City Council - Regular Meeting

Evening. I'd like to call the order of city council meeting for Tuesday, May what's today? Nineteenth twenty twenty six. Let's have who hasn't said it in a while? Let's have council member Carbahal say the pledge of allegiance.

Alright. Thank you. Next, Madame City Clerk, please call roll.

Mayor Mills? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Padilla?

Here.

Councilmember Carbajal?

Present.

Councilmember Collins? Here. Councilmember Fiddler? Here. Councilmember Green?

I am here.

Councilmember Snyder?

Here.

Councilmember Tadaya?

Present.

Council member Worth? Here. You have a quorum. Alright.

Thank you. And then next, madam city clerk, please read the consent agenda into the record.

Item two a, approval of the 04/21/2026 city council minutes. Item two b a resolution of the city council of the city of Brighton, Colorado authorizing assignment to Brighton Leased Housing Associates One L P, the private activity bond allocation of of the city for the benefit of the Dominion development Project pursuant to the Colorado private activity bond ceiling allocation act authorizing the mayor to execute set assignment on behalf of the city and authorizing the city manager to execute such documents and undertake undertake such tasks as may be required to effectuate set assignment. Item 2C, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Brighton, Colorado accepting the proposal of Asphalt Specialties Company Incorporated and approving the procurement of the asphalt portion of the transportation preservation and improvement project for the contract amount of 1,890,825 and authorizing the city manager to execute the contract on behalf of the city.

Thank you. What is the pleasure of council? Council member Tadeo? Move

to approve the consent agenda.

And council member Worth?

I'll second that.

First and second to approve the consent agenda as presented. Roll call vote. Motion passes nine to zero. Moving ahead. Approval of the regular agenda. Who'd like to make that motion? Council member Snyder.

I'll move to approve the regular agenda as presented.

Council member Collins.

I'll second.

We have a first and second to approve the agenda as presented. Roll call vote. Motion passes nine to zero. Moving ahead into ceremonies, item four a, public works week proclamation. Council member Green will read that into the record.

Thank you, mayor. Public works week, May 17 through 05/23/2026, rooted in service and powered by community. Whereas public works services are essential to the health, safety, comfort, quality of life for the residents of the city Of Brighton, and whereas the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the city's transportation network, water and wastewater systems, stormwater infrastructure, solid waste operations, facilities,

and

fleet services are vital to sustaining and improving our community. And whereas the dedicated professionals in the city of Brighton Public Works Department serve our community every day with commitment, technical expertise, and a strong sense of public service, and whereas the theme for the twenty twenty six National Public Works Week highlights the importance of the skilled and diverse workforce that builds, maintains, and enhances the infrastructure that supports our daily lives, and whereas it is fitting to recognize and honor the contributions of our public works staff who ensure that the City Of Brighton remains a safe, accessible, and resilient community for all residents, businesses, and visitors. Now, therefore, it be resolved that Gregory Mills, mayor of the City Of Brighton on behalf of the city council, does hereby designate the week of May 2026 as National Public Works Week and urges all citizens to join with representatives of the American Public Works Association and government agencies in activities, events, and ceremonies designed to pay tribute to our public works and utilities professionals and recognize the substantial contributions they make to protecting our health, safety, and advancing quality of life for all. Dated this May 2026.

Thank you, council member Green. Deputy city manager Falconberg, who is here to receive this tonight?

Good evening, mayor and council. Happy to have up, director Greg LaBrie and his entire team as well as Bob Younger.

Bob Younger. Good evening, mayor, mister pro tem. First time I've actually got to speak to you guys formally, so a little nervous. Thank you for taking the time to recognize the National Public Works Week. That's very important to us to recognize and give time and thanks to our crew members for all the work they do.

We celebrate some of their little accomplishments out throughout the year. One of those was last week. JR Engineering and Brannan Companies provided us with a small luncheon, which also served as the completion of the Bridge Street widening project. And in honor of that, the city, our public works department, handed out hats. And I would like at this time to present each one of you council members with one of our or whatever that word is, hats for the closing out of Bridge Street project. Special.

Well, thank you, Bob. Let's, let's gather and do a picture. If you wanna get your crew and bring them up, we'll gather close by here and we'll get a pic.

I know.

Pretty cool. Always good to recognize our public works team and all the great work they do in our community. Next is the National Police Week proclamation, and a lot of those activities happened throughout the nation last week. So I'm gonna is Betsy here? Yeah. Deputy city manager, will you call up our deputy chief to come on over and receive this proclamation and let her say a few words?

Alright. Also, I didn't wait for you to call me up early, did I?

You're on your way. Mayor introduced. It.

Deputy chief.

She's armed anyway.

Yeah. I am.

Well, I just wanted to thank you very much, mayor, mayor pro tem, members of the council for this proclamation. You know, every year, we celebrate National Police Week. Our department comes together, and we get everybody in uniform. It started out as an inspection. It's become much more of a, recognition of the dedication that everyone has for this profession.

We get everybody in uniform. We take pictures of the entire department of each unit. And then throughout the day, command staff cooks for each shift, makes sure that they're well fed, and, just shows our support for all of our members. We also attend, some more solemn occasions throughout the week. The Adams County Sheriff's Office has a law enforcement memorial that a lot of our officers go to.

You know, in each each day, the men and women of the Brighton Police Department, they put on their badge and their uniform, and they go out the door. And they don't always know what they're gonna, you know, encounter or if they're gonna come home. And National Police Week recognizes not only our sworn employees and professional staff who have dedicated their lives to this profession, but those that we have lost in the line of duty, to include our very own James D'Ellis, who was killed in nineteen o eight after only two weeks on the job responding to a burglary at the post office. And we're very fortunate that Colorado in 2025 did not lose any officers in the line of duty. But just last week, 345 names were added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington DC, and a 148 of those were officers that were killed in the line of duty nationwide in 2025.

And each of those men and women knew the risks, and they chose this profession anyway. They run towards danger instead of away to protect the loved ones of strangers. And so I just wanted to take a moment to say how thankful I am for each and every one of our employees, to express my appreciation for this proclamation, and also to thank this community who shows up every day, not just during police week, to express their support for the Brighton Police Department. So thank you.

Thank you. And I just wanna thank, you know, all of our first responders, law enforcement for the work they do twenty four hours a day, holidays, weekends, and everything you do. Anybody on council has not gone on a ride along, I encourage you go do that and see what they go through regularly. Might be an active shift. Who's who knows? So, we really appreciate everything that all of our law enforcement do. I'll come over, and we'll do a picture.

Thanks. Anybody else

stand up here?

We can all stand up.

So if

we can all stand up, that means we.

But do we have hats? Do we have badges?

I'm sorry. No. I was gonna bring you

guys all down.

Shouldn't we get deputy badges or

something? Some

handcuffs? Maybe some handcuffs?

I think Tom needs them more than the rest of us.

I've had a ride along in the back. I didn't know that, you know, it was a short ride just to the station.

I'm sorry. Look at her footstool.

Thank you. Congratulations.

Well, now we have to get up.

Alright. Next. Item four c, historic preservation month proclamation. Council member Tadeo.

Thank you, mayor. Whereas historic preservation is an effective tool for managing growth, sustaining development, revitalizing neighborhoods, fostering local pride, providing community character, and enhancing livability. And whereas historic preservation is inherently, economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable, fostering a culture of reuse and maximizing the life cycle of all resources through conservation. And whereas the city of Brighton has a wealth of historic places related to all ages, walks of life, and ethnic backgrounds that have formed the community it is today, and whereas it is important to celebrate the role of history in our lives and the contributions made by dedicated individuals in helping to preserve the tangible aspects of the heritage that has shaped the city of Brighton. Now, therefore, on behalf of Gregory Mills, mayor of the City Of Brighton, and on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim the month of May as historic preservation month in the city of Brighton and call upon all our residents to recognize and participate in this special observance of our heritage dated this May 2026.

