City Council - Regular Meeting

Today is January 6, 2026. It's 2:00 p.m. This is the Durango City Council Study Session. Could we have roll call? Thank you, Mayor. Councelor Koso here. Councelor Lawyer here. Mayor Prom Woodruff here. Mayor Yazy

here. and councelor Gonzalez. And may we have a reading of the land acknowledgement. This is a call to honor and respect indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. As residents and visitors of Durango, we are called upon to educate ourselves about the history and cultural heritage of the land we inhabit. The city of Durango is situated on the ancestral homelands and territories of the Nu, Ute, Hikaria, Apache, Apache, Pueblo of New Mexico, Hopienome, Hopi, and Da Navajo nations. The original stewards of this land were forcibly removed and exposed to countless atrocities by the United States government, including repeatedly broken treaties, forced assimilation, the tragic legacy of Indian boarding schools, and the loss of ancestral homelands. We recognize lasting generational trauma exists within native communities today. We affirm the continuing importance of ancestral sites to descendant communities as integral to the living cultural landscape. This acknowledgement only becomes meaningful when combined with accountable relationships and informed actions. May this serve as a step toward inclusion and reconciliation. And under council requested presentations, the first item is the accessory dwelling unit regulation and adherence presentation. Good afternoon, council. Jamie Lafco, your community development director to present on accessory dwelling units. Um,

ADUs support the city's vision and our strategic plan goal of innovative housing and economic development by providing housing solutions to support a multi-generational and mixed income community. So, this presentation is a result of a request from city council for a few specific topics on edus. Um, but before I dive into that, um, I want to provide a few points of background on the edu program. Um, it's covered in more detail in the memo in your packet. Um, then I'll get into the request from city council um, to address accessory dwelling units um, adherence, including current enforcement protocols and alternatives for stricter enforcement. So, an ADU is a secondary residential dwelling unit on the same lot as a primary home. Um, you often often hear it referred to as granny flat, in-law suite, backyard, cottage, cassita. Um, there can either be integrated or attached, which what you see on the picture on the right, or they can be um detached in a separate building or on above a garage as you see on the two uh pictures on the left. Um, and ADUs have existed in Durango for about as long as the city itself. Um, they are an efficient way to increase housing options for families that want to care for their elderly members, bring their kids back home. Um, they can produce income to assist with home ownership. Um, and they can be accommodated both in existing and proposed neighborhoods. Um, and I will note that ADUs typically make up about one and a half% of Durango's housing stock. So in July 2014 um we adopted a new land use and development code and as part of that ADU regulations were put in place for two of our zoning districts which is the EN1 and the EN2 zones. Uh along with that a voluntary registration program was created to help legalize ADUs that existed prior to these regulations. That program was then expanded in 2015 when the EN3 zone was brought into the ADU regulations. So, while these regulations started out

with just the EN1 and EN2 zones, they've been amended to expand other zones, provide incremental updates to regulations, um things like your partial area limitations, your parking, um and allowing alternative compliance or what is uh commonly referred to as an administrative variance done by staff for certain standards. Um these changes have been made to bring clarity in the regulations and provide additional opportunities for ADUs. Um, and that is covered in a lot more detail in your memo to show you the timeline of the progression of that. So, what are our current regulations right now? There is a limit of one ADU per parcel and parcels that currently have a duplex on them are not eligible for an ADU. Um, they must be owner occupied, meaning the property unit has to either reside in the primary dwelling or the ADU. Um, the maximum size is 550 ft. Um they have to meet our required design standards like setbacks, height restrictions. Um and those are based on whether the unit is integrated to the house or detached. Um they do have to have one additional off- streetet parking space uh which will result in three required spaces. However, there is an exception to that under certain circumstances that we will allow one space um to be uh accommodated on on street. Um they do have to meet overall design standards like our floor area ratio and our lot coverage. Um they uh the construction of an ADU is considered an additional dwelling unit. So it may trigger public improvements to the property. Um they cannot be rented for a short-term vacation rental which means they cannot be rented for a period of less than 30 days. Um and they may be eligible for what we call established neighbor neighborhood alternative compliance which is what we call the administrative variance to some of our design standards. and all of them are required to get a limited use permit, which is an administrative process um done by staff that requires public notice to the neighbors. So, let's take a look at where we're at now. Um we have been working over the

past year to try and compile some accurate data on our accessory dwelling units, and that has proven to be a really complicated task for us that we're still continuing to work through. The data you have on the slide is the accurate information that we have documented to show the approved number of units um within the city and broken that down by the year they were approved and where they are in the city based on the zone district. So currently there's 161 units that we have documented as approved. Now those aren't all going to be the same type of units. Um because of the voluntary registration program there was a tiered approach created on that based on the age of the unit. Um, I'll cover it in greater detail when I get into the registration, but I did want to break it down for you that of those 161 units, 25 of those are what we call legally non-conforming. They were built prior to 1941, so they did not have to comply with our regulations. They did not have to do an owner occupancy affidavit. They did not have to do the agent safety attestation. Um, the 66 of them are what we call registered. These are units that were built between 1941 and 2015 and they came in through the volunteer registration program to be legalized and then 70 of them are approved which means they came in they they followed the ADU process they were full compliance with our lean use code. Um we on average have received about 10 applications per year um since the voluntary registration period ended in 2016. Um as you can see a large number of our ADUs are in our EN1 and EN2 zones. um followed closely by EN3. Those are our districts that came in first with the regulations, had the first opportunity, but they're also the areas that commonly had a detached garage or out building on the property with alley access, which made it easier for them to convert the square footage to an ADU. So, I wanted to give you a visual on where our ADUs are approved right now. Um I'm sorry I didn't put it on the slide before, but the red dots are detached and the uh blue dots are integrated or attached units. Um and of

