City Council - workshop

Good morning. Welcome to Colorado Springs Work Session Meeting Agenda for Monday 04/27/2026. Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council member Casey.

Here.

Council member Crow Iverson.

Here.

Council member Donaldson. En route. Council member Gold?

Here I am.

Council member Hinjem? Present. Council member Lineweber? Excused. Council member Rainey?

Here.

Council member Risley?

Here.

Council member Williams? Excused. Here.

Oh, she's online. Emily, I don't see that online.

Our understanding is that she is just joining us until her travel arrangements, but here she is. Okay.

So Sarah, can you change that to online?

I have her present. Correct.

Thank you. Moving on to item two. Are there any changes to the agenda today? Today. This is today's agenda.

Then I don't have any changes.

Just stay there though because we're getting there. Are there

are there any I'm making up for the last time.

Are there any changes to the regular meeting tomorrow?

Madam president, Kevin Walker, city planning director. I'd like to postpone, for two weeks item 10 c.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 4A. Will the clerk please read item 4A into the record?

City Council Work Session meeting minutes 04/13/2026.

Are there any changes to the meeting minutes? Seeing none moving on to item 5A. Will the clerk please read item 5A into the record?

Just serve presentation.

Good morning. Good morning.

I am Tammy Farris. I'm the Pikes Peak Regional Specialist for justserve.org. Thank you. We, a few weeks ago, presented a plaque to the city, and I think all of you were here for that. The city qualified for the Just Serve City Award and you asked us to come back and talk a little bit more about Just Serve.

And so that's what we're doing today. I'm gonna talk a little bit about about how it works and exactly what it is. This is our mission. Just Serve is a website. It's a free website and we're involved with connecting people with meaningful volunteer opportunities while giving our community organizations a place to post projects and to reach potential volunteers.

This is our mission. The mission of Just Serve is to spread hope, goodness and unity through volunteerism. I want to point out this is a free website. Most of the websites that are similar to this one are not free. There is a subscription that you have to pay for so this is completely free.

This is where we began. We launched in February 2012 in Silicon Valley and it was designed to help individuals make volunteering a way of life. It began as just a localized effort, a small local website in Silicon Valley and it's grown since that time into a global movement available to community organizations and individuals of all backgrounds. This is our impact and all of us are involved with this are pretty amazed at all that we've been able to do. The platform is currently available in 17 countries and territories and in six different languages.

We get about 70,000 new volunteers to sign up each and every year. In 2025 we reached a milestone 1,000,000 registered users. Now on the website we will have organizations that need volunteers so when you search on the website you can go to organizations and search through the organizations listed alphabetically and if you're wanting to serve with a particular organization you can go through there and choose that organization. Or you can go to projects what we call our volunteer opportunities projects and you can search through the projects that are within your area. You can put in up to 75 miles from your current location.

When you register you put your zip code in there and it will let you search up to 75 miles away from your zip code for opportunities. There are more than 200,000 organizations on the Just Serve platform as of right now. Projects. At any given time there are about 15,000 active volunteer opportunities exist platform which includes virtual projects so if you're not able to physically go to a project there are plenty of virtual projects that you can choose from to be able to volunteer from home.

I have a question from Councilman Hinjum. Sure.

Thank you, madam president. Good morning. Thank you for being here and giving us more information. We saw you, I guess, just a few weeks ago. We're glad you're back. Thank you. Does your organization operate in the reverse direction? Can organizations find volunteers through you?

That's exactly what it's for. The organization they can't go to us and ask for volunteers. They can post their projects on there and then people can sign up. We also have a method for putting out the projects that are available through a social media what we call a social media blitz so that we can get more exposure to that particular project or that particular organization. But they can't come in and find volunteers in a list of volunteers.

I think that was my question. I certainly understand the other way that it works but I was just wondering if it works No in

it does not. We've helped facilitate more than 185,000 volunteer projects worldwide since its inception in 2012. So that's my portion of this presentation. I'm gonna let her introduce herself and let you know a little bit more about how it works.

Good morning Madam President and members of the council. For the record my name is Denise Selick and I am the Just Serve Area Representative for West Colorado Springs and for Teller County. My assignment is to talk about the ease of using the website and the apps. But first I'd like to start out with just some comments that I found from the Mayo Clinic. Volunteerism makes an immeasurable difference in people's lives, both those serving and those being served.

In an online article that they published in August 2023, it states that research has shown volunteer office pardon me, volunteering offers significant health benefits particularly for those older adults. It does so in three ways. It improves physical and emotional mental health and lowers rates of depression and anxiety. It reduces stress and increases productive relaxed feelings. You can imagine the benefit that is for any city who has a population doing those things.

It provides a sense of purpose and reuses valuable skills and talents. It nurtures new and existing relationships which connects community members and residents to the community itself. They have found that this benefit also works particularly well in young adults and older teens and this has actually been proven to reduce suicide rates which is also beneficial to any any residents. It develops a sense of community and a connection to the community which is very vital. To get started on our website, I would love to tell you, as every developer would love to tell you, that there are no glitches.

There are a few and we have worked through those. We have a very dedicated professional staff that works on that. But to register for JustService free, It's extraordinarily easy and it's really fast. You could do it right now sitting there at your desk. It takes just a couple of minutes. You go to justserve.org. You can download it either in Apple or through Google for Android phones and carry it with you wherever you go. I'm not used to using PowerPoint, I'm sorry. You complete a personal profile and that is optional. You can do that or not as you wish.

But it allows you to pick the days and times that you're interested in serving, the types of organizations that you're interested in doing, your skills and talents so that they can make the most of you and that way those things come up when you sign in it populates with those things first and that's very beneficial. When we talked about the number of projects that are on there I don't want you to think that you go on there and you're gonna see 200,000 projects and you're gonna have to sift through those. You don't have to do that. You're going to put in your city, state, your radius that you're willing to travel, or your zip code and it's going to pull up things. If you have registered and put in your interest it's going to populate those things first that you can go through.

So that's an optional thing you can do. You can also search for the projects by name or a type. That is not the most successful manner to do it but it can be done. It can be a little frustrating to go through it that way. But I sit and scroll through what we have available in Colorado Springs and find the things that are my interests and passions and we hope that that's what you'll do as well.

We have a great full time professional staff that work on updating our website and fixing things on a regular basis. They also hear from us regularly. We deal very closely with the organizations and when they have issues or don't know how to put things in themselves every developer tells you that their system is completely intuitive. I've never found one that was completely intuitive but this particular one works very well. We are also their contacts.

If they have issues they can come to us and we help them through them. We connect volunteers to projects and we connect projects to volunteers. The community organizations have a home where they can direct people. They can even set it up so that it goes directly to their website if they want to list their volunteers and nudge them and remind them to be there and to do the things that they need to do. Or some organizations even have vetting systems that they have to go through particularly those who work with young children.

And so those can be done through their websites. So you go to Just Serve, it takes you to the organization and the organization takes you to the website and collects the information that they need to have. It's very simple. I represent a congregation of primarily 70 and 80 year old people and they manage this really well and they're really fast and these are not people that consider themselves techno savvy in any way shape or form. And they don't necessarily have their children and grandchildren there to show them how to do it but they can do it.

So it's very easy. There are virtual projects and there are remote projects so people don't necessarily have to leave their home if that's not something they can do to go do projects. But they can still participate and there are still things that they can do. Anybody over the age of 13 can register in Just Serve. It doesn't cost anything to use the website or the app.

It doesn't cost anything to an organization to list a project. So it's free both ways. Your information is only used within Just Serve. So your information is not sold, it's not given away and it's not used in any other form. We have nonprofit organizations, faith based organizations, educational institutions, local governments, parks and rec for instance, community coalitions, and service organizations.

We do not do political or advocacy programs. We do not work for people who are working for profit. So these are the only stipulations when an organizer comes and says I want to post projects That is sent to one of the representatives and we review it and then it can't be posted until it's been reviewed. They post for free. They get their information for free, and they are reviewed. Do you have any questions on those things? Great, thanks very much.

Good morning council members. I'm Erica Carter. I am adjuster specialist along with my husband for the Southeast area of Colorado Springs. So I'm gonna talk to you, if I can get that going, about the programs and initiatives that we have. So one of the initiatives that we'll begin with is the high school clubs.

And I think that that was a topic recently about with Just Serve. So Just Serve high school clubs are encouraged here in the city. Here, sorry. So the impact on youth, it can be immense. They're established by charter.

They're student run. And then a teacher advisor sponsors those so that there's someone overseeing that. There can be an immense impact on the youth. There's improved self esteem, depression prevention. And then as we know, Surgeon General a while back had proclaimed an epidemic of loneliness which increases suicidality.

This can help with this as students are involved. It improves their leadership skills, their self confidence, and teaches some self discipline as well. They can establish friendships and become more involved in the community. So currently we have some high school clubs at Pine Creek, Liberty, and Dougherty. So those are the three of the schools. And we'd love to start them in other schools as well too. So we're working on that.

Sorry these are

Okay. We have volunteer initiatives and days of service. So most recently, we just had a day of service. I'm gonna go ahead and click for you on that. The global youth day of service, and that was actually this last Saturday. And there were a few initiatives that happened here in in the city, and we're still gathering data from all of those and everything. That generally, although it's the Global Youth Day of Service, it'll last into May. And another one would be the MLK Day of Service. Excuse me. The nineeleven National Day of Service, which also kind of flows over for about a week's worth of events.

We've had one that has been ongoing around nineeleven that has happened down in the city of Fountain over the last several years. And then there's the United Nations International Volunteer Day as well. So we like to promote those and get people involved during those times. There's also the Just Serve City program which you all heard about from Tammy a little bit earlier. And that, excuse me, recognizes the cities that meet certain criteria that are encouraging volunteerism.

So it provides the local governments with support for boosting volunteerism in their communities, recognizes cities and volunteers for their efforts, and participating in the Just Serve City program oh, is that time? I'm sorry.

If you're here.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So recognizes the cities for their efforts as the proclamation that you just received. So there's these different levels.

There's the Just Serve City Award. There's a Just Serve Hero Award that the Just Serve Cities can present to when they nominate someone, to if they've formally committed to promoting and supporting volunteerism. We have some ideas for people that we might be able to nominate for this city. And it's for people that have showed exceptional dedication to promoting and supporting volunteerism and created a culture of service that uplifts individuals and strengthens the neighborhoods. We also have the global Just Serve City Award that is given to a select group of Just Serve cities from around the world.

They're awarded this honor to celebrate exceptional commitment to volunteerism. And it's given to cities with distinguished that they've distinguished themselves through their innovative, consistent, and impactful outreach. So I think I'll just stop right there since we're about at time, and I'll turn the time back over to Tammy for America two fifty.

I have a question from Councilman Casey. Sure.

Yeah, just a quick question. Can you explain how the Just Serve Club works in a high school?

That's a good question. So usually there will be a teacher that sponsors it, But then it's all student run, so then they'll get started on their own. They can begin with a project that they've decided that they want everybody to work on or something that is ongoing throughout the year. So it's really student led. I hope that answers.

I guess the question was more like with the app and signing up on the website and all that. Is there like a, are the clubs on there that they could respond to other things or are they specifically focused on one particular project at a school?

They can be. They can utilize the website to sign up for those projects. Probably Tammy can answer a little bit more of that for you.

Thanks.

Thank you. Okay, I'll turn that over.

The Just Serve clubs, high school clubs are set up by charter. There's a charter that they have to read through and their sponsor and the student leaders that have decided to take on this responsibility have to sign the charter. It has to be submitted to our home office and accepted and then the students have the ability to use the Just Serve website. They're not listed, the clubs are not listed on the website, but they have the ability to register all of the kids if they're 13 or older to go to the website or use the app. The kids usually use the app and find projects that they can participate in.