Thank you. Deputy city manager, who is here to receive this tonight?

Mayor, we do have a couple of members from the Historic Preservation Commission. Invite them to come up, accept this.

Come on up, say a few words, and we'll come on down.

Hiya. My name is Sofia Imperioli, and I am a commissioner. We're very, very grateful for this proclamation celebrating Historic Preservation Month. And I must I must confess, my first time truly watching a city council meeting was the discussion of five seven five Bush, and you all truly have a very difficult job of balancing those dual, what's the word priorities of historic preservation and continued growth for this city with an incredibly rich heritage. So I was grateful to understand those processes.

So with this, I don't have swag to give you. I am deeply ashamed. No hats, unfortunately, but we do have pieces of paper. But wait, those pieces of paper have QR codes on them. And those QR codes bring you to the Brighton Historic Preservation Site. What they are meant for and I'll be taking one myself because luckily my house was built in 1919. You can place this in the window of a historic building, maybe you know some business owners letting people know that this place matters. It's a point of visual interest and we really want to get our community engaged as the Historic Preservation Commission continues to ramp up its efforts to preserve Brighton's heritage. So with that, thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead and pass those around, and then we'll come down and we'll get a picture.

Thank you

very much.

Wasn't 1919 Marv's first year working for the city

of Brighton?

That's right. Oh,

I forgot my one note. You can take selfies with them as well. That's what I was supposed to say. And actually, me, did I steal one already?

So what we'll do

and I can hold these or you hold the proclamation. How's that? Yes. There we go. Cool.

Alright. Next item on our agenda is item five, public invited to be heard on matters that are not on the agenda. I only have one person signed up to speak. His name is Tom Lampo. Come on, Tom. Introduce yourself. You'll have three minutes.

Alright. Thanks a lot. It's good to be back from Brighton. Good to see you guys. I'm Tom Lampo. I'm here tonight to lift Brighton up to the Lord in prayer. So please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, we come before you tonight to ask you to be present with us here in Brighton. You are God alone. No other can approach your authority. You're the creator and ruler of all. It states in Psalm one zero three nineteen, the Lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rule rules over all. There's nothing that can harm us if we only trust in you. We come before you tonight because you have richly blessed our lives with rain. Thank you for your provision.

Please do not remove your hand of blessing and provision from us. Your word states in Philippians four six, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God. So we humbly come before you, thanking you for the your provisions and asking you to continue to provide moisture. Water our fields, fill our reservoirs. You're always intentional and timely.

Our faith lies in you. Send the Holy Spirit to empower us so we may earnestly seek truth in all things. Truth sets us free. But if we're not prepared for it, our lives can be thrown in turmoil as if a storm has come upon us. But in your word in Proverbs three thirteen through 15, it states, blessed is the ones who find wisdom and the one who gets understanding. For the gain from her is better than the gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She she is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Help us to embrace this storm and trust in you. Holy spirit, bless us with wisdom and understanding as truths are revealed to us. Bring us peace.

Summer break is upon us. We lift up the families to you who are embracing this change. For some, it can

be

challenging. New schedules to juggle. Others will transition without a concern. You know all the situations, but no matter where we are

One minute.

You tell us how to gain peace. Isaiah twenty six three states, you will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you. Let us be mindful of you in this and in all situations so we can rest in your perfect peace. You are our God, and we are your people. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Thank you, guys. Have a nice night.

Thank you, Tom. That is all I have signed up to speak. Moving ahead, item seven a, an ordinance of the city council of the of the city of Brighton, Colorado, creating term limits for boards, commissions, and authorities by amending articles two dash eight, two dash 25, two dash 33, and two dash 40 of the Brighton Municipal Code. Deputy city manager Falkenberg, who is here to present this?

City attorney.

City attorney Calderon. Thank

you, mayor. This is a city council item for your consideration this evening. We've discussed it at two study sessions on February 10 and April 28. The ordinance before you this evening will create term limits for the adult youth commission members, Brighton Housing Authority, and Brighton Urban Renewal Authority. And the ordinance will also create consistent four year terms.

That is for the housing authority, remove moving five year to four year terms, sustainability advisory board moving three year to four year terms, and the adult youth commission members two year to four year terms. Those are the changes before you this evening. There is also a a correction that's being made. It talked about consecutive when it meant concurrent. No. It yeah. You know what I mean. We're fixing the language.

Alright. If there's no discussion, looks like there's some motions. Councilmember Green.

Thank you, mayor. I appreciate the work that went into this, and I move to approve item seven a.

And then mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. I'm happy to second that motion.

There's a first and second to approve seven a. Roll call vote. Motion passes eight to one. Okay. Moving on.

Item nine a, a resolution of the city council of the city of Brighton, Colorado accepting the proposal of SEMA Construction Incorporated and approving the procurement of the construction of Sable Boulevard improvements projects for the project for the contract amount of $7,716,512 and authorizing the city manager to execute the contract on behalf of the city. Deputy city manager Falkenberg.

We'd happy to invite up, Greg Labrie, our public works director, and you did get a good overview of this at your last study session, But, he'll go through it again for the public.

Alright. Good evening, mayor, mayor Pro Temp, and, city council. Tonight, again, I'll give provide an overview for the Sable Boulevard intersection improvements. This project consists of multiple intersection improvements along Sable Boulevard designed to increase safety, improve traffic flow and upgrade accessibility throughout the corridor. The first milestone is the construction of a new roundabout at 136th Avenue.

This improvement is intended to reduce conflict points, slow vehicle speeds, and move traffic more efficiently through the intersection. Next is the 1 44th Avenue intersection. All approaches will be widened, and dedicated left turn and right turn lanes will be added in every direction, with one exception. The southbound direction on Sable Boulevard would not include a dedicated right turn lane. These improvements will significantly enhance movement and reduce peak hour delays.

At 1 32nd Avenue, we will be adding dedicated left turn lanes on both northbound and southbound directions. This will increase safety and help relieve congestion at this point. At Bromley And 4th Avenue, the scope includes replacing the existing span wire traffic signals with modern signal poles. We will also be installing new ADA compliant curb ramps at all corners and repaving the damaged pavement areas within the intersection. Also want to note that we plan this is the Milestone four.

We plan to do this intersection last and have it completed by the first quarter of next year. All the other intersections, we are expected to complete by December 2026. This procurement slide shows that the six bids that we receive, we went through an evaluation process, and we selected the most responsive and responsible contractor, which was SEMA Construction. So public works' recommendation is to award the contract for the Sable Boulevard intersection improvement projects to SEMA Construction as the most responsive and qualified bidder in amount of $7,716,512. And this concludes my presentation, and I'm open to any questions you may have.

Other questions? Councilmember Green.

Thank you, mayor. Just a thought. Are these blind bids, or do we know the companies when after they submit their bids?

Yeah. We we know who the companies are when they submit them.

Yes. Okay. The only thing that's blind is when the amount before they they submit

it. Correct? Yes. Okay.

Thank you.

Alright. Next, council member Carbaugh.

Thank you, mayor. I just wanted to say thank you again for going out for RFPs and changing up the process and sharing that with us so that we could share that with the community. I think that's a big deal. And then just really excited about this project and grateful that we have the funding to be able to go take care of this for the community. So thank you for the presentation, and I will be supporting this tonight.

Thank you.

Alright. And then council member Snyder.

Thanks for the presentation. This is really important with the Sable Boulevard C 470, and I'm glad to hear we're gonna get it done mostly this year. I did have one question, and that is the roundabout at 136. Do you know what the radius of that's going to be?

I don't know the radius offhand. I don't know if the I have the construction plan here. Actually, this is a striping and signage plan, and I'm not sure if it's mentioned there or not. It has a lot of the reason why I didn't have that in my presentation because of all the, lineage and signage and things like that, it could get a little confusing. But it may be in there, and I can provide that for you if you like, or I can get that information for you as well.

