tracking a miss and I've I've said that you know a couple different times. So that is we're going to go ahead and book that as something that's going to likely happen uh for the calendar year 2025. So that's just headline. Secondly is that now can we make up some of this revenue? I believe we will. And that uh you'll

see here in the restricted permits we're tracking 325 where we were 314 year ago. We only had budgeted 325. The reason we're exceeding budget is that the permits for the BCC project were per pulled in January and we had uh contemplated in the budget than being pulled in December. So that timing difference created some favorable a favorable variance for us this year. that's going to help eliminate or I don't say eliminate uh lessen the impact of the miss if you will on what we have on sales tax. So, um, moving down on the revenue side, we're pacing a little bit better. Uh, just go down a little bit further, James, if you would. Bless you, whoever sneezed.

Thank you.

Uh, interest. Uh, we are still pacing a pretty good number on interest. Um, we have less revenue. Rates are coming down. Uh, I believe we'll hit eight. we may have some bit of a surplus or interest, but long story short here, make a long story longer, I think we'll uh have a slight miss on revenue principally because the sales tax is going to be off of our budget. Now, on the expense side, uh we don't have a an issue with our payroll. We're running a vacancy savings right now about 225 for the first six months. So, we're running a a nice vacancy savings. I don't see any uh operating expenses that are being distressed. There are a few hot spots, but nothing that's uh too alarming that we won't be able to make up in some of the other areas. Capex is pacing budget, so I'm not terrifically worried about that. And debt service, we have very little to deal with there. So, I don't think the from my standpoint, the the the miss, if you will, is the more concerning part is revenue versus expense. I think the expense can be managed. Um, if you were really looking at this, you'll see that our administrative expenses are at 52%. That's actually um going to be lower when we look at this because right here, public works is only facing 16,000. I noticed when we were doing this that all of the payroll expense for Justin being added was tagged to the administrative section and not public works. So, I have made that adjustment, but not until July. So when you look at these numbers in July, the public works variance, some year-to-year variance is like way off. That will catch up with u Justin being added, but he didn't start till like April, I think it was. So anyway, I just thought I'd share that with you guys. And then last but not least here on this slide of note is that we started the

year with just uh under 30 million. During the first six months of the year, we have added two million. And this is my uh proof that that number is accurate because I just take all the sum of the various changes in the fund balances. I adjust it for the changes in working capital being uh accounts receivable and payables. I did have a little plug number there of uh $9,600 to true up that number. So all in all headline here is that we're we're pacing. Uh I think we're going to have a slight miss. we are going to have a a miss on the budget because you know we had initially budgeted uh expenses in excess of revenue of of uh 390,000 just go down a little bit here James on this slide uh that was originally 390 but as we amended the budget to provide uh $500,000 for the contribution to the basalt park we made that budget adjustment

I know that and Joe you and I were chatting about this whether we can make that up uh I people make some of it up, but I don't believe we're going to make it all up. I really don't. Um, given it's August and the way things are tracking, I don't necessarily see that happening. It may still four months, but I don't I don't think that's got to be what we see. All right. Any questions on the general fund before I move on to the next slide which is so you're saying that you know revenues you know probably not be able to close that gap but but um our expenditures are in good shape it looks like and so the question is can we make can we have we're going to have a million dollars less in expenditures than we had budgeted

and I don't think that's likely we'll get we'll get some relief in in vacancy savings and um I don't think I don't We're going to get a million. Any anything that we need to do or look at as far as how our spending um this year well I think uh I think for the council's decision I don't necessarily think there's anything actionable here at this point. Okay. Um but I will spend a little bit more time here the next couple weeks here. You're going to be making a decision here about the town manager. So I'll hopefully have some more time to work on this um on the other side of the house. So there you go. So anyway, thanks.

Next slide is the restricted fund and this is just graphically illustrating our elements of income. Really this is simply uh taxes and readers. We got a big contribution this year of readers. This all this green stuff is read and this is taxes. And if you go to the let's go to the next slide here, James. Um you'll see here taxes are really tracking um tobacco lodging pacing pretty well with our budget and our prior year numbers. What the aberrant here is frankly our our readers. There's been a fair amount of turnover in homes in Willlets that's generating some pretty goodiz readers for us. Also when we are budgeting lake modern uh we can also call this so meadows lake modern but the the the Rita on the lake modern this is we only budgeted the pre-sold houses when we were doing the budget back in November and there's been a lot more sold than the pre-sold have been a lot of activity in fact um if you look at these numbers there's probably about $780,000 of Rita being generated by the sale of the of the Rita comes through on a on a park modern or lake modern is 2% really 1% goes to Willlets and 1% goes to what we're calling lake modern threearters of that 1% is for affordable housing and the other quarter is for public transportation so let's it's a pretty good number and uh say with the turnover in willlets in general uh we're far exceeding what the budgeted number was for the year So be nice if this was representative of the general fund but it is of the restricted fund and there is there's uh no I look through these expenses there's nothing here in in distress uh there's no other outliers I

think post will be um track everything's pretty much tracking so I think at the end of the day we will we will uh be putting up a surplus of revenue over expenses in the restricted fund. I think that's that's pretty much got to happen. Okay. And then rounding rounding third here going to the last home stretch here. Bond fund. This is just our collection of other funds. Bond fund is simply in and out. This is where the mill levy is for the debt service are the two bonds that we have the taxable and tax exempt bonds that were issued for Midland affordable housing and the green initiative. So that's um almost impossible to miss that number. So you got 950 in, 950 out. Capital construction fund. This is a cash basis report um for the essentially a cash basis report. I think when U Katherine finishes up with the Midland project and kind of the streetscape, we'll do a final accounting of that. But that's tracking what we've said all along. There's no surprises coming in that regard. What's different here and is it's noteworthy is this area right here. This general and administrative expenses um when we were investing the bond proceeds we took that tax exempt bond out we basically were paying a little less than 1%. And we were earning as you know some points up to 4% on our money and there's a limitation on how much we can earn on our tax exempt money. Uh IRS has a limitation on it's called an arbitrage. you can only earn so much more than you're than you're paying. Has not been an issue, frankly, for any municipality for like probably the last decade because rates were zero. But as rates came up and investments were were being made and as we've issued that bond and what it was 21 whatever it was, it's like 1% we we were earning four. We did

get clipped um by that arbitrage provision and we didn't have to pay it this year. We could have waited to 2027 to pay it, but I was speaking with Ellers that that's our investment banking firm that handles that our coops and our our tax exempt bonds. Their recommendation was to pay it. I thought it was the thing to do because it stops the acrewing of interest, which is basically at 4% right now. Number one. Number two, 2027 I likely won't be here and all the people that are involved with this won't even know what it was about. So, I thought, you know, just transparency about the whole thing. Lay it out now. Just go ahead and pay it and be done with it. Turn the page and um not not fuss with it uh going forward. So, that was the decision we made and that's what we did and that's why there's going to be a variance and that'll be that will be when we do our budget amendment. That'll be something that we call out as an amendment to the budget for the appropriation. Um so, then just rounding out the water fund, nothing remarkable here. revenues tracking. Uh actually it's a little higher because we did get tap fees on the BC application when it was pulled. Again, that was something that was budgeted in 2024. They hit in 2025. So that's showing a positive variance. It's really not operating variance. It's really a timing difference variance. Uh our expenses are in line uh across the board for admin, treatment, uh transmission, supply. Nothing remarkable to comment on. Um and then the last fund just wrapping it up is our conservation trust fund. That's the rake off of when we pay a lottery ticket. There's a portion that goes to this fund. We get it. It's based on the demographics of the state throughout the state. We have it. We have money associated with this um um project and we have budgeted money for the work on the cemetery that Justin

and Trevor are working on the irrigation project for the cemetery. So all in all, I think we're in pretty good shape. There's a few weak spots on the revenue, but I think um given the all of the uncertainty we've had this year in the market in general, uh liberation day and all that kind of stuff, I think there's been a I think we could be in a worse spot. Um frankly, and we're not we're not self-inflicting any wounds by overspending. I mean, a few hot spots, but nothing uh terrifically out of bounds. So, any questions? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Is that tobacco number right? Tobacco number right. We're like double. We're currently double where we were last year.

So people are just Is it No, it's uh I have 324 versus 298. Oh, okay. It has 628 on there. So I'm sorry. Flip back to that slide. It's on page 85. Go back. 298 versus 324. No. Well, it says 628. That's all. Oh, you're talking about expenses. Uh, well, yeah, expenditure. The tobacco. Oh, that's our Yeah, I see what you're saying.

You know why? Because we were hung up. Remember we were going to spend all that money to the Ron Fork School District for the bleachers and all that work at the school and we they they couldn't accept the money. Remember, because they had to do some sort of res change in the I floor plan or whatever. They It was It was not I know exactly. I'm not doing a good job articulating it, Jeff. Oh, that makes sense. I remember we stopped that. Yeah, basically projecting forward. Correct. Right. So, right. Okay. Well, we are spending the money now. Cool. And we are tracking revenue. So, anyway, there you go. Any other questions?

Real quick, you mentioned the RITA and Willlets 3/4% and that's goes to affordable housing and there was a quarter going somewhere else. Public transportation. Yeah. And then the other 1% goes to Willlets. Is that defined as Willlets improve capital will lane to call.

So are there other REITas that are set up the same way? And do we know um in in the interest of this question we have to go to the voters within November? Have we identified all of our affordable housing revenue streams? like that one I didn't remember didn't recall the three quarter percent and that has turned out to be a pretty good value added proposition down there it sounds like and then what others are out there that may have that same opportunity that we the basalt river park read that u roaring fork club has a readita roaring fork club has a readita I don't believe that that's specific for affordable housing but it's general

general community benefits so can we kind want to look at those you you made a point earlier Doug I think about looking at other I think the problem with reus is that they're not reliable well it's transactional base I mean but there are going to be transactions and there's going to be future growth and there's going to be a lot I look at this frankly as revenue this right here is recurring revenue you can bank on I think over here it's transactional and u so and transactional revenue I think you use mainly for capital projects not necessarily operating ing projects that would be so that would be 2e or or nine or whatever they are.

Let me do this. I mean there's like 30 different you know there's like 32 different restricted funds and you know there's a lot of lot of noise going through here but a lot of it just boils down to you saw the graphical illustration is readas and then sales tax. So all these impact funds and all that it's not generating a lot of yield, but I can I can take back. Uh yeah, I I just think it's a good exercise for going forward with this ballot question to look at what we what we have on the books and uh including what's on the books now in the survey.

Sure. I don't have that right now, but no, I anytime end of the year whenever you want to do it. I'll get it. I'll get it. Okay. And then some of that Rita for affordable housing help offset the purchases we made at BCC. Absolutely. Because remember the the the Rita the the BCC purchase was like 2380 2 million 380 and I believe we've got right now about 80% of the purchase price covered by looking at our various readers. Okay. So I I feel and that's only growing. I mean that there's still you know we still got the whole year to go at least six months to go because didn't we use some general fund for that? No. Or at least no it was all just read.

Right. The idea was that if we had some shortage that we would issue a certificate of participation and that we would secure the certificate of participation with the rent that we've receive on the rental of the six units. So I think that is that is solid. I don't I don't I don't think that's uh at all at at risk. Yeah, it'd be nice if the whole thing's covered, but it might it might be. Thank you. What? Thanks. Okay.

Anything else? All right. All right. Back to your other chair. Back the other chair here. All right. Next up, we have our council actions. Uh, item 7A, Republic hearing and resolution number 37, series of 2025, resolution of the town council of the town of Palt, Colorado, approving a preliminary uh subdivision review, preliminary plan review, and associated development review actions for the Jadwin Black Mountain Development at 431 Emma Road, Bassalt, Colorado. And uh, James, this one's yours.

Yeah, thank you. Uh we have the applicants here this evening. We've got Michael Forest and we've got Ramsey Fulton of Building Seed Architects. Um, as the mayor noted, this is a public hearing on an application submitted by Jadlin Park LLC, and they're requesting preliminary plan PUD and associated land use actions uh for the development of 64 dwelling units, uh 12 commercial lodging cabins, and uh approximately 4 acres of open space. Um, as background, the applicants received a sketch plan approval in September of 2023. Uh, and they're in a PUD process that requires three rounds of review by the PNZ and town council. Uh, they're in the second round of review, which is the preliminary plan phase, uh, where the details of the sketch plan concepts are further refined. Um the application also includes an annexation and the initial eligibility for the annexation was determined at the sketch plan review. Uh this evening staff will present a refresher on the application and highlight the most significant discussion items that have been identified for preliminary plan. And then staff suggests considering applicant comments uh taking public comments and providing council discussion. Uh, as I noted, there's a resolution in your packet for consideration. Uh, the property subject of the application is about 9 acres and it's just west of the post office as you can see here. Uh, it's on Emmer Road and it's partially in Picking County and partially in Eagle County. Here's the county line running through it. uh contains a single family residence and a mobile home and it's currently being used by the town or most recently being

used by the town as a layown area uh for the Midland Avenue construction that took place. Uh and it's also located within the urban growth boundary. Uh the portion proposed to be development developed is completely in the urban growth boundary. Uh there's this dog leg, but that was taken out of the application at the sketch plan level. Um the preliminary plan application, as I noted, uh is for 64 dwelling units, uh kind of in the central and eastern portion of the property. And they're proposed to be a mix of flats and town homes. Uh and then there's 12 commercial lodging cabins uh that were also part of the sketch plan review. Uh, and then there's four acres of open space uh with a uh primitive trail uh to make its way down to the river as you can see here. Uh they're also proposing to extend the bike trail uh that currently goes by the post office uh that's detached from Emma Road and they're proposing to take it to the western extent of the Jadwin property. Um of the 64 dwelling units, uh 32 are proposed to be deed restricted as category uh dwelling units or primary resident units. Uh in addition, the applicant uh has proposed 20 first tracks units and this was discussed a little bit at the sketch plan level. Uh these are units that are essentially market rate units uh but they're to be offered uh exclusively to locals uh that have lived in the Roaring Fork Valley between Aspen and Glenwood uh for the first 90 days um that they're offered for sale or if they're offered for rental for the first 30 days uh they're

offered for rental. Um you may also uh remember that there was a glamping uh portion of the project uh that was proposed at the sketch plan level. Uh that was removed at the sketch plan level at the direction of council and so that's not part of the preliminary plan application. Uh the applicants can go into more detail about the preliminary plan uh project. Um, it should also be noted that they're proposing to provide $700,000 uh in community benefit contribution, uh, which was also part of the sketch plan approvals. Um, staff had identified a series of discussion items that are on the front page of your staff memo. Uh, these items were reviewed by uh, the Basalt Affordable Community Housing Commission as well as the Planning and Zoning Commission. And so staff will go over uh some of the most uh significant items and give a staff update on those. Uh the first being the consistency with the land uses in the master plan. Uh as I noted, uh the applicants have proposed for 32 of the total units to be either category units uh or there's also eight uh resident occupied units uh that are part of the project. And that is consistent with what was included at the sketch plan level. And it uh exceeds the 20% of required units from the town's code uh as well as it exceeds 25% of the square footage which is also from the town code. Uh in that they're proposing 35% of the square footage to be uh deed restricted units. Um, regarding consistency with the master plan, uh,

there are a series of goals and objectives from the master plan that are in your memo, uh, that staff believes are applicable to the proposed project. Uh, the PNZ generally felt that many of the master plan's uh, goals and objectives uh, related to affordable housing and attainable housing as well as preservation of open space and connectivity were furthered by the proposal. um as the proposal more than satisfies the town's housing requirements uh and it's near transit and it has services within the urban growth boundary. Um additionally the mix of uses proposed uh is consistent with the future land use map. Uh this is an excerpt from the future land use map that include uh medium density residential and then it also had a short-term uh rental or uh lodging component uh here in the purple area and then it identified open space on the northern portion of the property. Um other discussion items included the first tracks units. Uh, as I noted, the first tracks units uh was a program of 20 units that the applicants added at the sketch plan level uh to add more benefit to the project in discussions with the council. Uh these units, as I noted, are essentially market rate units without price or appreciation caps. Uh but they would be offered exclusively for 90 days uh for sale to people that have lived in the valley for one year uh to purchase before being offered to everybody else. Um in addition, when the units turn over in the future, that uh offer requirement would also uh be applicable.