They don't have to use the Just Their website. They can pick a project that they find within their student body or within their community, whatever area they're in to participate in but they can. Most of them do use the website so it's not mandatory. That's how it's set up. Does that answer your question?

Yes, thank you very

Okay, just very quickly I know we're past our time a little bit. One of the additional initiatives that we have for this year we usually have four service initiatives every year that we support and sponsor but we have an additional one this year. It's America two fifty and in Colorado it's also Colorado 150. And our question for you is what is the city, our city, the City of Colorado Springs planning to do for America fifty, Colorado 150 and how can we help support that effort. If you go to the America two fifty website there are a list of different states who each have a commission designated for their state that helps them decide what they're going to do from community to community.

If you look on the Colorado one hundred fifty, the America two fifty website, they have lists of different projects or opportunities for service that are already going to be happening in the state of Colorado. And there was a couple of them on there that were for Colorado Springs that we figured we could help with but our question of course to you is is there something planned for the city of Colorado Springs that we could help support that you're aware of?

I'm gonna refer to the chief of staff.

I had a feeling you were gonna do that. There's not that I'm aware of yet, but I'm sure there will be something planned. And Tammy, it's good to see you. It's been a while. So I'm happy to reach out to I think I still have your email address so I can find out what is planned. Something will be planned. Just don't know what it is off the top my head.

Okay. If we could help the city provide volunteers for that and we will of course work with with them as well as do our social media blitz to help give more exposure to whatever we're doing.

Thank you. Doug Price from VisitCOS might be able to

have a whole list of things and Colorado Day is August 1 and so we can help you with that.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to be here and present the information about JustServe.

Thank you. We appreciate it. Moving on to item five b. Will the clerk please read item five b into the record?

Visit COS 2025 year end LARC contract update.

Speaking of mister Dick Price.

Good morning, council. President Crowe Iverson and President Pro Tem Risley and Councilman Casey. We haven't had the pleasure of meeting, but welcome and thank you for serving our city. My name is Doug Price, and I'm the President and CEO of Visit Colorado Springs. And I'm here, gosh, it's the end of April and we're gonna be talking about the end of December last year with results for our KPIs.

But I also am prepared to talk a little bit about where we are as a as a city and from a tourism standpoint now and looking forward. So first, let me go to LART report. And so in December 2025, we were down 1.29% actual from 2024. It's been a while since we've been down, and there's and we it's not a surprise because we had been down a number of months last year. But the forty four day government shutdown in October through November really does affect a city like Colorado Springs that depends on government and military travel.

So that was something that we were disappointed in, but it was not a big, big surprise. I can tell you that through February we are down 6.18%. We're waiting probably this week to get the March results. But yeah, the first two months that trend has continued. And I want to just read a little something that I pulled from last Thursday's Longwoods International tracking study of American travelers.

A third, 33% report that higher gas prices are impacting their travel plans, which is up from 21% just a month ago. Of those who intended to travel in the next six months, 41% are now planning to travel to destinations closer to home, and they are now 30% are reducing the number of trips they're taking, and 8% are canceling their their trips altogether. As of June of last year, 94% of American travelers were planning trips over the next six months. That percentage has fallen to 89% which is the lowest level in a year. So the good news is it's still 89% of people that are start that are saying they're gonna travel in the next six months, but it is down in just the last thirty days.

And from an international standpoint, 27% of travelers say that the war in Iran makes them less likely to travel internationally. Among those who reported the war's influence in their international travel, 40% will postpone their international trips, 31% will replace an international trip with a domestic 19% will cancel their international travel altogether. So the silver lining may be for us in Colorado Springs and in The United States in general that people could be staying closer to home and that we could benefit from that from a leisure vacation standpoint. And we'll be happy to answer questions and talk about that. But I thought it was important to let you know that we're we're looking at trend lines and trying to make sure that we're that we're on top of that.

Before I go on, this is this one's kind of important. Is there anybody who has any questions about where we finished and where we're what we're looking at for this year?

Councilman Hinjum. Thank you Madam President. Doug, thank you. I guess I actually do have a very specific question about the international travel you just spoke about. I'm assuming that that questionnaire went to just US citizens or just people.

Yes. That's American travelers.

So we're not looking at international travel to The United States or potentially to Colorado Springs?

No. That that one is just of American travel. Okay.

Thanks.

Mhmm. Councilman Rainey.

Yes. Thank you, madam president. I'm a go back to the previous comment that was made and to the chief of staff. Again, I'll kinda tie all this together. With the upcoming celebration, and I know there's other states, even nearby states, neighboring states. I know South Dakota, Mount Rushmore, they're doing and planning major events. Is there anything that we're doing or that you foresee that's gonna help elevate and bring more tourists in during that timeframe, anywhere between that June and August timeframe?

I do. And I think that one of the things that's significant for us as the people in front of us said, I thought that was a great presentation. I was not familiar with them. I just think that whole idea of volunteerism is a fabulous thing. But because it's our one hundred fifty, the state of Colorado is making a very concentrated effort to do a number of events.

And Amy Long from our staff is representing the tourism sector on the Colorado one fifty, working with the Colorado tourism office on a number of different events that can take place. I do know that for the Pikes Peaker Bus Rodeo, I think it's the July 16, There's gonna be a special one fifty drone show put on, and that is going to take place around the state. So one of the things that that we're we're really looking to do is put itineraries together for people who are either coming to Colorado or are residents and want to look for multiple days of things to do. And so yes, we feel like it's, there really is something for us to capture. And August 1 is Colorado Day.

It's our birthday as state. Yes, thank you. Any other questions about the summer or the LARP tax? Okay, just a few more and then I'm gonna turn it over to Melissa Williams from our staff who's gonna talk about a few things. But our revenue per available room in 2025 was actually down $8.18 compared to 2024.

And the entire front range, we were down $2.78 So that tells us that not only was occupancy down a little bit, but so was the average daily room rate for hotel guest rooms. We attended two more trade shows in 2025 than we did in 2024, and we are on track to exceed that number again for 2026. This is an important slide, and I wanna talk a little bit about a change that's taking place with room nights that are being booked in the group travel segment. The entire difference between 2025 and 2024 is that we were down about 5,800 rooms overall. But there is something that we've changed for 2026 on the way that we're tracking this, and I want to tell you a little bit about what is going on in the industry here.

Councilman Casey, as much as anything, I wanna make sure that you know what it is that we do because in addition to having a Visit COS website to attract visitors to come, we have a sales staff that goes to trade shows and they represent us, as you saw earlier, at about 25 shows last year. They get leads from these trade shows and we hope in many cases that they'll convert into groups that wanna come. But there is a company that's been in the business for a little while and has now really positioned themselves as the go to source for all meeting and event planners and it's called Cvent. And they are the dominant sourcing platform used by meeting planners to distribute leads to not only convention and visitors bureaus, but also to hotels and convention centers, making it the the primary channel. VisitCOS, we invest a lot of money each year into cVent to be very prominent on their site.

And we know as a result of that, leads that historically would have been sent directly to us are now all coming through cVent. So the importance of our visibility on that platform is paramount. Because of this industry shift, the traditional bureau assists and definite bookings no longer really accurately reflect our efforts in this space. Because total bookings now, and what we're gonna be reporting on later this year, total bookings is more of a meaningful measure that that we are working on to attract leads. So I just wanted you all to know that it's this this is a shift in the industry that we've watched for a while.

We continue to invest in, and now our KPIs in 2026 will be a little different than they were in 2025. We work with Charay on that. Okay?

Councilman Hincham.

Thank you madam president Doug. I'm sorry. I don't I I I still don't fully understand the difference between the bureau system, the definites, and and it sounded like this other format that you and others are starting to use is in addition to these two categories. Is that, It did I understand that

is, so a Bureau Assist is when we have received the lead through a third party source like Cvent. There are others, but that is the primary one. Where a definite is where the lead came directly to visit Colorado Springs.

Okay. I understand. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, let me just go here the economic impact overall through the for just the second half of twenty twenty five all combined was nearly a $109,000,000 when you combine conventions, sports, and domestic tours. And with that, I would like to introduce you to Melissa Williams who was our director of marketing. And Melissa's gonna walk through a couple more slides on our website and some marketing efforts and then we'll be available to answer any questions for you. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Alright. I think we're at like seven minutes so I'm gonna breeze through these, but please stop me if you have any questions. So with Google's AI overviews and zero click searches that came on to the field in late twenty twenty three, early twenty twenty four, that completely changed how users interact with content and get information, meaning that they receive answers directly in search results rather than having to click through into websites. And that is directly affecting organizations across the globe, not just Colorado Springs.

But keeping that in mind, looking through how we finished in 2025, our numbers our KPIs ended down year over year consistent with that broader industry pattern. And so that was not a shock but it's never fun to see. However, looking into 2026 since we are through our first quarter, we are seeing some measurable improvements to both users and sessions which is really encouraging. And we don't yet really know if this is kind of the new benchmark that we can start measuring against because it's so unstable, but it is moving in the right direction. We're continuing to monitor this environment really closely and adjusting our content and distribution for visibility to make sure that we are in the AI ecosystem and being discovered throughout with our website.

All right, so for social media activity for 2025, we saw some really good numbers. I do want to point out and flag one thing. For Facebook engagements, that is actually an incorrect bar graph. We accidentally pulled followers for this and now we are measuring engagements and engagements actually were up 68% year over year and we think a lot of that is due to a shift that we have done into more storytelling, more focus on our history and heritage which people are really engaging with well and showing a lot of really good performance in that. Instagram was down a little bit but that is due to them kind of constantly changing what they constitute as an engagement, basing it on time, basing it on scroll and then the algorithm as well.

So we're not overly concerned about that but we are keeping an eye on that as well. Everything else was performing really really well. Alright so we did do a short educational campaign on the value of tourism this year. We ran this from February 2 to March 13 and this was based on data that we received from that resident sentiment survey that we got focusing on tourism, the economic impact, and how it's funded. We used that survey data to guide the language that we used and the visuals as well and we incorporated a twist to kind of a familiar phrase we call this is why we have nice things and we paired that with a really simple illustrative style that was approachable and easy to understand.

Ads were placed programmatically through native ads, meta ads which is Facebook and Instagram and on LinkedIn. It targeted Colorado Springs residents and on some platforms we were able to target likely voters. And we got really, really good performance on that with 1,300,000 impressions, a 1.07% benchmark or excuse me per click through rate which is far exceeding our benchmark of 0.41. And then we also got a lot of traffic to that landing page which was this locals corner that we created to have a collection of the data points that people can dive into more, a lot of trends and things that we could answer more deeply and broadly. We had locals deals and a place that people can actually submit feedback or ask questions to open that direct line of communication.

Now we will be working with our friends at the Pikes Peak Community Foundation to collaborate and build off of their success of our spacious skies to conduct a second survey this summer and we learned last year that council would have liked a lot more involvement and we absolutely agree. So I would love to open up for it doesn't have to be right now if it would more convenient to do it at a later time, but love to get input on any questions that you think would be valuable, any timing that you would find more advantageous. We are more than willing and eager to get that feedback from everyone. A little bit of context. We are doing a short term meetings promo with our sales team, but this is based off of us noting that booking and lead volume is pacing a little behind in 2026.

This is due this means that people are booking with shorter windows within that same year and it's due to several different driving factors such as federal government shutdowns, TSA disruptions, global instability that we've heard about already today, rising costs and food, beverage and wages and it's causing planners to really delay decisions that they're making. The industry forecast that 2026 could actually be pretty flat over 2025. Now this isn't something to sound any alarm bells. That's because analysts actually characterize both years as stabilization years after record breaking post pandemic recovery. So it's it's not a decline as much as kind of steadying after this really immense growth that we saw.

