City Council - Regular Meeting

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Good morning. Welcome to Colorado Springs City Council meeting for August 25th, 2026. Will the clerk please call the roll?

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

Here.

Council Member Gold. Here I am. Council Member Hendren. Present in person. Council Member Lineweaver.

On his way excused.

Council Member Rainey. Here. Council Member Risley. Here. Council Member Williams. Here. Eight present, one en route.

Please stand for the invocation. We have the pleasure today with Pastor Chaplin, actually it's Chaplin, Gene Sineker from Stone Church. Thank you.

Thank you. Before I offer scripture in prayer, We had two Colorado State Patrol officers shot this morning on Highway 24 up Butte Pass. Please keep their families in prayer. And good morning to City Council and the staff and to all you in this room. From Psalms, I would like to read, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, seek my face. My heart says to you, your face, Lord, I do seek. May we bow our heads in prayer. Almighty God, as we gather in this room today, seeking the presence of the spirit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and as I have come as your servant to pray for city council and staff, we cannot run a government or our lives without the presence of our Lord. And so may this council, may all of us seek your face daily, seeking the wisdom, the strength, and the purpose of life through Jesus Christ. And as this city council governs this city, may they do so as you guide and direct each one. We ask this blessing now upon this gathering in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We will now consider the consent calendar. These items will be acted upon as a whole unless a specific item is called out for discussion by a council member or a citizen wishing to address council. Is there anyone who wishes to pull an item off of the consent calendar? Can I get a motion? We have a motion from Councilman Risley, a second from Councilman Casey. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Moving on to item 5A. Will the clerk please read item 5A into the record?

City council appointments towards commissions and committees.

This morning we have several appointments, starting with the Airport Advisory Commission. A vacancy occurred on the Airport Advisory Commission due to a completed term. Council members Roland Rainey and Kimberly Gold recommended elevating Mike Humberd, who has served as an alternate member since October of 2025, to a voting member position. Additionally, they recommended a reappointment of John Eastman. Council members, do you have anything to say?

Thank you Madam President and good morning all that are in the room and of course online. The one thing I will say is the Airport Advisory Commission is always that quiet group in the background that a lot of people don't get to see their interactions and what they're doing for us on behalf of the citizens of Colorado Springs at our airport and the people that volunteer their time are And what I mean by that is some are just regular volunteers, but majority of them are individuals that have a career in aviation, have ran small general aviation airports. So we're getting the best of the best on these commissions. And it was a very easy decision to recommend the individual to level from alternate to primary on the commission. And matter of fact, that individual ran a small airport out in Kansas City. And of course, now he's here, former Marine, retired. So I think a phenomenal choice, a great individual, and more than happy and excited to actually have him be an active member on the commission now.

Thank you, Madam President. I'd like to echo Councilmember Rainey's statements and just give a big thank you to John and Mike for their continued service. The airport is the front door of Colorado Springs, and they are doing a lot of unglamorous, behind-the-scenes things to really elevate our airport. So thank you, everyone, for their service, and thank you, Madam President.

Next we have Pikes Peak Area Council of Government Community Advisory Committee. A vacancy occurred on the Pikes Peak Area Council of Government Community Advisory Committee due to a completed term. On July 24th, Council liaison Roland Rainey interviewed applicants. Gregory Charter is recommended for appointment as a voting member. Councilman Rainey, do you have any comments?

Thank you, Madam President, and once again, this is another commission that I'm a liaison to, and I will tell you the Pikes Peak Area Council for Government Community Advisory Committee, their role and responsibility is you to integrate Find out what's on your mind and bring that back to the advisory committee. Granted, they have very specific areas that they focus on dealing with transportation, military land use, et cetera, et cetera. But these are folks that are out there engaging with all of you in the community. And I know they're going to continue to do that. A lot of great applicants. That was tough. One of the probably most tough interviews that I've had, 13 well-qualified applicants. Narrowed that down, made the selection, and the individual that we ended up selecting is someone who's really integrated into the community, and I'm looking very much forward, and I think I see him in the room. I thought I did. There he is. That Gregory is gonna represent you all well. So thank you very much, Madam President.

Next, we have County City Drainage Board. A vacancy occurred on the County City Drainage Board due to a completed term. On August 18, Council Member Casey and El Paso County Commissioner Bill Wisong, along with El Paso County Drainage Planning Manager and Engineering Manager, the City Public Works Division Manager and Engineering Technician, and the Board Chair interviewed applicants. Tim Martin was recommended for appointment as a voting member. Councilman Casey, do you have any comments? uh just that mr tim martin will be an excellent uh addition to the to the drainage board thank you if there are no additional comments we have a motion from councilman gold and a second from councilman rain or casey let's vote and the motion passes eight to zero moving on to item six is there any mayor's business today

Yes, just a few. Just a reminder that this is SoCo Startup Week. And so we've got a host of events in our community celebrating and assisting folks that are starting small businesses. I know a number of members of council have participated. Been involved in small businesses and starting up and continuing. And we want to make sure that folks have an opportunity. If you go to SoCo Startup Week, you'll see about a dozen more events still to take place this week. And then at the end of the week, we have the legislative barbecue down at the Colorado State Fair. And so those are a couple of the special things going on. And then Thursday morning, there is a special announcement at Widener Field. And that'll be great for our community. Thanks.

We've gone to item 8A. Will the clerk please read item 8A and 8B into the record?

8A, an ordinance submitting Part 5, Claims Management of Article 5, Finance Management Procedures of Chapter 1, Administration, Personnel, and Finance of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs is amended pertaining to Claims Management. 8B, an ordinance submitting Part 6, Workers' Compensation, Article 5, Finance Management Procedures of Chapter 5, Administration, Personnel, and Finance of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs 2001 is amended pertaining to Workers' Compensation Claims Management.

Good morning, John.

Good morning, President Crowe, Iverson, Pro Tem, Brisley, and members of city council. My name is John Hunter, and I'm with Colorado Springs Utilities, and I'm here this morning to present on the proposed city code amendments. This presentation will cover both items 295 and 296. If we go ahead and go to that slide. Your clicker should work. Okay, perfect. There's really two key points to these code amendments. The first is a more formal separation between the city and the utilities for their claims and workers' comp funds. They are currently separate funds that are tracked separately, but this code change would formalize that separation. And secondly, the transfer of the management of these two funds from their current state with the city CFO being the manager over all funds to amending that to have the utility CFO manage the claims and workers comp fund for utilities. And that's all I have unless you have any questions. Okay, at this time, I'd like to invite Tim Schreiderer from the city attorney's office to discuss a tweak to one of the ordinances.

Good morning, City Council. Tim Stratter with the City Attorney's Office. I'm the attorney in the office. In item 8A, where we're amending Article 5, Chapter 1, Section 15503, the very first line, it currently says, the city and utilities shall investigate. It should say the city or utilities. And so we would ask when you make the motion to approve this, that you acknowledge that amendment to that portion of the code.

Thank you. Councilman Donaldson?

Yeah, Madam President, sir, if you could stay up there. I've made the motion electronically, so I would just like to clarify that for the city clerk to amend it. My motion is amended to state or rather than and. That's correct, right? That is correct, in section 15503.

Councilman Hengim?

Are you good, sir?

I am. I would just request that you email that to me so that we get the right line number, page number cited in the minutes, please. Yes, I'll do that.

Yes, thank you, Madam President. And could you just explain the importance of or versus and, please?

So because each fund is being managed separately, each utilities and city will each investigate and compromise their own claims. So as it's currently reading, it's basically saying that both city and utilities will investigate both claims. And so we're just making the distinction that

both entities are going to investigate settle compromise their own claims separately i have a motion from councilman donaldson and a second from councilman rainey let's vote on item 8a and the motion passes eight to zero

Councilman Donelson?

It went away, okay.

Thank you.

8B, I have a motion from Councilman Donelson and a second from Councilman Rainey. Let's vote on item 8B.

And the motion passes eight to zero.

Moving on to item 8C. Will the clerk please read item 8C into the record?

Public hearing for the consideration of proposed changes as provided in Colorado Springs Utilities July 2026 net metering rate case.

Good morning.

Thank you and good morning. I'm Chris Bidluck, senior attorney with the City Attorney's Office Utilities Division. I'm gonna get you started on utilities rate case this morning by running through the instructions explaining the process that will be followed in today's hearing. The City Council's authority to establish rates, charges, and regulations for utility services is contained within the Colorado Constitution, Colorado Statutes, City Charter, City Code, and Council's rules and procedures. Article 20 of the Colorado Constitution provides City Council with the authority to establish electric, natural gas, water, and wastewater rates, charges, and regulations. Article 6 of the City Charter also provides the authority to operate those systems. The power to establish tariffs for electric and natural gas services provided inside municipal limits lies exclusively with City Council. City Code Section 12.1.108 E directs the City Council to establish rates for electric and natural gas service that are just, reasonable, sufficient, and not unduly discriminatory. Under Colorado Revised Statute, Section 40.3.5.102, the City Council's rate setting decisions for electric and natural gas customers outside of municipal limits are not subject to review by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, so long as the rates and charges are identical to those inside municipal limits. Typically, rates are considered just and reasonable if the rates balance, one, the utility's interest in recovery of legitimately incurred costs and a reasonable return on investment dedicated to the utility service, and two, the customer's interest in being assessed charges that approximate the cost associated provision of utility service. Part four of the rules and procedures of city council, together with section 12.1.108 of the city code, set forth the process that governs city council's hearing today. In setting rates, charges, and regulations for electric service and utilities rules and regulations, city council is acting in its legislative role. The written materials you have received, as well as the oral presentations and testimony at this public hearing, will constitute the record of that hearing. Today, you will hear the July, 2026 net metering rate case, which involves tariff proposals to the electric service and utilities rules and regulations. At the conclusion of the hearing, I will assist you in determining what issues to have identified and ask for a preliminary decision on those issues. Based on that, I will draft the decisions and orders for your review. Those decisions and orders will be reviewed at your work session meeting on September 21st, and you will be asked to adopt the resolutions at the regular meeting on September 22nd for an effective date as listed in utilities proposals of April 1st, 27. At this point in the proceeding, I would ask that if any city council members had any material communications related to the rate case prior to today's hearing, that they be included for the record.

Councilman Williams. Good morning. Thank you, President Crowe-Iverson. I'm just curious as to why that's a question, Chris, because we got rid of the ex parte portion of this, but does this still play a role?

There is no prohibition on those communications. We do ask that they be included now so that all council members are aware of all material communications related to the rate case so that all council members are working from the same collection of facts when making your decisions. much time do you have for us to list all those communications i mean we've all had communications right with countless individuals so how would you like us to that's why we asked for it to be material or a summary of for example i received a number of communications from constituents concerned with xyz so that it's understood that everybody is aware of what communications have happened

Okay, maybe I speak for all nine of us and anybody can object that we have received countless emails. We've had meetings with constituents and communication with Carter Springs Utilities as well. So I'm pretty sure that holds true for myself and probably the other eight of us. Thank you.

Thank you Ms. Williams.

Councilman Lineweber.

yes i um i've had countless meetings and um emails and um i've talked to utilities and all the other stuff that brandy said thank you councilman donaldson

Yeah, thanks, Madam President, and I've also received, I'm not sure, dozens, maybe 50 to 100 emails, and I've tried to reply to every one of those except the ones from this morning, and very few in-person meetings, but that's it. Thank you.

Councilman Hincham. Thank you, Madam President. Yes, I too have received dozens and dozens of, I don't know, since the beginning, probably well over 100 emails. I have had conversations with numerous rate payers with net metering customers. I have spent probably more time than Tristan would care to remember with the CFO seeking to understand the rate case. and i've done a fair amount of research and reading on my own as well thank you thank you it's up to you okay okay moving on to the right so councilman casey

Yeah, I participated in all Colorado Springs Utilities Board meetings and discussions regarding net metering, and I received and read all of the all-council emails regarding net metering.

Councilman Gold?

Ditto.

Councilman Rainey? I mean, Brisley? Sorry, Brisley?

Same as everybody else.

I also have received many emails, and I have met with constituents regarding utilities.

And so did I. Just wanna make sure for the record that I stated it.

Are you on the record?

I'm on record.

All right. We're all nine on the record.

I have it down, thank you. Next, I'll be turning over to Utilities for their presentation. Utilities has requested that questions be held until the end of the presentation, if possible, so that they can be efficient in presenting their material as quickly as possible, thank you.

Councilman Lineweber, do you have a comment or do you just have your name up? Yeah, that continues to happen this morning. Thank you.

Good morning, members of City Council. My name is Tristan Gearhart. I'm the CFO of Colorado Springs Utilities. Before diving right into the rate options that we would like to be able to discuss today, I wanted to start with the underlying issue we're trying to solve. The net metering program has been successful in helping our customers adopt rooftop solar and bring renewable energy to our system. This proposal is not about the value of solar energy. Our current rate challenge is that solar customers can earn energy credits for daytime production when power is cheaper, while still relying on the utilities grid when solar production is reduced or unavailable and our cost of power is more expensive. A helpful analogy is airline blackout dates. The airlines know that they have a small number of travel days that are their busiest of the entire year. They plan for those days in terms of infrastructure, employees, all of the things that they have to be able to support those days, and they price accordingly. Our utility system, electric system operates in a similar fashion. We have a small number of hours that we build our system for to be able to handle our peak capacity. We have to make sure that we maintain enough generation, substations, transformers, transmission, and distribution facilities to serve our highest on-demand peak hours for all of our customers. The difference is that airlines use those peak periods to maximize profits. As a municipal utility, we're focused on equitable allocation of costs. Our goal is to ensure all customers who depend on the grid contribute an appropriate share of the costs required to maintain the reliability for our grid infrastructure. This graphic in front of you now shows why the peak demand matters. The utilities builds 22% of our electric infrastructure for 4% of the time in any given year. That's almost a quarter of our infrastructure that's there to support 4% of the time in any given year. And most of that is a very focused time from really around 3 p.m. until 9 p.m. that we are building that 22% of our system. We cannot build our system for only average conditions. Our system must support moments when everyone wants power at the same time. The need for peak capacity is what drives a significant portion of our costs. The key takeaway is that while daytime net metering energy credits reduce energy purchases, they do not eliminate peak infrastructure that we must build and maintain. Approximately 7% of total residential peak demand comes from net metering customers. Based on our cost of service analysis, serving that 7% of net metering customers cost about $6.5 million a year in infrastructure costs. Under the current net metering rate structure, only about 2 million of that 6.5 million is recovered from net metering customers through kilowatt hour charges. The remaining four and a half million is not recovered from those net metering customers whose usage does contribute to the peak demand that we must serve. Those costs don't disappear. They're built into total rates passed on to non-net metering customers. As an organization, that four and a half million dollars is effectively us starting in a hole when we look at other virtual power plant programs and demand side management programs. This hampers our ability to fund programs that can bring more value from renewables. Batteries paired with solar are a game changer as they have the ability to reduce peak demand. In all of the discussions that we've had as we've been going through the net metering conversations, I've had discussions with many customers that have solar and some customers that have solar and battery. Seeing the way that the battery operates with that solar is truly a game changer for us as a utility company. It allows those solar installations to truly reduce the need of that peak infrastructure. That's where we would like to be able to get to as a utility, is being able to encourage all of those things. But when we look at the dollars that are available and we're starting four and a half million dollars in the hole, it is hard to be able to get the math to calculate out for those programs. That's a quick overview of the rate case, of why we're bringing this before city council. With that, I'm going to turn over some of the details of the rate case to our pricing and rates manager, Scott Sciarola.

Thank you, Tristan. President Crow-Iverson, President Pro Tem Risley, members of city council, Scott Sciarola, manager of pricing and rates, happy to be here this morning. And before we dive into really the details of the case, wanted to state for the record that our filing does comply with city code and the rules and procedures as outlined by the timeline and the procedural compliance. particularly, and I won't go through all these dates, but with our preliminary filing to the Office of the City Auditor, our distribution of our rate filing to the city clerk, members of council, posting it for the public, as well as the city attorney's office. On July 14th, city council did set today's rate hearing date, and then Mr. Bidlak went over the schedule for the decision and orders. Our proposal does include changes to our electric rate schedules, as well as utilities and rules and regulations. I'll go over the changes to electric rate schedules in more detail on the next slide. Before I leave this slide, I wanted to cover the proposed changes to utilities and rules and regulations. Particularly, our proposal always gives net metering customers the benefit of their own production, so they always are able to use their own generation to offset their consumption from the grid. Clarifying that in our rules and regulations for rate options that have a demand charge, we're adding a statement in our rules and regulations under the billing demand definitions to clarify that for these net metering options with a demand charge, that demand is measured off the net demand so the demand really pulled from utility system. The other change to utilities rules and regulations is clarifying that for our commercial industrial dynamic rate switching, that also applies to net metering customers. So utilities, Commercial and industrial rate classes are defined by the size of the customer's load. For example, small commercial customers are customers under 10 kilowatts, medium commercial customers are between 10 and 50 kilowatts, large commercial are between 50 and 100 kilowatts, and industrial customers start over 100 kilowatts of peak demand. As customers' loads naturally change over time through expansion or other drivers, if they grow from a load of 10kW to 12kW, for example, or from 12kW to 20kW, they move to the appropriate rate class. And we're just adding that clarification. That works for our non-solar customers, but we're clarifying that also works, what we're proposing is that same principle to apply to our net metering commercial and industrial customers. Mr. Bidlock indicated that our proposal is for these rates to take effect April 1st, and the filing that we provided to council and to the clerk's office on July 7th, of course, contained the full detail of our proposal, including our reports, resolutions, tariff sheets, and all the supporting materials and worksheets. Really diving into detail of the proposed changes to the electric rate schedules, you see they're really categorized into these six main categories, with the predominant one being the addition of new rate options for residential and commercial net metering customers. And we'll go over those in a little more detail in the next few slides, but adding both energy-wise great options for residential and small commercial customers, as well as net metering demand options for residential and commercial customers broadly. Our proposal does include the establishment of a five-year grandfathering a period for existing net metering customers so that they can stay on the current frozen rate schedule for a period of five years. So any customer that has a net metering agreement dated prior to April of 27 can remain on the frozen rate schedule that they're currently on until 2032, at which time they'd be transitioned to one of the new rate options of their choice. Additionally, for industrial customers that are currently on a frozen industrial rate schedule, we're proposing that they be moved to the standard energy-wise rate option for that class of customers that they're in. Additionally, we're proposing the removal of the indefinite carry forward option. Currently, our electric rate schedules provide net metering customers the option of choosing to continually roll forward their excess production credits, not only month to month, but at the end of the calendar year. The standard is for customers to receive bill credits at the end of the calendar year for their bank of excess production credits. Our proposal is to end that indefinite carry forward option that customers currently elect. We do propose that customers that have made that selection prior to April 27 can maintain that option as long as they remain on the net metering demand option of rate as the energy wise net metering option does not have that carry forward aspect to the kilowatt hours. Additionally, we're proposing increasing the current limit on system size, which is currently limited at 120% of the customer's annual kilowatt hour usage. We're proposing to increase that to 200%. And as Mr. Earhart indicated, this increase in system size pairs very nicely with future battery programs. We're also proposing to broaden net metering for industrial customers to include availability to meters that are totalized or aggregated loads. There's a small number of industrial customers that are on a campus type setting. So they have a large facility on a continuous campus and they may receive electric service from multiple points. And for their billing purposes, we totalize those individual meters into a aggregated load and bill them appropriately so that their overall campus is being billed for their total usage and not having to bill each individual meter. Currently our net metering rate schedules does limit net metering service to a service meter. So they would only be able to receive service at one of those individual meters. We're proposing to broaden that in these circumstances so that the whole aggregated load of the customer can be net metered. We've included a table here just as a reference of which rate options we're proposing to be available for our different customer classes. Particularly, you can see for residential and small commercial customers, as I indicated, customers that have net metering agreements dated prior to April 1st of 2027 may remain on the frozen rate schedule for five years honoring their previous investments in their solar system. That is a default grandfathering, so no action is needed on the customer's behalf to be grandfathered if approved by City Council. And that is true for both residential small commercial customers as well as medium and large commercial customers. They would remain on their frozen rate schedule through 2032. For new net metering customers, customers with agreements after April 1st, 2027, the standard option for residential and small commercial customers is that an energy wise net metering standard option, which I'll provide more details on that on the next slide. And then in addition to that standard option, they have a alternate choice option of the net metering demand option for those customers in the residential and small commercial customer classes. for medium and large commercial classes. We're proposing that any new customers, so again, customers with net metering agreements dated after April 1st, 27, their standard rate would be the net metering demand option. And as I mentioned on the previous slide, there's a small number of industrial customers that currently are net metered, but on a frozen industrial rate schedule. We're proposing that they move from the frozen rate schedule to the standard energy-wise rate schedule applicable to that rate class. Really going over more detail on our proposed rate options, and the rates shown on this slide are really applicable to the residential net metering customers. And this is, again, the standard option that's being proposed for new customers starting April 1st, 27, if approved, and the rate design would be the standard for grandfathered existing customers starting April 1st, 2032. I would add that if a, grandfathered customer with a net metering agreement dated prior to April 1st, 27, wants to go on one of these new options, they're free to do so, but they're able to remain on the frozen rate schedule up until April 1st, 32, if they choose. The rate design for the energy-wise standard option includes the access and facilities per day charge, the new grid access charge, which really covers the cost that Mr. Gearhart described, that infrastructure cost of serving the peak loads is included in that $1 per day charge, the new grid access charge. Again, this rate option includes the energy wise on and off peak rates. So customers are only billed the on and off peak rates for their net consumption energy that they're pulling from the grid during the applicable on or off peak periods and any excess production that they have during those on and off peak periods. So any production that they have in addition to what their system's generating, in addition to what they're using is compensated in terms of, in terms of monthly bill credits at the applicable on and off peak rates as well. So it does maintain that one-to-one value between what is being charged for energy and what is being credited for energy based on the applicable on and off peak period rate. And then just like all customers, these rate schedules are subject to the electric cost adjustment as well as the electric capacity charge. Some advantages of this rate are that they are consistent with the energy wise rates that are applicable broadly to residential and commercial customers and really all customers with that on and off peak pricing windows. The grid access charge does provide bill stability There's been some comments and concerns about the demand option and how it may have some bill volatility because of the 15 minute greatest peak demand. The grid access charge really does provide an averaging effect of that infrastructure cost across timeframes, across months, and across the whole set of customers. So it provides great bill stability, but still recovers that infrastructure cost that utilities incurs to serve the peak loads. There are opportunities for this rate option to work with a battery in terms of avoiding those net consumption on peak charges, but also being able to just shift usage to the off-peak period to minimize the amount of energy a customer is pulling from the grid during those on-peak hours. And again, the key distinction between this option and the next option that I'll cover is that this option credits a customer for their excess production monthly in terms of dollar amount bill credits to their electric bill. And those excess kilowatt hours do not carry forward to the subsequent month. Covering the next option, so again, this is a alternate rate that's available by choice for customers in the residential, small commercial classes. This rate design is also that, is the one that is standard for medium and large commercial customers. The rates shown here, again, are the residential and small commercial customer rates, but it does feature the access and facilities charge per day, covering all that customer-related cost. The demand charge is based on the greatest 15 minute demand in the billing period. It is seasonally differentiated, so it has a lower winter demand charge rate and a higher summer rate, really mirroring the cost of our system cost and the demands in our system, which are highest during the summer period. It also features access and facilities per KWH charge. So this is the energy charge base rate portion. So this charge, along with the electric cost adjustment and the gas and the electric capacity charge are those net metered charges that are essentially when there's excess production, the value of these energy charges is carried forward from month to month, similar to under the current rate structure. So this operates, just as the current net metering rate options do with that monthly carry forward. And for customers that have elected that indefinite carry forward option prior to April 1st, 27, it would continue to carry forward indefinitely. The distinction here between this rate and the current rate, again, is really the new demand charge covering that system infrastructure cost for serving peak demand. The advantages with this rate is if a customer really values that one-to-one carry forward and offsetting future usage with previous excess production, this rate option allows them to do that. And again, this option can compliment the battery program and really help a customer offset and minimize that demand charge if they're using a battery to mitigate the amount of demand during those on-peak periods. But even without a battery, a customer can have opportunity for bill savings by either shifting usage to the off-peak period, just as all of our non-solar customers can try to do under EnergyWise, but also by staggering usage of appliances across the on-peak period and not stacking appliance use on top of each other, which is what drives demand to kind of add incrementally on top of each other. Those two things help even demand through the month and lower demand charges. This slide illustrates the estimated bill impacts. We did utilize a comprehensive set of data of over 8,400 net metering customers to complete this rate design as really documented in our worksheets. And this table really illustrates the estimated impact of these proposed rates for, and these are shown in 2027 terms, but again, with the five-year grandfathering period, these are the estimated impacts after that five-year period when the customer would transition to one of the new rate options. You can see that under either option, the estimated impact is to be approximately $38 per month. And again, that's averaged throughout an annual period, so averaging 12 monthly bills. And it's really, if you look at the different colors on the chart, it's really distinguished between the the grid access option, the energy wise with the grid access being option one, see that blue portion of the bill being that grid access charge, really that average impact of of that infrastructure cost being recovered through that charge, but through a stable rate. And then through option two, it's really the demand charges making up the cost of that infrastructure cost, again, subject to customer control of that demand. In both cases, recovering that $38 per month, which is that estimated amount that infrastructure costs currently not being recovered under a pure volumetric charge. So with that, just wanted to highlight, Not only did utilities engage in public outreach to explain and promote our proposal, but we engaged in extensive customer research and engagement in developing this proposal. Really started last fall, but really accelerated this January with a comprehensive customer survey of both solar customers and non-solar customers in an open survey, really to collect feedback on what's important to net metering customers, and then narrowed the focus there with some focus groups to collect some additional information. As we started to draft this proposal, that included really the three pillars of grid access option, grandfathering period, and then the demand charge as an alternate rate, so customer choice. provided an opportunity for customers to provide input on our draft proposal. We engaged in extensive outreach to utilities board with presentations at the working committee meetings, really through this spring and into the summer. And once we had a proposal, we, maintain communication with our customers through the net metering newsletter posting information on csu.org as well as social media postings and other forms of communication so with that that concludes my presentation and there's an opportunity here for the city auditor to make comments on their audit

Great, thank you. Good morning, Natalie Lovell, City Auditor. The Office of the City Auditor's mandate under the city charter is to review the rate changes for mathematical accuracy and consistent methodology, not to recommend or oppose changes. We completed our review and concluded that overall modifications included in this rate case filing report and the supporting schedules were prepared accurately and consistently. Methodology changes were properly disclosed in the Utilities Filing Report. Changes were in alignment with the rate design guidance approved by the Utilities Board and were supported by the five-year rate case approved by City Council effective January 1, 2025. And I can take any questions if there are any.

I don't see any questions. So we will move on to public comment at this time. I have a list of... public comment signed up in opposition? We are now doing public comment. And if you've signed up for public comment, you will have three minutes. You will have to go sign up for public comment. Yeah, you can. So when I call your name, please come forward. Make sure the green button is on. Introduce yourself and limit your comments to three minutes. First up, we have John Lindsey.

Hi, I'm John Lindsay. I'm a retired teaching professor of electrical engineering at UCCS. Do I run this?

Oh, there we go.

And I'm proud that some of my former students now work for utilities. I'm here today as an engineer and as a customer and as a voter, and I want to point out right off the bat that although our solar panels, our net metering rate has grandfathered in for five years, this flawed rate is still going to be flawed five years from now. Sometimes I like to think of the grid as a tree with central power plants at the base and a trunk and branches going up to leaves. And customer-owned rooftop solar sits out on those leaves. And when we produce excess energy and export it, it goes right to our neighbors. In fact, the direct neighbor across my driveway, shared driveway, is John Hunter. And I know that when we are exporting power, John's using it. And that leaf tip to leaf tip transmission of power is an advantage and offers some advantages that a central power plant 20 miles away can't match. By relying on a cost-based study, CSU found a $4 million subsidy of customers like me from non-solar customers. But if you look at cost benefits, if a cost benefit study, it looks very different. So two totally independent methodologies, both scaled to CSU size, suggest millions of dollars of savings. A 2021 very technical peer-reviewed engineering study suggests $7 million of annual savings, mostly due to transmission and infrastructure costs. That's not generation, that's transmission and distribution. and infrastructure. But the study noted that as rooftop solar increases, even modestly, there could be up to 25% annual savings in generation costs. That's a really eye-popping number that you may be able to roll around in your head thinking about this plan for planned infrastructure that utilities has. That's all I have left. What do we need to do? To ensure fiscal fairness, City Council should pause the proposed net metering changes until CSU can make a transparent, independent, comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of just what these changes do. Thank you for your time. I had another slide, but it never goes.

Councilman Donelson?

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. And sir, I'm right here, I'm Dave Donaldson. I just have a question for you, especially considering your background. You've kind of highlighted transmission and distribution benefits, because it goes neighbor to neighbor. But at 7.30 p.m. tonight, when the sun sets, will your system be transmitting any electricity to Mr. Hunter?

It won't right now because my battery is not configured to export that energy. If we have a virtual power plant, it could be configured to do that.

So if all the solar customers had batteries, then what you're describing seems to me that would be accurate, but without the batteries, That is absolutely true at noon, at one o'clock, at two o'clock, up to that point. The problem is when we hit our peak, five to nine, is when the solar producers, rooftop solar goes offline. Mr. Gearhart touched on CSU's desire to come up with a, and we're working on it, to come up with a battery program for the rooftop solar customers, but I think the issue is currently we don't have that yet, and so that happens every day.

Is there a small response I can make? Sure. So if you look at the actual consumption of what houses are using, the peak is not, I don't believe, five to nine. I believe it's a little bit earlier. But at that time, my house is using the power we generate. And that peak now appearing a little bit later is because our solar is falling off, but the actual peak of usage was a little earlier in the day. And that does reduce the distribution and transmission costs.

And I'll ask Mr. Gearhart to address when the peak occurs. We have that data for every 15 minutes, so we'll get to that. The reason we have peak rates from five to nine is that's when our peaks occur. But thank you very much, especially with your background. Thank you for your comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we have Rona Culp.

Thank you for your time. My name is Ronna Culp and I'm an engineer as well. What I did was I took my actual bill and built a model so that I can compare my current rates versus option one and option two and make an informed decision. Next slide, how do I do that? Cool, in building that model, I found three problems. Number one was that after 28 days and three hours, your portal download gives you zero data. And so if you're not looking for that, you get wrong data, you download it, the model doesn't work, garbage in, garbage out. Second problem is my bill doesn't match my dates. So when I download the data and I compare it to the dates on my bill, it's not accurate in four of the last six months. And if it's not accurate in the dates, then the number of days is off. And when you go to this proposal, it involves the number of days being accurate. The third problem is a little more insidious. Well, this one shows the actual data down there of the four months where the data does not match my bill. Now over six months is accurate, but four of the six months, my bill doesn't match the dates. So there's something off there. The last problem is a little more insidious, and that is, if you look at June, I'm actually a net producer between 5 and 9, and obviously a net producer in the off hours. And my bill is still higher than it would be. So the model is not right. It shifted some way. So I said, okay, I'm an odd customer. I understand that. But let's just... take that to an average customer. An average customer will be producing at grid of what they're using. And their bill came out three times what it was. So this Brattle study that said that it will be only $38 higher, I believe is bogus when you look at actual conservative data. So my recommendation is, oh crap, can we go back? There, no, one more. So I don't have a last slide. My recommendation is fix the process so I can get good data in and good data out. Make it accurate. Second thing is re-look at this because I think I've given you enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt to say that the model is not correct. Have customers use this model. It's free. I'll give it to anybody who wants to use it. Look at your bill, compare it to your actual data, and you'll see that that model is underestimating drastically the amount of money you're gonna be charged. Are there any questions?