Um the planning and zoning commission and Bach uh were supportive of the first tracks concept. They thought it added some community benefit uh above and beyond the deed restricted units uh that were part of the proposal. Other discussion items included the occupancy priorities uh that the applicants are proposing. Uh the occupancy priorities for the deed restricted units uh are on two of your packet materials and you see them here on the screen. Um essentially most of the organizations that are proposed in the first uh occupancy priority uh are organizations that are in the town's uh first priority. Uh basically the difference would be that Aspen Valley Ski Club uh as well as the Forest Service would be promoted into the first uh level or tier of the uh waterfall of priorities uh according to the applicant's proposal. Um that was a discussion item for the PNZ as well as Bach. Uh ultimately Bach and the PNZ felt that adding those two entities uh was acceptable and so it's been included as a draft condition in your uh resolution. Other topics uh for consideration include the transportation improvements uh that are required at the sketch plan. it was determined that several transportation improvements were necessary uh to effectively accommodate the development. Uh specifically uh there was a requirement to add a dedicated right turn lane on Emmer Road for traffic uh traveling down valley at the Emma Road Midland Avenue intersection. And as part of the sketch plan proposal,

uh the applicants engineers, uh came up with two potential options for that right turn lane. Uh a longer option uh which pushed it uh kind of back past the driveway to the existing single family house on the corner and then a second option uh which was a shorter option uh that didn't push it past the driveway. In reviewing these options as part of the preliminary plan application, uh the town engineer and public works director as well as S DOT uh were supportive of the longer option one. Uh but the fire district had some concerns about that and were actually more supportive of the shorter option two. Uh staff did uh reach out to C DOT because it's in their right ofway and C do DOT uh as I noted favored the option one uh but felt that there was some tapering issues uh related to the design and so they've asked uh the applicant to uh go back and do some adjustments to the tapering issues and so staff has included a condition that before the final plan review uh that the applicants engineer here look at making those adjustments. Uh, additionally, the planning and zoning commission uh reviewed it and uh recommended that there be a plan for pedestrians at this intersection as part of the final plan review. And so that's been included as a draft condition in your resolution. Uh other transportation improvements that were noted from the sketch plan uh included uh adjustment to the turning radius uh and dimensions of this access uh to Emma Road coming off the slip lane to highway 82. And so basically what they did is square it off

and in uh improve the turning radius. And that was proposed at the sketch plan level. uh C DOT reviewed that and was accepting of that uh adjustment

and also the fire district reviewed that uh adjustment and felt it was appropriate and so that's been included in the conditions of approval. Uh the applicants have proposed a fair share reimbursement scenario uh where they install the improvements and get reimbursed by uh the neighboring property if it ever redevelops in the future for their fair share of the costs. And so that's been included in the draft conditions. Uh other topics for consideration included the uh parks, open space, and trails aspects of the proposal. Um the as was noted the glamping portion of the project uh was removed as part of the sketch plan. So it no longer is part of the project. Um the preliminary plan includes the extension of the bike trail uh as was noted along Emmer Road uh which was one of the parks open space and trails uh committee's recommendations. Um they're also proposing the 4 acres of passive open space uh that includes the uh trail to the river. Um it is required in the conditions and it was a requirement at the sketch plan level uh that the trail be field fit uh because there are a variety of u ute ladies tress uh orchids in the field and so those are protected uh so they need to field fit the trails uh so as not to disturb those. Uh in addition, they're proposing a landscaped burm along the uh roadway between the project and the trail. Uh this was a recommendation of the parks, open space, and trails committee at the sketch plan. And so the applicant uh looked at the potential to add that and uh found that it fit well. And so they've incorporated

it in their plan. And so as part of the preliminary plan review, the parks, open space, and trails committee uh reviewed the project and felt it was consistent with their recommendations that they made at the sketch plan level. Uh other consideration include the flood plane and flood way. Uh the Colorado Con Water Conservation Board, which is CWCB, has been remapping the flood plane and floodway throughout Eagle County. And so the flood plane shown in the application, and you can see it on this uh drawing right here. Um it kind of goes like this. And then this is the floodway. Uh those uh lines are being uh changed through a LOMAR a letter of map revision with FEMA and that was an effort by the Colorado water conservation board and they've coordinated with the town's hydraologist who is Robert Crrael of matrix design

and so CWCB has submitted this LOMAR to FEMA and uh the LOMAR is in the kind of final stages of its review with FEMA. And so staff has included a condition in the draft resolution uh that would require this adjustment uh to the flood plane uh before the applicant could get any development permits on the project. Um but as I noted uh it is in kind of the final stages of review with FEMA. Uh other topics for consideration uh include that the applicant has requested a fee waiver from the water tap fees uh in exchange for dedication of their water rights on the property. Uh the town's water attorney has reviewed this and he's provided a letter that's in your packet in the referral comments. Uh the letter recommends against uh waving the tap fees uh because he indicates that he doesn't think it provides a significant amount of benefit uh to the town uh because it would have to be uh go through the court system to make it usable to the town. The water rights that would be dedicated um it is the town's policy to require dedication of water rights through a t an annexation. Um so staff has included the dedication requirement um but based on the uh town water attorney's recommendation uh we haven't included the water tap fee waiver uh in the draft conditions of approval. Um finally some other topics for consideration uh that were included in the referral comments. Um basically the first one is that public works and the town engineer have requested some changes to the utility plans uh with

regards to the water lines and the drainage. Uh the applicant's engineer uh has met with staff and made those adjustments uh according to the public works uh director and town engineers request and so those have been included in the revised application materials. Um other referral topics that came up uh included topics by the uh police department. Uh they re raised the concern that the judicial boundary uh between the um uh judicial boundaries runs directly with the county line that splits a couple of the units. Um, it did split seven of the units and the applicants made some site plan adjustments uh to reduce that down to three of the units and the town attorney Jeff Conklin did some more work uh with the district attorney's office and basically the conclusion is that uh it won't impact the potential to prosecute crimes. uh it may impact uh and provide a little bit of confusion as to where which district uh the crime occurs in if there was a crime to occur in the units. Uh but that wouldn't impact um the ability to actually prosecute the crimes. And Jeff, maybe you can speak to that a little more if you've got any more comments.

Sure. This is an issue that comes up at like 71, for example, that's on a county line. So basically, if you can reasonably determine where a crime is committed, you need to prosecute it in that jurisdiction. And so here, I think there's three garages and then bedrooms above them, that would be in a different district. And so if there's a determination as to where the crime occurred and defendant says, "No, it was actually in this part of the house. It creates a defense and if that was successful, the charges would need to be refiled in uh a different district." So, it's it's not a real material issue for the land use application. It's just something to be aware of as to how that might play out in these units. And here are the three units that are impacted by that judicial uh line. These are three town home units. As I noted, the applicant has adjusted the application in the site plan to get this cabin out of it and also to uh make sure it didn't go through the multifamily uh units as well. Uh other topics uh for consideration at the preliminary plan level include the vested rights. Uh the applicant has requested a 10-year vested rights period. Uh the code standard uh for the town code is three years of vested rights and the town has traditionally tried to keep vested rights uh pretty limited. Um, there's a draft condition that includes a seven-year vested ride period and a phasing plan for the public improvements. Um, this was the PNZ's recommendation uh kind of as a um more limited uh potential for vested rights, but it also includes the potential for the applicants to come back and request an extension. Uh so that represents the planning and zoning commission's

recommendation on vested rights. So this evening staff would suggest uh hearing some additional comments and presentation from the applicants uh and then asking questions of staff and the applicants and taking public comments because it is a public hearing and then you could provide council discussion. Um staff has provided a resolution for consideration if you're comfortable uh reviewing that resolution. As I noted, we do have the applicants here this evening. Uh we've got Michael Forest and Ramsey Fulton.

Thanks guys. Do you uh turn it over to you? Thank you Ramsey.

Think I'm sharing. Hi guys. Um thanks James. Uh many of you are very familiar with this project and were part of the sketch plan. But um for the benefit of those in the public and um new members here tonight, I just wanted to run you through kind of u where we've been. Um so I'm going to kind of do that and then we'll kind of get to uh discussing whatever topics come up. So for the benefit of council members and and the and the public who might have not been following this project through the years, I want to briefly run you through the initial process that has landed us here today. Starting with an idea that came about during the community visioning of 2019 and 2020. In mid 2020, the new owners of this property started master planning and development with our team after seeing the road map for community interest taking shape with the feedback and work sessions behind the 2020 master plan. The then draft master plan showed how this property in conjunction with the neighboring parcel could be incorporated into the town as a key parcel to support the community's growth, vitality, and need for housing that stabilize community members at risk of displacement, including density recommendations, open space allocations, and appropriate land use designations within the property. [Applause] Initial analysis proved that the largest challenge to realizing this goal was the limitations of the site constraints, including wetlands, flood planes, and utility easements. In December of that year, we prepared our first master plan package for staff to review and consider. This spawned into two more years of analysis, design studies, staff feedback, neighbor communications, utility, county, seed dot, fire department, and engineering feedback. ahead of preparing for an annexation application. Jumping forward to the culmination of planning and outreach to neighbors and

referral agencies, we arrived at our first formal planning application shown here for engagement in public hearings and public committee feedback. This opening opportunity include 68 residential units, 35% of which were affordable housing, which was above the code required 20%. It also included 12 fishing cabins as a hospitality offering and seven glamping sites plus amenities and recreation elements provided in the extensive open space north of the housing. In addition to that, it included a a land designation of the area we call the dog leg for child care. During sketch plan approvals, many topics of consideration were weighed and and accommodations made from improvements to fire access, police management concerns, traffic issues, architectural response, project density, and of course, the amount of affordable housing. Some of the most noteworthy accommodations at the request of the public, PNZ, and council include the following. a move to 64 residential units and an offering of 50% as as affordable housing which is once again above the code required 20% and the initial offering of 35%. On top of that we introduced the first tracks housing priority for locals system which James as James explained gives locals a first priority to receive for sale or for rent units. [Applause] At this time, we also removed all seven glamping sites as well as mostly all improvements other than the trail access to the open space. We further agreed to a $700,000 gift to the town for community benefit as a better contribution to benefit the community than the land donation previously proposed. These items along with the planning planned improvements along Emma Road and Midland Avenue resulted in

sketch plan approval in February of 2024 by this group here. bringing us to today's preliminary application with our recent refinements and requests. Uh before coming back to you today, we we uh made adjustments per um Roaring Fork Fire Rescue, Bazalt Police, Parks and Open Space, referral agencies, including Pick and Eagle County. We also had a review, discussion, and approval with conditions presented by the Bas Basalt Affordable Community Housing Commission and the Basalt Planning and Zoning Commission. Our proposal summary once again illustrates the development of four multifamily residential buildings with two two-story structures and two three-story structures along with 12 single standing and duplex town homes as well as 12 short-term rental river cabins operated as a single hotel with on-site management as well as an extensive dedic dedication to open space lightly touched for river access and per the direction of post wildlife and ecological consultants and river hydraologists. Looking at the current application, a quick note on the con continued consistency with the master plan. We're always circling back to see that this key parcel is being proposed in support of the community's vision and larger initiatives. This consistency was highlighted more thoroughly in James' packet to PNZ presented earlier this summer. for tonight. We'd be happy to discuss this with council as you desire. [Applause] Next, as council members, I understand your desire to ensure the development community responds appropriately and respectfully to neighbors neighboring properties. So, I will quickly review the cardinal directions of our boundaries and provide some context. To the east, you have a combination of picking county and Eagle County lands,

both of which have been considered in their current use by meeting with the property owners and identifying their concerns and needs through proposed plantings and fencings at the property line property edges. We have addressed neighboring concerns. This is accomplished while the general scale and density of the development reflects the future incorporation of this land into basalt and the planned redevelopment as set forth in the 2020 master plan for community growth and continuity from the library and post office to this javelin property. To the west you have a combination of picking county and Eagle County, both of which are beyond the basalt urban growth boundary with uses intended to remain for the near future. In consideration of this neighboring lowdensity residential area, the low impact and lowdensity river cabins are positioned and spaced out to focus the views, activity, and experience away from the neighbors to the west. While the densely wooded wetlands at the common property line create a natural buffer promoting peaceful enjoyment between the two properties with little to no visual and auditory connectivity. Nonetheless, a six-foot privacy fence is proposed for increased privacy. [Applause] To the north of the property, the land opens to native flood plains, the Roaring Fork River, prospective future greenway trails and river habitat. After consulting with Colorado Wildlife Science and hearing public feedback, our approach to this natural frontage is to limit improvements and work to restore and maintain the existing open space. To the south of the property is the C dot rideway, Emma Road, and Highway 82. In consideration of this, we propose an extension of the Emma Trail across the property's frontage from the current end of the trail for bikers and recreational use. To soften the massing of the structures from the highway view, we are planning a

dense treelined frontage between the property and Emma Road and implementing architectural articulations and tearing of the apparent massing to bring down the scale of the three-story structures. Lastly, through landscape BMS and sound isolation techniques and the architectural walls and windows, we are addressing highway noise in consideration of the residents facing south. Now for a final note on architectural character. During prior council hearings, this project was described as important as it relates to the entry into basalt. The design and building massing has subsequently reacted with intentional materials and breaks in the massing to accommodate this importance. The provided character sketches show the three-story buildings specifically articulated to lessen the apparent massing by stepping back thirdstory walls and roofs and shifting materials used as they address the frontage to the basalt basalt's entry from Highway 82. This tearing taring accompanied by pedestrian level roofs and overhangs and the use of commonly seen regionally appropriate materials such as brick, weathered metals, and natural woods all play a part in our attempt to blend with the historic downtown and rural vernacular while also creating a permanence to place with durable lasting designs we are proud to showcase as a meaningful part of the community. This site massing diagram was presented at sketch design to this council group. It illustrates the proposed tearing down of both massing and density from the master plan's proposed annex lands to the east of this development stepping down as it approaches the county lands to the west. This final illustration is a character sketch of the river cabins consisting of low density arrangement of one and twotory cabin structures with a rural

feel set across the pond from the housing. And with that, I'll turn uh the mic over to Michael Forest to talk about some of the community housing and public benefits associated with our proposal tonight. Thanks, Ramsey. Yep.

Thank you, Council and James. Um just wanted to highlight some of you know where we are today with essentially 81% of the housing is deed restricted. That's 50% category and RORO and then that includes the deed restricted first tracks as well. Um Ramsey mentioned the 700,000 gift to the town, the improvements. Um, and I just think overall, you know, we've we've all a lot of us in this room spent years and years on this project and it's exciting to see where it's come and I I think it's a great project and I know we spoke a lot, so I'll throw it to the council and the public for comments.

All right. Well, thanks guys. Let's uh we'll go ahead and do public comment uh and then we'll get into all questions and comments from us. Um, so I will open, it is a public hearing, so I will open the public hearing. Just a reminder, it's 3 minutes. Um, make sure you give your name and address. Make sure you also put your name and address and sign it in the back there. And, uh, yeah, the floor is open if anybody wants to come up to the podium or anybody wants to come and speak online. I don't see anybody there. All right, I'll close the public hearing.

That was uh shorter than I expected. Clock goes away. Oh, you're good. This is [Laughter] Is that a public comment? That would that would not be how I want to would want to wake up. You can bring it to your house. Um, okay. Well, I'll open up to fellow counselors for questions or comments from to the applicants. That must be

I Well, I'll start um with you know I I I applaud you guys for I feel like you've been super responsive throughout this process to council to public to all of the referral departments. Um so I thank you for that. Um the one kind of I guess issue if you will that I had with the various requests um or variances if you will was for the vested rights I think and Michelle and James y'all can probably correct me is that at least since I've been on council we have tried to kind of stick with what is in the code because we don't want to just subjectively be you know like granting seven years here and five years there And it just I believe gets us into kind of a sticky spot. Um and so for that reason, just so that we can be consistent and continuous in what we're doing with each development that comes before us, I would stick with the three years that's in our code and then come back for and I realize that a project this size in today's economy is going to take longer than three years. But also historically, and obviously we can't make any promises if you know you come back for an extension and in all likelihood um there's not going to be issue with that. I just think the code's there for a reason. And I think I mentioned this the last time this request was made is that if we feel that that is no longer appropriate, then it's our job as council to amend it to maybe be a five-year vested right, but it needs to be consistent.