But sustaining group bookings through this stabilization period really protects the lodging tax collections and any of that downstream visitor impact to our local businesses.

We have a question from councilman Rainey.

Thank you, madam president. On the previous slide, and I do see there's a bullet on this slide also. I guess I'm a tie all the last three slides together. I see that you're wanting to put dollars behind ad placements for LinkedIn ads.

Sure.

However, your 2024 and your 2025 numbers on that particular platform are well underperforming. So is there like are you trying because LinkedIn is more of a professional engagement platform, not necessarily, you know, day to day ads. So I wonder, did you look at that to maybe think, hey, should we take those funds and put it into other platforms that are working versus the ones that are not?

Yeah and you bring up a good point. It's very audience dependent. So for for instance, the the value of tourism campaign, this was very that was kind of a business sector that we were trying to target. It's not something that we typically invest in for our leisure market which is one of our obviously our biggest market. But for group business, it can be very very successful and we can do very targeted in inbox messaging and advertising in that way but it's not something that we hold as kind of the gold standard for how it performs. It really just is dependent on who we're trying to connect with.

So in that particular case, you're actually trying to target a very specific group, I e being a business community?

Yes. And we can get really, really granular on that from the type of groups that we're trying to reach to third party planners who work with those groups. It can get very, very

Okay.

Specific, which is nice with LinkedIn.

Okay. Thank you.

Of course.

Alright. So this is obviously to to offset a portion of those rising costs and get planners to actually book within 2026. So in conjunction with that, we also are running a winter promo that we launched with our group sales and this is going to keep running for the foreseeable future to try to get people to book in that November through March window when that is when business is really valuable for our community. And it's you have to meet certain requirements. It has to be a minimum of a 100 rooms and at least two nights and it's up to the discretion of our director of sales and her team as well to make sure that we're getting the most value and bringing in the most economic impact with those groups.

There's a buzzer. Okay. We also ran our first ever winter leisure campaign in q four and q one which was really exciting for us. We it it came out of the gate performing really really well, 6,700,000 impressions with a click through rate of point 56%. And with that, we actually did we have invested in attribution data where we can tag this media so we can see a sample.

So the sample of 2,800,000 measurable impressions, we saw that we saw nearly 15,000 observed visits come directly from those advertising initiatives. So this is something that we can take as kind of our first blush out of the gate and build upon for future years that feels very, very exciting to finally be year round marketing to help lift those shoulder seasons which directly supports our overall goal of driving more visitation during those shoulder seasons. Alright. You brought up two fifty one fifty and we actually do have a lot of really exciting activations and initiatives that we are bringing forward this year. Doug mentioned our local organizing committee that meets regularly.

There's lots of state activations from the Colorado Tourism Office. We have a Colorado Springs Culture Pass that we're doing with the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum that really celebrates the history and heritage and commemorates that with different quiz like things that people can do on their phones. And the VCOs team is working really hard on media outreach, blog posts, social content that we're generating. And in case you missed it, one thing that came to fruition from that was Colorado Springs being featured from the top of Pikes Peak America's Mountain from Good Morning America and that was from efforts from the Colorado State Tourism Office. Pikes Peak of course worked really hard to make that happen and our team as well.

So that was something that was really exciting for for our whole community. Now lastly, this was some data that kinda came in and came together last minute, so apologies for sending it last week. But we have a new and exciting dataset that we're starting to dissect in our partnership and collaboration with Pikes Peak. We partnered with them to analyze their visitor data for the entire year of 2025 and that was in order to build a measurable understanding of who exactly visits one of our most iconic attractions and landmarks and compare that against other independent data that we collect and incorporate that into our strategies. There were no major surprises.

Obviously visitation concentrated really into the summer and on the weekends. 37% actually were on the weekends with the third busiest day being on Friday, so those weekend travelers. And then Texas leads that out of state market. Now one thing you might notice is Pikes Peak gets a lot more traffic than a 190,000 people a year and that's because there was a lot of gaps in the data and one area for improvement for this is to actually require state and zip collection for every visitor because that was missing. So this was the only set that we could actually gather from that data.

We're going to see meet with Pikes Peak and see if we can require those fields as well as maybe incorporate a timestamp to get some intraday analysis to really help with understanding the high times when people are coming, maybe help with capacity planning. And then the final steps is really work on this to lift that visitation in those shoulder seasons. Get them there more in the fall for the leaf peeping and kayaking as well as winter to do snowshoeing and new offerings that they're coming with things like the Tubing Hill and make sure that we're really aligning that goal of pushing the visitation to those shoulder seasons to help with the sustainability of it and our local businesses who get the benefit from that as well.

I'm guessing your shoulder season is the mud season up in the mountains, right? And maybe you already said that, but I must have missed it. Can you give me the dates of what your

This was for 2025 shoulder season. Oh, shoulder seasons? Yes. So that would be the fallwinter. So that would be, I would say, early October through early March is really where we're focusing those efforts. Thank you. Absolutely. So next we'll be comparing this data with our other data sources to make sure that we have the most accuracy and incorporate those findings into our ad strategy and into different collaborations and activations with Pikes Peak itself to help do that lift. I believe that concludes. Any questions on any of the stuff I kind of breezed through?

I don't see any. Thank you.

All right. Thank you so much for your time.

Moving on to item 5C. Will the clerk please read item 5C into the record?

Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC 2025 LART contract update.

Good morning. I'm Dani Boling, Chief Operating Officer at the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC. Thank you for having us today. Thank you to President Carriverson and all of Council, and welcome to Councilmember Casey. We look forward to working with you.

I'd like to start with this slide just to level set on our LARC contract. Whereas the chamber has programs for business attraction, business retention, and expansion to increase local jobs, programs for business tourism and site selectors to visit the Pikes Peak region, and marketing programs to raise national awareness for the Pikes Peak region as a desirable location to work and live. And whereas by attracting visitors, promoting business tourism, and supporting economic development activities, this program will fulfill the purposes of the LART. Quick look at the Chamber EDC. Our mission is to grow business, fuel innovation, and drive prosperity.

We are the go to voice for business leadership and collaboration, and we drive growth through development, defense, and advocacy, and we deliver results that move our region forward. We're proud to host the Pikes Peak Housing Network and the Pikes Peak SBDC. So I'm gonna start off with Space Symposium. We just finished that. This is the largest economic development lead generator for our team.

And throughout the week our team was able to gather seven economic development project leads, 20 business retention and expansion meetings, and nine leads for our Colorado Aerospace and Defense Economic Council. We also announced a company that chose to expand into El Paso County SelectTech, creating 150 jobs at an average annual wage of 85,927. For the fourth year in a row, we led the community campaign. While we have those 12 to 14,000 visitors in Colorado Springs, we wanna tell the why Colorado Springs story. So we do this through multiple activations throughout the community.

You can see some examples here on the screen. But we partner with hotels. Thanks to the Broadmoor, they allow us to place a piece of in room collateral in every single hotel room that highlights stats and data on the

key

industry. We have a welcome video that plays on every in hotel TV when you turn it on that has kind of a sizzle reel of all that there is to do in Colorado Springs. And we had some participating hotels in their lobbies as well. Mayor Yemi and our CEO, John O'Reeder Klemmeyer, provide a welcome message at the airport. We have Downtown Tejon banners.

You can see some signage throughout the airport and baggage baggage claim. And we work with a chamber and EDC member for billboards on I 25 to capture that DIA traffic. So our goal is from this the moment you arrive into our community throughout your entire experience, you're being fed some of this messaging throughout. We also like to thank our city of Colorado Springs and El Paso County partners for the street cleanup provided. We always like to say we like to clean up our house before we have some guests visit us.

For the first time, our Source Colorado Springs program, which is our national PR lead, we held a national and international media briefing. And this was a moment so that we could, again, leverage the attention with the eyes on Colorado Springs to tell that story of what makes us unique. So we had an all star lineup of a panel moderated by Andy Merritt with One Funds and leadership from industry experts in Bluestack, Infinity Systems Engineering, L3 Harris, Sierra Space, and we were also joined by General Hyten. You can see some examples of the outlets in the room on the side, and we've already earned 19 national media placements from the likes of Washington Times and Bloomberg and so forth. The the one anecdote I'd like to share too is that the Space Foundation commented that this is the first time this has been done as well.

So we're excited to lean in on and just leverage these opportunities as we have them in our community. Earlier in the year, we announced our intent to file an amicus brief. Now this, from a PR standpoint, our goal here was to separate our region from state level political disputes and position our region as a future forward ready partner for missions like Golden Dome. Thank you to president Crowe Iverson for your participation in this strategy. We executed a coordinated advocacy campaign, an op ed.

We had the press conference. We had direct outreach to the White House, federal delegations, and so forth. And this elevated the region again on that national stage to be a collaborative partner and to be thought of when it comes to basing decisions and projects like Goldendome. A look at some of the earned media on this strategy as well. Political Pro Air and Space Forces featured an interview with Congressman Crank and Payload.

We also had quite a bit of local coverage as well and multiple outlets that picked up the story throughout that week. Another unique asset that we pitched earlier this year was our Broadmoor winter polo. And a reporter from Sports Illustrated found this interesting and wrote an article about So we were excited to get that top tier news coverage and keep highlighting what's unique about Colorado Springs. Here's a look at our economic development team. Part of their work is to go hunt and gather, building those relationships with site selectors and industry key leaders at various conferences.

Now the next part of my presentation I'd like to spend on our branding initiative. And I kind of teed this up a little bit at my last presentation. And our goal here is to from a business standpoint, we have to be telling our story in a unified way. A couple years ago, presented our perception study to you all where we pulled future prospective talent and businesses and site selectors to see what they thought about Colorado Springs. And the main takeaway were if they knew us at all, it was primarily for vacation and tourism.

But there was no awareness from the business side. No one knew they could launch a career here. They did not know our strong key industries and so forth. So what we wanna do with our unified brand is to establish Colorado Springs in the Pikes Peak region as a premier national destination for business investment, talented workforce, and we wanna complement the work of Visit Colorado Springs and help bring in business conferences in our key industries. The work done at the end of last year, in the interest of time, I won't go into all of that, but at a high level, wanna just let you know the the science that went into the art.

We worked with a Vladimir Jones, a Colorado Springs headquartered agency, to help us with this work. And they conducted a series of stakeholder groups with our business community, our key industry leaders, representatives from hospitality, sports, arts and culture, military, and young professionals. They then took those findings of what are our opportunities, challenges, and all of that information and tested that nationally with focus groups, one on ones. And they tested everything from words, tone, fonts, colors, the whole nine to get us to where we are today. I'd be happy to share any of that with you all at another time if you're interested.

So the community has changed. It's time for the brand to change too. We're entering a new chapter, and this is the signal to the market. So as I mentioned, Source Colorado Springs is our program that is leading this effort. And I wanted to take a moment just to read through this slide. This kind of is the north star of the summation of all the findings that we had. So why are we here? Colorado Springs exists to expand what's possible for people, for ideas, and for the future they're daring enough to build. We bring breathing room for ideas with the infrastructure, talent, and business opportunities and community to turn them into reality. How will we do this?

We have space to create, diverse engine of innovation, a culture of why not and growth with intention. And we're boldly optimistic, grounded and approachable, inventive, and credible. This is just a look and feel at the visual system. As you can see, this will be used for our website and some of the advertising and different messaging that we're putting out to those various target audiences. And it is a new look and feel.