Councilman Hengem? Yes, Madam President, thank you. No, simply thank you for your slides and I would like to ask staff if I could have printed copies of these slides as well as the previous slides and probably any other slides that come up in presentation.

We'll go ahead and email those out to the full council.

Okay, perfect, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up we have Bob Ornley.

I guess my concerns over the whole grandfather issue, we installed a system a few years ago and we sized the system because it was bigger than what we actually needed, excuse me, at the time. As you know, over 20 years, the financing for the panels, the amount of output will go down five to 10%. And so we deliberately wanted to bank kilowatt hours that we would be able to tap into. So putting a limit on those or undervaluing those down the road really disturbs the whole financial decision that way. The other one is just wanna make sure you understand that the kilowatt hours that we banked, I think should be credited on a peak and no peak basis. We continually go home and we will turn off the air or turn the air way up. So it's not pulling a lot of power at the time during the peak and we'll use it at night. And if we're not accounting for that properly, then we're really wasting our time trying to save peak energy. So that's it.

Thank you. Next up we have Cathy Warnley.

Hi, I'm Kathy Wernly and just to add to his, we've had our system for three years. We have never once used more than we produced. So the net metering fee would just be punitive for us. I sent a letter out to everybody. I hope they got it. If they didn't, I'm just going to read it. I think CSU is over complicating the issue. their goal is to equalize the payments made by both solar and non-solar customers by charging a net metering fee for the peak and non-peak hours the very simple solution for this is to make both solar and non-solar customers pay the same rate without a net metering fee number one csu buys all the energy solar customers produce at the current kilowatt hour charge which is what they would pay to purchase it from an independent producer at the hour rate it is produced day rates peak hour rates number two the amount paid for solar customers energy will be banked and their accounts as credits then number three csu will then charge all customers including us for their usage for the current kilowatt hours peak and non-peak that we were all paying exactly the same thing you're using our solar that we're producing and we're just banking it no money's exchanging hands net breeding feed is not necessary everybody pays the same rates CSU is able to use the powers produced by the solar customers. Solar customers will be compensated for the energy they produce as credit to their accounts from which their monthly uses will be subtracted and they will be billed for any overage just as any non-solar customer would be. Keep in mind that You know, we have an additional $195 a month that we're paying for the solar panels that we purchased in good faith that we would be able to use them in the future. The net metering fee is definitely going to discourage future solar customers because why would they want to get solar if they're going to have to pay an extra fee anyway? Also, Denver and Pueblo, neither of them charge net metering fees, and they all have much more customers than CSU. CSU needs to think of a better way, and I think this is the best way by just equalizing it completely across the board for peak and non-peak. And again, to reiterate, we have never used more during peak or non-peak hours than what we are producing, and that's without a battery. So I think this net metering fee is just punitive.

Thank you, next up we have Court.

Madam President, could I ask one question of the nice lady? Now, ma'am, are you saying that in December, you're producing more energy from five to nine from your solar panels than you use?

If I count what I have produced during the year, yes. because I am banking what I'm producing. I'm making more than I'm using for the whole year.

And I would just point out, and I'm gonna ask Mr. Tristan Gearhart to address this, that's the problem. We have to build our infrastructure to cover you and everybody else from five to nine in December also. So you're exactly right, perhaps in June, is you're producing solar energy that whole time. But the problem is, and we're just trying to really identify why do we need to change rates, is we have to build or buy contracts to provide energy to everyone from five to nine in December. So we have to do it, we can't just do it for some months, because then you'd be in the dark

But we are not using your energy in December. We're still using our energy. Colorado is the second most highest state for daytime out, daylight hours for sunshine.

All right, I'll ask Mr. Gearhart to clarify it then for us.

Thank you.

Courtney Grant.

Okay, good morning. My name is Courtney Grant. I'm a Net Meter customer, and I also work for a local solar installer. The company I work for has been installing solar in El Paso County since 2013, and we are deeply concerned about the economic impact this proposal will have on our business and the local solar industry as a whole. With the elimination of the federal tax credit 25D, we've already seen a 55% decline in sales this year from last year, and it's not just our company. We've heard similar sentiments throughout the solar industry. I spoke with our local distributor last week, and they echoed our sentiments saying that their sales are 50 to 60% down this year as well. In 2025, there were 850 solar permits pulled with Pikes Peak Regional Building Department. This year, as of yesterday, there have only been 298 permits pulled. which echo what we're experiencing and so we're not just concerned about the lost revenue from new sales the proposed rate structure state any existing solar customer who chooses to expand their system after april 2027 will no longer be grandfathered in and will be considered a new net metered customer since current rates are more favorable to the proposed ones customers will opt out of expanding their systems otherwise they'd be financially penalized for doing so We're worried that the proposed net metering rate structures will exacerbate the decline in sales we've already seen and will force even more companies to downsize and or file bankruptcy. We saw three companies close their local offices just last month. If our company had to close, eight people would directly lose their jobs and many of the subs that we use would be negatively impacted as well. The solar industry works with electricians, roofers, energy consultants, banks, distributors, manufacturers, nonprofits, et cetera. The financial ripple effects this rate proposal will have in El Paso County are greater than just the solar installers. And when solar installers go out of business, that leaves their customers orphaned. We've noticed an uptick in adoptions this year as more installers close their doors. Folks are left scrambling to find someone local and qualified to help them get their systems back up and running. If no one is left installing in El Paso County, the existing 11,000 plus net meter customers will have an even harder time finding a qualified, affordable, and timely installer to help service them, get their system back up and running, expand it, or with a re-roof. So in short, the tax credit going away has already had a drastic effect on the solar industry, and if this proposal passes as is, it would likely be the nail in the coffin for our industry. As the demand for energy increases faster than we can keep up with, we should be creating policies and rate structures that incentivize solar and other sources of clean energy, not penalize it. I'm asking that the town council members vote no on the 2026 CSU net metering rate proposals. Thank you.

Next up we have Brian Sathon.

Madam President and members of council, my name is Brian Safian and I live in the Rock Rim and neighborhood of Colorado Springs. I'm asking you to vote no on the net metering rate proposal from Colorado Springs Utilities because of economics and real estate. First, this proposal will have a negative impact on our local economy because of the disproportionate change in monthly bills for net metering versus non-net metering customers. Given the still relatively small number of net metering customers amongst all utilities customers, if an average net metering customer's bill were to increase by $38, then a non-net metering customer's bill would decrease by only $2 per month. The problem is that a $38 increase is far more noticeable than a small $2 reduction and much more likely to result in adjustments to monthly spending habits. That means that net metering customers could annually spend $5 million less in our local economy. That means $5 million less to local businesses, small and large, tips to restaurant servers, and local charitable donations. $5 million less spending on which city taxes can be collected and then take out the secondary or flow through spending that will never happen. I'm asking this council to avoid creating these economic headwind for local economic growth. Secondly, while utilities proposal includes two options, they don't actually offer a choice to customers if they're both intended to raise net metering customers bills by an average of $38 per month. That's an illusion of choice. So really, we'd have no choice. Related to that false optionality, I didn't think of my solar panel system as a speculative investment. It was an investment in my home where I've raised my children and made family memories. We made this huge investment because we thought it would protect us from rising electricity rates. While utilities certainly has the right to change the net metering rate structure from the status quo, I'm obligated to pay the loan every month for another 20 plus years, far longer than the five-year grandfathering proposal. In that respect, this is a totally different situation than energy-wise rates for non-solar customers. While utilities can change its rules and even apply different rules for different groups of customers, I have no choice and don't have the luxury of changing the rules. As elected officials, I'm asking you to protect folks like me from utilities attempt to devalue my home. In closing, please support our local economy and home values. Vote no on this net metering proposal. Thank you.

Next up we have Darryl Cooper.

My name is Darryl Kuiper. Kind of like the asteroid belt. I'm here to say that I think what the utilities wants to do is very complicated and still is not well understood by a vast majority of the rate payers. So I sent a note to each and every one of you in an email explaining that I had visited with utilities department and then I listened to what they had to say and then I sent a response back, never, got a response back from them. So then I sent you a copy of that letter and let me explain it in very simple terms. I used to have a business and I know the difference between fixed costs and variable costs. Utility rates, the stuff that you pay for, you pay for by kilowatt basically. Fixed rates are the infrastructure to get that there and not everybody pays, not everybody benefits from the same sort of benefit from the utility, from those fixed rates that you charge. That's an average across all the people and so some people are ending up paying more, some people are paying less for that. So that's not any different than what we have now. So what I am suggesting is, that the utility keeps all their rates uh their fixed rates in the fixed rate bag not mixing them in because i think that's part of what happens so uh and then uh giving us credit if we generate electricity during the uh period of time when when utilities are very cheap to buy, then give us what you have to purchase. I mean, we'll act, use your solar customers as your suppliers, which they are. They're supplying you with electricity. If that's the case, then bank those dollars, not the hours, not the kilowatt hours, but bank the dollars that we saved the utility since they didn't have to purchase that from somebody else. They got it from the solar panel folks. let that be the rate that you reimburse us with. That way everybody is treated equally in my opinion, and as equally as possible. So that's my position. Questions?

I don't see any. I don't see any. Thank you. Next up we have Lonnie Emily. Linda Pillsbury.

Hi, my name is Linda Pillsbury and I live in Colorado Springs. Last year we installed solar on our roof. We did it because it was the right thing to do. Decreasing air pollution, reducing our carbon footprint, generating electricity for ourselves and our neighbors. We also did it because it was a smart thing to do. We could invest in the upfront costs and then produce our own electricity at a cost that would be consistent over time. We spent a lot of money. The system cost over $37,000 offset by the federal tax credit of about $11,000. I'm very upset about the proposed changes to net metering. Under these changes, we will not recoup our investment. We are 71 years old and the 10 year timeline matters. We have an all electric house which is healthier and we cannot shift our need for heat and cooking into non-peak hours. The proposed changes also represent a breach of trust. Less than a year ago, we based our decision on the relationship we thought we had and signed with our utility. It does not seem fair that the utility wants to go back on their agreement and more than double the rates of the 11,000 solar customers. No other individual customers are having their rates and fees increase as much. The proposed changes will also destroy the local solar market, as very few people will buy a system they can't recoup their investment, and work will dry up for the local contractors who supply solar. I thought Colorado Springs was an area where protection of the environment and open spaces was not a partisan issue, that virtually everyone believes we need to. But here is a proposal that actively discourages solar. With 240 to 250 mostly sunny days a year, we are ideally suited to promote solar, not destroy it. I urge you to vote no on this proposal and instead to do more research. Look at and analyze the community benefits as well as the costs of rooftop solar. Benefits like grid resiliency and local production. Use the UPAC and other clean energy experts to help identify what other cities and community utilities are doing as they face similar problems. Come up with a proposal that is fair to the 11,000 solar customers who have already made an investment in our community clean energy production. Come up with a proposal that encourages rather than discourages future solar investment. Come up with a proposal that actually benefits our community. Vote no on this one.

Next up we have Wendy Crawford.

Hi, my name is Wendy Crawford. My husband and I have lived in this city for 32 years. We live on the northeast side and we added solar to our home in 2019. We made this decision and significant upfront financial investment as a way to control our electricity costs as we look towards retirement and a fixed income. The proposed CSU changes to our net meeting agreements totally upends the cost benefit that we relied on when we made this decision. we would not have made the $40,000 investment in solar if we knew then that CSU would not stand behind their net metering agreement. The proposed CSU's changes make fools of all solar customers. I attended the public event last August. I attended the entire day-long session here last September, and I'm here again today. At this point, this feels like harassment from CSU. Is there part of their strategy to wear us down? If CSU has decided to move on, to move from one of the most solar friendly utilities in the state to a hostile one, then allow them to amend the net meeting agreements going forward for future homeowners. Homes in Colorado Springs turn over on an average of every five to eight years. This in effect will cause most current net meeting agreements to sunset. Naturally, CSU's new agreement can be put into place with the new homeowners then. The CSU proposal changes to solar are not fair, but at least the new homeowners would have the facts before they made their investment. This change in net metering will significantly hurt solar home sales. We're not gonna see the appreciation we expected. The local solar industry, who has not recovered since COVID, today there are less than a handful of installers in El Paso County. To allow CSU to make this change retroactively is not fair. It's wrong and it's flat out dishonest. This was wrong to do last September, it's wrong to do now, and it'll be wrong in 2032. As fun as it is to be with you guys, I'd like to not have to do this again. Please make a decision and put this to rest. If the council also feels solar should not be encouraged going forward, while I disagree, but if you decide that's the direction you want to take the city, at least uphold the current net meeting agreements. Grandfather the existing solar customers who made their investment based on the promises that CSU made to us. Do not pull the rug out from us under us now. Thank you.

Next up, I have Amanda Romero, ceding time to John Hopkins. Amanda? Yes, present. Oh, and you're ceding your time to John Hopkins? Yes. Thank you. You have six minutes.

Thank you. I thought I was gonna need six minutes today, but everybody that spoke before me did such an excellent job, and I'm not gonna rehash everything that they already said, but I'll just bring up a couple new points for you. I do have a couple brochures. Can I give these to you guys? You're welcome. So for the record, my name is John Tompkins. I'm a resident here. I moved here in 2010. I bought a house in 2014. When we bought our house, my wife and I, basically the primary reason we bought the house we did is because the house had a south facing roof so we could put solar panels on as fast as possible. In 2016, our house was destroyed by hail, and we lucked out because we did the roof and the solar at the exact same time, so it helped us. I'm an electrical engineer by trade. I've been a part of this process since last year. I appreciate everybody voting no against this last year, and I encourage you all to vote no again this year. So a couple of the new things that I'll bring up that nobody else brought up yet is the fairness factor that everybody keeps talking about. This is absolutely unfair, and it's especially unfair when you compare certain solar users to other solar users. A solar panel user with six panels will pay the same fees or fines that a solar panel user with 50 solar panels will pay. Those people are the people that we're trying to protect here. I have 32 solar panels. I have 32 solar panels on my roof. I also have batteries. Both of these plans, option one and option two, will actually save me money. They'll save me about 20 or $30 a month. I'm still asking you to vote no. because solar should be encouraged, not discouraged. I'm open to conversation on this with everybody, including CSU. I've spoken with Scott directly. I've spoken with Tristan through emails. We're trying to come up with better solutions. There are a few better solutions out there. One of them would be meter collars, which I don't think we're using yet, but we might be thinking about using in the future. Meter collars will reduce the cost to install these systems, the battery systems, the solar systems, and therefore provide an incentive to get through that peak five to nine period. Right now, I don't run my batteries too much from five to nine. We're on a kilowatt hour for kilowatt hour credit. I've heard a lot of other people already talk about compromise here, and that's what I'm asking for is a little bit of compromise. If we went to a dollar for dollar system, I feel like it doesn't, and CSU said it doesn't completely negate the cost shift, but it does help a lot. And whenever I talk to people, my friend here, Amanda, when I talk to them, I say, hey, there's a cost shift about $2, $3 a month. They're more like, why are we even talking about this? Why are we wasting time? I was surprised by the CSU studies and the outreach when they actually did it this year, that the non-solar users were just kind of like, what are we talking about? We're talking about $2, we're talking about pennies here. The entire grid is built on cost shift. I live right next to a transmission plant. It doesn't cost as much to deliver electricity to me than it does somebody 20 miles away from a transmission plant. So what I'm asking here is just for a little bit of compromise and then the last two minutes of my time, I'm open to conversation or questions or anything like that if anybody had anything they wanted to chat about.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President. I do thank you for the brochure that you provided. A quick question I have is, there is an example within the brochure of an attached bill model with a QR code at the bottom. There you go, sorry. Is that something that you build? Because you mentioned that you spoke with CSU. Is that something that you collaborated on?

A little bit, yeah. So the original Excel spreadsheet, if you don't trust QR codes, you shouldn't. But I promise you can trust me. It's not a virus. But if you don't want to scan the QR code to get to my Excel spreadsheet, I did what another resident already did. I built an actual cost model to figure out what this is actually going to cost people. A couple examples of this. and just so I'm not speaking too far out. So a heat pump is 5,000 watts, that's $37 on demand charge. A clothes dryer is 3,500 watts, that's $38 on demand charge. Air conditioners are 4,000 watts, that's $43 on demand charges. If you do any of these things in combination, you're looking at $100 easy on demand charges alone. And CSU's solution is buy a $23,000 battery. I'm sorry, I already spent $23,000 on solar panels. I don't wanna spend another 23,000. I did install batteries because I do see the writing on the wall. I do see the advantages to peak load shedding and everything like that. I understand that there is a need to get rid of that demand usage between five and nine, and I do support that. To your question, the Excel spreadsheet was built by me solely and I did send it to Scott. Scott peer reviewed it for me, made some notes and some changes on the rates because the rates this year are a little bit different than last year. So with that, the... I did adjust it, but you can go in and you can put your bill into this. And I have brochures for anybody else who wants it. You can put your actual usage in this and it will tell you exactly what these changes are going to cost. And I guarantee you it's more than $23 a month.

Thank you.

Thank you. Does anybody else have any questions for you?

I don't see any at this time.

Thank you very much. Thank you for your time.

Next up we have Heather Buenel.

That's really good. I'd like one of those brochures. Hi, my name's Heather Bonnell, and our home has been on net metering agreement since 2018. With the exception of about two months last year, our electric bill has been equal to the connection charge. So in effect, we produce all the energy we need for our household. We invested a significant amount to build our system, and each month of savings goes towards paying off that investment. As you might imagine, the discussion of an extra fee, whether we choose option one or option two, means that initial investment was made on an assumption that now may no longer be valid. We will pay more each month. In fact, some solar advocacy groups estimate that the average time to pay off a system will go from seven years to over 30 years with this rate change. there would be no way to pay less or even pay what we currently pay. We have no real control over our bill without a further investment into a battery pack. And when I asked for a quote on that yesterday, it was $30,000 to do that. Furthermore, the webpage that describes the option is very hard to interpret. My husband and I have both read it in detail. We can make assumptions as to what the terminology means and how it applies to us, but there is no example or sample calculation to follow to estimate the effect of these changes on our household. It has been suggested that everyone will see an increase of $30 per month, but I don't see how we could confirm this. except with maybe that. The education piece of this puzzle is missing and also builds distrust and frustration. Finally, there are the questions of legality of this move as well as the lack of listening to solar customers. The survey we were sent was a series of questions with no good answers. I wasn't even sure I should submit it because it gives the impression of preferences that I don't have. I chose the least bad of multiple bad answers. I don't feel heard and I know other solar users have suggested more fair ways of converting our energy input into monetary terms that could be applied to higher rates. That would allow us some control. The current situation permanently saddles us with an extra fee and no confidence that they won't increase again in the future. I guess my question is, do we want to encourage or discourage rooftop solar? Aren't we entering into an AI age where increased energy needs will require that every source of energy be explored and utilized? Why would you disincentivize solar installation and use at this time? Also, will time of day rates and demand charges even make sense in the age of AI data centers churning through vast amounts of energy during the workday? I ask that this net metering change be reconsidered and a fair solution be adopted. Please include more solar users in the discussion and educate the public about how potential changes would apply to them. Thank you.

Next up we have Deborah Fortenberry.

Good morning and thank you. My name is Deborah Fortenberry. I'm a Colorado Springs Utilities customer. I appreciate the time that many of you have given me in speaking directly with you. It's been a learning process for me and one that I've enjoyed. One of the things that I've learned is that the founding fathers in 1871 named the city of Colorado Springs the City of Sunshine. And of course, this follows a long tradition of the Native American peoples who called our shining mountain to the west Tava, which means a sun mountain. So this long-held consciousness of the benefits of solar energy and presence in our community is something I feel like is an opportunity that we can step into rather than impeding, which is what I believe the current rate increase proposal does. It will impede solar. it's an additional imposition to solar because of course we were limited to 120% build out when we built out our rooftop solar five years ago, and that limitation is continuing to this day. So now that we've converted so many of our appliances and heating system to electric, we have to go back through a construction process, pay new fees, new construction, new permitting fees, to build out our solar to what we actually need to produce 100% of the energy we use, which is our goal. We don't yet have batteries, which I think is the great opportunity here that I want to see Colorado Springs Utilities step into. if we focus on the opportunity to store the solar power that we can generate locally, we keep these funds in our neighbors' pockets, right? And we can close this gap on what is perceived to be an energy storage gap that makes solar unreliable. I think it's not appropriate to see solar as an unreliable energy source, but rather one that we need storage opportunity to close that gap. And so my request, I believe that we can do better. I believe that we can come up with a fair rate that also accomplishes this great opportunity. If we do that, if we solve the storage gap, we could be able to avoid building replacement power production when Nixon has to retire. So that I think is a great opportunity here if we focus instead on the battery storage opportunity. My request is that you refer both issues to the UPAC engage them let them do a comprehensive analysis and report to city council and you know we um i think there's a great opportunity here thank you very much thank you

Councilman Hingem. Thank you very much, and Deborah, thank you for speaking. In particular, a number of people have mentioned this, but I just received a note from the attorney at CSU, Renee Congdon, I'm not recommending that this go to UPAC because this is a legislative matter. And I am in disagreement with that. I actually think policy is driving this rate case. And we've had this discussion before as a board and as a council. I don't think... I'm pretty confident not everybody agrees with me, but I would like to actually, if not now, maybe after public comment, determine which is best, Madam President. But I would like for Renee Congdon, the attorney, to address this question about UPAC. After public comment. That's fine. Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President. And I would just point out for my colleague that UPAC is, as its name implied, an advisory committee about policy, not about rate structure. We keep UPAC out of that. If we adopted this today, I would potentially support having UPAC then look at different battery programs to bring in to the offerings of CSU, but not to look at the rate structure itself.

Next up we have Rick Allen.

Good morning. This is my first time in front of any city council, but I feel strongly about the matter. So my name is Richard Allen. I put solar on my home about a year ago. We built our house three years ago on the west side. It's the first, and to my knowledge, the only certified passive house in the city. and therefore I claim it as the most energy efficient house in the city. We have 12 inch thick insulated walls, triple pane windows and doors, no furnace, no baseboard heaters, no AC, and no gas, just electricity and the sun. That's all we need. We didn't do that to save the planet. We did that because as an engineer, I think I'm now the third electrical engineer to stand up here, I like efficiency. I oppose the changes CSU has proposed as the current rules were a critical factor in our cost benefit calculation to install solar in the first place. And now they want to change the equation. We invested $27,000 after tax credits in order to reduce our monthly bills and protect us from future impacts like this one. Neither of the two proposed options are acceptable. particularly the one that takes away the rollover, is offensive. Either one would dramatically increase, and I was actually horrified by the chart that he showed, that would show the massive increase in the prices for the electricity that we do occasionally have to pay. I also agree with others, my fellow engineer here, that it's incorrect to say that solar customers are raising the cost on other customers. It would be inherently unfair to increase our prices when we invested in this installation under the current rules. We chose to pay to install the battery, as others have said, which usually gets us through the night. It definitely gets us through the 5 to 9 p.m. peak hours, so we only take power from the grid during off-peak times, but we'll still get penalized under this plan. I think if there is a problem, and again, the professor has explained that it does not, there are many other options that you've heard today. And I think it would be well within your understanding to investigate all those options, not just these, what I would consider pretty terrible options. So I ask you to protect fair nut metering and vote against this proposal and investigate other options. Thank you.

Councilman Hingem. Thank you, Madam President. I would just like to make a request of our CFO, Tristan, when you come back up to speak, if you could. I just heard what I thought was an incredibly powerful argument, that this particular customer, I don't know if he's a unicorn or not, but would in fact be penalized by this rape case based on what he shared, and if that's true. You can do it later when you come back, Tristan. I just want to put a placeholder and ask you to please make a note of that. Thank you.

Madam President, if we could, I would like to have Tristan just address it right now while everyone remembers what exactly was stated and suggested, because I remember talking, again, I read every email that's come in. I talked with Tristan about this specific example, and I think this is why we want to go to batteries with this rate case. Go ahead, Tristan.

Yeah, and in this case, I believe the rate structure that we have set up is beneficial for anyone that has a battery. So if you have a battery already with your system, if you're using that battery from five to 9 p.m., you would avoid the demand charge in option number two completely. In option number two, you are able to continue to roll over your credits from month to month. So from a cost impact standpoint, there isn't any. In fact, you also have the opportunity with that battery to use power in such a different way that you can come out ahead based on the time of day rates that would be put in place. On option two, that would be on option one. On option two, it's still the standard kilowatt in, kilowatt out, one for one exchange. So all of those things with a battery make just a huge amount of difference. That's what we see with this. The whole explanation that I gave at the beginning was we've got a peak system issue that's going on. So from 5 to 9 p.m., we see megawatts that are from 800 to right up to our peak, which was set this July. July 20th, 4.45 p.m., 1,034 megawatts. That was our all-time system peak. From five to nine through the summertime, that's when we see that 22% of additional needed infrastructure. That's 800 megawatts up to 1,000 that we're building to be able to cover during that time. That's where the costs come from. During that same period of time, we see only about 30% production from panels of solar customers. That means 70% of that time, at least 70% of that time, they are leaning on our system. And that's the calculations that come back to the $6.5 million of contribution to the peak needed infrastructure. There's 394 customers of our approximately 11,000 solar customers that have batteries right now. Those customers wouldn't see any change potentially in the way that they choose those options. Batteries changes that and changes the math. We need to recognize that and make sure that our rates are set up in such a way if you're not contributing to that peak demand through the use of a battery, that it doesn't negatively impact you. And batteries can do that. As we look at the programs and things that we are trying to evaluate from both a virtual power plant standpoint and DSM programs, demand side management programs, it would be looking and going and saying, what is the value of the battery? If you wanna own a battery yourself or have already invested in that, what rebate should we be giving you? Calculations of that are in the works, but again, it's when we do the calculations of that and we're starting with four and a half million dollars under, the programs don't pencil out. If we're able to get those things taken care of from rate structure standpoints, we have potentially rebate dollars that are available that we can evaluate to anyone that wants to own their own battery. And we're also investigating programs through companies that offer hosted batteries on both solar and non-solar customers' properties. Those programs vary in cost. Some of them have month-to-month charges. Some have a one-time upfront fee that's all that customers pay, and it would be enough to be able to cover their use, plus have additional power that they could send back to the grid. These are all things that we would love to investigate, but we just can't do that if we're starting from a negative, in the whole standpoint, and being able to cover our infrastructure costs.

Councilman Lineweaver.

Justin, I just wanted to kind of elevate what you just said a little bit, because there's an understanding, when we take off any power that we generate through solar or wind, so if the wind's not blowing and the sun's not out, so we got a big cloud or something like that, whatever, our current generation of power is roughly like, we're gonna, What I'm trying to get at is Nixon, we were gonna have to take down in 2028. And utilities successfully got that delayed until 2033. But that's what I seem to remember. And this is what I need help recalling. That's 400 megawatts. 200 megawatts for next year. Okay, so we're going to lose 200 megawatts when that goes down in 33, right? So currently, what are we able to generate with just basically natural gas? That's really our only other option at this. No, we do have some hydro, but that's pretty small. Okay.

Yeah, when we look through that portfolio and our system folks can correct me and we can get that number exact if we want to, but we have approximately 500 megawatts from Front Range Power that is a combined cycle natural gas plant. We have approximately 150 megawatts from the gas units that are at the Drake site, those fast start resources that are there. So we have that that comes through at the Nixon site as well. We have two gas peaking units that are 30 megawatts each. So there's 60 megawatts that comes from that. Our hydro allocation, Tesla hydro, which sits at the Air Force Academy and drops water down from Rampart Reservoir. It's about 28 megawatts when water is flowing through there. We get a federal allocation of hydro power, which is about 50 megawatts that they deliver firm to us as well. When you look at all of those resources, and that's not counting any of our renewable contracts that we have, that gets us pretty close to the 1034 still being able to be covered with Nixon in the mix, that 200 that's there from coal.

And that's where I'm really trying to get at. So we hit our max and our max is not gonna be our max. We're gonna keep pushing that as more and more people get electric cars and more and more people go electric and there's more electric demand. we're gonna be losing Nixon. So we're actually gonna be going in a deficit on power production between five and nine. So we have to find a way to kind of replace that kind of infrastructure. And that's the cost that the whole city has to bear. So that's the reality of it is like, how do we generate power during five and nine? And it's even more of an impact because we're gonna lose Nixon in 2033.

That's correct. And I did leave out one other resource that we've recently added within the last couple of years, 100 megawatts of utility scale battery. And I'd like to highlight that just for a moment, if that's all right, Mr. Lefkowitz. that 100 megawatts of battery as we've entered into the market, this is our first year in the Southwest Power Pole market. So we've seen how batteries can operate in that market. So we regularly see during the daytime period, solar generation, not necessarily right in Colorado Springs, but in the surrounding connected market that's priced in the middle part of the day for as much as 50 to $80, they will pay us to take that energy. So we will pay you $50 to $80 per megawatt hour to take the excess solar generation that's out on the grid. We can put that right into a battery, and then when five to nine is happening and costs are greatly increased, we are able to flip that battery and turn it the exact other way and push out energy both onto our grid and sell it into that greater market when prices are hitting $500, $600, $1,000 a megawatt hour in that market.

So I want to make sure I heard you right, that we're not paying for solar energy at certain times of the day because of this battery bank. We're actually getting paid to take it. So it's a, I mean, that's crazy. It's like a free gift, right?

And there are transmission costs that come along when you look at all of that. But when you're down in the negative $50 to $80 range, we're getting paid to take solar power onto our system if we have the room to be able to use it on our system.

But there's one more point to this with that. With our solar customers, we're locked in at a fee that when we can go and get power at a credit of $50 or whatever it is, We're locked in at a payment to solar producers at what rate? It's about 13 cents a kilowatt hour. So we're paying 13 cents a kilowatt for the solar panel when we could go get it and actually be paid 50. That's correct. But those are extreme cases. And it's not the 13, the 13's locked. But there are times during the day where power in the middle of the day is so cheap that it's really difficult.

And that definitely wasn't the case before. When we first started this program in 2006, the saturation of solar was not what it is now. There has been so much utilities scale solar that has been added that it just makes a huge amount of change in those mechanics. about three to four cents, we can purchase, we have a purchase power agreement with our largest utility sized solar array. And we're paying 13 cents for the generations that's coming from rooftops. When it was a small amount of customers, the cost shift was small enough that it wasn't worth all of this effort. We're up to four and a half million dollars that's not being covered right now, but that grows with every single installation of another solar customer at these current rates. If we don't fix the rate structure problem, which has those energy credits that are happening in the daytime to avoid system costs in the nighttime, and I get there are many customers that roll over from year to year, but they still rely on our electric grid in the evening time. and I have to build just as many transformers, just as many substations, all of that distribution infrastructure to make sure that we have power for those customers as well. But because they're cashing in those credits, which we maybe are overpaying for in the daytime a little bit now, it's now a way that they are not paying for all of the infrastructure that they're using during those peak times that we have to build.

So there was a suggestion of having an honest charge to what solar rates actually are. That'd be very complicated because it's such a volatile I mean, every hour things change, right? And so it'd be very, very difficult to probably come up with something like that. Maybe down the road, you know, if we had more AI, but that would be very, very challenging.