Do do you have a sense will it be bigger than the ones at 85 and bridge?

I I I don't have a sense in terms of land area, but I do know they design it to accommodate truck movement, tractor trailer type movement. And this design that you see will accommodate two two lanes throughout the roundabout. It's gonna be striped for I say two lanes in each direction, I should say. It's gonna be stripe for one lane ultimately at this point, but when we start widening table, it it will be able to come it will be able to grow without doing any, additional infrastructure improvement to it.

Thank you. You got to the point I was after. Can we get a a semi around this? It's it's going to be large enough.

Yeah. They did the auto. They have a auto cat turn type thing for vehicles, and they were able to

Perfect. Thank you. I'm very excited about it. Thanks for your hard work on this.

Well, this may be similar, but also farm equipment too.

Yep. Yes. We definitely had firing farm equipment in mind that was top, top of the, design requirements as we work with the public on this.

Very good. Alright. If there's no other questions, I see some motions. Council member Green.

Thank you, mayor. Yeah. I'm super excited to show the public that we're continuing to improve the roadways around and getting into Brighton. So I'm really super excited to, most approve, item nine a.

And then council member Fiddler.

Thank you, mayor. Happy second.

The first and second to approve nine a. Roll call vote. Motion passes. Nine to zero.

Alright. Thanks. Thank you, guy. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the support.

Yep. It's public works week. Get to work.

Alright. Alright. Moving on to general business, eleven a. Quarter one twenty twenty six budget and financial update. Deputy City Manager, Falkenberg.

Yes. Happy to invite up our budget and performance manager team as well as our finance director and Becca Hefty from the budget and performance management team joining as well.

Thank you, Marv. Good evening, counsel. Alright. Good evening. We have our q one financial and budget update for you tonight. I have zero swag. Bob Younger has made us all look bad.

I have no finance hats, no budget hats, no,

no, no hats. We don't hand out money. That is not what we do. Bummer. All right. So we'll go through our financial and budget overview. I'll go through the financial side, then I'll hand this off to Becca for the budget portion of this. So a couple of caveats. This is, again, following a format you guys have seen before, but I always like to give these disclosures. So when we're doing these reports, this is unaudited information.

The data was pulled as of early May, and it is for actual transactions posted as of the end of March. So looking at just the first quarter. We will be focusing on governmental funds tonight in the presentation. Those are the funds that are funded primarily by taxes and other unrestricted fees. Those are the funds where there's a lot more discretion about how the funds are spent and choice about projects, things like that.

We don't cover the proprietary funds so much in these presentations. Those are basically utility funds that are funded by their rates and are funding kind of run a bit more like a business where those fees have to fund the operations of those. In your packet, there is a Q1 financial report that is much more detailed, and that does have information on those proprietary funds as well. So happy to answer questions on those if you have them, but the presentation will focus on our governmental funds. All right.

So our first slide here is looking at our governmental fund revenues. So when I say governmental funds, again, that's the general fund as well as our other tax funded funds, so capital fund, parks fund, things like that. It's looking at it all in the aggregate. The main theme here, and you're going hear this a couple of times tonight, is that we had a really big development quarter. Development was very strong for Q1, and that affected a number of our revenue categories. But it's important to remember revenue from development is not linear, right? Development doesn't happen quite consistently as something like sales tax. So having one big quarter in development doesn't necessarily mean all of our quarters will be quite that big. It depends a lot on the permits that are issued and the specific projects that they're issued for. So development helps use taxes, in particular.

That's taxes that are charged on construction for new development, and then also charges for services. So that would be impact fees, permit fees, things like that. And you can see both of those are up pretty significantly for Q1 compared to prior year. Use taxes, up $1,600,000 That is actually due almost fully to one very, very large permit. So that's great.

We got a really good start on our use tax revenues for the year, but we don't often see permits of that size, and we wouldn't expect to see that going forward every quarter. So again, good start to expect the trajectory of use tax revenues to level off a bit as we go throughout the year. Everything else that wasn't development related was a bit of a mixed bag. So sales taxes are up 4.6%. Not bad compared to some of our neighboring communities, a bit less than we saw last year, a little less than we were maybe hoping for, but definitely not necessarily a bad situation.

But we will talk about sales tax in a bit more detail on a later slide. Investment earnings are down. Investment earnings, it's important to remember, are valued based on the fair market value of the investments at the time. And when the economy is a bit unstable and there's a lot of uncertainty, those fair market values can vary as well. I can tell you, because we're already in May, that they bounced back quite a bit in April, so that's great. But we do expect our investment revenues to decline as we're spending down reserves. We've been doing a lot of big projects. I mean, you just talked about Sable. You've seen things like the MSC, Bridge Street widening, rec center. Those are all spending down reserves, which means we have less to invest, which means we're going to see lower investment earnings over time.

And then property taxes are down. However, this is due solely to timing. So property taxes are a known number. We know at the end of the year what the valuation is and what our mill levy is. So we know the property taxes that were owed, and we generally collect 99% of those taxes. So this being down is really just solely due to timing. We know, at the end of the day, when property taxes are collected, we'll be up a little over 2% on property taxes. So next slide we're going to go to is the other side of this, so spending through Q1. Spending, not a lot of things here that are necessarily a surprise, but I'll just go through and point some things out. So personnel, our largest single largest ongoing cost is up 5.4%.

Most staff received a 4% increase in January, so this kind of makes sense. You've got that increase as well as increases to benefit costs. So that all tracks to about a 5.4% increase, so again, kind of where we would expect it to be. Operating costs held steady, which is great. Repairs and maintenance is up quite a lot, but that is actually due, in part, to just being on top of it with a lot of the work we're doing. But also, we recategorized some expenses from capital to repairs and maintenance. So just getting them in a category that makes a little bit more sense, but makes it look like that one jumped a little more than it actually did. But you will see capital outlay is still up. Projects are still happening. We are not really seeing a slowdown in projects.

We're spending more this year than we did last year at this time. So projects are continuing, as you're seeing around the city. And then lastly, debt service is down. There was a kind of a short term shorter term financed purchase that we had previously. The last payment was made in Q1 of last year. So we didn't have that payment due this year, and therefore, that line item is lower. One important thing to note here, we're going to talk about this a little bit more, is personnel, as I mentioned, being our single largest ongoing expense, is up 5.4%. Sales tax is our single largest ongoing revenue and was up 4.5%. So not necessarily a concern today, but it is something to keep an eye on. We want to make sure that those are tracking in ways that continue to support the expenses.

But when we see at least for me, when I look at those and I see those getting personnel growing faster than something like sales tax, it's just something to watch into the future. So this slide here is a condensed income statement just for the general fund now. So general fund being our largest primary operating fund, most of our activity here, most of our staff is paid for out of this fund. So I'd like to highlight this one in a condensed format just so you can see how it's tracking. But again, you can see on here taxes being the single largest revenue source there.

That includes property taxes, use taxes, sales taxes. But again, sales taxes is majority of that funding coming in. And personnel, as you can see, being by far the largest expense. So this just sort of illustrates that kind of we talk about all these other line items sometimes, but those really are the two biggies that we want to keep an eye on. So I'm going to go off script a little bit here and actually ask you if you could look in your financial report in your packet at Page six.

I'd like to talk about reserves a little bit. We don't normally talk a whole lot about reserves here, but I do think it's something that's important to look at, especially as we've been spending them down. I've mentioned that in the last couple of reports that we're spending down reserves and having less invested and all that. And that's all been intentional. But I do think it's important to look at that and make sure, for transparency's sake, that we are talking about that.

So at the bottom of Page six, there's a breakout on there of the general fund fund balance, and that's as of Q1 at the end of this last quarter. So with that, you can see the general fund fund balance at Q1 was about $36,700,000 So feels like a large number. It is a large number. I don't think there's any universe where $36,700,000 is a small number, but it consists of a couple of components. I want to make sure that those are broken out and understood. So you'll see there's three emergency reserves on there. The TABER reserve is very familiar to those of us in Colorado. We're required to have that TABER reserve. That would be our last resort. If we were using our TABER reserve, we would be in very dire situation.

