City Council - workshop

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning and welcome to the work session for Colorado Springs City Council for Tuesday, September 8th, 2026. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Casey. Here. Council Member Crowe-Iverson. Here. Council Member Donaldson. Here. Council Member Gold. Here I am. Council Member Hendren. Present. Council Member Leinweber. Here. Council Member Rainey. Here. Council Member Risley.

Here.

Council Member Williams. Here. All nine present.

Are there any changes to today's agenda? Seeing none, moving on to the regular meeting comments. Are there any changes to the regular meeting? Moving on to 4A, will the clerk please read item 4A into the record?

City Council Work Session Meeting Minutes, August 24, 2026.

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

Thomas Wade v. Troy Bauer, Tim Kuhl, Andrew Lieber, Jason Reeser, El Paso County District Court, case number 26CV31641.

Sorry, just a second. Hang on, I need to get my computer. Just give me one minute, sorry. Good morning. Stephanie Boster, city attorney. Before the city council today is a matter involving Thomas Wade versus Tony Bauer. Tom Coole, Andrew Lepper, Jason Reaser. It's a case in front of the El Paso County District Court. It's case number 25CV31641. Council has in its agenda packet a memorandum from the city attorney's office which describes the nature of the case. And the Civil Action Investigation Committee met on August 14, 2026 and recommends that the city council acknowledge the city's obligation to represent the officers involved as required by the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act and the Peace Officers Liability Act. And the city attorney's office recommends that the city council engage in that representation.

So at this time, I just need a thumbs up from council members if you support the attorneys moving forward. Okay, done, thank you. Moving on to item 7A. Will the Clerk please read item 7A into the record?

Informational Presentation on the Homelessness Response Action Plan.

Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Madam President, members of City Council. I'm Amy Cox, the Chief Housing and Homelessness Response Officer. I'm here today to give you an update on the Homelessness Response Action Plan. Council had requested this presentation following the mayor's press briefing on August 12th, and thank you for your patience as we got this scheduled. The presentation today will largely follow the outline that was in that presentation, or that press briefing, but because homelessness often creates conversations that are both broad and deep. There are a number of subject matter experts here today who can help answer questions, and so I just want to recognize Lieutenant Ryan Tepley, who oversees our HOT and DART programs, Deputy Chief Doug Traynor, Steve Johnson with the Colorado Springs Fire Department, Community Health Programs, Kyle Hageman, who's a Senior Analyst and Clutch Project Manager in the Housing and Homelessness Response Department, And I believe Chantel Withrow is scheduled to be here. She's the division chief for prosecution. There are also a number of providers and concerned residents in the audience today. And thank you for joining us. So the agenda's pretty straightforward. I'm gonna give a brief overview of what we do. We'll go over the Homeless Response Action Plan and the three-time horizon, the phased approach we've put together. And then I wanna recognize City Council's partnership in this work because you are really key players in reducing homelessness in our community. So homelessness is really part of a broader response. in our office. It's part of a broader set of responsibilities that certainly include investing in housing choice for low-income households. Our team made investments in nearly 3,000 units that have been leased up, completed, or under construction since June of 23. We also fund neighborhood and public facility improvements We invested in the Colorado Springs Senior Center, the Early Connections Learning Centers, and we helped to build parks in low-income neighborhoods. And this is part of our commitment to improving overall quality of life in our community. We manage diverse funding sources, each with different compliance requirements, so there's a level of complexity here. And with all these funding sources available, in 2025, we distributed about $1 million for homelessness response. And that was mostly to support shelters, emergency shelters and winter shelter operations. And the intent here is not to grouse about resources, but to emphasize that our most significant contribution to homelessness response is really in our leadership and coordination. And these are themes that you're going to hear throughout this presentation.

But we're here today to talk about the Homelessness Response Action Plan.

The plan outlines 61 actions across six priorities over five years. These actions were shaped by residents, businesses, service providers, and government partners through a robust public engagement process. The focus is on addressing immediate challenges while building long-term solutions to reduce homelessness. The Housing and Homelessness Response Department is responsible for operationalizing these actions. And rather than manage the plan just like a checklist, We worked with our Community Development Advisory Committee to develop a phased approach with actions that are intended to build upon each other to meet those immediate needs and increase our system capacity to generate outcomes. In phase one, we built a foundation trying to set clear our goals and getting buy-in from departments and partners. Phase two will be about strengthening our system performance, both internally and externally, And in phase three, the work is to build a sustainable, continually improving system. It's very ambitious. In the first year, and you're familiar with most of these actions, we completed more than half of the actions in the plan. We expanded, you actually approved the expansion of the sit line ordinance, approved a budget to expand the homeless outreach team from six to eight officers. invested in the Downtown Clean and Safe Pilot Program, raised 860,000 to expand winter capacity. We completed a housing needs assessment to understand the gaps in affordable housing in our community. And we identified ongoing operations for expanded coordination. And this is important because about one third of the actions in the plan are ongoing operational activities, such as expanding right-of-way cleaning and planning for winter shelter. So we are currently in the expansion phase and I want to pause here for a couple of minutes because a common question that I get is what works to reduce homelessness and what communities, where are people doing this well? And it's easy to look at communities like San Antonio or Austin or San Diego which are beautiful cities, to see what's going well. But we see that a lot of what's happening well is happening in places like Rockford, Illinois, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Reno, Nevada. And the evidence-based practices point to one consistent factor, and that is strong system management. And it's about reframing the conversation from how many people are we serving in our system to are we actually reducing homelessness? Are there fewer people experiencing homelessness in our community? And the best practices include by name data, routine case conferencing, shared performance targets so everybody knows, all the partners in the system know what we're aiming for. It's about prevention and diversion to prevent people from entering the system altogether. That is the most effective homelessness response strategy is prevention and diversion. It's housing focused shelter and outreach to focus on exits from our system. And it's strong housing navigation because most people experiencing homelessness do not need intense wraparound services. They need housing that they can afford. Housing is very much the service. And once people are housed, you'll see significant improvements in their health and their functional mental health. And we do this work well in our community with veterans through our Built for Zero program by identifying every veteran in our community and then using case conferencing to connect them to a resource to help them exit the system. And we have seen meaningful reductions in veteran homelessness in our community. So this year and next, we're focused on strengthening our system management through better coordination internally with the Homelessness Response Team, which we'll talk about here shortly, deepening our partnership with the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care, improving behavioral health coordination, and using better data to track and improve performance. and quite frankly using better data to reduce the confusion that there is in this community about how we count using point in time counts and annual reports. So really shifting our practice to more real time data reporting and transparency. And some of our current activities include the homelessness response team. Again, more on that here next. We've strengthened regional coordination through a joint leadership of our Pikes Peak Continuum of Care with the Pikes Peak United Way. And I think this is really a game changer in our city because the city is now not just a member of our Continuum of Care, but we're a key partner driving the impact with the Pikes Peak United Way. The police department established a homeless operations team which now includes 14 officers and two sergeants who provide coverage enforcement and coverage six days per week. We invested funding into Step Springs to secure community housing for men in recovery. They have an excellent track record of helping men escape addiction and homelessness in our community. We're testing diversion services for families with children living in their vehicles through Catholic charities, and diversion is the best practice for meeting housing and stability needs without requiring a shelter stay. So it really leans into the strengths that families bring with them. We launched a housing action plan, which includes planning for supportive housing, which is housing with those wraparound services, and housing for seniors and the military. And with council support, we shifted nearly $2 million of federal funding into tenant-based rental assistance to support households with expiring emergency housing vouchers. The homelessness response team is a key change and was a highlight in the mayor's press briefing on the 12th. City departments have been meeting for a couple of years to communicate about our activities and to talk about what we're seeing on the ground in the community and how we might best approach those activities. However, Mayor Yemi took this up a level and directed departments to operate through a coordinated whole of government approach. Homelessness is, by its nature, cross-departmental. There isn't a single department that has all the tools or the expertise needed to solve the problem. Housing and Homelessness Response is the coordinator of this effort, and we really coordinate the internal expertise and responsibilities so that our decisions will reflect a unified city response. And initial priorities identified by this group include shared data so that we all have access to the data we're collecting in the various departments and can use that in defining the problems and finding solutions. It's about coordinated outreach and encampment closure to ensure that when we're enclosing encampments, we are doing that permanently. And that means both securing the space and helping people find a better alternative. It's improving our communication, both internally and externally, because public trust and confidence are really important to this work. And we'll start to lean into behavioral health planning.

Amy, I have a question from Councilman Lineweber.

You've brought up data quite a bit, and that's a nice phrase, but what is that? What systems are there? Is everyone on it? So is this entire list using the same system? How do we, because it is a whole team effort. I really like this approach.

Yeah.

But is everyone on the same page?

No. I think that is the challenge we have. I mean, we have, each department collects their own data. And what we're trying to do is create some sort of warehouse or lake where that information can be shared and pulled from. So right now, when we need to, when we wanna report on data, we have to reach out to each individual department. And the measures are not collected consistently across. all of our departments. So that's one of the efforts we'll be working on internally is to have a more standardized way of collecting our data.

because I know there's a lot of different systems that are out there that different organizations are using. The Rescue Mission uses, they are participating now, I believe, in HMIS, but they also have another system, and then there's Gelato that I've heard about, and I haven't seen it, but that's the thing. There's all these different systems, and yet if we talk about a whole team approach and we're all talking a different language, we've gotta figure that out, right?