There is pricing differences. And I think what I heard from customers was just put us on the EnergyWise rates that we're asking from all the rest of our customers. And that's part of the proposal that we have in option one is to go to those rates. When we did the math and said, don't put a grid access fee on there, just charge the energy rates from on and off peak and credit those. If it's lower in the daytime, pay us what the daytime energy wise costs are, pay us for the evening production, use both of those. When we applied those to 8,400 customers that had a full set of years worth of data, of reads on their system, it covered about a million dollars of the four and a half million dollar shortfall. It just does not work because you are exchanging on a variable basis per kilowatt hour. It's never going to catch up because of the interplay that happens there. As long as it's credits in the daytime, use in the evening hours, it will never catch up no matter where you set those rates at. We've tied them back to exactly what we have for the rest of our customers over energy wise and it makes up a million dollars. Three and a half million dollars still left hanging out there that grows with every single customer that comes if we went with that option. That's why we're trying to make sure that we have the rate structure set to ensure that everyone pays for their part of the grid. That's what the proposal comes down to.

So I guess what I'm wanting just to leave this with, If CSU was not a publicly held utility and was a private utility, would we be having this conversation?

Probably not. I think it's really because of profit factors that are there with other utilities. So when they look at four and a half million dollars that for a lot of especially large investor owned utilities falls very much inside of the guaranteed profits that they get for every piece of infrastructure that they build. So they have lines of net profit, net revenue that comes back at the end of the day that they can invest into these programs. All of our costs are generated on a cost of service basis. What does it cost to put the infrastructure in place? We charge that to our customers. We don't have a net profit line that we can go back and say, let's look for programs that we can do based on that. That's why I'm saying when it comes to battery programs and other things, we have to get the playing field levelized so it's the same across all of our customers. From that standpoint, we can look at what the value is. We can make those calculations. We can see how much value comes from our entry into the SPP market for having batteries that are available during that on peak period of time. and make an appropriate calculation of this is what a rebate should be for anyone that's already installed a battery or anyone that's planning to install a battery. And we can look further into programs that have third-party hosted batteries and what some of those options are. They could be very attractive for customers that have solar and for customers that don't have solar but just are looking for backup on their system.

Well, and I think that's what I wanted to kind of highlight though is because we're a community-held facility, we are a company, We often reduce rates. There's been plenty of times where we've reduced rates where you're not going to find that necessarily in the private industry. That doesn't really happen. And so that's the beauty here. And so when we compare our energy rates to other electrical companies in the state, we are incredibly lower than a lot of companies as it is right now.

Our electric rates, which we price on a quarterly basis are showing about 15% below the front range average for electric bills. And we do have really based on the way that we've been able to do things like with our 100 megawatt battery and ECA decrease that we're ready to propose for October 1st. It was discussed at utilities board this month. So because we're able to optimize some of our resources, both our gas and our battery and all of the other resources that we have, we've done, well for our customers and the way that we've been able to use our energy outside of the system, those benefits we need to be able to pass on to our customers and we can do that through mechanisms like the electric cost adjustment. All right, I thank you.

Next up we have Robert Latham.

Robert Latham, I've been a CSU customer now for 10 years. I feel like over those 10 years, I've done everything the CSU asks. First, I changed my light bulbs to CFLs. Then you told me to turn in my Christmas lights to get LEDs. And I changed my house lights to LEDs. Everything you asked, you asked me to reduce consumption. So I made a $20,000 investment to further reduce consumption in solar. Now it turns out CSU doesn't like customers who don't use much energy. When I look at the Brattle report, it's very clear. You recover infrastructure costs, not on fixed charges, but on usage. So as a low usage customer, I'm not paying much to the infrastructure. nor are some of my neighbors who don't have solar but don't use much energy. So are you gonna do the same? Are you going to introduce a demand charge for everybody who uses less than the average power throughout Colorado Springs? You talk a lot about fairness. That seems very fair to me. I want to be part of the solution. I try and reduce my demand during the peak times, even though it gives me no incentive. So I'm willing to pay something to draw on your power when solar is not available to me. But you've given me two options. One option is, I just pay a fixed charge. It doesn't incentivize me to reduce my usage. It's just a fixed charge and it blows 25% of the savings. Otherwise, I just roll the dice with your demand charge. I've tried for over a year to get demand information from CSU. They don't have it. They can't provide that. So what you're gonna do is for 15 minutes, I get to choose my monthly rates. I accidentally turn on two appliances and that sets my demand charge. I'm sorry, but these two options really don't incentivize me to save energy as you asked over the many years. Thank you.

Next up we have Linda Day.

Thank you all for your service. I appreciate you being here. My name is Linda Day. I live at 80904 and I'm gonna go off script here for a minute because I hope that you're listening to us, to the people that have solar. My husband and I have rooftop solar panels. I wish I didn't have to be here again to justify the value of rooftop solar, not only for us, for you, for Colorado, for Colorado Springs, for the earth, for the world. My husband and I invested in solar to give back to society. and to endorse the value of not having fossil fuels. We also thought that having solar might lower our electricity use when we are old, and we are old now. So we would like to have a way to offset escalating health costs. Our solar works. We've had what do you call it, that comes back to us. We've had credit come back to us. You're welcome. Respectfully, I ask you to call for a comprehensive and robust reevaluation of solar for this utility company and to change every utility user to the same rate. I reject CSU's rate proposal and ask you to reject the proposal and demand fair metering.

Thank you.

Next up we have Derek Law.

Hi, my name is Derek Law, a retired Air Force and Space Force veteran, Colorado Springs resident and solar customer. Currently serving as the acting chair of the Southeastern chapter of the Colorado Renewable Energy Society. I'm back before you, net metering for the second year in a row. Last year, my request was simple, transparency. If Colorado Springs Utilities believes rooftop solar customers are shifting significant costs onto our neighbors, show us the math. Since then, CSU's conducted surveys, focus groups, and public outreach. I appreciate the effort, but respectfully, that was not the homework assignment. The one thing we needed was a transparent, reproducible calculation showing how CSU arrived at its claimed cost transfer. We still have not seen it. That is especially troubling because independent research points in a very different direction. Studies, including research from national renewable energy labs, have found that the impact of rooftop solar on non-solar customers is generally very small. That does not automatically prove there's zero cost shift in Colorado Springs, but it does mean CSU has the burden to prove its local claim before imposing new solar specific charges. And that analysis needs to include both sides of the equation. The actual cost of serving solar customers and the value rooftop solar provides through reduced electricity purchases, exported local generation, and reduced demand on the system. My second concern is grandfathering. Five years is not meaningful grandfathering. I financed my solar system through a home equity line of credit. I still have about 10 years before that debt is paid off. I made that investment based on CSU's existing net metering structure. Using my own meter data and CSU's proposed time of use rates, I calculate these changes would cost my household roughly $800 per year. If I can estimate the impact using my own data, CSU should be able to show us the calculations based on its claimed system-wide cost transfer. That is money I would lose while I'm still paying for the system, and it could extend my payback period by more than a decade. I cannot undo that investment after CSU changes the rules. Existing systems should be grandfathered for the life of the system. Finally, singling out rooftop solar customers for special charges without first demonstrating that we actually impose those additional costs raise a serious question under the city's requirement that the utility rates be just, reasonable, and not unduly discriminatory. So my requests are simple. Show us calculations, prove the cost shift, account for the value of rooftop solar, and permanently grandfather existing customers. Until CSU does that, please reject this proposal.

Thank you. Next up we have Carolyn Disksherson. I hope I said that right.

For some reason it's spelled wrong. It's Carolyn Dickerson. It's all good. Thank you. Somewhere there's a V in there. I don't know why. Okay, well, Carolyn Dickerson, thank you. Okay. First, thanks. Thanks for your service. It's not easy to sit there and listen to each different perspective and every different person and it can be, if it's tedious for us, I know it's tedious for you. So thank you. As you consider the needs of our community utility, I keep hearing reliability is really sought after, valued, and important. I get that. As with many admirable goals, there's a point of diminishing return when pursuing reliability. Pursuing reliability past that point may lead to a willingness to saddle the community with debt. For example, planning for the Porsche, the really cool new nuclear power, when the known proven Chevy that gets the job done by pairing solar, battery, and wind. That does the job. Pursuing reliability past that point may lead to alienating the community you represent. As you move in ways that are really out of step with the community's values, pursuing reliability past that point may even lead you to work against the free market, adding unnecessary fees, selecting one part of our community to pay two or three times the cost per kilowatt hour that the rest of the community pays, slowing growth where it's growing.

Pursuing reliability is laudable.

I get it and I know I don't know near enough to know how important that is. Pursuing it at great cost against the values of the community and at the expense of regular individuals puts all of us at risk of debt and polarization. My question really to you is, why is the cost shift with solar the one that needs to be singled out? What about apartment dwellers? Apartment dwellers pay more than people who have single residences, even though people with single residences use more electricity. What about the people with water that has to get pumped way uphill for them to have water from utilities? Nobody asks me, do I want to pay for that pump when water just comes gravity fed to me? I don't get why solar has to be the one If the cost shift is real, and if it accounts for all the benefits of solar, why is it the group that right now is charged when other groups that have a cost shift are not? Thank you for thinking.

I'm going to take a 10-minute break. We have quite a few still signed up, and I'm losing council members. So we will take... We are now out of recess. Next up we have James Burnham. James Burnham. Graham Clout. Dina Cam.

the district six resident ben louis met with council member rainy in august regarding the proposal that he's changes these changes directly contradict the goals that are outlined his own 24 sustainable Hi, sorry, you didn't hear that. And it states that Colorado Springs Utilities aims to transition to a more sustainable energy system by reducing carbon emissions and transitioning from coal to renewable energy. The proposed solar rates Do not align with that commitment. CSU's two proposed options both result in the same estimated impact, an increase of approximately $38 per month calculated using 2027 rates. This is a substantial new cost burden placed specifically on solar customers. So for my example, my Energy Star, energy efficient, 1700 square foot house was built in 2021. We also are using the peak rewards so they can adjust our energy use at night. We installed solar in 2022 to counter the expected rise in electricity rates. Here's what our actual utility billing shows. In 2022, before solar, our total bill, water, the whole business, was 203. And since then, our even including access charges has been $50 less. So we are saving with solar about 50 bucks. So it's not a lot, but we don't use a lot of electricity again because we have a very energy efficient house. Our annual access charge today is roughly with the $19 access charge that it is today when we first got it was 15. so it's roughly 228 dollars a year under the proposed changes that would jump to 684 annually that's the 19 plus 38 times 12 that's what that is resulting in a tripling of that access fee before installing solar our annual bill was 2391 last year with solar it was 1934 so we saved about 457 a year The proposed change would increase our annual bill by 458, so it effectively eliminates all of our solar savings. In other words, CSU's proposal would financially penalize residents who have invested in renewable energy, and do so in a way that contradicts the stated goals of the 2024 Sustainable Energy Plan. This is not just a rate adjustment for people like me that have newer homes. This is a structural shift away from renewable adoption, away from cost management commitments, and away from the sustainability goals that CSU publicly set. It's also more severe than a peak demand rate increase. It's a targeted reversal of incentives that encourage residents to adopt solar in the first place. So I'm asking you to oppose the proposed changes and to advocate for rate structures that support rather than undermine the city's sustainability commitments. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up we have Tanner Cox.

Thank you, Madam President and members of council. My name is Tanner Cox. I'm a Colorado Springs resident in the first district, and I am also the Colorado program director for Solar United Neighbors. Today, I'm asking you to reject Colorado Springs Utilities net metering proposal. As a quick aside to Mr. Lineweber about your question earlier about for-profit utilities, unfortunately, we do see this a ton across the country in for-profit utilities. And in fact, the roots of the cost shift argument come from the Edison Electric Institute, which is a think tank for for-profit utilities, which makes me even more concerned that we're seeing this issue crop up in a community-owned nonprofit utility that is not trying to protect shareholder bottom lines. Last winter, I was able to sit down with Mr. Deal, Mr. Gearheart, and our friends at the Colorado Solar and Storage Association. In that meeting, I expressed great gratitude to Mr. Gearheart for the lengths he's gone to engage with CSU customers. I know he's probably responded to thousands of emails, had dozens of in-person meetings, and overall CSU has tried to engage the community. While I do value those efforts, I also express that I feel like we're putting the cart before the horse a little bit here, and I stand by that sentiment. As I mentioned last year, utilities are allowed to design reasonable rates to account for projected costs. However, a decrease in revenue does not equate to a new cost. This is especially true in our case when the decreased amount solar owners pay represents merely 1% of CSU's annual electricity sales. It's important to note that neither the Brattle Report nor underlying data show that solar customers present any new or unaccounted for cost that non-solar customers have to bear. Even more, the Brattle Report makes a passing comment about the benefits Rooftop Solar provides, but it does not include any hard data to prove that, quote, those benefits do not amount to the full cost of providing service. In fact, when presented with underlying data, it appears that no benefit evaluation has been conducted at all on behalf of the 11,000 solar owners in Colorado Springs. I am not suggesting that we only look at the benefits. Rather, I believe we should take the costs and the benefits as a whole picture. As you consider these changes, I ask you to reflect on a few questions. First, as customer behavior changes due to time of day rates, has CSU evaluated any extra benefits rooftop solar provides during the early afternoon? Second, has CSU conducted any cross study of the cost to serve solar versus non-solar customers? Third, given that we've never hit 100% renewables in Colorado Springs, has CSU studied how rooftop solar offsets costly generation sources even when wholesale solar electricity is exceedingly cheap? Thank you for your time today. I'm happy to answer any questions and I ask you to vote no on this proposal.

Thank you. Next up we have John Marvin. Todd Dorfenhaus. David Lovell.

Good morning, my name's David Lovell and I reside in District 6 in the northeast part of Colorado Springs. We had our solar system installed in February of 2022 at a cost of around 15,000. It would have been significantly more if we were able to take advantage of a co-op that was organized by Solar United. On an annual basis, my panels generate a little over 6,000 kilowatt hours. On average, I produce 4,200 and use 3,160, banking around 1,000 kilowatt hours annually. My current bankable surplus is around 5,200 kilowatt hours. I am not reimbursed for that surplus whatsoever. I have the following comments regarding this specific proposal. This issue has been argued on the basis of fairness. Solar users are being subsidized by non-solar users during the peak demand period. What is ignored is the contribution solar producers provide during the peak production period of the day, roughly 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. If you look at CSU's own data, you will find that solar producers provide a significant dampening effect in electrical demand during this period of the day. I would argue that 11,000 solar providers are subsidizing non-solar users during that timeframe, and if not available, would further stress the grid significantly. This is especially true during the hot summer months when AC use reaches its peak. I would ask why under the peak demand option the fee is based on the highest use during the peak demand period and not the average or median value. We don't calibrate sewage rates based on the highest water use period of the summer. Why are we doing so for peak demand? I have a bankable surplus with CSU. The proposal seeks to charge me for electricity I'm not using simply because of a time of day issue. Just like I cannot change when I generate electricity, CSU cannot dispute that I am producing more electricity than I am using. The peak demand period is designed to incentivize the shift of use to timeframes other than five to nine. What is the incentive for solar producers? The impression is we will be charged regardless. Based on the CSU assumption that the peak demand rate is roughly equal to the flat rate fee, what is the difference in options? One is the flat rate and the other fee for electricity we aren't using. I would propose instead to charge solar users a premium per kilowatt hour fee for electricity used during the peak demand period balanced against their monthly production. has currently presented the proposal being considered based on the highest use during the peak demand period and without the consideration for electricity produced as more a revenue issue than a fairness issue. When fully implemented, the revenue generated based on 30 to $38 monthly fee would be 360 to 456 per household, 45 million per year. As a result of the negative impact to 11,000 producers in the local solar industry, I stand opposed to this current net metering proposal. I hope you vote no. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next up we have Andrew Maverick.

good morning my name is andrew maverick and i'm a resident of district 3 and a net metering customer thank you all for being here and listening to us today i appreciate it I understand that net metering customers need to pay their share of, like me, I need to pay my share of access and facilities charges, though I do think we're making a pretty big fuss out of a pretty small part of CSU's budget. So I support the basic idea of the proposal, but I think it's unfair, and for two main reasons. it would greatly restrict the number of solar customers who could roll their unused energy forward. As far as I can read from the materials, only existing customers who choose the demand charge option would still be able to roll forward. This restriction on rolling forward conflicts with a proposal to increase the maximum allowed solar system size from 120% to 200%. Why would anyone build a bigger solar system if they would just be giving away their excess energy for free? Second, option two, the demand charge, claims to give us more control over our bill. But to have real control, we need two things, neither of which most seller customers have. To begin with, we need to know how much power we are using at any one time. We can get generic estimates, but that isn't good enough. As other speakers have pointed out, that a little accident of leaving two appliances on at the same time can cost you big at the end of the month. The bar chart in the CSU presentation shows that demand charges will average over $50 per month, and that means some will be much higher than that. The Gazette had a very informative article in July about companies that are facing huge increases in their electricity bills because of demand charges. Then, suppose my bill shows a big demand charge and I think it's wrong. I won't have any information that I can use to support my argument that I got an incorrect bill. So overall, I urge you to preserve Rolling Forward for all present and future solar customers and to help us get the information we need for the demand charge to be a viable choice. I have a few seconds left, so I want to, not just negative, I want to say something positive. The presentation from CSU also noted the imbalance between solar power generation in the daytime and peak demand in the evening, and discussed battery options. This kind of thing would benefit everyone, and I look forward to learning more about these plans. Thank you.

Next up we have Tom Harrington.

Good morning. I've lived in Colorado Springs 34 years now in Nancy Hendrum's district. I installed panels on my house in 2022, primarily for environmental concerns, but also in order to help control my expenses as I head into retirement. I don't know whether this plan is intended to wipe out residential solar, but it certainly looks as it will have that effect if it's implemented. Based on estimates that CSU has presented at meetings of the monthly and annual cost of either of their options, over the lifetime of my panels, fees to CSU will exceed the cost of getting the panels in the first place. So that more than half of the cost of having solar power will be not getting the panels, it will be paying month by month for the privilege of using them. Now, if this proposal had been in effect in 2022, I would not have gotten panels. In fact, if this panel goes into effect, I'm not sure whether it's even worth keeping my current panels active or whether I should just disconnect them to save some money on the monthly fees. And this is while my panels consistently generate more power than I use. There's talk about how much it costs to use, how much it costs CSU to compensate solar customers for power generated during the day, but a pretty significant chunk of the power my panels have generated is in credits that I will never use. They will never compensate for them for me at all. And that's fine, I don't mind that a bit. but I do object to being charged for having done that. Now, they will argue that if I'm concerned about the monthly charge, that the demand charge option will give more control over the bill, and maybe it will, but that still, even more than a year after it was first proposed, is still a complete enigma as far as figuring monthly costs. I have no way of knowing what it might cost me based on my past use. I have no way of predicting what it might be in any given month. So it's maybe I can control my costs, but it's essentially rolling the dice and hoping that I win out, but also knowing that I lose if I happen to decide to cook dinner during the evening hours or heat my home during that time. They keep on proposing this. They proposed this last year. Council voted it down once already, and they brought it back again. And I don't know if they're trying to wear us down or what, but I feel like they're giving us this, like I said, rolling the dice and hoping for the best. And maybe you'll come out ahead, maybe you won't. But in any case, as I said, I would not have installed panels under this plan. I don't know whether I should keep panels under this plan. I hope that you'll please vote against this. Thank you.

Next up, we have Wolf Sterling.

Thank you for allowing me to speak this morning. Sorry. My name is Wolf Sterling. I'm a nuclear engineer. My background is in operating and designing nuclear reactors. Why is that important today? Well, the important today is Colorado Springs Utilities has this huge presentation on how they want to subsidize our electric with nuclear power. And that is just magical thinking. The cost to produce nuclear power in this country is about $15,000 per kilowatt. It takes about 27 years to build a plant. We have nowhere to put that nuclear waste, and we never will. The only way we solve our power generation problems is through renewable energy. And the people in this room, including myself, have invested in that. Now, Mr. Donaldson has repeatedly mentioned, along with the CSU, we have a problem. Renewables don't generate during peak hours. And there are solutions to that problem. For example, Colorado Springs has a series of reservoirs which are currently not being used, and there's no plan to use them for pumped power storage. We could have batteries, but what CSU doesn't tell you is that in huge parts of the town, especially District 1, the system is at 208 volts, which you cannot connect a battery to. It has to be 220 volts. And CSU will not upgrade a solar user from 208 to 220 volts until the transformers in that neighborhood fail. CSU wants us to reduce peak power, and I agree, we should. There are things like condensing dryers that use 70% less power than traditional dryers. Try and find one in a store here, or even get someone who knows anything about that. We have lots of ways to reduce peak power, and we're not doing any of them. CSU has a single option, punish solar users because we don't produce power in the evening. But a better option is to say, how do we as a city ensure the reliability of this really cool thing we have? We own our own utility, and we want that. We share the thing. We want our utility to be reliable. Nuclear power is never going to happen. Never going to happen. And I know that because I'm an expert in this field. I build nuclear reactors. We have to find a way to reduce peak power, let everyone have batteries, and this proposal doesn't do it. All this does is punish people who invested in this city. And I invite you and I ask you, we don't have to say no to this forever. What we have to say is yes to a better solution that reduces peak power usage and allows batteries for everyone, not just the people in the new neighborhoods, but in the old neighborhoods, Ms. Williams, that you represent. Thank you for your time.

Next up we have Amy Pascal. Amy Pascal.

I think it sits on. All right. All right, thank you so much for the time to speak. I appreciate it. Good afternoon or morning, council members. My name is Amy Paschal. I am state representative for House District 18. I am also a solar user. And I am really impressed by all the testimony that I have heard so far. We have some very expert people here. Some people have done deep thinking, data analysis. I'm sure this is deeper information than what CSU got from their survey. So I think this is really important information and I hope you all take it to heart and listen to it. I'm not gonna go deeply into the different rate cases because I think people have covered a lot of that, but I do think that there are some issue areas here and this is a better rate case than the one last December, but I don't think we're quite here yet. I think there's a little bit more work to do and I do urge you to vote no. I did want to touch on something I've heard repeatedly is what CFO Gearhart said earlier about the fact that having residential solar paired with a battery is a game changer. And I think that's absolutely true. So what that speaks to me is that we want to get our solar users using batteries. they are expensive i know that i bought one last december um and especially the folks who are on solar right now especially they've uh the folks that are on fixed income that have um put their plan together there is no room for them to purchase a battery um and for the folks that who need the help the most the lower income folks who are using battery or who have solar but don't have a battery, they are also at least able to pay for a battery. So my suggestion is let's have a battery rebate program that pays at least 50% of the cost, even more. Now I also heard CFO Gearhut when he said the math doesn't math on that. I totally get it, I have a suggestion. There's something else going on in the city right now, data centers. I say that for data centers, part of the large load tariff or the agreement for them to be able to operate here is putting in a chunk of money into a pool of money that we can use to fund batteries for folks income qualified, the least able to pay for it. That's my suggestion.

Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Mike Butt.

Good almost afternoon members of City Council. My name is Mike Foote and I'm the general counselor for COSA, the Colorado Solar and Storage Association. We represent about 250 solar and storage related businesses throughout Colorado, including the CSU service territory. I'm assuming you've read the three letters sent by our CEO in opposition to CSU's net metering rate hike. I would like to offer a few thoughts in addition to those letters. First, while the City Council is relatively new to this issue, hearing it last fall and again this summer, it is part of a longstanding trend of utilities attempting to reduce the adoption of rooftop solar in their service territories. Putting it simply, rooftop solar doesn't help their bottom lines, and they realize the best way to stave it off is to eliminate the cost benefits to residents who may choose solar, and the revenue problem is solved. Several utilities in other states have been successful in doing just that, and they've seen solar adoption plummet as intended. But that's not been the case here in Colorado because of a 2008 state law that we outlined in our letters. The state statute does not allow what CSU is asking you to do here. Unlike statutes in other states, it does not have qualifiers like you may not unduly charge discriminatory rates to net metering customers or it can't be unreasonable. The Colorado net metering law prohibiting discriminatory rates is unconditional, and it applies to all utilities and their governing bodies throughout the state. In other words, there is no municipal carve out. Utilities in Colorado are prohibited from doing it regardless of what kind of utility or the reasonableness of their argument. Not that some haven't seriously considered it, and one investor owned utility south of here actually tried it about 10 years ago, but was rejected by the Public Utilities Commission. But when the other utilities are alerted to the state law and they further consider it, they almost always choose to not pursue it further. That just happened last month with a rural electric co-op not too far from here. CSU is the outlier, though. Now, as a matter of policy and personal belief, you may find CSU's arguments about why they should be allowed to charge discriminatory rates to net metering customers persuasive. And that's fine and that's not out of bounds, but it doesn't change the black letter law on the issue. The only way to do that is to go to the state legislature and get the law changed rather than pass a rate increase that violates it. I'll conclude by saying COSA is always keen to work with utilities to increase the value of solar and storage through system and would welcome the opportunity to do so here. We do it virtually every day, but we cannot support net metering discriminatory rates and ask the council to reject them as well. And thank you for considering our arguments.

Councilman Williams. Councilman Williams, can I just ask us a favor? We are running way behind. If we could hold our applause just so we can get through this fast or not, I understand your enthusiasm, but it does take time off the clock and we are stopping at 12 o'clock, which means you're gonna have to leave, come back at one. I just don't wanna drag it on more. So I appreciate the enthusiasm, but we gotta keep this rolling. Councilman Williams.

Chris, would you mind responding to that please?

Thank you again. Chris Bidlak, City Attorney's Office, Utilities Division. The question you were just presented was whether the proposed rates fail to meet the discriminatory requirements within the state statute. And it is absolutely accurate to say that the state statute prohibits discriminatory rates. What also has to be addressed is that discriminatory rates are well established in Colorado case law. Within Colorado case law, discriminatory does not inherently come into play based solely on there being a different rate. The key is whether there are reasonable bases for those distinctions between rates. So the question is not, does discrimination apply just because there's a difference? The question is, are the differences supported based on what's being presented and do the differences fit with the needed decisions that are being made. I'm happy to read from that case if that's useful, but I don't wanna extend further time if you're looking to go quickly.

Thanks.

Councilman Lineweber.

I have a quick follow up with that. So I guess looking at that, Does it apply, so rate credit, so we get, I'm a solar user, so I'm one of you. We get a net credit, but what's happening with this new bill change is that we're not gonna be able to apply that credit to a large part of our bill. And I'm wondering if that is, that could be a problem with this particular legislation.

So I would say that's a slightly separate question, but does go to the legality question. Under the state renewable energy standard, which is the law that was put in place in 2004, municipal utilities are required to have a net metering option for their customers. And one of the factors that is required to be available to customers is that month to month, one to one rollover. That is available in utilities second demand option. because an option is presented that meets all those requirements, utilities has met the burden of that statute. The statute itself does not prohibit any additional options. Under Colorado statutory interpretation, when a statute does not prohibit something, courts will not read in that prohibition on the argument that the legislature could have enlisted such a prohibition if desired. So we believe there is strong support that because one of the options does meet those requirements, there is no prohibition on a secondary option as well.

Thank you.

Next up we have Jason Sharp.

Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Council, for being here, for letting democracy occur. It's always a great part about being in our great country. So I appreciate that. I wanted to speak to the discriminatory. It's interesting utility starts with legal. We have legal questions. I don't think this is settled. I do think that if this moves forward, it will be challenged. And I think a lot of times things like this aren't clear until the judiciary weighs in. And it's unfortunate more and more we have to go to the judiciary to solve these things in our country. So just know that this is disputed and I think there are disagreements and you can hear multiples today. Point being it's not agreed upon. I would also speak to the problem the utility presented was peak demand. And I would argue that the solution has nothing to do with peak demand. I would also argue that the Brattle report that the utility commissioned has nothing to do with solving peak demand, nor does it ask for benefits of renewables, nor does it look at other cost shifts. There are many cost shifts where this is a public service. This is a council that serves the public good. do snow plowing, we do fire mitigation, we provide water. Do you charge different rates based on the cost shift that occurs for people who live in areas that need more fire mitigation than others? I don't believe you do. So why are we going down the road for solar? I believe that's indicative of this being a discriminatory case right here. I think you can do better. One of the elegant things about net metering is it challenges utilities to solve real problems. It's saying let's solve, Peak demand, design a rate that addresses peak demand, not design a rate that penalizes the people who want to be part of the solution. And most of the people who have invested in renewables want to be part of the solution. We have a $10 million project for low-income multi-family housing here in Colorado Springs. You have millions of dollars of private sector money coming to try to help solve this problem. Consumers are worried about reliability. We have more and more wildfires. And people have increasing rates. And you would be denying people the opportunity to invest in technology that provides power during those fire issues. There's a problem in Ohio currently where I think there's been people without power for a week. And why are we trying to make it more expensive for people who want to solve this problem for the local community? The CSU budget, according to online, according to Google, is $2.2 billion, $200 million. And even if there's a $4 million cost shift, that's less than 2 tenths of 1% of your budget. So trust us, if you give us 2 tenths of 1%, we'll deploy batteries. In the meantime, let's penalize the people who want to be part of this solution and are the most likely people that are going to invest in batteries to add to their systems. So give people a choice. Listen to your constituents. Don't shut this down and cause a legal case Do better, go back to the table and do better to solve the real problem of peak demand.

Thank you. Next up we have Lawrence Godoy. I hope I said that right, G-O-D-O-Y. Alexander Antipov. Did I say that right?

Thank you. Yes, you did. I was a little nervous that I wouldn't get to show up here, but thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to this. I'm a CEO of a solar company, so I want to talk a little bit more of the commercial. We've installed a 200 kilowatt system for ACE hardware on North Circle. They're now a net zero hero. And the same company, Scott Barnes, that owns that ACE hardware, wants to put solar in all five stores. Full systems, net zero, of course no batteries. We're also talking to YMCA owner of the five YMCAs here in town. They also want to go net zero hero. And we're talking about three and a half megawatts of solar. for these, you know, communities. And the cost of solar is cheap. So I understand where, you know, they're paying under 10 cents a kilowatt for energy. The proposed rates here for different situations are 36 and 30 cents a kilowatt. Three times the rate. And I think that's egregious. I don't think, you know, it's not, we're not talking about a quarter or 25%. We're talking about a big hike in increase. It's not gonna work. I'm a little nervous because it's, you know, first time speaking with all of you guys. So I just appreciate your patience and your attention. Brandi Williams, I'm part of your district. I could have told you that you're gonna have this issue. Everybody, every solar market goes through this. They get to a point where a lot of people are generating electricity and at three o'clock you have an excess. California went through that. Everybody that has a big solar market went through that. Xcel Energy in 2021 introduced the battery rebate program. $500 per kilowatt hour, you get a rebate. Then they get to use your battery during peak demand times. You know, that has not been done. And my mom used to tell me a lot, your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my behalf. Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on behalf of solar users, solar builders. It doesn't work. Another question I wanted to ask is the 4%. The 22% of... usage or infrastructure goes to 4% of time. That 4% equates to .96 of an hour per day. So it's not three to nine or four to nine, five to nine. That demand you're talking about is .96 of an hour or about 55 minutes a day. So it doesn't really make sense to have that demand charge. Let's settle that one hour of demand and let's go with that. Let's figure it out. Increase the rates. Our rates are low. Increase them and let everybody pay for it. We know the rates are gonna go up. But taxing solar and making solar impossible and not sustainable and not possible for nonprofits across the state, across the city is silly. And we're gonna stop four or five megawatts of solar. I employ five people and this would be a five to $10 million project over the next two years. that that's an opportunity for our city to have those resources, invest in jobs, invest in infrastructure. And instead they're just like, boom, let's charge you guys. And it's really not fair. And we've heard a lot of you guys say that like my bill doesn't add up, my bill doesn't add up. I'm an electrical engineer as well as the fourth electrical engineer in here as well. And like the numbers don't add up for a lot of people. If you vote on this, it's gonna be a mistake.