We would have spent down everything else. When you start using the TABER reserve, there are some other requirements about how quickly it needs to be replenished and all of that. So that is kind of, again, our last resort of funding. So if we're getting to that point, we've probably had a lot of other conversations about very challenging things before that. But there are two other reserves on here, an emergency reserve and a general fund stabilization reserve. Those are both established based on Council resolutions from previous years. Combined, they create a reserve of three months of our budgeted spending. So it's a very fiscally responsible policy to have. Three months is a good amount to be setting aside, and it's very responsible to do that for a couple of reasons. One is because economic downturn could happen, right?

We could see our sales taxes come in lower than expected. That's happened before. Having these reserves helps us keep our spending stable in a short term downturn. It's also there's all kinds of unexpected spending that could come up. There could be an unexpected emergency spend that we need, right?

So those are there to help keep things in good shape should unexpected things happen. It also is an important component for things like our bond ratings. So if we were to go out to bond and we didn't have sufficient reserves, that could cause us to get a lower bond rating because we don't have the cushion there, we aren't practicing sound fiscal management of our funds. So I say that to point out that I'm glad that previous counsels put those policies in place. I think it's a very responsible thing to have that three months of reserve in addition to the taper reserve.

Now there are a couple other things on here. There are some restricted items that are related to outside restrictions, so things like the bag fee. The plastic bag fee that you pay at a store if you're still getting a paper bag there, that is restricted money, right? We receive that money, but we must spend it in a certain way. We can't spend it on personnel for finance. We can't spend it on discretionary things. It has to be spent on very specific things. So we set that aside as a restricted amount sitting there in fund balance, waiting to be used on sustainability or waste management or other kinds of projects like that. So those ones I pull out as well. So any of those restricted items or emergency reserves, we set aside, and then that leaves us with just shy of $18,000,000 of what we call unassigned fund balance.

So that is the amount that does have there is some discretionary ability to spend that. That said, just like our own savings account, we don't want to spend that down to zero, right? That money is if you were to if that didn't exist, you'd run a real risk of dipping into those other emergency reserves, where things like a bond rating could fall if you don't maintain your reserves that are set in your policy. So there's definitely an amount of cushion you want to maintain there. And again, important to make sure we're accounting for the fact that all of our reserves, whether we're adding to them or taking from them, is based on estimates of what revenues are going to come in.

And we're guessing those revenues in August ish of the prior year, so a lot of things can change, as we've seen since August of last year. What's changed in the economy? I do want to touch again briefly, though, on how this reserve came to be. Because reserves don't happen without there being some excess revenue overspending. And this reserve in the general fund came about, for the most part, since 2020. So when COVID happened, the city was very lean. We were very, very conservative, which was a smart thing to do at the time. We didn't know what was gonna happen to revenues. There was a lot of unexpected things happening then, so the city pulled back. We had positions that were vacated that weren't refilled.

We had projects that were delayed or maybe even canceled. We didn't add positions at any real level for a number of years. So during those years, our revenues actually ended up positive for us came in very strong. We kept even in the worst year in 2020, our sales tax still grew by 2%. So we still maintained good revenues, but we had pulled back on spending pretty significantly. And there were some years where we were adding 7,000,000 or $8,000,000 to that reserve. So we built it up over time. We have now spent transferred quite a bit of it to funds for capital projects and all of that. And now we're here having about $18,000,000 left in that discretionary reserve. The reason I share that is that that money came about because we were being very lean.

We are now spending more in line with what our revenues are, so we're not adding to that reserve anymore. So if we spend that reserve down, there's not really an expectation it would come back, unless we somehow unexpectedly got a lot more revenue than we were planning to spend. So I say this just in caution, that this is one time money, and to be very thoughtful and intentional about how it gets used, and to maintain some level of cushion there for uncertainty so that we don't dip into those emergency reserves unintentionally. So with that, I will go back on script now. I wanted to just detour on that briefly for you.

Alright. So this, income statement here, same thing you just saw for the general fund, but it is for the other governmental funds. So capital fund, parks maintenance and capital fund, impact fees, all those other funds. A little bit of a different profile here. Taxes are still a significant revenue source, but intergovernmental, which is grants primarily, is a much, much larger source. Charges for services here is impact fees. So and we also have oil and gas royalties here. So some different things that we don't see necessarily in the general fund. And on the spending side, personnel is really not a factor in these funds, but capital is. And as you can see, capital outlay is a significant cost here.

These funds are budgeted to spend down $48,000,000 These funds have the money to spend. This is money that also has been accumulated for the intention of doing projects. So when we're doing projects like Sable, that's pulling from these reserves. We're doing projects like the rec center. That's pulling from reserves. So all planned, all intentional, all the reserves in these funds are restricted and dedicated to projects or restricted by external contracts, ballot measures, things like that. So not quite as discretionary. Still discretionary in the sense of which project do we want to do, but not something that we could move to the general fund to fund staff, if that makes sense. So when I see a large spend down of fund balance in these funds, I don't worry so much because it's, again, intentional and planned. All right.

So moving on to taxes. This chart here shows tax revenues over the last five years, again, looking just at the first quarter of the year for each of those five years. I will note that there is some level of cash flow variation here in timing. This chart is looking at when the cash was received, so that does vary a little bit. But I think this is a helpful one to see that how use taxes tends to go up and down based on those development years. 'twenty four, big development year. 'twenty five, definitely saw a slowing down. 'twenty six, we had a huge first quarter, which you can see here in the use tax revenues. Sales taxes, though, very consistent, right? They generally don't go down.

They generally continue to grow at least an incremental amount every year. And again, that's why that's one of our primary sources of funding for ongoing costs like staff. And you can see sales taxes for first quarter jumped a little bit, up to $6,400,000 Let's talk a little more about sales taxes, just because that is our biggest revenue source in these funds. This chart here shows sales taxes revenues month by month for the last several years. This is based on filings, so not necessarily when we collected the money, but when it was due.

So this is January, February, March tax, tax due. The blue line on that chart is this year. And you can see we started pretty far, a pretty good gain in January. We did really well in January compared to the prior year, but that gap slowed. So by March, we're pretty close to what we got in March of last year. So the gap kind of narrowed a bit. But looking at some specific categories. So I'll point out accommodations and food service. We know we had some new restaurants last year. That's certainly helping our food service category with sales tax.

That said, retail is still only up just under 1%. This is a trend we've seen for probably since COVID, really, of brick and mortar retail being fairly flat, but online retail gaining double digits every quarter. So online retail up 22%, and that's becoming a bigger and bigger portion of our tax revenue. Dispensary retail is up a lot. That's not necessarily because people are buying that much more pot.

We actually had a new dispensary open late in the year, so we're seeing now we have all four of our dispensaries open and fully operating. So we're just seeing that reflected in the revenue. And then last, I'll touch on auto sales. It's down, but with this one, you have to kind of think about what was happening in the economy last year. So this time last year, Q1 of last year, there was a lot of panic tariff buying ahead of anticipated tariffs. People were buying a lot of cars in Q1 of last year. So Q1 car sales last year were artificially higher not artificially, but they were just kind of an anomaly. So now they're back down to what was maybe more of a normal level. So not that people are necessarily buying less cars on a long term trend. It was just an unusually high year last year.

I will note kind of unusual. Bag fee continues to go up. We thought that might level off or go down, but bag fee revenue is continuing to increase, so people are still buying their paper bags. Lodging tax is down just marginally. And the last slide, added this new slide this time. This is our top 20 taxpayers. I will point out this is in alphabetical order, not the order of the most of the highest tax received. But I think this is a really interesting list. I always find it, kind of fun to play with our our list and look at who's in the top 10, who's in the top 20. Again, alphabetical order, the top 20 provided nearly 50% of our tax revenue.