these 161 units, um 89 of them are detached and 72 are integrated. So that means our detached are about 55% of our RAD use. So the map on the left is going to show you the area north of downtown. Um our EN4 zone is the orange zone all the way to the left. There's 12 units there. The yellow is along North Main where you have 34. That's EN2. And then Animus City um in the purple is EN3 zone and there are 29 there. And then we have our blue which is our EN5 zone. and there are three there. SL uh the picture on your right is of course our downtown area where we have our EN1 zone and there are 70 units there and then the bright yellow is our MU zone and there are three located in that area. All right, so let's get into the voluntary registration program. So in 2014 when council approved um the uh new land use regulations, they created the voluntary registration program to allow units that already existed to be legitimized um without penalizing the owners. That was the premise behind that. So community development proposed a phase incentive based approach to try and catch the interest of property owners to come in and apply voluntarily for this. Um so the first phase was for um us to mail out to all the property owners in EN1 and EN2 because that's where it started was in those two zoning districts um and let people know of the voluntary registration progress process and the new regulations that were put in place by council and asked them to come in if they had a secondary unit. Well, this resulted in approximately 300 registrations. The complicated thing with that is it wasn't just for ADUs. It was for anybody who had a duplex or a another multi-unit on their property. And so staff has had to go through over the years and try and figure out what was this registration for. Was it an ADU? Was it a duplex? Or was it something else? And so the data that we have now is pretty much based on

that. And we're still actually working through that trying to figure out um where we are in the process for those. So as part of the registration um we tried to identify the approximate age so we could determine which of the tier they were to go through. So based on that um there were different requirements. So the units built to prior to 1941 are our legally non-conforming units. They didn't have to meet the new regulations. They didn't have to do the owner occupancy and they did not have to do the agent safety attestation. um owner of these uh were given a letter from the city acknowledging that their unit was legally non-conforming um and it was allowed to stay as such. However, if they make improvements to the structure more than 67% of the fair market value, they would then have to come into full conformance. Um for ADUs built between 1941 and 2015, they were given what's called an acknowledgement and agreement. is something that was signed both by the city and the the property owner to formally legalize the unit. They were asked for a basic site plan and a floor plan. Um and they were required to do have the owner occupancy or they could request a waiver. We do have 17 properties out there that have a waiver of the owner occupancy requirements. Um and they were required to do the age and safety at testation and they were allowed to pay a prrated fee based on the age of the structure. Um, for ADUs that were built after 2015 require full compliance. They got to get the limited use permit. Um, they are required to still have the owner occupancy, but of course there's no age and safety because the city is doing inspections on those properties. Um, so to clarify a little bit on the owner occupancy. It's a notorized document that is um recorded with the county and it says that the owner is going to comply with the standards related to owner occupancy or request a waiver of those standards. Now, the age and safety is the same as a similar notorized document, but it asked them to attest to two things. That the unit is safe and habitable and that the owner

will ensure and maintain the safety and habitability of the unit in accordance with city and state codes. And the second part of that is the that the city of Durango has not certified the unit for compliance with adopted building and fire codes and therefore assumes no responsibility for the condition or life safety of this unit. And both those documents were to be recorded by the county and a copy provided to the city. So while the owner occupancy is still required for any new ADU, we do not require the agent safety at testation any longer because we do do full inspections prior to a certificate of occupancy. Um so I will note that when the voluntary registration program originally launched, inspections of accessory dwelling units were included as part of the process. After the first month of attempting to do this, staff came back to counselor and reported um how timeconuming it had been, taking up to four hours for each unit for them to do, and they just did not have the ability to continue to do that. And based on discussion, um inspections for the the units that existed prior to 1989 were removed from the process. Um, but it is important to note staff doesn't actively do inspections on buildings that have already been constructed. If it's not something that we saw during construction, it's not something we're going to inspect and certify. Um, we don't go out and inspect any of the older structures that are in the building. Um, the only time we're going to do that is if somebody comes to us and has a building permit and even then we're only going to inspect the new construction. We're not going to look at the rest of the structure. We're only looking at the scope of work on that permit. All right, so let's talk about owner occupancy. Um, the requirements are in the lane use code that either the primary residence or the accessory dwelling unit must be owner occupied. Um, so as we discussed earlier, we do have the requirement for the notorized and recorded owner occupancy affidavit. Um, and uh that's required when the unit is

permitted as well as a requirement for it to be renewed on a bianual basis to ensure continued compliance. Um second part of that is there is only one unit can be ra rented meaning owner occupancy unless an exception is granted for a temp temporary absence for the owner. There's some documented um things in the code that allows the owner to ask for an exemption for a certain period of time if they need to be away. Um and the last thing is if there is non-compliance um we could pursue causing the ADU to be vacated or removed and have a property go back to being a single dwelling property. So, one of the items that city council requested was related to enforcement of current regulations. So, I wanted to share the status of the owner occupancy affidavit requirement. Um, so the bianual requirement to renew owner occupancy has not been enforced up to this point. When somebody applies for a limited use permit and get the initial ADU player roof, absolutely, we get the the owner occupancy affidavit. Um but we have not at this point been able to keep up with getting the bi-annual process. Um so let's see. Um right now based on our research I can tell you that more than half of the approve on our approved list do not have an owner occupancy affidavit on file. Um but I will note that 17 of those properties have a waiver and 25 of them are pre-1941. So they did not require them. So we do have a few that are exempt from that. Um, there's also a requirement for purchasers of a property that has an ADU to submit a notorized and recorded owner a affidavit within 60 days of when they purchase the property, which again has not been kept up to date. That's very difficult to track. Um, but we have um capabilities to look in GIS and so we did research that and from what we can tell about 40% of our ADUs have changed ownership and need a new affidavit. So next part of that is is uh current