Thank you. Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, Madam President, I just want to correct something factually. I think the only time the kilowatt charge is 30 cents or above is during the peak hours, and that on non-peak hours, and if Mr. Gearhart wants to come up here and correct this, it's eight cents on the demand plan, roughly, and this is just looking at the plan here, and 10, not even 10, I would have to have Tristan or Scott come up, but I think the kilowatt rate that was quoted is a peak rate. And so for four hours out of the day, that's true, but the other 20, it's not, and I think that's very important.

And on option one, it does tie back to our energy-wise rates. Right now, energy-wise, off-peak is about 7 cents per kilowatt hour. On-peak is about 29 cents in the summertime, four months out of the year. In the wintertime, it's about 14 cents.

That's what I thought. And the other plan?

On the other plan, it keeps things at one all around the clock price, which right now would be at about 13 cents per kilowatt hour. Okay, thank you.

So that is going to conclude this morning's hearing. We do have to get downstairs as soon as... You're good? Okay. Good afternoon. There he is, just waiting for you. Welcome back to City Council. August 2025, we are still in the public hearing for utilities net metering. Giving him time to sit down. We will start with, we will, Start where we left off with public comment. Next up, we have Bill Clay. Good afternoon.

There you go. Okay. Good afternoon, Madam President, council members, staff, and community members. I'm Bill Clay. My wife and I started Solar Power Pros in 2013. We're a small business. We're roughly 25 employees. We install solar and batteries for residential and commercial customers in Colorado. And I was really impressed with this morning's comments from the citizens in the community and their points today. And thank you all on the council here for your patience in listening through this. We really appreciate it. I have three main points and I won't try not to really repeat all the points from this morning. My three main points for you are the proposed net metering rates will eliminate the solar only market in Colorado Springs. So I just wanna make sure that's understood. It will eliminate it. We've been doing this for 13 years. We model the financials for solar systems for residential customers. And in modeling this, the demand option offered by CSU is more expensive for almost all customers, and it's gonna be a non-starter for those customers. The time of use rates impose a $33 flat charge and a 13% increase on the off net and on net peaks to the non-net metering rates for net metering customers. So it's gonna be more expensive for those customers in most cases. The other point there is that in almost all cases, just different system sizes pointing different directions on different houses, differentiating scenarios. Even when you pick the best of those scenarios, the payback period is longer than the system's expected 25 year life. So most customers aren't going to pursue the purchase of a solar system at that point. We install systems across 15 utility areas in the state. And just so you know, this proposal is by far the most unfriendly to solar. Just wanna put that out there, by far the most unfriendly to solar. If voted in, it'll kill the solar only market in Colorado Springs, and it'll cause my business and other solar installers significant financial harm. Okay, so my second point, it's illegal. No, I'm not a lawyer, so don't take that to heart. But I did hear your legal counsels mention about case law, and I just kind of suspect that that case law that he's talking about is not specific to Colorado net metering. The rate's discriminatory, and Colorado law is really clear on this point. You cannot pass a discriminatory net metering rate. Okay, but why even go there? We heard this morning several times the discussion about solar and batteries. I am asking you to vote no on the proposed rate changes and instruct your utility instead to look at solar and battery options. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Next up we have Scott Carter.

Good afternoon. My name is Scott Carter. I'm a resident here in Colorado Springs. I have some solar that I put on myself, paid itself off in two years, so it's not a financial thing. For me, it's just CSU Utilities keeps kind of saying that we're shifting the charges to somebody else. And while yes, obviously solar customers do use when the solar panels aren't producing, however, we're not looking at all the times where the solar is actually a benefit to the county. You know, it would be easy to say a senior citizen is using a whole bunch of federal money when they retire, except it's not looking into the fact that they actually put in that money earlier on. Solar customers have invested in capital expenses that has helped out everybody. Let's look at some of the other things here. A couple places. The utilities themselves, they talk about having to build for that peak demand. The peak in all that infrastructure, that infrastructure is actually not used, the very peak of it is actually at four o'clock, not the five to nine. Their prices are higher from five to nine, but that peak is actually a little earlier. So they've already built that infrastructure. It needed to be there no matter what, solar or not. A couple other things where solar, you know, early on, solar helped pass Colorado Springs Utilities to meet the state's goals. You know, that's never factored in. A couple other things, solar has actually lowered those prices as we're seeing during the daytime, where we actually, Colorado Springs Utilities is actually making money off of solar. That's not factored in. Even a very odd example was when Texas had that crazy snowstorm, and we paid crazy amounts of money for gas. Just my system, assuming I have to look at their numbers, and I don't know exactly how many of their plants are peaker or combined cycle or not, but just looking at their numbers, I saved the springs $140. just my solar system. If everyone else, the 10,000 people, that would be $1.4 million that was saved. Obviously, every system's not the same as mine, but not looking at all the advantages that solar's actually giving is doing a disservice. I think you should re-look at this, maybe look at their initial assumptions. There might be some flaws.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next up we have Tammy Green. Tammy Green. Jan Labinsky. Zabinsky. Zabinsky. Thank you.

Thank you. My name is Jan Zabinski. I'm a resident of Colorado Springs and also a solar user. I'd like to comment today on the bigger picture that has been involved here. There's been a lot of strong and substantial reasons why this particular price increase and method of billing solar is really not a good thing. But long term, you have to realize that you people are elected to develop and to try to create a strong Colorado Springs in the future. And this plan, as the previous gentleman just talked, is going to kill the solar industry here in Colorado Springs, and then When it comes to the time gas is gonna run out, you gotta get rid of coal, what are you going to have? Nothing. And then there's the cost shift is going to be to the next generation that comes in here and you're not thinking about the future of Colorado Springs and the future of the country itself. This year we've seen We've seen tornadoes, we've seen floods, we've seen heat domes, we've seen wildfires, everything. And if you don't believe part of that is the cause of global warming, you're mistaken. Over the last 50 years, I've seen city councils like you, I've seen businesses and people take short term answers to their problem that are mostly financial based. And that problem has led to where we are now. The cost in the future from all of this is going to be astronomical, and it's going to be on our future generations and people that you have a responsibility to think about, not just the next term. Our Colorado Springs utility has been very neglectful in not planning for this. Not looking. They had six years to come up with a plan for the energy reduction. They didn't do anything. The only reason they got their statement is that the state is now requiring the Springs utility to come up with a plan. That is gross negligence. The Springs Utility are grossly negligible. So I just wanna say, I think we have to think about the long term. We can't just be concerned about, oh, it's gonna cost $10 here, more of that. We have to realize that 10, 15, 20 years, we're going to have an energy crisis here. And Colorado Springs Utilities will not be in the position to handle it because they've neglected to do the planning now. They've neglected to do the research and find the methods that can save us from that problem. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we have Lonnie Lemley. You're fine. Can you say your last name for me? Emily. Emily, thank you.

It's Scottish. Hi, I'm Lonnie Emily. I'm part of a group of private citizens that provide 1 5th to 1 6th of the solar power for CSU. Clean energy that's mandated by the state as part of its clean energy program. This benefits every single CSU customer. Now I ironically bought my system because I was concerned about rising energy rates due to the same clean energy mandates. The installer sold me the system, but CSU sold me the net metering program. They knew within a few years they would need to drastically change the program, which would drastically increase my costs. CSU seemed to think I didn't need to know this. CSU said, I made a bad business decision. I did. I trusted CSU, and by extension, I trusted y'all. Last year, CSU said I was cheating other customers by not paying the demand charge for increased energy costs between five and nine. Their solution was to charge me twice the rate for a full 30 days instead of the 20 days other customers were paying. Their example, they came up with a $25 charge per month. This year, with drastically reduced demand rates, the charge is $40 a month. Seems last year's estimate was a little disingenuous. Now there's an option where I can stop cheating other customers and pay the same demand rates as them, but it will cost me a $30 a month access fee to do that. Plus CSU will graciously keep and sell my excess energy and pay me nothing. These are examples of why I question whether CSU is an honest broker. Residential solar provides 1 5th to 1 6th of the solar CSU uses to meet the state mandated clean energy program. Why must residential solar carry the entire cost of this 1 5th to 1 6th portion when every customer from CSU benefits. And every solar customer is not the same. Some produce all of their energy, some produce only a portion. The low producers will now pay a significant penalty, about $40 a month, part of which will subsidize the higher energy producers. Their burden will be much greater than the $2 or so projected for all customers without this plan. Clean energy is more expensive than traditional energy sources. That burden should be shared equally. Residential solar helps CSU meet clean energy mandates. This plan loads a larger and larger cost burden from that on a smaller and smaller population. I'm not arguing to pay nothing, but I don't think we've made it fair yet. I appreciate the progress though. Thank you.

Next up we have Caleb Miller.

Caleb Miller, lifelong resident of Colorado Springs. Today we've heard lots of lots and lots of public comments about this. I don't have the privilege of being a solar user yet, but something that I want to point out to everybody sitting here, everybody in the room, everybody that cares, is that the presenter on this agenda item is Travis Steele. He is not present in the room today. after this board unanimously gave him a raise to $700,000, which is more than it pays to the beneficiaries of the publicly owned utility company through the coat matching fund. They've been very nice to you. They've presented their facts. Hey, my bills aren't here. Hey, this is off. I'm gonna go a step farther and say that Colorado Springs Utilities and the CEO specifically fundamentally misunderstand their purpose. It is a publicly owned, city owned utility company. The idea that you guys could make any decision to pass off the consequences of your lack of foresight to the literal beneficiaries of the utility company is embarrassing. It's a joke. Colorado Springs is a community. It is not a corporation. There are so many solutions to this peak hour thing. In 23 days, there's a data center hearing. You could go ask Raiden and all of these other 13 data centers in the Springs and say, hey, this needs to be covered. And you know what they'd probably say with their $100 million project is, we don't really like that, but we understand. But instead, you've taken the easy, dare I say, spineless route and tried to pass it on to the literal beneficiaries of the utility company. As far as I'm concerned, you guys are lucky that you're not being smacked with a lawsuit right now because CSU is fundamentally misunderstanding its purpose as a publicly owned utility company. I don't need to say anything else, that's it.

Next up we have Janet Capron.

Chair Donaldson, if I... If I could be recognized with Madam President. In terms of Travis Deal, our CEO not being here, my name's Mike Franklin. I'm the Chief Customer Officer covering for him. He's actually at the state level advocating on behalf of our customers in terms of a lot of regulatory changes. So I wanted to just let you know that he's actually trying to get here, but he had prior commitments at the state.

Thank you. Thank you, my name is Jeanette Caproon. I live in District 4, have had solar since 2020. One of the meetings earlier here in City Hall, utilities admitted that they knew about this problem nine years ago. To me, that's crazy that they have allowed all of these solar customers to sign up with a net agreement deal that they knew wasn't gonna be valid and that they were gonna have to change. I think that's horrifying. So in 2020, I put 10 panels on my roof. I was fortunate enough that I could pay cash, so it was $14,000. Every month, I went to the utility site and I wrote down how much my panels were bringing me in. It was because I wanted to see if I was gonna make a 10-year payoff. So it was like $24, $26. And I went, nope, we're not gonna pay this down in 10 years. The end of last year, I added three more panels. So now I'm up to $30 a month. Still not gonna pay it off in 10, 15 years. A solar installation is not a one and done deal. It has to be maintained, the panels degrade, so it's not a cost that you can pay down and say, I'm done. And I think that this charge for solar customers only is patently unfair. There's been enough people here that have said that this is a benefit to the city, it's a benefit to the earth, And when I did my solar installation, I got $265 back from the utility company. That was my rebate. Now those are gone. Now nobody gets a rebate. I think discouraging solar, which this deal will certainly do, I said, if we all win the lottery, all our solar customers win the lottery, and I can put a battery in, and I can go to 200% of my usage, where am I gonna find someone to maintain those? Who's gonna even install them? This deal is gonna kill the solar industry, which is a mistake for all of us, not just the customers.

Next up we have Melanie Richardson.

Hi. Thank you so much for your patience, for your time, your attention. It occurs to me that there may be something of a simple solution here. We've heard lots about the problems and lots of blame on both sides. It occurred to me that a possible solution to the two problems of citizens having to buy expensive batteries and CSU having to build new infrastructure could be eliminated. I'm recommending that CSU undertake a comprehensive comparative analysis of CSU buying the batteries versus building more infrastructure. Releasing the burden on the customer and ensuring that our future with solar and alternative energies is secure. Thank you.

Next up we have Rick Hart.

Afternoon, I'm Rick Hart. I've talked to Dave before and Nancy, and we've had some discussions with the original installation, I was one of them. So my comments are the engineering analogies of net metering obligations CSU created when it dedicated how early solar systems were built. First off, from the inception of the program, CSU, through I think 2020, till the funding went out, regulated south facing arrays and performed mandatory shade analysis. Customers were not allowed to choose west facing or time of day optimized design. CSU mandated south orientation because the program was built around maximizing annual kilowatt hours, not time of day performance. Those systems were installed exactly the way CSU required. Now CSU is proposing policies that penalize the people that installed them for what CSU required us to do. And so in the early parts of this program, you guys were begging us to basically install solar because of the state mandate. Deborah Mathis would send out an email, said, hey guys, can you guys do this, do this? There's only about 200 customers a year till about 2020 that were installing panels. So I find it very frustrating that I put them in per the design, spent more money doing it that way And then in which case now, you guys are changing the rules. So if you had a ROI, you can't do it. I can't do an ROI right now with the proposed changes that have been incorporated. So if you guys were the Colorado PUC, Xcel Energy and Black Hills both tried to do this. The PUC in Denver I've spoken with have actually filed a complaint with the Colorado Attorney General's office regarding this issue. They've accepted the complaint. They're waiting to see what you guys do. We can't have a solar only charge, demand charge for us. But what the PUC in Denver did, which I think you guys should follow the same format, was they grandfathered these systems in for 25 years. And that's what other utility companies have done in the past. I gave Nancy lots of examples of what other utilities companies had done. I also talked with Dave, I had correspondence with Alex, and they lost, the city of Carl Springs lost my paperwork and the original people that participated in the program. That showed what we had to do, which you guys, you know, CSU dictated the design for the early stage implementation. There's no, I don't have any west facing panels. Everything I put in was south facing. Now, I'm killed with both proposed plans. So I was hoping we revisit the grandfathering systems in some systems, only 3.5% of the customers actually put in solar. It seems like that if you guys are gonna change the rules, which the rules didn't change, they're not changing until 2027, we should honor these commitments made to us that invested into this. And what about the older people that say solar companies came and said your payback is this and it's not even gonna occur. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we have Steve Lightfoot.

Hi, I'm the guy that drives that LennonMurderTruth.com van around. Believe it or not, I used to be the top producer, one of the top producers in my telemarketers room. I used to sell solar. Solar basically is a hedge against inflation. You get payments that are equal to or less than your bill is currently. your system's paid off in 20 years and you've avoided all that inflation, then it's yours, you get about 10 years of free electricity. After 30 years, it's probably toast, but you saved about 25%. But what happens is the rules always get changed by the system. The system is dependent on the electricity company and the oil companies. They're the two biggest institutions besides our military. And right now, for example, you know how the windmills, create electricity with the resistance grinding in that little turbine box. If you put that technology in your automobiles, you wouldn't have to pay electricity or gasoline. The reason that's not being developed is because the oil companies and the electric companies run things and they're not letting that technology through. So you're working all 20% more than you need to work to pay for gas and electricity as far as your car is concerned. A lot of electric cars require energy from your house. So they're looking at ways to stay in power. If this vehicle comes out that transfers the energy of windmill turbines into your automobile and gives you free recharging, you don't need all those batteries. You can get rid of half your battery pack. You can recharge your batteries as you drive. The oil companies and the electric companies are going to do everything in their power to stop that. And I'm sure there is some shenanigans going on with the electric companies around here, twisting a few arms of the city council. So we're up against all that. But what I'm trying to point out is this. Imagine if I was the most famous human on earth saying this in front of the world's biggest microphone. The world would change. You'd be writing the coattails of a revolution that, my God, you didn't know existed. I'm the guy with the John Lennon story, the biggest news since Christ... For your sake, bring me forward. You guys have got to do something to stop the military industrial complex that controls your media. That keeps you stupid. Under Stephen King, no less. There's a spell cast on all of you. There's been a spell cast on the world since Stephen King shot John Lennon. You're afraid of your government. Only Beatles music set me free. I stopped being afraid. And I found evidence, what do you know? So please people, if you really want a cheap world to live in and you want things to be fair, you need a hero in your midst. I'm not ashamed to say I could be that guy, but you gotta bring me forward, thank you.

That concludes our public comment for this hearing. Public comment is now closed. We will now bring this... Back to the dais for Council questions and comments before we address the rebuttal. Councilman Hengim.

Thank you, Madam President. I want to say first and foremost that I've been taking notes madly through this entire hearing and listening to really each and every one of the customers who have come to speak to us, all in opposition, by the way. And I cannot say enough about how thoughtful and measured and well-researched and smart you all are and how you've approached us almost exclusively with a profound amount of respect. It's very impressive what you all have come to share with us. And I'm concerned that this council is at risk of sacrificing a portion of our customer base that is deeply committed to this utility um to the planet to their own energy efficiency to the city etc we've heard it all um for what is right now 4.5 million dollars and is less than 0.2 percent of our overall budget i just i just don't get that but but i i do want to say And by the way, the number of electrical engineers, a nuclear engineer, and just regular customers who have learned a lot about energy production and solar by virtue of choosing to put this on their homes, it's pretty impressive. But I really want to say very plainly that the proposal we are seeing today, and a number of you even said this, is better than it was a year ago. And I believe it is. And the 2025 analysis rested on a sample of 28 customers, and this one uses roughly 8,400. So that's an improvement. The utilities leadership did listen to this board, to this council last year. They added a five-year transition when there was none before. They raised the system size cap from 120% to 200%, although some of you have made a great case that it's going to be almost financially impossible to do unless we do some things different. But nonetheless, appreciate that. Spent eight months of public process rather than seven weeks. And I want the record to reflect that I really appreciate that work. I'd say the vast majority of it landed on Tristan and Scott. And I have spent, as I said earlier, probably more hours with Tristan than he would care to count. I respect him. I have a good relationship with Tristan. He's always been responsive. He's always worked to help me understand and answer my questions. And I sat down very recently with him one more time, and I've said publicly, I can't vote for something I can't explain to someone else. I'm a lot closer to being able to explain. And there's something new that's come into the picture, which I will talk about in just a few moments. So my questions aren't really about whether utilities should recover its cost. That's not my concern, really. We do have some additional cost, and I think most of you recognize that. I want to consider how we might approach September 22 differently or this whole rate case differently. But I have a few things I want to address first before I offer that. There are two options for the net metering customers and the promise or suggestion of a promise for distributed battery storage. We haven't heard a lot about that. It's been said. I'll speak to that a little bit more in a moment. Regarding the standard versus net metering demand, I just want to point out that it was only at the past June 17th board meeting when council member Lineweber, board member Lineweber, said that he had a problem with the single 15-minute event during a month as a methodology, and that, you know, A year ago, it was an average, which I think utilities basically said was intended at that time to place greater emphasis on customer satisfaction and bill stability. And we lost that for reasons that they have explained. But also Councilmember Williams and I have had a number of conversations and she was very clear that back then that the demand calculation had been described three different ways and should be vetted beyond a shadow of a doubt. And we have received a plethora of email, dozens, hundreds probably, that we still receive from some very smart solar customers who I would say don't feel like that has occurred. That's kind of what I heard from a lot of you today. And If you don't understand it and you're the customers, that's a problem. It is a problem. And then there's the cost causation. And if you could move to slide 16, please. I appreciate it, thank you. It talks about estimated impacts after the five-year grandfather. So I have a question, and it is, I think, really for Tristan. Is the $38 figure that's derived from cost causation under each rate option Or is it from dividing a revenue target by the number of solar customers? Because if the two are structurally different rate designs produced the same average, that suggests a revenue target with rate components fitted afterwards.

The $38 a month is the same on both rate structures because we price to the average customer and we use demand charge as one vehicle to be able to achieve that and we use grid access fee in the other. So going to your earlier point that you just made, last year we did have an averaging that we looked with only one option that we brought forward, not one 15 minute increment. In this rate case, we brought forward the full one 15-minute increment because we do have an averaging option. That's option number one. That takes the average of all of the customers across the system and says, what is that on a per day basis? And it comes back to the $1 grid access fee charge. So when we take an average customer, we see the $4.5 million revenue shortfall. and we calculate back how to recover that shortfall, either doing it with a demand charge or with a grid access fee and the energy-wise rates, it comes out to $38 a month. Okay.

That's the calculation we've made. That's something that we'll potentially be voting on. But I guess, again, a number of our customers still don't fully understand or appreciate that or feel it's fair. And so I think overall, I heard so many things today from all of you. And one of the things that impressed me is many of you said, I'm not going to repeat that because it was already said, which a lot of people when they come talk to us don't do. But you made... additional different and very interesting points and but overarching what i heard from you all is that you feel betrayed you feel betrayed by a utility that you have trusted in for decades many of you who entered an agreement and a relationship. And I know utilities has said, well, you signed a contract and contracts have clauses and so forth and you should have realized you were entering a business agreement and things could change. But this is a publicly owned utility company and you entered this in good faith. And somebody just gave an incredible example of, I was told to put the panels on the east side of the house and it was never given the option to capture that, peak time, when in the summer, when the sun's still up. So whether it be betrayal by something as significant as that, or hey, you told me to buy LED lights and I did that, right? I mean, you have been good, good customers of CSU and trusted customers, and that has changed. And we have been hearing that as a utility board. In our last meeting, we looked at our scorecard, and our customer satisfaction rates are down and dropping. We did a brand survey recently in July that I haven't seen yet, but I'm very keen to see. I've heard that it may be not so great and matches the customer satisfaction drop. I have a meeting to get queued up on that here. It's on my calendar. I'm not sure that the plan is to present that to the whole board, but I sure hope so. But we have a trust problem with CSU. There isn't a single person up here who wouldn't tell you that we are receiving emails every single day about the rate increases that people are experiencing. This is a very specific part of our population. I voted for that five-year rate case. I'm not saying that we don't have needs for greater rates, and I won't go into that whole argument, but I'm not here to say that utilities is bad or not with integrity. I'm challenging and I'm challenged by this one particular item, which you all have so well spoken to, which leads me to the promise of or the hope for battery storage solutions. So many of you mentioned this. And in fact, the guy who spoke who's got the unicorn house that sounds like uses no energy whatsoever is going to benefit because of battery. But I understand and heard Tristan say that people who choose the demand charge will also benefit from battery. But where is the support for battery, battery distributed storage for this group? And furthermore, I heard from Tristan and from Travis, who by the way, I am disappointed who's not here. I'm glad he's working at the state. But what more important thing is there right now for our utilities than this rate case? I don't know the details. Maybe there was absolutely no other way for him to do both at the same time. I can't make that judgment because I don't know, but I am disappointed that he's not here. But I heard from him and I heard from you, Tristan, that yes, we are very seriously looking into this and we want to present this so that you can support this now. And Tristan, you said numerous times when you came up to the podium today that we gotta get that 4.5 million or we can't make it pencil out. But here's my question. If Peak Energy Rewards operates today under today's rates and our rate design is firm enough to bill against it, to come to this council and say, we want to charge those rates, then why is it not firm enough to address battery now? Why? I don't get that. Would you like to take that?

Yeah, and the answer is we are starting from $4.5 million upside down when we look at any dollars that we would put towards a program that's either demand side related when we have to be able to put those costs out. So if I'm gonna go through and say, here's how much rebate per kilowatt for a battery, I'm starting at negative $4.5 million. So right now, I would like to charge you a little bit more for that battery to make sure that we can level out the rates. If we can get everyone on the same basis, we've built rate structure that will allow you to avoid the demand charge because you have a battery in, and if you would give us the same thing that we see in the peak rewards thermostat program, which is ability to use that battery during our peak timeframe, we would be able to say, here's how much we should give you as benefit from that.

Okay, so you are working toward that, you're preparing that, but this is like 0.2% of our overall budget that you're saying we're under. What else in our budget is $4.5 million, Tristan?

All of the things that total up to a $4 billion build out over five years that we are trying to prioritize and looking at every one of those dollars. As the CFO for the utilities, I care about all 230,000 of our residential customers and making sure that we achieve rate stability for all of them. When we look at these programs, we have to do it with all of those dollars in mind. When we look at the programs that we currently offer, we have to be able to look at those things. If we were to look at these right now, we wouldn't even start looking at the rebate programs if these rates aren't in place. We're starting from a place that does not have equity amongst the rate structure. It's a no go for us. So the idea that we would go back now and look at rebate structure when we have the inequity that is there, it would not happen.

So, Tristan, trying to appreciate that, I'm not sure that I fully agree with you. I think that's a choice, that's a policy choice that we could make, that this council could make. And what I've heard from this group, and what I actually heard from Travis, and I'm sorry he's not here to speak to this, but that... we would offer this not just to solar customers but to any utility customer because having distributed storage is good for the entire system and for the future and the climate challenges that we've heard coming up and and we heard a nuclear engineer now i want to get involved in a nuclear debate you know we've we did use a upac by the way to look at nuclear but we don't want to have upac look at solar policy, okay, but that is ridiculously expensive right now, and we know that. And here is something that we could be doing for all of our customers and to create less demand at those peak hours by distributing battery storage. That technology is out there, you know, I guess I'm gonna get to my final thing. And I see a motion and there's not a second. So I am going to make a motion. There's a motion on the screen, but there's not a second for the rate case as is. Okay, now there's a second, I'll make an amendment. I'm going to make a suggested amendment. And Michael, if you would please pass that out. So I wanna be clear. with you all about where I am. I'm not asking this council to say that utilities may never adjust net metering compensation. I'm not. I think the cost recovery concern is real. And I think the 2026 analysis has done some very serious work. I've talked about how much time I've spent on this already. I am now more clear that there is real cost to operations of the system, to infrastructure, for moving electricity to and from a net metering customer's home. But my ultimate concern is more about how we have dealt with this, known it for nine years. We just heard somebody say that. Customers who have been loyal, who want to be loyal and a part of the solution to this customer-owned utility. So I am making a motion to amend the proposed tariffs to provide that the new net metering rate option shall not take effect until Colorado Springs Utilities has filed with City Council and City Council has approved a distributed energy storage program, including customer-owned battery rebate levels, program budget participation capacity, and enrollment timeline with an availability date no later than the effective date of these rate options. That is my motion. I would appreciate a second.

President Kravitz, if I could just address procedurally the rate case process here for a moment. Yes. I just want to clarify, today City Council is not giving a final vote on the proposed changes. So we're not looking for a motion to approve those changes today. um today but i believe council on member hendrum would be proposing is to direct utilities to make those changes to its terror proposed tariffs so that then you could vote though vote on those on september 22nd um so i you're i welcome you to address councilwoman hendrum's proposal i just want to clarify that that would not be a motion to approve the proposed changes it would be a direction to utilities to make those changes that will be presented for a final decision on september 22nd and to be clear i was asked by

the attorney of record, Renee Congdon, to make this motion today. Did I not, city attorney and Renee Congdon? I have documentation that you asked me to make this motion today.

Renee Congdon, no, what I suggested was that if you wanted to make a motion to postpone that you would make it today. That was the only motion or procedural motion. What you're making is a motion of substance to subsequently change the rate case. If you want to change the rate case, there's a portion of the agenda, which I believe is in item eight, where you would give direction to Mr. Bidlack. He would make the change upon consensus of the group. Of the council members, he would make the change to the rate case. It will come back 1st for a work session where it will be presented. You all will hear that work session. If you agree that he captured all of the comments and the directions, then on the next day, which I believe is September 22nd, then you make the motion to approve as it was presented. So any motion today would be a procedural motion. So a motion to postpone or to, I mean, I think maybe not hear it, postpone to a date certain or postpone indefinitely. Those are the types of motions you would make today. You wouldn't actually make a motion on the substance today.

Okay. Well, thank you for that clarification. I'm sorry that I did not have that clarification before just making this motion. Then I will, since I don't have a second, I will change my motion. and it will be essentially what you have in front of you, council members. It will be simply to instead to amend the proposed tariffs, to postpone the proposed tariffs to provide that the new net metering rate option shall not take effect until Colorado Springs Utilities has filed with City Council and City Council has approved a distributed energy storage program, including customer-owned battery rebate levels, program budget, participation capacity, and enrollment timeline, with an availability date no longer than the effective date of these rate options.

And can I clarify? I think you have two motions in there. One would be to postpone, which would be a procedural motion, which you could make today. You could make a motion to postpone the entire rate case. without making any changes, so it could be to a date certain or indefinitely. That would be one motion. A different motion wouldn't necessarily be a motion, it would be a recommendation where you'd be seeking consensus of the rest of council to revise the rate case to incorporate the statement that you just read.

Okay. My greater desire than to postpone is to provide new net metering rate options that would not take effect until Colorado Springs Utilities has filed with City Council and City Council has approved a distributed energy storage program, including... customer-owned battery rebate levels, program budget participation capacity, and enrollment timeline with an availability date no later than the effective date of these rate options. That is what I would like to have put into the rate case then for September 22. If that's what I'm trying to accomplish, I'm asking you, is that the proper procedure? And do I need to wait to do that until later in the hearing?

Yes, that is the proper procedure. Under the agenda for the rate case, we first have city council questions and comments, and then city council potential for amendments. Those tend to merge as those conversations happen. I think it would be appropriate, given that you've explained your position, to request that the rest of council weigh in on that request. If you were to receive a majority support for that request, that would give us direction to make those changes prior to bringing it back. If you were not to receive majority support, then we would continue on with additional questioning and proceed forward per utilities requested proposal.

Chris, for clarification, do you want a thumbs up for what she's asking, or do you want a vote?

This would be the thumbs up, thumbs down, because this is not a procedural motion. This is about direction for utilities to follow.

And Madam President, if I could just ask a question of you. On our agenda for today, know item number five is city council questions comments for utilities to address yes item number six is a break for utilities prepare those answers perhaps a question that one of my colleagues just asked item seven is utilities response to the public and city council questions and then after that we deliberate and have a discussion of any amendments to the proposed so i think we've kind of jumped to item eight without completing five or doing six or seven. I would just ask that we kind of get back on. I think it'll help us to go in this sequence.

I'm fine with following process and procedure. People understand now what I'm trying to accomplish. I wanna do the best process possible, but now my fellow council members understand my position. So I will wait to introduce that and you'll let me know when. Absolutely, thank you.

So we are on five and Councilman Donaldson, I saw your name up earlier, so would.

