City Council - workshop

dunking the famous donuts in the coffee at 14,000 feet. Absolutely. So we have the official record now.

We do have that. So congratulations to us. Actually, Jen, I was surprised that that's not... so so

Good morning. Welcome to the City of Carter Springs work session meeting for Monday, August 24th, 2026. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Casey.

Here.

Council Member Crowe-Averson. Here. Council Member Donaldson.

Here.

Council Member Gold. She's on line. On line. Council Member Hingem.

Present on line.

Council Member Lineweber. Excused. Council Member Rainey. Here. Council Member Risley. Here. Council Member Williams.

Here.

8 present, 1 excused.

Are there any changes to the agenda today? Seeing none, moving on to the regular meeting. Are there any changes to tomorrow's regular meeting? Seeing none, moving on to item 4A. Will the Clerk please read item 4A into the record?

City Council Work Session Meeting Minutes, August 10, 2026.

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

Visit COS 2026 Mid-Year Lodgers and Auto Rental Tax LARC Contract Update to City Council. Good morning.

Is your mic on? Can you make sure that the green button?

There. Okay. Yeah, so good morning. My name is April Perez. I am the Director of Finance at Visit Colorado Springs. Doug Price sends his apologies for not being able to be here this morning. So jumping right into our KPI report for the first half of 2026, we have our LART tax. So these are the LART collections for June for activity that happened through May of 2026. We see a slight increase over 2025. We suspect that the increase could possibly have been driven by maybe America 250 events as well as World Cup games. Also a slight decrease in gas prices and the end of a TSA shutdown as we moved into Labor Day weekend. Revenue per available room, we see here the revenue per available room was up 5.43% over 2025 locally. And on the front range, we're up by about 4.03%. Jumping into group sales. So I am presenting these on behalf of our director of sales, Dena Worthen. She is traveling to a trade show today. All right, trade shows attended. So our team attended 14 trade shows in the first half of 2026. That's one less than the, what they attended in 2025 due to just fluctuation of when these trade shows are happening throughout the year. The team attended trade shows such as American Bus Association Marketplace, SMART meetings, MPI, which is Meeting Planners International, World Education Congress, and then two of some of our top third party planners, Helm Briscoe and Conference Direct. So overall, the team is tracking to attend about 29 trade shows throughout the whole year. A total room nights booked for group travel. So we see over 20, or from, you know, over 2025, we're down about 8% for the first half of the year. So again, I mentioned the TSA shutdown. We did have some government shutdowns that we dealt with at the beginning of this year. So unstable economic conditions, unstable political conditions, all of which have a direct impact on the meetings industry. So again, not too worried about that, just slightly down over 2025. estimated economic impact we track separately for convention sports and domestic tour most notably you can see domestic tour is down significantly from 2025. so this is we track this to be due to a large tour operator that booked 17 tours in 2025 so that's why you see that gigantic estimated economic impact in 2025 versus what we have booked for 2026. In sports, you do see a slight decrease in sports overall. We tracked that due to some tournaments that the city lost due to some local high schools just not being able to accommodate those tournaments anymore, conventions. is up uh you did see in the previous slide that room nights were down however the estimated impact is up we do suspect that this is due to higher adr inflation and meeting costs such as food beverages av things like that so thus we see that the economic impact is stronger than the room nights booked we have a question from councilman donaldson

Yeah, thanks, Madam President, and good morning. Good morning. Thank you for being here today. And can you just kind of explain what domestic tour is? What is that?

Yeah, so the majority of domestic tour are motor coach operators. That's pretty much the gist of it.

Is it a motor coach as a bus? Is it... tour groups like, what's the name of that one? Like a historical tour that comes to Colorado Springs and they spend several days here and they see different sites in the Springs? Or is it something else?

Yeah, I would say that's accurate. The biggest party that we work with, American Bus Association Marketplace, is one of the largest motor coach tour operators.

American Bus Association?

Yes, ABA for sure, yeah.

And those are historical tours or what do they do?

I can get more information from you, but yeah, overall it's exactly what you're thinking. Yeah, those big buses traveling throughout the United States, yeah.

Okay, but it's not something that originates out of the Broadmoor and then goes around the town and comes back to the Broadmoor. This comes from, it's like Ambrose Historical Tours is what I'm thinking. Yes, that's correct, yeah. Okay, huh. And so you said there were like 15 in 25?

Yeah, 17 tours were booked in June of 2025, making that number close to two and a half million.

Yeah, I'd be curious about that. I didn't realize that there were historical tours or something like that coming to Colorado Springs.

Yeah, absolutely. I will get with the team and we can definitely get you more information on that.

And then I'll have a couple other questions, but I'll wait till the end, thanks.

Well, that's it, that's it for my slides. So if you have other questions for me, otherwise I will turn it over to Melissa Williams for our Marketing Communication Partnership.

Good morning, I am Melissa Williams, Director of Marketing at Visit Colorado Springs. I'm gonna just kind of briefly go over some of our marketing initiatives and how they've been doing for the first half of the year. So looking first at our website KPIs, AI overviews and large language models continue to shift user behavior away from clicks. Consumers no longer need to click through to a website to get the information that they need. And now we're seeing that nearly half of all searches end without a click and that's across all industries. To be frank, traffic is never going to be the same and it's never coming back. So we have to be able to pivot and measure differently. The good news is that because this is across the board, we're all kind of facing the same challenges together and visit Clara Springs. We're doing everything we can to position ourselves to come alongside both our partners and the community to kind of help us all along this journey. Although the traffic is down, we are seeing more qualified visitors. Organic traffic, for instance, which is the traffic that comes from unpaid search engine results, that engagement rate is at 70%. And that tells us that seven out of 10 visitors are making meaningful action on our website, whether that's filling out a form, watching a video, clicking through to our partner pages, they are highly, highly engaged. The way that this is changing is really fast. It's been monumental over the last year, and it continues to change month to month, so we're keeping a really close pulse on that. And one of the things that we're doing is evolving our strategy by focusing on curating content that is easily picked up by these tools, these AI tools, and stay highly visible in search. We're getting significant traffic already, seeing the fruits of those labors, in large language models, including 140% increase year over year in that visibility. In just the last month and a half, search impressions have been up, and we've racked 2.1 million impressions on Google's generative AI alone. So we're starting to see that really pay off.

I have a question from Councilman Hingem, and she's online.

Sure. Thank you very much, Madam President, and thank you for being here this morning. So can you just say, you sort of just indicated a little bit about my question, I think, but can you speak a little bit more to what kind of adaptations you're making given the introduction of AI and the clicks not being a way to measure? So what specifically right now do you know are other ways to measure, or are you ready to speak to, have you gotten there yet, I guess? Have you figured that out yet?