enforcement protocols. So one of the outstanding issues that wasn't resolved as part of the voluntary registration was how do we handle ADUs that didn't voluntary register or didn't complete the registration requirements. So based on the uh registration information that we have, we are aware of at least 70 units that exist that either did not complete the registration requirements or did not meet the requirements of the program. Um some of these have enforce uh information on enforcement efforts that began with no documentation that uh that it was resolved and some of them only have a voluntary registration application filled out with no other information. So, when it comes to enforcement, um there's some concerns with completed this I wanted to to point out so you're aware. Um currently staff only pursues enforcement based on complaints on properties that are seen by staff doing construction without a permit or um we do sometimes get um complaints from the C uh C clickfix on the city's website. Um people will report things via that and we do investigate those. um other than the ADUs that we're already aware of on the voluntary registration, they're difficult to identify. Um it's difficult to establish the legality of some units because some have gone through part of the process and then there's no documentation. Um but also not all complaints are violations. Um this is where it gets a little confusing because some of uh units are permitted and some are detached duplexes and some are just living space. Um, so we have what's called a detached duplex here, which basically looks like two homes on a property or a unit above a garage and a home on a property, which can be very much mistaken for an ADU. Detached duplexes are very much less restricted and they're a larger size than an ADU. So that's where we have to keep in mind that um looking at those, we have to

make sure what it is before we go down the process of trying to regulate it. Um the other um complication is is some of property owners add living space to their property which means you can add a bedroom and a bathroom above your garage. That's not an ADU. That's just living space. And so we ask you to sign what's called a non-living unit agreement with that that basically stipulates you understand this is not a dwelling unit. You cannot add a stove in there because we define let's see have a definition of a dwelling unit as the provision of independent living facilities for one or more persons including permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking and sanitation. So our non-living agreement is something we put out there for people who just have a bedroom and a bathroom and probably a refrigerator and a sink in their garage. It's not an accessory dwelling unit. It's not something we regulate as an accessory dwelling unit. Um and and the problem we have with that is after inspection people will add a stove. It then becomes a unit that becomes hard for us to regulate. Um so there's what we have two of those those two are two things that make our ADU problem a little bit more hard to wrap our hands around. Um and then we'll move into alternatives. Um so I think we have a good path forward for owner occupancy and how to wrap our hands around that. Um, we are going to draft letters to be mailed out to all property owners where we're aware that uh an ADU has been permitted and let them know they need to come back in for new owner occupancy. We're going to send them the hard copy offer of notoriization with the city, get it recorded and back in with us. And what we're going to do with that is our open gov software has a a system that allows us to do what's called a campaign. So, we will put their information in there and it will automatically set a two-year deadline and we can say, "Okay, 30 days before that, send the property owner a letter. it says it's time for you to renew. So that way it's automated and it's not on staff to have to remember to

do these things at different intervals throughout the year. So I think that will help keeping the bannual status up to date. Um we're also going to uh monitor our GIS quarterly. Um we're going to take the list of current owners and check that against what it is in 3 months from now and see what's changed. And whoever has changed, we'll again mail them a letter and say, "Okay, you bought a property with an ADU that requires owner occupancy." and then work with them to get that recorded and add them to the campaign database to make sure we're upkeeping that. So, I think that is a piece that we can definitely do better on and we will work towards that. Um, lastly, um, we've all heard a lot of information from the public, a lot of concerns, a lot of questions. Um, so staff's proposing that we do some sort offormational session both to share what are the current regulations out there. Um, what are opportunities that exist to legalize units that are not currently legalized through the limited use permit process um, and get the ADU rebate program out there. As you can see in the memo, it hasn't been as well used as we would like it to be. And I think the more we can get that out there for people to cover those fees, um, we can hopefully get that used. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. Uh Jamie, I got a lot of questions, so I may take take a breath and and roll away from this. So, um some clarifications just on the presentation and and I want to give myself credit for not interrupting you in the middle of the presentation. So, anyway, um

yeah, thank you. The detached duplex, can this be above a garage? Yes. Okay. Can you just explain to me the difference between a detached duplex and ADU? Or is it just so technical that we I would be burning up my limited time? It's not technical. Um the detach is only allowed in the EN1 and EN2 zones. Okay. But you have to have a larger lot size. Okay. Um so a lot of the um smaller lots it will by default be an ADU, but if you have a larger lot it could possibly be um the detached duplex. And it comes with there's no um unit restriction size. It can be any size and there's no owner occupancy requirement with it.

Okay. Um, from from what you just reiterated to us, first I I want to state you were not here in 2015. You were not here in 2020. This is this is something you've inherited. The team is doing the best they can with the situation that they inherited and and I really respect that. So, thanks for the time and the energy that you put into this. Um, I had no idea how complex this was to be honest with you. And I I find myself in need of some materials or some tables to take what you've just shared and be able to digest it a little bit better. And I don't know how to ask for that appropriately or not, but if if this gets deferred or or I I would love some followup that really does talk about the different um different types of ADU exceptions that are out there and what you see from a numbers perspective from total ADUs, how many are in each of those categories of not fulfilling the owner occupancy or didn't go through the process or or or does that make sense? I I I just got lost in in in the complications here in many ways. So um there has been a lot of conversation around um utility infrastructure and the addition of any more ADUs into this mix. The presentation we didn't talk much about what kind of strain this might have put on utilities. I don't know if you can speak to that at all or not. Um, I guess I just wanted to make sure that we were talking in some way, shape, or form, if we're talking about opening things up for more ADUs, what kind of impact has the the past edition of ADUs put on to the public works? Can you answer that in any way, shape, or form?

Not at this time.