Okay, yeah, thank you. So, First, I'd like to say it's difficult to just hear all that and I'd rather sit down and just have a discussion with each of you, but we can't do that. We kind of have to do summaries and things like that. I want you to, you know, don't feel betrayed. The Board of Utilities itself works to take care of all rate payers, and as has actually been discussed here, is working now to find a way to both recover the full amount for the service that's provided to solar users, to recover that full amount and not impose a cost, really to try to keep your cost almost the same. That will probably be with the help of batteries. I think the question, I won't get into that, short-term answers. There is a talk about, hey, this is short-term thinking, what you're doing today. I would say that the short-term piece of this has been since 2006 when a recovery structure was put in place which never recovered the cost for CSU. And as more and more citizens have with good intentions, gone to solar, it has become a bigger and bigger gap for the utilities. And as our CFO was pointing out, that's really the crux of the problem. When we don't recover, when utilities doesn't recover enough from those that are receiving the service, it comes from someone else who's paying. And yesterday I received an email from a woman who is a regular rate payer, she's terminally ill, She's a senior citizen. And she's asking, what can you do to help us? And I forward that up and we're gonna do things to help her. But we have 210,000, 220,000 other customers that are paying additional fees because we don't, we have made a rate structure which doesn't recover the full amount from the solar customers. Solar customers, assist CSU during the hours when you're generating electricity. And that's been described, but everything is brief here. You can't get into the, really, to details. But the fact is we have to build a system, a infrastructure that will cover all of us when no one's using solar. And the fee, the cost for that is what we're trying to fund. And as the CFO pointed out, I think 22% of our infrastructure is only used 4% of the time. I do have a couple of questions directly for, I do wanna point this out too, that I don't have solar. My bill, we don't have air conditioning. My bill's about $50 a month, or maybe 45. Almost half of that is just access fees. If I used no electricity that month, I have to pay about 22, 23, $24 every month. I think there's been some unhappiness or concern about that with solar, but that happens to all of our customers. There's an access fee, and Tristan would have to correct me if I'm wrong, and for every service that we provide, it's kind of like, joining a club or something like that, and you pay X amount, almost like Netflix, whether you watch it or not, and then when you do use that service, then you pay a little bit more, as a simple analogy. So, Tristan, if you could come up, And so either you can answer these questions now or after we give you some time to put your thoughts together, you can come back and answer them. The point that, hey, some of our citizens have made, I produce more energy than I use every month. Why do you need to have these kind of rates? Why is there gonna be an increase for me? I produce more than I use.

Yeah, and we definitely see that the production happens in the daytime hours. For a lot of customers built on the way that they put those panels in, it may be more than their total annual use. And we can see that because many of the customers talked about their energy credits that have rolled over from year to year. My question would be, what is your use when the sun goes down? So I mentioned before we have about 390 customers that have batteries in currently. The rest of those customers don't. At some point the sun goes down, the sun hits an angle where it's not producing energy on your panels. Our estimation is that during that peak period of time where we're building that 22% of infrastructure, we're only getting 30% at most generation from those solar panels. The other part to remember inside of that is we typically see electrical use by solar customers is about 30% higher than a non-solar customer. which makes sense, they've invested in solar panels, they're trying to find electric devices that they can use with those credits. So when you look at those two, they basically offset each other and what we are now building during the peak period of time is exactly the same amount of transformers that are needed if they had the panels or not. We have to be able to still provide the energy during that five to nine period of time and we have to build just as much. When you look at what they're producing in the daytime, that's great, that's the energy that comes in. We credit for that, but the rate structure right now applies those credits against a time where there's not energy that's being produced and I still need to build the same amount of infrastructure.

Okay, thank you. Another question. It was pointed out by one of the citizens that installations have declined recently. We haven't passed this yet. Is there another reason the installations, in your view, have declined?

Yeah, and I believe the same customer mentioned the federal incentives. At the end of this year there were federal incentives that have rolled off. Incentives over time have changed. When we first started the program we had incentives. Some of our customers that may have mentioned some of those earlier installations received significant rebates. I think you heard one customer say that it was a few hundred dollars by the time it was by 2021, we had removed the rebate altogether based on what we were seeing happening with the cost shift. For those early customers around 2006, it could have been thousands to tens of thousands of dollars that they were received in rebates at that point in time.

Does CSU, if they identify, hey, costs are being shipped from this group to that group, do we try to address that across all groups and have the group pay for the expense or the cost to CSU to provide the service to them?

If we can see from a individual level, there's a group of customers, then yes. And that's why we have different rate structures. That's why industrial customers have demand rates. They have for as long as we've, almost as long as we've been in existence, industrial customers have had demand rates because they use the system differently. It's really part of the reason that we have our energy wise rates that went into effect last year. There's a different price structure from five to 9 p.m. We had in utilities board last week some information on the market. We saw the price difference that's going on. When we're looking at the market prices during that five to nine, not just in Colorado Springs, but across that entire Southwest Power Pool footprint, costs from five to nine are significantly more. That's a trend within the last, five to 10 years that really has been brought forward. So energy wise rates, we're trying to send that price signal there. If you're a customer that has AC versus a customer that doesn't have AC, there's cost shift that was happening there. Energy wise rates for the rest of our customers was a way for us to address cost shift that was happening amongst all of those customers.

And do the rates which CSU has recommended, are they being done to discourage solar or is it to accurately reflect the cost to provide the service?

It's all about making sure that we are collecting the cost of service in the areas that we, as we do those cost of service study. If we are able to see that there's costs specifically attributable to any group of customers, we are trying to set our rates in that way. It's not perfect. There's assumptions and things that go into all of those numbers, but once we are getting into millions of dollars, we can see those things and we try to address them through the rates that we put forward for our customers.

And I think I understand what you are saying about, hey, before we go down the road of looking at rebate plans for residential batteries, which I believe is very much what CSU wants to do, we kind of have to plug the hole in the ship. We're taking on water now, we're losing money really with every new customer that comes on for solar. And so, What we want to do, what you're asking to do is let's address the price, the rate recovery now to make it even. And we are simultaneously, you're doing it now, working towards a battery program to then help solar customers move over to basically option two and avoid all the time of day rates. Can you explain it better than I just did?

Sure, so again, as we look at the rate structure, we see the four and a half million dollars that we're not recovering. If we can be able to get that through rate structure stabilized, it enables us to go and really look and see from a cost standpoint, what are the benefits then to a battery on that system? What costs are avoided from a peak infrastructure standpoint by having batteries as a part of that? If we have customers that want to own their own battery, and participate in that, we should look at that like we do our thermostat program, where if you're willing to give control of that battery so that we can use it during that most expensive time for us, we should be able to associate some dollars that go back to that. And this is specific to a customer owning their own battery. Before we can get to those rebate dollars, if I'm starting four and a half million dollars upside down, I cannot get to math that says we should do that type of a program. Other programs that we do and continue to look at, our peak rewards thermostat program is one that we will continue to look at. In the market this year, we saw customers, all of you that are participating in that right now, thank you. I mean, when we see from five to nine, when we call on the thermostats, which automatically through the internet goes in with the touch of a button, virtual power plant style, we push a button and we see about 20 megawatts worth of heat the same thing that would be generation that comes from customers that have said we can turn your thermostat from 70 degrees to 75 degrees that's the program that they sign up for there's value that comes from that we should probably be looking at that with the market now too and seeing is the 25 a year credit that we give the right level we need to go back and look at that and see if there are additional dollars at the same time as we look at um what the um rebates should be for somebody that owns their own battery that can perform the same type of a function, provides instantaneous power. And the third part that we would want to look at is a third party that would own and operate batteries that we would have the ability to have a purchase power agreement from that takes excess of an oversized battery and gives it an opportunity for us to use that just like we do with our 100 megawatt battery that's out at Jackson Fuller. We're interested in all of those programs, but starting from a place of we've got our rate structure where it needs to be and not increasing with each customer that comes onto it an inaccurate rate structure puts us at a place where we can do all of those evaluations and have information out. We're not looking to drag our feet on this. We want to align the timing of that to April 1st when we say that the new rates are coming out for customers, new customers that would experience the option one and option two rates. We heard customers wanting to see about the investment they have. That's the grandfather, and it gives customers that have currently made this five years to figure out what's going to be the right solution with those things that we'll bring forward in April, to be able to choose the path of which of those options might be the ones that help them the most.

Okay, and there's a couple other council members that wanna ask you questions, so I'm gonna stop there, thank you.

Councilman Leinweber.

Okay, so let me first say that thanks for the effort. I mean, I think we're getting better and better, but as I dive more and more in this, I get more caught in the weeds and it gets more confusing all the time. So hopefully you can follow along with me here. What we're basically looking at is we changed the rate structure for non-solar customers with EnergyWise because we wanted to address the peak season. And so we did that. Now with that, they also pay a connection fee of, $72.69 per day. That's correct. And so, which is roughly $22 a month. So all non-solar customers are paying to be connected to the grid.

And Mr. Limelower, if I can explain on that specific charge. So our access and facility charge per day that is currently in our rates is tied specifically back to customer-related costs. And every customer that is connected to our system has a meter. Every customer that's connected to our system has billing software that we use to send out the bills to customers. We have staff that takes care of all of those things. We have a payment center. Those are all rather fixed costs that we can say per customer, here's how much you should pay for those things. That's what we're recovering with the access and facility charge per day that's in that line item.

So, and I agree with that. I think that's great. But under the option one deal, what you're proposing is that solar customers will be charged that 0.7269 cents a day, or $22 a month, plus an additional $1 a day, which you're determining as the grid access charge. That's right. Okay. And you're doing this because infrastructure generally is paid for based off of kilowatt hours that these non solar customers are all they're using more power. So they're going to be paying more, which helps cover infrastructure costs.

It's really to, if everything worked on a per kilowatt hour basis and we didn't have that exchange of credits from daytime generation to evening, then the math would still work out on a per kilowatt hour basis. Because we have that application of credits from a different period of time, that's what causes the problem inside of us. So yes sir, that's the crux of the problem. The $1 a day is to be able to cover for the connection at that peak time.

And so it's trying to be fair because they're not using as much, but wait a second, that might not necessarily be true because am I a solar customer if I have four panels? So if I have four panels, I'm gonna be paying kilowatt hours during peak hours at a peak rate. So I will be paying for infrastructure through my kilowatt hours, and I won't be paying, I won't be getting offset because I won't have my four panels actually working, but I'm gonna have to, in addition to that, have to pay a $1 surcharge.

Yes, and again, as we explained, option number one does have the grid access fee. If we took that grid access fee away, changing to the energy wise rates takes care of part of that four and a half million dollars. So you, by having those four panels and paying for some of the energy in the on peak period of time, when we looked at all of the customers and did the analysis, takes care of about $1 million of the $4.5 million. We don't get all the way there with just the energy charge. There's still $3.5 million left of that peak grid infrastructure that serves net metering customers that's not covered.

i can understand the one dollar charge for someone that has 50 panels and needs to have reliability and other things because maybe their 50 panels go down right or something like that they're going to have to lean on csu to keep things going like that's a good insurance policy in my mind for a 50 panel home but where i'm having troubles is with the small solar panel user so someone has a smaller system on a smaller house they're not able to offset their costs. So they pretty much are gonna be energy wise. They just have this little bit of solar that kind of helps out here and there. And then in addition, they're gonna have to pay a $1 surcharge. So that's where I'm starting to have problems because you are, you're kind of double dinging them a little bit because you are getting them for kilowatt hours that they're gonna use because they're not gonna be able to offset that or get credits or anything like that. they're going to have to, the smaller solar panel user is going to have challenges with that option one.

And that's why we say, so if it's a dollar a day, 30 days in a month, it's $30. That's the additional charge. But again, that relates back to that person that has a smaller amount of panels that are put in place is still connected to the utility system. We need a mechanism that can cover the demand-related costs. That 22% of infrastructure is not being covered just by the energy charge.

But you're getting that through the kilowatt hour charge, because they're not able to offset their charges. So they're paying...

We're not getting all of that through the kilowatt-hour charges is what I'm saying.

But for the non-solar customers, you are.

Yes, because they are not exchanging credits made during the day, during the evening hours.

Well, it gets back to my point. What if you have a customer that just can't build up credits because they have a small system? If they have a small system, a small house or whatever, and they can't offset their costs, and they don't get any credits, they're not really getting... Can you see there's like the smaller the system you have, the more of a ding you're going to get. I mean, it's really going to be disadvantaged to someone that put in a small system just to try to offset some electrical costs.

Well, it depends on the size of the system again and what their overall electrical use is. So let's say that the peak that that person pulled was two kilowatts. they would wanna look at option number two, which is the demand charge. It may be more advantageous to take the demand charge set in that highest 15 minutes where their peak usage is two kilowatts. If that's their case, that might be the better option. That's why we put two different options that are there based on the size of the customer.

But I'm starting to get to the place where they have a third option, which is even better, and that is to unplug their solar and just go non-solar, and that's where I'm starting to have a problem. because I want people to be incentivized to be able to put solar on their homes because I want that to happen. But I think we're getting to a place where I don't think there's enough of a benefit that we're offsetting that, particularly for someone that can't necessarily afford a large scale system that would cover their solar system.

The cost structure, what we were saying from a price standpoint, all of the accumulated costs for that customer proves out that they are not covering all that peak demand. So if they unplug the system, we are still having to cover that expense. If a customer is covering enough of their use that they don't need to be connected to our systems, that's what they would do. But solar customers without battery, continue to be connected to our system.

But you keep coming back to comparing all solar customers as the same type. And that's what I'm trying to refer to. They aren't the same type. There are small household solar systems that just supplement their steel. And there are others that we heard from one gentleman that he's totally like, he covers all his electrical needs with his house.

I guess what I'm trying to say, Mr. Lineweber, is even those customers that are saying they cover all of their use from a total number of kilowatts, they're not covering their peak usage. They still rely on the utility system from five to nine. Small customer, large customer with solar installations, they still are relying on our system. They are still contributing to the peak. They are still contributing to the $6.5 million to be able to...

Again, the large system guys, I'm not really focused. I'm okay with the $1 charge for my system that I'm operating, okay? What I'm not okay with is for someone that has a smaller system, let's say 12 panels or less, and I'm just spitballing because I am no engineer. But I'm just spitballing here because if they have a small system, they're getting double ding because they kind of are an energy wise user. They are paying through kilowatt hours because they can't, they're only supplementing. And so it's that one dollar doesn't seem like a fair rate to me. That's where I'm having issues.

the $1 still is there to be able to cover those peak infrastructure costs. Whether you're a small user, you still are contributing to the number of transformers, the number of substations.

But they will be paying for their kilowatt hour use, okay, which is gonna be higher than what mine is, all right, So they're gonna pay more through their kilowatt hour use and they're gonna pay the $1 surcharge. So they're actually gonna be paying more proportionately. That's what I'm trying to get at. And that's where I think there's an unfairness here to someone that has a lower economic position that couldn't afford a larger system.

And all I can say is that that customer still has kilowatts that they are coming back and needing from our grid. Otherwise they wouldn't want to connect that system to the grid. Again, the hours that are happening in the daytime where they're producing any of that energy are being exchanged at the true value in option number one. Daytime, they're producing solar credits at seven cents, they're getting paid for those as that happens. That's lower cost in the daytime, and it trues up on that side, but even with all of that taken into account, it's still not gonna have that customer pay for their fair share of the infrastructure.

Well, I'm gonna have to understand the math on all that a little bit more, because as I'm looking at it, this is just one area that, I always think of someone, my problem, I think that we come to this as all solar customers are one size. And that's just not the case. I think everyone's just like me, because I'm a solar user. But that isn't the case, and that's what I keep hearing every time I hear customer comments, is that a lot of people have smaller systems, and they're just not in the same game as, a lot of other people. And so I'm worried that they're gonna be paying a lot for kilowatt hour usage because they're paying all that. They're not getting a credit because they don't generate enough power to get a good credit. And so then they have to pay the $1 surcharge. So I think it seems like a burden on people that I would prefer there not be a burden on. So that, I think we'll just leave that, and we're gonna have to argue that through a little bit more. Or I'm gonna have to understand the math, because I'm kind of at a roadblock. But my next piece, I think, is that I still have a problem with the peak demand piece, the highest thing. I mean, like I said, the last time I said, you know, my daughter, which she would never do this, by the way, has a sleepover party and they all turn on their hair dryers and blow their hairs, right? I mean, that's a lot. And then so I have this one charge that happened during a 15 minute period and now that's my rate for the whole month. And so I kind of feel like you need to like throw out the highest one and then I'd be a little bit more happy with it if there was some kind of way to say you throw out the top one, We'll give you an ad, whatever, and then we take the next one down. And if the next one down is probably likely just right next to it. So it just seems like I'm worried about the spike.

So two points to that, Mr. Langlois, where we had to be ready to deliver that power when somebody has a party and decides that they're going to use that energy. We can't say, well, it was just a party that happened one time in a month. We're not gonna be ready to serve that energy. We still have to deliver the power. So we have two options that are here. Option number one looks and says it's a reservation charge. Whenever you're going to ask me for the most power in a given month, I have to be ready to serve that need on our system. If that doesn't work because you feel like you're gonna have those things that happen, then go to option number one that says it's a set amount each day. and do the math on your bill. We have the calculations that are there. We have had many customers that have reached out to us and said, can I see based on my data? And every one of those that has reached out to us, we provided that back in an analysis. Does option one work better or does option two? If you want an average of your high load events, then you should be looking at option number one.

Well, But we also want customers to be incentivized to use less power. I mean, water-wise was just amazing. It has been amazing. We've incentivized our customers to use a lot less water than we realized. And I think we're going to have something similar with energy-wise. We're already seeing it. And so it's been a big plus. I don't wanna take away that. That's the thing. And that's where, if you just would be able to remove the one $15, if there's one 15 minute that was high, that can go and it's the next one. That would be, in my mind, I would feel more comfortable with something like that. but it's probably gonna be the same. So I'm still, that's where I still have an issue is it's kind of like, you know, I keep thinking of water, like you left the water on, oops, you know, and yeah, you need to pay for that extra water, but we have a community that can absorb a slumber party. That's the piece that I keep coming back to.

Well, and I think that's the overall question of the entire rate cases. Are we okay with socializing costs across the entire rate base? I'm not sure that that's what our charge has been to do. It's we want to look at who is driving the cost of service and who pays for that. And if there's somebody that's having a slumber party and we have to be able to deliver that power, should they pay for it or should their neighbor across the street pay for it? That's really what the question comes down to. We've laid it out for council over the last two rate cases. We've come back with different options that we feel like address some of those things. If you feel like I can't operate in a way that I can shift some of that usage on a one 15 minute block, I would not recommend going on the demand rate. I would recommend going on the $1 a day option.

I don't think it encourages people to be energy wise every day. So when you have a bad day, I mean, it is gonna force people on option two that just don't wanna think about every 15 minutes of their day. And that's, I would like people to kind of think generally of conserving all the time. So I'm just trying to get a helpful solution to kind of get us to that place. So that's where I have a problem. So thank you.

Councilman Williams thank you this is more of a statement just when you come back up to address our questions and comments it was mentioned that selections are made prior to April 1st 2027 I would like it to be on the record that that's not the correct date because I don't want to panic anyone in this room so if you could clarify that

For sure. If you right now have made the election to roll over your credits from month to month and year to year, that will be in place until 2032 with the proposal that we have put in place. At that point, all customers are choosing between option one and option two. If you choose option two, which is the demand rate, you will continue to roll over on a per kilowatt hour basis, those energy credits. And just so that I'm perfectly clear on option number one, there is rollover of dollars that can happen. In the summertime, if you have more energy than you're producing and you end up in all of the cash out of those where you had a $5 credit at the end of the month, wiped out all of your access and facility charges, wiped out all of your energy charges, and there was a $5 credit, we don't just say that goes away and you start fresh the next month. That $5 bill credit rolls to the next month. It's in dollar terms, not in kilowatt on option number one. On option number two, you can keep, if you prefer to keep things on a per kilowatt hour basis, you can roll those over. If you've already made that election, there's nothing for you to do in 2027. You don't have anything to do until 2032.

I don't see any other comments on the dais. Do you need 15 minutes?

I think we'd be okay with 10.

Okay, so in the next scenario agenda is a break for utilities to review and prepare a response to the public comments.

Just kidding.

We are now back in session for the public hearing for consideration of changes to utilities. Moving on to seven on Councilmember's agenda. We will have a response back. Hi, Scott.

Good afternoon, President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tem Risley, members of city council. I'm happy to give some responses in response to some customer comment as well as some city council member questions. Leading into that, I'd first like to really just state that we understand that this is a difficult issue, not only for net metering customers, but for our community and of course for city council to weigh this. Utilities doesn't recommend this proposal lightly, but it really comes on us as a requirement. A lot of the customers here today have made passionate statements and understandably so about the investments that they've made and the other community benefits that they provide because of their solar energy. And utilities definitely supports renewable energy. We've actually added more renewable energy over the last several years to our overall energy portfolio. And we support customer choice in installing rooftop solar. We do have the obligation though, as we provide pricing for our services and proposing those to city council to propose rates that are based on our cost of providing service. As a municipal utility and as an enterprise of the city of Colorado Springs, we pay for operating, building, maintaining our system based on services, based on the rates that we propose and the fees for services. So the proposal before you today is based on the cost of service, really specifically for solar customers. With that proposal, another comment that has been reoccurring several times through the hearing is maybe a little bit of a misunderstanding of what happens to excess production under the, really the energy wise with the grid access fee option. Customers always have the benefit of using their own energy. And then anytime a customer generates more energy than they're using and they export that to the grid, our proposal compensates the customer at the full rate. So at no time does utilities take free energy from the customer if they're a net metering customer and they have excess generation. They're compensated at the full energy wise rate or under option two, they're compensated in terms of a rollover kilowatt hours carried forward month to month. Utilities did substantiate its filing when it filed its rate case with City Council on July 7th. Our rate filing contains comprehensive worksheets that demonstrate our calculations. The cost shift and the justification for the grid access fee and for the demand rates are all laid out in the worksheets that were included in that filing that was submitted to the clerk and that City Council received in its packet for the July 14th meeting. Several times we've heard customers comment on some tools that they've self-built to help evaluate their own impact of the proposal, and that's, I wanna compliment many of the customers on their on their efforts to do so. And I have reviewed several of those personally, and I know I have requested review several more from customers in the last several days. I do acknowledge that it can be complicated when we're looking at 15 minute granular data. So meter reads for every 15 minutes of every day And really it's twice that for net metering customers, because it's 15 minute reads for their net consumption, what they're pulling from the grid, and then 15 minute reads for their excess production that their system is producing. So that is a lot of data to pull, and we do have the known issue right now, if a customer tries to pull more than 21 days from the My Usage tool right now, on our My Account portal, there is a time-lapse issue that can cause the data to kind of lapse out, so you need to pull data in smaller increments of time. But the data coming out of the system is accurate, and it's just a matter of interpreting that data. And sometimes it's not always as clear as we would like. Utilities is committed, if this rate case is approved, to develop tools that are much more automated for the customer, just as we have for non-solar customers on our EnergyWise rates. We have the My Rate tool that customers can log into My Account, and that meter data automatically flows into a rate calculator that displays, based on the customer's historical usage, what the estimated bills are for customer under the various EnergyWise options, the EnergyWise, EnergyWise Plus, and the fixed seasonal options. We anticipate doing something similar for that for these net metering options if approved.

I'll just check my notes real quick here.

I wanted to speak a little bit about the other complications with the tools and one issue in particular about, I believe the question was, and really questioning the calculations that we have in the validity of our rate filing because the customer was seeing a higher bill even when they were producing excess generation during the on-peak time periods during summer months. And to speak to that, The grid access option in particular, but Color Springs Utilities, using that cost of service method, the grid access option is based on the average of net metering customers. And again, we used a large data sample of 8,400 customers, so it's a broad, comprehensive set of data. And to calculate rates, we use averages across the data set. So based on the average of those net metering customers, the grid access charge is based on that infrastructure cost not currently recovered through energy charges alone. There is, of course, within a set of customers, always outliers on one end or the other. And so because of that outlying effect, it is possible because the grid access option is based on average Average on-peak contribution, if a outlier customer has excess production, which an average customer doesn't during on-peak hours, but applying the $30 average grid access charge to them, it is possible for them to see a bill increase under the option one. even though they have excess production even in the summer months. It all has to do with the trade-offs of using a large data set and setting rates based on averages, recognizing that all customers are different. And that goes also into the proposal of providing options for our customers. Customers really desiring more granular impact for their particular situation can elect option two with the demand charge. It's really more tailored to their specific usage patterns. With that, I think I'll turn it over to Tristan Gearhart to address Council Member Line Member's questions.

Yes, and I had just a couple of other things that I wanted to be able to hit. The first was Mr. Lineweber's question that we just had at the end. Apologies, as I was thinking of things, I was thinking from a customer that would want to have a net metering agreement with us. So all of our net metering customers sign a contract, they come in, they decide that they're producing enough energy that it makes sense, that they would want to see some of that rollover from month to month. or from year to year. If you're a smaller producer and Mr. Line member to your example, if you're a very small producer, you probably wouldn't even want to sign up as a net metering customer. You could still put your panels in, you could still use that energy and you would not have the access or I'm sorry, the demand charge or the grid access fee. This would relate to things like balcony solar. So that has been approved by the state. That's a very small use of solar that then back feeds into the system behind our meters. It lowers your overall energy bill because you're using solar for some of that. That's really your option number three. If you're that small in what you're producing, there's no obligation that you have to sign a net metering agreement. You can just stay on our regular rates and keep that usage behind your meter. Does that answer part of what you were looking for, sir?

Yeah, actually, that does answer it, because I was just locked in on that there's two options. But there actually is a third option, and that is that someone can have solar, receive a benefit because the solar offsets their energy use, but they're not necessarily, they may not get enough of a credit to really be able to maximize the system. Do you know what I'm saying? Because they don't have a large enough system.

Correct. And in that situation, and I think balcony solar is another one of those issues that fully relates to that. It may be a very small panel that does offset some use. It may just be your refrigerator that you're offsetting, but you still want to offset that and get the benefit on your bill. That's an option to do behind the meter. That's allowed inside of our system. It really is that third option. A couple of things that I wanted to hit just real quickly. When we talk about the nine year ago date that relates back to this, we've been working on technological advances in our system for quite some period of time. If you go back to 2006 when we started this program, we didn't have the ability to look at everyone's usage on an hour by hour basis. Really, just as we've gone live with our new AMI meters, have we gotten the technology that allows us to look into every 15 minutes of usage from customers. That's part of the reason why the timing was right now to do this. And that's not just for our net metering customers, that's for all of our customers. So as we've deployed those smart meters, We wanted to make sure that we were aligning the information that we were now receiving in much smaller periods of time, really from an energy-wise standpoint for all of our customers, we could see the data, the usage from five to nine, and be able to make the analysis that allowed us to say, yeah, we should look at rate structure for all customers. When we first started talking about changing net metering rates was at the same time that we started talking about energy-wise rates in general. That does date back to the 2018-2019 period of time. There has been state requirements and things that they've been looking at related to net metering in general. Some of the things last year related back to some decisions that the state that we were waiting for them to bring back that they never finalized. We still feel like we now have the technology that's in place through this AMI system that gives us the ability to look at a much more micro level the information that comes from our customers and price accordingly. That's part of the reason why now is the time that we've seen that it is the right time to bring this type of proposal forward. And just one last thing that I did want to be able to cover that we heard in customer comment. We have about one and a half million dollars a year that is our budget for Project HOPE. I just wanted to highlight that part as well. So, thank you.

Councilman Hingem.

Yes, thank you. Actually, Tristan, I was wondering, I think Renee was gonna relay some information to you from one of the customers, Ronna, who spoke about her, she was the second person to come up, and did you speak?

I believe, yeah, I believe I addressed that with the comments on how the grid access charge is based on the average net metering customer.

All right, you feel like you addressed that question. Okay, all right, thanks.

Seeing no other comments from council members, we've moved on to the item eight. Councilman Hingem, here is where you would actually do your motion.

Okay, thank you very much, Madam President. So I, first I want to say I think, you know, in listening to people, you know, we have heard how people feel. and what their experiences and we can't tell them to feel differently that's part of the problem that we have as a utility company right now and i think quite frankly as a council that we sometimes come across as we know better than the folks uh... that we are representing and i think that Part of that public dissatisfaction that we're experiencing is not listening and people have come to us and they've said, can you please design a rate that supports people to be a part of the solution? That's what I heard quoted today. So, respect us. I think I heard that people are feeling penalized who want to be a part of the solution, who are asking us to do better. And I think we really can do better. And so what I'm asking of my fellow council members is for us to do better. We can get down in the weeds about the math. And I think what's been made really clear is people still don't fully agree or understand, even with all the explaining and all the going through everything. And so I... What I'm asking for, what I'm asking this council, what my fellow council members to support is that very specifically that we make an amendment to the proposed tariffs that are present. to provide that the new net metering rate options shall not take effect until CSU has filed with City Council and City Council has approved a distributed energy storage program, including customer-owned battery, rebate levels, program budget, participation capacity, and enrollment timeline, with an availability date no later than the effective date of these rate options. In other words, we prioritize that. And one of the reasons I think this is really important is that we have known about this for nine years. And Tristan, I appreciate your comments on the 4.5 and we're plugging this hole, but we are making so many decisions about a rate case five years from now that we don't have all the details for. So let's do this thing right by these customers. It will help. I really believe it will help rebuilding trust with this customer base who has been loyal for many, for decades. So I am asking my fellow council members to please support that amendment to this rate case.

Thank you. Ms. Sedgham, may I ask one clarification on your intent there? The effect, as I understand it, would be to delay the effective date of what is proposed to a date to be determined based on the distributed generation piece. Would the intent also be to toll the grandfather period, so essentially all dates are shifted in parallel with the time it takes to develop the battery program?

I hadn't thought through that. I don't know that I want to complicate it by messing with the grandfather rate. I mean, I heard some good arguments for this group should be grandfathered for forever. I don't want to complicate it more. I would hope, and based on a personal conversation with Travis, who just shared with me not that long ago that he was talking with the Pueblo Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Chamber of Commerce and others about how this Technology is possible that we're working on this, that we're working on getting this done as soon as possible. So let's keep working on that and move it. I don't care if we can get it done a month from now or two months from now. Let's do it two months from now. Let's get it done as quickly as possible. So I'm not going to I'm not going to complicate things by messing with any anything else.

that the effect of the change would be specifically to the April 1st, 2027 date, which would be removed to a date to be determined based on the further action?

Based on the requirement that I stated, yes.

Okay, thank you. I just wanted to make sure I understood exactly what was being asked.

I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible and as respectful as possible to the people who are net metering customers. Thank you. And all the customers, thank you.

So based on the request from Councilwoman Hengem, what I would ask now is that thumbs up, thumbs down piece, because this is not a motion. This is looking at that direction to utilities. So I would ask is a thumbs up in support of Councilwoman Hengem's proposal and a thumbs down to deny it and continue on with what utilities has proposed.

He's excused.

To make sure I understand, I have three in favor and five opposed. Okay, so based on that, utilities will not be directed to make those changes to the proposal. With that, we are still at agenda item eight. So any further discussion or deliberation from council is welcome at this time.

I don't see any at this time, so now do we do a thumbs up or so because there's no further discussion.

This is when I request that direction on how to prepare the decisions and orders many years. You see me with a list of 30 questions today. We simply have 2, and that's because they're proposed changes to both the electric tariff and the. In both cases, I'm simply asking if there's. direction to approve the proposed changes related to net metering. So at this point, I would ask for that thumbs up, thumbs down on whether you approve or would like me to indicate approval of utilities proposed changes. So to be clear, I have six in favor and two opposed. All right, with that, I will prepare the decision orders. You will see the draft of those at your September 21st work session. And then at your September 22nd city council meeting, you'll be asked to make formal approval of that via resolution. Absent any additional questions, we don't have any further action here.