Yeah, we have to figure that out. The Homeless Management Information System does not work for the information that we collect, but the Colorado Springs Fire Department enters information into the HMIS, and in their outreach efforts, when they are encountering somebody on the street, they can identify what other services they may be connected to. But internally, how many tickets the police department writes is not going to be something we collect in HMIS. HMIS is really a longitudinal database that looks at the client level and is how we can track people's movement through the system.

And what works and doesn't work. Sometimes we just look at the numbers, like how many do we have, but how many have made a visit to jail? How many have made a visit to our hospitals, emergency rooms, right? I mean, all that can be really valuable information. So are we coordinating? Like, I don't know if I saw hospitals on here. No, you don't have hospitals on here.

They're not a government agency. This is our internal homelessness response team. And actually we've made an invitation to Colorado Springs Utilities to join this team. This is our internal homelessness response team. But all of the work we do internally has an external nexus. And so we have identified, for example, the PPROEM in our after action report for our winter shelter, identified the need for better coordination with our health system. We have identified in the continuum of care for our collaborative application, when we report to HUD on the performance of our community and our system, they want to see MOUs with behavioral health organizations. We have not had those in the past. So those are things that we're working on externally.

How can council help with this? Because I think you're right. I think data sharing is probably at the top of the list. We have to know what we're dealing with, right? At the individual level. So how do we get there?

Yeah. So I think that what... Again, this is part of the theme of this presentation, which is that our biggest asset in this system is the leadership and the coordination that we can bring to the entire system. So our ability to take the internal work and attach it to the external work. And I think that's where we have we will struggle with the staff that are in our office is that we don't have an adequate number of people to actually do this work. So we've had to move folks from other critical functions to respond to the homelessness response team. which is important, so we are happy to do it. And again, I'm not here to grouse. There'll be plenty of time to talk about this during the budget hearings. There are plenty of departments in our city that need support, but this does require dedicated coordination. And we are part of our role in housing homelessness response as a partner in our continuum of care and that collaborative application and that system leadership is investing. We're providing matching funds to that program and that allows us to monitor and provide some oversight.

You know, when I think about like military operations or anything like that, the number one thing, and I can turn to my fellow Councilman right here is to know your enemy. I mean, they do incredible amount of funding goes into research and identifying all the different gaps and this and concerns and this and that. we need to be investing in that data. Data is really important when it comes to operational type things, when you're taking on a large challenge. And I think that that is a very critical issue. So I think that will be a lively discussion when we get the budget. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. And I do wanna point out that our senior analyst is a retired army ranger and he often brings military metaphors to, sorry, Kyle, I don't mean to. Yeah, point you out there, but he's teaching us all sorts of military concepts in our approach. Let's see. Okay, the activities ahead of us include community resource mapping. It's hosting a behavioral health summit to bring folks together around the behavioral health issues. We don't know the details of that yet, but we know that there's a need to convene folks. Improved shelter and crisis response for individuals with deeper needs. continued work on medical respite, and advancing the supportive and extremely low-income housing strategies. In our housing needs assessment, we identified that 30% of the housing need in our community is for people earning 30% of the area median income or less. So we'll need strategies to fill that gap. And by 2028, we expect to complete over 90% of the plan and align it with regional planning, the regional planning we do with our Pikes Peak Continuum of Care. And let's just be honest, no plan accounts for all the variables when it's created, so recalibration will keep actions aligned with our real world needs. But the goal here is to develop a system that is continually improving and to build that into the culture of the work that we do. And finally, and this gets more to your question, Councilman Lineweber, I'd really like to recognize City Council as a key partner in this work. Your decisions shape the response. It shapes it through laws and through the approval of funding. You approve the plans we bring forward. You regulate land use. And you bring leadership to a variety of committees. And I want to thank all of you who have participated or asked questions or engaged in this issue. It's very, very critical that we have a whole of city response that involves our administration and our city council. And to support ongoing transparency and public confidence, the Homelessness Response Team plans to provide quarterly updates to City Council and produce an annual report, public report, tracking progress and challenges. And ultimately our success will be measured not by the number of initiatives that we launch, actual reductions in unsheltered homelessness, faster exits from homelessness to stable housing, improved health and employment outcomes, and a more coordinated city response. And we're committed to this work alongside the providers and many in this audience today, our partners, our residents and volunteers, some of whom are here today, funders, and of course you. So thank you. There are two slides here at the end of this that were in your annex. about enforcement, if there are questions about enforcement, I know those come up. Right now, I do have a question from Councilman Hincham on these slides. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President, and Amy, thank you so much for being here this morning. I do have a couple questions, but before I get to those, I want to say I hear really loud and clear what you're saying about the importance of strong system management. And I want to actually personally credit you and your work in this role for the last couple of years, since you were, is it two or three now? I was on your interview team. And I really credit you in influencing what is now 15 different departments that are listed as collaborating together. And I would challenge a word that you use, which is it's not buy-in. What you're doing, what I've watched you do, is to create a sense of ownership. in the city and with the departments and we have many of them here today demonstrating the advances I think you're making in how the city approaches such a complex significant challenge of which we have very specific things that we can do and we can't do the entire thing. So I just really want to thank you for your leadership and you just deserve to really be noticed and appreciated for what you're doing. I do have a question about where things are at with this body passed a year ago or so, an ordinance making it illegal to sleep in your car at night if you are homeless. And I'm just wondering if you can speak a little bit to where that's at, what kinds of solutions. I know part of the... from many people who came to testify in support of that ordinance who said, we support this because this is creating challenges in our neighborhood. However, we are looking for and want compassionate responses to where these folks can be, especially the families. And my understanding is that Family Promise has been working on something. But if you could just give us a little bit of an update around efforts on that matter. And then I have a couple of other questions for you.

Thank you. Yes, Family Promise has been most actively working on creating a safe parking program for families with children. And it is actually very challenging to create a safe parking program. They originally created a program with churches really leaning into religious land use because of some of the zoning issues with creating a safe parking program. And what they found was that it's very difficult to insure, and that is to get liability insurance on these properties. It would require either fully securing the facility, fencing for example, or providing 24, I'll say security the entire time people are there. They're not there 24-7. But they would have to have onsite security and that's a very expensive and so they are looking at other models, but there are there are challenges with that.

Is it primarily the money Amy? I mean, other cities do. Have. solutions, right, it sounds like they're looking at them, but how much of it is funding, how much of it is our own ordinances and requirements around zoning and so forth?

Some of it is zoning related, and I can look over at Kevin Walker, who we have worked very closely with Family Promise, our planners have, to try and go through what the zoning requirements are and the notice, et cetera. There are areas where a human service facility is a permitted use, but there are areas then there has to be the occupancy has to be aligned with that. So there are some challenges there, but a lot of the challenge is financial. I mean, there's a big cost to providing insurance or security to ensuring that there are restrooms and facilities available for people. There is neighborhood notification generally and getting neighbors to buy in. So I will say watching Tim Close with Family Promise do this, all the kudos to him for his persistence in trying to figure out how to make this a reality for families with children. We have stepped in in our department to test that diversion program with Catholic Charities. We've provided a small contribution to Catholic Charities so that when PD encounters a family with children, that they can immediately refer them to Catholic Charities for up to three nights stay in a motel to get them out of their vehicle and that assessment and case management to connect them to a better alternative. It's very limited in scope, simply because it's limited in dollars, but it's our belief that if we can demonstrate that this is a successful model, that we can actually find more funding for that.

Okay, great, thank you for that. Two other questions. One has to do with, I understand that Hope COS, who I believe is here in the chambers today, is actually seeking to open yet another shelter. And I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit as to where they are with that process and why opening Hope COS is important for our city and for folks who are experiencing homelessness.

They are here and I will continue to look back to make sure I'm getting this correct. This has been something that Hope has been looking at for some time. They currently operate in the winter when we activate winter shelter at the Sanctuary Church. So they've operated for many years there. We activate winter shelter at 19 degrees. And 19 degrees is not based on any human sort of physiology or people just get colder at 19 degrees. 19 degrees was based on the resources we had available. So when you look at the history of weather in a community, we said we had X amount of dollars. It costs X amount of dollars per day to operate a shelter. So we could operate about 60 days. What temperature is that? And that is how we decided on 19 degrees. So we see that last year working with PPR OEM, we saw that three, I believe three people died when the temperatures were higher than 19 degrees. And so we have been looking and HOPE has been looking at what is the opportunity to provide just a full winter shelter so that when it's cold between October 15th and April, 15th um that there's a place for people to go but that has now expanded into um a year-round shelter proposal and that is rooted in um the the the after action report for the winter shelter indicated a need for a full year full winter shelter uh our point in time count identified that we did not have sufficient beds for the number of people counted on the night of the count, so we were short about 195 year-round beds. And there's also a need to sort of differentiate some of the populations. HOPE often serves people who have deeper needs They do it through a peer-based model. And with some of the concerns with what we see on the streets, especially in downtown, we hear that very vocally, there is a need to provide a facility for folks who have deeper needs. So that is a very high level of summary of what HOPE is trying to do. I think one of the really, the after action report for our winter shelter, some of the strengths were the coordination, the safety at all of our facilities. And so this is a build on that.

