City Planning Commission - workshop

Good morning.

Welcome.

So I have been informed that we need to do a roll call for attendance this morning, so I will turn to Solange for that.

When you are ready.

Commissioner Slattery. Here. Commissioner Robbins.

Here.

Commissioner Willoughby. Here. Commissioner Engel.

Here.

Commissioner Case.

Here.

Commissioner Didiano. Here. Commissioner Clements.

Here.

Commissioner Thistle. Here. Thank you. We have eight members present. Okay.

Any changes to our agenda? I know there were some missing links that will get taken care of by formal. Any other changes to the agenda? I'm just going down the agenda. Kevin, anything you feel like you're just going to or Dan? Dan, any UDC items you want to add?

It sounds like not allowed.

OK, so for communications. I'll probably say the same thing that Kevin's probably going to say. We did interviews last Friday with a slew of candidates. I can't remember how many. 27? No. Like six or something. I don't remember. And I believe an offer has been extended for a voting member and two alternates out of that. And you probably know when those are going to go to council. Next Tuesday. Okay. So we should have...

But I'm not sure when they scheduled the start date. So I think that may be August, not July.

Okay. Yeah, because Andrea's term is up officially on the 28th of July. And so it would be our first August meetings. We would implement those new individuals onto the commission.

That would include you and Jen's reappointment.

Correct. And I'm assuming that city staff has reached out to you They've not.

They should be shortly. Okay. Yeah, we just confirmed with the council staff on that.

Okay.

Is it safe to assume that you wish to be reappointed or as you wish to be reappointed? Okay, good. Okay, good. Too bad. Too bad for reappointing you. Okay. And likewise, I'd like to be reappointed. I've longed to know that.

Okay.

So then hopefully by August, we will have a full complement of voting and non-voting members. And then I think, as I've talked about with a couple of staff and commissioners, I think we'll make sure that we have all of our secondary DRB, whatever else, whatever else, appointments and make sure we've got people slated where they should be. And then I think just being timely, my other communication reminder to everyone is just to be timely with your responses to staff. about attending our meetings. Because the sooner we know, especially if we're trying to schedule a special meeting, the sooner we know, the sooner that those can get coordinated. And I recognize that, especially what probably Kevin will talk about that, things are going to change and those dates are fluctuating, but just respond as quickly as you can to staff. If you're going to be here, how you're going to be here, if you're not going to be here, and if you can make the special meetings. So I think that's all I have that I can remember. I took half your thunder, but maybe you have more.

No, I knew you were going to do that. Okay. So I just have a couple of things. First, I want to have Melissa introduce our new staff member.

So thank you, commissioners, and thank you, Kevin. We have our new plan tech one that started on Monday. This is Samantha Fonestock. Did I say that right?

You did.

Oh, okay.

I'm practicing in my head. So she comes to us. She is currently living here. She comes to us as a previous... worked in the city of austin in historic preservation as a planner do right perfect um for a little while so we're really excited to have her and uh she is on my team and anything that you want to say oh happy to be here nice to meet you all and looking forward to working with you my thanks to all of you for your patience with

some of the changes that are going on. You know, we're doing AI minutes and appreciate your patience with that. We're changing our rules around work sessions and other things like that based on the fact that we've been doing it wrong for 48 years. And so some of those habits, some of those habits die hard, but I appreciate your guys' patience as we try to make sure we're doing this correctly with the city attorney looking over our photo. So thank you for that. From a council perspective, the Boulder vacation was approved at their last meeting. After much backs and forths and all kinds of public meetings, it ended up being a 62 vote with one vote abstaining. So that was probably the biggest thing that's occurred at council. recently. And then there is no council meeting. The second meeting in June, so that'd be June 23rd. They're all out of town at a Colorado Municipal League meeting. And so that's put a lot of oddness in terms of trying to plan for agendas and getting hearings done and those kinds of things. So that's going on. and um what else going on around our office our office we're starting the budget process believe it or not for 2027 and so a lot of information around that and um that's kind of that's kind of all we talk more specifically about the scheduling of the special meeting for the data center and kind of the timing around that um here in a few minutes so any questions comments concerns

That takes us right into new business. And Mr. Belbray, that's you. Cottage Court at Costilla or of Costilla.

Cottage Court on Costilla, yes.

Cottage Court on Costilla. Take us away.

All right. So this application or applications, they are development standards adjustment and a development plan. IT IS THE DEVELOPMENT IS FOR 14 SINGLE FAMILY ADAPTED HOMES. AND THE DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS ADJUSTMENT IS RELATED TO THE NEXT SLIDE THERE. WE ARE LOCATED AT 745 EAST COSTIA AND 404-410 SOUTH PROSPECT. WE'RE AT THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF COSTIA AND PROSPECT. and we are just east of downtown across Shooks Run. The zoning of this property, as you can see, is MXL. Most of the zoning from the edge of downtown along Shooks Run, as you can see, is a mix of business park, like general industrial, and then For the most part, the rest of Hillside is all residential zoning. This MXL zone district, to the best of my knowledge, has been around since the 1980s. It could be longer than that, but I could not figure out the rezoning sequences in this area. But this MXL zoning, to some extent, makes some sense in reality. We do have more commercial businesses once we get to like the middle of this block and then heading east. But on the south side of the alley, we have more residential zone property. So anyhow, that's kind of just a little overview of the zoning in that area. The site is just about a half acre in size. As I mentioned, it's for single family attached housing. And go ahead and go to the next slide. SLOW.

SO HERE'S JUST A CONTEXT MATH JUST TO KIND OF GIVE YOU A MORE SPECIFIC IDEA OF WHAT'S GOING ON.