Yes, absolutely. We've been investing a lot of time and energy and research into what these tools look for. They look for really quality person, human-first content that is marked up in very specific ways so it's easy to crawl and gather that information. It prioritizes relevant information Information, so we're using human 1st, curated content and what we call schema markup on the web pages so that it breaks it up categorically in the back end. So that these. Robots for lack of a better term can actually come through and grab the information. They see us as a relevant source, and they will actually display our information 1st. and so we're seeing a lot of that already have really, really good outcomes.

Great, thank you for that additional explanation. I appreciate it.

Of course. We're also in support of this launching a new website redesign in February of 2027. And that's going to be prioritizing a more sophisticated search, storytelling and content forward, information to align more with evolving user behavior, like I was just mentioning, and a lot of various hubs that we've been working really hard on to capture that information, things such as our itineraries page, which inspires people to not only get out and explore like historic tours, but also stay longer. We also have our neighborhoods hub that gets people to spread out around the community, as well as a new events hub and a variety of others that will we think really help boost those efforts as well. And all of it is designed to be easily scanned and digested by these large language models without sacrificing our audience and what they actually are coming to look for. So working in tandem and really hand in hand with those. All right, in terms of our social media, all of our views and engagements are really up year over year showing that those efforts and the content that we're making is really paying off. We got a really big boost in 2025 in our new Instagram followers due to our neighborhoods initiative and a lot of paid that went into that. But otherwise, everything is going really smoothly. And you can see in the next slide that we're also, oh, I thought there was one more. We're also sending a lot of traffic to our website from these social channels. And that, I believe, is the end of our presentation, if anyone has any final questions. Councilman Donaldson?

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. One question on this page, maybe you said it and I just missed it. What's the reason the YouTube views went through the roof?

We started really prioritizing YouTube Shorts specifically, and we had never, before we got a content specialist on our staff, we really didn't have the bandwidth to invest in YouTube and YouTube content. So now that we are, we're really seeing that really take off, which is exciting.

And what is it you try to message through all these platforms? Is there one primary message you send out or are they all kind of event specific or maybe give us a...

All of all of the messaging, although the content may be a little different, like, the subject matter might vary from contact to content. All of it is to invite people to come and explore the region. Not just the big hotspots, but the places that people may not expect the places that are the hidden gems and. that we can get people to come and spread out a little bit. We're also prioritizing getting people to come in the shoulder seasons, which for Colorado Springs is just not summer. So we're investing a lot into that kind of content to invite people to come in here, not only in the fall, but also in the winter and in the springtime as well.

Has there been a specific thing in 26? Like, is there a new message or just a new event or a new venue that you're highlighting?

We are working currently right now on a new music tourism strategy. We're working with a company called Mission to Market that's doing a lot of really great research. We're working collaboratively with the cultural office, kind of helping us take the lead on this to identify the wonderful live music assets that we have, identify any gaps that we might need to feel and see how we can really tap into this market because As a music lover, I will travel to go see music shows. We have such wonderful venues here. It's something that we can really capitalize on.

Well, great. And pretty soon, right across the street here at City Auditorium, that'll be a new venue. And then I have, they're really questions that the first speaker was on. And to go back to, it was kind of the bus tours, the domestic tours. Do we know why the American Bus Association, why did they stop coming this year?

That's a great question. I wasn't aware that they did. So I will have to get back to you with that. But I did follow up with our director of sales while I was sitting down and she did confirm that. Yes, those are historical tours that come to the city, but itineraries also vary based on what the, what the patrons want to see. And they work, we work with tour Colorado on those itineraries and on those efforts. And then the other thing she wanted me to relay was that domestic tour is primarily motor coach, but it also does include things like family reunions.

Oh, okay. Okay, so that's something totally different. But yeah, I would be curious what changed. Was 25, were we a new market? And then they found out they weren't getting, they weren't being able to fill the seats or has something changed Is there something we can do to get them back?

Sometimes what happens too with that metric is that a lot of the times the business isn't reported to us until after the fact. And so you might see that change a little bit like with our final report. So we will reach out and try and get that information. And that happens usually when the booking happens, but a lot of the times it happens after the fact. So sometimes we don't get that information until the end of the year and then we have to update our KPIs.

Very good, and then the last one for me is this revenue per available room. And last year it was $67, this year it's 70.7. Is there a goal that the hoteliers have? Hey, if things are going well, we should be seeing $80. We should be seeing 75 or... Is there something like that? Do we have a goal? And it may not be you that sets it.

It might be the industry, but... Yeah, it's absolutely not us that sets that rate. It does come down from the industry. Again, I can follow up and get you a better answer. But yeah, we don't set those rates.

Okay, so we don't really know if 70 is great or okay or...

But we do like the fact that it's up over 2025. We can't say that.

But yeah, I just don't know if 67 is good, like 67 is C minus work or what. So it would be, from your perspective, that's great, or this is C, but this is why we think it'll get better. And then the front range, amount is considerably higher like 86 this year and we're at 70. do we have a uh explanation for that is that normal because of this or is it is there something usually we see that rate a little bit higher on the front range because those are like the smaller mountain towns um so they do charge a little bit more people want to go there versus you know and then there's a lot more competition here in the springs so And now for me, front range would mean the front range on this side, it wouldn't mean Vail. Correct. So I would think this is Denver and Pueblo and the front range, Boulder.

A little bit of Teller County.

Okay, and so we'll throw in Woodland Park. So again, that's just something that jumps out at me. You know, are we oversaturated? And that's why we just have to have lower prices in our rooms. And maybe this is something you don't do at this midpoint, but you know, available rooms and how many were booked, that percentage, how is that looking this year? I don't think that specifically was in here.

Go ahead. We have access to all that data in a dashboard that we can follow up with. We just don't have those numbers in front of us for this particularly, but we can absolutely follow up.

Not a problem. Overall, just like in summation, would we say that tourism is doing great in 26 so far? Would you say this is A year, B, or C? C being...

I would say it's doing great. We're up. It's a modest amount according to Longwood's data year over year over 2025. REVPAR is seeing improvement. Occupancy rates are high. So we can give you the specific numbers, but I would say anecdotally, yes, tourism is doing very well.

has there been one event that stood out so far like hey this did way better than we thought or this was new and it was great or i don't really want to highlight the negative but if there was something that laid an egg we thought this was going to be good and it's it was uh

I mean, space always knocks it out of the park. Space symposium. Yep, and that was really, really successful this year with even higher number of attendants. Local events during the summer pull a lot, and we'll see a Labor Day lift-off coming up very soon, but things like the Fan Fest, like Pikes Peak Pride, all of those are bringing in a lot of visitation.

Okay.

I'll add just one thing with the... You'll need to come up and speak in the microphone. and please introduce yourself alexia veneration director of communications at visit cos i would just add for the summer we don't really have metrics yet but with the fires happening in the area and a lot of smoke in the air there are a lot of national news articles the whole summer that colorado's on fire and people don't know we put information out of like The air quality here is really good still, but people who don't look into that don't necessarily know the difference. So I think that did impact outdoor attractions somewhat. So you might see or hear reports from Garden of the Gods and even Pikes Peak that some numbers in the summer were a little down. It's promising and great to see that LART is up and hotel occupancy is up. So we'll still see how that shakes out, but that did certainly have an impact perception wise.