Okay. All right. So, that piece of the conversation I think we need to include in some way, shape, or form. I'm sure that's public works getting pulled into this, and I'm probably they're probably very happy I'm pulling them into this as well. Um, short-term rentals are the other issue that I I I find myself a little uncomfortable with. We know the integrated ADUs and the and the the detached ADUs, you've done some great mapping here, but there is an overlay map somewhere that we can figure out to put short-term rentals into these neighborhoods as well and determine what kind of density we're looking at. Very transitory folks that are potentially just um it's an over an over impact in some of the neighborhoods. That's the one of the key things I'm worried about, too. I I don't know how best to do that. I think we may need some time on that. I think the individual components, a heat map of the short-term rentals is out there, and you've done great work here on the mapping of these, but in some way, shape or form, being able to see all of that together really would bring graphically across kind of the impact, I think, of of of short-term rentals and ADUs together. Um, I I'll move on and then circle back.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, thank you Jamie. I know this has been a lot of work and get probably getting up to speed on where everything is at. So, thank you for the time and energy of you and your team to kind of get us uh all on the same page here. Um, so something you said earlier about um, you know, having a ADU uh, you know, signing off that it's safe and habitable. Is there a legal liability to us as a city if we say that an ADU is habitable and and ready to rock and roll then that we could therefore incur some sort of legal liability because of that? Did I hear that correctly?

Yes. All units that were built prior to 2014 were supposed to have an agent safety at testation which puts the liability back on the homeowner because we did not inspect them. Anything after that is fully inspected by us prior to certific certificate of occupancy. Yeah. Would a CO count as as that sort of habitable space, you know, requirement, like a certificate of occupancy? Could that be seen as kind of that same thing? Not well, most of the units that were built that came in under the voluntary registration didn't go through permitting. They were just done. They didn't get a certificate of occupancy. They didn't get a permit. So, that's why we as a city were not going to take on the liability of that. is why we asked for the agent safety attestation.

I see. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Um then do you think there's any interest in bringing the legal non-conforming units up to speed um to current requirements? You know, because they're legal non-conforming. They don't have to adhere to any of the the the framework that we've kind of predicated all these conversations on. Um, do you think that that would be do do you think there's a lot of a lot of um issues with trying to bring some of those non-conforming those legal non-conforming legal non-conforming units up to these current standards?

Um, I think we could have that with many number of residential units in the city. Um, but there is not a lot of standing for us to go out there and just inspect a private property. Um the only thing thing we have is an unsafe building uh code in our code of ordinances and that is a very extreme thing where we would look at pro possibly condemnation of of a property. So I don't know that we have an in between at this point to try and and check the livability of those.

So somebody goes to see click fix and send and somebody says hey I think somebody has a an ADU that's out of compliance. What would be the the next step for us as a city? Um people can report it to community development or through CC C clickfix and we do send a code compliance officer out to the unit and they do um talk to the owner about what's there and they can go into the unit and physically see if there is an ADU there and um send them down the path to get an approval for that. If there is not one, we will research it first to make sure it's not on our list of something that we're aware of.

Okay. Um do you so you kind of went over the stricter enforcement um aspect of of this kind of as a as a next step. Do you do you anticipate there being a timeline to try to get something kind of put to speed with some sort of process or standard that we're you know trying to get up to? I'm hopeful that I would say probably by the end of of January, maybe in February, we'll get letters out letting people making them aware so we can at least start the process of making people aware of trying to get those um compliance um for owner occupancy back in place as well as um we'll set an initial um for owner occupancy. Now, we'll look at what the changes are and we'll seek out all the ones we're aware of that have changed since they got their permit um and try to get compliance from those as well.

Okay. have two different letters going out. And I assume we have some sort of violation matrix mapped out if somebody is non-compliant or they're out of something out out of whack with with something within the code that there's some we have some sort of like hey this is what's going to happen if you're you're not owner occupied or whatever else. Uh for owner occupancy yes I mean it basically we can um ask them to remove the the ADU or essentially remove the stove. it doesn't to alleviate the unit that's there. Um that's one of the the easiest solutions for something like that.

Okay. But we I mean but we do have kind of a violation matrix to kind of when we were doing these enhanced enforcement procedures that we have a way to have some teeth behind it. Um the lane use code is a little bit different than most of our compliance processes that we start out with a notice of violation that says okay here's what's wrong and here's how many days you have to fix it. Um and usually I mean we try to educate first. We tried to work towards a voluntary compliance. Um very rarely do we get to the point where we're at the next step which is working with um the police officers uh code enforcement to actually issue a ticket of violation which would then trigger um going to court. Okay, great. I got more but I'm happy to kick the can.

Okay, first I want to um apologize if I have you repeat anything. I'm struggling with some hearing stuff right now. Um, but I wanted to to also acknowledge what great work you did. I can't even imagine the time and effort it went um for you and staff to compile all this and the little nuances that I didn't even think of like someone building an ADU, not putting a stove in, getting it checked out, and then putting a stove in. Like, how can you keep up with all of that? Um, I find it to be impossible. But I don't think it's a problem that we're dealing with alone, right? I think it's all over. um especially in communities where the price of housing has um gone up so much recently. And so I think it's a balancing act that we need to kind of um try to maintain. And I appreciate some of your um thoughts about going forward on stricter enforcement and how to do that. Um obviously you don't have unlimited hours to go and knock on everyone's door and make sure that they're compliant, nor do we have the budget for that. And I don't think that's um a responsible use of that. Um, but making sure, [clears throat] um, I wanted to touch on the aging infrastructure a little bit. Um, because I do think that that is important for us to realize as we kind of get into it. I know you can't answer the questions right now. Um, but you know, our utility rates just increased to fix dilapitated pipes. Um, and I think it would be important for public works to conduct a capacity study specifically for the EN neighborhoods to ensure that the lines can handle increased taps and usage that will come with, you know, potentially adding in more ADUs. And so I find that piece of information would be super helpful. Um, as well as the STR component, like getting it, can we get a map of not just ADUs, but STRs as well, approved ones that, you know, I get that there's some that, you know, aren't, but we have systems in place hopefully, but

so we know the strain on all of our, you know, roads and parking and systems in every neighborhood. Um, and so I just think that those two kind of components would be helpful. Um, and then I also do think um, we have heard that direct neighborhood input hasn't been heard. And so I think it's important like you mentioned in your presentation that we do do some more community outreach as we look at these specific neighborhoods to increase ADUs and um and potentially like do a series of engaged Durango forums or neighborhood specific focus groups um to ensure residents feel heard regarding their specific alley and street concerns because everyone is different. So anyways, those are my thoughts overall. Thanks All righty. Um, let me take a moment. Um, I understand Shirley is online now. So, Shirley, do you have any questions?