WE DO HAVE OUR MAIN STREETS RUNNING EASTWEST AND NORTH SOUTH, KIND OF TRADITIONAL PATTERN OF THIS PART OF THE CITY. WE HAVE THE SHOOK'S RUN TRAIL. WE HAVE bus route and bike routes. We have, as you can see, a mix of residential, commercial, and industrial land uses in the vicinity of this project. And again, I'll just emphasize, yeah, we are just kind of a stone's throw away from downtown Colorado Springs. Next slide. This is just zoomed in on the particular property that we're talking about so yellow is the outline of the development site the site was previously developed developed so there was an old convenience store here i believe was in existence through the 1990s there were two single family homes uh built in the early 1900s those have now been um This property has been vacant for quite a long time, so there hasn't been anything there. Just to give you a little more detail on Costilla Street, we're probably all familiar. It does have two travel lanes. It's got bike lanes, parking lanes. It is on a bus route. The right-of-way is 80 feet or 100 feet in width. The one thing you should know about Prospect when you're looking at this, it's a very narrow, very narrow right away. So, which is kind of somewhat important as it relates to this project. So next slide. And so here it is, this is the proposed development. So we would have 14 single family lots around a kind of central green space that runs from Costillas Costilla back to, um, the alley. Um, these images on the right give you an idea of what the development would look, feel like, uh, when it is built. So you would have, uh, seven buildings. Um, they would be, um, kind of in a duplex style, but they are on their own individual lots. They're for sale houses. Um, these are two story in height and, uh, units on the west east side are one story in height they do have parking that they're providing in the rear 11 11 spaces so those all those are accessed by the alley they would have new landscapes they would put in they would have reliance on the public street to meet their parking standards so development standards adjustment is really asking for planning commission or the city to consider two things based on kind of the style of this development duplexes that they would like us to look at it as if they were multi-family so then we can apply this different parking standards which brings the parking requirement to 18 on-site parking spaces And they're asking to provide just 11 and then take advantage of the credits or reductions that code allows. So I think everyone is familiar that in the development code that if you have, if the street has on-street parking and it is adjacent to the site, it's not specifically going to be their parking. It still remains general parking, but they can apply that credit. And then if you are on a transit route or within, you have to be on a transit route, but you have to be within a certain distance of a stop, you get a transit reduction of 10%. And if you're on a bike route, it's a 5% reduction of the parking requirements. So that's, to me, probably one of the bigger pieces of this application. And then I just wanted to highlight to the Planning Commission that this application is coming to us, attempting to address the housing needs of the city. And this fits into, I guess, this big umbrella that people call missing middle housing. So in this case, I think, this cottage court style, which we don't have it as a land use, but maybe places around the country, maybe even in Colorado, that do have this cottage court add a specific land use. And that's kind of the concept that these guys, that this application is trying to do. So much of their language or EXPLANATION IN THEIR APPLICATION IS ABOUT MISSING MIDDLE, DIVERSIFYING HOUSING. THE SCALE OF THESE UNITS, EVEN THOUGH THERE'S MORE DENSITY, FITS WITH THE RESIDENTIAL CHARACTER OF THIS AREA. AND IT'S ALSO SUPPORTED BECAUSE IT'S IN A LOCATION THAT'S WALKABLE, BIKEABLE, BUSSABLE. to some degree, trying to explain that, hey, if you don't, one, I think, yeah, to some degree that we can provide a more affordable product by providing this many uses, reducing their size and not having to build so much parking. So that's kind of, I think, their explanation that they provided a rationale for this project. So you are, GOING TO HEAR, I BELIEVE YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR, I SAID THIS LAST TIME AND NOBODY SHOWED UP. I BELIEVE YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR FROM THE NEIGHBORS ON THIS. AND YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR ABOUT TOO MANY UNITS. YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR ABOUT PARKING TROUBLES. I THINK THOSE ARE REALLY, AND TRAFFIC, I GUESS. WE HEAR THOSE THINGS ALL THE TIME. And so those are going to be the big, you know, I think the big items. But if you want, I can, I'll share two last things with the Planning Commission. I'm sorry to roll off. No, that's good.

Take your time.

I was thinking about this project and how we all should be looking at it. And this to me is kind of a development where we're talking about housing versus parking. And so This might be just something you think about as you're reviewing this over the weekend and leading up to this hearing would be, should onsite parking standards be applied in an urban setting like this, where we have walking, biking, transit available, or I guess in some cases prioritized, but I would just say in this case for the city of Colorado Springs, it's just available. I don't think we prioritize transit. Or the other way to look at it is, Is it acceptable or rational to trade off parking access for housing access? So this is kind of, to me, maybe a little philosophical, really policy directed. This could have bigger impacts, but I think that's kind of the focus of this application. And I don't believe we've seen a cottage court style development in the city where an applicant is asking us to consider the general use of the street in kind of a different way. Because I think the very traditional way is the streets are first driving and the private parking is to be on private property. So that's all. I think I have.

We'll have a robust presentation. Yeah, they'll have a... I would hope so, yeah. And I know that we weighed in on the transit-oriented development legislation as a body, but then council didn't do anything with that. And this would not count as one of those because it's not near a transit hub or center. Do you all remember what I'm talking about? But this is too far from transit, so they're not necessarily utilizing that provision.

You're talking about the parking?

Yeah.

No. Part of that has to do with that these are not apartments either. Oh, right.

That was true multifamily.

That was really multifamily oriented.

But when we find ourselves with things that are somewhat between, I think that's getting back to your philosophical question.

Here's some of that argument from the app.

Sure. Yeah. I think it looked like this was going to be, well, since I didn't have any links either, an easy item and maybe not so much. So good, good, okay.

I know you said near bike routes, but is there bike parking set up here at all? I know it's not multifamily or commercial, so the shared parking, but is that something we've done?

You should ask that question of the applicant, but in this case, Where it is right now, there is no bike park.

Okay.

They'd have a week.

No, I mean, it's a good question.

And doors. I know.

Yeah, it gets to the point of, to me, this is one of those where you fall in the middle. Oh, right. Multi-family versus single-family attached.

It's like...

You know, they might just tell me it's like they're going to park their bikes on their lot, lean it up against their house or store it inside. I don't know, but it's a good question. And we have talked to the applicant about that very thing. They chose more parking spaces.

I mean, I could see the struggle and the fight for that. Yeah.

To me, I think they feel they're Maybe otherwise it'll just start. It'll be my personal opinion about what they should be doing.

I would say if you've got time, it's helpful to drive by and see this because.

It is really helpful to take this and then go to a half acre lot and visualize that. And then also what happens on the street when on street parking is going to be more relied on for these types of projects than it would otherwise.

Yeah. I have lots of questions that I'll save for next week. Otherwise, Sarah will give me the side.

I guess I'm curious about maybe management of the overall development. It's kind of that mix of apartments and single family. Are they going to have some sort of maybe HOA type thing with that?

They're going to have an owner's association. They'll set it up. Right now, they're setting up a townhome development. Right. Okay. Yeah.

And because they're single family, they'll all be individually owned in theory. I mean, maybe.

Great.

IT'S A GOOD ONE.