Okay, and that's an interesting point. I didn't think of that. The fires could have suppressed even our tourism, and honestly, the air sucked back then. My wife kept telling me about it.

Yeah, I do think that impacted the domestic tour industry as well.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Just a quick question for both of you. For both your presentations, when you show 2025, is that 2025 for the whole year or the same point in this point in 26?

It's the same point, the same point in time.

All right, thank you.

Councilman Gold, and she's on nine.

Thank you, Madam President, and thank you for this presentation. Going back to the slide with the different platforms that we're currently on, are those the only platforms we're on? I say only very loosely because I think it was like five of them.

It is not the only ones that we are on, but it is the ones that we are measuring as part of what we are contracted to report out on. We're also on TikTok. And that's really it. We're on TikTok as well.

Okay. I mean, that's a, that's a lot of platforms. So that's quite impressive. And, um, and also I just wanted to give kudos. Um, I do follow the Instagram page and it's really nice to see a blend of external, uh, partnering with external, um, and internal influencers. So it was really nice to see like our local influencer, um, uh, the Instagram handle actually it's Megan, um, some really cool content. So thank you for the work you guys are doing. Thank you very much.

Thank you. You're welcome. Is that the extent of your presentation? Yes.

Okay. Ma'am, could I ask one final question?

Of course, Councilman Donaldson.

Could one of you step back up there? Are you aware of the influencer page that our chief of staff, Wayne Williams, has on Instagram?

Maybe we should do a collaboration.

Yeah, he doesn't really have one. I'm just trying to find one. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have item 5B. Will the clerk please read item 5B into the record?

Cultural Affairs Office of the Pikes Peak Region, Copper 2026 Mid-Year Lodgers and Auto Rental Tax Contract Update to City Council.

Good morning, Angela. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I'm Angela Seals. I'm the Executive Director of the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region. We're the local arts agency for El Paso and Teller counties. We are an independent nonprofit. We work closely with our municipal partners across the two-county region as well as the other contracted entities like Visit Colorado Springs, the Chamber, and sports corp throughout the year, as well as tourism and economic development partners to lift up and unify the power of arts and culture across our community. We have 550 arts, culture, and entertainment groups across the Pikes Peak region. If we were to define that as the creative industries and include interior design and architecture and the broadest definition, there would be many more. This is really the center of arts and entertainment, and 80% of them are in the city of Colorado Springs. The Cultural Office has always met or exceeded our expected KPIs for our contract for the city through LART. This report is for the first half of 2026. Our current KPIs cover 14 categories and eight additional initiatives to fulfill our shared goals to increase tourism, to develop our community economically, particularly for us in the creative industries, sorry, And we do provide full reports to the mayor's office through whom our contract is kept. You are welcome to see that full report by request. We have been building cultural promotion and tourism since we were founded 20 years ago. This is our 20th anniversary in 2026. And our first program was peakradar.com, which has now become the region's arts and entertainment website, as well as being on many of the platforms that Visit Colorado Springs is on. We've decentralized into a lot of that same storytelling and engagement digitally. to really build audiences for our arts and entertainment assets here in the region. The centerpiece is that website and really we measure in the first half of the year a really robust usage both locally and by tourists of the website. We have promoted 1,483 events over the past six months and served 206,700 tourists. You'll see that our subtotal of tourists has really blown up in the past six months at 84% of our users are coming from outside of the Pikes Peak region. That's a little high. We want to make sure that we're also targeting our local residents too. And so you may see that correct in the next six months. But we're proud that so many of our tourists and that so many of our efforts with hospitality and the tourism industry are resulting in high usage by people who want to visit here. You should also think of Peak Radar not just as a standalone website, but as an engine that's culling all these events from the region and feeding them out to other websites. We power the calendar at visitcos.com, also at Downtown Partnership, Manitou Springs Chamber and Visit Manitou, Pikes Peak Region Attractions, and artsoctober.com for our region's arts month. We directly email subscribers every week, and there are member hotels through the Pikes Peak Lodging Association who receive weekly curated events for their hotel concierges to direct visitors to things that are happening locally. Ooh, this got kind of, I'm sorry about the layout here. It looks like it got a little bit changed when it was put on your computer. But we did our 2026 Peak Radar user survey in June, and we had really great response. I can't read that first number. Is that 99% that agree that Peak Radar helps them connect? to arts, culture, and entertainment, 92% of our users attended a local event that they wouldn't have because they saw it through Peak Radar's platforms. And 79% of people interact with Peak Radar daily or weekly. It's really strong loyalty. If you look at even monthly, 96% of people are interacting monthly. When you ask them the question, because of Peak Radar, I, you get some pretty inspiring answers. They're more aware, they've bought tickets. In fact, clicks on our buy tickets button are up 22% for this part of the year over last year. So people are buying tickets, about 10,000 ticket sales through Peak Radar in the first six months of this year. And if you take that bottom one, I have planned a trip to the Pikes Peak region because of peak radar. 14%, 14.25, if you take that percent of the tourist users that we showed on the earlier slide and run it through our formula that we've developed with Visit COS for hotel room nights, There could be over 38,000 hotel room nights generated by how inspiring Peak Radar is to get people to come here and participate. We're excited to announce that in Q3, we'll be doing a full refresh of peakradar.com. It's based on a platform nationally through Artsopolis that is in about 50 markets around the community, or around the nation. And we'll be one of a handful who will get this initial rollout of major improvements that will help its performance, its accessibility, its responsiveness on mobile use, and also some pretty neat new features. Like for example, when someone's out at a restaurant, they'll now be able to quickly find what's happening near them that they could walk to from the bar or from the restaurant. There'll be more geolocation tools. There'll also be a new module for Artsy Hotels. This is an example of what it looks like in Central Florida on their platform, where we'll be highlighting hotels that particularly appeal to cultural tourists. The Cultural Office runs a marketing campaign to build the destination's reputation. We've had seven million impressions in the first half of the year from this campaign. And we should note that we've invested $48,000, but we have $65,000 of in-kind Google ad grants This is where that public-private partnership with the city really is an advantage. The fact that we're a nonprofit and the fact that we have the LARP funds to use an SEO expert to help us really dial in that Google ad grant means we're maximizing that to more than double the impact of our marketing campaign for the destination. We also pitch stories to media. In the first six months of the year, we've had 13 local media pieces as a direct result of our pitches, and four from out-of-market publications. We were really excited by the Southwest Contemporary highlight on Colorado Springs. That was a big one. We're really focusing on doing this in an asset-based way. We want them to tell the positive stories, not just that arts are struggling across the country, but that they're thriving here and people should come and see how. We've also hosted two FAM tours for statewide reporters from Rocky Mountain PBS and Colorado Public Radio. And in just those two fan tours, we were able to highlight 17 local art sites and interviews. We are the founding partner and sponsor of Art at COS. I know that several of you have been there and seen the new gallery in the terminal. We are proud to support that in partnership with Cottonwood Center for the Arts, Downtown Creative District, and of course, our friends at the airport. It's the 250-150 year, and Peak Radar has been the landing page for the events that are happening. We served on the committee with Visit COS and other local planning partners. We also, in the past six months, featured the Olympic City USA Guide. That rolls around every time we've got an Olympics going on and gives us a chance to really center Olympic City USA and what people will find if they come here to visit. There's no underestimating what it means to have a professional staff dedicated to lifting our cultural tourism. We have many long-standing partnerships, and we sit on important tourism-related committees to help build the destination and support long-term change. These contracts give us an opportunity to make long-term comprehensive improvements that go beyond individual events. we also released in the spring our impact of local arts tourism study it's important to us that we focus on learning from real data about what is happening in cultural tourism and in this two quick pages which we shared with city council in print delivery We explored what we currently know about cultural tourists and the total attendance, tourist attendance, and estimated hotel room nights generated by 11 of our major attractions in 2025. We conducted the study by surveying the attractions. For future iterations, we'll be able to leverage Placer.ai because we are one of the partners in bringing that to our community. So we'll have additional details in the years ahead. We also, of course, as a tourism sector expert, are leading the grant making process for the Cultural Destinations Pillar. This year, we are coordinating six of the current grantees with $165,000 and overseeing the panel for that pillar for the 2027 grants. As of June 30th, those six grantees weren't yet due for their final reports for their work, and so we'll be reporting on those metrics at our end of year report to you. Developing our cultural destination is part of the 10-year cultural plan, Arts Vision 2030. And so our mission and the mission of LART are closely aligned on this goal. Thanks so much for this opportunity to share with you those highlights and the reach of our work. I'm happy to take questions now.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you Madam President and thank you for being here this morning and thank you for your presentation. I do have one question because there was a theme I saw throughout the presentation but maybe the data just wasn't in this presentation. A lot of the activities when it comes to lard i like to refer and i think you've heard the term before heads and in beds and i call them feet on pedal rental cars um but i didn't see that within the construct of this presentation can you speak to that sure absolutely