It is more modern and it is more bold, but we want that bold confidence, and that is intentional. So now I wanna read to you our brand manifesto. This is the the vibe. This is our new swagger. This is how we're talking about ourselves, and this is going to be the foundation for all of our messaging going forward as we're reaching out nationally in that unified voice. Welcome to Colorado Springs. Curious minded explorers, a place where never been done gets done plenty. Got a winning mindset? Ambitious aims? The ability to lead the next generation of talent?

Good. You found your people. People who welcome everyone with open arms. People who turn ideas into impact. People who have helped make Colorado Springs one of the best business climates in America. It's this mindset that has allowed us to break molds and play by our own rules. We don't accept labels nor do we chase them. We think, we build, we collaborate. And we move forward with main character optimism without waiting for permission or applause. We are Colorado Springs.

So one of the biggest wins is when everyone is telling the same story with confidence. That's when the market starts to believe us. Now I'm gonna walk you through a couple examples of mock ups of what this messaging can look like out in the wild. We have mock ups now, but we are launching our website and more assets in May, May 18. So I just want to say that before you look at these, some of these R Stock photos.

So again, with looking at our target audiences, they travel a lot. These could be some airport activations. Here, never been done is all we do. If your goals are to move mountains, might we provide a little inspiration? A culture of why not, an obsession with what if, talent that raises the bar and can drop down and give you 20.

You'll barely notice the five star conference rooms. A workforce that stood on the world stage can handle your boardroom. From podiums to boardrooms, our workforce knows how to win. A workforce that's as good as gold. A clear nod to our Olympic pride here in Colorado Springs. Welcome to the training ground for new thinking. Now every region is saying similar things, but this is how we stand out. Everyone claims innovation. Everyone has their own quality of life and great talent pool, but very few own a distinct and memorable narrative. So we look forward to training spokespeople.

We will be having media training for for folks and our business leaders so that everybody is singing from the same songbook we like to say. We'd love to see when the Olympics are back, we'd love to see the athletes not only saying hi to their mom but using some of our messaging in those national platforms. Our business leaders are asking how they can help. When they're recruiting nationally, they can use messaging in their job descriptions, in their recruiting as they're doing their own speaking engagements. They're And then finally, last but not least, I'm very proud to share that through proactive outreach and partnership, we helped bring the twenty twenty six Credits and Incentives Symposium by Institute of Professionals and Taxation to Hotel Polaris this November, generating an estimated four fifty to five twenty five room nights plus additional spending that supports our hotels, restaurants, attraction, and of course our LART tax base.

The attendees are business leaders and tax incentive professionals who influence future corporate site decision making, so this is very valuable beyond just this one event. Our organization, the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC, alongside the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, will also be featured in the state and local EDO showcase highlighting the Integris Colorado Springs Manufacturing Center of Excellence as a national case study in CHIPS Act driven economic development and advanced manufacturing growth. With that, I would be happy to take any questions.

Councilman Hincham.

Thank you, Madam President. Hey, good morning.

Good morning.

Yeah, I guess my question is, and maybe you said it and I missed it or was distracted, but why why did you feel the need for a rebrand?

Sure. So the our board and our board of directors and our stakeholders have been asking how can we tell our story? How can we be aligned in our messaging? We found that that information from the perception study. And we also have other data that has been telling us that we need, from a business community standpoint, to be speaking the same language.

We we know that we have many uniques in our military assets, in our hospitality, and all of our key industries, but there is no alignment in how we're telling that story. So if our goal and part of our LARP mission is to be that national storyteller, we need trained spokespeople to be able to be aligned in that messaging.

Okay. Thanks, Danny. And and does that mean I mean, will you no longer be the Colorado Chamber and EDC? You'll be Source?

No. Great question. No. We are still the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC. Source Colorado Springs is a program that we've stood up to manage this work. Okay. Just to have it helps with reporters. It helps to have that kind of one point of contact of contact expert.

Okay. Thank you, Dan.

You're welcome.

Councilman Lineweaver.

Thank you.

So when I think about LART and I think about tourism and I think about the business community, I'm constantly challenged because we have some challenges. We don't have the airport that a lot of cities our side might have. We have the meeting space. So how are you addressing some of those challenges and how are you trying to target certain market groups? How are you coming alongside Visit COS and partnering with them and their efforts, and then also at the same time you've got the Broadmoor who runs their whole program also.

What is your secret sauce? What are you adding that kind of helps us drive tourism?

Sure. Great question. So I'll try and break it down in a

couple

responses. To start with the airport, we have a great asset in Colorado Springs Airport. However, we also have Denver International Airport just up the road within I think it's 60 to 75 miles. So from an international standpoint and the connectivity that we have, absolutely are able to market that as well. When it comes to partnering with Visit Colorado Springs, we have a great relationship and a great rapport with them.

Our team has sat down with Dina Werthin several times to talk about how we can complement our work and share leads with one another. Our goal really is to just generate leads and and and so that we have more sales tax base. Where we find our opportunity and what we can bring to the table is our key industries. The example I shared with the tax credit symposium is is special and unique because it supports LAR and sales tax, but it also has site selectors and corporate decision makers here that our economic development team can work with on future deals. So another opportunity that we've discussed is we haven't it's just in planning mode yet, so I don't want to go too far, is that we've talked to Visit COS about hosting a FAM tour, a familiarization tour here where we can bring meeting planners who make those decisions in our key industries and have them come here, visit the hotels, and ultimately hope to plan a conference here.

Now when it comes to size, and again, Visit Colorado Springs is the expert, we have been told that sweet spot is like the 500 number of attendees. So while it might not be the big space symposium all the time, a lot of these associations, especially the industry associations we speak with and participate in, have special leadership group spin offs that are a couple 100 people, board retreats, those kinds of things. So even though there we might not be able to accommodate tens of thousands all the time, there are lots of associations with different segments spin off. We were also approached to help with the Women in Economic Development Conference next year, but we just couldn't make the numbers work to be prudent with ROI. But those are the kinds of opportunities out there.

I think there's there's plenty. And again, I would I would turn to Visit COS to to be the expert there. But that is how we work well together. Think Space Symposium is another great example where we both had a booth there and we sent each other leads all the time. Are you here for business or pleasure? And we could send one another back, share talking points, that kind of thing.

I guess what I'm looking at is I'm trying to understand I don't see the list, you know, like what what are all the medium sized business groups that you've been kind of bringing in and stuff? I think that's I'm looking for tangibles, you know, just, you know, things that I can actually like go, oh, yeah, this looks good, this looks good. Sure, yeah. Because I understand, again, understand our limitations. We don't have a convention hall.

We have Broadmoor, but that can be limited. But that's I think, what I'm trying to get at is try to understand how are we growing. I wanna see how we're growing business tourism. So if we're fitting this niche market or this medium group size thing, what are some of the organizations or events that we're getting? You know, like if we were looking at the sports side, we had the jump rope tournament. That was a unique thing that we were able to bring in here, and it was hugely impactful, right?

Yes.

So I want to hear something Yes, like

sure. Yes, I hear you, Councilman Lineweaver. Thank you for the question. And I want you to know our team has lists like that, and we collaborate quite a bit with VisitCOS. But some examples where we think that could be some stones unturned would be things in the cybersecurity sector. We have our Caddock that's now stood up, and we have those members saying, we're always going to this conference in Huntsville. It's 200 people. We should have it here in Colorado Springs. That's great. Let us know. Can you make a connection? Can we loop in our con convention visitors bureau? So our key industries, aerospace and defense, cybersecurity, and advanced manufacturing, we're talking to those business leaders saying, where are you attending? What shows are you going to? How many people are in them?

And do you have a point of contact? Can we name drop you and say, we'd love to we'd love to host you here to show it off? So that's how we're trying to lean in and complement the work of the conferences piece. We think that there is a huge opportunity in business tourism aside from Space Symposium. There's so many associations. I mean, we were brainstorming recently on like a shoe. So you know, there's like association for everything. So why aren't they being held here, especially if they're in that 200 to 500 range? Another thing I wanted to say is you mentioned the Broadmoor earlier. From a PR standpoint, we actually collaborated with VisitCOS on this too.

We had a lead from a business facilities magazine that is target audience is meeting planners. And so we were able to secure a feature with Jack DeMulley talking about why mid sized cities are primed for conferences due to cost and amenities and so forth. So again, that constant drumbeat of telling that story of we're here, we're open for business, and you all should be here is part of our strategy.

Alright. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah. Thanks, madam president. Good morning, Danny.

Good morning.

Can you just remind me what's the contract? What's the dollar amount annually for Chamber of

Sure.

Yes. $750,000.

Okay. And then, you know, I think I agree that what would be really useful is for us to have a way to understand which organization that we fund is responsible for various events that are brought here or tourism. Because that's what we would wanna do. It would make sense that we increase the funding for the organizations that are ROI. The dollars that we provide are turned into trips here and conventions.

And so I guess I would be interested in that too maybe at your next presentation, which ones are tied directly to chamber EDC? Or can you not separate out what you're doing from what VisitCOS does?

Yes. I'm absolutely happy to prepare that. And I can share too, I had six conversations last year that were folks that approached us and asked some questions and went a different way for whatever reason. But we have all that tracked and I'm happy to share that.

Okay. Thank you.

It

looks like that's it. Okay. Very good.

Thank you

for your time this morning. Thank you. Moving on to item six a. Will the clerk please read item six a into the record?

Audit. Excuse me. City audit. Review of concerns involving an elected official.

Good morning, Natalie. Good morning.

Thank you. There's some handouts coming around. I'll give those just a second. Good morning President Crowe Iverson, Pro Tem Risley and members of City Council. I'm Natalie Lovell, City Auditor.

Before I move into the details of what I want to cover with you, I want to explain why I'm standing here in front of you to review our prior report. After our report was released regarding the concerns of an elected official, I received several comments from many of you across council. Normally, we do not always get too many questions, and so in this case, I wanted to bring it in front of all of you and have an open dialogue, so that you could all hear all of the information at once together. Some of you are seeking clarification about the findings of how the city policies apply to elected officials, and to make everyone, aware of the same information were up here today. My goal today is simply to walk through what was reviewed, what we found, and the options that council may want to consider as we are moving forward.

I'll begin with the purpose and authority. Under city code 12,703, the city auditor is responsible for ensuring the administrative officials are held publicly accountable for their use of public funds and city resources. The auditor is also tasked with determining whether laws are being administered in the public interest and identifying any potential abuses or discretion or errors in judgment, and it is under this authority that we investigated a review of fraud, waste, and abuse from a hotline report. The review focused on a hotline report that raised allegations involving an elected official. Although elected officials are not considered city employees for purposes of personnel policies, the allegations related to city assets and resources which placed them within the authority of the city auditor.

Councilman Hinjem.

Thank you, madam president. Natalie, just could you say if that report on the hotline was anonymous or not?

It it was anonymous. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.

The report contained two actionable allegations involving the elected officials' use of city resources. The first allegation was that members of the elected officials' security detail were completing tasks on behalf of the official that may not have been related to city business, and the second allegation was that the elected official used a city issued vehicle for personal purposes. Because, again, both of these allegations involved the use of city owned resources, they fall within the auditor's authority under city code 12703, and we proceeded to review them. Moving into the findings. First, regarding the use of security detail, we identified five instances in 2025 in which the elected official was accompanied by a member of their security detail.

They included two instances of picking up their children from school, one instance where they attended the child's elementary school graduation, and two instances of picking up dry cleaning. Second, regarding the personal use of city owned vehicles, we confirmed that between May and June 2025, a city vehicle assigned to the elected official was used by the official's spouse for a total of 152.5 miles. The finance records confirmed the use was subsequently reported and the appropriate IRS fringe benefit reporting was completed. These findings reflect only what we could substantiate based on available records and documentation. In addition to these specific instances, I want to provide important context on how we evaluated the findings.