WHEN DO WE THINK WE'LL GET LINKS TO ALL THE INFO?

THAT WAS MY FAULT, BY THE WAY. I THINK EVERYTHING HAS BEEN APPROVED AND YOU SHOULD GET THEM SHORTLY.

OKAY. Any other questions that can't be asked? Until next week. So we're ordering lunch.

I'm hoping that we're not because I have another one to attend next week. Okay. Well, then next is Sheila for Annex COS. Actually, I'd like to see if I can swap those. I asked for changes to the agenda.

I know, and I didn't look at them until now. It's an audible amount of change. That's right.

It's an audible amount of change.

What I'd like to do is just sort of chat a little bit about the schedule on the data center. I don't want to talk about data centers in general or specifics because we're in the process of reviewing and these are all coming to you probably at some point. And so I don't want to talk about anything that resembles the project and or the issues.

Can you opine on that for just a moment? What type of information can or should folks be thinking about or not thinking about?

What we want to talk about is just really the schedule, the status, what the process is and what the status of the process is and what the expected schedule is. That's the only three things that I want to talk about. So the status is that We have had a project submitted that is of significant concern to the city, and we are working towards an approval of that or not. I mean, it's possible still that it's not there, but we haven't finished our review. So we are in administrative review at the moment. Sometime next week is when we expect to have a conclusion to that process. The likelihood is that either way, however we go forward, this will be appealed. And we have a fancy schmancy methodology. It's a lot better on a large screen to try and figure out how to, what the dates kind of are and how to get this done. So we have a 10-day appeal period. Then after any appeal is received, it has to be heard has to be scheduled within seven days of meeting. And the meeting has to occur between 30 and 60 days from 30 and 60 days from the date of the appeal receipt. So and since this is a rapid response, the city and the city council would all like to get this done as quickly as possible. And so our schedule at the moment is to have this approved sometime next week or denied and appealed after that, then we would have a 30-day waiting period, which leaves us out into the end of July. So you guys have asked, we've asked you to opine on your availability on the 23rd, which is a Thursday, 28th and the 29th, which is a Tuesday and Wednesday. But with this appeal process, we can't do the 29th. because it ends on a weekend, and that additional day will create a 30-day delay beyond that. So the available options right now that you've seen are the 23rd and the 28th. The 28th doesn't look like it's doing very well in terms of attendance, and so the 23rd is preferred. I would, though, offer that we could have the meeting on Friday the 24th or Monday the 23rd, And so if anybody has, if you could by maybe by the end of the meeting today, think a little bit about what your availability is on that Monday and or Friday, because it's certainly we can do the hearing on those days and it's available. And then this would then, if it were appealed after the planning commission. So this is just a development plan, pretty simple. statement. No variances or anything else, no land plan, no loan changes, just a development plan. And then it would go, if it were appealed, it would move to the September 8th city council meeting. So that's kind of the general schedule. And so our ask of you is to take a look and see if there's any interest at all in a Monday or a Friday hearing like that. because that gives us really only one day since the 28th has not been a good, we didn't get it.

We anticipate that being a full day thing though.

Yeah, I would anticipate that. Yeah, this is a significant issue. Well over, though there's probably doubling up, but we had 600 people at one meeting and probably four or 500 at another meeting and over 600 comments online and others. So it's a substantive issue. Anyway, that's what I would like to have you guys think about. That's why I wanted to go. That's why I wanted to swap this so it gives you some time to think about it a little bit before the end of the day. Yes, Melissa.

Can I just ask that at the end of the meeting, if commissioners that are present can come see staff so we can just talk about that and make the dates, make sure we have that solidified. And for anybody online, Solange will reach out to you all individually.

Okay, thank you.

I'm just going to speak and maybe others agree with me. I think a Friday meeting would be less ideal. I would prefer the Thursday or the Monday, but if we have to do the Friday, maybe we kind of say first choice might be the Thursday if people are available, followed by Monday and finally Friday. I mean, I'll give up my Friday for anything for this city, but... Knowing that this is going to go late into the evening, I think that's less preferable. But if someone can't do the Thursday, then maybe we look at the Mondays available. And then I think also too, like Andrea's term is up the 29th, which we could, I think she could be extended. beyond but if we get that also is part of the I think the timing that we keep the kind of the same commission that we've had and not trying to change our members or have someone be gone so I think that fits as long as we can get it done by the 28th so we do earlier in the week of the 23rd like Wednesday or Tuesday even no because the the well you know I think it all depends on when

Ultimately, an appeal would be filed. So the date ranges from a kind of conservative standpoint that we've looked at. Maximize the 10 day appeal period and then start the 30 day o'clock as opposed to day two of the 10 day appeal period. Somebody filing and now we can start that 30 day o'clock. So we're kind of approaching it.

That is more dependent on the date that we are done reviewing and and so if we could get the review done sooner than it's possible that we could do that the Wednesday or the Tuesday before.

Sorry I missed that last statement.

It's the difference between July 10th or July 12th. That's the target date. Yes. Yeah.

Reminds me of some of my favorite civil service. Well, you know what? Let's do this then.

Let's add those two days, the 22nd and the 21st, to thought process there. And maybe we might already see if we think we can realistically get that.

I just need to confirm whether REC is available in the States. I'll do that right now.

Sorry, this is June or July?

July.

July. Okay, thank you.

This is June, but the meeting we're talking about is July.

Also, thank you for that clarification. And what day of the week is today?

I also need to know that.

That's asking. That's too much. Yeah.

Okay. Well, I would say, and again, just like my, um, suggestion or admonishment, whatever you might have taken it as, to respond to staff quickly about if you're going to attend meetings, be as timely as possible on any of these dates, knowing even that it could change, just so that we can make sure that we would have a quorum. So please and thank you.

Okay. My question is, what days are we zeroing in on? Because I've heard so many days now that you guys have talked about. 27, 21, 22.

21, 22, 23. Now we're back to 21. 24. That's what I just asked you. Based on a question from staff or from the commission. Well, that week. And basically Tuesday or Monday. Monday the 27th or Tuesday the 23rd. Yeah, or Tuesday the 23rd.

I'd have to miss a golf tournament if we did on Tuesday. So that's not. So the week of the 20th, if you have any major conflicts, I think that, okay.

I'm good.

Yeah. It's just such a moving target. Yeah. And please come see stuff before you leave.

Thank you.