Oh, can y'all hear me? Yes. Oh, interesting. Okay, great. It worked. Um, so thank you so much uh for the presentation. I I I I don't really have any questions. Um except for that you didn't mention anything about parking. Uh unless I missed it. Um is there any parking requirements or is that a whole separate presentation or what is the requirement for for parking related to ADUs?

Um parking was covered under the current regulations and there is an one additional space required. So basically three spaces for the property. However, there is a provision that allows you to utilize one of those spaces on street under certain circumstances.

Okay. Um Okay. Well, that's really all the question I have. I feel like most of the concern for I've heard from constituents is related to parking issues. So, um I think if we can get that kind of squared away and resolved, um you know, that's that's really what what I feel like has been such a big complaint. So, um, but I'm standing by, um, if if I think of anything else. So, thank you for, um, for plugging me in, mayor. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Kip.

Uh, Jamie, it seems like we've got a lot of issues that we just we need some clean up on, and you've got some solutions to a couple of those. Um, for me, it makes no sense to even think about adding more ADUs into the system. Have you thought at all about putting a freeze on additional ADUs being created at this point until we've got our systems under control? And let me ask that question first. That would not be something that we could do at a staff level. That would come from council direction. I is is there a capacity issue with continuing to take on new ADU applications while trying to clean up the systems for the prior um like I said, we only get about 10 applications a year.

Not that not an issue there. Okay. Um, but trying to look at the 70 properties that are still hanging out there right now, we would have to to figure out workload wise where we could work that in. And and you addressed an issue that um and I I'm sorry the years got mixed up for me, but um staff came back after a month or two months and just said this is this is way beyond what we can do. Are are we in a different position now or are there limitations just from uh capac staff capacity, enforcement capacity, something along those lines that would keep us from tightening down this system a little bit better?

Not knowing fully what they were looking at. I think they were digging in and doing a lot of research back then that I don't know that we need to do now. Um we would not be in a place to inspect something that's already been built and covered up. There's nothing for us to look at at that point. We can't tell what the wiring is behind the wall.

Okay. um that limits what our ability is. But now bringing those into compliance is more about are they on a lot where it's permitted? Do they meet the design standards? If they don't, can we go through the alternative compliance and gain that compliance? So, it's it's it's going to be a a a larger process with a lot of moving parts of trying to negotiate things that maybe were not in the a place to be permitted since they're non-conforming. So, so fair to say that it's something would be triggered if there is a a danger to the inhabitant if if we had an ADU in our in our block and they stepped out of the shower and their foot went right through the floor. I mean, if there's a if there's a real problem with the ADU, then they can complain to the city and something would follow up at that point. And on the flip side, new ADUs coming in or this backlog of ADUs that are it just haven't been keeping up with owner occupancy, we can catch up with those.

Yes. All the all the new units are being inspected. That comes with the process and we're going to put things in place for the owner occupancy. Okay. Just to clarify for me and I'm sorry you're repeating this again. The grandfathered units that were given, you don't have to worry about this application and until they do 67% remodel. We would never even touch those units. They could be falling apart on us all. They as far as they the owners want to let it and we've got no recourse on those. Correct. No, sir. Not unless they apply for a building permit. Okay. All right. Thank you.

All righty. I have one question. Okay. So, you have a total of 161 units that are tracked by the city of Durango in all various stages of development. Do you have any idea how many are out there that we aren't tracking? Are is it like a hundred 90 because I know there's a lot of them out there. Yeah, there's at least 70 that we're aware of that came through as part of the voluntary registration that never came to resolution. Um and and staff has not had the ability to follow up on those. Okay. So, are you saying that it's 70 plus 161? Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Jamie. Um kind of follow up to Kip. Um, are you familiar with other municipalities that interject when housing conditions are thought to be unsafe? Is that normal municipal response is to insert themselves into those conversations or in your experience, is that something that is usually between the the renter and the homeowner? Okay. But never have you have you heard of other municipalities that kind of insert themselves in those conversations? Not unless it becomes u an unsafe situation where we consider condemnation of the structure. So, and that is that where we could potentially come in if there's a a potential condemnation of a structure that where it is unhabitable for anyone to live there. Right.

Okay. But normally in normal circumstances, if somebody complains that their foot fell through the floor, it wouldn't be the city or municipal municipality's response to come in and do something about it. It would be between the land owner and the the lease, right?

Okay. Thank you. Um, and then when we when I introduced this back in October, um, September, we're talking about just EN3 for the allowance of detached units, only EN3 and detached units. Correct. Um, is it safe to say that because of current setback and lot size requirements that not every parcel is going to be available to even have a detached unit available?