Thank you. And at this time, this public hearing is now closed.

Thank you very much.

Moving on to item 9A. Will the clerk please read item 9A into the record?

An ordinance of the City of Colorado Springs dissolving the old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority.

Emily? Emily Evans, City Council Administrator. I'm going to start this item here. Just to summarize, this item first came before City Council on June 8th in an executive session, then came to Council in a work session on July 13th, and at that time, a decision was made by the Council to postpone to today, Tuesday, August 25th. For the record, the recommendation from legislative services remains to dissolve the board, and at this time, there is no additional information from legislative services regarding this item. As we move through this item today, city staff are available, including our planning director, Kevin Walker, for questions, and I believe we're also being joined today by our director of the Urban Renewal Authority, Jeriah Walker.

We will now hear from the DDA, the chair of the DDA, or whoever's representing the DDA today. Yep, 10 minutes.

Thank you, Madam President and members of council. I'm Bob Gardner. I have the privilege of being a council to the old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority. I am going to yield the balance of my time very quickly to Mr. Adam Stapin, who's the chair of the board. But before I do, I wanted to make clear that the Downtown Development Authority of Old Colorado City is committed to creating a viable, workable, and sustainable entity to develop the old Colorado City in the character of the community. There have been some concerns expressed earlier about council's ability to dissolve the authority if there was debt. And my reason for standing here before you is you have a resolution that there is no debt, confirming that, and a resolution that they will not enter into any debt until such time as they have a revenue stream. It is, in our view, council's obligation, the city's obligation to assist what has been adopted by prior council and voted on by the taxpayers of the district to assist them in becoming viable, to give them the opportunity to do so. And with that, I will yield to Mr. Steppen to make his presentation.

As Bob said, my name is Adam Steppen. I am the chair of the Olcrota City Downtown Development Authority. And thank you, President. Thank you, members of council for having me. If I could get the slides. I will give you one caveat. I am suffering from an invisible illness that decided to take the better of me today, so I do have some rheumatoid arthritis flare-up stuff happening, and I am unmedicated, so my mind can be very sharp and stay on task, but just know that I'm going to struggle a little bit, and just bear with me. We're here today because a resolution proposes to dissolve a voter approved, legally constituted entity before it has even been allowed to execute its mission. Disillusion is an absolute nuclear option to administrative puzzle. And I wanna show you why saving the DDA is the only path that honors our voters, protects small business equity, and guarantees the responsible economic stewardship of Colorado Springs' historic west side. We'll move on to slide two.

You should be able to use the clicker there at the podium to advance. Oh, thank you.

So let's ground this conversation with history and democracy. This DDA wasn't imposed by city staff or handed down by a developer. It's a years-long, plural, years-long grassroots effort citizen-led effort. And in 2024, our community explicitly voted to start sunsetting our outdated special improvement maintenance districts and transition into a modernized DDA. Local merchants put skin in the game, spending over $70,000 of their own capital to fund the consulting and structural engineering of this district. When we talk about dissolving this board today, we are talking about actively throwing away $70,000 of private small business investment and undoing a clear mandate given by the voters of the west side less than two years ago. Before a single project is launched, we are threatening to tell our constituents that their votes and their money do not matter. So I want to address some of the administrative hurdles head on, because opponents are painting a picture of stagnation that is actually false. The narrative that the DDA hasn't produced anything is completely dead on arrival. We have already, and this is really in six months that we've been able to meet as a proper board, we have, I'm sorry,

Sorry, I lost my voice, here we go.

We have already finalized our first plan of development, submitted to the city and the city staff has already completed their first round of formal review. We have received their structural comments and our board is actively working on those exact revisions for final submittal right now. This system is working exactly as Colorado law intended. To dissolve this authority while we are actively in the middle of collaborative revision process with city staff isn't fiscal oversight. It is administrative sabotage. So there is a push to dissolve us in favor of rolling our corridor into the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority, as well as a bid has been proposed that we'll talk on in a minute. This in front of you is showing this existing boundary that we have that is the DDA. And what Ryan Lloyd with Echo Architecture has done with this is filled in some blanks of blue spots being the site is completely vacant, ready for immediate redevelopment. The red, let's call it red, underutilized site, non-historically contributing and ready for development in the near future. And then black is an underutilized site, non-historically contributing, ready for development as the economy improves. I will say that in 1907, with annexing Old Crowder City, it was the original downtown. And we are in a unique spot. It didn't get blown up, it's still here. So we are in a unique situation where there are two downtowns. There are two central business districts that have wildly different needs. And as you can see, this project here is decades first, and a lot of it is not urban renewal. It is not casting blight on this avenue and our beautiful historic district. They're infill projects. They're small projects that Jariah's team is not interested in doing. Now I will say that we're here part of the reason because of this node at the very end by the freeway. Now I will tell you that I myself and the other Old Crowder City stakeholders did not initiate this being on this map. And I have emails that I'm happy to share with all of you that say that this came as a suggestion from urban planning, from city staff, that this may be a good idea to include these for future development and future TIF. So if we had known that we would all be standing in this position talking about dissolution because of the choice to include these, I can assure you no one would. And there are a lot of ways to adjust this boundary map if it really is the real issue and the real meat. I am here, but no one asked myself, no one asked the board to have a conversation about this, so how would I? How would I? I don't know. I think it's pretty impossible. Moving on to the next slide. So a lot of talk has been about, oh, we'll just pivot to a bid. Structurally a DDA is far superior for our current needs because it captures growth through tax increment financing without forcing automatic heavy new assessments directly onto struggling small properties. But more important, let's look at the financial and political reality of starting over. The DDA is what our community already debated, agreed on, and legally passed. So abandoning it to start a bid means throwing out years of work, spending well over $100,000 in new legal consulting and election administrative fees, and furthermore, forcing our local businesses and residents to go back to the ballot box for a completely different tax structure triggers severe voter fatigue. there is a very high probability that an expensive new bid campaign would lose at the polls. And so I'd ask, why is it that we would risk a $100,000 gamble when voters have already handed us an approved working tool? So this is a newish one. Let's talk about the equity across our city. Just a few weeks ago, this very council reviewed a massive $458,000 supplemental appropriation of city tax dollars to fund a corridor security on South Nevada. The Westside is not asking the city for a half a million dollar handout. The OCC DDA is designed to be completely self-reliant. By utilizing tax increment financing, we are simply asking to capture a portion of the new sales and property tax revenue generated right on Colorado Avenue and put it back on our own historic streets. If you dissolve the DDA, you are stripping the west side of its only self-funding mechanism, forcing our businesses to either decline or come to this council later begging for general fund handouts. Please let us pay for our own progress. So here's a path forward. We agree with Councilor Williams that there shouldn't be lingering questions. The solution to uncertainty is clarity, not elimination. We have a clear immediate path forward and our board is currently finalizing the comprehensive plan of development and we are ready to submit next month with our, based on those comments. Was that my time?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now go to public comment and I will start with those in support. When I call your name, please come up. Make sure the green button is on and limit your comments to three minutes. We're gonna start with Elizabeth Salinas.

Good afternoon, members of City Council. My name is Elizabeth Salinas. Our family owns two commercial properties located on West Colorado Avenue, where we've lived since 1979. I'm here today to object to the severe lack of local transparency, the statutory overreach, and the flawed boundary lines of the newly formed Old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority. First and foremost, our properties are in Adams Crossing, formerly known as No Man's Land, not in Old Colorado City. Adams Crossing has already been addressed through a major public planning process, the West Side Avenue Action Plan. A multi-jurisdictional public improvement took three and a half years and $41 million of taxpayer funding to complete. Throughout that process, impacted property owners were notified and included before, during, and after completion in 2021. This is why I must ask, how did Adams Crossing get included in this new old Colorado City DDA? We never received any notice, a legal ballot, informing us that our two commercial properties were in the DDA. Instead, the only document we received was a highly unusual oversized ballot, 15 pages in total, mailed to our business and residents at 3518 West Colorado Avenue. where we are registered voters. The ballot did not come from the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder's Office. It was sent by a private law firm based in Denver. It looked like junk mail. When I saw our property schedule numbers listed on the ballot, along with the new tax obligation we would be required to pay if the measure was valid, we voted and mailed the ballot to the Denver law firm. Before doing so, I copied every page and saved the envelope. I also contacted several other commercial property owners and asked whether they received anything similar or if they believed the ballot I received was legitimate. Not one property owner I spoke with had received such a notice. Several believed it must be fake. This raised serious questions about this DDA boundary, election validity, transparency, and administration. The boundary map is structurally unfair. Instead of a focused district, a cohesive commercial core, the DDA is drawn as a four mile corridor from I-25 to Manitou Springs. The lines also appear to run through the alley behind West Colorado Avenue, creating a narrow ribbon that excludes cross street merchants in the historic shopping district while my properties are included despite being far beyond that core. Yet under the tax increment financing structure, tax revenue generated by our property's growth will be captured to subsidize a tourist strip down the road, all while being physically sitting outside the tourist hub They pay nothing because they happen to face a cross street. A DDA election should be transparent, administered by a local El Paso County officials and confined to a fair, logical, urban footprint. Should not be a four mile tax dragnet deployed by a front-wage law firm that exempts core businesses while penalizing properties like mine and others a great distance away. For these reasons, I respectfully request City Council dissolve the OCCDDA. Thank you for your time and leadership.

Next up, we have Eric Wyatt.

Hello. Well, let's see, I've been here 61 years. I've got three companies in town. I've got two properties affected by what these other people are trying to do for old Colorado City. I just want to say I got two properties downtown in the development downtown project that Susan Edmondson did an excellent job. And... let me know exactly what was going on. And I said, yes, I'll pay the extra tax money for it. And they've done a good job. This situation never received anything from these people on two properties I've got, one at 3511 West Colorado Avenue, and the other one's at 3533 West Colorado Avenue. And the only way I even knew anything about it was the Mecca Motel people saying, hey, you know what's going on. And I said, what's happening? And so then she filled me in, showed me where they wanted to increase mill levy and taxes. And so then I tried to call, tried to find out what's going on. Got zero. Went down to 30 Nevada Avenue, 7th floor, talked to planning, talked to everybody there trying to figure out, okay, well, where's the plan? What's going on? Phone numbers. Because I wanted out. And they didn't have much information. And so then I tried numerous times to call whoever the boss was up in Denver and to let them know I'm not interested in this. And finally, I made contact and they said, oh, we sent that to you three times. I said, no, you didn't. I said, I've never received anything. And then by the time we got done with the conversation, they said, well, you're a liar. And I said, really? I said, well, that's going to make me enough to get here and say what I got to say. You know, if they want to do something down in old Colorado City, keep it there or at least educate people. I'm all the way on the far west end of this, and I'm not interested in paying more taxes for what they're doing down there. The way they've went about it, I think stinks. And if they would have maybe went about the right way and educate people, we could have something serious to talk about. But that didn't happen. So to kind of speed this up a little bit, I encourage you to dismiss this outfit and vote no. If you got any questions, I'll be glad to answer them.

We do. Okay. Councilman Lineweber does.

Who?

I actually, I wanna make sure I don't get confused about the 17 properties that were removed. Are we talking about any of those? okay so these are all ones that are legitimately apart because they're in the general area of these addresses it's confusing in that area that no man's land is very confusing right so there's 17 properties that got removed from this um and i just wanted to have some clarity about are any of these properties that? So anyway, that was my only question.

Does somebody got a list of the 17 properties? And am I on it?

Yeah, I don't. Those properties were in the county and that was the reason.

Yeah, they were in the county, not the city.

Right, so if you're in the city limits then.

Zoned county.

Okay, well now the city's been approaching me for years to annex in because behind me, across from me, to the side of me is the city and they've offered to let me come in for nothing.

well now now now he is one of the 17. okay well well i haven't agreed to that well that's what i'm saying you're not in the city right oh i'm not okay okay but they but you're not a part of this you've already been taken off the list but thank you for your comments is that correct i i i

But I've got nothing that says that. And then they said I A-OKed it.

So now, I don't know why I'm speaking. Someone else should be speaking to this. And I'm just asking the question. That's why I'm asking the question, because it's uncertainty. We were told a couple of months ago that of this district, 17 properties are actually not part of the city. So they cannot be a part of this DDA.

But we dissolved those, so that's, we're good.

Right, but so he doesn't even know that.

Okay, well.

Because he's clear, if you have never been annexed into Colorado Springs, so if you're not, then you are one of those 17 properties.

But we have since taken care of that. So thank you for your comments.

So you will not be a part of it. That's fine. Even if I was in the city, I'd say no. You will be a part. Okay, we can move on to the next person on the list. Thank you.

Next up we have.

But I mean, that's, it was legitimate. I mean, right? So I just want to be clear, right? All right.

I can't understand your lips.

I was going to say we are pulling that ordinance and we'll be able to work with this gentleman to confirm his address removal of those 17 properties that council voted on.

Okay, thank you. Next up we have Christine Van Wert.

Well, that just shows you how much confusion there's been around this, right? Okay, I am Christine Van Wert. I'm presenting to the best of my recollection and may reflect my opinions. I did receive a notice by mail indicating a meeting for residential on the proposed DDA Old Colorado City on April 30th, 2024. Two other residents were with me at that meeting, one of which had to leave at noon, but she was here to verify how many people were actually at this meeting. The total number of persons in attendance was seven to nine. Project meetings on the west side that I've attended during my 12 years on the own board were heavily attended. This disparity in attendance caused me to start asking west siders if they had heard about this proposed DDA. I found no one who had. This concern caused me to speak on August 27th, 2024 session of the City Council Colorado Springs. I addressed the issue of DDA notification for the April 30th meeting with such small turnout and the lack of clarity of the DDA in general. I requested that the city council that all information on the notification process be made available. I also requested that the ballot delivery information be available because again, turnout's very small for a very large group of people. In closing, I have a question because I sincerely believe many people were not notified and I suspect many people did not get a ballot. And since we cannot confirm either because neither respect or aspect of what I requested was ever dealt with, I need to ask, does the lack of notification or the possibilities of no means of voting affect personal property rights? At this point, I think you've heard enough and you've gotten emails enough to understand that there is a problem. This was not done in a normal fashion, in my opinion, and it generated a result that very likely shouldn't have happened. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Next up we have McKenna Elias.

um hello i'll keep this brief i believe that you should dissolve this i believe it is an unnecessary tax on local family businesses and i believe that the way it went about where many of these businesses had no idea of this bill until it had already been passed is very inappropriate i also believe that the lack of knowledge that they had about what is in the bill the lack of details that they are given about levies and things it's it's uncomfortable and i think that it gives people a lot of sorry availability to take advantage of smaller businesses when there's no specific things listed in the bill it just gives a lot of uh sorry i'm nervous it just yeah leaves too much leeway for people to get taken advantage of when there's not specifications thank you

Thank you. Next up we have Greg Saunders.

Afternoon, how are you everybody? my name is greg saunders i've operated my businesses beers and shares in the 3100 block of west colorado for the last three years i never received notice um i currently own property on 1700 block as well and i never received anything on that as either um I see that the new tax lines on the property in which that I own there on 1700 block is also affecting it. So myself and other, and or my landlord from previous location of the 3100 block never received these notices. We haven't been able to vote on this. I feel that that's unfair and we're asking that this be dissolved. Thank you.

That ends public comment in support. We will move on to public comment in opposition. And first up, we have Megan Morris.

Hi, my name is Megan Morris. I've been a small business owner in old Colorado City for the past five and a half years. Every day I see what makes OCC so special. It's the historic heart of Colorado Springs. People come here because of its charm, its local businesses, and its unique character. But preserving that character doesn't happen on its own. Our small businesses need support that goes beyond territory days. We need year-round investment to keep our streets clean, safe, welcoming, and thriving. We need a long-term strategy that helps businesses stay open and succeed. That's why having the voter-approved Downtown Development Authority is so important. The need for a DDA in Colorado City is no longer a nice to have. It's essential to our future. For years, the Old Colorado City Association has relied on an incredible group of volunteers. They've poured their hearts into the district, organizing events, supporting businesses, advocating for the neighborhood, and helping preserve everything that makes OCC special. But they're exhausted. Volunteers cannot be expected to carry the long-term responsibility of economic development, beautification, marketing, business support, and strategic planning. They are overworked, and that model is simply not sustainable. It is easy to overlook this need when you're not living it every day. Those of us who own businesses here, work here, invest our lives in Old Colorado City, we see the challenges firsthand. We also see the incredible opportunity. We know what this district could become with the right resources. We need dedicated staff, sustainable funding, and a strategic plan, just like downtown Colorado Springs has. A DDA would provide the structure and leadership needed to keep our streets clean, improve safety, support small businesses, and ensure that this historic district continues to thrive and not just survive. Investing in OCC is investing in one of Colorado Springs' greatest assets. A thriving historic district strengthens our local economy, it supports small businesses, it creates jobs, and it preserves the place that both residents and visitors love. Please don't do away with the DDA. Please give old Colorado City the tools, resources, and support it needs to continue thriving for generations to come. Really wish that we would have been able to be in sooner today. I personally closed my small business to be here today. Been here since 9 a.m. Along with all of my other small business owners, this is so incredibly important to us. So thank you for hearing us. Thank you for your time.

Next up, we have Robin Fryer.

Hi, I'm Robin Fryer. I'm general manager and family owner of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. It's been in operation since 1982. My family has been owner operators for the last 25 years. We are merchants, building owners, and residents of the old Colorado City area. Running a business in Old Colorado City can be challenging because we must rely on the volunteers of the Old Colorado City Association who are also merchants and work hard to raise funds to promote the area. The OCCDDA is an investment in our future and will give local businesses an organized and dedicated voice to market and manage growth internally. OCC business owners and residents are proud and a viable part of the city of Colorado Springs. Local families bring their visitors to old Colorado City for a unique experience. Five different tour buses, Five different tour groups bring roughly 60 to 100 buses from May to September and make OCC a destination on their trip through Colorado. Shopping the quaint old town atmosphere and enjoying lunch at restaurants where locals have voted some of them as best of Colorado Springs. I am here today to ask you to vote no on dissolving the OCCDDA. The DDA will give old Colorado City the opportunity to enhance the success of our businesses, increase property values, and continue to provide the locals and visitors with a unique experience in our historical area within Colorado Springs. Thank you for your consideration. Next up, we have T. Crespin.

Hello, thank you for your time. My name is Tisha Crespin, and my family has been a part of OCC for over 50 years. My grandmother had a beauty shop there in the 70s. And today, after retiring from the federal service for 24 years, I now run a small business on Colorado Avenue. I'm also a volunteer at COS Hope Warming Center, where I see firsthand now how much OCC continues to struggle and how much it still needs coordinated support. I've traveled all over the country, and in almost every city, the historic district is treasured and invested in. Old Colorado City, the original heart of this city, deserves respect and resources. Westside businesses have watched corporate corridors and large developers receive significant support and attention. Meanwhile, the small businesses barely hanging on of OCC receive or see the constant homelessness, aging infrastructure, and safety concerns with no coordinated mechanism to address them. The DDA finally gives us that mechanism. It gives over 400 independent Westside businesses a unified voice and a structured way to improve our district. Removing it leaves us fragmented and unprotected. As someone trying to retire into my shop and barely hanging on, I can tell you firsthand we need stability. We need investment and we need a DDA. In closing, I urge you to vote no on disillusion. Respect democracy. This was voted by the people. Respect our election results. Allow the DDA Board to finish its development plan. Give old Colorado City the dedicated representation it earned at the ballot box.

And thank you for your time and your service.

Next up we have Sarah Voss.

You've turned it off. Oh, sorry. Am I good now? You're good. Okay. I hate, everyone hates public speaking. So thank you so much for your time. As many of you know, I was on the organization of West Side Neighbors Board and the Old Carter City Partnership Board since about 2015. So you might remember names like David Brackett and Jonathan Neely and Welling Clark, lots of different volunteers that have been involved in spearheading a solution. Because you're right, it's confusing. Who do we talk to? There's lots of different boards. And so this was part of the conversation to help our community in streamlining problem solving. So in 2018, these volunteers hired DCI out of Denver, Downtown Colorado Incorporated, to say, what do we do? And so there was an assessment done. And that assessment led to, hey, let's look at a special district, along with some really other fun things, like the lights over at Colburn Court. really branding our community. But they said special districts, so we raised the money. In fact, $30,000 of that 72 raised came from the city of Colorado Springs. And we were surprised, just like everyone else, that a DDA was suggested instead of a bid. We thought it was going to be a bid. And guess who vetted that? The mayor, city council, every single city department we had to talk to to make sure we could have a second DDA, and that tool was correct. So just reminders, you've heard this already with some of our board members here, but there were focus groups, so you're right, some of the focus groups only had seven to nine people because they were business owners and we had really deep dive conversations, but we had tons of focus group meetings, tons of surveys, and again, the DDA was vetted and concluded upon because of the input of these surveys. So folks said they identified OCC as the entire corridor, not just the few blocks of that shopping district. So again, concluding that this was the right tool based on the input from the residents. And I think that's super cool. We're willing to tax ourselves. We're willing to do that. And guess what? The people that don't want to, we're gonna go back to the ballot if you don't dissolve us and we'll have more opportunity to talk to people about that taxing question, because that question didn't pass yet. But the DDA spreads the burden across that entire corridor instead of just a few blocks too. So the tax is less. And that was on purpose as well. We did the due diligence. Now we need to get across the finish line. Let us invest in ourselves and not dissolve the DDA. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up we have Julia Evans. No. Next up we have Karen Hazelhurst.

Good afternoon. Thank you all. My name is Karen Hazelhurst, and I have been on the Colorado City Association board for eight years. And I've been on the marketing committee for that long. And as Megan talked about the burdens on the volunteer organization that we've had up to now, It's been great because we've been trying to help all the businesses. I've taken calls from businesses, talked through the night. I've been in and out of stores and we wanna really see Old Colorado City develop and grow and have opportunity for, restructure and you can't do that with a volunteer board and i was really excited when the voters voted to have this dda that would help really old colorado city you know grow and it's already been voted i will tell you i live in old colorado city um i'm out of the geographic district for me to vote. I live on Bijou Street and I have since I moved here in 2007. My husband, John Hazlehurst, had that house since 2000. He was once on city council too. So, you know, I understand the dilemma and the decisions that you have to make, but I'm asking you to please you know, look at this and help the Westside, you know, grow with a dedicated team of people and money to do this. The volunteer organization can't keep up that growth for that long. So please vote no and let the DDA pass. Megan, I loved what Megan said, you know, about the businesses and about having an organized DDA. And the plan is already, being organized now. I know Adam has that in front of you. And we plan to take that vote. I listened to some of the people that talked about not getting the voting, the paperwork and not getting all of that. I was at a lot of those meetings when the consulting company, they had sent out all of that and gave everybody, residents and commercial businesses the opportunity to come and hear about what was happening. And it might not have gotten out to everybody, but I know that they did do that. So please say no. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Timothy Trell.

Timothy Trell.

Sorry, I don't hear very well. Veteran, traumatic brain injury, business owner in OCC, pretty new there. I specifically chose that place because I met the people there and it's a great community. I've dedicated myself to mental health and working in that field for the last 25 years. as a professor, as counseling, neurocognition is my specialty and I've really been able to, my wife and I started a little store there where we can just kind of meet with the community and really make something of it. We do need stability there. We do need support. I was just looking it over and we got roughly about 400 small businesses in that area. But let's just break it down if we take 100 in that strip right there, it's about a little bit over 100. And at 3.07 tax, that we get in revenue that goes to Colorado Springs that comes to about $1.23 million a year that we give to Colorado Springs through our sales tax. So I'd say we're doing pretty good. That's only about 100, a little bit over 100 businesses. I'm not even including all the rest. So, Just in the last month, two businesses closed their door within 100 yards of me. A couple of weeks ago, another business down the street said they're going to have to close their doors after being open for several years. I've not been there very long. Some of you have already said that they're struggling. I mean, we've only been there six and a half months, and we're seeing that every day with our neighbors, how people are struggling. And the... speeding is starting to happen up. We had somebody hit by a car a couple weeks ago and things like that. It's just a very interesting thing to see. But if we follow that, if we don't get the support we need, let's say we do keep losing people, if we lose roughly 70%, If doors close over the next three, five years, that's almost a million dollars a year that Colorado Springs loses. I mean, you're not doing a ton into that. I mean, that's a lot, a million dollars a year. And remember, that's a very conservative number. That's only based off of 100 small businesses. There's around 400 in that area. So that's a huge number. It's much bigger than a million dollars a year. It's roughly 860,000 to be exact, but it's pretty close to a million. And for those, I only got 14 seconds, but for those who weren't, I wasn't either, but you don't know about the DDA and stuff, come and be a part of it. If it keeps going, or if we have to keep volunteering on our own for nothing, come be a part of it. Just be neighbors and be family and be supportive. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next up we have Andrea Warner. Andrea Warner. Jim Richardson.

Thank you, President, Council, and the Council members. My name is Jim Richardson. I'm a resident in Old Colorado City, and I am a newly voted-in board member of the OCCDDA. Let me start this way. The Downtown Development Authority, DDA, in Oklahoma City is the result of a citizen-led initiative approved by voters in 19, I'm sorry, in 2024. Our goal, was to let independent Westside business owners and residents have a say in how they want to preserve the historical value of OCC. The OCC DDA would give local mom-and-pop shops the market and vehicle that the historic district can manage the growth internally and not be in the mercy of large-scale developers or retail chains. The bottom line, again, is the OCCDDA was formed to let the OCC have a voice at the table. To achieve this goal, as mentioned before, over $70,000 was spent to hire a special district consultant, Centro Incorporated. None of this, all this money came to pay for this consultant was done out of donations and private funds. as well as stated early as the city's community development and economic development departments and the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority. To engage stakeholders, Centro, on behalf of the OCC partnership, mailed surveys to property owners and registered voters within the boundaries in question, and held informational meetings for residents, business owners, and property owners, as well as OCC-related board members and City of Colorado Springs staff. With feedback and months of reviewing the best way to manage and fund improvements in OCC, a DDA was considered the best option. Based on this research, the council referred the creation of the DDA to a vote of residents and commercial property owners inside the proposed DDA boundaries. The DDA formation passed. Based on the vote of this community, I see no justification or rationale for the city council to dissolve this DDA. Dissolving it now completely overturns the democratic will of the community. I am urging to vote no on this dissolution.

next up we have melanie richardson

Thank you so much for your time and your talent and especially for your ear and your consideration. My family made Colorado Springs our home over 100 years ago. William Jackson Palmer would be rolling in his grave to see the dilapidated condition of this beautiful city of the sun. We're all just caretakers. And how ironic it is that the OCC merchants and businesses are having to close their doors today to come here to renew economic development for OCC, just strikes me as a little peculiar. The residents of OCC voted in the DDA and the city council, in my opinion, has no agency to negate that vote. ignoring pardon me ignoring the will of the residents of old colorado city is not just a sign of disrespect it is another sign that we must have a group of citizens at the helm who are willing to begin to invest and move this beautiful city ahead again with the same spirit as my grandmother and William Jackson Palmer. The OCCDDA is such a group. So I respectfully ask that you vote against dissolving it. Thank you.

Next up we have Nancy Milleron.

She's not here. Annie.

Annie Trejo.

Good afternoon, it is Ani Trejo. It's so nice to be before you and appreciate y'all hearing us out. I'm a small business owner in old Colorado City. I own, excuse me, co-own Circa Vintage, which was established in 2023, Eclectic OCC in 2020. But originally my business partner founded a business called Eclectic Co, which is located at 214 and a half North Tejon Street. We would not have been able to make that business happen without the Downtown Partnership investing in small businesses. So we started as a pop-up and with that pop-up, we brought in 30 small businesses to come and be a part of a storefront. They were not just people who would bring their goods to the storefront, they would actually work in the storefront and we would all work together and it created this beautiful community. And very quickly, we outgrew that storefront and realized that we had more space, excuse me, less space and more vendors on our wait list. And so we started to identify if Old Colorado City was the right space for us. Just by virtue of happenstance, the connections that we made were with Jules of Simple Body, who I know wishes that she were here. She told us, hey, let's be neighbors. There's so much retail space available in Old Colorado City. And we were down to like 3% occupancy downtown. There was nowhere else to go downtown. And so we looked at old Colorado City and we said this place is amazing. I lived there for three years as a resident and we understood that there was so much potential, the historical nature of it, the fact that so many businesses had closed down and there was opportunity for people like me in their 30s, women of color, to come step in and be a co-owner of a business that would not just have goods in there but that would actually employ small business owners. So across the three stores now, we have 200 small businesses that function out of our space. The community is vibrant. I don't know how else to explain that to you. And it is because of your citizens. It's because of us. We're the ones who are pulling our weight, doing everything that we can. And I knew that I wanted to get involved. And when I tried to get involved with OCCA, I knew it was the wrong model because I got burned out in a year. I tried my best, and then when we started having conversations, and let's just say the fact that we're all kind of in agreement here about the DDA being the best solution is a bit of a miracle, okay? Because we tried so many solutions, we have tried so many solutions as a community, and I just, I want y'all to hear our hearts and our voices. Colorado Springs loves small businesses. They love supporting local. Tourists come in and they beg us as a storefront to come to their city and start a small business like theirs. So you have an opportunity to support something really incredible. And I know downtown did not happen overnight. We all know that. That came because of a DDA. We need the same thing in Old Colorado City desperately. We cannot keep doing this. You're going to lose small businesses. You're going to lose people who are attracted to our city because of Old Colorado City. Thank you so much for your time. Please vote no.

Thank you. Next up we have Kit Hutchinson. Kit, that is correct.