Well, so you mentioned that they sort of in a way serve a different aspect of the population and provide a broader set of choices. And I think that's really important. And we have all heard of the folks who, for whatever reason, and they have many different reasons, are not willing to stay at the Springs Rescue Mission, who have themselves said, we can't be the be all and end all for every single person experiencing homelessness. But could you please dispel what I believe are some misstatements out there about Hope COS allowing people to use while they're in the shelter? I understand that that's not true. And if we could set the record straight about how they differentiate themselves and what's true and what's not true.

Yeah, so the city of Carl Springs has a contract with Hope COS to help fund some of the winter shelter operations, some of that operation. And so we do monitor and we do have requirements. I will say this, that Hope COS has security Bags are checked. Drugs and weapons are not allowed in the facility. Folks know that. They're not bringing weapons and drugs into the facility or actively using. They hope in their peer support program requires that their employees or the peer support workers be at least two years sober. They are leaders in EPIC. around how recovery residences are administered. And so, no, they don't allow. I think a lot of this stems from a really bad experience that happened a few years ago in partnership with a church and was done in an emergency. And folks have learned significantly since then about how to operate a facility safely. One of the key things when we're evaluating one of the key factors in our PPR OEM report is about safety. And that was one of the strengths that we identified is that all of the sites were very safe.

Thank you. Last thing, and it might be a little bit more of a comment, and you may or may not, based on your earlier statements about we'll have a chance to get into budget later. I did want to say, and I don't know how many of my fellow council members have yet had a meeting with our CFO and Chief of Staff about the 2027 budget, but I have, and I recall seeing a potential position for your office in there. And I just am aware of, again, you've talked about, there's a lot of stuff you do that you haven't talked about here, things that you're responsible for. But I just wanted to say that I do hope, given that homelessness and homeless response is probably at the very tippy-top and the top three of things that our citizens care about and are concerned about, that we will consider giving you the support that you need for your office, and you're welcome to respond to that if you like.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we did request, a number of departments have requested additional staff. We requested a dedicated position for our homelessness operations. We had this position previously and lost it in the reduction in force. And it's just, it's a key position. It would allow us to open up I'm currently using staff that could also be deploying some of these other dollars into the community to do this work. So I think that it'll make us more effective in our homelessness response, and it'll allow us to get more of our money out the door more quickly on all of those other issues, housing and community development. Great. Thank you again, Amy. Appreciate it very much.

Is that it? Did you have the two other slides or they're just for?

They're here if anybody wanted to talk about enforcement, I added them because there had been some questions about it. So if council would like to talk about the two enforcement slides. Councilman Donaldson.

I was gonna have some questions, but I would like to see those slides.

Okay.

Before then.

I just provided some resources. It's a list of the common ordinances that we enforce and our municipal offenses and how those are handled. And we have members of the PD and City of Chantel is here with the prosecution. There are questions.

Okay, then yes, Madam President, I just have a few questions. Amy, when was it we combined housing and homelessness? It wasn't that way a few years ago, right? Didn't we have a homelessness officer and then housing fell under a different department?

Yeah, you know, I'm not exactly sure. It's been this way since I've been here the second time. Previously, we did this work under, I was previously a community development manager.

What was your predecessor's name? I've just forgotten.

Steve Posey.

Steve. And then we had- So Steve did housing, but then what was the gentleman who did homelessness?

Andy Phelps.

Andy Phelps.

Yeah. Yeah.

And what strikes me is when we put it together like this, Steve Posey, that's right, like Chief Housing and Homelessness Response Officer, it just seems like we think, you know what, if we could lower the price of housing, then these people living on the streets would go away. And I don't think that will happen. Do you?

I mean, there is a... Homelessness and housing are deeply related. Housing... There is a structural problem in our community in terms of the availability of affordable housing.

A certain percentage of people that we see on the streets, I guess we're talking about the unhoused homeless, vagrants we used to call them, a certain percentage may actually, if we could simply get a lower cost housing unit for them, they would go back to work. That's asking a lot. They would be okay. Aren't there other things that contribute to this other than simply the cost of housing?

Yeah, oh, absolutely. There are other, there's mental illness, there's drug addiction, there's trauma, there's employment and wages. There's a number of things that contribute. I think the challenge we have is that the majority of people who are experiencing homelessness in our community are not those people you're talking about. let me ask you this the the majority that are we we have a lot of fancy words now why he's calling vagrants unhoused homeless would you say the majority of them either have drug addiction or mental health problems i would say and there may be a nuance here council member and we might want to have a a different conversation about this but what i would say is the majority of people who are considered unhoused are people who are living in shelters or people who are doubled up who are people who are couch surfing, people who are living in their vehicles. There are thousands of people on waiting lists for housing. So I think that we have different, we have to have different strategies for people with different needs. And that is really the basis for this, for the, having real time data and case conferencing. And yes, I cannot say that there are not folks out there who are, that, The answer is not just to put them into a home and let them be. That is not the answer. But the answers are very individualized.

And I don't think it's, like you said, I cannot say that there aren't people out there like this, as if it's a few. I think it's a whole bunch of the ones that are on the street and in the parks and on the creek. It's a whole bunch of them. And lowering... it just strikes me that when we have your position as running housing and also doing homelessness that isn't it's not all it's i think it would be better to split the two positions out and to again have a homelessness response person that's what they do and that's all they do and they focus on this other stuff too because It sort of creates this idea that, well, you know, if we just had less expensive housing, this problem would be over. I don't think that's even close to true. And when we shut down state inpatient mental health institutions, that created a bunch of people who can't survive on their own, no matter what the cost of housing is. And when we legalized marijuana and drugs became more prevalent throughout our society, more people got addicted to different kinds of drugs. And it doesn't matter what the cost of housing is. That's its own problem. And if we're gonna focus on homelessness, we really need to focus on what are we gonna do with these people.

I'm sorry.

I just wanted to get your view on that. Do you think that your position would be better split into two again as it used to be? When I came on council, it was that way.

I think that my position is titled because of the way the Housing and Homelessness Response Department is titled. What we're asking for is a Homeless Operations Coordinator, which was the position that was doing the coordination work. It came under Housing and Homelessness Response under Mayor Yemi, but we had a separate position doing that. My job has been largely to oversee all of those resources that are being deployed and help set the strategy for how we get dollars into the community to address community issues. My job has never been entirely homelessness response, and I think that is a misunderstanding as well.

But Andy Phelps' job was that, and I think we need someone with Andy Phelps' job again, just focusing on homelessness, nothing else.

That 100%, and that is what we're requesting. That is what we've requested in the budget.

And we also need to, I think, stop the misinformation that it's just a cost of housing problem. If we could just get housing cost lower, everything would be okay. I think that's just not true. And even the title of your position confuses it. I only get one or two more questions. You know, the mayor had his press conference and he rolled out the homeless response team. And I don't know who the lady was, but there was someone off camera who asked the inconvenient question, well, haven't you been doing this like for the last couple of years? And what was the answer to that question?

Yeah, I mean, we have been meeting, our departments have been convening for a couple of years. It's just a new direction and setting a tone that we are all working together. And it gets to your point about homelessness is not just a housing problem. Homelessness is a problem with criminal activity. Homelessness is a health and behavioral health problem. Homelessness does create trash and it's a cleanup problem, right? There are a variety of problems. No single position, even if we have a one sole position dedicated to homelessness response, we require all of that expertise to come to the table to identify what those needs are.

But we've really been doing this for several years, right? All these groups have been meeting and trying to figure out the best way to coordinate.

We have been meeting to communicate. If you think of, and I don't wanna get really nerdy here, but if you think of a spectrum of collaboration, we've done a good job of communicating and talking about some of the shared issues, but not aligning our performance, aligning our planning in a meaningful way.

Well, I remember, because I watched the conference, the press conference, and then the woman, whoever she was, said, well, what's really going to change? And then the mayor wasn't really sure, so he asked you, and your example was, well, we could, when we do try to clean out one of these big campsites, we could, before the police come, we could have, like, the social workers come the day before and tell them what's going to happen, so if they want to... receive services, they could do that first. Do you remember that?

Yeah, I do remember that. And encampment closure strategy is Oklahoma City, for example, just in our, we had a fellow here spent the summer with us who's now with Oklahoma City and they go out and they just cleared a campment, 75 folks, put 55 directly into housing. 20 are in case management. Folks have case management for a year, and they are permanently closing the site. So those are strategies. That's an example of a strategy.