I I totally understand. I mean, part of it is doesn't hurt to ask,

of course. Yeah. you know, these things take a long time. We're 5 years in right now. So, it just feels like not a lot of time and but I appreciate, you know, the understanding that if something happens, a COVID, some kind of massive dislocation in the market that you guys are going to take that into account. We have no intention of um slowing this down. You know, our intention is if we do get um approval to work immediately to put the plans together, submit for a permit and break ground as quickly as we possibly can to deliver the housing. Um but we figured we'd ask, but I can understand that you don't want to make an exception. And if that's the council's position, we're okay with that. Well, I' I'd also add that, you know, I'm I'm not a on his side of I'm just the architect on the project, but, you know, having a lack of certainty that you're going to get those rights when a project does take longer than 3 years could impact your ability to, you know, attract funding. Uh, this is like 50% affordable, so it's a pretty tight envelope as it is. I can see where um there might be some leniency for a project of this scale with this much affordable housing uh amongst annexation pro projects. Uh there's not many projects that come at this kind of a scale with this many types of components and this size of development. And it it just seems to me that when they asked for 10, I understood why there was some backtracking by um PNZ, but PNZ also understood that there's some some certainty that they'd like to have and not have to um bank on the the ask in three years. And that's just me talking, not the applicant, but I'm just kind of putting that out there as something that I think would be a good gesture to go race. James, in the past I know it's gotten I feel like more consistent, but I know we've

varied in the past maybe before this council on larger Yeah. projects. It's kind of been dependent on the size of project. Um for example, parcel five uh out of uh SARS Meadows um received I believe seven years and it was a phased scenario. um uh starts mill before that uh I believe they were in the 3 to five range but then they received uh at least two extensions that I recall but otherwise we've tended to stick you know as close to the code requirement as possible.

Yeah, I prefer the three but I'd probably be be okay with this the seven as P&Z recommended but I I do think we should be more consistent um wherever possible. Can I just Can you just explain how the resting is set up under the ordinance because it's really that the building permit for the first phase would need to be pulled from three years then it would get extended with each additional phase and by an additional three years. Is that right?

Yeah. So basically they have to file a subplat for each of the individual buildings similar to what was the requirement of parcel five and they would have to file all the subplat within 7 years. Uh and then there's a certain amount of time after filing the subplat that they have to actually build the building. Um and then there are requirements uh that they actually do the improvements uh to the trail uh within 5 years after improvements as well as the intersection improvements. Uh and then also installing all the deep utilities prior to the first CO. Uh and then you know it does have that extension ability. Does that answer your

Yeah. And just to clarify where you what I'm hearing from Angel and David, are you suggesting that all subplots need to be filed within the seven years? Is that so it wouldn't be uh within I'm sorry within 3 years instead of seven? Is that right? Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. The the way it's written in the in the code. Yeah. Well, the code basically says that if you get a statute, if you get a sight specific development approval, you have the presumption that you're going to have three years of vested rights. And you can council can grant

invested rights period for longer periods of that. But that's by by statute you get three years. And so, you know, for Willlets there, this isn't Willlets, but Willlets had 20 years of vested rights and other projects have 10 depending on the scale. And so there's um if you're that's why there's room for discussion on the topic just depending on you know the magnitude of development here. Yeah. I like I said I I I in general I'd prefer three years but I'm okay with seven in this instance PNZ's recommendation.

Yeah. My point is more that I feel like maybe three years is outdated, but that is what it's, you know, I think Michelle is not like I'm I'm kind of always saying this like maybe we need to update our system so that this is not a conversation every time. 3 years may have been applicable in the economy 15 years ago, but I think that it's no longer applicable nor will it be applicable into the future. Um, so this is just kind of yet another example of maybe we need to look at that for for this development. And I think as long as the ball is rolling in 3 years, the way it's written here, um, I'm okay with that. And, you know, I agree. I think that where allowances, you know, should be made is in cases, you know, where y'all are going above and beyond and providing 50% and we appreciate that. And so, of course, I'm willing to bend to a degree, you know, and go with Z's suggestion there, too.

And this app also written as three years like that. It was um that the affordable housing was uh buildings were addressed first. Yes, that's correct. Well, go ahead, James. I'll let you Yeah. Yeah. The requirement in the draft resolution is that the affordable housing come on proportionally to the free market housing, right? That's kind of how we've addressed it in past approvals. I would just note also this project I mean there's so many different components even just from a drafting perspective there's just a lot

to do here you know even the multif family buildings each one is different it's not like we can design one fully and then just repeat it each one is different we tried to make them similar but you know to get the right unit mix and all those associated things they're very customized um so it's just a lot going on with civil and and everything. So that was why we were asking for a little bit longer. And this can I can I sorry you guys want to continue on this one? Let's let's hammer this one out. So all right. Well, that that was I'm good with this. Uh you want did anybody else want to talk about vesting? I I thought you No, I was gonna move on. Um

you can do a new topic if you want. Me? You have? Yeah. We'll just follow up on vesting. I mean, I think that there's a number of things that in this project that are interesting that aren't traditionally what we've been looking at at land use and basalt. One is affordable housing being built first. Mhm. Generally, you know, we've looked at applicants that have well, I got to do my free market to raise enough money to do the affordable. So, this is a complete flip in my opinion. Um, the things though that I think are are maybe a little more significant are this Lomar schedule timeline because if you can't pull a building permit until that is accepted by FEMA, that could be three years. So, I don't know if there's a timeline on that, James, or what, but those things are

Yeah. ridiculous. There there is a timeline. Um, they're in the 90day appeal period now. So after a Lomar is approved, then there's a 90-day appeal period and so it doesn't become effective until the appeal period is up. Um the CWCB has expressed to town staff and Robert Crrael um that that should be up near the end of the year. So December. So by the 26 they'll have a Lomar. Yes. Approved by FEMA. first quarter of and that's got to go through Eagle County's process. Correct.

Well, E Eag Eagle County uh has been part of the reviewing agencies with the CWCB and and so um the CWCB uh then submitted the LOMAR after getting comments from town staff and and Eagle County. Um so they're they're actually in the LMAR now. Is Picky County affected? It's just the Eagle County portion of the site, right? It's just the Eagle County.

The other thing um was the issue of water rights being dedicated to the town. And I don't know if those tail water ditches mean anything or if there's a significant amount of water rights. But the other um thing that I think is a little complicated is EQRS that we ask to be paid for versus trading it off for water rights. In the past, I think we've traded water rights to be converted to domestic use on projects where now we're looking at what can that water right accomplish besides domestic use and and sustaining a wetland or sustaining a river corridor, the repairarian, irrigation on the sites, etc. So I I am tipping more towards if there's a deal there on the especially the lower uh cost housing in that project where the UKRS could be looked at because we did talk about that with on other developments and when you know when this was compared to the high school work you know that that only involved two employers you know so that was pretty restricted and it was also so expensive to extend an infrastructure out there. This infrastructure is a lot closer. Um, in fact, I think some of it's on site already. And so, I think there's something to be said for maybe looking at that a little bit to get as affordable as we can on these units, but without giving it up completely. And I don't know how much water you guys are talking about, CFS or however you want to define that. Uh, I can get that for you here. Uh, okay. As we continue

as you continue next time or whatever. Yeah. And that that might be a good topic to um kind of have resolved at final if if it's something that does take some digging and looking into and how that's going to work the possibility, but I certainly appreciate the the suggestion there. I I would be against that. I don't think we should wave the water fee on this. I mean, it's an actation. It's it's more That's my position as well. There's just at some point should we stay as it has been in the past? Same. Did you have something you were going to bring up? Well, just about the I mean if are we on what are we on now?

Let me just We talked about the BMing last time. last time around it just from the sketch plans it just I don't know if you're you kind of cleared that out so it's a better view of the house because or better view of the thing but there was there was an intention on that burming on the highway 82 side with landscaping and then the fences in there somewhere kind of sorting that out through your fencing plan it but on the drawings themselves it it looks like maybe we clean that out so we could see the buildings I'm not sure

uh well the the there's a lot of you know figuring out the slope of the of the road versus the land that we're developing on with the and then getting the drainage to work. And so we worked with Soers Engineering Stephanie here tonight uh to see how much burn we can actually get out of it without sort of um making it so that Emit Trail wasn't going to work and so we could get some planting area in there without too steep of a slope and also not have an overengineered look at the backyards of these units, right? And so it was it was a balance, but the objective was to um soften it to kind of make it seem like it's tucked back in. And then also the other real advantage is those those first floor units really get a buffer from the sound of the highway out of it.

Yeah. And I guess that's my concern is or not concern my my desire would be that we really pay attention to that and and buffer that as best as possible. And that is, you know, by and large the entrance to the, you know, when you're looking left, the first thing you'll see on as you enter the town. And y it needs to be handled appropriately. And we uh we did a number of um of renderings that that were you guys looked at last time that showed the trees, you know, first four years, obviously not much, but over time it kind of looks more like the forest you see along there now of the of the cottonwoods where we're really trying to um green it up. Um, so it's a it's a multiaceted approach. It's sort of how we're going to kind of soften that edge, right?

Both with making really attractive, well articulated architecture that when you do look at it, it's great, but also making it look like a greenscape and and really bringing nature back into it as much as possible. And uh, we really did push the BM as much as Stephanie would would allow us to

um, with practicality of because there's some really real water drainage issues associated with this site. Stephanie Helen by Sopus engineering. He clearly wanted me to get up and talk and he knows I don't like doing that. Um yeah, so we when we started this project, we were hoping we could have a larger burm to help to help with the sound on the site. And as we realized the restrictions with with utilities in um the Emma Road Rideway and how close that we needed these buildings to really be to the Emma Road Rideway to be able to make this project work financially and for for for everybody. um we just didn't have a lot of room to put make a large burm. So, we're using uh essentially the the wall in the patio to help bring up the grade to the top of the wall in the patio and still create a a private space for the people on that that lower level so they're not inundated with um the traffic of Highway 82 and and also deal with the drainage um in a separate way to where we could collect the drainage in each of the patios and route it out and um have have all of that in a happy element with trees on top. Anything else?

Okay, thank you for that. Thank you. Um, the dog leg is out now, so the folks living there, it's in the way it is now is going to be this the way it is going forward. Yeah. For I mean, we're we're not planning anything on it right now. It's not to say we might do something in the future, but that lot once it's kind of separated is is pretty restricted as well. Um, we're not really sure anything more than there can be built there. Um, but right now we haven't planned for anything there. Okay. I got a couple questions. Sure.

Uh, once again, first of all, thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for participating. you guys have been it's awesome. I I do appreciate that. I'm obviously not the most friendly guy to developers. Um I like that you are honest on this and saying for sale and rental. So I guess my question is what is the strategy there? Is it is it a mix? Is it certain buildings are for sale? Is it what can you sell then the rest gets rented? So is there a breakdown on that or is it still kind of up in the air? So the the deed restricted housing is all for sale.

Um that's been the feedback we've received from the community from day one. Um the free market, which some of which is the first tracks, is where we're keeping that optionality. Um from an underwriting perspective, you really have to make sure the project works as a rental before it works as a selling condos. you know, the condo market is much more fluctuating. Um, it depends on interest rates. It depends on a lot of other factors. There's also, you know, other projects in the Roaring Fork Valley that have had this size units that have had some difficulty selling. Um, so we wanted to leave that optionality. You know, personally, and I think I'm speaking for the partnership, we want to keep as much housing rental because we feel like there's a really strong need for that as well. It's just from speaking to our lenders, we really need to underwrite it both ways. And that's why we wanted to be transparent with the council as well.

I really appreciate that. Uh, in the first tracks it, you know, I feel like I get we have to call it deed restricted, but I feel like deed restricted kind of turns it into sounding like it's affordable. I I I love what you guys are trying to do there. I feel like it's a little bit weird because I think almost any house that comes up for sale here, someone from Aspen to Glenwood is trying to buy it if they can afford it. Um, but I appreciate where you're going with there. I just I just feel like it and it's not your fault cuz it would have to have something in the deed restriction to be for sale for 90 days, but it it it isn't affordable. So, I feel like we should definitely and just be upfront about that. And um

you're you're 100% right. I mean, it's it's we're just trying to stretch to keep it as local as possible. Um, you know, I think our position is that I think it will get bought by locals. Um, but you know, other places around the country, other municipalities, there's other ways to kind of underwrite and these deals, there's sometimes tax real estate, you know, tax breaks or there might be other kind of funding to build the stack. Um, so we really had to maintain the free market to be able to do all the public benefit stuff. Yep.

I guess to kind of follow up on that question, without a price cap, how is that I mean, I don't think it's quite meaningless, but it's going to I I don't see how it's going to work. I think it's going to have the deed restriction. It's going to go through the 90-day period. It's going to be priced if it's a free market unit in a way that local can't afford and then it'll be bought by somebody else.

And we saw that to tree farm. They had kind of a similar deal. You put it on the market. It can only be bought by folks in the Roaring Fork Valley. The onebedrooms were 1 million. The two bedrooms were 2 million. I think I saw a threebedroom for $5 million. And then they just kind of waited out the clock and sold it to whoever. So, I had kind of had that question as well.

I mean, I it's it's a fair comment and I definitely don't have all the answers, but you know, from a developer perspective, when we price the units, we're going to price them to sell. We're not going to overpric them. There'd be no real reason to overpric them for that 90 day period to wait for someone else, you know? So, we're going to price them at where we think the market is in the Roaring Fork Valley. You know, the cost of building, as we know, you know, is high. I mean, you see the numbers that are coming out of Lumberyard, um, you know, price per unit, snow mass price per unit. I mean, the numbers are insane. So, it's like if you just look at our cost, that's probably not affordable for most people. Um, so it's a balance and it's like I think we're kind of feeding this affordable project with those units and with the with the hotel component. The hotel component obviously is a lot more untested. You know, there really is no comp for that type of product right now. So, it's

kind of a big question to figure out how much that is also going to support, you know, the project. So the first tracks was really an attempt to just try to do our best but maintain the ability to have free market. Yeah. And that's appreciated. Can't afford the market on a on a salary that's here. That's I think it's also worth noting though that a lot of the local organizations that we've talked to actually preferred the free market. That's a good point.

Um deed restricted with first tracks but not deed restricted with a price cap because they can eb and flow who's in there. There could be a um CFO in there one year and the next year a lifty right depending on you know ski would be the example of that one right of their need for that year and any organization could use it in that way but if it had a deed restriction they would have a very limited scope so there are local organizations and local entities that are really excited about these free market ones and with that first track program so that other institutions that aren't local or other locals other non-locals like we saw in the COVID boom don't come in and take that inventory out from under um our community.

I'm glad you brought that up because I forgot about that, but when we were doing the outreach during sketch plan, I mean, just based on our conversations with employers, we think the need we think we could potentially sell out all of the residential units if we were doing for sale to just local companies. And to Ramsay's point, there were some organizations that specifically said they prefer free market because they don't they just want the flexibility and they want the flexibility to sell it. They want the appreciation because their boards like the idea of those units being able to appreciate. Um, absolutely. Yeah. Do you have any letters of intent for because that that makes perfect sense like if you're running a

a business and and do that, it's going to be better for you probably in the long run. Are there any organizations that have signed letters of intent or expressed an interest in those first track unit? I know I saw in the packet there was um you know fire district I think for some of the the dean restricted but do we have anybody who's wanted to bite on the on the first tracks the a couple of the hospital systems um yeah that's right

they were the ones that were specifically you know it was like okay if we can get a couple of D-restricted great but can we get 15 free market you know because they just have that need and they want the flexibility and from their funding perspect perspective, it's easier for them to fund raise or, you know, it just makes it easier for them. So, we kind of stopped the outreach after sketch plan because now we're sort of at the stage where a lot of these boards want to take it to the next step. You know, they want actual pricing. They want actual units. They want to go say, "Okay, if you're delivering in 27, can we go under contract now?" And we don't want to spin everybody's wheels until we get through this process. But as soon as this process ends, our intention is to go right back to all those stakeholders because, you know, it's a it's tight, right? It's a tight deal and the more we can get pre-sold, the more this gets out of the ground. Just a clarifying question, can they like a a local has to buy the unit or a local organization has to buy the unit, but is there any sort of primary resident requirement of if they bought it and rented it to someone um or local requirement of who they rent it to? Yeah, I think James probably knows the best answer to that one than uh we do honestly because I

think in the deed restriction it it includes that. I think it's just the first priority, right? The requirement in the deed restriction is every time it goes back for sale or rent, it has to comply with first tracks again. Mhm. Um so it would have to then go to somebody who's lived between Aspen and Glenwood for the for at least one year prior. Mhm. Um, so that test happens every time it trades.