Hello, my name is Kit Hutchinson, and I own Little Heart Shake, which is a small gift shop in Old Colorado City, and I've been in business in the neighborhood for eight years now. Old Colorado City is a beautiful little historic gem in our city and deserves the care and attention that the main downtown district gets. We are all local small businesses, and we are what brings charm to Colorado Springs and makes this city desirable to visit and to live in. It is a true second downtown in our city, and I love being a part of it. In the last eight years, I've seen a number of different folks rise up as volunteers to run the various organizations that we have tried to support our neighborhood business district, and eventually they all burn out and have to hand the reins over to someone else, as you've heard repeatedly from all of us. As you can imagine, this inconsistency is not great for getting things done. We really need paid staff who aren't trying to run their own businesses too, and can focus on building a sustainable future for our whole neighborhood. We are scrappy, but we are struggling. As a neighborhood, we spent a lot of money over the past few years to work with the city and a consultant to figure out the best direction for an organization that would support us appropriately. And the DDA came out of that, and may I remind you, it passed in a popular vote. Dissolving it now is going against the public will. It is undemocratic. It's also throwing your local small businesses under the bus. We would have to start over with a different plan that would cost even more money that we don't have, or businesses will just close or move somewhere else, and we will lose Old Colorado City as a charming historic shopping district. Please don't let that happen. The city claims to be supportive of small business and now is your chance to show us that you support us. Please listen to the voters in our district who voted to pass the DDA and listen to all the small business owners here who have taken time out of our very busy schedules to fight for our neighborhood today and vote against dissolving our DDA. Give us a chance to get this DDA up and running and get our neighborhood thriving. Thank you for your time.

next step we have pat stock allison danielle good afternoon council i'm allison danielle and i run stellar propeller studio in old colorado city and i am new to the board as well like jim so i've been involved less than a year at this point and So I wasn't around for the votes. I wasn't around when there was the confusion. I would like to personally apologize to you guys. I wasn't around when that happened, but I can see how that would be extremely frustrating. And I could see how you would assume that there's something nefarious up with that situation. i can tell you from someone who's been serving on the board since the beginning of the year it is not a nefarious group at all like we we huddle up and we really are trying to like figure out what will make business better for the people of old colorado city like all of us really care so i just wanted to say that to you but i am sorry that happened um And yeah, I mean, I agree with what everyone else has said too, like just going against the will of the voters is a really, it feels like a slippery slope to me. I believe in democracy and I just, I feel like I have tried to ask multiple people why a bid is better, and no one has explained it to me. No one has given me anything to grasp onto that made it make sense. In fact, at one of our last meetings, Councilwoman Williams, when I was trying to ask this, said, it makes sense to me, but it doesn't make sense to you. which is not really helpful, because I think I'm a reasonably intelligent person, and I would just love to hear from anyone, like why is a bid better? And I think it would be fair. I also, I find it troubling that the thing is to dissolve right now, but there's no plan in place, like nobody came, and said, this is not the right tool, but I have an idea. And here's why this is better. This is how it's gonna help the people more. So maybe let's try this. I feel like it's just been like, no, let's just kill it. And we, we really want to help old Colorado city. Like, we really care. So I've just been very disillusioned by this whole experience and I. I am sad and to think that we might get slashed before we even get started because we do really want to help people and. yeah i would just ask how would you feel if you volunteered to serve on a board and you're excited and it was kind of your first time and you like love this city and then somebody from inside your own board is like we're gonna get rid of it uh it's been yeah it's been very disheartening so um yeah i would ask you to please vote no just give us a chance and uh yeah appreciate you

Councilman Holt. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to specifically say to you, Allison, I've watched you from afar for a few years through your work, and I was really excited when last year your name came up and we were voting to have you serve on the board. And regardless of the outcome of today's vote, I think you should be really proud of yourself for stepping up to the plate to volunteer for OCC and for the advocacy you have done thus forward. I know this is like one of your first experiences really being on a board and what an experience. So again, regardless of the outcome, I think you should be really proud of yourself.

Next up, we have Michelle Garrett.

All right. Good morning. Just kidding. It's afternoon now. Wrong notes. Good afternoon, Madam President and city council members. My name is Michelle Garrett. I'm a Colorado native and I live in old Colorado City and I own my own business. It's Gratitude Zero-Proof Beverages. It's the first non-alcoholic bar in Colorado Springs. We're located at 28th and Colorado. You know, we're one of the handful of the unique independent stores that you'll find in OCC. I'm active in my community. All my employees live in the community. My regulars live in the community. As a bartender, you often hear people talk about the neighborhood, what they need, what they don't need, what concerns them. I was voted onto the Old Colorado City DDA at the end of last year and has served as secretary since February. The West Side is a unique location full of independently owned shops, timeless character, and history. The history of Colorado starts in Old Colorado City. The oldest standing stone wall in El Paso County actually exists in my bar, which I repaired and brought back to life bit by bit on my own dollar. In 2024, the people who live and work on the west side voted to have a DDA. Not even two years later, Councilwoman Brandi Williams is now leading a movement to dissolve the DDA. Councilwoman Brandy Williams sat on the OCC DDA board as a liaison to bridge local legislative goals with specific community operations. As a member on that board, I can say without a doubt, Brandy Williams did not bridge any gaps, she created them. From monthly meetings to plans of development, Councilwoman Williams sat quietly, self-admitted she had never read the 2024 formation documents, which included survey results, DDA versus bid, budget comparisons, ballot language, and key background information prior to her moving to dissolve the DDA. The DDA empowers Local businesses such as mine, it gives dedicated voices to manage growth internally. The West Side is not like the rest of Colorado Springs. When you drive here, it feels different. When you visit here, you feel what the heart of Colorado is. Beauty, nature, and history. The stores that have been tirelessly run by individuals who want something different. Something with charm, soul, spirit that large-scale developers do not possess. These businesses have fought for everything to exist without significant financial backing and still managed to make OCC feel special. I'd hate to see the day that these shops and shop owners who pour everything they have into our community are wiped out because city council sees deeper pockets. I would like the city council to vote no to the dissolution resolution. I believe that the citizens of OCC must have their election results honored. I believe that the DDA board needs to be given a chance to exist, to grow and to accomplish what's best for this unique place called home.

Next up we have Emily Fair.

Hi, my name is Emily Fair. You may have read my email that I submitted on Sunday. This statement is meant to piggyback those thoughts. My husband and I opened our gallery and frame shop 45 degree in 2010. We bought our home. Sorry, this pisses me off so bad. We bought our home at 11th and Cucharas in 2011. My history as part of Old Colorado City business community started in 2002. As a business owner and resident, I have lived the results of a dwindling, the results of dwindling funding and city oversight in a vital Colorado Springs neighborhood. With the City Council and voter-approved promise of the DDA, I have been given a glimmer of hope that my investments have not been in vain. The DDA provides real hope, hope of representation, hope of infrastructure, hope of economic identity, hope of recognition, and hope for stability. The list goes on and on, but none of this will happen if you dissolve the DDA. There is simply no time or funding to pivot. We need help now. To dissolve the DDA would be a massive mistake. It undermines the democratic will of the west side voters and kills a vital economic tool before it is given a chance to work. A vote to dissolve a citizen led voter approved authority is a blatant dismissal of the people who live, work and invest in old Colorado City. Thank you.

Next up we have Amy Paschall. Michael Henning. Rebecca Powell.

Hello, thank you for having us here today. It's unfortunate that it's under this circumstance that we're even here with all the time, work, and effort that's gone in to putting this DDA together, but it's important that everybody has a voice, and that means the residents, that means all the business owners and so on and so forth. I have to let you know that I am a member of the SIMD and Gateway, which doesn't get much representation at all. And part of that is it's such a small little area. It was formed in 1988. So it's a very old volunteer board. and we're headed by city parks, and pretty much what we do is make sure that our little area is clean, that the medians are taken care of, and that, you know, trash removal, so on and so forth. So it's just a very basic maintenance district. um our operating fund is on the average of ten thousand dollars a year which isn't much so when i started hearing about the old colorado simd and the opportunity to bring gateway into that district gave me such hope for for our area and a way to co-op with Old Colorado City. And Gateway, it's the corridor between downtown and Old Colorado City, which I've always loved. My first home when I was born was on 12th Street, so right in Old Colorado City. block away. And I now, with my husband, own a larger property that we live in, in Gateway, at 7th and Colorado. So that in mind, our intention was never to get involved, buy a property, tear it down and as I've heard from certain members of city council say that we wanted to tear things down and redevelop, that's not the case at all. What we wanna do is clean up the neighborhood we have, maintain these beautiful old buildings, keep the character that has always been part of old Colorado City and all my life of living here, the place that I love. So with that in mind, I'm asking you to vote no on dissolution and give us the opportunity, give us the opportunity to work together, give us a small portion of the taxes that we pay in that area to stay there. I have a local business that only works with other local independent businesses. We do not do anything with chains or anybody outside of Colorado Springs and El Paso County because we wanna keep that money local. And it's very important to myself, my husband, our employees that we're able to do that. We lease the rest of our property to other local businesses same way. So thank you, thank you.

Next up we have Kelsey Willow.

It's a little low, sorry. I think I'm the tallest one here today. Hi, my name is Kelsey Willow. Colorado Springs has been my home my entire life, and Old Colorado City has always been a heart in my story. I'm deeply invested in the future of this community. I'm the marketing manager for Squash Blossom, Ellie Blue, and Stell & Bo in Old Colorado City, as well as serving on the OCCA board. With three distinct businesses in this district, we have a unique perspective on both the incredible potential of OCC and the challenges our small businesses face every day. I'm here asking you to keep the voter approved DDA intact and allow it the opportunity to do what our community voted for it to do. Our small businesses are already stretched thin. Business owners cannot be expected to run their business while simultaneously carrying the responsibility for the district wide marketing events, advocacy, economic development, and communication with the city. That model is not sustainable. Old Colorado City needs consistent professional leadership. We need the ability to plan beyond the next event or fundraiser. We need reliable resources for marketing community events, advocacy, and economic development so that we can make thoughtful long-term investments in this district. because ultimately the heart of Old Colorado City is its small businesses. They are what make this neighborhood vibrant, unique, and worth visiting. We should be creating an environment where those businesses can thrive, not simply just survive. And perhaps most importantly, this DDA was created through a vote. Businesses and property owners participated in a process that made their voices heard. They voted to invest in the future of Old Colorado City. I believe that vote deserves the opportunity to be carried forward. Old Colorado City has an incredible history, but this is about its future. It's about giving this district the structure and resources to remain beautiful, economically strong, and a place where our community continues to gather for generations to come. I am asking you to respect the will of the voters that created the DDA, keep it intact, and give Old Colorado City the opportunity to move forward. Thank you.

Next up we have Daniel Ramos.

Thank you, council. Thank you for your public service. Small business owners, thank you for your time. That's our most precious asset. And it shows how important the DDA is that we're all here sacrificing our time today. And then for all the volunteers that have served past the present on the board, thank you for your time. I know how much work you guys put in. My wife couldn't be here today, she's a college professor, also a public servant working at a local university, but she would concur with what I have to say today. We moved to Colorado Springs 13 years ago. 10 years ago, we bought our home in the west side. um that doesn't seem very long to most of you guys who have been here for much longer than myself but as somebody who's lived in 18 states uh that is a long time and the west side was valuable to us that that's where we decided to put our roots down um We like the community, we like their neighbors, and we chose to open a business in 2021 there. OCC Brewing, here's my one shameless plug. We're about to have our five-year anniversary this Sunday, so come see us if you have an opportunity. But I thank you all for your public service. In my previous lives, I also was a public servant. I'm an Army veteran. I also was a wildlife biologist and worked for multiple government agencies trying to conserve our natural resources. With public service, it's an honor, but it's also a privilege. As a public servant, comes a responsibility both to your country and democracy. The DDA was put in place by a vote of the people. So when you vote to dissolve the DDA, you're voting against democracy. Vote no against the dissolving of the DDA and you're voting for democracy. Thank you.

Next up we have Dave Valancourt.

All right, I made it back just in time. Good afternoon, everybody. Madame President and members of council. My name is Dave Valancourt. I'm a Westside resident and OCC homeowner. I also serve on the board of the Organization of Westside Neighbors, which represents over 8,000 residents, and I chair a multinational committee at ASTM International, where I've become quite familiar with governance and the importance of process. Public trust depends on openness, adequate notice, honest analysis, and clear accountability. By those standards, this dissolution process should concern everyone in this room. Consider the timeline. OCC stakeholders raised their own money and hired an experienced consultant. The options were studied. A DDA was recommended. Council approved eight to one to refer it to the electors and voters approved it. Council did not complete the board appointments until December of 2025. The board organized in January. Then just months after these volunteers were finally empowered to work, they learned with only two business days notice that council sought to dissolve this organization. Council cannot control when a board becomes operational and then fault that board for not producing years of results. That is not accountability, that is moving the goalposts. This board is made up of our neighbors, private sector, small business owners, property owners, and residents who have invested countless unpaid hours in this voter-approved initiative. They believe that old Colorado City, where I live in one of Colorado Springs' historic crown jewels and a major visitor destination, deserves better than chronic underinvestment. The DDA deserves support from council. clear expectations and a fair opportunity not to be cut off at the knees before its work can begin as i've heard council member donaldson and many wise members of mentors of mine say let's not allow perfect to become the enemy of good enough a dda is not merely a tool for new construction colorado law says its purpose includes preventing deterioration and protecting property values preservation and thoughtful reinvestment are exactly what old colorado city needs in If a bid is desired, it can and often does, as I believe downtown is included, coexist with a DDA. Dissolution is not required. Further, starting a bid would place another costly organizational burden on commercial property owners who have already done this work. Reject this ordinance. If Council is unwilling, consider postponing it for six months and establishing measurable objectives with the Board within 30 days. Require completion of the plan review, a transparent operating budget, no new debt during the postponement period, and public progress reports. Council Member Williams, you represent and serve District 3 and currently serve on this board. Before asking Council to dissolve it, I encourage you to use your position to establish clear expectations and help it succeed. With your budget experience and engineering background, you are well positioned to lead that work. The responsibility to lead should accompany the power to dissolve. If put as a vote today, the outcome will be remembered as a test of whether Council empowers local enterprise in respects of voter approved initiative or adds new bureaucracy expense by forcing property owners. Thank you. Thank you.

Next stop.

Thank you for your comments. I just want to clarify, the board was in place from the time that the vote took place. So I don't want the audience to think that the board did not exist until the end of 2025. The board had been in place either right when the election happened or when that was ratified. We'd have to clarify with the clerk, but the board was not in existence that whole time. So just so you're aware.

Next up we have Curt Hale.

Hi council, I'm Curt Hale. Some of you guys actually know who I am. I changed my hair a little bit, you know, trying to make myself more presentable and have the respect of some of your council members, which I personally met personally when you're running. Just know it's kind of hard for me already to speak, but just show my support for people that have even though I'm considered houseless, as some people are like houseless, don't you live on the west side? I said, well, I reside over there. They're like, well, where's your house at? I said, don't you see, people don't really get the fact that In 2016, my wife passed away, okay? And when we first got here, it was a joke, because we were gonna just stop and go, and I ended up working at Labor Finders on the north side of town, and in the morning, people would go, oh man, I hope the west side won't come over, and my wife would be like, I said, what's up with the west side? And they're like, well, those guys are, you know, they're their own regime, and she didn't really get it. I said, well, they're not understanding of how people work as a coalition inside of the city, sometimes groups that are from different parts of town. hey, this is our side, you know, and she goes, okay, well, and so she started inquiring with some of the guys that are, hey, what's so great about being on the west side, and they said, because we have the respect of just the people and the community around us, and she goes, well, where's the west side, and They go, well, ma'am, no disrespect, you're just passing through, but just know when you're heading to the Chicago area, I'm like, Chicago? Chicago's up north. I'm more on the north, south side of town, working, just trying to manage, and my wife goes, well, I'll just look on the map, and I'll let you know if we should check it out or whatever. And just know the fact that when we got here, she goes, see, it wasn't, it was just right down the block. And I was like, well, thank you, dear, but just no respects of just being, just passing through tours. Wasn't expecting to stay here for long, but just... What I'm just saying is I really appreciate all of you guys and your support on this stuff. People just don't understand. When I go, where are you from? I'm from the west side, but I'm technically a southwest sider, but hey, who's geographically minded? Thank you guys.

Next up we have Jay Gust.

Well, good afternoon, Council.

I want to say, well, A, of course, please vote no, right? We got that under control. And I want to say thank you, everybody, because you've heard from not only business owners, building owners, residents from Gateway, residents from the Senate area, residents from OCC proper, from all around, correct? I mean, this is a fact. So this isn't like a one-sided thing. This isn't like, here's this little four-block slice that we're going to take care of. The point of the DDA was to take a look at it as a unified whole and really bring that together. And we've done that, and I think we've proven right here that this is happening. Now, this is just the start. It is a young board. It hasn't really been developed. It hasn't had a chance to run. It's still crawling. It's a baby. To dissolve it now would be absolutely buffoonery because there's too much money at stake. There's too much energy put behind it already. Give it the chance to succeed. Get it funded. In fact, the next time I come up here, I would love to be asking, get it on the ballot measure. don't have to have to use a third party company lawyer to use it get it on our ballot you guys vote on that that's what i'd love to see and that's really up to us that is the end of public comment we will now move it to the dais for question um councilman casey there's someone missing that was signed up we're not done can we harley

Can we confirm the list? Because Matt Radcliffe hasn't spoken, and he was on the list that I sent you. And Bob Gardner can speak to that. He was CC'd. I apologize to interrupt, but I think everybody that signed up ahead of time should get their opportunity.

That's all I have on my list. In the meantime, Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. I have a few questions for Uriah Walker from the Urban Renewal Authority.

Yes, sir.

So we heard some discussion about the DDA versus the Business Improvement District. Can you talk through that? And if the DDA were dissolved and a bid was formed, what would be the timeline, process, costs, benefits to residents and all the small business owners we heard from today?

Sure. That's a long question.

That's gonna take me a little bit. Yeah, I know, I can repeat it if you want.

It's all good, it's all good. Just for the record, Jeriah Walker, Executive Director of the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority. I think in the beginning of this, I will say that the URA donated to this effort. You know, not only with some great volunteers, I think you heard from a bunch of them today, but we were under the impression this was going to be a business improvement district. And actually, I was one of the members of that Downtown Colorado Inc. study that had looked at this area, and I was doing that as a volunteer at that point in time. I kind of came to that solution at that point. In order to do, I mean obviously with the DDA, the problem that we're in now is that you've got a DDA that's funded, but you've got no financial mechanism behind it. So while I can certainly appreciate a lot of the folks that said we want to be self-reliant and self-funded, that part of this election actually failed. And so it creates this ambiguity of how do we do projects in this area? And is this a taxing entity or is this not a taxing entity? And unfortunately, it's kind of a worst case scenario when you're going for a DBA. As far as the business improvement district side, you heard, A lot of the comments that were up here, you know, maintenance, cleanliness, marketing, promotion, business support, maintaining things, investing, most of that is geared towards business. Matter of fact, most of the people that spoke, and God bless them, but are small business owners. So the, you know, typically when you start hearing those level of things, that gears more itself towards a business improvement district. Now, the nice thing about business improvement districts is it doesn't have to be just five mills. It can be, I think we got some in this community that are up to 50 plus mills, right? Kinda depends on their palette and what they wanna do with that. But it does give the breadth to promote the businesses, to do that placemaking there, to kind of promote the events beyond territory days, et cetera. And that is typically how it's used in Colorado. As far as this DDA measure, Again, to me, you run into this hurdle, and the reason why the URA was leery of the DDA and why we said we didn't support it at that point in time was simply for the fact that the map was way too big. I think Adam, and I really appreciate your comments, Adam, and I'm sorry you're feeling bad, too. that kind of eastern swath, that pickaxe piece of that map, that area was one of those areas where we were looking at saying, this isn't even really tying into the old Colorado City corridor. And when you've even got properties north of Bijou Street, I think it's a stretch to think that that's all gonna be one corridor. The other problem that we saw with the DDA is that you're really taking things from that business perspective. And again, that list that I read is mainly around businesses. You're putting that shared cost on residential units without as much benefit to them as it applies to the businesses themselves. And so we create this weird dichotomy with, what are the residential units get out of this? How does it all connect together, et cetera. So even the downtown DDA, the current one, or the one in the downtown proper area, they started with the business improvement district too. And the nice thing about business improvement districts is they give you an opportunity to kind of start, you know, start at a ground level, start basic and be able to chunk through some of these things that they want cleaned up and that maintenance level and, you know, et cetera. So it's just, it's an easier piece you typically just have to do a petition from those business owners to qualify for the ballot um and from a cost perspective you know i know i've actually had some conversations with some members of the dda and i think there was one you know quote that they got for thirty thousand dollars to win an election um i'm not sure you know obviously that's going to depend on on the private companies that they choose um but i don't think it would be an overwhelming especially since you have so many business owners in that old Colorado City proper area that seem to support some sort of self-taxation.

So process reforming the bid, getting funding, is it two separate measures again, like it was last time? And then there was some concern about, well, we already spent all this effort doing this. It's gonna be kind of wasted effort if we have to start all over again. Can you address that?

Yeah, I think to me, and again, I appreciate all the comments. I think the challenging thing is when you're dealing with something where you have to have like a designator of election status. So if you're a business owner, You have to actually be given a sheet of paper that says that you're gonna vote as somebody, and you're gonna vote for that business. If you're a sole proprietor or doing business as, you can get a ballot normally. But in this scenario, you have to actually fill something out. And to me, I think that's kind of what happened here. I think that's where a huge disconnect actually occurred. is that you had a lot of people um and i i heard from a lot of people because a lot of people confuse you worries and ddas too um but i actually think you had people thinking hey i never got a ballot and maybe they didn't get that designation form or they didn't know how to do it so it just over complicated the process a little bit but as far as from a business improvement district level those same businesses in that occ proper area which i would classify as you know 21st to 31st, maybe that's a little generous, but that seems like it would be what that area would become. I would imagine with the outreach that they did and a lot of the people that spoke here, I don't think that would be a heavy lift to get that group to support a business improvement district, at least in my opinion.

Councilman Donaldson and Hensham, do you have questions for Jariah because I do have Mr. Radcliffe here who wasn't on the list but now is that I'm going to give three minutes to.

Yeah, please do let the other speakers, I don't know if there are any others that didn't get a chance.

It's just Mr. Radcliffe but you do have three minutes.

Well, look at that. That's exciting. Good afternoon, Council. My name is Matt Radcliffe, and I serve on the Old Colorado City Associates Board, and I'm asking you to not dissolve the DDA today. I'm also president of Springs Ensemble Theater, a nonprofit theater company that moved into Old Colorado City a few years ago. That's my tie to the neighborhood and I've seen firsthand through both of those things, the theater business and the old Colorado City Associates, just what it takes for all of these small business owners to keep their businesses alive and for us to keep the district alive. Today, around 700 people live within the old Colorado City DDA, alongside 400 great local businesses, many of which you heard from today. Well, I guess not many, a good sampling, and an award-winning theater, all run by people who've sunk their lives and savings into the neighborhood. Residents walk the same streets and deal with the same issues the businesses are dealing with next door. Parking revenue gets collected from Old Colorado City, reinvested in the city-wide parking system, but the district doesn't actually control where any of that money goes. Independent Westside-owned businesses and residents rarely get the kind of coordinated support investment bigger corridors take for granted. so residents and business owners from old colorado city got together research ways to reinvest in the neighborhood two years ago they presented the case for why a dda and not a bid was the best choice for old colorado city this council voted to put the question in front of voters the first reading was eight to one the final vote was seven to two that doesn't feel like a close call to me uh then the people of old colorado city voted and they said yes they said yes to possible investments included in the proposal city council reviewed in 2024 things like safety and homeless outreach which was the top priority for 83 percent of residents and business owners support for fixing up aging buildings and facades which was the resident's second highest priority right behind safety programming and events that activate old colorado city The people voted yes to investing in what makes Old Colorado City a great place to live, work, and visit. Almost 600 residents and business owners weighed in over two years to shape the plan. 78% said Old Colorado City needed some form of a new funding model. The DDA is a well thought out plan to revive and preserve Old Colorado City. This council studied it and sent it to voters. The voters approved it. Dissolving it now before it's even had a real shot means overturning what the people of Old Colorado City decided at the ballot box. Please do not dissolve the DDA. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. The two votes were just referenced. We always vote twice on an ordinance. First was eight to one, and Mike O'Malley voted no, and then the second was seven to two, and I was one of the two, because I was worried about the ballots and how that was gonna work, and that there could be some confusion. Sarah and I talked about that on the balloting. but it's been done and the citizens voted, the citizens within these boundaries voted and they voted yes to have a DDA. So I'll be voting no today on this ordinance. There's a unique history here, right? Fountain Colony, which became Colorado Springs, wasn't even here when Colorado City was here. So it makes sense that there's two downtowns. There really is a second downtown, or maybe it's the first downtown, and this is the second downtown that we're in right now. So I know there was some conversation about that at our last meeting that, well, nobody else has two DDAs, this is crazy. While Colorado Springs has a unique history, I believe Colorado City was annexed in in 1917. So that's why, one of the reasons I think two DDAs do make sense. And then finally, Mr. Ramos, as a fellow Army veteran, I'll be there to have a beer with you on your anniversary here on the weekend. And Michelle, if you have the oldest wall in Colorado, I'm gonna swing by there even though I like alcohol in my drinks.

Councilman Hincham. Thank you, Madam President. Jariah, I actually just have a follow-up question for you on the questioning from my fellow Councilmember here, Ken Casey. Tax increment financing, while that did not pass, the DDA could go back out again to the voters, correct? And that could pass. And can you explain what would happen if they choose to, well, I would assume they would have to choose to do this if they want some revenue to work with. But if you could explain that a little bit more. And just for the record, it's funny, Council Member Donaldson went back and looked at it. I did as well. So yes, he opposed with Council Member O'Malley, but in favor was Council Member Avila, Crowe, Iverson, Helms, Hengem, Lineweber, Risley, and Tallarico at the time in 2024.

Again, for the record, Jariah Walker, Urban Renewal Authority. So they passed, and I'm not sure if your question got a little mixed up there, but they did pass the TIF portion, technically, right? Because with the formation of the DDA, that's what allows that component. but that's the component that goes to all the taxing entities so that school county library city water conservancy district that's that's those funds what they didn't support is taxing themselves so they didn't support actually paying out of pocket on their own properties to fund this effort they passed keeping organic TIF from the taxing entities. That's what was passed. So that's an important distinction there.

Can you say more about, I'm not sure that I'm totally following you on- I don't blame you. Oh, sure, sure, sure.

Sorry, more of a legal question. Trevor Gloss, the city attorney's office. So the TIF question that was passed, it's been commonly called a TIF question, but it was really to let the DDA retain any TIF or other funds that were collected. What did not pass was the mill levy, which is the five mills that DDAs can impose on both residents and businesses. So since that did not pass, their main financing mechanism right now would be the TIF. The tax increment financing takes a base level of tax, and then anything over that level of tax is what would potentially go to the DDA. That would have to be approved through the plan development, which will come before city council in the future, assuming it's not dissolved, and city council would approve the TIF at that time. So that is a separate bucket of money, if you will, compared to the mill levy that was on it.

So then what they could do and probably should do is go back out for a mill levy.

They could go out for a mill levy again. That is a possibility. They would need city council's approval to do so.

Okay. And I guess, I don't know if I'm allowed to ask this question, but I am curious to know from somebody on the board if that's an intention that they have. If, I mean, the president would need to acknowledge that that person could speak.

You can answer that question. Thank you.

So yes, this was our first order of business, was planning out and mapping out a strategic plan to going back to the ballot with a mill levy. I personally advocated and secured a forgivable loan for us to finance that. And the forgivable component of it is that if by chance, the mail levy doesn't pass, and we do decide to dissolve as an organization, that the loan would be forgiven.

Forgiven by who? I mean, it's your personal money.

So it's Old Crowder City Associates put the money forward. And what we did was we put out a vote, not within the board of OCCA personally, but all members. So we sent out a ballot to over 200 members of Old Crowder City Associates, and they voted. in wildly high percentage numbers to give this money to the DDA.

What was the general percentage of that?

57%. 57%. The general population, you know, I think last year for Colorado Springs turnout was 24.7% and the DDA vote originally was 25.6%.

Okay, so let me just make sure I understand this really clearly. You fronted the money, OCCA said, if this fails, we as a body will forgive that loan and we will pull our money and we'll pay you back somehow.

Which is why, if it had been indebtedness, we wouldn't be here having this conversation because the DDA would be in debt already.

Okay, all right, thank you. Those are all my questions. You're welcome.

Councilman Gold. Thank you, Madam President. You know, I first had the opportunity to visit Colorado Springs in 2009, long before I was a resident, and I have a very fond memory there because there was a pottery shop that no longer exists where I was able to do an imprint of my child's hand for their first birthday. And thank God, because that child is now huge. So... And I was really surprised because I thought, oh my gosh, what a charming downtown. And the person was like, this is actually not downtown. So I think we have a very unique situation here in Colorado Springs where we have this large geographic area with very unique parts that add to, they don't take away from Colorado Springs. And when I reflect on all I've heard about the DDA, it really appears to me that you all need more time. You guys have the alignment, you have the heart for this, you just need more time to get it sorted. So for that reason, I will be voting no on this. And also, I just really wanted to acknowledge that we have so many small business owners here right now. And you guys are small business owners in the context of you had to shut your shops down to be here. Your time is literally your money. You have lost revenue fighting for the cause today. And I acknowledge that, and I thank you for your hearts. And I hope that you guys should have name dropped, so at least you could have had some advertising. but I hope that you recoup those costs from today. Thank you.

Councilman Leinweber.

Yeah, a couple of things. One is, first, I just want to disclose that I am a business on the west side, but I am not part of the DDA. Originally, my business was going to be a part of it, and it was adjusted so that my business ended up not, because I'm not really on Colorado, I'm not really a part of that. So I wanted to just disclose that I have some connection to this community and can understand it very, very well that my business has been there since, well, the truth be told is that the business originally was located within the DDA. and it was started in 1982. So it was on Colorado, but now it sits on the corridor of 21st Street and Highway 24. So I want to first just acknowledge that. Second, I was part of the proceeding and the discussions when this DDA was formed, and we talked quite a bit about the bid and DDA, and it did really appear that the DDA gave a lot more options for this community to move forward. And there was great excitement about all of this, that it was really an easy vote to say, let the community do what they can do to really turn this into a great place. But I will say third is that when you got all that excitement, you kind of needed to dot your I's and cross your T's. And that's part of why we're here is that there was this stagnation that kind of took place and this unknowing. And so there was some uncertainty about is this a real thing? and so you you you have to stay engaged you've got it like i mean it's it's the it's the third or fourth quarter you gotta like finish the game and get this across because you're gonna have to get that funding done now i have a question is can the borders of this dda be altered without voter consent at this point? Like, can it be, can the board decide to reduce the boundaries? Not add, but reduce.

Trevor Gloss for the city attorney's office. To reduce, There is no mechanism in the statute for the Board reducing the DDA's boundaries. City Council has some authority to do that as part of the general authority to dissolve, which is what you did with the 17 properties a couple weeks back, but the Board itself does not have the authority per statute.

So if the Board wanted to, they could approach a couple of Council people and say, hey, we've got this idea that we don't want this to be this, we want it to be this, if we're reducing and not bringing anyone new into it, I don't see the negative effect of that. I don't see someone not wanting that, but council could bring that forward.

Yes, subject to the limitations on debt and whether or not debt exists at the time.

Correct, right. We've been down that road. My other question is really to Sarah. I'm gonna wake her up over there. Sarah, if Council wanted to step in and help the west side and this DDA, could we possibly, what would the cost be for us to put their question on the ballot and go to just the residents of the DDA? Do you have that ability to do that? And then if we were to try to push this to be on the April ballot, for example.

Okay, pardon the eye roll about the April ballot. There's a lot gonna be on that ballot. Oh, no, I understand. Sorry about that. I don't know the cost, but I would say that I'm not an attorney, but I'm thinking the DDA would have to pay reimburse the city for the cost of that election because assuming there's no dissolution today there is an entity and that entity would have to pay for the election and no I don't know have any idea what cost that is.

Because sometimes we can you know in kind of you know a volume type and I don't know what the difficulty would be to kind of, I mean, we already do it. We do ballots by districts, obviously, so we don't do citywide ballots. We can make a smaller thing, but you don't probably have a current district. for this DDA. You'd have to create that.

No, we don't. And it's a different type of election in that you're dealing with registered voters, you're dealing with property owners. There was the document that Jariah mentioned, which I don't know the legal name of, where a property only can designate someone to vote. So it's a little more convoluted than just mailing registered voter ballots. So it's a little different creature.

My question is just to understand what tools do I have as a council person, and if I get four other members is there something that we could do to help this process move forward? Because I think that's some of the thing is that they are a new organization that's trying to find its roots and move forward. And certainly coming off a no funding vote had to kind of change the dynamic a little bit with, oh, we've got this great thing, but we got no money. I mean, I think that was the conversation I think everyone had during that election season. So I'm trying to understand what council might be able to do to maybe support this moving forward.