Our report notes that the security detail activities we observed could be viewed as incidental in the course of the official's day to

day

responsibilities. However, the fundamental challenge we encountered is that there are no existing city policies that define what is or is not permissible for an elected official's security detail. As city auditor, I am required under our professional standards to evaluate evidence against established criteria. In this case, there was no policy criteria to evaluate against, and that lack of criteria directly informed my conclusions. In short, the absence of a policy is itself a finding.

In our fraud, waste, and abuse work, when we find substantive evidence that an activity more likely than not occurred, we would normally involve human resources and the city attorney's office. But in this situation, elected officials are not considered city employees under the city personnel policy, and therefore, those policies do not apply. Because elected officials are ultimately held accountable to the public rather than through employee based processes, I made the decision to share the results publicly so that council and the community have information needed to make their own evaluation and consider clear policy guidance where it may be warranted. I'll now move into our conclusions and recommendations. Under our professional auditing standards, we must assess evidence against clear established criteria.

In this review, we found that the city currently has no policies defining what an appropriate what is appropriate for elected officials' security detail nor policies addressing the personal use of city assets by elected officials or their family members. I also want to briefly acknowledge the role of the city's independent ethics commission simply as part of the broader governance landscape. The ethics commission administers the city's code of ethics for certain covered individuals. Our review was conducted strictly under the fraud, waste, and abuse framework. Because there was no policy framework to evaluate the conduct against, the absence of criteria became the basis for my conclusion.

We could not determine compliance or noncompliance because nothing existed for which to measure against. In our fraud, waste, and abuse work involving employees, when we substantiate that an activity more likely than not occurred, we typically involve human resources, as I said, and the city attorney's office. That process is not applicable here because elected officials are not subject to personnel policies. Elected officials are accountable directly to the public. For that reason, I determined that releasing the results publicly was the appropriate path so that the community and council could evaluate the information.

At the time the report was issued, our recommendation was directed to the administration to develop a clear and enforceable policy to address these gaps, which reflects how similar guidance has historically been created. As council considers this information, it may also wish to explore whether addressing these issues through ordinance to city code would provide clear or more consistent standards for elected officials as a whole. That is an option available to city council as part of the policy making authority. The audit committee reviewed this work additionally and strongly recommended that the administration establish a clear and enforceable policy governing elected officials' use of city resources, specifically police detail and city vehicles to ensure transparency, accountability, and consistency. And just as a reminder, as this is the case, we do administer the city administers the anonymous fraud, waste, and abuse hotline, and so I want to share that with the public because this is a good time to advertise that.

With that, I'll take any questions.

Councilman Hanjem.

Thank you, madam president. My question actually is for, the chief of staff that's on the dais. There's one in the audience as well. I would like to know what the administration's response to this recommendation is.

Right now I will say that a policy is going to be developed to address these issues. Okay. And

how, will you be gathering any input on the creation of that policy? How will that policy be developed?

We will definitely be gathering input and it's really in the early stages right now. We just had one meeting about it last week, and so very early on in those stages. So I don't want to say specifically how we're gonna go about getting all that data just yet, but we will be gathering data.

Well, would like to offer some input actually, just myself right now. And that is, and I think having a policy is completely appropriate and necessary and appreciate that out of this report came that identified need. I also want to say that I do policy takes into account that in this particular case, elected official being the mayor, that a mayor with a young family who has a life to live and who's working nonstop from the time he gets up until the time he puts his head on a pillow. He's working also to try and maintain a marriage and a family and kids in school. And that's this particular mayor.

Who knows what the next mayor might situation might be, but I think what whoever the mayor is, we need to take into account that that position is profoundly demanding and that with security detail how you function and manage and take care of a family, live your life and take care of your needs needs to be incorporated into that policy I guess is suggesting. What My hope is that you get input from a broader group of people who would be interested and that would take into account the entire aspect of being a human in an elected position. Thank you.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you Madam President. On slide five, I just have a clarification question, more maybe just education. The last sentence states the finance records confirmed the use of subsequently reported and the appropriate IRS benefit reporting was completed. Does that go directly from the member to the IRS? Does that go through the the city clerk? Does that go through the CFO? Like, who's the, I guess, the city organization that would have to report that?

In this case, the elected official reported it to the payroll department, and then they Okay. Calculate

Thank you.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, madam president. Thanks, Natalie, for your, report this morning. I I do have a couple of clarifying questions that I was hoping you could help me answer. The report indicates a security detail in a number of locations, but then at the end in the recommendation it talks about a police detail. In your findings, was this are these individuals sworn police officers?

Yes. They would be sworn police officers to the best of my knowledge.

Okay. So we've got sworn police officers driving and and again your report didn't specifically say mayor, but by my count there are 10 elected officials in the city of Colorado Springs, nine council members, and one mayor. And and to my knowledge, the mayor is the only individual that has a police detail. So is it fair to assume that we're we are in fact talking about the mayor council member Hemgen mentioned the mayor? I think it's

I can confirm it's the mayor. Yes.

So we've got sworn police officers driving the mayor to various city events and then they're making pit stops along the way to pick up dry cleaning or kids or things of that nature. That's

correct.

I would say that's 's correctly characterized.

Can you talk a little bit about how you documented that information?

I can go into a little detail. I prefer not to go into too much details. We like to protect our processes. But in this particular case what we do, as is the case with any fraud, waste and abuse, we begin by doing interviews. And in this particular case, we started interviewing and searching for records. Sometimes those records are, as Councilmember Rainey mentioned, say payroll records that include the fringe benefits. And in this particular case, a lot of the information came from interviewing, various police detail or the police officers that are on the detail.

Okay. Thanks.

Do

you, and I I guess a similar process was followed in terms of documenting the use of a city vehicle by the mayor's spouse.

Yes. Absolutely. We would interview. We interviewed the payroll team and requested their records as is our normal process.

Okay. And can you talk a little bit more about the difference between your audit and what the ethics commission may or may not do with something I'll like

I'll default to the attorney here in a minute, fill fill in the blanks if you will, if I get out of bounds. I think the real distinction and between us is this, and I

think I mentioned it in the presentation, we administer the hotline through the fraud, waste, and abuse. And you saw that reference to the city code, I think one

twenty

seven-three, versus the ethics commission is really has its own process. It has a hearing. It has its own they're evaluating whether or not something that might come out for a covered person is through the ethics is a violation of that ethics process. And I don't know if the attorney would like to add anything more. Probably didn't explain it perfectly well.

Sarah Bruin, city attorney's office. So the code of ethics is administered by the Independent Ethics Commission. Therefore, if there is an allegation of a an ethics code violation, the Independent Ethics Commission is tasked with evaluating that and, forwarding that to city council for a determination. The reason the Independent Ethics Commission is responsible for code of ethics violations is because there is a due process requirement that attaches to those types of allegations because there is the potential for a fine to be imposed as one of the sanctions that's authorized. Therefore, that process is built into the Code of Ethics and the reason why code of ethics is administered separate from allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse.

And I guess my final question, just going back to the police detail and perhaps even the use of of the vehicle by the mayor's wife, Does your investigation or did your investigation contemplate or take into account the cost associated with this? In other words, what what how much money is being spent by the taxpayers every year for this type of use of city resources?

Not entirely. I mean, I I think that we always have that angle that we look at. But in this case, you know, we had already looked at and seen that the mayor had reported out on the 153.5 miles, I think is what it was, as the fringe benefits. And so, yeah, we didn't completely, but that's not out of the realm. We sometimes do take our requests and look at it from that perspective.

Okay, thank you. Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, madam president. Just on the aspect of mayor's wife driving the city vehicle, and how will the executive branch create these policies? There are policies already in place, for example, the chief of police and the fire chief. Right?

That's correct.

And are there spouses allowed to drive those vehicles?

To the best of my knowledge, I do not believe any city employees,

whether that's the fire

chief, myself, would be allowed to do that.

Okay. So I you know, just there's a recommendation that I think it should be across the board, Others than that individual who's been elected shouldn't be driving the vehicle. And it certainly shouldn't be used for activities that aren't related to their office as a mayor. And I guess that's all I have for right now. Thanks.

Councilman Hinjem.

Thank you, I just wanted to ask is there a question at play here based on other council members' comments? Are we questioning the need for security detail for our mayor?

I'm not sure I could answer that question. I think that would be for your fellow council members Just wanted

to know if that was a question being posed at all.

I think that might be a question. Sorry. I'm not sure.

Alright. Thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Thank you. This kind of opens up a little bit because I know the way that auto insurance works, it's the named driver that is insured. And so technically speaking, when a spouse drives a car of an employee of the city, that spouse I don't believe has coverage. That's what I'm kinda concerned about. I mean, there's gotta be some kind of liability that's connected with that insurance component of having an unauthorized driver drive vehicle.

And I wonder if there's, like, some kind of liability risk that was put did did the city get put at risk, I guess?

I'm gonna default to the attorney, but I'm gonna say, you know, potentially. Right? So perhaps the city attorney could weigh in on the liability.

Sarah Brun, city attorney's office. The city does maintain a number of liability policies. I don't know specifically if for motor vehicles who they cover, but that would be a question for our risk department to assess whether or not a spouse would be covered.

Well, think that's and really to Councilman Donaldson's point, I think that should be probably the leading reason why a non named driver should never be allowed to drive a city vehicle. I think we can definitely go down that insurance route and talk about the liability issues. So thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Thank you Madam President. And Natalie, you looked at the specific allegations that were made by the person that called the hotline, correct?

That's correct, yes.

And no more. So I guess my question is, do you know or are you aware, has anyone asked about other uses of that city vehicle that would to just common sense not be appropriate? Perhaps used for a vacation or out of state travel not related to mayoral duties?

At this point, I would prefer not to answer that question.

Okay, can I rest assured that those kind of things are being looked at by someone?

I can give you assurance that yes, at this time we are looking at things. Anytime something comes through the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline, you can have assurance that we look at it. And then, of course, as you know, the audit committee, we put out a quarterly report on the disposition of all of And

that's just my thought is I'm sure you did a thorough job on what was specifically reported, but do I or someone else need to raise the question, are there other incidents of, I would say inappropriate use of a city vehicle?

What I can say is as we get additional or if there are any kinds of fraud, waste, and abuse reports that council has any, interest in, we could certainly bring them forward like we did with this one for you all to evaluate. The process remains the same. We anonymously administer the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline. We investigate every, actionable item that comes through here, and we would continue to follow this process, whether that's going up through human resources in the city attorney's office or

Okay.

If it's an elected official, it will be a public report.

Because we're we're in this little gray zone now where there's been something which has been reported and and investigated, and I think we most people would say it's inappropriate. There is no guideline yet to say it on black and white on paper. You're not allowed to do this. So have there been my question, and I understand you can't answer it today, are there more examples like this and how do we find out about that? But thank you.

Thank you.

I don't see any other questions at this time. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to item six b. Will the clerk please read item 6b into the record?

Agenda. Agenda planner review.

Are there any questions or additions to the upcoming agenda planner review? Councilman Hinjem?

Yes. Actually, I do have a question about the item related to city forestry on the agenda planner. And I I guess it's just a request that I learn a little bit more before that work session. Maybe someone, the head of city forestry, could reach out to me, and I could understand more what that's about.

I'd be happy to set something up. Yes. Great.

Thank you very much.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah. Thanks, madam president. I I just wanna point out for citizens because I know there's a good bit of interest about this that in regards to the Boulder Street vacation or Palmer High School, that issue, that is on our agenda planner for our regular meeting on May 26. And also on that same meeting on May 26 is the ordinance regarding adult and child daycare centers, the changes to that, and its neighborhoods are involved in that also. So thanks.