I've got a couple of questions about this, because what I always notice on the news when we do this, when we sweep a campsite, it's always the big ones, is several people get arrested. Felons get arrested. actually more than a couple. So if the social workers go the day before and tell them, you know what, tomorrow the police are gonna be here, it seems to me the real hardcore criminals that are in there will pack up and move on right there. And so we'll miss that opportunity to take felons off the street. So to me, if that was the best example we had, that was an odd example of what would be better. And then just to go back to it, because you said this earlier, is we'll close these camps permanently. How does that really work when we sweep by an area on a creek and then we actually clean it up, we get all the garbage out, all the tents, and all the crap that's accumulated there, how do we permanently close it?

Well, you can permanently close things through activation, through fencing, through hostile architecture. There's a number of things that you can do.

I don't have, this is not the- So we're gonna fence it or put up hostile architecture?

There are a variety of ways to do this. We do not have the plan. It is an example of what communities do to try and keep from moving folks around. I think our own team, our homelessness response team has expressed the concern that enforcement without making the meaningful connection just moves people to other places and we see folks circulating in the city and somebody within the city described it as paths of destruction that get created because people know that we are a community that enforces and so they will just pick up and leave when a camp is cited. So we can look at other best practices of bringing our entire, all of our departments together to figure out how do we solve this problem? How do we solve the problem? And I don't have the plan. This is a plan that would need to be created by this team, but it is an example of what cities do. It is an example.

My impression from that press conference was that essentially this has been happening for the last couple years. The mayor himself said, well, we'll just make it more formal now. That's what he said. He said, well, it's official now. So to me it was a PR stunt, is we'll come out and we'll announce this, we'll give it a name, and we'll do what we've been doing. Disappointing for me. It just didn't seem like there was anything new there and and if we're gonna say like we're gonna permanently close these sites tell me you know, tell me how you're gonna do that and I don't I Don't think you really can unless it's underneath a bridge and you fence it off or put rocks under there But that's not where the big campsites are. Anyway, they're in the trees and along the creek So I think things are being suggested, we'll be able to do these things, and you really won't be able to do those things. You're not gonna be able to close down the creek beds. We're gonna have to have a level of enforcement that as soon as it begins, it is stopped. I have my ideas on that, but I'm not gonna go, you know, try to extend it all, there's not enough time.

that enforcement is a key component of that, as we have created urban trail ranger programs and given the authority to post and those sorts of things. But again, we don't solve these problems if we're not solving them together. If one department...

I think, but what I heard is that we've been working together for two years. The mayor, I heard him say all this. He came into office, he said, hey, do we meet together? And then people said, well, we can do that. And then we started doing it pretty early on in his four years, which would make sense. You shouldn't wait till three and a half years to ask that question. And so... now we give it an official title we call it the whatever it's called uh but we essentially continue to do what we've been doing and some things have changed i've only got one more question the final thing i'd like to hear about is and i guess this would be from pd is how or or uh our prosecutors When we passed the you can't live in your car ordinance in our city, we were warned that we were gonna cause overflowing of our jail. Mothers and children would now be wandering the streets because we kicked them out of their car. It was gonna be horrible. We heard about this. So I'd like to hear a little about the enforcement, how many actual times that citation's been written, things like that.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of council. I'm Ryan Tepley, the Lieutenant of our Homeless Operations Team. That law went into effect, I believe it was March 24th or 26th of this year. And so we've been in effect enforcing that for the last five months. The numbers that we have so far, the number of vehicle camps that we have contacted is 335 in five and a half months. And the number of people cited is 28. It's a very anecdotal survey I took of my team to say, hey, how many of those people have been families with young kids? None of them have been. They've usually been single adults. And we have some that are multiple offenders in that. For instance, we have one individual we contact that the second we contact him in his vehicle, he jumps out and the fight is on. And so it's not that we're contacting families with young kids all the time, it's rarely ever. Even with that, officers still have discretion on whether or not they wanna cite an individual depending on the circumstances that they come into.

And has that, Lieutenant Tupley, has that ordinance been useful when you go to a neighborhood on that complaint which you were receiving before that someone's living in front of my house or next to the park? Is this ordinance useful in addressing that and bringing a sense of order back to the neighborhood?

Yes, I've gotten specific feedback directly from citizens when they've placed a go COS complaint or a request or called us directly asking for that enforcement piece for us to go out and initially contact those individuals first.

uh the law requires that we give a warning to them first before they can be cited at least once and so that warning usually helps and then they leave that area and we don't hear from them again and the goal i'll speak for myself on that was to this needs to be like carrots and sticks like we want you to come and receive uh help in getting out of this situation that you find yourself in If you don't, we're not gonna allow you to live in your car. You're gonna get cited. You could even potentially, although unlikely, get sent to jail for 10 days. You may not know this firsthand, but has it been useful in getting people out of the cars and into some kind of a living situation that's different, whether it's Springs Rescue Mission, Catholic Charities, whatever it is?

I don't have that data. It's a serve and release ticket always. So anytime we come into contact with somebody, it's a serve and release ticket like somebody would get on a traffic stop and then we go on our way onto the next thing. So we're not conducting follow-up with that individual later. We do offer outreach resources to individuals when we're in contact with them. Whether or not they take advantage of those is up to them. We can't force that issue. But we do offer those resources when we're in contact with them.

Has there only been the one that you mentioned that's been cited more than once?

I believe so. I know of one for sure that we've cited multiple times.

And I don't know if the attorney's office would have anything you could add. Just about if, we were also warned this would be, oh, this will overwhelm the court system. It would be too much if we tried this, it would overwhelm the court system. How has that worked out?

Good morning council, Chantel with road division, chief of prosecution. Unfortunately, we're still early in the data because after PD issues a citation, there's about a month delay before they come into court. We have to offer the ability to get attorneys that kind of thing. So I can't say much about the results of these cases, but it has not been a significant number that is overpowered the ability of us to do our job.

Okay, Chantel, thank you. And again, I think it's always important to say this every time, confiscation of the vehicle is not a part of the ordinance, correct?

No, it would have to violate some other ordinance or some other provision of law.

Okay. Okay, thank you, yeah. That's it for me, Madam President, thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Amy, I'm trying to put some numbers to all this to kind of help people kind of understand this housing piece a little bit. So if someone is unable to work, okay, they've lost their job, whatever it might be, and they start applying for funds, I'm gonna throw a number out of like $1,240 is what they can get a month. from somebody and the average cost of like a one bedroom home, a one bedroom apartment is probably around that amount. So that doesn't leave any money for food, medical expenses or anything else. So there seems to be, There are other programs. They can apply for a list of other programs. SNAP, for example, they can go after. There's some Disability Act stuff. Medicaid, of course. There's SIDI, which I wasn't familiar with. That's something I just realized. And then SSI. And with those, It's complicated. And so one of my questions is, do we have enough caseworkers who are trained with SOAR, what I understand, that's kind of a combination of those understandings of those different things. Do we have enough of those in our county right now?

SOAR has been a sort of a best practice program. No, I think one of the things that providers have said to us in our convenings is that the three top priorities that came out of a convening were data. We don't have adequate data to solve the problem. We don't know what's working and what's not working at a system level. We don't have system leadership. So somebody who's actually leading, and we have tackled that with our continuum of care. In fact, I think this city worked to tackle both the data and the system leadership with our partnership with the Pikes Peak United Way. And the third one was case management. There's not sufficient resource to provide case management to support the number of people experiencing homelessness in our community. So, I mean, I would have to go back. I don't have a list of how many SOAR-trained caseworkers there are in our community, but SOAR has been a best practice to help people navigate those systems, which are really complex. It's not about just filling out an application. Those applications take multiple, you have to fill them out multiple times before you're successful.

And on top of that, there's a possibility of housing vouchers, but we've had housing vouchers have been cut back correctly. And so now they're harder to get. And so a lot of individuals that maybe have been dependent upon those housing vouchers to help fill that gap, because I just pointed it out, if they can get a thousand, what did I say? A thousand,

Yeah, there are- $1,290. I mean, that's rent. There are... about 3,000 people, just under 3,000 people on the wait list for housing choice vouchers in our community, which is what many folks would know as Section 8. There are over 400 people on our coordinated entry waiting list who are people who are experiencing homelessness, who are actively seeking housing. So there's over 400 people on that list. And a case conference too, I don't know, a handful of units every month. the housing need in our community again 30 percent of the gap is for folks earning 30 percent of the area median income or less and so it is housing is a challenge in our community so

It's complicated, all right? And I mean, any of us, anyone in this room that might be in that situation would have to go through a pretty extensive filling out form. This is what homeless people are doing every single day. So they just do it on their computer. Oh, wait, but they can go to a library, right? So they could access a library to get some help there. And so, But it's still, they have to figure out how to do this and if they're not holding down a job and they don't have, there's some challenges with all of that, okay. That leads me into the next question and this is where I want to bring Shendell back up here. So we cite people for illegal camping because we don't have a lot of other choices. We can't just tell someone to move on. We have to say, it's illegal. You can't camp here. And then when they don't move on, our only response is a citation. Most of the camping citations that we have are not jailable offenses though. They're usually fines, is that correct?

So it does have a maximum potential penalty of up to 10 days in jail or a $2,500 fine. That is the absolute maximum, not something that we see regularly though.