So when we talked about our events promoted, we talked about the number of tourists that were here. We don't currently have, we have a formula that we've been talking with Visit COS about using, and we used it in the tourism impact study to develop from a total amount of tourists served, how many hotel room nights does that generate? And we don't,

So you don't have those numbers just yet because that's a formula that you're working on right now?

And really, I think if we could get kind of some consensus, not just between the two of us, but with the whole advisory committee around that formula, it would be really helpful because we can track the number of people we're serving, but we can't track where they're staying. And so having a formula to give us a good database is something we've been working toward. I think we've got it because we pulled it from the Longmont, Longmont? Longwood study. And they tell us the average number of nights that they stay and how many stay per room. And using that, we come up with totals. I didn't factor it for this first six months, but I'm happy to provide it.

Yeah, when do you expect that, I guess, the formula to be accepted and to where that data will be provided to us?

Sure, we can just bring it up at the next LARD Advisory Committee. Everyone seemed to agree with it when I shared out the tourism study in the spring, and it's definitely something that the panels have been asking for, because we get a lot of tourism totals, but it's been very hard for applicants to tell us the hotel room nights.

okay now i'm looking forward to hearing that thank you yeah thank you for asking councilman donaldson yeah thanks uh madam president good morning good morning hope you had a nice weekend thank you i hope you did too um first i want to say i think this uh it's described as a new tool on the new, probably app, where if you're at a restaurant, you can just look around, or if you're at your house, you can look around and see what's nearby. I think that'll be very, I mean, just super useful and generate people coming into venues or just different sites that are identified on there. I use that kind of a tool. even when I'm at home, just like, what restaurants are around here that I haven't tried? Totally. And so I think that's great, and that's using everybody's phone, and that's what we use nowadays. You know, on a couple pages past that, you mentioned the $65,000 of in-kind Google Ad Grant dollars.

Mm-hmm.

What, where does that come from, the Google Ad Grant dollars, or can you explain that?

Yeah, so we applied to be a Google Ad partner, and we have to demonstrate to Google set of metrics to maintain that they give us that. We have to hold to certain guidelines about the content on the site to make sure it's really mission centric. And when they see us compliant with all of those guidelines, they give us Free ad space. And we've been working with professional consultants for several years to really optimize and max out that Google ad grant. So we're excited to be able to report on how much that's lifting beyond the dollars that we're spending, how much it's lifting our work.

okay yeah so i mean that's interesting i hadn't heard about that and didn't know about it have you why have you uh spoken about that before i may not have highlighted it before we've been doing it for about a decade and i'm not going to ask you that but maybe you can talk just for a minute about um i believe i know i've read this other places i think you've talked about it in the past that um People who come to a city kind of with an arts priority, that's the kind of things they want to see. Their typical spending or what good tourists they make. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, thank you for asking. So that was really highlighted in our spring report. I'm gonna get to that slide here. Right, so, boy, I wish I could see it a little better. Yeah, so locally, cultural tourists spend 17% more in our economy than tourists of other types. And we know that nationally, arts, culture, and heritage drive 68% of tourism. 48% of our current tourists are engaging in arts and culture when they come. And I wanted to share this data. We're pulling from a couple different studies. We're pulling from Longwoods through Visit Colorado Springs, but that's a national firm. And then we're also pulling from the Americans for the Arts, Arts and Economic Prosperity Study. So those are both national. data sets and i wanted to highlight this because cultural tourists have great value when we get them i know that it'll never be the top story that we tell and that's okay it's really flexible i just came from the chamber on friday we were getting media training in source colorado springs and the business tourism identity that they not tourism the business destination identity that they are developing. We're going to be one of the spokespeople for them with national media. Arts and culture fits right up into the identity they've created, even though it never says arts in there, right? We are really flexible.

In Colorado Springs, it doesn't say that.

Right. They're talking about being a high-performing city, that we can seize big ideas together, that it's a place where you can be innovative. It's very easy to fit arts and culture as part of the fuel of that culture that they're promoting. And so I just say that because I think cultural tourists should always be part of the portfolio of tourists that we're drawing. And we have to understand that they have great economic value, even if they're not always the main story we want to tell.

Well, and I think you could point this out. Colorado Springs, which was Fountain Colony when it was founded by General Palmer, was always envisioned to be a city of culture, of universities, of a resort, you know?

It's been part of our DNA.