This is a this is a pilot project, right? This isn't something that the town had adopted that we we sort of latched on to. So, we're we're trying it and we hope it it ends up being something that people appreciate and that is successful, but it's it's an additional benefit we could find within the financing mechanisms that we could sort of kind of weave in there. Uh, so we're trying it out and we hope it works to to do good, not not like what happened to Tree Farm like you were describing. Yeah, I I do really like the intention of it. I'm just trying to think of what are if there's any kind of bumpers we need to put to help that make the reality. Um, I have questions in a different area if people

ask one more on the on the first tracks. Um, actually two more really quick. Um, the 0.25 Rita 0.25% 25% RITA. Is that only if it's sold as a in the first tracks program or is that if anybody buys that unit? Um, it's a good question. The way it's written is that any transaction would only be the 0.25 25 Rita, but that could be a council discussion item or replacement. I mean, that should be if if it's not bought by someone explicitly in the first tracks program, that should have the normal Rita regimen. I I think that's a good idea because that gives that buyer a little benefit. Further incentive,

further incentive because it's they're not going to pay as much transfer tax. Yeah, I think that's that you have full power over that. Yeah. So, I I agree with that. I'd even extend it to say like if it's not going to be occupied by a local. I mean, it sounds like there's the hospital, there's other people kind of chomping at the bit to have it occupied by a local, but if someone's buying it so they can rent it to someone working remote for a season, then I feel like the full redo is fair game, but that might be over complicated. I think that's tough to police is the problem. That would be very challenging to We'll go with simple. Yeah, I think the discounted Rita only if it's in the 90-day to the first tracks, you know.

Yeah, qualified applicant. Qualified applicants. Otherwise, it's the full. I think that's good. Jeff, are you going to add something to that? I was just going to clarify that, but it sounds like if it's outside of the 90-day first tracks period that the full agree.

Okay, great. The other question I had um I know I said the pro proposal includes the town administering the first tracks program. Um and I got to ask the question it's been asked before in various ways like what kind of FTE commitment are we looking at and I keep thinking like shavings make a pile of responsibilities and everything like how would we absorb that like help me help us feel better about operationalizing something like that. K. Currently, you know, with the affordable housing units that we have in the town system, the developer or their property manager does most of the qualifications and then they provide them to the town just to do a a review of for the most part. Um, I would envision that would be the way it would happen here with the first tracks scenario. You know, when they sell a unit, they would have to provide proof to the town staff that they they have uh advertised it for the 90 days and or if it's rental for the 30 days. Um, and so, you know, I don't see that there would be too much effort on the first tracks units. Um, but on the other units that are deed restricted, we review qualifications on the tenants annually. So, you know, as you get further up there in the number of units that we have in the program, the more challenging it it gets for the current town staff.

Okay. But right right now under the current uh amount of inventory that we have um you know it's not too burdensome at at the current time but you know we're going to have parcel 5 soas meadows affordable housing units coming on shortly. Uh they're in for permit and so you know it starts to increase the the workload. So outside of this process, we need to keep an eye on that as far as how we're planning. And David, I think having the town review it does create a small burden on the town to there, but I think the checks and balances of having a a non-arrested third party.

Um, quantify it and stamp it approved is probably a good thing for everyone. Sorry, were you going to say something? Just just not to belabor this, but something we're looking at with West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition is a per services agreement for doing such a thing as we're having a lot more affordable housing. We've identified that need at West Mountain that all of these municipalities are short staffed in this regard. And so West Mountain's looking at a fee for service model where they actually oversee the administration of that. and we instead of bringing on a full, you know, full-time employee, just pay a service fee for that. Anyways, it's something to

consider. Okay, Hannah, you were going to um just a quick clarifying question. It says that the building in development is all electric and then it also has a gas connect letter. Um, and I was curious which of which of those are what's happening there. Yeah. So the the mechanical systems are proposed to be designed all electric. Great.

There is the option to have um gas um stoves and gas fireplaces, but that's not the mechanical system. So we we um have done this in a number of Carbondale jurisdictions and stuff for IEC IEC 2021 um that you have the whole mechanical system as electric only. And another addition that could be applied would be or electric ready for any stoves or any sort of fireplace that are involved. Um that's the intention. That was the intent. Do you want to talk about that?

Sure. So and that being said um should our code change and get more restrictive um regarding gas when they pull building permit they'll be required to meet the code at that time. Gotcha. So um it's seems highly possible that that will happen over the next seven years. Awesome.

Just one more comment on on what I'm seeing as a trend in the how the modeling of these projects is going. CMC's proposal to us to purchase the nine units was a groundbreaking proposal that that took into consideration that the locals are going to high school here are going to go to CMC and come back into the workforce and as a result of that they put out enough cash to buy nine units and they've had success with that and a couple of other places. Um to Ryan's point, the transactions that we've done over the years with developers have been not in a partnership manner necessarily. It's been through annexation. Uh lots of public hearings about this and that and arguing over whatever. And this is, you know, we are starting to trend towards affordable housing being a top priority. Willlets um 92E and the rugby field uh this one the port you know part of Clark's market uh the trailer parks that are being purchased by a co-op of all the governments West Mountain coming forward with an idea of creating a uh entity to manage these places that we're going to build. um it challenges us a little bit to let go of that old model and start to look at a really fresh set of guidelines. And I think Bach, I think that PNZ, I think that the last five years you guys have spent and it took a long time to get that 2020 master plan out of the pipeline as well. Eight or nine, 10 years. and 5 years for me is a long time to wait again for results of this project to to happen. Um, so there's a, you know, there's an incentive here, I think, to get some of these answers to the questions and get them on the table and

get it going because if, as you've suggested, if you're willing to stick a shovel in the ground over there with all the infrastructure and site work that needs to happen and go out there and sell and approach the market with deed restricted units first, um, you know, that That kind of takes care of a lot of the concerns I would have otherwise. But I'd still like to hear from James on the water issues and EQRs and those kinds of things because anything we can do to make it affordable or more affordable or more attainable or whatever the word is is something we should look at. Yeah. I think kind of you can respond to that. Nope. No.

Yeah. Like along those lines, I was looking at the pack and it and it said that the parcel was originally zoned for 80 to 180 units and it really stood out to me that we're at 64 um and that that was a decrease and and I feel like we have, you know, developers who who are presenting us with 50% affordable housing. We really don't see that. And that's really critically important for for a lot of the workers listed on that waterfall of affordable housing. And for what it's worth, like we're not meeting the the minimum density on that parcel that's right next to the post office that's right next to the library. And I think it it kind of felt to me that we were maybe leaving affordable housing on the table. Um, even going down from from 68 to 64, that's that's two affordable units that we could have that we don't. And I know that's cuz you guys are really working with neighbors and really listening to community feedback. Um, I wonder how many young people often go to community feedback sessions on development because it's something that I hear all the time every time I go on a hike or go to book club or anything like that. Um, and and I just for what it's worth like would be perfectly comfortable increasing the density up again. I know you've kind of already done the leg work. Maybe that ship has sailed. Um because this is a really great opportunity for the town. It is a great opportunity to have people kind of go through the whole housing spectrum of of their lives here to being a young person to growing a family to to

living in the town for a long time. Um, and I and I know we're kind of developing less attainable affordable housing than we could be.

Look, it's definitely a fair point. It was it was it was brought up at PNZ a couple times as well. So, it's definitely a sentiment we we've heard. I mean, some of the restrictions on the site are just the restrictions. the parking for example, you know, that's one of the biggest kind of, you know, limiting factors. Um, and we we really try to balance, like you mentioned all the community concerns. You know, building height is obviously um a way that you can get more density. You could put tuck under parking, you know, and put a couple more stories, but it it really felt like during this 5-year process, this was really the best outcome for all at, you know, that that inputed, if I will. Um, but I don't know if Ramsey, you have anything to add there. I think I think it's a little bit misleading though because the the the key parcel document you were looking at with 120 to 150 had to do with the the Jadwin and the stock parcel and that parcel is larger than ours and it has a lot more developable area that's not in flood plane. M

so we are definitely taking our bite out of the apple that is necessary towards achieving that goal and we're developing in a pattern of development type that that document specifically spoke to including the tearing down of the size and scale of units as you get towards the county lands. So, we really studied that really closely when we came up with those first numbers. And part of the slight downturn just had to do with how we were going to get more affordable units out of this and actually balance that sheet to make sure that it's an achievable project. And it cost a couple, you know, um, but it, you know, the big picture of things is I think I'm excited to see this actually happen and for that big bite out of the apple to actually occur.

Great. Thank you. So, something I'm I'm sure is on folks's mind that I did not see in the packet mentioned with short-term rentals. Um, the underlying what what would that what would that situation be if that were annexed in just as the as everything is written right now, would they be allowed to do short-term rentals an owner there? Well, certainly on the cabins, those are uh besides the hotel stuff. Yeah. Not not the hotel stuff. I'm talking about the the residential only

in the in the deed restricted housing the um 32 units of deed restricted housing the the deed restrictions do not permit short-term rental um the first tracks units uh I don't believe that there's a restriction on Yeah. So I mean I I would be opposed to the any short-term rentals being in there at all

that just kind of defeats the whole purpose. I mean, I know you guys are work trying to get it underwritten. I know you're trying to make it pencil, all the things, right? As far as it's a business, but I mean, the short-term rental that that's just going to put further upward pressure on prices as people continue to shop for properties that they can go and use as short-term rentals around our neighborhoods. And like we just can't build another neighborhood where people can do that. Especially one where there's an amenity cabin and all the things that like would just be like kind of a slam dunk for a short-term rental. Like so I would like to do something. I don't amend. I don't know how you would do it, but but the outcome would be there's no short-term rentals in this development.

Well, I think you need to look to your left and right first. I just want to understand clarifying question. Would that be something we could say here in the um as an amendment just into the the exhibit? I'm trying to understand the mechanics, Jeff, of how we would do that. There be you know condition of approval and then you know this is preliminary plan and then come back and final plan through that be incorporated final plan development approval restriction on.

So I'd love to hear everybody else felt about that. So I I wouldn't be opposed to if a first tracks unit sells to a qualified first tracks applicant adding some kind of STR restriction because the intention of that program when sold to qualified applicants is that it is inhabited by a local working family. Okay. So that helps achieve the intention of that program. Outside of that, um I just I I I want to make sure this is done right 100%, but I don't want to lose the forest through the trees here in that I think that these guys are really really trying to make this project work with the amount of affordable housing and the first tracks and all of that. And I feel like from an investor perspective how they can sell the free market units and for how much they can sell the free market units and that's what's paying for everything else. And I don't want to jeopardize them being able to finance this project and get shovels in the ground and get it going. others.

I mean, we have that great fee. We could be paying into the front. I'm indifferent on it. It's like 50% of it there. But once again, that now you go back to that same language in the the D the the first tracks and and I feel like first track is going to be a wash. Not not your fault, but you know, it's just a hard it's a it's a hard sell. So, I'm I get where you're coming from. I hear both sides of this one. So, I'm I'm indifferent right now. Okay.

I'm probably somewhere in between. I'm like scanning through my brain and all the young people I know getting houses like Stoz Mill. Sorry, this is kind of an aside, as an example, ADUs aren't allowed there. Short-term rentals aren't allowed there. People are having roommates to be able to afford those homes. And um those are threebedrooms. So young families can rent a third bedroom, but if these are one and two bedrooms, I'm wondering for the qualified owners, for the qualified First Tracks owners, like I would be comfortable saying you can short-term rent, not all the time, but like when you go home for Christmas or whatever. Um, I'm if we could have it without having the free market have short-term rentals, I'd do that. But I also get financing is tight. I'm probably somewhere in between you two.

I just feel like the the reality of our market is that the free market units are going to be purchased by out oftowners who are going to want to use it when they want to use it and they're going to want to rent it when they're not there. And that is how they make the purchase decision work for them and how they make their own personal finances. how these and to me that's how these guys make money and how they finance the 32 affordable housing units that we are so desperate for. That's why I'm willing to give on this. Well, but then when they have to follow the rules of the short-term rental Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And then we make money on fees anyways and we and then if we get the increased lodging tax passed, we get more money on that. I mean, like we don't totally lose out. And we're only talking about 12 units realistically assuming that they go for first chance. Well, depending 32 units. Yeah, I I get it. I just it

I I I mean my feeling is that I think this issue which is a legitimate issue is better dealt with like more globally about STRs just for the whole town as opposed to like enforcing it on this new project. Whereas a project, you know, other residences in Basol that were built a long time ago at much lower prices have that ability. And to get this out of the ground, we're like cherrypicking this development saying we don't want it here. If we don't want it in Basalt, I think it should be more sort of equally applied. Well, this is this is annexation, too. So, all bets are off. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yes. Yes.

Like that's you know, it's not basalt yet. Yeah. No, you're 100% right. James, did we limit STRs at Basalt Center Circle? Yeah. Yeah, we did the whole building. Yeah, we don't do it there. So, yeah. No, that's No, that's why it's a good example. That's what I was trying to to defend for yourself. Yeah. One one other little tidbit to that is that in these multif family um buildings, you have to get HOA approval from your HOA to have an STR. So, you have bigger buildings here. It might be really hard to get an STR license. It might not be, but

I'm just uh personally motivated to make sure that this financing works when it comes down to it. And I don't know what the kicker is going to be there. So, I mean, does the the bank real I mean, I know it helps make the price higher. Is the bank like, "Oh, this isn't a short-term rental." Is that something they actually look at? I think every restriction could potentially affect more Yeah, it's more like death by a thousand cuts. So, we're just trying to limit the amount of cuts. Um, but you know, I I hear you. Um, you

know, I guess we were we were we haven't really had this discussion throughout the whole process, you know, and we were just sort of thinking that we would be subject to the town's rules and regulations and if you wanted to get more restrictive, you would and it could just retroactively apply to this project. Um, and we wouldn't have to kind of decide that now. And and looking at the BCC example too, I mean, it's kind of like we all started off this conversation with wanting to applaud and kind of reward these guys for taking the step towards 50% affordable housing and that's why we're willing to you know accept a variance on the vested rights and um you know to your comment about death by a thousand cuts. I mean, I think that's why I don't want to restrict you where it's not necessary, where we already have plenty of regulations and fees and taxes in place and processes in place for that. Um, it kind of goes back to like BCC didn't give us 50% affordable housing,

but they were an annexation. That's true. But, you know, I I just Yeah. I mean, I think it's clear that I'm a little bit more pro SDR in this council than than a lot of us. So that my stance is not surprising to anyone. That's one of the things I admire about you the most is always know where you stand. So I don't think we need to place that restriction where it's not already placed. But I mean I think that we do need to get the other council members thoughts on this.