Yes, that is accurate. Okay. So um so it's about one established neighborhood and not all the lot require not all the lots are going to be even eligible to or even people might not have an appetite to even put in a detached ADU but they do have an a current allowance for an attached ADU. Correct. Right. I believe it was for the EN12 and three zones. Right now they all have parcel size limitations for detached and we were looking to but there are current allowances for detached units in EN1 and two correct or is it

there's a parcel limitation on one two and three they are allowed but you have to have a certain size parcel for them to be allowed integrated allowed by right um but the parcel size of one 123 will dictate whether you can do a detached okay so it's allowed but you have to have a parcel big enough

okay great thank Uh, mayor, I guess I wanted a little bit of a council conversation. And Jamie, that doesn't mean you're totally off the hook on this one yet, but um the the the what Jamie shared has changed my thinking a lot about pausing everything at this point until we get the systems in place with the city to make sure that what we're agreeing to and what these owners are agreeing to they're they're also following through on. So, I'm I'm I'm lost a little bit in regards to what next steps would be out of a study session if we've got a modification based on the presentation presenting some new stuff. Does that make sense?

No, no, that's absolutely. I was waiting until the discussion would because I think that's the part that uh as staff I just want to make sure that we know where we're at because this was an item that was brought by council. Uh so, it was at the direction of council. I think it went through CDC. it that when we looked at changing the to allow the parcel size requirement that went through CDC. This CDC has not seen. Yes. But I mean as far as the original council request, it has gone through CDC. So that means that it the next step in the process would it would go to first consideration.

Well, so I I pulled it until we had this study and then I guess maybe it's a procedural thing. Would I need to potentially if I if I decide or anybody I guess decides that they want to move forward with this because right now nothing's on the table. We we don't have anything up for consideration because I had pulled it. Correct. Was it pulled or was it referred to the CDC?

CDC came back and kicked it back to us and then then after councelor Koso made some statements I decided to pull it until we had this exact study session for for their next steps. And so from my understanding, there is nothing on the table. It would take something new to to resurrect the current that that previous ordinance to bring it up under a new business. At least that's how I see it.

I think that because the motion that passed was pulled it until this since this happened, it would then go back on as first consideration for an action to either be approved, denied, or pulled indefinitely. So there would have to be the the [snorts] trigger for it was pulled to until we had this study session. So since we've had this study session, it would then go back onto the first consideration for then the council to decide what is the next step for this item. Correct, Mark?

Yeah, that's a good summary. Then the purpose of that is that ordinances can't just disappear. Another counselor can pick them up. Um but they have to be dealt with officially. So in the the assertion that yeah it was pulled pending this study session means it would automatically come back on and at that point you can modify it, amend it, vote on it as is. You just go through the rest of that ordinance process. So it would come back as a I think it made it through first reading, right? No. No. So that's where it paused at first reading. Yeah, first reading. So it would come back as a first reading, right? And that would be next council meeting. Not not tonight, but not tonight. text counts. I mean, you said first reading, I meant actually consideration.

Consideration. Yeah. Sorry. Old habits die hard.

Well, I think we have a few different options. We can either vote for Yes. or vote it down and remove it. Um or amend it to what however we see fit. If we want to do more enforcement, this would be one way to continue the conversation, which Yeah. So, that's probably what I'm asking is what's the best way to continue this conversation. I think I I'd love to see some some followup on the the data that Jamie shared today and and represented a little bit easier, um, better digestion, and then also there's just several issues here to talk about. So, yeah, I think we'll be able to discuss those at

the next council meeting. Okay. Um and then um because it will be up for consideration. Um and then that would allow us to have the conversation on the dis about what we think about it. Yes or no? That would happen at the next council meeting. Yes, sir. I'll be out for that council meeting. I know. So we'll we'll deal with that internally. It would be nice in that council meeting if you had a list of things that you're already planning to change like we're doing X Y and Z like concise so we can kind of Does that make sense what I'm trying to say? like we we've changed these things already for the stricter enforcement. These are our plans for compliance. So that way I understand it. Okay. Okay.

Can I just ask can we can we find out if council's okay tableabling it until the following council meeting and not at the next council meeting? I I know that's a little irregular, but this is an issue. It's going to be to mark on that and I I I've been elbows deep on this one and and for me to be absent is frustrating. confident that your fellow counselors will do you the favor of tableabling it until you can be here. That's been the common practice. Yeah, we've done that before. Okay. So, it's not like we haven't but it needs to be done at that meeting. I'm not moving it. Um yeah, I I I think that that would be just fine. So, maybe the first meeting in February, but we'll table it comes at the next meeting.

Yeah. For the next Okay, I see. I can see more questions coming once some of the data that Jamie shared comes back out. We'll just take that on as one-on-one questions. Is that uh I do have the follow-up items. We'll try to get them to the council as soon as we're able to get them. Uh hopefully we're able to get them uh now that we have it seems Well, I'm going to take that back. If the council decides to go ahead and table it to another meeting, that gives us at least a month out, which I hope would give us enough time to have that follow-up information ready for the council for that discussion. Jimmy or Jose, do you need council direction for any of the enforcement or anything that's that that you've discussed? And I mean, you don't need us to say, "Hey, go about this this way."

Like, you're you're you're good with where things are at. No. Okay. Just want to make sure that you weren't like left in the in the in alerts like, "Well, I can't do anything until you guys tell me to do it." So, I just want to make sure that you had you had enough tools at your disposal to do what you need to do. Okay. Thank you, Jessica. Any Um, Shirley, do you have any more questions?