So that's why we watch this so closely and really keep an eye on these businesses. Because let's say one of them were to leave, or one of them were to have a a this I don't know, corporate meltdown or something like that would be really could be problematic for us. But our top 20 does tend to be very stable businesses. We've got grocery stores. We've got utilities, things like that. So these do tend to stay very stable for us. The bold ones, Texas Roadhouse, Verizon, and Wells Concrete, are new to the top 20. They were not in top 20 in q one of twenty five. And they kicked out Apple, TikTok, and Tractor Supply are were in the top 20 last year and are not this year. So, I will note these top 20 that make up almost half were only up 2.8%. So, they they grew at a rate slower than the rest of the city, the rest of the taxpayers.

Maybe it's because that new iPhone is a lot of money.

You know, it it is. Yes. It is not a cheap iPhone. You are right. That is the that is the, conclusion of my slides. I'm happy to answer any questions, or can hand it off and do questions at the end either way.

Cool. Well, we really appreciate this presentation. We'll go to questions or comment. Councilmember Green.

Thank you, mayor. Just while this slide is still up, what's FlowZone?

FlowZone is up, near the, it's north near the wind Vestas. Vestas. Yes. Thank you. It's up up near Vestas. I I don't know off the top of my head what they make, but they popped into the top 20 about a year and a half ago and have been there very steadily.

Yeah. Don't know either. That's everybody else I know. But

Mhmm. I thought it was a sewer treatment plan.

I I

don't know

what it is. Okay. I can find that out for you if you'd like.

Now, in the interest of transparency, is there anywhere that the public could go to see that the proprietary funds are only spent on the organizations that they're supposed to be going to?

So the q one financial report does get posted online. So they could refer to the report that's in your packet, and that does have, the five years last five years, revenues and expenses for those funds. So if that would if you feel like that would be sufficient. Just like

I said, I wanna make sure know we kinda glossed over, but I wanna make sure that that information is available so

that Absolutely.

We're not trying

to hide anything. Yes.

What about the repair and maintenance? Is that gonna be fixed for next year's budget, or is that just a function of it being quarter one? Or, you

know, the Oh, you mean it being higher?

600 and some super percent. You know? That seemed to be an anomaly. I know it's a small figure, but it just

Yeah. I I think it'll be an issue, like, that us reclassing some things from capital to repairs and maintenance will be kind of a twenty twenty five to 26 variance for the year. Right? By the time we get to next year, then we'll be using the same classifications. But some of this came also with our shift to the new system and grouping accounts a little bit differently, but the old information is still in the old format.

Yeah. So It's just when

a number like that sticks out. I just, you know Yes. Now the, plastic bag fee, I again, I'm still amazed that it continues to increase.

I thought

it would

be decreasing. I don't know how.

I agree.

Are we using that fund at all, or are we just letting it build? Or is it anything that's being applied to our sustainability efforts, or are we just

I will defer to Catherine for that.

I would love to answer that. Our sustainability coordinator does use some of that each year on some, she's been doing some smaller items recently, of seeing how it's going to continue. But she's looking at using some consulting services moving forward to start the the funds are dedicated specifically to waste diversion. Apologies. I'm getting over laryngitis. But she's looking at doing some, like, consulting dollars to figure out what our waste categories current categorization is of where our waste is going so that she can get from there where we can spend these dollars. And it's a little bit easier for her to see now the ongoing amount that we're gonna get. So there will definitely be something in the budget this upcoming year, and we'll bring more to you.

Okay. And I appreciate our conservative approach to the reserve funds, and, we continue to do more. Thank you.

Yeah. I got a quick question

Yes.

Before I move on. When you're saying the change over, you know, like, the 668%, is that comparing the previous quarter, the same quarter of the previous year? Yes. Which one is that?

Q one twenty five to q one twenty six.

Yeah.

2520. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thanks. Doing my best to take to heart the lessons on reserves because we certainly did make a a choice to not spend money when we had a fear that there was not going to be money.

Yes.

And we didn't see such a dip, But we have sort of backfilled those positions by now and have worked towards that. And I've seen that staffing has increased relatively conservatively, but perhaps at a faster pace than new sales tax growth. And we're still worried quarter over quarter what will be developing, what may slow down, what are the impacts of tariffs. But then I got wrapped around the axle on the difference between that and some of the capital reserves. So when we look at some of the projects like the RecPlex or when we look at purchasing the additional building for the police department or the additional building for the museum, do those come out of our capital reserves differently from the operating reserves?

Or do we move back and forth

The ones

Some of those that are not planned

Right.

How are we hitting those?

So addressing the the ones that you specifically mentioned. So for the building for the police, the South 27th, Street, we've issued COPs for that certificates certificates of participation. So we brought in new money to fund that. So we actually didn't eat from reserves at all for that one for things like the rec center. There there was a lot of money moved from the general fund into the parks fund in '23 and '24. It was, I wanna say, around 26,000,000 that came from reserves. So we did make a choice to use reserves to fund projects like that, not just the the rec center expansion, but other other parks projects. So there was a lot utilized at that time to to sort of we got the money into the fund even though the work hasn't necessarily it hadn't happened at the time. We knew it was coming. That helps.

Right. Yep. So we're we're being

creative add a little bit more to that. Those funds are they do have their own dedicated revenue sources. Those are separate reserves that need to be spent on those capital items. The general fund is called general because it can be spent on whatever our needs are. So that's why we do sometimes transfer. We can't transfer back from those restricted funds. The general fund is just that one that we sometimes do use to supplement the others.

Time for parks and recreation facilities outpaces the capital Exactly.

Improvements. So there's kind of a little bit

of both of those reserves there.

That is true.

And we'll continue to, because the things that are not specifically funded yet but are in the works somewhere where we've been talking about expanding the active adult center, where we've been talking about a RecPlex, those we haven't built up enough parks and rec capital improvement fees to take on those projects yet. Those would have to come from other reserves. So I was trying to figure out, if we were to dig into those, is that $18,000,000 of unassigned fund balance, or is there still additional funds for capital reserves that we haven't tapped yet?

In the general fund, it's the 18,000,000. And other funds, budget team keeps very good models of all of that. They're kinda dedicated. Dedicated.

Yes. At this moment, they are relatively dedicated. And specifically for those larger projects that you all know about and we've been talking about, we'll be bringing back more specific information about them to give you options and what we would have to not do and what we'd have to change and all of that kind of stuff.

So jump into decision making on

people. Right.

That's gonna be coming to you later in the year, I'm sure.

That that we have available relative to the size of the bucket of things we would like to do.

Yeah. So it kinda depends on the time of year and what year we're in. But at this moment, in pretty much all of our funds, because we've done so many large projects, we don't have much else in those dedicated capital funds either.

Right. Yeah. Things like water treatment plants that are incredibly expensive and the municipal services center. We and $20,000,000 for for Bridge Street.

Yes.

And a lot going into Sable. So we we've been doing a lot in the last five years. Yep. But I have to figure out when when do we turn off that tap or turn down that tap because, again, as you said, it's not self filling. Okay. Thanks.

Gotta rebuild those reserves. Council member Carbajal.

Thank you, mayor. I I'm a little bit opposite of this. I think we've talked about this before when it comes to reserves. I understand the need to keep money available to utilize, and that is the purpose of those three accounts that you talked about, Tabor, Emergency, General. And when we look at $18,000,000 on top of that, I think Fiddler said it a few meetings ago, the percentage of that to the general fund is pretty significant.

And so I I'm just curious. I don't want necessarily to hold on to that funding that's that's the public's money in case we can't continue to grow staff at that rate. So my question for you would be, as we look at that percentage, that 1.1% difference in sales tax versus staffing. Are we slowing down hiring then so that we're not just utilizing that funding to backfill that? Because we should be staffing according to what we're bringing in, right, in terms of that funding, as opposed to saying, hey, we have $18,000,000 for the next five years. We can mess around and find out.