Well, we have a process to look at those licensing fees and all that that's easily adjusted. That's what we just went through. Um, so I think if there's an issue that comes up over there, there's a way to address it to disincentivize it. And this is another thing that just takes up more time and more space and more approvals and probably goes back to Bach and goes back to PNZ and a whole bunch of other stuff. So you know for me it's uh well I think

we have a way to do it within this bureaucracy and you know if it's becomes offensive or if there's somebody say well if I get four votes I win you know but um I think that I've seen enough to that detail may come later but not now is it's tough time to introduce anything that significant into the process. your preliminary plat that should have been addressed at sketch plan annexation process would that we address SDRs then

annexation will be a subject for almost all the developable properties within the UGB basically so you know with the exception of Willlets rugby field things like that um but as far as any you know things like this parcel next door all that stuff's even the project up at the high school was outside the UGB. That's never been annexed. So, we have varying rules across the board and uh they all fit a different model. So, I'm not in favor of, you know, I think STR's if we have a fee structure that contributes income to the town's affordable housing process and that just helps our affordable housing process. But if it becomes punitive to build affordable housing, then it's putting us in the reverse. Again, my sense is that the financial market, the investors would see that as another barrier to funding the uh project potentially. I mean, the deed restriction of RORO is finally coming to some kind of resolution in the lending. You can see that with a mobile home park. People are creating these opportunities to fund through a nonprofit a purchase of CMC's done. So it's just another layer of I mean I feel the same way. I feel we have a mechanism and we put a a pretty stiff mechanism in place to deter it as best as possible across the board and it exists and you know if if uh if they're going to STR it we're going to make the town is going to get money for affordable housing. That was the point of the STR fee.

So I think it is offset the cost that the community incurs the cost is born. It's not externalized more than it was to like one way to look at I think in the scheme of things you're you know it's what you know model

I guess I guess in the scheme of things you know doesn't doesn't add up necessarily I think so I feel you know I feel comfortable and if it was to I mean I just feel like we've had we just had a big discussion on STRS and you know you got to be bold, right? So, we were bold and and and and instituted some fairly decent fees and we that has a timeline of 60 days and I know it's to offset, but we're talking a minimal number of units and and if people are going to grow the STR STR industry wherever they are throughout the town, uh the town's going to receive money for that, but it's, you know, that's the cost of those folks doing business themselves, I think, and being competitive in a hotel market And

okay, so it sounds like there's not an appetite for restricting short-term rentals. If we changed our mind later for whatever reason, is that something that you can do for an individual development once it's built? at you could once it's built not not at final but like when it's for to amend your zoning code to create caps on the number of STR licenses available in the town similar to what um pick county did that's a global solution though not a development

it would not be it' be a zoning solution it wouldn't be a you know post approval condition on on the property Okay. So, our only chance to really do it to this development solely is now. It sounds like as a condition of approval like with BCC, you know, BCC I think there were some particular concerns based on the location and traffic generation. I think I don't remember the whole discussion but something like that. Um but this is the appropriate time to have this discussion and not a sketch plan. I was like I don't think that we were that this is way too

been through three or four commissions post G&Z for five years master plan process public process public hearings the STR issues new in all the resort communities it's only been raised in the last couple of years as a real issue with the lack of affordable housing although maybe it was going on before that and it may be trending in the opposite direction. We don't know. We we've got 21 21 or 42, I forget the number of units. Um, but people may elect not to pay the fee and not to do short-term rentals and not become licensed and just do it anyway. So, you know, do we still have that issue out there?

Yeah, I like that. to it just seems like another and to your point the zoning it gets to be that that big an issue where we have public services and police force and all that is are being you know compromised then that's the appropriate way to address the problem

I'd like to just compliment your guys's statement and I don't think it's brought up enough is as much as we're trying to make something affordable and you guys participating, you guys now have to sell the other 50% at a higher rate to make the rest affordable. And then everyone goes, well, why is this all so expensive? Why is it? And so we're kind we we have the best intention, but it it also messes with market. It's also a market manipulation. And and so it's you guys are already fighting to get a to get a loan on this. this isn't an easy loan to get to to put up 50% affordable. Um, and so that that's where I would sit on, you know, if anything, I would thought you would have been fighting on 100% RO for an annexation because that's something that we were discussed at the first part, but I I don't think you can do that either unless you're like a nonprofit and you're not making any money on this. So, I just think

trying to be pragmatic. I know listen I'm just I'm just bringing up just I just you had said that and I just want to compliment you on that because it's a very we it's not talked about enough in this whole valley of of what we are doing and it it's listen you guys are here to make money. We get I get that you know but we're also here to try to defend some try to carve out something. So it's it's a give and take on all our sides and and it's it's hard to do. I mean, it's not it's not good on your pro for map.

No, I appreciate you saying that. I mean, we're we can't solve all the problems on just this development, but I think, you know, to your point, I think long term there's other levers that, you know, need to be pulled to really, you know, get that density of affordable and, you know, the private sector might not be the best place for that ultimately. um you know as we're seeing you know with the mobile home parks like you know the the government is essentially stepping in to make that work. Um so that may be you know by the way.

Yeah. Um but you know that's kind of the reality is sometimes the private sector can help but maybe not solve all ills. One quick thing, there is a process that was defined for annexation in the past that it was a prioritized kind of thing where if you were in the town of assault, you were in the first tier. If you were adjacent to the town of assault, you were in and you were in the UGB, you were in the second tier. And if you were outside both those lines in space, you were kind of at the bottom of the list. So is that still around here somewhere for for what? Priority

for annexation. So if someone came in with a petition for annexation, they were outside the UGB and outside the town limits, they pretty much were told no thank you. And then the next level was if they're in the UGB and adjacent to roads, infrastructure, mass transit, things like that. But then if they were in the town, of course, they didn't have to annex at all. Right. So there was a little bit of a prioritization of that. Well, there's I think there's language in the master plan that talks about annexation.

Well, actually the the master plan, the last couple master plans, the 2007 and the 2020 basically has a goal or objective in it that says you have to be within the urban growth boundary to annex four development purposes. Um so so it kind of takes the the priority for uh annexations outside the urban growth boundary kind of out of the picture for the most part. Right. Right. That's what I was trying to remember because there was a lot of controversy over the annexations that happened. They created a policy of

having and all that stuff. 99 plan, you had those kind of three priorities, but then it shrunk to just the UGB. That was the methodology behind it. All that all that effort that went into that um 2020 master plan too is is seen here. I mean, identifying the key parcels and what should be built there is like allowed this group to get traction on okay, what what what do they actually want? There's actually a road map that actually makes this project something we can pursue. So, I think those efforts should continue um for for their master plans in the future because they they really help guide the way.

I have two other questions, not dealing with this. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. Go for it.

Uh there was a memorandum from Katherine and Justin. Um and it addresses the well number eight site. Was that Did they get back to you on that on Okay. I didn't know if it was where it was marked out because that's obviously a big deal on how much water we have. Uh and then just the traffic. I just I I feel this is going to cause a lot of traffic and I know you know my history on this parcel is it was pitched way back in the day to P&Z and I fought for it and and the argument was if two RVs got to that intersection all hell was going to break loose. And now we're going to put 62 units, you know, 150 cars. I know it's I've heard all the words. I know it's transitoriented development. We're going to have we cycle and we're but we all know you have parking for a reason. And I just I know we do the traffic study, but I just wonder where what you your honest take on that traffic study is because traffic is already backing up at this roundabout at the Exxon station in the mornings and BCC isn't done. You guys haven't even broke ground. I know it's not your responsibility, but you know, obviously I think and I also think option one is better. You're going to need as many as much room for that right turn lane as possible. So, let's get the arc that the fire department wants. I I just as the developer, what is your

your hope on that? Like if you have tons of traffic jams in front of your place, it's not going to sell either. you know, it's like a and it looked like in the study that they had a lot of people going down valley, which I don't really think is right, but I'm sure there will be a good amount of trips down valley. Um, is there any any additional, you know, how many traffic studies did you have to do? I don't know. I just

um I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is with respect to BCC, I I remember watching those council meetings mostly during COVID, I think, on Zoom. Um, and I think they they the determination there was that their use was actually less traffic than the prior use when it was a supermarket.

Um, and like you mentioned, you know, we did the traffic studies. We have these imp we have two intersection improvements going on here, um, that we're paying for. Um, and I guess high level, we're we're relying on the experts. And I think this parcel was chosen for that specific reason because it is close to the bus stop. It's close to town. Um, you know, our hope is that a lot of the people who live there work in town and, you know, work within walking distance or they're going to use the bus. Um, and you mentioned we have the we the we cycle as well. Um, you know, I think it's a problem. I mean, people love their cars. We would love, you know, figure out ways for people to use less cars. Um, but it kind of all circles back, you know, to Hannah's comment about density. It was like, yeah, we could push push push density, but that's just going to push push push traffic. So, this was where we felt we found that comfortable medium. I don't know if Ramsey, you want to

Yeah, I think I um I just had to lean on the experts to help model it because it's very dynamic and complex on how that traffic moves. And um I hear what you're saying. I mean, it's reason for concern. Uh, a lot of talk and discussion went into it during sketch and uh, we listened to all of it and a lot of good points were made and we're doing our best to rely on what the experts put together and and um, also hopefully hoping that um, you know, as traffic in Colorado mountain towns gets worse, people tend to use their bikes and ebikes and and uh, commute and car share and use buses and transit.

I saw the flyer out there $500 discount for buying an ebike. So, you know, other incentives to uh to help with Yeah. Um and and we had the traffic study had to be uh modified slightly because we removed the um the it's I'm so tired. Dayare. Daycare. Thank you. So, our our trips have reduced significantly since the initial um study. So, that that's going to be a a good benefit for the project as well. I agree. There's going to be traffic. We we all want we all want housing. We want to be able to accommodate this, but there there's a compromise.

Yeah. I I guess my question then would continue on to town. Do we ever do an auxiliary traffic study or what are we doing to analyze our current traffic patterns in the midst of everything that's been going on in town? The amount of people, the influx, the I just Yeah. I just worry we all of a sudden get caught in a hard a rock in a hard place and then we're just stuck in this horrible mornings afternoon kind of gets weighed out. But look, you see it at the high school and with Stouts Mill and

well, traffic's difficult obviously, but um you know, at the sketch plan level, the applicants provided a traffic study that indicated that they didn't need to make any improvements for the most part. And so the town had uh Charlier and associates review that traffic study and uh you know kind of truth the conclusions that were part of it. And so out of that kind of review came the need and the requirement for the right turn lane because that wasn't recommended in in the original traffic study. And then also the improvements to the slip lane intersection with Emma Road that came out of that kind of third party review of the traffic study and and so we we also took uh the fire trucks out there and kind of worked uh in the field on the turning radiuses for the scenario you were talking about uh with the potential to have RVs passing each other and and so I I think we tried to mitigate that to the the extent we could require it. Um um also the other probably item to note related to the roundabout uh is that you know we have the the plan to do the mini roundabout on the other side and improve the um lanes on the south side of the Highway 82 intersection. And so that will get rid of the um split phase requirement at the light. So that that will impact both sides of uh highway 82.

Okay. So it it'll allow turning traffic to go at the same time instead of waiting for the other side to do that. That that could be, you know, couple years out still. Um but we're in the design phase for that roundabout. And so then the next step would be to get all the funding together to be able to change the lane uh requirements to get rid of the split phase. So, you know, there's a couple items there that help towards mitigating that issue.

I would just say one other thing. I don't know if it's how major the impact was would be, but at the final sketch plan when there were um a couple of the BALT school principles were here and they were talking about their teachers and people coming from way down valley. So, if they're living here, theoretically, they're taking some pressure off that up valley traffic. We would hope. Um, how impactful that is, I don't know, but it's it sounds good in theory. No, it's great. And I just I just want to make sure as a bigger thought of town and as councilors, we continue to think about that because I I feel like it's not brought up enough. And if you're driving around here, traffic is, you know, we're blessed to be in Basalt, but I don't want Basalt to turn into 82.

Yeah. and we're right on we're right on the cusp. So that's all I have. Thank you. There's also I'm our basalt rep on the transit um committee regionally and they're working on different congestion strategies that I can give an update on at some point. You're the second generation to get to do that. Anna, I know good news is this one is on 82. Yeah. A lot of our developments are off 82 that require you to drive through neighborhoods and uh this one is you're going down valley you get on the you know you go

and the latest data I heard was 29 thou you know this blows me away 29,000 cars coming through Glennwood and you know that's amazing and that may drop as that I70 corridor builds out. So if we want to capture some opportunities for people to live here, that would reduce traffic AC across that bridge. Going back a slight bit, does it help you guys at all if we expand that first tracks Aspen to parachute just to cast cast a slightly wider net? For all intents and purposes, I feel like that's our community and employment corridor.

Yeah. I mean, I'd be good with that. I don't think we have an issue with have an issue with that. Yeah. I feel like we might as well. Someone coming from Parachute is more traffic than someone coming from Glenwood. So, well, and it seems like if you look at the other entities, right, the childcare we heard from earlier, West Mountain Regional Housing, that is now the region that we are considering uh and we consider ourselves part of. So, it would make sense to open this up to that same region. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, I think we were just I think we were just following some prior mapping and descriptions, but there was that that would be fine for us. Cool. Yeah,

I thought the uh the intersection and the turn radius doesn't look quite as head-on as it did before, too. So, at the micro level, the slip lane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, no, I I you guys overall came back with, um, a proposal that, yeah, I was pretty pleased with. Um,

I mean, I think you heard what we said. You came back with something meaningful, u meaningful changes. Um, the the deed restricted RO and category housing, like that's where we got to be. If if it's going to come into the community, that's where we got to be. um you know, so um yeah, no, thanks for doing that. Thanks for listening. So, appreciate it. Um I I surprised about the short-term rental stance everybody has, but I'm you know, hey, that's the direction council wants to go. I'm not going to um cool. I'll I'll still vote yes even if we do uh um don't include anything on short-term rentals in there. But I do think in the long run, I know we got a fee. I know we're talking about things for affordable housing, but I it becomes more to your point, Rick, you're, you know, pointing out that the, you know, the issue wasn't as much of an issue 5 years ago. I think it's going to continue to crescendo as an issue.

Yeah. As people realize, I mean, realize it's a great business if you get the right property in the right situation, location, and all that. So, how when you have to deal with it, the conversations about what industry drives the short-term rentals? Is it local businesses or is it core resorts or is it Yeah. outdoor recreation? And so there's a tugof-war going on between how do you balance this quality of life with uh you know keeping people in a community and having neighborhoods and social capital versus just turning into, you know, whatever it is, a hotel neighborhood. Yeah, a hotel. But anyway,

that's a different something for another day. But so I I'm I don't have any other questions or um anything at this point. I do just have one more. I think it's addressed in there, but the that pedestrian walkway from the post office side to that new option one, is that in their purview? Is that required by them or is that become something? Stephanie, it's it's required. Um the pedestrian crossing is currently in the draft conditions of approval and I did put together um some options for it that didn't make it in the packet but Okay, cool. That's I just wanted to make sure it wasn't like kind of like talked about and really it's in the draft conditions. That's what I thought.

Thank you. Oh, this is so nitpicky, but I remembered it talks about trash and recycle. And if we could also get compost, that would be so awesome. We've got the stickers. We'll give you a sticker. Please, can we uh compost? It'll be less trash for you guys. We I would love it if we get more compost in there as well. We We need to really analyze how that's going to work, but and figure out what service providers are available. Um, but some of some of it's just wheel out to the curb or the the driveway and other ones we have a localized area for it. So, it really has to do with volume calculations and talking to the companies. Awesome. So, I think I know who to talk to about how compost works around here

as advertised. We'll give you the code. And anyone else?

Jeff, you want to tell us what are you able to tell us like kind of what things have support as far as amendments? I think I heard um a lot of support for the resolution, but I heard a few amendments. Uh one couple relate to the first track for grant one was to expand the area from Aspoon to Glenwood to Aspoon parachute. Uh the second was that the quarter% REITA would only apply during the first track period for those units, but the full 1% would apply, but the regular REIS would apply um if the units aren't sold during the first tracks period. Um the and I don't know if this was resolved, the third was related to water tap fees and whether there'd be potential waiver, but I think I find heard enough say that there is not support for a waiver of any ties

and in the in currently in there there is as drafted as drafted right uh as drafted it says town council will determine a waiver with ties I think so I think we have a majority of people who want no um the water tap waiver for it water tap fee waver request will be considered by um so I guess the amendment would be that um there's a waiver of death. Okay. Uh I think the and James, I don't know if this is a decision point in the resolution about the the term lane options, option one and two.