So there is a component with camping, but that's probably not something a DA would do for a first time or something along those lines, right? Give us a picture of what that looks like. I wanna understand, like what are they dealing with when they get this camping violation ticket? What are they likely gonna get?

right and it really depends and i know i hate answering that as a lawyer because we say it all the time but it depends a lot on the actual offense itself whether or not you're on private property public property whether you've received one citation or 15 whether you have a criminal history that includes other things that makes it more of an aggravated case so we look at all of the factors together before we come up with a reason We do have our fire department partners that work with us as well. So if there's somebody that's willing to accept resources, sometimes we do what's called a diversion or we pause the case to give them an opportunity to kind of put their actions to their words. And so we can decide to dismiss cases if people are actively working with our resources. But sometimes it does come down to jail and it just depends on all that variety of factors.

So this is where it becomes a problem for me is, There's lots of these individuals that have acute, chronic drug addiction, behavioral health, mental illness, and et cetera. How are they going to fill out the forms and everything to get the income in order to get housing? How are they going to navigate the system? And is there a place for people who are not capable of doing it the way that we have set up they end up just giving up because they don't know how to fill, they don't know how to access some of these resources. And so they just continually get citations and get sent to you over and over. I mean, I've seen one individual that had over 200 citations and he's still on the street. So we seem to be, we have this one issue where if they're not capable of taking care of themselves, How do you respond to that?

And you've hit upon the most complicated part of my job. There are different legal standards as well. So if you're not competent, meaning you can't understand yourself, the ability to understand the system and assist your defense attorney in your case, then we can't prosecute you. So it goes to a different world. There's another standard to take care of yourself and not be a danger to yourself or others to be committed civilly, which is a very high standard to meet. And then there's a standard of people that you just stated that just can't get together enough to fill out the forms or don't understand them. As a court, we do have- Or show up at court. Or appear, correct. So we do have the ability to have court appointed attorneys appointed to some of these cases that can assist. We do have our fire department partners that can help people and as long as people are willing to sit there and work with them, a lot of the hard work falls upon them to do the actual paperwork and that kind of stuff. But you have hit upon one of the biggest problems we have with repeat offenders is how to make that behavior change and whether or not they're capable of doing it. Sometimes that is a challenge.

Because I'm trying to, like what's the motivation when they just don't understand or they can't figure out how to fill out the forms, right? That's where it gets kind of problematic. And that's where your job becomes really difficult because you're trying to deal with an individual that has violated the law over and over and Again, here we're trying to, because we are so limited in the tools that we have because of competency laws, complications, right? Because a lot of these individuals, you just know they're just not right. I mean, they need some additional assistance and our society needs to do a better job Denver needs to do a better job of working on competency laws that really help us deal with this instead of having to citate or use local laws to try to control this. But we don't have any other choices, right? We're kind of caught in this place.

I would agree with that. We are bound in a lot of ways by the state legislation that defines competency defines when you can help somebody into a facility for their mental health or their drug addictions. And so, unfortunately, the municipal level can't do anything, but follow the state laws in those areas. So you've pointed out 1 of the areas that I think we struggle with, and we have to individually evaluate each person.

I think it's one of the biggest gaps that we have because we have some programs that aren't quite sufficient enough, they can be better, but we do have programs. But these folks, they don't apply for them because they just, They don't have the capability to do that, right? They don't have the capability to show up to court. And so these are the individuals that our police and fire are dealing with every single day. And they're just repeat offenders. I heard the rescue mission celebrated an individual who had been at the rescue mission for 20 years, and he just finally was able to get to a place where he could have his own housing. That's an incredible, I mean, one, that's amazing that this individual, you know, got a place after 20 years. But it took 20 years. That's not movement. I mean, you see what I'm saying? That's not movement. And so the system is fundamentally different. not capable of doing the job we need to do efficiently. That's one of our issues. So we need to kind of address these competency laws issues as you've kind of raised, right?

Yeah, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, again, that is with the state legislation, but we have worked with Amy and her team to create bigger groups for some of those, we call them super utilizers. And we can determine if there are other avenues that we can proceed, even if competency is an issue and we can't go through municipal court.

And just to kind of reiterate and make sure this is clear, is there anything that we at City Council could do around this issue? Or is this just 100% a state issue? Like we just can't even go there.

It comes down a little bit to funding as well as having people that can focus on the problem. Working with our partners at PD and as Amy has said, it's about getting the people that can understand the problem and devote their focus to it. As a prosecutor, my role is very limited because I'm an advocate and I'm on one side of the situation. But getting to know the people that you can reach out to in the city and outside the city in the community to refer people to is important and has helped.

My last question is I hear all the time that you'll bring down a verdict for them to be in jail for 10 days or whatever it might be, and then they go to the jail and the jail releases them in like two hours. How does that happen? What's going on there? I wanna understand what's the loophole there?

So there might be two things you're talking about. One might be what we call truth in sentencing, and there are state laws that basically say if you get a sentence, sometimes the sheriff can reduce that based on good time and good behavior within the jail. Again, that's outside of the municipal court's providence. The other thing is bond, which again is a state issue and mandated upon us. We have to release people with certain low-level offenses, including most of our municipal offenses. So even if you're picked up on failing to appear, most of the time you will be granted a bond relatively quickly and be released from that facility.

Gosh, it just sounds so hard to do good things. I guess that's where I'm kind of like stuck at. I think we need to be looking at our state officials to say, hey, this issue needs to be addressed. It's costing municipalities some real dollars and we just not, it's making our jobs much more harder. The taxpayers paying a lot because of some issues that aren't being addressed at the state level.

I can understand that sentiment, Council Member.

All right, thank you very much.

And Council Member, I think this is, again, one of the strengths that we can bring with the Homelessness Response Team, which is really getting the data around this, the stories for the advocacy to do this work. And so.

I agree with you because that's how you tell the story, right? We can go forth and go to our representatives and say, hey, look at this, this is the cost. So there's a bill that's coming forward that's indirectly related to this around fentanyl. and it's a zero tolerance kind of bill that we'll be voting on at the ballot. And it's mandatory eight to 32 years if you're caught with a real, more than a single use dose because you'll be considered a distributor. It's gonna be an interesting thing if that passes. And unfortunately, I think as we've discussed here, one of the best tools we have is law enforcement. I wish it was something different.

Yeah, we have very well-trained and responsive law enforcement, work very closely with providers and our fire department. Oh, they're doing great job. But I will tell you that I think that you've sort of wrapped this up, I think for us, which is that we're looking at not only, you have to have support to people to complete all the various forms and get on the waiting list, and then there has to be places for people to be. And I think that's what we heard with things like safe parking or what Hope COS hopes to bring to the community as well to support the great work that's already happening at the Springs Rescue Mission. So when we think in terms of, there's a maximum quality management that is that a bad system will beat a good person every day. And the system requires more than just people to help fill out the paperwork. There has to be a bridge place for people to be, and then that connection to that exit. And that's what we're really working on as a system, is how do we fill those gaps? We can't be everywhere or do everything everywhere all at once. But I do feel to Councilwoman Hengem's comments that we are beginning to see that how we manage the system and how we move people through that system is very important. And to Councilmember Donaldson's comment, it won't work for everybody. It won't work for everybody. And that becomes the issue of our law enforcement and our prosecution, those laws.

So. Well, you know, the old philosophy of carrot and stick, right? It's just the reality of the human condition. You have to kind of bring forth either a reward or, you know, the stick and it's been that way for, So anyway, thank you very much. I think I got most of my, no, I don't have all my questions answered because this is not a, it's an open-ended question because I think we have to keep kind of pushing and leaning in on this and asking questions over and over again about the realities of how hard this is. And diversion is the best. Let me go back to that. Diversion is the best.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, lots of success with diversion. Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. I'd just like to ask Lieutenant Tepley a couple questions again. I never did say good morning to you.

Good morning, Lieutenant Tepley.

When the hot team contacts people who are living on the street in the parks, You're really, once you, if there's a crime that you were called there for, you have to investigate that, but tell us, is your, one of your first things that you wanna do with this person is try to inform them about resources that are out there, Springs Rescue Mission, et cetera?

Yes, we always give information on that. We are actually, we recently entered three MOUs with three of our outside agency partners with one additional pending actually with Hope COS. And so we do work with them closely and we do offer those resources. However, our piece is enforcement. And so we have a responsibility to the citizens that are calling and complaining and have concerns about people camping in their alleyways or whatever to go and investigate those and then either cite or give warnings. Again, there's discretion there to a point, but we are that enforcement piece with a serve and release ticket.

And I believe enforcement is a huge part of solving this problem. But what I wanna make clear is that, especially the hot team officers, CSPD, the goal isn't go, hey, we get to go out and site give someone a ticket. Boy, this is great, let's go site this guy. Rhetorical question, but is that the goal?

I wouldn't say the goal is to site. I would say the goal is to, we're trying to keep the community safe and enforce the law. So our goal is to enforce the law. That can look differently. Sometimes we are coming into contact with people with felony warrants. And so that is a piece of it. The other big piece that we deal with is we work with Public Works very, very closely every day with regard to camp cleanups. And so I'm not gonna speak to what they do and they have their own numbers of how many tons of trash they pick up. in a given month, but it's significant.