So I will say that that is not the only revenue source for staffing. It's just an indicator. Right? So it's not like, seeing that gap doesn't necessarily mean that we're out of balance. It's just something that I like, for me, I look at and say, okay. Maybe we need to watch that. So I don't think we're at that point yet of what you said. But also, fund balance should never ever be used to fund staff. It is not an ongoing source of funding. It's one time, right? So you really shouldn't ever use it for ongoing to fill a gap of ongoing staff, things like staffing needs. That would be you'd use it more for projects, like a one time expense.

And we do have a requirement to have a structurally balanced budget. So our ongoing revenues need to cover our ongoing expenditures, or else we should not be bringing that to you for adoption. So we would never be bringing something that's going to spend those down on ongoing operations.

Okay, perfect. My next question is, are we generating interest off of that funding and about how much per year? And can you give us some information on that?

Sure. So yes, it's invested. We work with an investment adviser, PTMA, that helps us with managing our long term investments. We keep things like our unspent bond proceeds separate from that because, again, that is restricted. I don't have off the top of my head how much we brought in in total last year. But it is a line item in the financial report for each fund. So for general fund, you can see at least through Q1 how much we brought in. I'm going to pull that up real quick here.

Thank you.

Get my pages to come apart here. Going backwards. Okay. So for Q1 in the general fund, we brought in about $153,000 In previous year, we brought in about 500,000 So again, last year was a much better year for interest earnings so far. But we're generally investing around at about 3.5%. We do a lot of things in kind of the government equivalent of a high yield savings, or we use a lot of treasury bills, government securities, things like that.

And when interest comes in, is that still dedicated to that certain project based on where that money sits? Or does that then go into funds where we could use it?

So the interest if it's something like the unspent bond proceeds, the bonding that we borrowed for the water treatment plant, that's money that was borrowed specifically for that project. So the interest on that account stays with the project, it helps to fund the water treatment plant. And in

fact, it was sort of

counted on to help fund the water treatment plant. But all the rest of our interest is pooled. So we look at it at the end of the month. We say, all right, we brought in, say, 1,000,000 of interest. Then we look at the cash balances of each fund and allocate it out based on the cash balance. Because it's whatever fund earned it, basically, is what gets the interest.

Okay, perfect. That's all my questions. Thank you.

All right.

All right.

That is all the questions that I see. No action today, obviously. Oh, do you have more? Okay. Okay.

Just give All me

more slides. Good evening, mayor, mayor pro tem, and members of council. My name is Rebecca Hefty, and on behalf of the Budget and Innovation I don't think is this on? Can you hear me? Is this on?

Yes.

Sorry, I didn't see the light. And on behalf of the Budget and Innovation Department, I will be providing an overview of the quarter one expenditures. Let's see. All right. Starting off with quarter one expenditures by fund.

Overall, 12% was spent by the end of the first quarter. This is expected as capital projects don't start until later this year. You can see on this slide here that many of the funds are driven by capital expenditures, for example, the capital and the parks capital improvement funds in addition to our utility funds. And these right now have lower percent spending than those with heavily operating items, like we mentioned before, the general fund, which is 70% dedicated to the salary and benefits for city employees. By the end of this year, we still expect significant savings in the Parks and Rec Capital Improvement Fund and the Wastewater Fund, as each of these funds have large capital projects and design that are expected to have significant carryover into the next year.

Keep pressing the wrong button. I apologize. Now looking at quarter one expenditures by type. As you see here on the slide are particularly our operating items. This includes our personnel and operating supplies.

These are around 20% spent at this point of the year, and these tend to be relatively consistent, and we typically see near to full spending at the end of the year. As mentioned in the previous slide, capital outlay has less spending at this point in the year, but you will see spending increases over the construction season, which typically occurs in quarters two and three. Lastly, budget contingency, as you see here, currently has no spending, and this is because the budget for contingency is added just in case planned purchases come in higher than anticipated. However, when contingency does need to be used, spending occurs in the account that holds the original purchase, and budget will be moved from contingency to cover that additional cost if needed. So there is a possibility the budgeted amount will reduce throughout the year, but there will never be spending in these accounts.

Thank you, and we are open for any questions or comments you might have.

Alright. Questions. We got Mayor Protham.

Thanks. Thank you very much. I I just wanna make sure that an assumption I'm building into this holds true because I would expect predictable things like personnel to hit about that 25%. But as I was starting to ask the question, it occurred to me that a lot of our personnel are seasonal. Is that why we have less now and would end up seeing more by the time we get to August?

I will defer to Catherine for that because I'm not entirely sure.

Yes. That is correct. We have a very large amount that we'll hit for a lot of our parks and rec, in particular, items that are temp.

I always good when my question gets answered as I asked it as as persuading. Okay. Thanks.

The other questions? Councilmember Green.

Yeah. And I'm asking another one for understanding. You said the budget contingency will never have spending. So would that would be covered in transfers, or it would just just drop and then appear in another category? Or how do you say it wouldn't have spending?

The spending would occur in the account that the expense needs to happen. So we don't actually plan anything to be used for contingency. In an ideal world, we won't need that. And it's actually relatively small in our major funds. It's, like, $200,000, which sounds crazy to call that small. But in our, like, $60,000,000 general fund, it's about $200,000. So if we do need to spend something in an account and go over budget in that account, we'll go over budget, or sometimes we'll move the budget into that account if we can administratively do that. Sometimes that requires a budget amendment with counsel, but you just won't see the spend actually hit the budget contingency line. It would hit, like, supplies or professional

services.

We just go to a different one, we'd approve it. It's a transfer, but it's not covered as a transfers? Correct.

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

I see no other questions. Do we have any more to present? I didn't see anyone in the slides. Thank

you so much.

Alright. Thank you. Again, this is just an informational item. No action tonight. Moving on to reports. Reports by the mayor. Alright. I got a few notes here. So about was it last week or the week before, I attended the state transportation advisory committee that's over at the CDOT headquarters. I attended on behalf of doctor Cog.

I'm one of the alternates to attend that monthly meeting. And some of the items that were discussed was the CDOT's ten year plan and also an update on their freight program. And it was cool to hear from Craig Hurst who gave that presentation who some of you might know used to serve on Commerce City City Council. I had the opportunity last week to talk to a group of eighth graders that are learning about civics, and I was very intrigued that there are some eighth graders learning about civics because I don't feel like that's being taught enough. And so it's good that they had a civics project.

It was one of the 27 j online academies that, I was able to speak with. And I wrote a few notes down as far as some of the questions they had, and they had questions regarding, improved sidewalks. They would like a community greenhouse. They also had traffic concerns. They may not drive, but they see the traffic.

The activities on 85 and Bromley, especially the lane that was kinda cut off going westbound is kinda controversial. Drought concerns, obviously, that's that's impacting everybody. They're concerned about housing prices because, you know, there'll be future homeowners in the future, and they wanna be able to buy a house someday. And also, they have concerns about underage drinking and people drinking in the parks and how to handle those kind of things. So it was good to interact with students in that grade.

They're mostly about 14 years old and hear about what they're thinking. And I also encourage them to apply to be on the youth commission and also be in our future pool of people that wanna be interns for I said for next year because I think a lot of the internships are already applied for for this year. So some I think already started. Is that right, deputy city manager? So yeah.

Also, I attended some events related to the National Day of Prayer. I was also given a tour of the Riverdale Post Acute Center on Bridge Street. Also attended the Aurora State of the City address by, mayor Mike Kaufman in Aurora. Went to some of the rec center grand opening activities and got a tour again of the of the additions to our rec center. If you haven't been there, I think today was the last day of grand opening activities, but go anyway and go check it out.