We we've got uh condition that council at final plan will make that decision after seeing the adjustments to the tapering and the pedestrian plans that are required. So that's not one. Um and then the vesting

the I think the best thing is as drafted in in the reszo um there was also a request for composting to be included as part of the final plan. And then just one thing to clarify I heard some discussion I think James clarified it a bit the deed restricted units would be built first and the ordinate the resolution says the deed restricted units would be built proportional with the free market. So I just want that's what it says. So I just want to make sure that's clear everyone. I think that's fair. I think as drafted proportional is fair. I think it was just maybe a misspeaking like

so I think a motion could be to approve the resolution with the following amendments that first tracks program be amended to be uh include asking parachute that the 0.25% Rita only applied if units first track units are sold within the first tracks period. um that there is not a waiver of any t fees that the final plan application include um uh composting as part of the bill. I got it. You got that, Hannah? I'm on it. So, somebody can say so moved. So, so moved. Whoa. Been a motion. Is there a second? Second.

Been moved and seconded. Uh let's do let's do a roll call for this one. Pam, would you please call the RO? Sure. find my list of people here. Okay, let's begin with Hannah Berman. Yes. Rick Stevens, yes. Angel Dupra Buchart, yes. Ryan Slack, yes. David Knight, yes. And Deer Schindler, yes. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Great job. Presentation. Thanks for Thank you guys. that stuff. real appreciate to go to work.

All right, next up we got item 7B. It's a public hearing and first reading ordinance number 10 series of 2025. An ordinance of the town council of the town of Basalt, Colorado approving the first amendment of the declaration of covenants concerning occupancy and resale for lots 156 20 and 21st mill subdivision PUD Basalt Colorado. Uh James and Jeff.

Yeah, thank you. Um staff actually recommends considering the next two items together as they are related. Uh the first item is first reading of an ordinance that would approve of an amendment uh to the declaration of covenants for the four lots uh that the town owns in Stoz Mill. And then the second item is consideration of a resolution uh that would approve of a policy for administering the rental or sale of the Stotszmill duplex units that the town owns. Um as background, Stzill developer uh was required to deed restrict four lots uh with discounted prices. Uh the town chose to purchase the four lots and construct two duplexes. uh one duplex was just completed and then the other is in the uh planning phase uh and being designed. Uh so the lots were included as category 2 lots uh in the deed restrictions. Uh the draft ordinance would amend the deed restriction to remove the category 2 restriction uh for town employees uh so that a town manager or department head that uh is above the category 2 range uh could occupy the units um so that the town could better recruit and maintain a town manager and department head candidates. uh under the amendments, the sale of the units uh to town employees would still non-town employees uh would still fall under a category 2 requirement. Um in terms of the resolution uh that you have that's the next item. Uh it sets up a policy for administering the sale and rental of these four units. Uh the town currently has a policy for administering town-owned units uh for rentals but not for sale of town-owned units uh because

we haven't previously sold any of the town-owned units. Uh the proposed policy is generally based on the town-owned unit policy that the town currently has as well as the community housing guidelines. Uh it was a drafting effort between uh town attorney's office and the planning staff. Uh it allows the sale and rental to town employees to not be required to satisfy uh the category income requirements uh consistent with the current town owned policy. Uh and it gives the flexibility for the town to attract and maintain staff. Uh this policy also sets up priority system internally for the sale of the units uh to town employees by which the town manager uh would get a first priority. Uh department heads would get a second priority and then other uh employees would get a third priority. Uh it also identifies that if the town were to sell the units, uh it provides the town employee that uh must resell the unit to the town uh if they cease being an employee with the town. Um and there are some discussion items around that. Uh generally the amount of time uh that a town employee would have to sell it back if they were terminated. Uh we currently have uh 90 days in there for rental and then 180 days in there if they had uh owned the unit and had to sell it back. Um this is longer than the state statutes requires. The state statute requires 30 days. Uh so staff thinks that that is a discussion item for for consideration. But overall, staff will likely be coming forward with uh some other affordable housing code amendments in the near future and will likely consider a similar policy be adjusted for townwide uh town-owned units. Uh but

staff thinks it's appropriate to start here with the four mill units. So this evening, staff would suggest asking questions of staff, uh taking public comment, and providing council discussion. uh and you could approve both the ordinance on first reading and the resolution if you're comfortable with those adjustments. Uh I will identify too that you have a sheet uh at your seats says item 7C there was one additional adjustment uh to take out town manager approving the uh 10% capital improvement allowance. Um, this was for the case where the town manager owns the unit. Um, we didn't want the town manager approving, you know, capital improvements on his own unit. So, we just took out and said the town his or her unit. So, staff would suggest asking questions if you have them or providing uh potential for public to comment.

So, it's a public hearing. So, let's go ahead and and do the public hearing. Um, I will open the public hearing. So, doesn't talk. I don't see anyone online. Uh, so we can close the public hearing and then I'll open it up to you guys. Question. One quick question.

Only for sale to employees, right? We're not opening it up to outside employees. We we are allowing for the town council to make the decision uh to potentially sell it to other non-town employees, but we we have to allow for that is my understanding. Um but there's always a right of purchase back for the town.

Yeah. When this status mill was approved, these laws were restricted to this declaration for category 2 units. This was kind of started over 2007 was basically where that approval was. It wasn't really contemplated that the town would be developing these duplex units on here. And so the idea is it was, you know, I think originally thought, okay, we'll have just a regular category D restriction. this is going to get sold out into the market and it'll just kind of operate as usual. But so here the the amendment kind of keeps it all so long as these units are within the kind of the town's orbit, we're going to be able to put um allow occupancy by town employees that might not meet category 2 because it's not there's not any like windfall for that. It's just circulating within the town ownership. Um the deed restriction includes that the unit after it's sold to an employee has to be sold back to the town. Um unless the town declines to do so in which case you know I don't know what that reason might be in which case then it might be sold. Does that clarify

a little bit? But we're dis we're discussing that I just don't think these units for what we're building them as should ever be sold outside the town outside town employees because up to town council

of course if I'm Yeah. But I think in that lane, I just feel like the purpose of these units were to attract and retain staff. And the minute you allow it to just fall into the deed restricted category, too, we've lost our purpose. Granted, we are helping community, but we're not doing what we set out to do in this first thing. So, I guess that's my my question. I think all the stuff on the employee side is fine. I think but and I would limit the days. I would go 60 and 120 cuz 90 seems like a lot. 90 is a lot. Someone that's fired 2 months is a good amount of time to get out of a house.

You talked about 90 30 is is state required by the statute and then it in practice it's been 30. If you're leaving on good terms and the person's liked, you could always extend it. Yeah. Yeah, I think which we've done in the past, but I think I think personally I think 90 I know I didn't get a vote here, but I think 90 is uh too much because you could have a disrupted employee that trash the place. They can stop paying rent all sorts of great pray affordables that could happen. So I think that's still

I think two 60 days 120 days is fair and on those numbers but then I just I guess it's still that question. And of course, council, next council can say, "You know what? We're tapped out. We're we're not going to buy this back. We'll just put it into the category two for sale." I just I just feel like we're defeating our purpose of trying to attract employees once we get out of our Yeah. But I mean, I I I would hate to change the language unnecessarily and strip that power away from future councils. Oh, no. I'm fine. You can't you couldn't legally future counsel to not Okay.

Yeah. But the category 2 thing has to remain there because that's the original declaration. This amendment allows limited amendment allows us to kind of live within that existing declaration. And so if it were to go outside of town ownership, that category 2 deed restriction were to apply. And we're kind of um making this limited amendment to kind of clarify that deed restriction and align it with town policy for town units. It allows us to cheat the system. the town uh the town's policy the town the town's

it allows us to it allows us to it allows us provides benefit from the system provides town flexibility for zone town build affordable housing units and is a policy of the town can I ask a question so it's category 2 let's say this happens and it's category 2 and we're talking about a threebedroom Like how many of the category of people that need category 2 housing, how many need a three bedroom? Don't have an answer for that.

We the the housing needs assessment overall which so this that your question would really we can only answer it for the housing needs assessment overall. Yeah. um doesn't suggest for sale units to category 2 or lower. Um whether there's a need is possible, but it it doesn't suggest that for category 2 or lower, mostly because mortgages don't are not affordable. Yeah. Yeah. So, it does seem unlikely that if there was a category 2 family that they would want to purchase rather than rent. Yeah. But that's to be seen.

Yeah. Okay. Based on current in um uh interest rates from

Yeah, that all makes sense. I think I had internalized it that then it could be sold to the category two person and I was like, wait, I thought we had that conversation that they probably can't buy it. Um, I have a question and someone fact check me if I'm saying any of this wrong, which is highly likely, but the idea is that the town sells it to an employee. It's no more than a third of their income. So, let's say that means we're selling it to an employee for say 500K. We built them for 1.1 million. They get fire insurance to cover their mortgage. The town burns down. Hopefully not. But what happens to that 600k remainder? Like, do we just eat that? Can you can we mandate that they overinsure that it would have to make the town whole? If so, what does that do to affordability?

Sorry, straight for the jugular. Great. Bill, that's a great question. I don't know if we have anything in the town policy that would normally ensure to the replacement value of the structure. That's what I was going to say. The insurance would ensure not at the purchase price, but at the appra like a third party replacement value, which would usually closely align to usually. Um, I think I think it can get out of hand with larger residents, but on a simple residence, it should align with the value of what it would cost to rebuild it. Okay. So, that kind of gets around that. So, they're going to have to insure it for what it was going to cost to rebuild it, not what they paid for. That is good.

How How would we enforce that? And that might be a you might have to jump into here. I think Aspen had that issue and and I think what they experienced was that the mortgage company is only going to require to have insurance for the the loan. I mean they're not going to require you to in this instance have insurance for a million two replacement costs. They're not going to mandate that. So the question is then how do you there's still delta that's still a probability or possibility. I know I know from talking to Pete Stker and his um controller that that was something they struggled with. And so so you know you had

matterof fact type statement you made I don't necessarily think is the reality that that had experienced in Aspen. So I I think it's a something still to be solved for. Frankly yeah our our guidelines don't address it at all in terms of insurance level that's required. Bitkin has a shared equity program versus like a a required repurchase agreement. the shared equity agreement can address that in a in a better way because you're more aligned with the economics of the transaction.

I mean, could I'm just thinking out loud reluctant to say it, but I mean, is it possible that we could hold a policy for the difference um and and figure out a way to um or be self-insured? But yeah, either way, like I don't know if you'd have an insurable interest in something you don't know. Yeah. You know, you know, because it's cuz that's the thing like we'll be the ones holding the bag, the town. Yeah. I just don't think you have an insurable interest. I mean, that's a question for a small percentage of owner um the way Pen County does that and their D restrictions. Mhm. Um

that would require

like is burning. There could be ways to, you know, to create that insur insurable interest by um I've seen this in other affordable housing schemes where I think Picking County does it and I've seen it elsewhere where you the town or the affordable housing entity, they retain interest in the unit as a tenant and common owner. So they'd have like a 1% nonpossessory fe like 1% interest in in the property but not not have any rights of possession to it and then that allows to that's kind of helps get to the shared equity that shared equity piece.

I have another very rudimentary insurance question that probably everyone else knows but me. If if the home burned down, they get a $500,000 check from the bank. We're the co-interested party. We get the difference. So maybe that 600k to rebuild a $1.1 million property, but are they attached or forced in any way to then rebuild that 500k home right there? or could they take that and be like out of here going to somewhere with some other kind of natural disaster?

And that's that's the problem when we start doing all this. There's all these things that no one's digging deep on In order for us to do something like this, we're going to have to take on risk. That's and that's kind of the way you know that's just the whether you like it or not out. Yeah, it's a very interesting question. They would get foreclosed on. So, there's a they're disincentivized to get foreclosed on by walk like if you just took the money and walked away from your mortgage. Oh, and that's okay. That would be bad for Yeah, that would be really bad. We're uh our first reading. We can take a look at some of the insurance questions and bring it back for

Yeah. I'd be interested to know how other towns deal with that because that's a that's a good question. just like to put like the bumpers on the bowling lane like we think you're going down the lane, we hope you're going down the lane, but I guess because it's town money, I maybe have a lower risk tolerance in case something goes off the rails. Is there a way to mandate in their employment contract somehow that they ensure it at full replacement value, not at I think it's going to make it unaffordable. the place to do it would be either be in the policy or more so in the deed restriction and if it's going to be a place but before committing to any kind of amendment I'd want to take a look at that a little bit more closely

um is there something happening locally fire my smoke alarms were going off inside all weekend because of all of the fire breathing isn't it really about the negotiation on the compensation for the person that's going to live in their overall compensation package that they're getting they're getting an opportunity to buy a town owned property at a discounted rate and they live in it for as long as they're employed and then what happens when they sell it? Do they just get reimbured for what they paid for it or they get to share the equity that's happened over time whether it's 3% per year or free market or whatever it is 3% per year. So the negotiation

the negotiation piece is for the town manager because the council hires the manager manager does everything else everything beyond and so the rest of it would really fall in that's what the policy lays out is in terms of leasing and right spot. Yeah. At this point, the only property we would sell would be to a town manager. No. Or that's at the council's discretion.

Well, that's one of If that's at the council's discretion, then we haven't cross that bridge yet, I guess. Unless we can just if we put a unit out there that's category 2. We buy it, we sell it to an employee, whoever it is for part of a compensation package because he can't afford the market for a category 2 house. Like your example, if it's 1.2 or 1.3, whatever it is, they can't afford to buy it and they buy it for 500. That's part of their compensation. that contribution of that home has a value of whatever it is a month on a salary and then when it comes time to split it it's they get to share in the profits based on what they put in it.

Tell me if I'm remembering the policy around but the in terms of the negotiation for compensation that's only for the town manager. The town council ultimately gets to determine who, you know, has to approves the sale of any unit, but the policy lays out who's eligible to purchase and it lays out at what price it would be purchased and at what rate the purchased unit would later appreciate that and that it would then be repurchased by the town once there was a trigger event that it had to be resold. If it's repurchased,

there's really not any negotiation with department heads at all on it. It's really about a matter of determining where within this policy do they fall based on their u where they're coming in at that should be the policy that applies to a town manager then that the town if it can't if the town can't buy it back you know that because that's what you just said right if a department head buys a home across the street here and the town has to buy it back if they leave that's the deal. That's what we're saying the deal is, but a different council could say something. It's got to be a level playing field. You can't do it differently. I don't think that would be I don't think so.

And we're not doing it differently. We're saying we have four units, right? Yeah. They're all going to be for they're going to be for sale hopefully to a town manager, hopefully to a department head, hopefully to employee. And we're basically just selling a deed restricted unit to our employee at a discount. I mean at the category rate. Yeah. They we're selling it at a category rate because it's going to help us attract them as as the town. Scenario was if the category rate is too high. Well, she was worried about it burning down.

I'm also worried about that. I'm worried about a lot of things. But we're not we're going to sell it to them for let's say $600,000. They're going to get the 3% appreciation and that's it. It's there's no Yeah. And then it sells at the if but where the position we're the town is in is to buy it back. Well, theoretically the town would embargo the money when they got the sales price. They would embargo the money. You still have debt service on whatever you put into it if you just paid it off. So you're still carrying in theory no death service on condos because we use Well, I mean on a new home your microphone. Sorry. So you know, sorry.

If there's a house out there that's 1.3 and we hire somebody to come in here and go to work for us, whatever it is, 1.2 295, whatever it is, the town buys it for that person. No, no, Rick. This is We're Are we only talking on four? We're only talking about the four or four unit stops now. That's it. Okay. Okay. So, what? So, that's what I'm saying. That's still the same question. Well, no, but we're not we're we we own these four units, right? As the town that's what the bond money is for. We're not going to buy a free market unit for a town manageration for the So, the town manager is not buying the unit. They can they could buy.

We're only talking about the four units in Scotsville. That's all this is about. that we're already we already built two and we got two more common. So it's 1.2 to buy it and he says I'll give you 800 or we'll do 800 we'll carry four $400,000. Is that what Hannah's question was? If the person can't afford to pay like insurance the purchase price is determined based on the category that they qualify under under the community housing guidelines,

right? and those categories uh that that that determines the purchase price and so that is a much bigger policy than this policy and that is purchase price under the for each of those categories is based on affordability. I think Hannah's question was about insurance and we're going to come back with that on the second reading. Do they pay if the category two for stocks? What's the what's the selling price for those units? For those four units, we're not doing category 2. That's the point of the change in the in the policy. Category 2 doesn't work for most of the town employees. What's the purchase price going to be for those 40 units?