And the Rockies, and it always was, and it started off that way, and it really maintained that for quite a while. So it's really just part of what Colorado Springs has always been. And art tourists, although there's no such thing as a pure art tourist. That's kind of hard to, I think, identify. typically are at a point in their lives or oftentimes have disposable income, which they can spend, and that's exactly what LART is supposed to do, is bring people here to stay and help our local businesses and hotels, so. Okay, thank you. Unless you have anything to add to what I just said.

No, thank you. I loved everything that you said about it's always been part of who we've been. It is an important part of our future. It is a competitive advantage to have a strong arts and culture scene.

And just to continue that, if you look at what General Palmer did, the parks he donated to the citizens and others, like Stratton, it was always about enriching citizens with cultural which they could experience and participate in. And that was, I mean, we don't wanna just become, you know, Amazon here and sell stuff, so thanks.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Just a couple of quick questions. How does one get an event advertised or promoted on Peak Radar?

Yeah, it's free. We have over a thousand groups who have posted events on Peak Radar since it started. It's pretty user friendly. You create a login and password and then you have a dashboard. And we do a lot of tech support with our community to make sure that they're able to create a really great looking listing. So we get those from the community, uploading, and then we push it out across all of our platforms. Peak Radar has operated essentially as a free marketing department.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Hengim, online.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President and Angela. Nice to see you. Thanks for being with us as always. I'm glad you went back to this slide that you have up now because I think to Council Member Rainey's question, while it is a little bit harder to track direct booking, I think the piece around cultural equity tourists, if you will, and the longer stay and the kind of national research that's gone in that regard is important to note. And just as one person, when my husband and I make decisions about where to travel or go be tourists, cultural resources and going and spending money on art or et cetera is very much a part of our own decision making. And I know that isn't everybody as you really well articulated, but it is an important part of our cohort of tourists. And the other thing I did want to emphasize in response to Council Member Rainey's question is, if I'm understanding correctly, it is an extrapolation, but the survey you did of peak radar users, that percentage of those users said they planned a trip to the region because of peak radar. Now, granted, they might be in state. It's possible they're in state and they aren't staying overnight, but no doubt some of them are staying overnight. So, again, honing in on how to track that a little bit better. Obviously, there's something you'll continue to work on, but... YEAH, I LIKE HOW YOU FRAMED OVERALL THIS KIND OF NOTION ON IT IS A SEGMENT OF OUR TOURIST POPULATION AND REALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE DON'T OVERLOOK THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE AND ARTS IN OUR TOURISM INDUSTRY. SO THANKS FOR BEING HERE. AS ALWAYS APPRECIATE YOUR PRESENTATION.

THANK YOU COUNCILWOMAN HENJUM FOR PULLING THAT OUT. I DID NOTE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS SLIDE that i use i did use that formula and i ran it on the number of tourists that we have served through the cultural office in the first six months and the formula resulted in 38 718 hotel room nights great thank you thanks councilman gold and she is online as well

Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Angela, for this presentation. I don't have a question. I just have a comment. I wanted to share that Peak Radar is actually saved on my bookmarks tab. It's such a great resource. I go to it all the time in hopes that I can attend things. But as you know, our calendars are pretty booked, so I don't often get to. But I really wanted to compliment you. you on a wonderful resource and the diversity of the programming of events like we have such a robust big letter a arts community so whatever your interest you can likely find it on peak radar and that is so cool also i learned today that neon pig that you partner with neon pig and i think what an amazing creative business they are, business model. So I thought that was pretty cool too. So thank you, Ms. Steele.

Thank you. We run our nonprofit to benefit local creatives. And so in 2025, $100,000 of our budget benefited local creatives through contracts, through sponsorships and other ways.

Angela, I don't see any more questions for this morning. So thank you so much for your update.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 6A, will the clerk please read item 6A into the record?

Agenda planner review.

Are there any questions or changes to the agenda planner? Seeing none for the record, there are no changes to the upcoming agenda planner. Moving on to item 7A, will the clerk please read item 7A into the record?

A resolution to repeal resolution 30-14, thereby resolving the Colorado Springs City Council Engagement Program.

Good morning, Blancha. Good morning, Council. I'm Blancha Lindsay, the Boards and Commissions Program Administrator. Today I'll be going over the dissolution of the Civic Engagement Program. So a little bit about the program. It was administered by a volunteer citizen and authorized by City Council through Resolution 3014. It served as a hybrid model and has created some challenges over the years, including inconsistent operation and messaging, as well as confusion to staff liaisons and board chairmen. The aim of the civic engagement program was to let citizens shadow boards and commissions, and it kind of allowed them to see what boards and commissions did without going through the formal application process that perhaps maybe an alternate member can have now. Additionally, a lot of the functions of that program has been absorbed by my position. So when the program was established in 2014, there was not a Boards and Commissions program administrator. So this program essentially stepped up to that void. However, now we have a paid staff member who has dedicated working hours to reaching out to the public and engaging citizens in our Boards and Commissions program. A little bit of the history, so it was established in March of 2014 by city council through resolution 3014. we received annual updates and we were able to find records of those updates in 2018, 2019 and 2021. there was a recognition for the 5th year anniversary anniversary in 2019. And the last thing we received from that board was an annual update in 2021. There were a series of monthly meetings that happened in 2021, but they have not had meetings since. And so they have been inactive for about five years now. In March of this year, we received a request through Council Member Gold from the program liaison to remove the program from our website. And so it seems like this program is coming towards its end and we're doing the final administrative step by dissolving it through resolution. Part of the review process we had to dissolve it was we met with stakeholders, which included council president, council president Pro Tem, interested council members in the past, Kimberly Gold, as well as council member Nancy Hengem. And we also contacted the civic engagement program leads on Eric Phillips. and after meeting with all of them we came to the consensus that it was appropriate to formally dissolve the program so that is all i have on the civic engagement program the next step would be it would go to the regular meeting on september 8th and we ask that it be put on consent are there any questions councilman donaldson

Yep, thanks, Madam President. Good morning, Blancha. Morning. How was your weekend?

It was wonderful, how was yours?

All right, it was great. Wonderful. This is a program, are there citizens that are kind of on this committee or this program?

It was more so citizens that led the program. So it was led by Eric Phillips and another citizen who has since moved that had interested citizens go through it, but it has not been active.

Eric Phillips is listed as program liaison. Is he a city employee and he's the liaison to it?

No, so he was a volunteer citizen. He was a former planning commissioner.

Okay, and how long has no one really been at the head of this thing?

Since December of 2021.

Okay, so.

Quite a while, five years.

All right, okay. And did we have council liaisons to it? Is that where Kimberly and Nancy come in?

No, they were just interested in it in the past

Okay, and could you say a few words for like a citizen watching this and thinking, well, hey, an opportunity is being lost here. Are they, what I'd like you to do is talk about how citizens can come to any of our council, not council, but committee or board meetings and sit in and listen and see what they do, or they can contact you. So really the functions of this don't go away, the opportunity is still there. It's just this thing is on paper, but it hasn't really had any activity for five years. So we're just kind of accepting reality there.