This is Shiva. I just have a conflict on the 24th. Otherwise any and all of the stuff you were saying works.

And Ryan, you have a conflict the whole week of the 27th?

Yeah, last week of July, but the week of the 20th through the 24th is best for me. Preferably earlier in the week if possible.

21st, 22nd. This is Amanda. I just wanted to weigh in that I can make any of those dates. Awesome. Thank you. Since we're kind of discussing this, is it appropriate to kind of just do a little round robin, or do you still want to wait until afterwards? Let's just continue the dialogue.

I am available all of those dates, and I'll make it work.

I can do any of the dates.

Commissioner Clements?

I'll make it work.

Brian?

21st and 22nd are best for me. But could you do the 20th, 23rd, or

24th, if needed.

24th, 23rd, no.

You cannot do the 23rd.

I could, but I have to leave early.

That's not ideal. Okay. This time the only person we don't know about would be Commissioner Slattery.

Is that correct? Correct. But she's coming back from a European trip. She can't take any more time off. Very good. I'm just saying.

She may not come back. That's true. So once we get confirmation from RDC that those dates are available for the 21st and 22nd, we'll send out, we'll confirm with Kevin and Dan and then send out a final, hopefully a final email for dates. Thank you all. Sounds good.

Wasn't sure at the preamble to the discussion of the scheduling only aspect of the data centers. Was there a comment that there's other aspects of data center regulation being considered by the administration or staff to be drafted at all? I was trying to parse that in my head.

No. I don't suggest discussing anything substantive related to the data center. because it's going to be an appeal item, which is a quasi judicial item and everything that you need to consider will have to be presented at the hearing itself.

Okay. Yeah. And that's what, I mean, I was kind of saying Kevin wants to preamble, but my preamble would be that while we need to be knowledgeable, we need to be most knowledgeable about the code of which we are applying and that, and the review criteria of the UDC and the process that we take. And, um, just like we may not, um, know a lot about some things and we may know a lot about other things based on our own knowledge that's one thing but we have to look at the criteria as the criteria for each and every project so despite what people might research or read in the paper or do whatever right we're beholden to the code so i don't think that there's any other forthcoming information from the city that would be appropriate to guide our decision that's what i'm going to say um

So the appeal document is what's going to guide your, you know, what you're going to consider and what you analyze, you know, if there is an appeal, depending upon the decisions that are made and then whether or not there is an appeal or appeals filed.

So just like anything, I think we want to minimize bias and look at our criteria and do our process as we normally would.

Correct. Because again, you know, you're sitting very similar to, you know, the way that a judge would sit at a trial, right? Or in a hearing where you're receiving the information that's presented at the hearing itself and analyzing that against the criteria in the code.

Or is it if you like the defendant or don't like the defendant?

You're correct. None of that factors into it.

So for what that's worth. to you all. Please keep in mind, I mean, there's lots of things that we see and we are beholden to the criteria, so.

Question anything else Kevin?

And I'm going to present the annex EOS.

Slideshow. So this is annex EOS. Just give you a little bit history. Plan COS calls for an update of the in-ocean three-mile plane. And it has been sort of started and worked on for many years. This particular iteration started in 2024. And so it's been going on for a little over two years. And there's been significant information changed, and I'll go through that a little bit about that. But there is a statute requirement that we have to do these things, these updates every three years. And so we haven't really been in compliance with that. So what are we discussing today? So where we are in this particular process is that we will be bringing this to you probably for review in July. This is the first time and I'm presenting some of this information to city council on Monday. in the same informal way as a way to introduce the issue and a way to introduce what we've got as a draft plan. So we have a draft still going through final changes and that kind of thing. So we'll have that for you when we get to the hearing. But we don't have that for you today. Why we're doing this? Partly because of state statute, partly because of the plans of the OS asking to get it done. And quite frankly, everybody would like to have something done. Property owners, city, some of the city agencies, It's just something that has been on the books for a while and it seemed to get to the finish line. So that's why we're trying to get this particular one done. In 2024, we hired a consulting firm and created a public process and did a substantial amount of work on the Three Mile area. And then a lot of that had to be redone based on what happened in 2025, which was several major annexations. which were outside, gave us a little bit of guidance. And then there was an election that also gave us a little bit of guidance. So that's part of what's going on and what's resulted today. Annexation, what is it? We'll talk about that in this process or in this slideshow. Content and policies, we'll give you a little bit of flavor for that. The specifics again are being finally worked on. And then... what's the process of annexation, how we're gonna go through that based on this particular policy statement, and then how we're gonna implement some of the guidance and some of the policies in here. Then we'll have some questions and answers. So next. So Plan COS targeted some city expansion over the next 20 years. Again, 2019 is the date for Plan COS. Statute requires a regular update of the plans, supposed to be every three years. And what the plan is, is sort of up to the local jurisdiction. The emphasis in plan COS was on redevelopment. So basically saying we would like to continue to redevelop and infill with strategic growth opportunities on the outskirts. vacant lands within the city that already have access to utilities. That's what we basically kind of define as infill and then annex only a fiscally beneficial and aligned with city plans and with a lot of focus on water in terms of making sure we have adequate water for new growth areas. And the annexation plan has been a council priority, so it's been something that they've been waiting for and wanting to get done next. Annexations are limited to no more at the annexations. The statutory requirements are you're only limited to three miles beyond the current boundary of the city in any given year except under special circumstances. So we had one of those last year where we annexed the. Southern Colorado rail yard beyond three miles there, and so that was a special circumstance, special economic development kind of opportunity. The municipality must adopt an annexation master plan for a three-mile area. The three-mile plan is what they call that, and it's supposed to have that in place prior to completion of the annexation. So we have one that we've been using, and that's dated 2006. That's the general plan.

The general plan is a city... I'm looking for the word. It is a city mandate, but some of the other things that govern annexations are state statute. Correct.