Also went to the chamber top golf event last Friday. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting in front of the rotary club and giving them a Brighton update. Also, earlier today, got to tour the Brighton Fire Training Center and was there with council member Green and deputy city manager Falkenberg and Karen Serene in the back. Wanna remind the public that with all of our grateful moisture that I encourage you to delay the sprinkling of your lawns because I did that and take advantage of that free water. If you're an even address, that would have been today.

If you're an odd address, that will be tomorrow. And that is all for my reports at this time. Next, go on to any reports by department directors.

Mayor, we actually do have a report by our utilities director, a couple of them in fact. Cool.

Good evening, mayor, mayor pro tem, and members of city council. Just a couple updates for you this evening. The first one that I'm going to start with is an update on our lead service line inventory. So at this point, we have approximately 26 addresses or service lines left that we need to characterize the materials on. All the others are done at this point.

If you recall, we presented to you several months ago that we did find that one lead service line. It was immediately replaced, and removed from the system. As we move into the final phases here, there are, three galvanized, lines that need to be replaced. And just as a reminder, the reason that we need to replace a galvanized line is because it was downstream at some point in time of a lead service line. And during the galvanization process, there's zinc that's introduced into the metal alloy, and that can attract the lead particles and essentially makes this galvanized line a lead line.

So we have to replace those to be in compliance as well. There are some updates to, the state and federal guidelines for lead and copper rule. There's a a new rule. It's called lead and copper rule improvements. And with that, there are some other random addresses and, verifications that we have to do.

So we are going to have to look into, approximately 341 meter pits, just to verify the materials that are in that meter pit. So it's not going to be nearly as, cost intensive or time intensive, but it's just another step that they want us to make to ensure, public health for our residents. We do still plan to have all of this, completed by November 2027. Any questions on that one before I move into the next update?

Any questions on that one? Oh, mayor Botem.

So we had to do the at hitting every single house be built in a certain era because our random survey hit one house or found one, and then we found three galvanized. So out of 14,000 houses in in the community, we had four houses that had to be addressed?

Four houses that will have to have the line replaced. That's correct.

Okay.

Yeah. One of which was done immediately. Yeah.

Absolutely. Okay. Good. I just wanted to figure out that that it really was that small, total, an important total, but that's small. Thanks.

Good thing to point out. Do you have more?

I do. The next update that I wanna give is related to the Sable Outfall. So the Sable Outfall is part of the overall larger Sable project. So the intersection improvements will be tying into this outfall, so it's a a needed part to take place before they can do the intersection improvements. We're working with Mile High Flood District on that project. And, actually, they were supposed to mobilize out to, the site yesterday, but because of all of that free water that the mayor mentioned, they were, not able to make it out there. They don't wanna make a mess, going out into the motor, getting vehicles, or anything stuck like that.

So play in the mud?

Right. So they're they're gonna push that, mobilization off for a little bit, let it dry out so they don't, make a mess out there. When the contractor does mobilize and they start with the construction on that project, there's going to be really two, impacts to traffic. The first one is going to be when they cross Sable with that outfall, and that's going to be just south of the, the existing storage, place there and our current south outfall channel. And they're gonna control the traffic exactly like they did with the portion of the outfall by the Fulton Ditch.

So they're going to have traffic in both directions. It'll be controlled and alternating with a temporary signal. That seemed to work, pretty well. I don't think we received, many, if any, complaints on that. People were only sitting there for just a couple minutes before they could, go on their way.

That impact is going to start the middle of June. The next impact will be a full closure of 144th at Sable. So there will be barricades at 144th just east of Sable Boulevard, so people will not be able to travel all the way through that intersection. If you recall with, the previous interruption on Sable, they had barricades on the other side of 144th, so it'll be very similar to that. Detours will all be posted.

That impact is going to be the middle of July. Each of those are going to last for about forty days. The all all the other channel work is going to be, off to the east of Sable Boulevard. Those are really the only two traffic impacts. And the overall completion date for the full outfall is, anticipated to be October.

It's important. We're gonna have a lot of contractors that are in the Sable Corridor. So as you guys awarded earlier today, SEMA Construction will be there working on the, intersection improvements, and we have already, connected those two contractors. They are, talking to each other to make sure that we, have coordination as we move forward with this on on the, major roadway. Any questions on that one?

Any questions on this one? I'll just comment that, you know, I got comments last year that it seems like every road people drove on Brian was under construction. And now it's mostly gonna be Sable with a few other exceptions, I I believe. So, yeah. Do you have any announcements related to someone sitting next to you?

Yes. I do. I have one more update, though.

Oh, okay.

So I'll

let you do that first.

Let me let me do my last one. It'll be real quick. So just a reminder, every year we do our annual water quality report. It's known in the industry as the consumer confidence report. Really, it's the report that we put out that says, here's all our water sources, here's the contaminants that we're testing for, and provides a whole bunch of information that we want our residents to know and contact information for all of us if they have questions.

So that report will be available on the website here in the next couple weeks, and then it'll be going out a notice will go out into all the utility bills, in English and Spanish that lets our residents know that the report is available and provides, the website location for that. Cool. Alright. Those are my updates. Any last questions on that one before I introduce who's sitting next to me?

Okay. See any.

Okay. If you guys all remember, Sherry Skajari, she was hired with the city, as our watercom water quality compliance coordinator. She has been promoted, and she is now the deputy director of utilities. Alright. So, please help me welcome her.

Alright. That's all I have.

Tom's gonna offer

a deputy badge.

Yeah. Sorry. We don't we don't have swag either. Alright. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Alright. Deputy city manager Falkeberg, any more director reports?

That's all for tonight.

That's all. Okay. Can't top that. No other department has any cool news. Next reports. Yes. Holly's got reports by our city attorney.

None. Thank you.

None. Oh, reports by our city manager's office.

None tonight.

None. Oh, you could have upped Michael, you know. Yeah. Boards by our city council. We'll start with council member Collins.

Thank you, mayor. I just kinda wanna touch on filling our board spots for Parks and Rec and Youth Commission. I think those are coming along swimmingly. I think that Parks and Rec is full now with one with the exception of one youth member. So we had one youth attend this month.

And I'm guessing Tanya's probably going to assign someone. So that will make Parks and Rec completely full, which is wonderful. I think applications were due for youth commission on the eighth, and they were doing interviews this week. So we'll be having some new members of the youth commission as well. I know there were also adult applicants, which is exciting.

I think that's about it for that. Next week, the housing authority is having their groundbreaking for Ravenfield, which is super exciting. So the twenty seventh at 10AM, I plan on attending. So if anybody else can attend, that would be wonderful.

Cool. Thank you. Member Snyder.

Thank you, mayor. I've got a couple things. Bora is continuing to work on improving downtown the best we can, and we do have a, owner's rep for the, landscaping development at Bridge in 85. And if it'd be the pleasure of the board tomorrow night, which I can't see why it wouldn't be, we will be signing a contract to get that project underway at long last. So we're excited about that.

We have one into one issue there that may become an issue in other parts of the city, and that is our new signage. We wanted the sign coming into town, the new bright welcome to Brighton sign to be very large and visible and make a statement. It was designed in at 30 feet. CDOT did not like the size nor the colors. They felt like the colors were going to interfere with street signs. I don't know if we've resolved the color issue or not. We're trying to because we'd like the sign the way it is. That's why we approved it. We they they took us down to 20 feet. We're trying to work it up to 24.

We wanna make a statement there in that West roundabout. Welcome to Brighton. So we'll see how that works out, but that is moving along very nicely, I am happy to say. Today, I attended at noon the legislative wrap up for CML. I'm just gonna go over a few of the bills that got passed or didn't get passed that I think are important to Brighton.

There's a whole bunch that I'm not gonna go over, but this whole packet is listed on their website if you're interested in all the bills and what happened to them. Couple of things that affect us. They were trying to do a statewide bill on massage facilities and how they ran and how they were background checked and that kind of thing. House bill twelve fifty seven passed and was signed by the governor, and that left those regulations up to local codes. So they left it in our hands.