Depends on whoever's whatever category they're in. So, so if you have like a police chief, say or another department head and and they're making a salary that falls into the 150% of area median income, then they would be in the category 4 um per the guidelines. And so they would pay the category 4 purchase price. And so that the town would would take that money, put it in a fund, and hopefully gain interest on it, but but the category 4 purchase price is not going to be as high as the amount of money the town, you know, spent to to build it. So, it's subsidized by the town.

That's my question. It's part of the compensation package to attract recruited people to come here, right? is they get to purchase a really nice three-bedroom brand new duplex for a category that's whatever category price. Sure. And then we carry it for perpetuity. Yeah. But but the price will be dependent on what category their income falls in. So their income will determine what the price is they pay. Correct. Okay. Question. Oh, you got

just before we jump off the embargo questions. Um, it I'm assuming was part of the process of approving a capital improvement fee. After that was approved, then that money, we would also make sure that we had a match of that in embargoed as well. In other words, bought it for say 500,000 and you know it's 10%. We would we need to embargo another 50 to cover that later on. I know it's not a lot of money. Appreciation you talking about? No, the capital improvement. Oh, sure. Yeah, we need to bargo that, too. I'm assuming that's part of the Yeah. approval process for the to let somebody do give them credit for 10% of the

Yeah, we say, "Hey, yeah, you can go ahead and remodel your kitchen or whatever, whatever it is, and we make sure we set that money aside, too." Right. That would be correct. Just just from the point of view of negotiating a new hire or old hire or whoever the heck it is, we have to have some clear-cut definition of what this person's participation is into whatever real estate they purchased that's town owned as part of their contract. I think part of the problem is is that that person that might buy the house may already be be employed by the town

that too. So it'll flow through. So then you're renegotiating their employee contract and I'm not sure that that's I don't I don't know that you can do that. Well, I think I don't think there's any The only person with an employment contract is the town manager and the um the policy is intended that is up for consideration tonight is to kind of serve the purpose that I think you're getting at Rick, is well, if I'm a department head, existing or new hire, how do I even go about, you know, purchasing this? And that that's kind of what what the policy lays out as to

who is prioritized and how that would flow through for potential purchase is is there, right?

Yeah. wi with the exception of the town manager position that might be negotiated, you know, with their employment contract. Basically, the way it's set up is that when we have a unit that's done, we we um offer it for sale to all town employees and then the town employees that are interested, you know, respond and say, "I'm interested." And then if we have multiple interested employees um then we use that occupancy or I'm sorry that priority system that's in the policy town manager first department head and and then other employees and if we have multiple employees in a certain category then then we do a lottery is the way it's set up.

So that individual gets the benefit of a 3%. Yeah. There would be a 3% appreciation cap. Is that 3% cap? It's like AMI or 3% whichever CPI. CPI. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah. Um Okay. It's the lower of CPI or 3%. So if there was some big economic downturn, it's not like the town's on the hook to buy it back at 3% every year.

Yeah. Because sometimes it might be flatlined at zero if it's CPI. Um, I've thought this is an incredibly interesting thing to consider and I am completely sold that this is a good financial model for the employee because you're building equity with a little bit of interest on something versus tossing your money down the drain with renting. From the town side of things, I think I'm kind of with Ryan that it would be a big shame if the town lost out on one of these units, like if we didn't have the money to buy it back because there was a recession or something like that. Um, which makes me feel like we should have that money in an account just sitting somewhere. Um, so I guess what is the financial picture and benefit look like to the town? Um, like if you have to have that money on deck,

well, we there's already a reserve policy for the town

that is prescribed by resolution that was determined years ago. 40% of the operating expenses is really it's the mathematical determination what it is and that's money is a bargain. Fortunately, during my tenure here, we've always been eclipsing that amount. So, we've always been in the black. doesn't mean you always will be. But I think to answer your question, I mean what you could simply do is make that modify the resolution to include any sort of proceeds andor capital improvements andor um 3% cola or however you want to call it the appreciation cap as part of your reserve that the general fund would have to maintain on a prospective basis. That way you kind of protect yourself from you have a you have a you know a 089 situation. Mhm.

where you know everything is just going to hell. Yeah. And I think and that could be more clearly prescribed, but I think maybe that was the idea is that upon sale that money be basically set aside for when it might need to be repurchased. Can we just create a restricted fund for affordable Well, you wouldn't want to make it for sale affordable housing. Well, I think you'd probably want to have as part of the general fund. It had to be had to be accounted for in your fund reserves. So the 40% that we maintain Oh, I get we have that money, but I'm still in that stance of what if you blow through your reserves,

you know, you could have some you could have something horrible happened and it we got $4 million to build these houses, right? Heaven forbid we lose these four houses because our replacement cost anywhere down the line is going to be more than than what it is to the purpose of these was to attract employees and to give us a a higher edge to keep awesome employees in this town and to keep the town running. And so I would just I guess what happens? What is the structure now? If we sell one of these that money just goes into general fund like they get a mortgage, the bank has the mortgage bar like we like they need to not spend it. But yeah,

but but to your point, well I guess we just need to be responsible like I mean it's and but if a future council decided to raid that reserve fund like there's nothing we can really do to stop. Oh god. That's you could buy you could buy a bond you could buy a Treasury bond fiveyear Treasury bond or 10 year Treasury bond and say okay there's no there's no risk here principal loss risk that would and I don't know there's there's ways I mean I think there's simply ways to embargo money without without creating too much brain damage that it saves the saves a we would have I I think there's plenty of ways to do it

Doug wouldn't that be something in the line item from the budget as well that the auditors would look for money in and money out. I really do think it's not I don't think that's a hard thing to solve for. Frankly, I really don't. And I I I share the concern. I mean, I'm the one who brought it up is like we got to embargo the money. We can't use it for other things. Yeah, that's that's I guess my concern. You know, I've been pretty conservative. Shouldn't count it against your reserve balance. you shouldn't, you know, there's a lot of considerations, you know, in the sense of being compliant like, but it's a town asset. We're at least that's from the whole balt forward. The whole thing was, hey, we're building, we want to have this housing to attract staff, and I don't want to lose that ability to attract staff.

I got you. So, I just

So, do these policies are they where they need to be then or do we need to go back to the drawing board? Um, what I would recommend I think that that the we've got an ordinance for the declaration and I'd recommend that that be approved on first reading and the public hearing second reading continue and set the public hearing second reading for August and we'll with the direction to staff to review the insurance um issues and then on the policy I'd recommend that that be continued until August so we can review whether there needs to be any amendments in light of um our discussion tonight related to basically creating any kind of reserve fund upon a sale of a unit so that that money's going to be there to repurchase it.

Makes sense. Two more so questions or No, go ahead. Go ahead. Um I guess for coming back in August, you had mentioned there's a Pitkin program. You were like, "It's like that program." So maybe it might be nice to hear like why we do this, not that. Well, we do. We already have those. We have the the pit department. We have the document shared equity. We also have the one for aspirin. So we we had those as guides. We put those together. Okay.

So it's sort of a hybrid of the two, but I I think um frankly think that the shared equity addresses the insurance issue a little bit more than the what we have here in front. That's my uh understanding of it.

Yeah, that might be helpful to look into that or lean into that then. And then I guess the other thing I just wanted to triple check. So, employee buys it, there's an economic downturn or some reason that the town doesn't want to reby it when it goes up for sale. So, it goes out into the community as affordable housing. How does it work? Say it's a hospital worker, teacher or something. They leave that job. Can that follow them? If they leave that job, if they leave that job, do they have to sell it back to us? What's the chain of custody? Well, if if we sold it to somebody that is outside of the town's organization, um we would likely and this would be at the discretion of the town council, but put in stipulations in the contractor deed restricted such that we would get a right to purchase it back. And then it would probably um stipulate the terms of of the ability to purchase it back. Wouldn't you think, Jeeoff?

Yeah. Sorry. If this is if if the town council chose to sell one of the units to somebody that was not a town employee, that the town council would probably likely place a first right of purchase back. and and provide stipulations if if they were not employed in the valley or Yeah, there's the be subject to the ex underlying category 2 deed restriction the ability, you know, as the owner to place his additional kind of covenant on it to create a right of first purchase from the town sale to a non-town.

Didn't we just say that we're not selling to category 2 people though or that that's unlikely? We have to maintain that for the to maintain that underlying deed restriction in the event it were to be sold to a non-town employee. But what what could what's more likely to happen here is that it we go through all of the town staff and by some miracle nobody needs the unit or the units or whatever. Then at that point there's nothing to say that we can't advertise or offer the unit for rent. I see 12 months. Just rent it. We don't have to sell. We just we don't have to sell it. You can just offer it for rent and kind of We're still offering it for rent, right? And town council has to decide whether we even want to sell it. Right.

Correct. Even kick off that process category. It could be somebody comes in and says rather than me put a bunch of my savings into this and get 3% appreciation, I'll just rent because it's tied to my employment anyway. Yeah. So that's that was my point in this discussion with hiring whoever it is, town manager, police chief,

you know, mechanic for public works that if they want to buy a unit, there's got to be some really clear explanation about how the transaction happens and how what happens if it doesn't to work out down the road. To your point, the compensation range for town manager is pretty broad. So there may be, you know, not somebody may not want to buy it. So then and that'll that's what's covered in the policy.

So um so we'll table the resolution. So I I think that what Jeff just to kind of summarize we can make an amend uh not sorry we can make a motion to approve ordinance number 10 um and include direction to staff to look into the insurance questions that we had at the meeting tonight. Is that sufficient for that

motion? So, let's just do these one at a time and I'll just I'll just make the motion and or read a proposed motion. Someone could say so moved. So, the motion could be to approve ordinance number 10 on series of 2025 on first reading and set the continuence at the public hearing second reading for August 26, 2025 uh with the condition that the uh staff look into insurance questions on the deed restriction. So moved. It's been moved. We have a second. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I.

So, real quick, 7C, resolution number 38, series of 2025, resolution of the town council of Basalt, Colorado, approving the administrative policy regarding the rental and sale of the town owned Stoz Mill duplex units on lots 15,6 20, and 21 of the Stotszmill subdivision PUB. Uh Jeff, do you want to give us that motion? Yes. Um there could be a motion that town council continue resolution number 38 series of 2025 to August 26, 2025 um with uh the direction to staff to review um the issues that town council discussed tonight. So moved. Second. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Thank you guys.

We got one more. Wait, we have another one. I said thank you to the people who presentation cuz that's polite. All right. Next up is item 7D, first reading, ordinance number 11, series of 2025. Ordinance of the town council of the town of Balt, Colorado, referring to the registered electors of the town of Baltult at the coordinated election to be held on November 4th, 2025. A ballot issue to increase the lodging tax by 4%, setting the ballot title and content for the ballot issue, and providing other matters other providing other matters relating to the election. And this is Jeff. And I don't Bill's Bill Ray's on, but Jeff's here. Jeff, where where were you? I was in the kitchen.

I didn't even see you come in. Good to see you. I just slid in. You snuck in while I was reading. I gave him a big hello. All right. Well, Bill, you're here. You want to you want to lead us off or Jeff? Who's who's who's running this?

I'll start. Um so this is uh an ordinance to um set the ballot question and the ballot question on a lodging tax increase. The as drafted the ballot uh issue would propose increasing the lodging tax by 4% um from 4% to 8%. And the revenues from the lodging tax would be restricted to affordable housing purposes. Um I know Bill's here to go over some of the work that he's done on the survey and otherwise. And um Bill has also made a couple of suggestions for amendments to the um the way the question reads in particular as to the the bullet points re related to those more specific affordable housing purposes. So Bill, I'll

give me 20 seconds more. I think I'm in. You're in? Yep. Can I present? Do I need to be promoted? No, you should be able to share. Sorry, council members. I don't have a share option. Okay, I'll promote you to pan. Thank you. There we go.

Well, while this is loading, uh, thanks for having me back. It's been a while since I have come and visited with the town of Basalt council, but um so I've been helping out the town do some community outreach and engagement working with the town staff. Uh we we put together a postcard that uh we hoped helped uh provide some information to the community about the lodging tax, the current uses of the lodging tax, and what um could what an increase could be used for to support the town's workforce housing ef uh projects and efforts that I think you've been talking about quite a bit this evening. Um, so as part of that um, mailer and the information we put out on social media and on the website, we had a short feedback survey in there. And I wanted to share the results of that with you and just talk through that and see if you have any questions about that, but I can't seem to get it to come up. So, I'm just a little unorganized tonight. I apologize. Do you want my printer?

Here we go.

All right. Sorry about that. So, as I said, we had a mailer that went out. It had a QR code, email address to take a short survey. And uh just so you know, we sent out about just under 2300 postcards to households in the town. Uh we also did a text to uh folks that had a mobile number attached to their address in the file that we pulled and we were able just to send a text that said look for look in your mailbox for an important update from the town. Also gave a link to the town's website and to the survey. Uh we got 162 responses as of yesterday which I thought was pretty good. Um just so you can see here we asked a couple demographic questions. I think it's always interesting to kind of know a little bit about the demographics who are who's responding to the survey. So you can see here on the right hand side this column that says 2025 LV that means likely voters. So I can go into the voter file and take a look at all the voters in the town of Basalt. I can look at their vote history. I can't tell you how they vote, but I can tell you if they vote. And voters are typically pretty habitual. If you're going to vote in an odd number election, you're probably going to vote in this oddnumbered year election. So, you can defin you can kind of get a snapshot of who are the likely voters in this upcoming election. And just so you you see here, the way to read this is 18 to 34 year olds are be about 12% of your likely voters uh in the upcoming election. 9% of the survey respondents were 18 to 34 year years old. Uh 35 to

44 year olds about 18% they were 21% of the respondents. 45 to 54 year olds 16.6%. 6% 21% of respondents 55 to 64 year olds 19% they were 23% of our respondents and 65 and older voters will be about uh 34% of your voters but they were just about 25% of the respondents here likewise um we asked uh gender and county and you can see about 40 just under 45% were female uh respondents, 51% of our likely voters. Males were about 37% of our respondents. They'll be about 48% uh 49% and 8% preferred not to answer. And this is where we got nice kind of very close was the proportion of Eagle to Picking County. Uh we are, you know, really just a couple points off there in that balance between Eagle and Picking County. So that was nice to kind of see a good balance uh represented in the survey. So we always like to start with a question like um would you say things in the town are on the right track or headed in the wrong direction? And uh here you can see almost 59% say right track. So uh good job. I'm not seeing uh right track numbers like that in other communities I'm working with this cycle. uh actually have seen a lot of pessimism out there in some of the other areas where I've done these types of surveys lately. One thing I will note is almost everywhere that I've done a survey this year, uh, no matter if it's for a county, a school district, or something else, folks who are kind of 45 to 54 and

especially these 55 to 64 year old uh, cohorts have been real kind of pessimistic on a lot of surveys I've done. And that's the case here, especially the 55 to 64 year olds. We asked the question uh what do you think the number one issue is in the town and the region and um you're probably not going to be surprised by this but 40% said housing affordability and cost of availability and cost of housing. Uh the next uh the second one was traffic con and congestion. Then you have wildfire risk and then you have uh folks who selected other and they provided these are some of the responses. Uh we also had about 10 people all say all of the above which we typically have. But you can see here in these other responses there isn't just one issue. Education and the economy, senior housing. Uh this person next one ranked traffic, housing, wildfire risk. Uh so you can see a couple things. Parking along Midland Avenue. Uh federal lands noise. Um taxes always seem to come up in these uh lists of problems. Um we asked how much of a problem is that lack of affordable and attainable housing uh for the town of Basalt and you can see here about 66% say it's a serious problem. So they rank it as the number one problem. They also see it as a serious problem and it's pretty consistent across age groups here. 100% of the 34 year olds.