My first reaction to this is, assuming you don't dissolve, the DDA board would have to make the decision when they want to come to a ballot. and then come to you, I think I'm right on this, Trevor, there's thousands of attorneys here. I think they would then have to come to you to, what am I trying to say, forward, refer that to an election. So I think the biggest question would be, do you want an election and what election do you want it on? Do you want it on in April? Do you want it on a November? Different voters, different aspects. If it's November, the county clerk would conduct it. If it's April, it's us. Or you do what they did before, which was a standalone election, which is hire an entity to do it.

Well, that's what I heard. But I think it's the board's decision. I heard some conversations about we didn't get a ballot. And so I'm trying to see if we can maybe help resolve that problem in getting it on a standard ballot. Okay, Attorney.

Senator Blas, City Attorney's Office. So the general process would be the DDA Board would pass a resolution saying they would like City Council to refer a question. City Council would then vote on whether or not they would want to refer the question to the ballot. With regards to the timing, there, pursuant to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, timing is either in the fall of either year or spring in biennial years if you have, well, if your organization generally has biennial elections, which means spring elections every other year. The city has biennial elections. DDA boards generally do not. They don't actually have taxing authority for elections normally. So whether or not they can piggyback off the city's election is kind of a question for us to look at and to see whether or not they're comfortable with that, whether it can be legally challenged in the future. But either way, the fall elections would be fine for a referred measure. But we would have to work with the county at that point. If we're adding it to the general ballot, yes. There's a lot of city and county back and forth on those elections. Okay. And sorry, I believe Mr. Gardner has something.

Mr. Gardner, did you have something?

No. Madam Chair, yeah. Thank you, and Councilman Lineweber, I appreciate the question and the support of the neighborhood. my own sense of this has been as counsel to the the district is that their best path forward is to get their plan of development which is in the planning department now get it approved without that they cannot access the tax increment funding um once they do That number, and Mr. Gloss may know what it is, that number for last year, which was not accessed, was $100,000 or something along those lines, which would, create the funds to pay to participate on a ballot. Now, my own, not having looked at this, I don't know of any taxing district that cannot piggyback on a ballot if they pay the freight on volume. But without a plan of development approved, which they need to get done, they don't have the revenue to then get on the ballot and go for a mill levy. But that in my mind is the path forward.

Okay, that's helpful, thank you.

Councilman Williams. Thank you. I'll start off by saying thank you all for being here. You may or may not believe it, but I do appreciate you all coming. And I absolutely love Old Colorado City. Like much of you here, I grew up here and spent lots of time in Old Colorado City. So I'm going to reiterate how we got here. How we got here is a lot of the reasons that you guys walked up here and spoke into that microphone and said, Old Colorado City is charm, it's soul, it's spirit. Old Colorado City is a treasure. For those of you who haven't been bored enough at night to really read what a Downtown Development Authority is, that is development and redevelopment. So I definitely wanna clarify that it's the exact opposite I don't want to tear anything down, but I know that this entity, in order to fund it properly and pay for the attorneys and the accountants and all the oversight that comes with it, lends itself to development and redevelopment, which is why it's called a Downtown Development Authority. It survives because of development, because of that tax increment that comes with development. So we've heard from Jariah, the Business Improvement District, which every single one of you are business owners, and every single one of you want that money reinvested into your businesses. I personally would rather do that than pay attorneys and accountants and other people to manage an authority that doesn't lend itself to Old Colorado City. So that's how we got here today. Depending upon how this vote goes, I'm pretty sure I'll have all of your involvement to get this from zero to really putting money in old Colorado city to get what you guys want happening as fast as possible. So I just wanted to explain that for everybody here who wasn't able to make it to the previous meetings. So thank you.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President, and I would like to also start by saying thank you all for being here. Small business owners, I'm a small business owner, so I know exactly, a lot of the comments I heard, I know exactly what you're going through, what you're feeling, especially about how we got here with this particular DDA. A couple of themes that I heard before I get into some process procedure items, need help, want help, support needed, stability wanted, charmable Colorado City, cleanup, maintain, economic development, marketing. Those are a lot of those items that Jariah, the Executive Director of URA, that he mentioned when it comes to a business improvement district, things that they can lean into to make that happen. But I'm gonna go a step further here because I think there's something that's missing pretty importantly. And Wayne, oh no, you're not Wayne. This is, in my opinion, an opportunity for the mayor's office, economic development, to include the URA, to come together and figure out something that will work in conjunction with our downtown authority that is currently in place and baked in, and figure out how to invest better into that area, because everything that was mentioned is about investment into that area. So, and now when I say investment, I wanna make sure I'm very clear on this, is that investment to what they're needing as business owners in that area. That's first and foremost. Secondly, going through quick items. Currently in the United States of America, there's 19,500 towns, cities, municipalities all together. 19,500 in the entire United States. Currently, In the United States, there are two DDAs, two cities that have two DDAs. And sadly enough, the one other city that has two DDAs, there's a reason for it. And if you've actually been paying attention to the news lately, sadly enough, you'll probably know the reason why they actually did two DDAs. There's a whole lot there. And I won't pounce on that particular city, but I'm quite sure if you haven't seen it, you will see it on things that are going on in that city. Thus, that leaves us. In the state of Colorado, there is no cities, zero, that have two DDAs, zero. So when I go back and I look at the historical timeline of how we got here and reading through the minutes from 13 August, 2024, every last comment, and by the way, the lady who's here, thank you very much on that day being here also speaking. And then of course the minutes from August 27th of 2024. Every comment that is made in every messaging, everyone said a BID, every last person. to include members of council, to include other stakeholders in the city. And there was a lot of back and forth about why not a BID. And it wasn't until a couple of other things that transpired that really evolved this thing into this DDA. Another item I would like to clarify, because this is also, I think, somehow this has gotten lost in translation. A DDA does not operate unto itself. Colorado Revised Statute 3125, 801 through 822, Part A, Article 31, excuse me, Title 31, Article 25 governs how DDAs operate here in the state of Colorado. And there's been several conversations and several comments made that they operate unto themselves. And that's not accurate. I had one member, I don't believe they're a part of the DDEA, but they live in that area, who came to me in a previous session and stated, well, we want the funds so we can determine upon ourselves on how to best do that. That's not how those funds operate and work. So I go back again to BIDs being better suited. And I think Council Member Williams just hinted at it. A DDA is designed for large scale infrastructure and capital development. and that's not what you all are looking for. That preservation of old Colorado City, why I go to certain candy shops down there, why I go to certain Italian restaurants down there, that preservation, that historical preservation is what you are wanting while still doing, maintaining the cleanliness, the upkeep, making sure your business can still thrive while maintaining that historical presence. is where we should be putting a lot of our effort into. And I do go back to the vote that transpired November of 2024, the actual formation of the DDA, that vote passed, 123 to 90. The mill levy failed, that vote failed, 98 yes, 115 no. Now, the other two items, the debt authorization and the table revenue retention, those pass. But look how those passed. The debt authorization passed, 108 yes, 105 no. However, the table review retention passed, but it passed 105 yes, and 102 no. So it goes to the heart of a lot of the folks that mentioned, there are some people and some numbers that are missing here. There are people that were included that may be voted and probably shouldn't have not voted. And there are people that should have voted and somehow they got missed in this entire process. So I will tell you, I want something for you. I love old Colorado City. I love the passion that you have for your businesses. And I think there is something there that we collectively can lean into. Now, what is that? Is it a BID? Is it a collaboration of a BID with a new formed agreement with downtown, with the current DDA in place, along with economic development, along with other items, whatever that looks like and whatever that shapes out to be, there is something there for us to lean into. The however factor is, I go back again, minus the one city, and they did it for a very unique reason. I don't wanna pounce on that, because it has a whole lot rooted in a lot of negative things. But that makes us the only city out of 19,500 in the United States that would like to have two DDAs in the same city. So I think that's, and then when you look back at the minutes, when you look at how we got here, I think we need to take a step back. and just say, okay, how do we make this right? And I hate to put you on the spot, Jariah, because we've had conversations, but he is on ready standby. to help get this to whatever best mechanism is ready to move forward. And I've seen him in action, one of the most astute professionals I've ever ran across in my time, and he knows this stuff inside and out. So I would say leverage him, leverage those organizations, let's leverage current organizations we have in place in the city, and let's not conflate, confuse, or I love to use the word muck up, we're kind of mucking up what a DDA is intended for versus what you're asking for. And I think this is why you find in the United States, there's not any cities that have two DDAs. They're very unique unto themselves, but they're also governed by revised statute. They don't operate like a document unto itself, only in your community. So this is where I will tell you, Moving forward, I think there's a lot of resources that we can lean into, the right resources to get you where you need to be, where we need to invest. And I might even go a step further, especially when it comes to small business, because I just held a small business forum back in June. And that, to me, is where we need to really start looking at giving you the support, the resources that you need in old Colorado City. So with that being said, I turn it back over to you, Madam President.

Seeing no other comments from council members, I have a motion from Councilman Williams and a second from Councilman Rainey. Let's vote.

And the motion passes five to four.

Moving on to item 11A, will the clerk please read item 11A into the record?

Madam President, could I just ask, I think, I want to let the citizens know that we vote on this again in two weeks.

We vote on this again in two weeks. Move on to line 11A. Will the clerk please read item 11A into the record?

Ordinance number 26S37, amending the zoning map of the City of Colorado Springs pertaining to 5.401 acres located at 5325 Mark Dabbling Boulevard, mixed-use neighborhood scale with streamside overlay to mixed-use median scale with streamside overlay. This is the second reading in the public hearing.

Today's hearing will proceed as the following. City staff presentation, applicant presentation, public comment in support, public comment in opposition, applicant rebuttal, closing staff comments, back to the dais for questions and deliberation and decision.

And Madam President, can I ask for a five minute recess, a five o'clock break?

A five o'clock break.

I am here in place of Chris Sullivan this evening. He's a senior planner on our team and he was the case planner for this project, but he is unavailable tonight. So this project is, oops, I'm going way too far there. This project is a proposed zone change with land use statement located at 5325 Mark Dabbling Boulevard. The proposed change is from MXN SSO, so that is mixed use neighborhood scale with streamside overlay, to MXM SSO, that is mixed use medium scale with streamside overlay. As I said, the site is 5.41 acres. It is located on Mark Dabbling Boulevard, southeast of Interstate 25. It is an existing site. There are some existing improvements, a couple of small office buildings located on the site. Pikes Peak Greenway Trail also runs through the center of this property, forming part of the regional trail system. The east property line extends down the center line of Monument Creek as well. The property is surrounded by BP's own district, which is Business Park. which allows primarily commercial and some industrial uses. So the properties to the north and west are primarily office. And then we also have Monument Creek to the south and some multifamily residential across Monument Creek to the southeast there. In terms of the history of this lot, the property was rezoned to office complex with streamside overlay back in 2017 under the former Chapter 7 with a supporting concept plan. This was to support an application, a development plan, non-use variance, and final plat for multifamily residential, totaling 48 units. um these applications were never approved due to a private covenant restriction that had been applied to the property that prohibited the development of residential uses and the approved concept plan expired in 2023 and the other associated entitlements again were never approved In 2023, the office complex zone was absorbed into mixed use neighborhood scale as part of the bigger adoption of the unified development code. And at that point, the multifamily residential use was no longer permitted by right. So we'll touch on that a little bit more later. So again, the proposed rezone is from mixed-use neighborhood scale streamside overlay to mixed-use medium scale with streamside overlay. So I have highlighted, or Chris highlighted, some of those dimensional standards and what that change will look like on this slide. There is predominantly an increase in building setbacks between mixed-use neighborhood and mixed-use medium scale. We're going from 5-foot interior side to 20 feet, for example, 15-foot corner lot side street to 30 feet required setback. There are a few reductions, including the 20 foot rear road setback would become a 15 foot rear road setback. Maximum building height permitted would increase from 45 feet to 50 feet. This item was initially submitted November 18th, 2025. It went through four review cycles and it was ready for the agenda on June 12th. It subsequently went to city planning commission on July 8th, 2026 and was approved on the consent agenda. Postcards were mailed to properties within 1,000 feet. There were 25 postcards mailed out, and zero comments were received. And that public notice occurred during the administrative review, prior to city planning commission, and again, prior to city council. No major agency comments were received at this time. All comments that are specific to the different agencies will be provided at time of development plans submittal. This project was reviewed as well for compliance with Plan COS and was found to be in compliance with the applicable visions, big ideas and strategies of Plan COS. It was also evaluated for compliance with the criteria for approval for a zone map amendment. There are a couple of things that Chris wanted to highlight as part of his review as the case planner. And those included the MXN for the current zoning is intended to be located on the edge of or internal to residential neighborhoods with or off of a neighbor, a combination of local streets and collector slash arterial streets. Whereas the proposed rezone MXM is intended to accommodate the development of new activity centers and emerging growth areas essentially provide some additional flexibility for the development of this site. Additionally, the Monument Creek runs through the site as well as the existing trail does create some constraints on development of this site. And the proposed potential multifamily residential use was identified as an opportunity to kind of activate the streamside area further. That was identified as a positive opportunity by staff. And additionally, no other kind of negative impacts were identified as a consequence of this proposed rezone. So after evaluation of this application, it was bound to meet the review criteria. We have our optional motions here. And I can also answer any questions.

Councilman Donaldson.

Thank you, Madam President. And is the property owner here? No. And who's the gentleman who says no? For this project or this property?

Yeah, there will be an applicant presentation following staff presentation.

Okay, the rezone, the prior zoning does not allow data centers, is that correct?

I'm sorry, the MXN zone district, I'm not sure about that.

Does the requested zone allow data centers?

Kevin.

working on it okay that'll be my question and we i can you can double back after the applicant presentation that will be fine yeah okay thank you there are no other questions we will now have the applicant presentation for 15 minutes

Good evening, it is evening now. President Crow Iverson, Pro Tem Risley, and council members, my name's John Olson with Urban Landscapes. We are the planner for the property owner. Rodrigo Terrazas is the property owner. He's not able to join us this evening. He is a resident here in Colorado Springs. I've actually gotten to know him through playing pickleball, interestingly enough. uh rodrigo purchased this property i want to say in 2022 2023 so it was right around the time of the udc let me go through the slides here and just to answer your question mr donaldson i'm not exactly sure that was not ever a use that was ever contemplated or or discussed by the property owner so i'm not sure if if it's allowed or not but i'm sure they're looking through it right now So some history on this. There was a zone change proved in 2017 with a concept plan. It was looked at for affordable housing. So there was a there were formal plans put together for this. The site is very constrained with a lot of things and a lot of lot of charm that goes into it too because of the the trail that's there the creek is right there you'd be all familiar with this being across from university village across the creek from university village area so the trail in there is very beautiful and so the trail bisects the property quite a bit and we'll we'll show that here in a minute um the uh the previous zoning which was pip2 i way before it was reasoned i did believe did because that's more of an industrial allow a data center just for whatever it's worth When it went to the- It's not allowed in either zone.

What was that? They're not allowed in either zone. Okay, there you go.

Thank you, Mr. Williams, I mean, Mr. Walker.

So what he was looking for in particular on this property, the property owner, is he was looking to figure out how to get value out of his land. So when he approached us, we were looking at it for something along the idea of a campground recreational vehicle park. was really what he was looking at. And he was looking at more of a glamping kind of a feel that would go along the creek there. But he also didn't want, he wanted to have the multifamily allowance. As happens with, it seems like every project I touch, things change when you're just doing a zone change. And over time, we've had a lot of interest in the multifamily side of things. So it's a good fit. The idea is, to really return the zoning of the property back to what it was and what it allowed, which was the multifamily aspect and the campground recreational vehicle park. So in 2023 the UDC was adopted MXN went in place Which is mixed-use neighborhood still stream side. So there's there's all those components that go to the site This is the prior concept plan. So the if you look at the upper cross building on there, that's an existing structure That exists there today. I believe there's a home somebody lives in there right now and with this plan they were looking at it as a clubhouse so they were just going to convert the existing building and then the larger building being the multi-family this was done by america west housing solutions during that process to my knowledge they never actually owned this property so they weren't able to go and fulfill it before the economy did what it did Here's the stream side overlay on here, and you can see the overall site is really highlighted on there. You can see it expands across the creek. It's really quite large, and the trail piece there. There's a stream side overlay. I'm sorry, the property doesn't go across the creek. I don't know what I'm talking about. Stream side overlay, so it's 5385 on the map here. If I could...

Does that work?

No, it doesn't work. There's another, let's see here. There's a picture of the site, then it turns, it rotates, so that's a confusing aspect. North is up now. Where we've got a lot of it in the inner buffer is the 1.75, I'm sorry, the outer, let me look at my notes here before I keep messing this up. It's the outer buffer of the stream side. The inner buffer is the 40 feet. Development goals, as I mentioned, multifamily residential, attached single family, campground, lodging. We've looked at all of these aspects and what could be done with the site. It is chopped up. There's a big utility easement that comes through the site, as well as the trail and the stream site aspects. but it is still worthwhile to go after. I put all these in here. The statement that you have has a much larger exhaustive list. I only put five because I'm not even going to really read these. They all have to do with infill. You can imagine you've seen these before. You get the strategies and aspects of anytime you see a zone change. And I'm going to back up and just turn this over for questions because that's really the nuts and bolts of the property. And the goals are really to just return it to what was allowed before.

So with that- Councilman Hinchum. Thank you, Madam President. Yeah, hey, John. Not really a question, but just more of a comment, I suppose, which is how we develop along the creek and along that trail. I think with the Pikes Peak Waterways vision of what can be possible with our creek, and while the I'm blanking on the name of the shopping center across the way. University Village. University Village is nice. Unfortunately, they completely avoided the beauty of taking advantage of the beauty of looking over the water onto the mountains. And I just hope that whatever gets developed here, it takes advantage of the beauty of the watershed and the water at the creek. and um and activates that in a way you know continues to activate that trail uh because i think it's a fabulous you know it's fabulous what we have along that along that creek yeah it really is beautiful down there and kind of just walking around and going on the property it's

It's a fantastic piece, and yeah, that was a disappointing aspect of University Village when that went in, especially with the 40-foot retaining wall and the other aspects toward that. This site, I think, would be pretty hard to not engage the creek. It's right there. There's floodplain aspects that go into this, but the creek is the major amenity. Mark Dabbling is... not necessarily something that you really want to front onto, but the creek absolutely is.

I don't see any other questions at this time.

We have no one signed up in support of the project, and we have no one signed up in opposition. So we will now move to the applicant. There is no rebuttal. So we will hear a final closing from staff if there is one. Nope. I'll turn it over to the dais for questions. I don't see any. We have a motion from Councilman Hingham and a second from Councilman Risley. We can do, if you wanna do a roll call, we can do a voice vote.

And the motion passes eight to one. Or I'm sorry, eight to zero with one absent.

Moving on to item 11B. Will the clerk please read item 11B into the record?

Ordinance number 26-38, amending the zoning map of the City of Colorado Springs pertaining to 7.79 acres located at 4290, 4310, 4320, 4330, and 4340 Buckingham Drive from Business Park with conditions of record to Light Industrial with conditions of record. Second reading.

Today's hearing will proceed as the following, city staff presentation, applicant presentation, public comment and support, public comment and opposition, applicant rebuttal, closing staff comments and back to the dice for council member questions, deliberation and decision. We will now hear from the city planning.

Hello again, Molly O'Brien, planner two. Again, Chris Sullivan was the case planner for this project and he's not available, so I am here in his place. This is another application for zone map amendment with land use statement. This project site is located on Buckingham Drive, southeast of the intersection of Centennial Boulevard and Garden of the Gods Road. These are five currently vacant lots, and the total site area is 7.79 acres. So again, the project proposal is a zone map amendment with land use statement. There are some existing conditions of record associated with the business park zoning. So the existing conditions of record that staff is proposing to remove include a 25-foot landscape buffer, to be provided adjacent to the southern property boundary. And there's another condition too, says service facilities including loading and trash enclosure areas shall be designed and arranged to avoid adverse impacts on adjacent property zone residential. And said facilities shall be screened by buildings and other means acceptable by city planning director. So just to give a little bit more background on this site, it is currently zoned business park with conditions of record. The surrounding properties to the north and east are predominantly zoned business park and used for storage, warehousing, and light industrial uses. To the west, we have mixed-use medium scale, and this is a commercial shopping center. And then to the south, we have an R5 zone district that includes single-family residential. These existing conditions of record that are associated with the zoning, are kind of considered to be slightly redundant given the tools that exist in the current Unified Development Code, which again I will touch on a little bit later. But as part of this rezone request, we would be removing these existing conditions of record and then imposing some new conditions of record, including prohibiting the following uses, household living, group living, industrial hemp, marijuana-related services, natural medicine, and indoor and outdoor kennels. And just for your information, household living includes pretty much all residential uses in the Unified Development Code.

Council Member Townsend, do you have a question now or do you want to wait until she's finished?

I would have a question about that.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, I just and maybe you'll get more into this in your presentation, but I'm just trying to understand the removal of the conditions of record and the addition of the conditions of record. How common is that in a rezone and why? I mean, I guess I just don't fully understand. All of that, so if you're going to explain it as you go on, that's fine. However, you want to cover that's fine with me.

Right? Absolutely. Yeah, so I'm about to go into the site history and I think that kind of helps to explain kind of how we got here. So, this site does include 5 parcels. As I mentioned, they are currently vacant. There's a history of entitlements on the site, none of which were ultimately developed. So there have been several different development plans that were approved for a sports facility, a warehouse office use, recreational vehicle storage. So several different projects that were approved and ultimately did not go forward. So my understanding is these existing conditions of record were meant to provide mitigation for the properties to the south single-family residential properties in the case that something kind of more intense and industrial in nature was developed on these lots so that 25-foot landscape buffer and then also the extra screening and design standards for the loading and trash enclosure areas were intended to help kind of lower any potential negative impacts on the adjacent residential neighborhood to the south. However, during this review, it was determined that these conditions were no longer, they were kind of redundant, as I said previously, just due to the tools that exist in the current Unified Development Code. We do have landscape buffering requirements from residential to industrial uses and residential to commercial uses. That does include a 15-foot minimum landscape buffer. And additionally, the way the site is oriented, which you'll see later, it would be more like a 50-foot buffer. buffer between the landscaping and an access easement that runs across the south portion of the property. So during the review process, it was determined that those existing conditions of record were no longer necessary. And then potential development of the site was intended to be restricted to potentially some less intensive uses. And that was at the suggestion of the applicant. that these following uses that you see on the screen were prohibited, would be prohibited with this proposed rezone.

So my, oh. Madam President, could I ask my, I'm sorry, I didn't put my hand up there, but can I ask my data center question on this property? Is it currently allowed in the zoning? Would it be allowed in the proposed zoning?

So it would, go ahead. So it would be allowed in the light industrial zone districts that is proposed.

Is it currently allowed? It is currently allowed to. It is? Yes.

Okay.

And additionally, just to clarify, this is only a zone change with land use statement. So we have not received any development plan applications for this site at this time. And additional mitigation measures would be considered depending on the intensity of the use as we proceed with the development plan review. The unified development code does include again, landscape buffering requirements, parking requirements, lots of different design standards that could be considered as part of that development process. So here we have the existing, some existing permitted uses in the business park zone district, contrasted with some of the permitted uses and conditional uses allowed in the proposed light industrial zone district. Something else to highlight is that in the current business park zoning there are established building setbacks for all sides of the property and in the proposed light industrial zone district there is only a minimum front setback of 20 feet and the rest of the building setbacks would be determined by other factors such as landscaping setbacks and parking setbacks. There is also a required 100 foot separation requirement from residential to development in the business park zone district specifically. And that use specific standard that applies to the business park zone district does not apply to the proposed light industrial zone district. So that would do away with that separation requirement. And then there is also an increase in permissible building height from 45 feet in the business park zone district to 60 feet in the light industrial zone district. So this application was submitted initially on March 5th, 2026. It went through three administrative reviews and it was ready for the agenda on June 12th, 2026. It went to city planning commission on July 8th, 2026 and it was heard and planning commission did recommend approval to city council and that was seven, two that they recommended approval. During the administrative review and prior to both public hearings, 264 postcards were sent out to properties within 1,000 feet of the site. Initially, three comments were received, two of which were in opposition with concerns about potentially intense uses that could be allowed in the light industrial zone district. There were specifically concerns about higher noise impact and other potential impacts across the property lines. Additionally, there were two comments that were received prior to the city council hearing that were passed along to council staff for the council members. One was in opposition with concerns specifically about the potential for a data center use, and then the other was in support of the proposed project. This was evaluated by city agencies and there were no comments identified during the review process. Additional comments will be provided when a development plan is submitted. City Traffic Engineering also identified, sorry is that my time? You're fine. City Traffic Engineering also identified that a traffic impact study may be requested at time of development plan if that is appropriate given the use. This was reviewed for compliance with Plan COS and the Unified Development Code and this was found to be in compliance with all applicable plans and guiding documents. Staff did not identify any potentially negative impacts on surrounding properties, as long as the development plan, excuse me, So the specific use and development will be evaluated under a future development plan application. So we will look at things like landscaping and access and building orientation to mitigate any of those potential impacts to the adjacent properties. So after evaluation of the application, it was found to meet the review criteria. and I can take any questions now. Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Yeah, can you go back to the staff slide that shows who you staff with. I'm just curious why we didn't talk to fire, the fire department. They don't have any issues with this being light industrial from Business Park, or is it too early in the process for that?

So fire typically does not review zone change applications. They typically will review potential impacts at time of development plans and middle.

Okay, normally there's a When packages come in, there's an applicant response to public comment. I know there wasn't a lot of public comment, but I didn't see that in the record. Was there a written applicant response to public comment? No. Can you go to your map, the zoning map? I'm really struggling with how light industrial fits in here with right on top of residential, right next to Business Park and MXM. So with the previous business park, we had 100 foot setback from that R5, that housing development to the south. Now going to light industrial, we have no setback for the building. I realize there'll be some landscaping setback. And the building heights get taller, right? 60 foot versus? 45. 45. So they could have a much bigger building overlooking their backyards, pretty close to the fence line with some minor landscaping or whatever landscaping is originally developed on. Is that accurate?

Yes, they could potentially have up to a 60 foot building height.

And you don't think that has any adverse impacts for the criteria?

So the applicant will get into potential building design more but given the existing configuration of the lot there is a significantly sized easement on the south portion of the property and as well as an access a private access easement that runs across that southern portion of the property, which, to my understanding, the applicant intends to retain that as the main access point, which would naturally create an additional buffer to the single-family residential. Additionally...

I'm sorry, can you say that again? The main access point is...

So there is an access easement that runs across the southern portion of the property north of an additional easement. So there is naturally going to be a significant buffer created by those existing easements of about 50 feet.

So it's significant that you're saying it's 50 feet?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. That's all the questions I have for right now.

Thank you. Thank you. Next up we will have the applicant presentation for 15 minutes. Good evening.

Good evening. Last but not least, Ben Swanson. I'm one of the property owners with Buckingham Land Holdings LLC. Yeah, there we go. So I'm gonna skip ahead to a couple of things and probably get to more of the things you're more interested in discussing. Here's the perfect one. So there is residential to the south. There is, various different industrial uses every other direction except for the retail to the west and that retail is kind of the service area that retail so it's not customer facing or anything and and i think what's most interesting about this reason is this is essentially a history repeats itself This was originally zoned PIP1, PIP2. I think that was depending on the parcel is why there's a mix. In 2005, that was up zoned to PIP2. That PIP2 zoning remained until 2023, I believe, when the new UDC was put into place. Historically, going to light industrial isn't necessarily an expansion of the historical uses, it's just restoring those uses. I think PIP2 and light industrial are almost identical. And when the BP zoning was put in place, that was done not by a discussion and the merits of the parcel by parcel of that. It was really just done as part of the implementation of the new zoning. So by going back to light industrial, it's actually essentially the same zoning that was there since 2005. So what we, talking about access and things, there currently is a easement on the east side, what's shown next to West Tech 3, what we share with West Tech 3. That comes down and then what you can't see through the trees on the southern side, there's an existing road there too. We plan to utilize those exact roads, improve those. that'll act as the main access to reconfigure site of say three to four parcels um and then the when we talk about building design we we looks because the residential neighbors that's the first thing that we wanted to deal with and make sure we listen to the way this site would lay out would be Access would be coming down the east side, wrapping around on the south side. There's a stormwater pond that we're working through the details of that would lie on the south side there too. Then you would have parking, and we've agreed to have the orientation of any building so that let's say from south to north, it is access and stormwater, then customer parking, then the building, and then if there's an outdoor yard component to it, it'd be on the north side so that the building, the parking, the access all acts as a buffer to mitigate any negative impacts as residences. Let me see. Some of the things we've done with from the odor perspective, we got rid of a lot of the uses that we felt that didn't fit there. You know, for odor, for noise, the buildings and the way that we're planning to have this site oriented helps both with noise, with dust. It acts, those buildings themselves act as a buffer on top of the distance created by the various functions on the south side. And then this is just a quick snapshot of within business park, business park and light industrial, they're both obviously part of the industrial umbrella within the zoning. What I try to do here on the section with the green, everything that is, I'm trying to remind myself. That is the list of everything that can be done right now business park versus light industrial, anything in green requires an additional development standards to come in and actually have a site plan. So there's additional mitigation that's required by the code. If you take all those green ones that have that extra step and eliminate those, you're left with the top right, which is where it's got the blue. The blue, actually, Sorry, it's been a minute since I saw this. So let me back up. The green is conditional uses. So those are all within the light industrial. Those are uses that obviously are conditional. When you remove those conditional uses, you're left at the top right with the blue. Those are the ones where those additional development standards come into play. So that's additional mitigation to get those uses. So then the bottom right is what's left when you simply remove all those additional things. What is allowed by right that may not be allowed in BP, but it's allowed in light industrial, and it becomes those uses. Those mirror what essentially PIP2 was historically.

Councilman Casey.

Yeah, could you go back to that? So I understand the uses that you're taking out that you're not considering. What do you need light industrial for? What proposed uses do you see in light industrial that are not already allowed on BP or something like MXM?

Yeah, that's a good question. So the biggest difference, there's some hesitation in the market and any of these where it's business park and light industrial, they prefer to see light industrial. There's a lot of groups that won't even pursue it because there's some gray area in the light industrial. There's not obviously that many uses. The ones that are important to us are, There's heavy equipment, sales and rental, construction sales and services. Previously, there used to be contractor yard. There were some different definitions of that throughout there. It's slightly changed here. Those capture those uses, but it's basically, you know, What we're trying to provide is there's service businesses that need to supply the city. This is a central location within a business park. And if we design this and come forward with a site plan that factors in the neighbors to the south or the residents that we would like to be able to have some, you know, I'm trying to read right here, but the construction sales and service, for example, those ones that aren't allowed in business park. And that is a category that we think would, a lot of the users would fall into that would be perfect users for this site.

It just seems like something like heavy vehicle and equipment repair would be noising going back to the public comment. That was one of the concerns that, the amount of noise the site would create versus, say, a business park, which is intentionally kind of designed to be lighter in terms of noise impacts. Can you speak to that at all? Do you have interested companies that are interested in doing this, or are you just rezoning to position yourself to be available to them, or where are we at in the process?

So right now we don't have anybody identified specifically. There is some hesitancy with the business park zoning, so it's hard to even go out there and do that without this being in place, which is I think part of the reason they went PIPT before, but now we're trying to do that again. I think, I'm trying to remember your first question, sorry.