Okay, seeing um hearing no response from Shirley and no raised hands, let's move on to the next item. And the next item under council requested presentations is the resiliency and recovery fund presentation. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Tommy Crosby, economic opportunity manager in the prosperity office. Um here this afternoon um to discuss uh the outline of the framework of a resiliency and recovery fund. Um this would be really targeting our innovative housing and economic development strategic plan goal. Um, and really this would be another arrow in the quiver when it comes to tools we're able to provide to protect our local businesses in our community. So to set the table a little bit, um, council requested a study session on this topic to provide a concept level framework of what a program like this might look like. Um, I really want to stress that this is this is really just a concept only. Um, we we took the ball only so far. um we didn't go really into the weeds of some of the minutia of what this program would look like. We wanted to provide um an a maybe not a 30,000 we'll call it a 10,000 foot overview to council of what a program like this could look like. Our goal today is to provide an overview overview of that framework and start to build the house a little bit on the structure of what a program like this might look like. So the situation at hand um we have uh occasionally rare high impact uh unforeseen incidents that can have a really disproportionate impact on small businesses in our community. When I say rare uh since 2023 there have been three documented incidents that kind of would

fit into the criteria of a program like this. 2023 to 2025 there have been a total of three. Um, we're looking at targeting gaps, um, gaps where private insurance is is denied or doesn't quite fit into the situation. Um, we can really see the risk starts to snowball and the threat to those businesses having to leave our community um, or permanently having to close um, due to the inability to recover from these rare high impact incidents. The ripple effects of that I don't really need to describe into great detail. Loss of jobs, um potentially essential services, neighborhood vitality, just to name a few. So, I want to be pretty clear on uh the concept that we're bringing to you today of what it is and what it is not. This is really going to be a last resort tool. um with with [clears throat] the limited number of instances where a tool like this would actually be used, it would absolutely be the exception of when a tool like this and a resource like this would be used. Um it should be meant to bridge the gap. This is this isn't going to be longterm um uh a long-term force source of funding. This would really be bridging that gap to make sure that a business can keep its doors open and remain in our community. Um, and then this is meant to complement private insurance, not to replace. Um, so flipping uh flipping the coin to the other side of what this program is not. We do not want this to be a replacement or a substitute for a business's private insurance policy. Um, we don't want this to, you know, just fill in the blank with uh routine operating risks or normal maintenance that a business hasn't hasn't budgeted for. Um, and this is not meant to be a general grant program for small businesses. This isn't like some of our other grant programs like the

Renew Grant where any business at any time can make a public facing property improvement. Um, the use of this program would definitely be the exception. So looking at what could some core eligibility standards look like for a program like this? Um one that we we have landed on is this idea of an unforeseen event, unscheduled, unplanned for, um sewage backup, um unforeseen flood, um something that is out of the ordinary. You're not replacing your water heater, um or your HVAC system, something like that. Um there would need to be a documented hardship component. So, this wouldn't just be word of mouth. Uh, city gets a call, hey, my business flooded. Um, I need to activate this emergency impact fund. Um, we would likely need to have some sort of documentation showing that they uh applied to uh have their insurance cover this incident and that incident was denied or only part partial coverage was provided. And again, this fund would be coming in as that bridge to help that business keep their doors open. um likely looking at some sort of no fault standard. Um this this wasn't uh an employee that left the sink on. Um uh this this would be something like a sewage backup that is that is out of the business's control in all likelihood. And then location and standing, they need to be in good standing with the city active and valid business license. And then within city limits um would would be kind of the the extent of of coverage for a program like this. We looked at a few menu kind of a menu of support options for for this program. Um, one lane could be a traditional grant uh one-time source of funding to uh help cover unforeseen costs. Um, other option could be a loan. Um, the city provides that upfront funding maybe with a a low or no interest cost um and

gets repaid over time. Or we could look at some sort of hybrid. um we could provide that one-time payment um and maybe if it's a larger incident, you provide that onetime payment with uh another component, another arm of that funding package that is going to need to be repaid over time. That would really help us stretch those dollars as far as possible. Um so in your uh study session packet, you received a conceptual outline of what this grant would look like uh sorry, what this fund would look like. Um, by no means is that a a final version. We just wanted to show council that this is something we can stand up very quickly if if council does so choose to move forward. We have a great existing platform that we've streamlined all of our grants onto submittable. Um the uh the fund um the funding application that was included in that packet was just kind of boilerplate of giving you all example of what that might look like. But the exact questions and verbiage um would change significantly based on how if how and if council chooses to move forward. Um the nice thing about Submittable, it's kind of a one-stop shop. Um there there's a great user experience and then also a great back-end staff experience. Um you can have the applicant submit and then they get routed internally to other city departments for review and approval. um they can upload all their documents to one uh streamline software. And then on that note of kind of back-end multi-ep department uh components of this um a program like this would would be facilitated in close coordination with the safety and risk team. We had a lot of conversations prior prior to this presentation with the safety and risk team of how these incidents tend to roll out, how does the city tend to handle them. Um they would be a lockstep

partner. um as far as the internal coordination of this fund would work. Um high level understanding of what the process flow would likely look like. We'd get those policy and guard rail the the policy guardrail set in place um determined by city council. Um staff would uh administer this program. We could keep it internal to the city. Um and then the workflow again uh incident would occur, applicant or business would apply and submittable. Staff would review and potentially recommend that to council. Um and and depending on the circumstance, we would try to get that request in front of council as soon as absolutely possible um to really be a meaningful partner at the table of meeting that immediate need to bridge that gap with funding. Um, one potential partner pathway that I really want to highlight, we reached out to Region 9, Economic Development District of Southwest Colorado, and uh, they were very interested in partnering with the city on um, either creating a new loan program or altering um, a similar emergency impact loan program that they will activate from time to time. Um, they they most recently activated it with the Po Pagosa and Viaceto floods. um they have been a great partner with similar loan programs. We stood up uh a loan program for some of our other grant programs. When applicants needed that funding upfront, they can take their award letter to region 9. Region 9 writes them that check. Once the work is completed, um the city would reimburse them. Um, but with that all with all that being said, I think we if we do choose to go the pathway of a loan or kind of that hybrid model where we have a loan and a grant, region 9 is standing in the wings ready to partner um and and build out a potential program with us. Some of the outstanding uh question marks uh you know, how narrow or broad do we want