So, um, we didn't ask a, you know, like a ballot question. Shall taxes be increased in this? We wanted to keep it a little more conversational in our survey, but we did ask this. We kind of set the stage. The town may ask voters to increase its lodging tax. I'm not going to read this whole thing, I promise. Uh, by four uh 4% up to 8%. Each 2% increment could provide 250,000. And we gave some potential uses providing matching resources for private and nonprofit partnerships with and with other local governments. Supporting programs to reduce the cost of renting or owning a home such as down payment assistant, deed restrictions, increasing the supply by constructing homes, purchasing available homes, addressing infrastructure. would you be more or less likely to support this? And you can see here uh really strong support. 65.6% said yes. 29% said no. I always tell when I work on these uh kind of show these kind of data points. The light blue versus the purple, the definitely yes versus the definitely no. Those are the folks who just have their mind made up right away. They get their ballot or they see the proposal and they don't even read it. They just see a couple words. They either know they're yes or no. And you can see here that 34% were definitely yes. 20% were definitely no. Basically, when I'm asked, well, will a ballot question be successful? I actually look at those numbers and I those are the numbers I key in on. And here um you know you always want to have the definitely yeses higher than the

definitely nos. In this case that's a really strong showing. Um you can see interestingly um I I thought that this kind of 45 to 54 year old group were the kind of the softest on it. Um, I don't know if you know they've kind of already have purchased their house, have kind of got that set and like I worked, you know, a lot of times we see when I do other affordable housing. I did a big project Glenwood Springs one a few years ago. We had a lot of folks say, "Well, I saved up. I I had to do what I had to do to buy a house." And we heard a lot of those comments from that age group, the 45 to 54 year olds, probably because they just kind of went through all that and like, you know, I I had to save up. No one helped me. But, you know, but I was surprised to see that number a little, you know, so kind of um, you know, softer in that age group. But otherwise, all the other age groups, not surprising to me, younger 18 to 34 year olds love this. I love the idea of some help to find housing because got to be a major stressor for that age group. I know I have two at living at home in that age group right now. So the the small group of folks who were no or unsure, we brought them out into a sub question just to try and figure out well if you're no or unsure why. And you can see here that the major reason was other. We always like to give folks a chance to give us their feedback. That's so important to this kind of process. Um the second most common answer was generally don't support tax increases. Third was there's other more important uses of tax increases. But within the other, I pulled out the um kind of the the more the most substantial comments

for you to see cuz we just had a bunch of people who just kind of reiterated, I don't like taxes. Um and so I I did pull out um some of those. You know, why should visitors support this? Seems like too much going to marketing. um you need to provide a full blockchain with receipts of where every single penny of taxpayer money is going. Uh you know, so you you all can read the comments, but there's, you know, a lot of different variety of comments. You know, I don't like lodging taxes is uh something um folks brought up. So, um, we did ask a couple kind of questions that to frame the conversation around the lodging tax increase. And so, I'll go through a couple of these. Um, so we ask folks would is knowing this information important, very important, somewhat important, not very important or not important to them at all in their decision makingaking on this. So, we asked the lodging tax will almost exclusively be paid by visitors through hotel stay or short-term rental. By doing this, visitors can help support the town's workforce and increase the supply of housing. And you can see 52 and a half% said that's very important knowing that. Uh the next one, providing housing for the town's workforce has several benefits, including allowing local employees to become rooted in our community and also reducing traffic and other impacts from people commuting to work. Um 65% basically said that's very important. I think that had a lot to do with traffic because we saw traffic pop up in other places in the survey. [Music] Um the proposal would allow the town to partner with other local governments including the county school districts

and do those private and nonprofit partnerships uh 55.6%. So important information but nothing like that uh question before that had to do with traffic and congestion. Um, the last one, the proposal would allow the town to fund programs that reduce the cost of renting or purchasing housing and limits the resale value to keep them affordable. Also important at about um almost 59%. So, I'll pause there. There were also we did um offer folks an opportunity to provide feedback and an open-ended question and I provided a report of those to Doug. I hope to share with you all. Lots of great feedback in there. uh comments about uh some of the things that kind of caught my attention. There were definitely people wanted to let you know about their thoughts on parking here in town. Uh traffic came up many times. Uh comments around shouldn't you know the the resort company be doing more for housing? Why is the town involved in the housing business? So, good comments to read, good feedback. We're going to be using some of those comments and feedback to do some more um information on the town's website to kind of answer some recurrent questions and themes that came up in there. But I'd recommend reading through those because I it's good feedback from your community members and there were a lot of comments. So otherwise I'll pause there.

I haven't sent those yet. I didn't want to steal your thunder. That's forthcoming. That's great. Some good reading for y'all. Yeah, great information. Thank you for doing this bill. Um, I don't have any questions. I'd be supportive of this. Open it up to the rest of the group. How did we get to 8% total? It seems four. Well, I got the simple math, Rick. Thank you. He said four plus. Talk about the first four. Yes. Oh, strong note. No, I'm not being facicious. So, I want to talk about the

new I want to talk about the new four. Um, it just bringing us to 8% total lodging tax. Right now, we're at four. Carbondale is at two, Aspen's at two, Glenwood's at five. I I'm really afraid that we're going to push people down valley and then we're going to be kind of missing out on sales tax revenue on top of lodging revenue. Um I I I think it's too too much. It is too bold deer. Um I I think if we settle somewhere like in the middle of that with an additional 2% 6%'s a little more pal palatable. Total tax rate would bring us close to Glennwood in the Eagle County portion of our town which is where most of our lodging is. So we'd be at 14.2% 15.3 in Pickin. I also am concerned about voter fatigue with that. Like we know for a fact that the we have the education district coming and asking for taxes, we are going to be asking for a sales tax increase here in pretty short order.

Um and while it's two completely separate groups of people paying those taxes, lodging versus sales, I still think that voters look on their ballot and go, "Oh my god, taxes. taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes. And it might not necessarily click with all of them that like as a resident, I'm not paying the lodging tax, but it's still another tax increase. And I look at that same side of, you know, you're going to pit one of our hotels directly across the highway to another hotel that has none of this tax.

Um, and you know, I think doubling it is a lot. I mean, we're we're we're a f that that to me is a a way higher rate and you know, I don't think they see it so much right up front, but I think it could build up and and so I would I would agree with where Angel is coming from. Are we talking to Eagle County? There was a Veil Daily article maybe a couple weeks ago that said they were considering Jeff Schl had indicated they are indicating he didn't say what it was but the the the most eagle can go to is six since we're home rule we are not captain six

but they are considering that and then what Ryan said was correct there's a a competitive advantage of the Hoffman say relative to the element not only the the lodging tax, but there's also no 3% sales tax at the Hoffman versus the Element. So, the the delta could become if if Eagle stays at two and we go to eight, then you're you're up six on the lodging and then you add another three on sales tax. So, you're like a 9% delta between the two. And when would we know what they may or may not go for? Just so we could know that exact delta. Oh,

well, I was presenting to the Eagle County Board of County Commissioners before I drove over Cottonwood Pass and joined you all tonight. So, we did a sur I did a survey for them and presented those results. They also had very strong support for their lodging tax. They are doing a public comment session next Wednesday, okay,

for at the commission and then the following Wednesday they'll make their final decision. We surveyed on the full six% that they're allowed to levy. I I don't know what they're likely to do, but they're definitely giving it a very close look. and they want obviously early childhood education, housing, but also the state in a new bill this past I think this past legislative session allowed counties also now to use their lodging tax for infrastructure

and uh public safety and wildfire mitigation. So they are also considering those uses as well. Okay. So the question I have is the data that you generated is it from general elections or from April spring basalt specific elections or where did it come from? That's a great question. So the voter database that I use to look at voter behavior and who our voters are do does include um spring election data in there, but probably it relies more on general election and November election data.

Okay. Yep. The other thing to your ask of 4 plus4 the current 4% um is divided into $125 for a chamber or $125,000 that goes to the basalt chamber for marketing or whatever. 125,000 goes to open space and parks and 250,000 goes to events for the town of Bault. So, we have in this lodging tax $375,000 just used for tourism, marketing, events, whatever. Change the logo, whatever it is. I would like to know if the council has discretion. If we ask for 4%, that gives us theoretically a half a million. But we've had many conversations tonight about where we're going to find money for affordable housing. We have a 1% sales tax on open space that goes to open space now that I think generates over a million dollars a year. Um

like three million three million a year. So this two this 125 in here seems a little redundant to be giving to a fund that already generates $3 million a year. We've accomplished this goal across the street here of finishing that park. And I you hear from Doug. I'm just throwing it out there. But that's another source maybe we look at and I don't know if the if it's a ballot question to split that differently or if it's a council decision. I think you might be conflating post versus maintenance because it's No, I'm I know that there's a certain amount of out of open space 1% that goes to maintenance. No, no, no. 1% is post that is capital projects,

right? But that also was had a part of that was dedicated to maintenance of our parks and we voted on that many years ago to increase it from 10 to 20% because we didn't have post. We had just an open space tax. So, I'm just asking the general question of, you know, where's the bucket? Where's the buckets of money are? And, you know, as a as a voter, I would look at this and say, well, you know,

if we're going to get let's get 2% out of this, let's get some more money out of this first 4% and settle at six and maybe we have a chance that these guys are talking about or my own personal opinion is it's a spring issue, not a fall issue. But that I have haven't won out on that one yet. So, I'm not going to worry about it. But I I I think that's an eye openener for what we're doing now is we're dedicating we're asking for 4% that goes right to affordable housing. I would definitely ask Jeff to jump in on how the different monies can be used because I'm not that familiar with those. Sorry, council member.

If you're going to change the use of a to change the use of a a tax would require voter approval. So if there is a voter approved sales tax that's restricted to whatever purposes to add an additional purpose to how that money could be spent would require voter approval. Is this the first 4% defined like it is here 125 125 and 250 the there was open space on the lodging chamber and events on the last 4%. What was that defined as? The There was originally the first 4%,

right? There was originally a 2% lodging tax and it was tied to certain purposes. I'd have to look at the code to say exactly what they are, but there as been described in the uh in the memo and then there was an additional 2% lodging tax that was passed some time after that. And then this would be what you guys get to decide on is whether to submit this question to increase that by some further amount and for that further amount to be dedicated to to affordable housing purposes.

I think any more on that? Um, like one thing that stands out to me is we asked people through this survey like how do you feel about going up to 8%. And 66% of people said that housing was a serious problem and 66% of people said they'd support it. Um, which makes me feel more

like those questions were asked in somewhat of a silo. Do you know what I mean? like we know the other tax ballots that are tax questions that are going to be on the ballot and the other tax questions that are going to come up on future ballots. And that's what I'm like concerned about. I think if those questions had possibly been phrased, you know, with like given all of these other tax increases that you're going to be asked for, do you know what I mean? And and it was a it wasn't an options given question. It was like 8%. I'd be interested in knowing like would you support they'd be 46% too. Yeah,

I would say I'm I I would happily go for the full amount today, but I'd also be like especially for the element versus the Hoffman tax rate. Like I'd be very interested to know where Eagle County lands just so we know exactly what we're getting into for the element in Hoffman. Um can't go more than six. But like if they land like are they going to increase to 4% or 6% like figuring out exactly what that delta may be. But for timing we don't really have that benefit.

They'll do it. They'll it sounds like there's they're going to decide the day after we have our next meeting. So, but we might have an idea and and we can always change the percentage next meeting. I just what I go back to is the survey. So, the people that we have to ultimately get to decide on this are supportive. I seriously doubt like it's not a zero- sum game in the hotel business. Like both hotels are are going to be full in the peak times. It's not like we're going to have a der of visitors going to the element or to any of the other hotels in town because they're like, "Oh, I got you. I got to pay if I have $500 a night room, I got to pay 20, is that right? $20 a night, whatever it is,

help me out." Yeah. 2%. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I just don't see that dissuading anybody from from going there. So, it's like if the voters want to do it and the consumer is going to still want to come stay here and go ski Aspen or fish our rivers, like it sounds it's like sounds good to me. Um, yeah. Yeah.

You have a good representation of the demographic right here in front of you right now because I'm in the 65 plus category and I've been through a number of sales tax increases and my question would be, are we accountable to what we're collecting? are we using it what we thought it was for and have our priority shifted to something else which they have based on your data to affordable housing. So, we need to raise as much revenue because to Doug's point earlier, we're seeing a flattening out of sales tax. Generally, we've got a couple of pretty big projects. So, Mhm. our council is the parabola of age ranges approval ratings. Got a lots of support. Got a little dip.

I think we have what, like four of us in the uh 55 to 44. Oh, that's nice of you. I appreciate that. You look great. Thank you. Thank you. We're at Me and Rick are standing alone here.

I'm way alone. But I but I you know that I would like to see this obviously because we've had hours of discussion about STR fees and sales tax and lodging tax. the you know the reason Basalt went and got city market in the first place was because we wanted the 2% to land here and not the 1% over there. So to your point there was some congruent behavior here would be helpful. I don't know if they've there time to get a ballot question on the fall ballot or not with this. Do you have Eagle County Eagle County

Eagle County? They only have to have one reading. So they have they have until September 5th to do it. So they have plenty of time to make a final decision. Yeah. Counties don't require two readings. When's our deadline basically? Well, you tell you can tell us what it is. Our next our next meeting. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Can we lo Eagle County? Probably could.

Where do you stand? I feel like I feel like the, you know, um, if it it sounds like the community would support a big leap like that. And I believe, you know, so I would, you know, I think that's sort of my benchmark right there is if we're going to do everything possible, the 6% falls into the everything possible. We could do less than everything possible. Um, and that would certainly be, you know, positive for the specific hotels in the in the um in the community. Um, but I mean, if the community has an appetite for it,

yeah, I guess I I I'm I'm less concerned about the Hoffman versus the element and just more concerned, like I said, about voter tax fatigue. And well, I think I'd rather do 2% now, ask for the sales percent increase for police and public works. and then go back for another 2% after we get that big fish. I think though when you look at the demographic of the most supportive group being the oldest group is probably the group that definitely absolutely knows that that's where that they're not going to pay for that,

right? I think, you know, you're, you know, nothing against the younger voter, but they may not necessarily fully, they may just be like tax, no, you know, but I think the older voter who is more willing to participate will recognize that it's not necessarily a tax on them unless they want a station at the at the uh whatever element. All right. Any other questions or comments? and we can change the percentage in the second reading. Right. So, if no one has any other questions or comments, I'd entertain a motion.

Mayor, I move that the town council approve ordinance number 11 series of 2025 on first reading and continue and set the public hearing in second reading for August 26th, 2025. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Pam, will you please call the role? it. Sorry, before before you call the role, I I do need to say one thing. Bill had suggested a couple of amendments to the ballot language as it relates to the um kind of these bullet pointed purposes uh defining what the affordable housing purposes are. And so I I'll just say that we'll bring that as an option to council at second reading to either approve it as it is or as revised. Um because they were a little more concise and to the point it might kind of create a maybe a less cluttered ballot question.

Okay. So sorry. No, you're that's all good. Good to know. Do we need to amend the motion at all? We'll just bring it back for as an option for a second reading. I think it's fine. Cool. I have a question on that. Yeah, technically if we go forward with a six or 8% and we ask is that allow us to ask to reallocate the total 6% to all affordable or rearrange the how you dole it out be a separate question to to amend the uses for the existing 2 or 4%. Okay. Lodging tax. No. Could we do it at the same I mean would it make sense then to do it at the same time?

Um well I think technically you're not supposed to have multiple questions within one ballot question so that might be a problem. Um um you have to pull that uh nobody else wants and I don't I don't know if we've had enough discussion or support for Well, I would support that in conjunction. The existing lodging taxes are used for their allocated purposes. Right. There's not a Yeah, I think that's fair to say.

I would recommend against it. I I I don't think I think from a Taber question it's limited to a single question. Um so that might run a foul of uh a provision in Taber also might be confusing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely confusing. It's confusing. Sorry. The scenario if if it doesn't pass we come back with an April question. If it doesn't pass you could bring back a question at your regular municipal election. Okay. All right. Any other questions on the motion or questions like that?

Okay. Pam, will you please call the role? Absolutely. Let's begin with uh Rick Stevens, yes. Angel Dupra Buchart, yes. Ryan Slack, no. David Knight, yes. Peter Schindler, yes. Hannah Berman, yes. Motion carries 5 to one. All right. Thanks everybody. Long meeting, but we're done. Thank you to the staff that is here. I know