The people living out on the street that you contact, are many of them unaware of the Springs Rescue Mission or Catholic Charities? Are they not aware of those things?

I would say most are aware.

Okay. Most are aware. And so this is what I've thought here over the last couple minutes as we've had this discussion is, it's it's not that uh well they just don't know the people living on the street if we could just inform them that they're making a choice i don't want to do that i don't want to go to the springs rescue mission i don't want this kind of treatment i'm i'm doing this today In my opinion, that's because they're weighing the benefits and the cost. What's the cost for me living in this park? What bad thing is gonna happen to me if I do that versus do I really want to go and try to get off drugs and get a boring job at McDonald's or Home Depot and have to get up every morning and go to work? I hate that stuff, it's boring. So, We can't allow people who make a decision like that, a choice like that, to destroy the quality of life for the citizens of Colorado Springs. And if it is, you know, if it takes jail time to get them to realize, you know what, I've gotta straighten my life out, this sucks, I don't like this. thing good for jail. I mean, that's good. We're helping them. I remember a woman who was at the Olov Cheney's retirement. Actually, she wasn't there. They read a letter she had sent in that he had saved her life when she got sent to jail because she would have died on the streets because she was addicted to drugs and she knows she would have died and she was a prostitute at that point. And so it helped her. and maybe this is amusing to some people, but it was a very touching letter that she had sent in. We think, well, you know, jail is just always bad. We should never do that. Sometimes it helps both the society and the person who receives something which they knew could happen. They receive a punishment for their actions. Is there anything else you can share with us about that ordinance that we did pass, the one on car camping or living in your vehicle? Yeah, is there any insights that you have about that, Lieutenant Tepley, lessons learned since we've started to enforce it?

I think that one of the things that has been a positive thing that came out of that, and Amy touched on it a little bit, is that we're working more closely with Catholic Charities with that program. If we do come into contact with individuals with families and young kids, we actually just worked on a script and they're putting out a video that we're gonna send out to all of our patrol officers so that they have that information. If they come into contact with a family who is in their vehicle, Catholic Charities has resources and we can get them immediately in direct contact with them to get them help. And so I think that's definitely a positive thing. With regard to enforcement, it has not been overwhelming our system. We're not seeing it every day. We contact about 65 camps a month in vehicle camps. And then the number of citations is about less than 10% of the people we contact.

Okay, thank you, Lieutenant Tepley. And Madam President, I wish the problem was just that people didn't know how to fill out some forms. And if we could solve that, we'd be okay. I just think it's much bigger than that. And strong enforcement is a big part of the answer. Thank you.

Amy, I don't see any more questions at this time. Thank you for your presentation this morning. It was very good for us to see what that press conference was all about. We really do appreciate you putting this all together for us this morning.

Thank you, Madam President.

Next up, we have item 7B. Will the clerk please read item 7B into the record? Agenda plan or review. Does anyone have any questions on the up and coming agenda plan or review?

Yes, Madam President, I do have a couple.

Yes.

On page two. Number three, it's a resolution of the City of Colorado Springs approving the request to accept the designation as the approving authority of the Southern Colorado Rail Yard Metro Districts number one through three. What does that mean? It's a resolution to accept the designation as the approving authority.

Members of council, Kevin Walker, city planning director. The districts that were formed at the rail yard were formed under county jurisdiction. When they get entirely annexed to the city of Colorado Springs, then we should be the managing authority under that. And that's what we're basically passing a resolution to take over the county's position in those Metro districts.

Okay, and originally they were created under the county. They were, with our comment.

We made sure that we commented on those things.

Perfect, and this one, this next one, Kevin, would be for you too. It's just the very next one. It's a zone change consisting of 203 acres known as portions of Ute Valley Park And then some of it goes from residential this to residential that and some other stuff. What is that exactly?

It's cleaning up some of the zoning that has resulted from some gifts of land and purchase of land that were not zoned PK. So I think that's what that is all about. And that will be heard by the Planning Commission shortly.

Okay, but this is on our calendar for September 21st? That's right. Okay, but planning, I'll hear it before you.

No, I'm sorry, I think planning has already heard, Planning Commission's already heard that. Okay. Misspoke. That's right, that's why. My apologies.

All right. Okay, thank you.

Moving on to item 8A, will the clerk please read item 8A into the record?

A resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a memorandum of agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for site protection requirements associated with permitting responsible mitigation under Department of Army permits.

Good morning, Erin. Good morning, City Council, President Crow-Everson. My name is Erin Powers. I'm the Stormwater Enterprise Manager for the city. I'm presenting a resolution authorizing the execution of a memorandum of agreement with United States Army Corps of Engineers for wetland protection. So one of the biggest focus areas for the stormwater enterprise is our waterways. We do many larger open channel projects, and these larger projects require us to pull 404 permits prior to performing construction in waters of the United States. So these permits are managed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and they require mitigation for wetland impacts, which is typically performed on site, which means we're putting the wetlands back in our waterways. So under federal regulation, applicants conducting permitting responsible mitigation must establish a site protection instrument to establish long-term preservation of permitting responsible mitigation areas, which is what these are called. In the past, the Army Corps has accepted our language on wetland protection and that's in city code and also our drainage criteria manual. But recently they are now requiring memorandums of agreement for each wetland mitigation area. And so rather than executing a single MOA for each channel project that we do in the city, this single memorandum of agreement would cover the entire city and all future 404 permits that we apply for. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Councilman Williams.

Thank you, Erin. Did they explain why? why the transition, why they feel that this is necessary. I appreciate the fact that you're not gonna do a thousand of these, but did they state why we wanna go from what we were doing to this?

Yeah, so we met with them several times to try to go back to the old interpretation, but there were some upper-level staffing changes over there, and the new interpretation of this is just what we're being required to follow.

Sounds like you're working with the railroad. Same thing. People do rules. Okay, thank you.

I don't see any of the questions at this time. Thanks. Thanks, Erin. Next up, we have item 8B. Will the clerk please read item 8B into the record?

An ordinance certifying delinquent stormwater fees.

Oh, I'm so sorry. We just did that.

8B.

Oh, it's the second one? Okay. Sorry. Sorry.

An ordinance certifying delinquent stormwater fees and charges to the El Paso County Treasurer for collection.

All right. It's still you. That's what happened. It is, yes. So city code section 14.8.109 states that nonpayment of stormwater fees creates a property lien upon the property to which the fee is assessed. And so as some background, for all of these accounts, a notice of intent to lien was sent by certified mail in July to customers with invoices 90 days or more past due, and where the dollar amount exceeded $200. So the notice indicated that Stormwater Enterprise will place a lien on the property if the account is not brought current, and then if payment is not received, the customers are subject to lien and their accounts will be sent to the El Paso County Treasurer for collection. So as of July 31st, 2026, there are 181 accounts that total $116,322 that follow within the current guidelines. And just an update, as of the end of August, 23 of those have paid, so there are 158 accounts remaining. If the payment is not received, after certification to the county, the total amount due will be added to the property tax owner's statement in January, 2027. And then if that property tax bill is not paid in full, then the remaining unpaid balances fall into the provisions for tax sale by the treasurer, tax lien sale by the treasurer. So I'd be happy to answer any questions. Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Just a quick question on the $200 and 90 days. Is that something that's an internal policy or is that written in code somewhere?

That's an internal policy, the $200. And that's just because there are fees associated with this whole process and then also staff time. And so there was an analysis done to show where it was worth proceeding, where we wouldn't be losing money.

All right, thanks.

Councilman Hingem.

Thank you, Madam President. I don't really have any questions on either of these items, but just did you want either of these to be on consent, Erin? Yes, thank you. And I'm supportive of both things.

Can I get a thumbs up for both of these items on consent?

You got it. Thank you.

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

8C is an ordinance amending multiple sections of Article 3, Code of Ethics of Chapter 1, Administration, Personnel, and Finance of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs 2001 as amended pertaining to the Code of Ethics.

Oh, sorry. They're the two. They're not the same. We'll read the D again. I just had them marked as the same. Hi, Caitlin. How are you?