Definitely, I can speak to that. So if any citizens are interested in any of our boards and commissions, they're more than welcome to contact me. I can get them information on the boards when they meet. And if they're interested in applying for any opportunities in the future, They can reach out to me.

Additionally... How do they contact you?

Yeah, so they would contact me by my email at blanchalindsay at coloradosprings.gov. They can also contact me through the website. My email is there on the Colorado Springs slash boards website. So they can contact me through those measures. It's also, we have, you know, a dedicated staff. So there's somebody on business hours all through the week who can work with interested citizens on boards and commissions.

Okay, and on the website, all the boards and commissions are there in the ColoradoSprings.gov website. When they meet, who's on it, how to apply, all that is on our website, right? Yes, that is correct. Okay, thank you.

Councilman Gold? Thank you Madam President. Council Member Donaldson you asked some really great questions. I did want to give a little bit of historical context on my involvement. I have worked with the current volunteer Eric Phillips in a different capacity before I was on council and also the former volunteer who no longer resides in Colorado Springs. And actually, as a resident a few years back, this was actually my first interaction with Mr. Michael Montgomery because we were asking the questions on how could this program potentially be revitalized At the time, the new Ms. Ayanna Garcia was just hired and had not even started as the board's commissions and committees liaison, the role that Ms. Blanchard is in right now. So we said, hey, you know, let's kind of wait to see how she's onboarded. And, you know, since then, there's been really no forward movement. So I ran into Mr. Phillips a few months ago, and he was like, hey, you know, This was a really great program when when there was a lot of investment in it but it just doesn't seem like we can get that momentum going forward. And I might I may do something you know outside of the city to to help people to become more civically engaged. He will be attending the meeting where we'll formally dissolve this and we'll likely have some remarks but just wanted to give everybody a little bit of historical context.

I don't see any other comments except you asked. Oh, Councilman Hinge. Actually, sorry.

I don't think Michael got my name on there for me. Yes, I did. Okay, thanks. So I just wanted to say, in fact, I remember It was either in my very, very first council meeting when we were actually meeting over at utilities back in 2021, would have been April or May at the latest. Mr. Phillips did come to present to the city council at that time. I remember being very interested in it. And I understand and appreciate will vote in support of eliminating this effort. But I would also ask Blancha if you could speak a little bit to while we may not have this program going on directly with the city, in addition to the things you described that how people can be engaged via you, can you talk a little bit about the work that the El Pomar Foundation is doing related to boards, commissions, training and recruitment and how they're working with us at the city. And Council Member Gould, if you are going to be looking at doing something more, and I know you're very familiar with El Pamar, I would want to be in collaboration with them because they're really doing a tremendous amount of work in this space. So, Blancha, could you speak a little bit to that? Yeah.

yeah definitely um so we usually every year attend the el pamar get on board event and so we've seen a lot of success this year going to that event we received a bunch of interest in applications to our boards and commissions additionally there is the hey neighbor program that has um we've received some interest through members of that program as well And so we also partner with any professional organizations on boards that need specific specialties on their commission or board. And so those are kind of some of the outreach avenues that we use to help fill our boards and commissions. Yeah.

Thank you. And thank you for bringing up Hey Neighbor, too, because we actually have gotten quite a few applications through Hey Neighbor. So between El Pamar and Hey Neighbor. and the position that you now hold that we were successful in creating and getting on staff within the last five years, I think there's a lot there that we are and can continue to leverage. So thanks so much for all your work, Blansha.

Thank you.

Blansha did ask if this could be put on consent. I need to see thumbs.

We'll put it on consent. Thank you.

Moving on to item 7B, will the clerk please read item 7B, 7C, and 7D into the record?

7B, an ordinance repealing and reordaining Article 1, business license provisions of Chapter 2, business licensing, liquor regulation, and taxation of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs 2001 as amended pertaining to business licensing and providing penalties for violations thereof. 7C, ordinance repealing and reordaining Article 3, sales of goods and services of Chapter 2, business licensing, liquor regulation, and taxation of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs 2001 as amended pertaining to business licensing and providing penalties for violations thereof. 7D, an ordinance repealing and reordaining Article 4, Adult Use Businesses of Chapter 2, Business Licensing, Liquor Regulation and Taxation of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs 2001, as amended pertaining to business licensing and providing penalties for violations thereof.

Is your green button on? There you go. Thank you.