That's state statute. And other things, we have others, which we'll get into a little bit. Annexation area of potential inclusion. Planning interest. Something like that. We just call it AOPI. Don't know what it really stands for. Anyway, the last plan that was officially adopted was 2006, and we've had statements that basically affirm that plan since that time, last one being in 2024. Next. So the Comprehensive Annexation Plan, NXCOS, is policies that evaluate impacts of infrastructure and services, impacts known in advance of annexation petitions. Properties within three miles, again, you'll continue to hear this three mile. It may include property outside of three miles if we identify them as growth opportunities. And if they are, the other potential annexations are growth potential areas, enclaves, isolated county areas, which are not enclaves, but maybe have three sides. For example, there's a number of them. here in town that have not completely surrounded, but three-sided. And then any other county property, but the property owner wants to mobilize. So that's kind of a general idea of what's available for annexation. Annexation is not growth. It is not roads. It's not houses. It's just simply a change in jurisdiction. So it becomes city jurisdiction if it's annexed to our city and stays in the county as their jurisdiction if it's not annexed. Next. Current plan adopted in 2006. There's been a lot of annexation and infill since then, so obviously we need to have an update of that. That's what we're working on now. The other challenges that have occurred is that in 2006 we were growing rapidly. I think 2005 was the record year for numbers of single family homes constructed in El Paso County and in the city of Colorado Springs. And then we had 2008, which was a record year for not building houses in Colorado Springs and El Paso County. So we had very slow growth ramping up through the 2008 to 2020 and 2021 and that kind of timeframe. The Banning Lewis Ranch impact, 25,000 acres of vacant land that had not been developed primarily because there was an annexation agreement that made it impractical. And in 2018, 19, there was a work towards modifying the annexation agreement, making it more available and more practical for some of those developments to occur. And since that time, we've seen substantial starts, new development in what was the old Banning Lewis Ranch master plan area, which had at one point been 26,000. There's about 20,000 left, plus or minus. We had an IGA with El Paso County in 2019 to 2020. It established the AOPI, the Area of Planning Influence Interest. I'm going to get that down by Monday. Well, I just proved to you that I'm not reading the slides. I wrote them, but I'm not reading them. And so that IGA was an attempt between the city and the county to try and implement the county's master plan, which basically has this three mile area as being an area of transition. And their interest, at least as it's stated in the plan, is to have that land develop inside a corporate structure inside the city limits, either a fountain or a monument or Colorado Springs primarily. So that was an attempt to try and figure out how to motivate property owners to do that. It has been woefully ineffective and basically hasn't been worked on. But it did establish an additional area, that AOPI area, which some pieces of it go beyond the three-mile map. And we've got a map of that here in a minute.

I'll show you. Can you talk about what are the goals from the county's perspective and what's the benefit to the county to have those areas annexed? versus staying in the county?

Well, I don't want to speak for the county. I'll let them speak, but I think I know what they will say. The benefit to the county is that right now what's happening is that they're becoming individual county developments that are served by county service agencies, especially police. They're serviced by what is most often rural, what used to be rural fire districts. THEY HAVE COUNTY PARK STANDARDS, WHICH IS SUBSTANTIVELY LESS THAN WHAT OUR STANDARDS ARE, AND NO WAY FOR THE COUNTY TO MAINTAIN THOSE BECAUSE THE COUNTY DOES NOT MAINTAIN NEIGHBORHOOD PARKS. AND THE LAND ENDS UP BEING IN A DISTRICT. AND A LOT OF WHAT THEY WORRY ABOUT ALSO IS THE GROUNDWATER, IS THAT MOST OF THOSE ARE BASED ON GROUNDWATER AND THEY ARE JUST A LONG-TERM CONCERN about groundwater, though the county does have pretty strong policies relative to water provision. So that's kind of their interest, but they have, without fail, entertained development opportunities for that. Larson Ranch, for example, the ones that are running that bull run and some of those, Falcon is a great example of a development that occurred with county services And so it doesn't have a corporate structure, a municipal structure that provides police and fire and other kinds of services. So the county sort of is in this boat of providing urban services when their structures really are not made for urban services. So that would be, I think their rationale for wanting to see that growth area being in a municipal setting rather than a county setting.

And that's important. I think about like Falcon area, right? There's a patchwork of Metro districts with a variety of water services and sanitation and this and that and the other, but it's such a patchwork. Whereas annexation into the city, maybe not in that particular area, but anywhere else or wherever might provide more comprehensive and consistency of services. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which might increase.

And that's, that's the city's concern too. The city would prefer, I think, to, have that urban form that has urban services provided by urban service providers as opposed to rural and county service providers. You know, the Ellicott Fire District is, while it will transform itself into a more urban setting, they certainly can't do it right now. And so having that kind of location annexed makes that transition a little bit easier. If you look at some of the you know, the fire district, Falcon Fire District, for example, certainly has turned into a more urban service provider and can provide that. But they still have that mix of some urban and some not, and they have the questions of fair taxation and investment and all of those kinds of things. So it's just easier, I think, from a city planner's perspective to have those things work under a municipal organization rather than 2022 we had a water ordinance lot of heat and light around that having to do with making sure that we have adequate water in in our control and our development right now before we annex these things. The way that has finally worked out is that it's 28. We have to always have a buffer of 28% of our current water use is is somewhere in the reality of our of our system. There has not yet been one annexation. Because of the way that's written, it's not a cumulative effect. So if you annex 1,000 acres and it's under the 28%, the next 1,000 acres use the same capacity. So it's not now 1,000 acres plus 1,000 acres. It's just 1,000 acres. And so the ordinance has kind of been ineffective. I think it was designed at one point to sort of restrict annexation. hasn't and won't the way that it's working. And so there needs to be some work towards that. The Colorado Springs Utilities is working on a integrated water resource plan right now. So they are looking at that particular ordinance. Just as we are looking, and you'll see some of this later, we're looking at potential working through the IGA with the county and coming up with a different sort of scheme for that. And then we've had recent annexations, Amara-Carmen line, the rail yard, the election last June, 82% people voting against the annexation. Whether that was, you know, the right way to operate a city or not, it doesn't matter. It was voted out and that's kind of where we are. So that certainly informed some of our work in the last six or eight months in terms of what we think the next COS should be.

Next slide.