Good morning. I'm doing well. Caitlin Molnar, our City Attorney's Office, here to go over the proposed changes to the Ethics Code. So for each slide, the setup is the same. I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but you can see the specific changes from code are there at the bottom of the slides. A brief overview is listed at the top. So I'll just read the top, but stop me if you have any questions. So the first changes that we're discussing, the advisory opinions are clarified to be available only for the requester for your own contemplated actions, right? Can't ask for another member of council. Next, we've removed the independent contractor term, and we've made language more specific to say that it's specifically those individuals receiving a 1099 from the city. So we're saying that is who the ethics code applies to. We've added the option for the Independent Ethics Commission to dismiss the complaint for failure to comply with the requirements listed in the city code. Previously, it just said there are rules of procedure. There are procedural requirements in code, so we're cleaning that up. We've increased the gift exception limit to $75. It does update as the state updates it. We're just making it as up-to-date as possible in our code. In the gift section, we have removed the requirement that family members of covered individuals may only accept a free or discount event ticket if they attend with the covered person. And then we've also clarified that if you're accepting free or discounted tickets, the value of the gift that we need to make sure is under $75 is in the aggregate. So one $50 ticket, great, two, that's 100, that's a no. We've removed redundant language discussing events in multiple sections. Gifts, in the gifts section, events was again listed in a few sections. We've addressed specifically the events we want to, so those extra ones are being removed. We've removed the requirement that certain gifts must be documented in order to qualify as an exception in the gift prohibition, so that language is struck at a few places. In this section, this gift section does a few things. These are both specific, related only to elected officials. But we've added that elected officials may designate a person to go to an event in their stead. We've removed redundant language. So there's language at the end of 15 there that says does not affect a direct official action. That language is already at the top of accepting any code. It doesn't need to be there again. And then again, that gift is documented. We've already discussed that. or removing the documentation requirement altogether. The other piece that we've added is 16, that bolded language is all new. 15 covers event tickets, so that gets you in the door, but we didn't have anything addressing activities at the events once you get in the door. So we've added a section saying you can go to these activities in certain cases where they're events funded, sponsored, hosted in whole or part by the city, or sponsored or hosted by another governmental entity pertaining to official duties. We've removed redundant language. This is the final section at the end of the gift section. We've already discussed gifts, obviously, throughout the gift section. We don't need this language. It's not serving a purpose. We've added, now we're into conflicts of interest. We've added an exception. So if you are attending ceremonial events, that wouldn't be a conflict of interest that is prohibited. Those are things like groundbreakings, grand openings, ribbon cuttings, things really celebrating the city. That wouldn't be an endorsement of the business having the ceremonial event. We've replaced unclear language, that participate term. So participate is not a defined term. We've replaced that with direct official action so we know clearly what behaviors you can and cannot engage in. Again, we've removed redundant language. This is talking about conflict with his or her official duties and responsibilities or fiduciary duty of the city. This is in the conflicts of interest section. So all of these specific behaviors that we want covered, those are specifically enumerated. This, again, doesn't add anything. And then lastly, we've added an exception in the conflict of interest prohibition. So if, as an elected official, you could serve on a 501c3 board of directors, so long as you or if an immediate family member does not otherwise have a substantial interest in the 501c3. So, any questions?

I mean, Madam President, the question on that point right there, you've always been able to serve on a 501 , this changes it to allow you to vote on issues that pertain to that 501 , right?

You are correct, I should have been more clear, yep. So if an item came in front of you and you were otherwise serving on a board, right, currently you'd have to recuse yourself, this change would allow you to take that vote. Again, unless otherwise you have a substantial interest in that board.

and so maybe you can help me understand why couldn't that council member just abstain from that vote i mean under the old rules they simply would have abstained from the vote it's a 501c3 it's probably gonna gonna have uh strong support anyway and that would remove the appearance of a conflict of interest yeah you certainly still can this would not prohibit a council member from um recusing themselves for that appearance of impropriety Correct, but why are we adding this? I mean, currently our rules, essentially, my understanding would say if you're on the board of, yeah, on the board of a 501 , and there's a matter that comes before Council, you should recuse yourself. This is saying that you don't need to recuse yourself. You can, but you don't have to.

Yeah, this specific change was a request from Council, so that's why this one has been added.

Okay, okay. So this is one that I'm not sure I support this change, just because, and I will like to ask you, this can look like Council is loosening, ethical restraints here on ourselves. What else in this do you think might give that appearance that we are lowering the bar for ourselves as far as there shouldn't even be the appearance that we're doing something to benefit ourselves, our friends, the group we're a part of?

Yeah, I think all of these are changes that our office can support. So politically, how they come off, I don't know that I can answer that question. But otherwise, legally, our office can support these. But of course, you are the legislative body, and so if you want to change anything, these are just proposed changes, we can make changes to the proposed ordinance.

Just for my colleagues' knowledge, that one makes me a little uncomfortable. I don't see why we would change our current standard on that, thanks.

Caitlin, can you clarify why it's just the 501c3 when we know there's many different, there's four, there's six, and we all sit on different boards in this community. Why specifically are you calling out the three?

Yeah, that's a great question. I worked with an attorney who is no longer with the city, and she was the one that requested only 501c3s. So if the board would, if Council would like me to take a look at opening it up to other non-profit boards, I'm happy to do that.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Can you go to slide 12? Yeah, can you explain that again? Why the change there?

Yeah, absolutely. So the previously or currently right in code, it says no covered person shall directly or indirectly participate. And the problem was what is participate, right? That can be a very broad statement, right? That's a broad term. So you on city council, how are you supposed to know what actions you can or cannot take by participate? It's not a defined term in our code of ethics. And really it was supposed to be getting at direct official action. direct official action is a largely defined term within our code of ethics and so now taking a look at this you know what actions you can participate in or not because it's those direct official action yeah i just wonder about the word influence what that encompasses that would be different than participate Influence, I would interpret influence as different from participate, right? I think influence is more like you having a conversation with your fellow council member and trying to sway their direct official actions, something like that, right? That's really along the lines of influence.

All right, thank you.

Chief of Staff.

Thanks, I had a question. Thank you, Madam President. Can you go to the slide that talks about a spouse who is not accompanying someone? I forget which slide that is.

I went too far, sorry.

And while you're doing that, I understand when a family member is accompanying someone covered by the code. what i want to clarify is whether this code purports to govern individuals who receive something not because they're a spouse but because of an independent action for example my wife holly is a county commissioner dave's wife happens to be the head of ppo so if someone's extending an invitation in that capacity and not because the individual is a spouse of a city covered person, does this code purport to regulate what a county commissioner or the PPO head can do?

So our code of ethics only applies right to the city and people who are covered persons. So it wouldn't necessarily apply to a county commissioner or other members, other boards and bodies. What I would say though, is your example is starting to get fact specific. And so that's when I would say you could get an advisory opinion from our office. as to whether you can accept that certain item.

I just wanted to clarify that it's not intended to govern what our spouse can do in our own capacity.

Correct.

Thanks.

Councilman Leidenweber.

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that also here a little bit because there are some events that we are invited to as honorarium and our spouses included. And that event, that ticket price for that event might be 80 bucks. So combined, that's 160, so that would put us over the 175 limit.

So as an elected official, that's where we get into those other changes.

Okay.

which is here um b15 under the gift section which is so so that one it is the reasonable cost and frequency of those meals and event tickets and that is where your example would land okay so still so i can go the christmas party good thanks

I don't see any other questions at this time. We'll just look forward to you getting back to the questions that myself and Councilman Donaldson had. Thank you. Moving on to item 10A. Will the clerk please read item 10A to the record?

8D, a resolution adopting the internal audit charter of the Office of the City Auditor of the City of Colorado Springs effective September 22nd, 2026.