Moving on to item seven a. Will the clerk please read item seven a into the record?

A resolution authorizing the use of possession and use agreements in eminent domain to acquire real property, permanent easements, and temporary easements using Brookside realignment project using PPRTA funds. Good morning, Gail.

Good morning. Gail Sturtevant, City Engineer Deputy Public Works Director. Thank you President Krewar Everson, President Pro Tem and the other members of council for having me today. Today I am joined by Kelly Billingsley, the City's Real Estate Services Manager, our Real Estate Consultant Brad Rothenberg and I'm also joined by one of the property owners of the properties we're gonna be discussing today, Danny Mianka. The purpose for me coming before you today is to discuss a resolution authorizing the city to use possession and use in potentially eminent domain to be able to acquire five properties for the Brookside realignment project.

To orient you to where this project is located, there is a map shown on your screen. Up on the page is north on the orientation of the map. That red rectangle designates the project location. It happens to set due West of Nevada Avenue and approximately one block or and one block South of Motorway. The five properties that are in question are directly adjacent to Nevada Avenue to the west.

This map is color coded before you. The blue represents what would be future right of way to be used for the road realignment. The purple represents what would be a public improvement easement that would be used for sidewalk and other ancillary improvements for the roadway. And then the orange is a temporary construction easement. As I mentioned, these five properties, three of the five are owned by Danny Mianke, who as I mentioned joined us today, and he has been in support of us taking this approach for possession and use.

And we'd also like to use it for the other two property owners. And the reason being, just in the nature of these properties, it's going to take us a while to be able to come to a settlement on valuation, but it's going to be important for the project to be able to get all the properties together at one time to be able to complete construction. I will mention and I'll mention it again later on that all these property owners will be appropriately compensated for their properties in accordance with our real estate manual and that is based on appraisals. The property owners have the ability to get appraisals and any additional costs that may be incurred because as maybe I will come up with that there's going be property or facilities that need to be demolished during this as well. So if the property owner's come and demolished prior to the city coming in and we would have to do some demolition, they could be compensated for that particular cost.

I'm gonna go through and just give you highlight. This is starting on the west end of those five properties. You can see in more detail what is gonna be needed for the project. This one's owned by Mr. Mianca. Second one in is also for Mr. Mianca. The third one in is by the Edgar Mims and Tatieta Mims Living Trust. A fourth one in is owned by Mr. Mianca.

And then the fifth one is owned by Mr. Ringer. They've all received notice of intent to acquirers. We've been actively pursuing been engaged with these property owners and doing the appraisal portion. But we would like to be able to move forward with having this possession and use in particular as an option to be able to get all the properties necessary to be able to complete this realignment.

This realignment, what it does, if you saw on that earlier map that Brookside to the West of Nevada Avenue is offset by about 50 feet for where it continues on the east side and that creates a very precarious intersection. We're trying to eliminate some of the conflict points that would be happening in that area and would actually help us improve safety and operations on Nevada Avenue. Councilman Donaldson. Yes

sir. Yeah, thanks Madam President. Good morning Gail.

Good morning.

And you don't have a government vehicle, do you?

I I do not. Okay. By design.

Alright. Very good. Oftentimes we get photographs, you know, overhead photographs of the lots. Are we gonna see those in this presentation?

You will not see them today. I could add those in the future or send them separately. I did start pulling up street view to show you that some of these properties are actually boarded up. There's one that has is habited, and then the one on the Far East Side has U Haul trailers on it, and there's one business that is a tattoo parlor.

The two that aren't Mr. Mienka's properties are the ones I'm interested in. The ones What's going on on those?

Mr. Mienka's properties, I believe are board I know at least one of them is boarded up.

Yeah. None But the others are the ones I'm I'm interested So

one of them, the Mims property, have at least two residents that we're aware of. We believe that there are two residents in there.

And it's a single family home, is that what it is?

It is single family home and they have an accessory dwelling unit that right now does not appear to be habitable.

And then the other?

The other one is actually a business like it's a parking lot that they now have U Haul trailers on it and there's also a small tattoo parlor business there as well.

Who owns the one right at the corner?

Mr. Winkler and that's where the U Haul is located plus the tattoo business. Okay.

And on that slide it said medical marijuana. Is that also?

It is. There's a relationship there that they technically own the property to the north, as well, correct? Oh you do? So Mr. Has been buying the properties there so it sounds like he owns that property to the north now since this slide's been put together.

But when you say to the north, does that mean that Mr. Mienka owns four of the five properties or that's a separate property?

It's separate property. It's not needed for the project.

Okay. Let me

see if I can get this to go back. So there's a faded out property to the north that now Mr. Mink has purchased to the south that was part of Maggie's Marijuana but is owned by Mr. Wrangler.

In the home that's occupied, it's occupied by the owners or is It it

a is occupied by the owners. We believe it's occupied by the owners.

Okay. And how long have they been there, do you know?

It's about approximately a year. They purchased this property right when we were initiating, or just before we initiated this project.

And this is the Mims?

The Mims property, yes.

Like a living trust, Mims Living Trust.

Yes.

Okay. And are you going to if it's later, I'll wait until later. Give us some data on how dangerous this intersection is and that's why we need to realign it.

I wasn't planning to, but I can bring that data back to you We've as had operational issues with the South Nevada Corridor from I-twenty 5 South, and there's a tire transportation master plan that was done with that. There was a PPRTA project that was completed this past year that fixed the intersections just to the north of this area. This intersection was not addressed but this is really that last operational intersection area. Did not have as much of the crash history as some of the intersections to the north but it's still been identified by both the city and CDOT as an area of conflict, a lot of conflict points and creates a lot of operational issues with South Nevada Corridor.

Okay, there's still gonna be a light there though, right? There would be a There's gonna be a light in the future.

There would be a signal there. It wouldn't have to be split in that separate geometry there. It gets very confusing with drivers there I think because the signal is sitting so far to the north or south of where they have to drive. So a lot of times they don't recognize that signal as being something they need to stop at, Just with the nature of how it's oriented.

Okay and can't remember, this quasi judicial or is it not quasi judicial? It's not, is it?

Sarah Bruin, City Attorney's Office, no.

Okay, so we can go out and look at it ourselves and that might be helpful for us making a decision is to see, well, because we've changed something you know to the north of it now so this may get less backed up or confusing. I don't know that. I have to go down there and refresh my memory on it. But when we're basing our decision on what a bad intersection this is, it's good to have data on what a bad intersection this is. But that's that's probably all I have. Feel free to reply to that.

I would be happy, Mr. Donaldson, if if either if you'd like to meet on-site either with myself or Todd Frisbee, where we can also bring the the traffic data that shows what has really precipitated or driven the need for this realignment of the project.

Okay, yeah, if we're going to, know, seems like this home will have to go. If you realign it, the home has to be leveled?

The primary residence would definitely need to be leveled for this project to proceed.

So for a decision like that by City Council, I think we do want to be very sure that this is the only way to do this, is to go down that route. Thanks.

Thank

you. Councilman Lineweber.

Yes. So I drive this area quite a bit, so I'm very familiar with this jog that you have to take place. And if we had an alignment there, think it would be a great improvement, so I'm really in support of that. My question is really around do we have any plans for the vacated land for the street that's gonna appear? Is that gonna just be green space, or are we looking to try to do something with that?

Yeah, so after the project is complete, we would do an evaluation of any remnant land that the city would own from that port at that point and we would likely go through and do a disposal at that point in time. And it would make sense for, if there's remnants, for it to go to the adjacent property owners.

Yeah, that's what I would think. All right, thank you.

Councilman Donaldson?

And who is the adjacent property owner?

Primarily, it's either Mr. Manko or the Bonicelli's. I'd have to go and look at a map to tell you exactly who the owner is depending on which remnants would have been left.

Yeah. It says KW one five zero two LLC. So I'm not sure what that means.

Properties have been changing hands so much out there that I think that I'm having a hard time even keeping track of who they are. We're having to get title work refreshed frequently.

I would ask that we are informed of who owns the property as soon we can be. If that can happen during this hearing so we can state it out loud, great. If not, an email today would be, I think, appropriate.

Great. I think I have a team back here who's helping me figure out who the current owners are of the adjacent properties. I'm gonna pick up on the timeline of the project. As we mentioned, know, was let me back up. We would like to have redone this intersection.

We did the previous I-twenty 5 work. It just didn't make sense with where that PPRT project was identified at the time, and so we are looking at this intersection just to the south and feel like it's critical to be moving forward. So we've been advancing engineering for it and doing a lot of coordination with the permitting and the future signal improvements with CDOT. The timing is necessary to be able to keep this again all together with the project and we would continue working with the property owners to help find solutions whether it's relocation purchase, relocation and anything necessary in accordance with the city's real estate manual. For the purpose of this project, it is PPRT funded project.

We are gonna be asking council to authorize us to have the ability to use possession and use and if necessary eminent domain and the resolution would allow the city to be able to proceed with those activities. Right now this is scheduled for the council's May 12 regular council meeting and then immediately following this meeting all the property owners that would be impacted would receive notice of that council meeting so they could attend should they choose to. Let me, I'm gonna turn to my colleagues. Can you tell me who owns the adjacent property to the north?

Oh, to the North. That's

to the South. I I think Gail, we're gonna shift the road to the North.

We're shifting the road to

the The

which would become available is to the South, right?

Well we actually would have properties on both sides. To the North that would either be Mr. Manker or the Bonicelli's. To the South, can you say We'll get a hold of this. Yeah the South. We've been in coordination with the properties to the South as well. We would have to keep some of that property to the South just for utility impacts and would likely would be providing essentially a frontage access for those businesses that are on the South area just with that open space that would be available. All right. Other questions?

Councilman Hinjum.

Thank you Madam President. Yeah, I see PPRTA has allocated the funds. Is this part of a project list or does PPRTA have just additional funds that can be used on an application?

Yeah, this is, we have program funds to do intersection improvements and those are the funds that have been identified for this particular project.

Okay, great, thanks.

And if you're wrapping up, Gail, I don't know if you are, but if we have some of the information I'd be happy to, well I would prefer to receive that now during the hearing and then the rest when you get

it. Okay. I believe they're looking at it. Public works actually is the next item. I would be happy to come back if you give me just a moment to give you those property owners. Thank you.

So

it's Marshalwood and Investigation.

To the south.

Okay. This is at the corner on

the south. These are to the

Okay. So I mentioned the owners to the north are either Bonicelli or Mr. Mienka. To the south, it's Mark Shuffle Woodman Investments. And it is that KW1502 LLC.

And who owns that? Do you know? KW.

Brad Rodenburg with TRS. I don't know the exact name but we dealt with KW15O2 on the Nevada project. There was a permanent easement that we needed to get as part of the sidewalk improvements at Brookside. So we have met with and dealt with that property owner before. I just don't know their name Okay, off top thank of my you. Alright.

Any further questions at this time?

I don't see any.

Alright, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to item seven b. Will the clerk please read item seven b into the record?

A resolution authorizing the Stormwater Enterprise manage manager to execute memorandums of agreement with the Department of Army related to the Cause Creek Plan feasibility study.

Good morning, Erin. Good morning.

Good morning, council members and president Carriverson. My name is Erin Powers. I'm the stormwater enterprise manager for the city. Today, I'm here presenting a resolution which would authorize the stormwater enterprise to enter into two memorandums of agreement with the United States Army Corps of Engineers to progress the COS Creek Plan feasibility study. So one of these MOAs allows the city to pay the Army Corps for inherently governmental activities such as plan processing and formal review.