Lee McRae, Licensed Enforcement Officer with the City Clerk's Office. We also have Emily Vandenberg and Young Shin from the City Attorney's Office, and Ryan Talmadge from the HR Risk Management, if there's any questions later on that. We're here to propose three new ordinances to update the business licensing provisions of Chapter 2. Let me get going here. uh... repeal and replace article one article three nautical article four uh... we're skipping over to and five because those are uh... dual jurisdictional licenses, statutory licenses that we've just done recently in the form of marijuana and liquor at the last part of 2024. This is really a multi-year effort. Periodically we try and do a code scrub and this has been a multi-year effort and consultation with many different departments, finance, risk management, city attorney's office, fire, police, forestry, and in addition to stakeholder comments over the years of things that they would like to see. This is also part of the general city code scrub and recodification project, so we're first out of the gate for presenting this type of thing. We've also sent drafts of these ordinances and red lines to all the stakeholders, the licensee stakeholders for comment. We put today as the deadline for comments so we'd have time to make adjustments before first reading if we needed to. So ordinance number one is the general business license code. We are proposing to remove the word general essentially due to ongoing and historical confusion that we don't have a general business license in Colorado Springs like some other jurisdictions do. So we're renaming it to just the city business license code. This ordinance then sets up the structural format and flow for all license types. Each of the license types we'll discuss are subject to this general license code, excuse me, the business license code. It'll take me a long time to get used to not saying general. And we'll get into each one of those in a minute here. So the main changes for ordinance one, or for the license code, are essentially reorganizing and reformatting so we have a simplicity, it's easier to navigate, more citizen friendly, if you will. So we're taking all of the sections of code and putting them all together in one section for all the requirements, for instance. Previously they were kind of scattered out throughout the code, so now hopefully a licensee or a prospective licensee can look exactly, knows exactly where to look to find what the requirements are for their particular license type. So this ordinance then sets up that flow and organizational outline. There are no real changes in operational practices. Coordinates number two then covers most of the licenses that we used to call general business licenses in article three. We'll get to a screen here to show you what those are in a minute. I'll just do that now. This is the reorganization for a couple of things. One is to eliminate or remove unused portions of code. So we're suggesting to renumber those and basically we're moving everybody up one to then have articles or parts one through nine of article three. This slide shows when each respective license was established, last time it was updated, and the current number of licenses for each type. As you can see, security far outweighs everybody else. Another major thing happening is to update our insurance requirements. Basically, the code scrub analysis revealed that our insurance requirements in the code were not up to industry standards and not up to what would be characterized as needed for risk management. As a little side note, in doing some little research for this morning, I went back and looked at certificates of insurance for multiple agencies and licenses, and virtually all of them already have these new updated insurance limits. Then we'll get into specific changes for specific license types. For massage, the essential change is because of the new state required mandate for background checks for all employees of a massage business. not just the therapists or owners or anything. So that's a big portion of our code change here is to accommodate that and make that in our code in addition to attempting to put in distinct procedures for processing fingerprint-based background check results. Security would be, as we said, the bulk of what we have for general business, and the items that we're proposing changing are adding new notification for camera-assisted technology. We've gotten a couple feedback comments on that already, and we're looking to make sure that that is buttoned up language-wise before the work session, or before first reading. Again, increased insurance. Changing the title from private security officer to private security guard. This is really coming from the need to make clear definition between a law enforcement officer and a security guard. We already do refer to them as guards throughout our operation. Their license says private security guard. Other jurisdictions say guard. The former, it didn't pass, but there was recent legislation that the state didn't pass. They called them private security guards as well. We have made some accommodation already based on feedback, stakeholder feedbacks to make sure that they understand that we're not making them change their uniforms at this point in time, just when they are requesting new uniform approvals or placing new uniforms in a service. Another update is the maximum temporary permit period for a private security guard, reducing that from 90 days to 60 days. Most guard applications can be completed, all things being equal, within a week or so. I looked up our stats last night and so far in the first six months of 2026, our average turnaround was three days for a temporary permit. So we don't need that 90 days, 60 days is more appropriate and that leaves plenty of flexibility to if somebody's having trouble getting basic training or the training required. Clarified a little bit of language for security weapons and again in uniforms and then some codification of existing policies. Escort services hasn't been updated and doesn't really need to be updated that much, except for the format and flow. And the city attorney's office did do a review on state statute and recent case law to make sure our terminology was up to date on that. Mobile food vendors, really the only change is extending residential zoned operations until 9 p.m. That's been a request from stakeholders, both residents and licensees. Pond brokers, it's again just a city attorney's review of the statutory provisions as well as being consistent with that and the review of the police seizure and hold procedures. One thing we're proposing is to eliminate the bond requirement on this type. Let's see, the next three are all the same. Funeral escort, pedal cab, bicycle share. We have no funeral escorts, no pedal cabs. We have one bicycle share. The only change is the format and the insurance changes. The Article III tree service, we're proposing elimination of the limited tree service license subtype. That was enacted in 2024, I believe, at the request of the then forester, and we just had limited participation in that, and the current forestry recommendation is to eliminate that redundant subtype. increased general liability worker comp insurance, and we reviewed the penalty section for conformity with all license types. Ordinance number three then is the change to article four to change it to adult use business license code. It used to be called sexually oriented business. In doing a little bit of research, it used to be called adult use back in 1977 through 92. through planning code. And in 92, when this license was enacted, it was changed to sexually-oriented business license code. Changing that terminology also conforms with or is more consistent with statutory provisions and references and potential legislation there. And it's already in planning code, UDC, as adult use. Otherwise, it's the same structural hierarchy and flow outline and the terminology to be consistent with existing statute. Little side notes, I think I mentioned this already. There are no proposed changes at this time for Article Two or Five. Business licensing in Chapter Two is Articles One through Five. Two and Five are statutory. Currently we did marijuana most recently at the end of 24 to enable the retail licensing. And similarly in the late 24 for liquor licensing. And although excavation and concrete contractors are licensed through the clerk's office, those codes currently reside in Chapter 3 under Public Works and so are not part of the Chapter 2 code scrub. Just a couple of little... Comparison charts, one is about, we're just under 5,000 licenses and you can see the year over year changes. Of course, 2026 is year to date. Of all of our licenses that we issue, approximately 70% are those business licenses we've been talking about. And then of those business licenses, about 70% again is security, makes up security licensing. That's all I have at this point. I know there will be questions and I'd be happy to try and answer them or palm them off on the back row.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. Good morning, Lee. Morning. If we go back one slide, that's a cumulative total, right? That's correct.

That's just the business licenses we're talking about today.

Okay, and what's the typical duration of a license or just a business license? How long does it last?

Sure, it wildly varies. For instance, pawn shop have been, their longevity is much longer, but we've got quite a few fewer than we used to have of those. Security guards are very transient, very flexible in and out. Probably of the guard, excuse me, of the security agencies, about half of them, about 50 or so, are long-term licensees, and the other half are, I don't want to say transient for them, I want to say new.

Okay, and then the other thing, I'll just say this, is that I have, and I think many council members have met privately with, or just so we could ask lots of questions of Lee and Sarah Johnson. So you won't hear us, you're not gonna hear me ask any other questions today. All my questions, and I asked a bunch in this meeting. and had questions answered there. So if citizens wonder why aren't the council members asking any questions right now, for me that's why. Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't see any other.

Okay. Next steps would be just on regular meeting schedule on September 8th.

Okay. We will see you on September 8th. Thank you. Moving on to item 7E. Will the clerk please read item 7E into the record?

A resolution supporting an agreement between the City of Colorado Spring Stormwater Enterprise and the State Board of the Great Outdoor Colorado Trust Fund for the COS Creek Plan Feasibility Study.

Chief of Staff, we don't have anybody from the department to present this. Are you able to speak to this item?

I can generally, although I don't know as much, but let me just pull it up here. I apologize for that.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President. While I understand that you may be trying to figure this out, that's probably not the smartest idea to try to, if we don't have a presentation here and then this is something that we're just kind of going through the motions on, I guess I have to ask the Chief of Staff, like are you adequately prepared to speak to the topic versus us just kind of winging our way through it?

I think I'm adequately prepared to at least introduce it. I'm hoping that Rich or one of his other people is on the way now that we're here. Basically, many of you are aware that we've been working with a number of private entities and a number of individuals and their parks department and public works to address Creek COS. We've had presentations in front of council and in front of the utilities board a while ago. This is an application for a grant, and so it needs city council approval. It just simply seeks an application from Great Outdoors Colorado, and so one of the steps we have to go through is to obtain city council approval for that application. It does not commit general fund dollars. It's simply seeking a grant, and that's the purpose of this. For those who aren't aware, Creek COS spans a significant portion of Fountain and Monument Creeks and is designed to ultimately get approval for federal funding through the Army Corps of Engineers out of the Albuquerque Division. And it is a step that as we work together, both private funds and this grant, it would enable us to go forward and seek that. And that's what I can tell you right now in terms of the work session. And I apologize that we do not have someone here. I thought someone was going to be here.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President. There we go. Thank you, Rich.

We're just really fast, I'm sorry. And they ran, look at them. Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President. Wayne, I just want to make sure I understand, and perhaps now that we've got some experts in the room, they can clarify. But you, if I understood, you just said that this would not obligate any general fund dollars. But when I read the resolution, what it states is, quote, City Council hereby authorizes the expenditure of funds as necessary to meet the terms and obligations of the grant agreement and application. which I assume means that there's some staff time and staff expenses, but I don't know what other expenses would fall in that bucket. And that to me is different than what you just said in terms of not obligating any general fund dollars. I apologize for that.