So the process since the present, we had a review of existing documents and identify some area we had, or some of the issues, some limited public engagement there. We had a speaker panel event, which was mostly designed to talk more about growth and development, not specifically about annexation. The next phase was a lot of work in-house, and then we had some focus groups. We also had in 2025, an open house, with some of the data. What was being focused on at that point was they identified 22 different sectors of land that were sort of cut off or bounded by the city and or by logical other aspects of development, such as roads or drainage ways or those kinds of things. They had each one of those, they were going through a land plan of each one of those and a fiscal impact model of all of those. And so then we have these other annexations and sort of the Kamara, the carbon line, Amara and the election, as well as the rail yard. None of those seem to fit very well in this, into this process. And so we, and after the vote that basically said, no, we're not particularly interested in annexation, we sort of shifted gears and stopped the process from determining a land plan. So the principle change was, it was our opinion that we really did not, we needed to get some policies written about how we go forward with annexation, not so much about what the land plan was. The land plan is not annexation, but what we were trying, what that effort was trying to do was to try and say, there's a fiscal impact. We're trying to judge whether or not Different areas might be better for annexation than not, but in order to do that, you have to determine a land plan and in order to do that, you had to do that yourself. And in my opinion, 22 different areas that have probably 1000 different property owners that we were going to be bogged down a long time, kind of figure out what our plan. So it would be better if we did just a general look at at how we annex not so much what we are about to annex and you'll see. kind of where we end up with that. But we are drafting and finalizing that right now and we'll be going through that here in the summer and fall.

And then we'll have some public involvement again or just the committee?

We've had some focus groups, the public involvement. We probably will have another open house, but mostly now it's going to be hearings in front of Planning Commission and City Council. Next. Oh, one other thing that's really changed substantially is the relationships and the interest on the part of the Air Force bases and Space Force bases and Air Force Academy Fort Carson to participate in the land planning aspects of this. Some of those have been created because there's been development that has occurred and you've heard some of them, the landings as being the most recent one, where there is impact on the operations at the Space Force bases at Peterson and Schriever primarily. So they have not only just engaged with us a little bit more and we've engaged with them a little bit more. They also have actually started a process and it's called Soy Kuz and I am not going to try to. I was wondering what that was. I don't know what a Z is. But they are basically going through a process where they're analyzing their uses on the base and trying to figure out what the impacts are from development on the outside of that. For example, line of sight, try not to build a 20-story building right in the way of their access to a satellite field or location or a geostationary location, stuff like that. That's relatively simple, but there's electromagnetic and protection of forces and those kinds of things that are all critical. They have now engaged in that to the point where they're trying to come up with a standard uh out there retriever and this will be a standard actually that they'll use around the country so this is kind of a guinea pig sort of idea so that that's a substantive change as well we don't really know what the land uses ought to be until they get done with that that we'll hear a little bit more about that in september and time frame next slide um this is the um this is the It shows annexations from 1872 by decade. So it's kind of an interesting little map in terms of when these states were annexed. Obviously, the 80 to 89 timeframe annexed the whole boatload of land. That would be Briargate and Banning Lewis and Northgate and others. Southwest annexations, which included the Broadmoor and all that land down there. Obviously major expansion in the 80s, but that's kind of an interesting map. It goes slow for awhile and then then boom. Next map or next slide. This will give you an idea of the relationship between the three mile line and the AOPI, which is the shaded area there. So the area that's clear is basically the city limits line today. including Banning Lewis. Then you go out three miles from there, that's the red line. Some of that land obviously is in the mountains, so probably not much going on there. There's a little bit of land around Manitou and pieces and parts around through there. A fair amount of enclaves and a lot that is impacted by monument as well as by fountain. So those areas kind of are we'll end up not having any kind of opportunity for annexation. But this three-mile line bulges out substantially at the south because of the southern Colorado rail yard annexation. And so it's a substantive difference than where we were even with the 20.4 map because those were not annexed at the start of this process. The ALPI is the land that The county and the city agreed to have special interest in, and what the idea was, was that if someone wanted to do a development out there with the county, with a special district, with another water source, et cetera, that they could ask the city if the city was interested in annexing, and therefore they could end up developing to city standards as opposed to county standards, which is why it was so ineffective. Because if you're not going to annex today and you're developing to a city standard in the county, it becomes a nightmare for the property owner to figure out who they need to talk to about getting their plans approved. And once they're approved, who they turn the water system or the road system or the park system, who they turn that over to in terms of maintenance. So that's why that IGA has been ineffective in terms of encouraging annexation or trying to make it a little bit easier but that's there that's the area there what we're proposing is a modification of the iga because you guys are still have your county master plan that is concerned about this area uh what what else can we do to cooperate around that to encourage development inside municipal uh structures as opposed to county structures and i think they're still interested in discussing that i don't have any idea how that might turn out I don't know. But it's a recommendation out of this to modify that area. Next. What is annexation? It's a change in jurisdiction. That's all it really is. Again, it's not growth. It's not using water. The act of annexation obviously makes it more just change in jurisdiction. Who's going to maintain your your roads and who's going to maintain your parks, etc. 95% of our annexations have been through private petitions, property owners, maybe 99%. The one that wasn't, if you remember that map, that whole southwest annexation area, that was not driven by private property owners requesting. In fact, they requested not to be and took it to court and did all kinds of things to stay out of that. But that's the only one of major note in the last 40 years. It has not been driven by a private property owner, either major ranch lands in the case of Banning Lewis and Briargate, Northgate, or even smaller. If you look in some of these smaller enclaves that we've annexed recently, Peach Ranch and some of those others that have just come in recently. So those are all initiated by private property owners. That's the majority. There are other options though. You can, petition for annexation, if 75% of the property owners who own 50% of the land can petition other people to annex with them. So there may be enclaves out there where you could get 75% of the owners, but you can't get 100%. And so instead of leaving a patchwork, you can kind of make all of the area annex. We have not, to my knowledge in the last 45 years, done anything like that. in Colorado Springs. It's done in other places, but it's not been done here. We can, if the city bigly encircles an area, we can unilaterally annex that. The city has not chosen to do that in the last 30 or 40 years, but it's possible to do that. And there are times in other jurisdictions where that has occurred. We may think a little bit about expanding that just a little bit, And it's especially concerning if you have a vacant land and you have development occurring right inside the city limits that's urban in nature, et cetera. The city might consider annexing that just to make sure that whatever gets built there is integral to how the city is operating. And then city-owned land, we can request that at any time. You can even, I think you can even request that without contiguity. So you can have a piece of property that's not contiguous to the city and you can annex it yourself. For example, some of the lands down at Cheyenne Mountain State Park are owned by the City of Colorado Springs for the parks, but are not annexed. But we could annex those. And that's a possibility. The City of Colorado Springs owns substantial land out there. by Carmen line where the reservoir is going to go. So there's a possibility that they would annex that piece of property. Not likely, but possible. Same with the Ray D. Nixon power plant or those kinds of things as well. You could annex those to the city and the city could provide its own services like that.