The other MOA allows Army Corps to provide technical and policy review. So both MOAs support the feasibility study for the COS Creek plan, extends from the North North of the Garden Of Gods, along Monument Creek south to the Leon Young Youth Sports Park on Fountain Creek, extends through that whole creek corridor. Some council members may remember a presentation given by Pikes Peak Waterways on the C. 0. S.

Creek Plan back in 2024. This feasibility study would take approximately twenty four months, and we'll develop a plan that transforms that section of creek to create public amenities, respond to infrastructure needs, and then it also respects our community's values. So this study, once completed, will be submitted to the assistant secretary of the army for civil works and then transmitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget. We'd be targeting inclusion in the 2028 Water Resources Development Act. This would just position us for federal funding to support our infrastructure along the creek. Be happy to take any questions.

Councilman Hincham?

No question, Erin, but just a comment, and thank you for presenting this. I certainly support this and look forward to our passing this. I think it's one piece of probably hundreds of actions that have been taken and will be taken in the future on behalf of the development of our creek. And so I even see some folks here in the audience who related to that project and appreciate, I don't know if that's why they're here or not, but just want to take the moment to appreciate the importance of that work arguably could be one of the most impactful bits of development that we do on our watershed and for our city maybe ever. Thanks a lot. I totally support this.

Thank you. Donaldson.

Yeah. Thanks, madam president. Good morning, Erin. Morning. Nice to see you today. What's the anticipated cost for this study, scope of work study?

The full feasibility study is around $3,700,000

Okay. This piece that we're being asked to have paid for by stormwater, how much will it cost stormwater? I know there's a $65.35 split in here. Paragraph B says that within fifteen days, or it's actually two A, stormwater will fork over $20,000 What's how much are we really looking at from stormwater?

So the this feasibility study is actually being done through a partnership with Pikes Peak Waterways, which is a a nonprofit, and then also, Colorado Springs Utilities. So the city portion of this work for the feasibility study would be $600,000 And then the rest is coming from private funds.

And in here, I think resolution it says that this won't have any impact on the general fund. The money comes from storm water, know right?

Correct.

Is this, it's a feasibility study for, I'm just drawing a blank on the name of the project.

Creek Plan.

Creek Is that appropriate for stormwater funds to be spent on? Whether it's a great project, the best project man has ever thought of or not, is it really the right place for money to come from out of storm water, which is a tax on our citizens or a fee? Is this the right way to go? Is this, is it I guess it's legal, and the legal's not waving their arms.

So if I can just, main stem of Monument Creek and then also Fountain Creek are some of the corridors in our city that most need improvements. Those are also our largest creek corridors and so the improvements needed are extremely expensive, far more than we could pay with the stormwater enterprise alone. And there there are areas along there that are badly in need of improvements. You know, if you drive by and and see massive cut banks, those things would be rectified with this project. The feasibility study really allows us, if we are included in that water water Resources Development Act, then we would be receiving federal appropriations of Congress and that would support this improvement.

They would cost share those improvements with us. 65% federal, 35% non federal. So that's really what we're going for is essentially a giant federal match for these improvements.

And that I get. If the project is gonna happen, the beauty of it is that the federal government will pay for it. But these initial amounts of money, that's my question. Is it is it would it be more appropriate for the private organization that's really pushing for this? It's their vision to to to pay for these smaller amounts, or does it have to come from the city?

And there may be there may be that the federal government can enter into a contract with a private group. It has to come through the city, but then it could be refunded to the city too by that private organization, it would seem.

So that's that's correct. There needs to be a non federal sponsor to follow this section two zero three process, which is the fastest way to get inclusion into that act to allow for the federal matching. I will say the private fundings are surpasses our contribution. They're paying over $3,000,000 and our expected contribution is $600,000. So it seems like we're getting a good kinda heads up on this one. But, you know, happy to provide additional information, your thoughts

just wanna be sure I heard you right. We're the city is gonna contribute 600,000. The private funding is

Greater than $3,000,000.

Greater than 3,000,000?

Yes.

When does that take place, the 3,000,000? Like we're gonna we're upfront with this these dollars, right? This is step a. If everything else may not happen depending on step a. When when do our partners when is their assistance happening?

So step a for the feasibility study, we need these agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers. We also have a private consultant on the board onboard that is gonna be doing the majority of the study, like the technical modeling and, just the vast majority of NEPA requirements, other other things that come along with this. So they are paying for that full private consultant contract. HDR is the consultant. We are paying for this, these memorandums with the Army Corps of Engineers. So they're paying now.

And that amount, the study by the private consultant is expected at 3,000,000?

Over 3,000,000. I'd have to look at the exact number, but it is more than 3,000,000.

Alright.

Councilman Hincham. Thank

you Madam President. So Erin, we've had the creek plan presented to us numerous times over the years here at City Council and if I recall correctly, I'm pretty confident about this that this really is a critical public private partnership. And we have the City of Colorado Springs, CSU, and the Cause Creek River. I can't even remember the name. I know Chris here. What's the name of the organization Chris?

Ike's Peak Waterways.

Ike's Peak Waterways. Right and funded heavily by philanthropist Lyda Hill and so my understanding is that those partners are meeting if not monthly possibly more frequently than that on this whole project. Is that correct?

Certainly. There are committees and oversight committees, subcommittees all meeting regularly.

And my understanding of this project has been not only does itand you're here representing Stormwater Enterprise and just talked about the importance of work on this particular waterway as it relates to its critical nature of our stormwater system, And it also happens to address future economic benefit to the city and development of the city. So it's as well as just sheer enjoyment and recreation and outdoors and healthy waterway system. So I I do appreciate the questions and I think it's important that people do understand where the funds come from. That's really critical. But I think this is a really incredible example of an outstanding public private partnership. Thanks.

I don't see any questions. Are you asking for this to be on consent?

Yes, if possible. Can I get a

Councilman Donaldson, do you have a problem with this being on consent?

When does it come back to us?

The twelfth. May 12.

I'll be in Washington DC.

So you can have this on consent. Thanks. Moving on to item seven c. Will the clerk please read item seven c into the record?

A resolution authorizing the acceptance of the donation of approximately a 100 acres of land known as the Pikeview Quarry. This item is back to back. It's 10AM tomorrow's agenda. Good morning, Lana.

Good morning. Lana Thielen, design development manager for the city parks, recreation, and cultural services department. Good morning, president Ivers Iverson and pro Tem Risley, members of council. Today I'm here to present to you the Pikeview Quarry donation. To orient you to the site, this is on the Northwest part of our city, West Of I-twenty 5, kind of Northwest of Vindicator and Centennial Boulevard.

It's just south of our existing lodged open space. It's outlined in the lighter color there in between the green. I of wanted to mention a background piece of this. This is part of about a ten year process that we'll go into in little bit more detail, but essentially it's a multi part acquisition. The first phase of this came forward with the acquisition of the Pikeview Quarry frontage in addition to the Black Canyon Quarry.

Those came forward in two phases. Pikeview Quarry Phase 1 was about 88 acres and that was in September 2020. I will provide you visuals of these in just a moment. And then Phase two was about 62 acres and that was acquired in April 2021. Also in phase one was the Black Canyon Quarry.

That's located just a little bit west of Cedar Heights. And that is about 165 acres of acquisition acquired in September 2020. Those two purchases were made as part of an agreement with the property owner to provide them some additional reclamation quarry funds to reclaim the Pikeview Quarry. We are at the third part of this three part acquisition in that we are now looking to acquire the donation of about 100 acres at that site. Just wanted to mention in total, between all three phases, that will be about four fifteen acres coming to the city.

Again, to orient those pieces of the Pikeview Quarry frontage, the first one is shown in red here. You'll see Blodgett Open Space to the north. The gray shaded portion is going to be shown up in phase two, so the red portion does come off of Allegheny Road and then there's an access way into the site. And then if we look at phase two, that's the other portion of the site there just south of Blodgett Open Space. And then putting all three of those phases together, you can see where the gray now is considered the buffer parcels and then the 100 acre site is shown in red and that is the donation parcel that we are looking today as part of the Pikeview Quarry.

Now I'm gonna turn it over to David Dedemeyer in our office to walk you through some of the important pieces of the Pikeview Quarry reclamation. Good

morning. I'm David Dedemeyer, Senior Program Administrator for the program. Good to see you all. Thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit more information on the reclamation process and its history. So I wanted to take a few moments to go over the timeline.

As we look at this, the mining for Pikeview Quarry began in 1903. It expanded greatly in the nineteen forties and fifties with the construction of the Air Force Academy and the expansion of Colorado Springs post World War two. The current ownership acquired the property back in 1972 and assumed the reclamation liability associated with the operations of the mining itself. Cut to a few years later in 2008, there was a series of landslides that began to happen that caused slope failure at the center portion of the quarry. That ultimately ended in the operation of mining ceasing in 2018.

During that time frame, the ownership looked at those avenues to formally submit a reclamation plan to the Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety with the state, and that was submitted in 2018. Kinda cut to this current image in the map, I wanna go in a little bit more detail about what that represents visually on the landscape. So in this map we show in pink highlighted the Pikeview Quarry parcels, the 100 acres. To the right in that olive green is Blodgett Open Space and that is part of that buffer frontage that we acquired in 2020 and 2021. Within the darker green portions, that's the Pike National Forest, ownership by the federal government.

So that sets the land ownership as it exists today. As we dive into a little bit more detail about the permit, there is a solid blue boundary line that goes around the quarry itself and onto those adjacent properties. That is the DRMS permit area. And then within the permit area, they've identified what they call an affected area. Ultimately, that is the area of disturbance associated with the reclamation.

That dark red line represents the areas that are meant to be disturbed in order to reclaim the site. So you start to see it expand beyond the boundary of the 100 acres and those were acquired through two different means. Within the Blodgett Open space, that was part of the negotiations with the acquisition through our TOPS program. So we bought that land subject to that disturbance knowing that that was gonna be tied into the reclamation of Pikeview Corridor itself. Additionally, the ownership had a special use permit with the Forest Service that had been in place for a number of years that allowed them to access the Forest Service land for not only the mining operation but also for the reclamation and the layback of the slope.

So it just paints the picture that there was a greater disturbance beyond the 100 acres. Last thing I wanted to highlight just on the northern portion, the top portion of the image, there's a dark crosshatch that really covers a portion of the open space. That represents a 9.2 acre area of disturbance that was negotiated as a fill dirt agreement. So the owner of the quarry utilized that land, that earth to move over into the quarry itself to begin that reclamation work. And that was again subject to the acquisition and we came into it knowing well where that that was gonna be disturbed.

So what that accounts for within the open space, have about 32 acres of disturbance that have been reclaimed, and we've used a portion of that for our open space as you'll see in a few of the photos here coming up. Wanted to step back a couple years prior in this conversation when this as Lana mentioned, it's been about a ten year process. So in 2016, staff began those conversations with the ownership really to look at what their future was within operations. We were familiar with the landslides. We had an interest because of the open the open space opportunity as well looking at what maybe the reclaimed quarry could provide to the city in terms of a benefit through, through community use.

In 2018, the ownership announced a formal plan to reclaim the Pikeview Quarry and at that time identified it would be donated to the city. At that time, that ownership group also mentioned the idea of a potential bike park just to help create a vision of what that land could be used for, but by no means a decision. So in 2020, when we move forward with the acquisition, those discussions around the donation of that reclaimed Pikeview Quarry were incorporated into that sales agreement as you heard from Lana. The company began moving forward with reclamation, physically moving the earth back in 2022. In 2023, the Parks Department led an effort to move forward the Blodgett Open Space Master Plan.

That was a sixteen month process that looked at how we could incorporate Blodgett Open Space with a a management plan and a site development plan to create a trail system and allow sustainable public access. During that process, we had over 1,400 individual citizens engaged in it. We had over 30 engagement opportunities including TOPS working committee, Parks Advisory Board, and City Council. We were very clear during that process that the Pikeview Quarry was not part of the open space at that time and that we would come back to a future public process, to really understand what the community's interests were for Pikeview. We still have yet to do that.