Aaron, you want to clarify that please?

Sure. Hi, Erin. Hi. Apologies for tardiness. My name is Erin Powers. I'm the stormwater enterprise manager, and I'm not a runner, so here we are. So this is a resolution for support for the grant application. The resolution is required to support the grant application, but ultimately, Ultimately, the grant is being, sorry, I can't breathe. I'm good, I just need some oxygen.

Hey, Madam President, can we take a five minute break?

Yeah. Aaron, we're gonna give you a five minute break because we have to get ready for an executive session anyway, so we'll. We are now back in session on item 7E, Erin.

Yes. All right, good morning City Council, President Crowe-Iverson. My name is Erin Powers. I'm the Stormwater Enterprise Manager for the city. So this item is a resolution to indicate support for a grant application. The grant application is being submitted by Pikes Peak Waterways, but we are in a partnership currently with Pikes Peak Waterways and then also Colorado Springs Utilities for the COS Creek Plan. So there is no general fund money involved in this. There's also no Stormwater Enterprise money involved in this other than just some project delivery, project management support on the staff side. So the money would go toward HDR's contract. HDR is the consultant on board to perform both the study and all the associated grants that are helping to go to fund the study. So this is just a resolution indicating support, and it's a requirement of the grant application. So I'd be happy to take any questions.

Madam President, since no one answered my previous question, and I think you were just walking in when I asked it, I just wanna make sure I understand the second clause, section two, which says city council hereby authorizes the expenditure of funds as necessary to meet the terms and obligations of the grant agreement and application. The chief of staff mentioned that there would be no general fund dollars associated with this. I interpret that to be something different. Can you just clarify?

Yeah, so it is correct that there are no general fund dollars. The specific Section 1 and Section 2 are requirements of the application. They provide this language. But the way the funds are working is we have essentially a pass-through account that we're We invoice Pikes Peak Waterways and then they pay the money and then we pay that directly to HDR. So there's no contribution to that account, but essentially it is going through our contract with them. But there is no general fund money. There's also no separate stormwater enterprise money, so no city funds.

Okay, thanks.

I don't see any other questions. I apologize, Madam President. I'm supposed to be communicating with Michael, who maybe is triple tasking right now, but I did ask to be acknowledged. Thanks. So I just wanted to say that, and thank you, Erin, for the clarification, and thank you for running over. uh, responding to this. Um, I'm very supportive of this, uh, and certainly will be supporting, uh, voting on the resolution, uh, given that it's a requirement. Um, and we're working, the city's been working, um, and my understanding meeting, um, monthly, if not weekly with utilities and the city and Pikes Peak waterways on the cause Creek, uh, plan with, with Pikes Peak waterways. So very, very supportive and appreciate your, uh, hoofing it over to help explain to us why this resolution is so important. Thanks.

It looks like that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to item nine, Chief of Staff.

Did you want this on consent or regular?

Do you want it on consent?

I would support putting it on consent. I'm going to take that as a request from the chief of staff to go ahead and put it on consent.

I'm looking for a thumbs up. Yep. Thank you. We'll put it on consent.

Moving on to item nine, council member reports and discussion.

Are there any council members with reports? Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. On August 13th, the Pikes Peak Library District Joint Appointment Committee met and elected Commissioner Kerry Geithner as chair and myself as vice chair. The committee discussed the vacancy created by a resignation and the upcoming expiration in December of two terms for current trustees. The committee determined they would handle the three actions together in one application process. The El Paso County Commission has the lead for the application process in coordination with our boards and commissions program administrator. The appointment to fill the vacancy created by the resignation would be through the unexpired portion of that term, which would end in December of 2027. So the appointment will be for roughly a year once the application and approval process are complete. The appointments for the expiring terms will be for five years. It's not known right now if the two trustees with expiring terms were interested in applying for a second term. Under the county process, current members of boards and commissions must reapply for second terms. Timeline-wise, we're looking at an announcement for the application period. It's going to be earlier than last time. It'll be September 2nd, on or about. It'll be open for about four weeks until October 2nd, and then applications will be sent to the Joint Appointment Committee members shortly thereafter. Councilmember Hengeman and I have agreed to interview the candidates together with Blanche's assistance, and the county commissioners will follow their own process. The Joint Appointment Committee will decide on recommendations on November 5th, ideally followed by City Council and Board of Commission approvals in November. And second point, on next Saturday morning, August 29th, I'm participating in a Hey Neighbor organized coffee with Councilman Casey for District 2 residents. Thank you.

Councilman Rainey?

Thank you, Madam President. Just a couple of items. One, first and foremost, last week, or maybe it was week four, we had interviews for the economic development officer position. What a great opportunity for our city. A lot of great, strong candidates. So I think when we talk about Colorado Springs being open for business and having an office to really go out and bring business into the community, I think whoever the mayor so decides is gonna be a strong candidate. We had a great interview panel and I thought we are definitely and we should be in a great position moving forward. I also wanna give a major shout out to the residents of Banning Lewis who invited me for coffee. And oftentimes when we set up meetings for coffee, we were always talking about you know, what's on your mind, what's negative, and it was vice versa. It was an opportunity for them to just bring me in and say, here's some great things that are going on in our community, and we just want to thank you for being supportive. And that was refreshing to actually have coffee and talk about the good things that are going on in the community. So thank you to the residents of Bandon Lewis for doing that. I also want to thank personally a couple of residents that invited me to their home and they wanted to highlight their solar use and provide somewhat of an education moment of their panels and how their panels are connected to their um batteries and how that works so we as council or myself as their representation had a great understanding of how it works versus just going through the back and forth conversations through emails and so forth so thank you very much to those residents uh it's not quite often that council members get out to residents homes but once again what a refreshing take on being engaged in the community. So I want to thank them. And last but not least, last week, Friday, I believe, I had the opportunity of giving a speech at Reclaiming Civility Pledge Planning. And what a great opportunity to sit around the table with a lot of stakeholders in the city to include the mayor. Matter of fact, one of the candidates who has already announced that he's running for mayor was also there, along with some other stakeholders in the city, really talking about civility and where we're at as a community. and drafting and thinking through what does a commitment look like through a pledge as a community try to get back to just a sense of normalcy. So was very proud to provide a speech at that event and have great engaging moments with a lot of folks in there. I see one of the members in the audience, Thomas, he was there along with many others. um just want to say that that was great and i know there's some upcoming activities in september i believe that will be published so more to come on that that's all i have do i have any online i can't see your hands

Seeing no updates online or on the dais, we are going to adjourn this meeting and take a 10 minute break and come back in for a special meeting for a closed session. So we will re-gather