I think that's important because I think in both of those issues, and not everybody was here for all of those, but the city owns a fair amount of land that's not currently annexed into the city boundaries, but that are used for either land holding or other uses, right. Which I think was pertinent with the rail yard and Carmen line, et cetera. So Jen, did you have a question or comment or did you forget it?

I, I was just wondering this, the emphasis that annexation is not growth. Um, But it's usually conceived of as a growth management tool. What exactly are the city's obligations following annexation?

Well, a lot of that depends on the annexation agreement. So you can modify. So if a piece of property is inside the city limits, the city has all the same obligations it has for any other piece of property inside the city limits, downtown or whatever. So that would be some kind of fire protection, some kind of police protection, and service of public rights away, maintenance of those kinds of things, so that they would have all the basic urban services available to that piece of property. Those can be modified though, and they are modified often in annexation agreements. We just talked about the BLR annexation agreement in 1988. They had obligations to actually pay the city $250,000 a year for police protection. We basically said, yeah, if there's a car accident out there, we're not coming. You know, those kinds of things. And so there's a way to basically establish a level of service that's different than the level of service that you'd expect if you were inside the city limits today. So that can be modified by an annexation agreement. So that's, that's, I think that answers your question.

Thank you for clarifying, especially the public safety end of the obligation on the city's part. Is that also ever waived? I'm sorry? Is the public safety obligation on the city's end ever amended or not included?

It's never not included. I think it's always been considered a core function that the city has to require. Maybe there's a legal way to say that, but I think what has happened in the past is that they've established that you might get a different level of service here. That doesn't take the obligation away. If somebody's murdered on the Banning Lewis Ranch in 1989, the city would have had to deal with that and would have had to prosecute that or police that. But if you have a car accident out there or you get a call for a police or a fire, you might not get service in eight minutes. You may get a level of service that's substantially different, but it doesn't change the overall obligation. I think it just changes the level of service that you can expect. And annexation agreements also, though, change a lot of things, especially as it goes into development and growth. For example, annexation agreements can amend who builds parks, how they're maintained, who maintains open spaces, dedication of park lands and fire lands or fire station land and those kinds of things. So there's a lot of different things that the annexation agreement can amend.

When the annexation occurs, though, there is a transfer and who receives the property tax proceeds from that land, right?

Not much. Only that the city will get a share So, for example, Banning Lewis Ranch always paid county taxes, always paid school district taxes, always paid all of those other property tax entities. And they were collected by the assessor and distributed. But when it was annexed to the city, we applied our new levy to that. And then we would collect a little bit. They would pay more and we would collect more because we weren't collecting anything if it wasn't in the city. So, yeah, there's a little bit of change. but I wouldn't consider it to be substantive.

I think the comment of annexation is not growth is important because I think that is the common conception. It's a change in jurisdiction, which can allow for different growth. It doesn't mean that it's going to be massive or immediate. It really is And I think that's the lens that this body, right, that we need to look at these types of things as they come through is like, what exactly are we weighing in on? And we're weighing in on a change in jurisdiction. And then potentially, if that land is already inhabited in some way, it might just stay as it is, like some of these enclaves with the housing, right? But then the city is going to get taxes, we're going to send police department, but in areas that are undeveloped, that can allow for development, sure, services have to be provided. But it isn't And I think that's maybe the common public misconception is annexation is bad because it immediately is growth, which may not be the case.

I think the point we're trying to make is that annexation in and of itself does not increase traffic. It does not increase water use. It does not increase wastewater use. It doesn't do any of those things. Growth does. If you build houses, it does. But if you don't build houses, the act of building something on it is growth. But the act of annexation does not pass jurisdiction.

Is it not to entitle you to petition for utilities to be run?

Yes. But you can provide utilities outside the city limits as well. Falcon is the number one example. I mean, you can solve those problems in different ways. You can have the sheriff's department be on call for robberies, and you can have a fire district on call for fires and medical emergencies and those kinds of things. So, you know, your growth occurring outside the city limits is different than your growth occurring inside city limits. That's the distinction.

And then a development plan or a land use plan or any of these other things that we are going to see on occasion, potentially through a process, would still come forth after an annexation, whereas if it wasn't annexed, any growth plan would be for the county. So all those mechanisms and potentially city planning would weigh in, whether it's us or not us as a board. That's a great point.

What you said there made me think, is there a plan within Annex COS to do more staggering of the annexation item from the development plan or rezoning item?

No, there's one of the policies we have written and this policy we have anyway now is that if you annex, you got to bring us a land plan. We got to know what it is you're planning on doing. And so we can't, we don't, I think, regularly annex without a land use plan of some sort and a zoning action at some point. So that, yeah, that's true. Those do come with. So I think that'll be part of the policy statement that we make. Can we go to the next one?

Thank you, Kevin.

This is just a little bit more in terms of how annexations fit into the scheme of things. Got the constitution and statutes, municipal code. And then we apply the unified development code, which has a process by which you annex the criteria for annexation, et cetera. So those are all involved in the hearing. We have a checkpoint policy at city council. So if there's an area that wants to be annexed, we take it to city council on an informal basis at the very beginning of the process that basically says, you guys, okay, if we consider this, because we don't really want to spend a lot of money and a lot of time, the council basically says, there's no way we're ever going to annex that. So go away. And so there's a policy that we are maintaining the opportunity for council to weigh in to say whether or not you're qualified or whether or not you want to annex, we aren't going to do it. Or yeah, proceed ahead. Now we'll get to the nitty gritty and try to figure out whether we want to or not. And then we have this intergovernmental agreement between the county and the city. So those are other sort of pieces that influence annexation aside from just this particular policy. So next. Again, it's a policy framework. It's a planning tool to shape the urban form. Again, jurisdictional. It's a guide for infrastructure expanse and utilities. Very interested in what we think of annexation on this. And it gives a guide for the city and property owners. So property owners need to know Should I consider that? Should I consider it today or am I 20 years away? And that gives a little bit of guidance to that. But it's not a land plan for 40,000 vacant acres out there. It may even be more than that now because I think the 40,000 did not include that boatload of land that we did when we added the Southern Colorado rail yard. And so it is not a priority map to say we want to annex that piece before we annex that piece. So it's not that. I think it was headed towards something like that in 2024, but with the various activities that occurred from a political standpoint and a leadership standpoint, I don't think that's a viable option for the plan at this point.