So that is really our next step if this moves forward is to initiate a public process. In 2025 last year, reclamation were concluded. The state DRMS officially approved the reclamation and released the surety bond on that property and allowed us as the city parks department to move forward with an independent review at which time it took several months to go through thousands of pages of documentation. Our engineer completed their own analysis and gave us that feedback just last month. So cut to today, we're we're now moving forward with this request.

One last interesting point to note since that time frame in 2018 when the Pikeview ownership offered the donation to the city, there's been more than 36 media stories specifically talking about Pikeview reclamation and the post reclamation future. So it's certainly been well noted within the public's realm. I wanna highlight very quickly, again this is a multi year process. I have two slides to highlight the reclamation work that was done. The main goal was to stabilize that hillside and manage the water.

So that was accomplished by moving a significant amount of earth material to create a buttress at the toe of the slope. And these three photos represent a time frame from 2019, 2022, and 2023. And it really just shows that toe of slopes starting to be built up with earth material as they start to formalize the stability of that site and ensure that that structural stability can hold back that hillside. As mentioned, 3,400,000 cubic yards of material, 127,000 cubic yards of topsoil placed. There were daily inspections with the quality control, quality assurance manager, and they tested every 5,000 cubic yards for not only the material but also the density testing.

There was those monthly on-site inspections with the DRMS as well as the project team which included the US Forest Service and the City Of Colorado Springs. After the project was completed, they seeded eroded They seeded, placed erosion control blanket, and planted over 31,000 small trees and shrubs and have implemented their LICA monitoring system, which is essentially a laser system that monitors the stope slope stability for displacement every hour on the hour.

Councilman Hinjum.

Thank you, madam president. Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking myself and council member Donaldson up to the site last week. Really appreciate that. It's quite the impressive view from up there and it was really helpful to see this in person. But I didn't ask the following question which I wish I had regarding the LICA monitoring system. Is that being donated with the land or does that go back to the company?

Yes, that is being donated with the land.

So we get to continue to use that technology?

Yes. We do. And we plan

to continue with that monitoring. Fantastic. Okay. Thank you.

So from these three photos, can see that progress. The next one is taken in 2024. So now we have the reclaimed slopes. We have the grass seed that has germinated and starting to grow in. You see these lines across the hillside. Those are the drainage channels that are being worked on, placing riprap to really manage the water flow that falls on the hillside to push it through the system and exit out. The other thing that I did note in the previous slide, but it's important to identify, is that at the toe of the slope when they started the work, they created a French drain system at the bottom of that to allow for any groundwater to drain through and out of the site

itself. Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah. Just a clarifying question because I think this is really relevant and important. Does any of this property currently exist in the city of Colorado Springs?

Again, there's about a 100 acres identified with two parcels.

Yeah. So the 100 acres that we're looking, the donation, a 100 Yes.

So there's an individual tax number at 10 acres that is within the city of Colorado Springs.

Okay.

The remaining 90 acres is outside of City Of Colorado Springs limits.

Okay. So we currently today don't have any jurisdiction or any authority over that 90 acres. Yes. Would currently fall within the county limit, right? That's correct. And so until we get ahold of this property, there really isn't much of a discussion, other than for the 10 acres possibly, of how this land can be used.

That's correct. And just a point of reference, the 10 acres, at least in this photograph, is in the very back center on that steep hillside. The remaining 90 acres encompasses the claimed hillside as well as the base of it which has some relatively flat ground.

I just think that's a point of contact because until we actually acquire the land, it's almost none of our business. And so I guess that's the point I wanna kind of raise here that we wanna bring this land in so we can secure it because we've dealt with this scar long enough and it's time to kind of make use of this. I don't know what that use is gonna be. We have a lot of interesting aspects of it with the bighorn sheep and all sorts of stuff that's kind of happening, so there's gonna be a lot of challenges for this land and how you're describing it right now with the slope and stuff. It's liability possibly, but I think that liability as you've described is gonna be greatly reduced. So thanks.

Thank you. Alright, I will continue on. I'm gonna share a few photographs just for a different perspective. Again of the timeline of that reclamation. So this one was taken in fall of twenty twenty. It was right around the time frame that we acquired that frontage portion for the open space. And you can start to see the hillside that had series of landslides that impacted it right in the center. As we start to move forward on the timeline, summer twenty twenty three, you can begin to see that buttress being built up about halfway up the hillside. In 2024, the vast majority of the earthwork was completed. They started to seed and blanket.

They had a little bit of remaining channel work that was going on during this time. And then in the fall of twenty twenty five, all of the reclamation work had been completed. And this is about the timeframe that the state came out, did their final inspection and then provided their letter of approval. Another thing I wanna highlight just to put out there in public record and make sure that we're all familiar with this is as we move forward at the Blodgett Open Space Master Plan implementations, a portion of our recommended trail plan falls on reclaimed hillside that is within the open space. So I wanted to just show a few photos to reflect how that would look.

In this location, we see the new trailhead that's under construction. This is a 50 stall trailhead known as the quarry trailhead that will service Blodgett Open Space. As we put on the overlay of where Pikeview Quarry ownership falls, you can see how we start to integrate in that reclamation area in the open space and then within the quarry. And the green highlight represents ultimately those disturbed slopes that have been reclaimed within the open space. Why I think this is important to bring up is that part of our trail construction this spring has built a dedicated mountain bike trail that is associated with the recommendations of Blodgett Open Space Master Plan.

And so there is a visual indicator that we have trails within the reclaimed area, but I wanna be clear that it's not within the Pikeview Quarry itself. I think that's an important distinction to make. So as I conclude the presentation here, I wanna highlight a little bit more about the reclamation review. As we've gone through this process, I think it's pretty clear to understand that this site has been engineered, heavily regulated with the state, and we did the independent review from a geotechnical engineer. The site was designed by those licensed professionals.

Professionals. It was regulated through the state, permitted, constructed, and monitored. And this one was heavily watched by the state because of the slope failures in the past. And it's something that they typically do not do unless it has had a history of big slope failures. And then we have that independent review by Granite Engineering Group.

And just to conclude their recommendations, they evaluated the reclamation design, construction, history of failures, and those current slope conditions. Again, is thousands of pages of documents that we've been working with our engineer from November of last year up until about a month ago. They identified those past instabilities driven by the weak clay layer, groundwater, and the mining related slope conditions that ultimately caused the slope failure. They confirmed that this reclamation improvement, again working on that structural buttress and the drainage improvements, have significantly increased the stability of the site. And they concluded here, as you can see, that the site is currently stable.

But they do recommend that we continue the LICRA monitoring system and that we implement a groundwater monitoring system to understand the water flow. Because of their water sensitivity analysis, they did determine that if there's elevated water groundwater levels that that slope stability starts to decrease. And, of course, they wanted us to continue with drainage maintenance and monitoring which we certainly would do moving forward. Last note to highlight some of the cost. I know this is an important component.

What the way we look at it here is this ultimately these three different levels or these time frames. The short term, we do anticipate about a $10,000 cost to continue with the LICA monitoring system and do staff led light maintenance work. So this would be incorporated into their work plan, stretching our employees a little bit thinner to be able to address any of the the lighter maintenance needs. We then look at a longer term implementation of these monitoring systems including pozzometers and inclinometers to monitor the water and the slope stability and maintain that like a system in place. We then look at security measures with fencing, signage, noxious weed management, and be proactive on those maintenance concerns.

So higher level of maintenance. And then the third term, that long term, would be these bigger what if questions. And we don't quite know what those are. We do believe the site is stable, that will remain in those lower short term maintenance needs, but there is uncertainty. As you are all familiar, this site is a geological concern and we need to continue to monitor as we move forward.

We do believe that the slope, if there is signs of failure through our monitoring, that it won't be catastrophic and won't be rapid. It would be a slow transition. And so being able to monitor in a timely manner would allow us to address those issues and be proactive. So as we see and what you've requested, we'd like to come back tomorrow for this on the regular session vote to help us to close on the property by the fifteenth. Again, we have had plenty of opportunity between November and now to be able to come forward, but we found it very important to move forward with that third party review. We wanted to take the added time to ensure that we did that right. We got that information and as soon as we did, we'd move this forward. So we do request that. And with that, this will be the motion that we see for tomorrow.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah. Thank you, madam president. And first, thanks David and our acting parks director Kim Kane, Lana Thielen for taking, councilman Hengen, myself out there just last week and answered questions on-site. It's always better to see things firsthand. Can you explain? It's unusual for us to do something back to back. That's abnormal at council. Normally it would come to us today at a work session. Two weeks later, we would vote on it at the regular session. Can you explain again why that was the recommendation of of the Parks Department, the request?

I disagreed. I wanted to wait and vote on it in two weeks. The majority of council here wants to go ahead and proceed tomorrow. Can you explain why?

A project perspective, again, as I've highlighted, we've had the opportunity to do the third party review since November, and it took a significant amount of time. During that process in our agreement, it had identified that once that once the state DRMS approved the reclamation, it would be transferred over within a two week period per the agreement created back in 2020. We wanted to step back and take that additional time to review with our third party reviewer. Again, it took additional time, but we're in this time crunch that kinda squeezed us between the state approving and closing on the property. And the reason we'd like to close sooner than later is because the landowner would be charging us a fee for those holding costs.

They have a fiduciary responsibility to their ownership group and their stakeholders, And they have already postponed charging us fees. They've been patient through this process really since January 1. And so we found it pertinent to be able to move forward with this timeline. I certainly would welcome any additional comment from our parks leadership if they wanna elaborate a little bit more on that.

However, I mean, we had voted on the twelfth, the closing is on the fifteenth. So there's still the rest of the twelfth, the thirteenth, the fourteenth. The the fifteenth is the date of the closing. Is there something anticipated where it would take more than three days?

I don't know if I can speak wholly on that one, but I would say that there's a significant amount of work that still needs to take place as there are with transactions related to real estate. So we certainly understand your point of view and and respect it.

Okay. And I understand that about inspection reports and all that when you buy a home. However, it seems to me everything is done. You're just waiting on council. And if that happens tomorrow or it happened on the twelfth, you would be fine for the fifteenth. Council's not gonna we're not gonna do anything special that changes things on the twelfth. But the majority of council wants to move forward with that. I don't I don't quite understand it. But my next question, I think it's very important that the work was inspected by a third party engineering firm. It was not the one that did the work.

Can you just say that a little more? Because I think that's helpful for citizens to understand, okay, this has been inspected. Yes. It's not by the state. It's not by the company that did it. It's by an outside party.

Correct. Yes. Done by an outside party who had no involvement in any of the planning, engineering, or reclamation work.

And what was the name of that that firm that inspected it?

Granite Engineering Group. And they do a lot of landslide analysis within Colorado Springs. Mhmm. And so we felt confident with their ability to review the data and provide us with their professional recommendation.

Okay. And we've heard that today it was said, well, we can't do any planning because we don't actually have the property yet. We could have done that. It's just we chose not to do that. And okay. We're gonna get the land first, then we'll decide. But there's nothing that there's no law in America that says you can't plan for a piece of property which you anticipate acquiring. We could do that, right?

We could. I would like to stress if I may, and that at that time, several years ago, our director at the time, Britt Haley, was very adamant that we do not spend any tax resources on a planning process that may not come to fruition.

Fairly reasonable. What are I know these, but this is good for citizens to hear. What are some of the possible uses of that land? Because there's a master plan. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. Like, what is the process now? What will happen once the city accepts the land? What is that process?