Let's see here. Oh, the adjustment requirement proposition for affordable housing. They passed house bill twenty six thirteen thirteen, and the formula that they came up with is very much more in favor of statutory cities being able to meet the requirements for affordable housing. So that was a a good win for us. Alcoholic entertainment districts, they decided there was just too much vague ambiguity in that, and, it's dead.

May come back next year, but that bill died. They did approve liquor manufacturers to have sample rooms and to be able to pour in their sample rooms. So if you have a brewery or you're making whiskey and you have people come to take a tour, you can actually give them a sample. And there were there was a lot of opposition to that, but they decided it was just fair to let them do that. This one's very nice for us.

They have expanded our ability as a city and as residences to use geothermal energy to heal heat buildings, residents and commercial buildings. So we might wanna have our people look into what possibilities we have for thermal energy to cut our energy bills. Tom would know more about that than I do, but it's nice. Retail theft prevention, they have assigned an advisory board. As we all know, that's a huge problem.

And they've assigned an advisory board to study what we need to do. They tried to pass a bill that on your third strike and not showing up on a personal reconnaissance bond that the judge could require an actual monetary bond. That failed, but this advisory board that they've approved may be able to, to do something about that. Criminal theft of, structural metals, people stripping the, copper out of businesses and all kinds of stuff they're stealing is now a class six felony, so they're hardening that. And, let's see here.

Let me just give you one more. Oh, the traffic safety bill in their schools was going to require a great amount of new signage and postings, and it was gonna be very expensive to the cities. They got them to modify that. We do have to do it, but only on new facilities that are built. The existing facilities are grandfathered, so we're not gonna have to make new steins and repost for every school in the city. So that's really the stuff I thought affected us most. But, again, the CML website has posted the entire, which is four times bigger than what I just quoted. So if you have interested in some more of the bills, you can look at that. Thanks.

Thank you for that update. Next, council member Fiddler.

Thank you, mayor. Just a little bit of a personal privilege. Wanna congratulate the Brighton High School baseball team. They had heck had a heck of a season. They went nineteen and five, 12 and all in the league. They were league champs for the first time in, I believe, twenty four years since 2002. They hosted a regional their regional playoff site, and, they were on a 15 game win streak. And, unfortunately, they hit a hot a hot Chatfield team that ended up winning the regional. So their Chatfield set it off to state. But wanna congratulate those players and coach Tabor. They've had a heck of a season. That's it. Thanks. Great. That's awesome.

Next, mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. Not a lot to report tonight. Tomorrow is the quarterly airport coordinating committee, looking forward to updates on what's happening with noise violations there and what we're able to do to enforce those for the airport. And then I also wanna call attention to the groundbreaking for the Ravenfield Apartment Complex at 27th And Purcell, from the housing authority. That is next Wednesday, and I will be there. So it should be a very cool event. Happy to see that project, get off the ground or into the ground.

Yeah. Very good. Thank you. Council member Tadeo?

Thank you. I don't have much. I'm, going to be attending the doctor Cog meeting tomorrow evening, and I'm looking forward to that. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Green?

Thank you, mayor. I really enjoyed schooling you at Topgolf at the chamber event. You're welcome. I I was out of town last week, so I didn't really do a whole lot. But, you know, the armory is next to the tracks. But this Saturday, it's going off the rails because it's the Aussie Osbourne tribute band is gonna be there Saturday, May 23. Get on that crazy train and get out to the armory. Thank you.

Think, promotions are hiring you. Council member Worth. Thank you, mayor.

So I got to sit in for director Green on the e four seventy board. I'm the alternate there. And there are just some of the highlights. We have the the new gas and convenience locations along the highway where you'll be able to stop for a snack or to fill up on your way to the airport without having to pay a new toll to get back on the the highway. So I I'm enjoying that idea.

Sable Boulevard exit, gonna be opening soon. And we also had a chance to go through the current agreement they have with Colorado State Patrol for patrolling that section of road. The BYC, as far as council member Collins mentioned, they were they've been doing mostly speak week follow-up. One of the, I think, unintended benefits, at least originally unintended benefits from the speak walk has been the recruiting aspect. Every year, we get a lot of kids that that are that come in and help out, and they see what's going on with those other BYCers and they wanna be part of it.

And so there's a big recruitment effort. We did have just yesterday had some interviews with the commissioners with seven new youth commissioners and a couple of adults and really, really good kids. And I know that's a surprise, but really great kids coming in, it looks like. Got to go to the sustainability board meeting. I've got updates on current grants.

And one of my favorites right now is that we're gonna have or that we have a grant that we will be able to rebate money back to electric vehicle purchasers. The feds cut that grant out, and the city's gonna replace that grant. So up to a certain amount. Right? So I think that's a great idea. Right now, Colorado and a lot of people don't realize it, but Colorado in Colorado, last year, 26% of vehicle sales were electric vehicles. So that's surprising to me. It's one of the highest in The US. And so it's it's important that we get the infrastructure out there. So and then last, the Legacy Foundation.

We had our our May meeting yesterday. I had a good meeting. Got presentations from several new applicants for mini grants who will also, I'm guessing, be coming back for official grants come come October. One thing that we just got today that Yvette Martinez sent out to us, and I really appreciate this, is statements of gratitude from some of the people that we or groups that we do grant money to during the year. And let me just read a couple of the highlights from here if I can.

From Brothers Redevelopment who does the Help for Homes program. You know, the funds received supported our Paintathon program. It allows allowed them to provide free exterior painting and yard improvements to the low income older adults and individuals with disabilities in Brighton. Food for Hope, it allows, blah blah blah so we can reach every Brighton resident with the resources that most effectively meet their food needs. Ralston House thanking us.

Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, helping and us connect people of all ages with birds and their habitats. Meals on Wheels, another great program out there providing meals to primarily the elderly that can't provide for themselves in that regard. Junior Achievement, Food Bank of the Rockies, Laredon Hall, who, the mayor gave us a little bit of background on, publicly last, meeting. Just, you know, they mentioned, one of their it says your gift will support people like Vicky, a Brighton resident in our adult day program who had a very difficult time returning to programming after COVID. With support, she'd been able to come back and engage in the meaningful activities that Laredon provides.

So, anyway, it's nice to know that these funds are out there. They're really hitting real people and and, benefiting those around us. So thank you.

Thank you. I love the recap of how these organizations are affecting our community when they give back. So thank you. Councilmember Carbajal.

Thank you, mayor. Just a couple of quick ones. I attended the internship celebration for chords, through twenty seven j. And in general, it's just really cool to see so many people connecting and collaborating in the collective impact. So many City of Brighton departments hosted interns this year. Over two thirty interns went through that program. And so the number of businesses, all of the entities Adams County, City of Brighton. And so a lot of our departments were participating, and that was just really cool to watch. Those kids walk across the stage and then know that, like, all the entities were playing their role. The second one is Garden in a Box.

If you order, don't forget. Tomorrow is pick up for that, and I'm excited to be picking up many plants myself at the Adams County Fairgrounds. And then a reminder I I love that the mayor said earlier, a reminder to us not to water because we've been blessed with the rain, but a reminder to businesses to make sure that you turn off your sprinklers if you're not there in the evening because we are seeing some watering and a lot of noise online. And so if we could all just be diligent, it also goes for businesses in our community as well. And then a personal plug is Vons Vision.

Vons Vision is an organization that I work with that provides eyewear to kids. And it actually does an event here in our community, just right on the edge at Commerce City. And they have a lot of slots left for youth. So if you know anybody who needs new eyewear, they can come and get two new pairs of eyewear for free based on that organization. And I'll figure out how to get that information out so that our community could take advantage because there's a lot of slots left, and it's very close to Brighton. And that's all for me.

Great. Thank you, and thank you everybody for representing well in our community. Next week, we do not have a meeting, and so we will reconvene in two weeks. We are adjourned.