Do you think that, since maybe it was kind of going that direction in the past, was that something that was maybe driven by some of the... city side or some of the public of saying we kind of want to know and some foreshadowing would be helpful or was it just the way that the conversations kind of blended themselves during that yes or was it all of that okay i think it's all of that it was it was a variety of reasons um i think utilities had a lot of uh influence about where that was going in their

If you remember when this started, they really didn't have a good idea what they were doing with wastewater plan down in the southeast part of Colorado Springs. And they've since that time sort of gone through that process and worked through it. And they would, they're engineers. They just would like a little more predictability. I'm not an engineer. So predictability is sort of like, you know, the hobgoblin of small minds, right? so it's uh so i think that was part of that was as much of an influence as anything um and there were property owners who wanted to know kind of and and obviously some property owners were asked to annex uh since that thing started and they were kind of waiting to see what was going to happen there and then they they moved it forward anyway much to their chagrin yeah yeah okay thank you next here's This is the draft that you'll see before you get to hearing. This is some of the pieces, the book goals and policies in chapter two, and how we're going to implement this. Primarily what we're looking for is a lot of the same things we do now. We showed you the influences that were already there. We'll make sure that you have a land plan. Go to the next slide. I'm not sure how much detail I have. What we're looking for is basically an annexation report. For all of these, it talks about the contiguity, how close are you to current infrastructure, so that people will know, not so much that we can't deal with the stuff that's not adjacent, but it will be obvious that you're adjacent or you're not adjacent. The fiscal impact, we think the fiscal impact analysis needs to be much stronger, so we're recommending a stronger fiscal impact analysis be developed. And utilities really does have a very strong fiscal impact analysis, and there's pretty hardwired as to how they get through their process. So it's really a very good. Then it can give you an idea of some infrastructure extensions, especially in utilities, how we need to cooperate with other jurisdictions, how we deal with enclaves. There are a lot of enclaves still, and we, The city's moved its thinking a substantial amount in terms of enclaves already in the last five years. And I think we will continue to do that to try and bring these things back under city control so we don't have a patchwork of urban services being provided. And then flexibility for special circumstances. You know, that all you have to do is set up a Colorado rail yard and that's kind of the, if you look up special circumstances in the dictionary, it shows the so so it's those kinds of things that the state statute allows for that this policy needs to allow for that as well next well this gives you an idea the goals the general goals that the basic areas there uh there are goals under in underneath each one um next THE PROCESS, THIS GOES THROUGH, AGAIN, THE FISCAL IMPACT REPORT, THE ANNEXATION REPORT THAT I OUTLINED A LITTLE BIT EARLIER, THE CHECKPOINT PROCESS, MAKING SURE THAT THE LAND PLAN ACCOMPANIES THE REQUEST, THOSE ARE THE KINDS OF THINGS, AND THEN THAT WE DEVELOP AN ANNEXATION AGREEMENT.

NEW SPEAKER ARE WE BACKING OURSELVES IN ANY SORT OF UNFUNDED MANDATE CORNER WITH EMPHASIS ON THE FISCAL IMPACT REPORT IN A WAY THAT MIGHT IMPACT THE CITY OR ITS BUDGET NEGATIVELY? Or is that within current staff capacity?

Oh, I think that's that special circumstance. I mean, the city could basically say we're willing to go in the hole for that. Don't know why they would do that, but they could. But it's primarily the fiscal impact analysis drives the annexation agreement. So, for example, if you had a road that needed to be built and you were planning on building it, and it needed to go three miles outside of the city's jurisdiction right now, but you were only going to have one house at the end of it. There could be an annexation agreement that basically says, you can build that, you can dedicate that to us, but we're not maintaining it for the first 10 years, or until there's 1,000 homes, or we're not going to maintain your park until there's 2,000 houses built out there, or something like that that can mitigate the fiscal impact.

Performing the fiscal impact analysis, we're not overburdening. Planning staff, finance staff.

So what we're doing, that's a good question. Maybe I can clarify that a little bit. The fiscal impact analysis is paid for and done by the property owner. But what we don't have is a really strong set of criteria that says this is how you're going to do it. We're not paying for it. We'll pay to set up the criteria. And we do actually pay for the fiscal impact analysis for annexations under 400 acres, I think. Smaller annexations, we actually will pay for. So they just plug a couple of numbers in and look at it that way. But no, we're not obligating the city staff to do anything. That's all still on the nickel of the property. Good question, though. I had to clarify that. Next. Again, guidance and implementation private property owners. You know, could figure out this is once once they know what this is, they won't know exactly whether they're going to get annexed or not, but they'll give them better guidance as to what pieces of information they need to weigh and what they need to think about. Same things with the city and then we still want to recognize. that we've got substantial vacant land inside city limits already, 20,000 acres. And Sheila and I were talking about this yesterday. A lot of what the state statute requires, especially this three-mile kind of annexation plan, is they were trying to deal with those jurisdictions in Denver where they were all competing for various pieces of property and trying to figure out who's going to annex what, and I don't want to annex that, you annex that, and that kind of thing. And I don't know that the statute contemplated something like what we have here, which is basically 40,000, 50,000 acres of vacant land available inside that 30 mile or that three mile area. It just puts a different kind of emphasis on, you know, what do you think we can do with that out there? Next. That's it. But we'll get you a little bit more detail at the next planning commission and we'll see if we can get to the finish line of some of this anyway.

You'll have a copy of that for us to review. Next week or no, no.

Something else occurring next week. It's occupying a little bit of my time. Aside from the fact I'm driving my kids to Saint Louis or my grandkids to Saint Louis. No, you'll have it before the planning commission. We'll get it to you as soon as we've got it kind of ready, which should be certainly before work session. We'll give you a couple of weeks to try to digest that.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks. That's good stuff.

I think that's the end of our agenda.

So I did hear back from RDC and the 21st is available all day. The 22nd would be available after 930 AM. Another entity has that. So if everybody can do the 21st, Kevin, is that still OK?

Yeah, and it'll just give us a piece of information as we continue to try and figure that out.

Yeah. Yes. So it sounded like earlier the 21st would be OK with everybody. Can everybody just give me a little nod or thumbs up? Great.

And the 22nd needed assignment for me too.

Commissioner Gisiano, 21st is still okay with you? Yes, that's fine. Thank you very much for confirming. We will keep you all posted as this process evolves. And Brian? He gave a thumbs up.

Okay. Moving targets. All the time. I'm good, yeah.