Good morning, President Kriverson, Pro Tem Risley, and members of city council. I'm Natalie Lovell, the city auditor. Today I'm going to cover our mission, vision, and values, which we've covered, so I'll do it briefly. A little bit about our office structure, purpose, the city auditor authority, some unique considerations as it relates to this internal audit charter, our audit committee ordinance changes that you may, as a council, wish to consider next year, and then talk about next steps. The purpose of the Office of the City Auditor is to provide independent, risk-based advice, insight, and foresight through objective assurance and advisory services designed to add value and improve the city and its enterprises operations. The Office of the City Auditor provides two distinct types of work, assurance work, commonly called audit work, and advisory, often called consulting. Our audit services involve an objective examination of evidence to provide an independent assessment of the organization's governance, risks, and controls. Consulting services, which the scope is often agreed to with the involved parties, provides advice without taking on management responsibilities. Our mission is to encourage responsible stewardship and accountability for public resources through independent and unbiased audits. We seek to be trusted advisors who drive positive organizational change through the independent insight, integrity, and solutions that strengthen public trust, confidence, and address emerging risks for the benefit of the community. and we hold accountability, principled behavior, service to the community, continuous improvement in people as our values. I'm here today to review and present to you an updated internal audit charter, which aligns our office with the 2024 global internal audit standards. The internal audit charter documents mandates that are already defined in city charter and city code, but helps to further define the roles and responsibilities of the city auditor, sometimes called the chief audit executive in our Red Book global standards. It defines major deliverables to council, to the audit committee and senior management, but most importantly, it reaffirms our support, your support and senior management support for our independence and objectivity. And I will point out that this is a major key deliverable to getting us prepared for our peer review and external quality assessment next year, which we shared with you during our audit planning process a few months ago. The authority of the city auditor is largely driven from the city code and the city charter. The city charter section 310E appoints, directs, and supervises the city auditor that is set forth by city council doing those roles. And then many sections of the city code, I won't go through all of those details here, but that defines our independence, our access, our responsibilities, and those mandated audits. These provisions form the legal mandate for the internal audit. And we could stop there, but really the standards envision a lot more. And so that is really why we're here in front of you. The Global 24 internal audit standards place additional responsibilities on both the chief audit executive and the governing body, you sitting as city council. Standard 6.1 requires the auditor to provide the board, in our case, city council, with all information necessary to establish the internal audit mandate. And much of that mandate, as I mentioned, is already embedded in the city charter and city code, but this document summarizes that for you. Standard 6.2 goes further and requires the internal audit function to have a formal board-approved internal audit charter, and that at a minimum it defines the purpose of internal auditing, our commitment to adhering to the global internal audit standards, our mandate, which includes our authority, our scope, and our service types, your board responsibilities, and our organizational position and reporting relationship. And then further, standard 6.3 requires that I provide to our board and to senior management the information necessary to support and promote the recognition of the internal audit office. So while the city charter and the city code define that mandate, this document takes that a step further and helps us to define roles and responsibilities for each of those parties. There are some unique considerations with this internal audit charter. Now the Red Book or the Global Internal Audit Standards envisions a type of internal audit function in a maybe executive session or executive setting versus where we are, which is reporting to an elected body, a strong mayor form of government. And within this, I think it's helpful to set the standard that the charter and the code and the audit committee ordinance, which we're gonna talk about here in a minute, are really kind of the foundation. The internal audit charter is not intended to change any of those, none of the code, none of the charter, but it is to further define what those standards are trying to achieve. And the other thing, and just as I mentioned, and I read off the requirements for you all as a board for standard 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3, there are the equivalent of those for senior management. It would not be appropriate in this case for city council, if you think of this audit charter more like a contract between me as the city auditor and you as my board, to put any requirements for senior management in that charter. You don't have the authority to do that. And so what I will propose to you is that after we get this internal audit charter through a resolution with you all, that I will be coordinating with the administrative side through both utilities, the airport, other enterprises, the City of Colorado Springs proper, with intergovernmental agreements or service level agreements that help solidify those same requirements that we have with the senior management, similar to what I'm doing with you all today. In that same vein, there is also an audit committee ordinance that is very specific on the setup of the audit committee. And that is a board or a committee that responds or reports directly to city council. And so it would not be appropriate to also add any changes in this charter that would govern that audit committee. That should be done through ordinance changes. And I'll mention a few of those that we may wanna consider in the future. In terms of roles and responsibilities, which is really what this document helps to solidify beyond what's in the city code and city charter, and that is that city council has the responsibility of approving the internal audit charter, reviewing and supporting audit and resource plans, receiving required annual communications, and resolving disagreements between the management and city auditor. There are some other key things, starting on page seven, the responsibilities of the city auditor per the 24 Global Internal Audit Standards. These range from developing key deliverables to required communications. And Council has already observed a pre-implementation, if you will, of this charter over the last year. Council received a very early draft of this charter back in October of 25, and we have loosely been trying to implement this charter to look for any gaps that we may find. So an example of that is that quarterly status update that you all have been receiving every quarter this year. And that's been helpful to just make sure that we haven't missed any major deliverables or anything in the charter.

Natalie, we have a question from Councilman Hingem. Yes. Thank you, Madam President. Natalie, thank you for presenting on this this morning. Regarding the audit committee, can you remind me, we have two citizen seats, is that correct?

Three. Yeah, the committee is made up of five members, two are council members and three citizens, and then any alternates that the council may wish to have. Okay.

And the citizen seats, what are the... I guess, rules in that charter, or what is the charter for that committee, of how long those members can sit in those seats?

When it was created, it was started on a staggering, so the first member had only one year, and then the second member had two years, and that way we're only replacing one citizen member every year. But once that's in place, it's, I believe, a three-year term, and I could double-check that here real quick. Let me just, before I give you... an additional three-year term. So they're term limited for two three-year terms. Two three-year terms, okay, thank you. And just for reference, in case you're looking, it's ordinance 13-32. Great, so on page 13, it starts to highlight city council's oversight. I covered some of that in those references, the standard 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3. But mainly, this is to remind council of the role it plays in ensuring the auditor's office has the authority it needs and helps us all stay aligned to what the purpose of the internal audit function is. And then page 14 highlights the audit committee's role only in so far as how it relates to the office receiving deliverables or communication with the city auditor that you oversee. And this is a very abbreviated summation of the deliverables and the reporting cadence that is found in that internal audit charter. In exhibit B, it goes into a lot more detail, looking for the action that council would take, the roles and responsibilities of the audit committee, helping to really define what everybody's roles and responsibilities are to those major deliverables for our office. And as I mentioned, going through this process, we did identify a handful of potential changes that this council may wish to consider in terms of changing audit committee structure, administrative things, and some of those examples came up. In the last two years, I've spent a lot of time meeting with the citizen members of that audit committee so that they could advise this board. And part of the ordinance requires that a council member be present in order to have a quorum. Maybe one consideration might be to allow the city auditor to meet with those citizens without, say, an audit committee or a council member present, for example. It does address the frequency of meetings, but maybe we want to be more specific about those frequencies. Another consideration would be specific areas of expertise for the audit committee. So it might make sense for us to spend some time over the next year as an audit committee going through potential changes. Always a good time to look at it. It's been since 2013 when this ordinance was created. It's probably time for a refresh to make sure that this committee is doing still what this council wishes. Anyway, I would propose, if there is an interest in this, that I bring suggested changes, potential ordinance language to this board sometime next year. And just a recap of our stakeholder process. I mentioned to you all that this council received a very early draft of this charter in their required annual communications back in October of 2025. And then an updated version in March of 2026 at my quarterly briefing to you all. And then the audit committee received a draft version of this draft internal audit charter in June of 26. We held a dedicated workshop with them on July 9th, and then asked for a motion for their recommendation to this council for approval at the August meeting. And so they did provide that recommendation. And so looking at next steps, if council wishes, we would like to have this on the consent agenda for next regular council session, that would be September 22nd, and where you'll be considering a resolution for approving the internal audit charter. And then again, if council desires in 27, the city auditor to work with the council audit committee to recommend changes, if any, to the structure administration, basically a relook at the ordinance that established us. And then I would be remiss in not pointing out that we also administer the city's fraud, waste and abuse hotline. And so for anybody who's interested, there is the contact information for us. And I can take any questions you might have.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you, President. Somewhere in there you had disagreements between management and the auditor. What is the definition of management?

Yes, that's a great question and that's required by our code. It's an escalation process that we have or that we're required to have. And so an example of that might be risk-based. Let's say that we go through an audit process and we find a control that needs to be fixed or we make a recommendation and management comes back and says to us, nope, we cannot implement that or we refuse to. I may work with them to say that risk is still too great. Let's say we can't, arrive at a recommendation that works, that's where we would come before this council.

So the definition of management is whoever you're auditing?

That's correct. So that's a very broad term in our standards. Management is beyond just what you would think of as an executive. Yes, it's anybody that we're auditing.

That's correct. We don't have IGAs in place, which is why you're proposing them. Do I understand that correctly?

That is correct. We do not currently have them in place. And it could be something as simple as administratively when we issue an audit at the conclusion, we ask for management responses, we would like for them to return those management responses in a timely fashion. And we also then commit to getting them to them in a timely fashion. So I'm looking to put a little more structure around that going forward.

And I'm going to look at the attorney, but I'm not sure how we'd have an IGA with ourself because we are the same government.

So maybe more of an MOU or... Yeah, it might be an MOU, but some sort of agreement that, you know, really solidifies management's commitment to supporting our office so that we can rely on that.

Okay. Thank you.

I don't see any other questions. Can I have thumbs up or thumbs down on consent? You've got it on consent for the 22nd, thank you. Moving on to item 10A, will the clerk please read item 10A into the record?

Authorization of out-of-state travels for council members.

Councilman Gould. Thank you, Madam President. I'm requesting authorization for out-of-state travel for NLC in November, November 19th through 21st. Both Councilmember Rainey and I have a desire to attend. And yeah, that's it.

So you're asking for yourself or and Councilman Rainey, are you also asking for yourself? Could you ask?

Yes, Councilman Rainey requesting permission from this council to attend the NLC, the 19th through the 21st.

Councilman Risley.

I'm just curious what the cost of that is. I believe the cost currently was somewhere around the $3,400 mark. Yes. And that includes travel, lodging.

Yeah, registration, airline, hotel per diem. At the highest, it'll be around 34. At the lowest, it'll be around 28.

Yeah, okay, thanks.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. I guess I should add in here that I guess I need permission to go to Huntsville with the Chamber trip down there. Yeah, so mother may I.

So we have a request from Councilman Donaldson to travel to Huntsville with the Chamber EDC in the fall and Councilman Rainey and Gold for a CNO conference. It's a thumbs up if you are in support. Okay, it looks like you will be traveling.

That concludes our- And Madam President, I'll just add that, what is our stipend that we get to use for these kind of trips? I've forgotten what it is.

Around $6,000 in a council member.

You know, and I went out for that American Defense Communities thing in D.C., and I went up to Colorado Municipal League in Denver, so I don't have money for plane tickets, but I'm gonna buy them out of my own pocket unless there's a kind person sitting up here at the dais who wants to basically give me a little piece of their stipend to cover my plane tickets.

So if you can convince a council member to do that, they just need to send me an email requesting that they are giving you some money out of their bucket and we will then move forward with that.

Okay, I appreciate it.

Thank you. This does conclude our work session meeting for today. We will begin the regular meeting at 1 p.m. We are adjourned.