this program to be? Um do we have a preference for grant loan hybrid? And then some of those guard rails that we want to put in place uh if this program is to be established. Is there a cap for incidents? Do we look at um a fixed dollar amount or do we look at the percent of um total uh hardship costs? Um what are those documentation minimums? Um some important questions that we would seek to answer depending on direction from council. Um potential next steps. Again, this was meant to be a highlevel conceptual overview. Um, if council expresses interest, staff would really get into the weeds and start dissecting what a program like this could actually look like. Um, and we would bring that back to you all um, as seen appropriate. I'm happy to answer any questions, comments, or concerns that you might have. Tommy, thanks. I appreciate that. And credit goes to city manager for taking a couple of very hazy ideas and pulling them together into something cohesive and and to you and the team for really building something that I think's got a lot of potential here. So, um I I had some nitpick stuff that I won't go on in in regards to the form, but loss of revenue due to any shutdown would be a part of this form. I just didn't see it when I was reviewing it, but it'll be there somewhere. Correct. Okay. Um the um there was a line that was no active litigation against the city. it was in a checkbox list that that was a limiting factor to it. Um, after talking to the city attorney, I just wanted to say that we should really have related to this claim against the city. So, if no active litigation related to this claim against the city, um, I I do think a business that might have something else, a parking ticket, whatever the heck, might be arguing out in front of the city, it shouldn't eliminate them from the the the completion in this. Um, I really appreciate the loan element in working with region 9. I think these

public, private, nonprofit, governmental partnerships are great. Um certainly uh would be interested also in talking a little bit more about how the program might be used if we were doing infrastructure rebuilds down Main Avenue for example and we've shut down an entire block for a summer for half a year whatever it might take to redo these um you know the ideas that I've bounced around a little bit with the the bid and some other entities were how do we get these businesses to be supported during this time of something that's not necessarily their fault but it just needs to happen. And so these big rebuilds that were really going to be blocking access, etc., etc. So, you had talked about it being kind of a one-time kind of emergency thing, and I guess I'd be a little bit interested in talking a little bit more about how it might apply towards something that is planned is not necessarily an emergency, but still significant business interruption. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Yeah. Thank great great comments and questions. Um, I think if we do decide to take that next step, absolutely would try to include and address those in a subsequent kind of more fine-tuned version of a program like this.

Okay. And maybe a couple more questions about specifics that may not have been vetted quite yet. Um, so when we talk about bridging the and I apologize if you've already answered this and I just didn't catch it. Um, but when you talk about bridging the gap when quote unquote insurance is not timely, would you anticipate that if insurance money does come through at a at a at a later date that they would reimburse that grant cost back to them? I think that's where maybe we open the door to these discussions around loan hybrid. Do we um do we categorize uh for instance uh flood occurs um it's tied up in insurance for 3 months. this business wants to get their doors open. City enters the picture, provides a hybrid grant that is contingent on if if this insurance claim is approved, the city would be reimbursed. I think that could that could be a um a great potential option. So, if that claim eventually is denied, the city's already provided that funding, business gets to open, but if insurance approves, city gets that money that money refunded.

Okay, great. Thank you for clarification. Um, and then do you anticipate there being some sort of grant committee that would approve some of these and recommend them for council for approval or would it just be like one or two people within staff?

It's a good question. Um, I think there's uh there's benefits to both. I think with uh in it with a program like this, I think smaller might be better just to be able to very quickly respond. Um and then having that additional layer of council approval. Um I I think we have identified a group of community both internal and external partners that could be a strong partner in a program like this. Um likely pretty similar to the review group that we have for our economic development incentive program. Um but I think a good bridge that will cross when and if we get there. Great. Yeah. I just wanted to, you know, just think about kind of how we're going to kind of put these pieces in place. So yeah, this is great. Thank you so much.

If I could just add a little bit to the funding portion of it because I I do want to make sure that uh especially when public is is listening that you know tax dollars are always going to have something tied with it, right? We just don't give them a check and say go off and here you go. Uh we there was always going to be qualifiers that go with that. You know whether it is a loan until you get your insurance back and then that money comes back. There are things that will be associated with it. So, I just want to make sure that as we go through that, there's always that component that it's a reimbursement or it's something that bridges that and then when you get it fixed and we receive the money back, it it does do offer that assistance, but it would be limited. Um, the other part of it is we talking a little bit on the caps. Uh, I don't think that this is going to be something if it's we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars or even $100,000. That's probably not what we're looking at. I mean, to be specific, this is probably like a 5,000 an occurrence, and I don't even know how many occurrences we could have on that. Uh, just funding wise, we just, you know, depending on where it goes. I want to kind of put some perspective on what we're looking to do. Maybe it goes up to 10 or 15 depending on where we're at, but be cognizant of just the financials that go with it. Um, we'll continue to work on that as we go and look at funding side, but just want to to make sure that we're kind of putting some ideas of kind of what we think financially might be feasible. Jose, with it being such a rare event, does it really need to be as low as 5,000 per incident, which could get eaten up pretty quickly? One of the incidents that was referred to was clearly, you know, 30,000, $40,000, $50,000 incident. So I I guess I I I want to push back a little bit or at least ask the question, why at a five or a 10 if the business that's affected is clearly over that threshold. I think what you're looking at on some of those areas is just financially do we have the funding for it? Um if we're specifically talking for that one business, you're looking at tapping a fund for $50,000. That's a that's a large amount of money for us to be able

to go through. And I think that's what we're looking at here is when you look at the budget as y'all have gone through, we don't have in some of those instances that kind of cash to be able to pull away from that. That means it's going to come from operations and we've got to figure out where that goes from. So this is a hybrid program that we're looking to go through running through our prosperity office. But the funding that that money comes through specifically in this budget year is going to come from an operational component if it's established right now. So that's the part of where I'm trying to put this perspective in in guards of it of like what could this possibly look at. I don't know if I could find that kind of funding right now for an incident like that for right now. Um so I'm just trying to talk just try to put in a uh a portion of this is what it might look like here. If we look at something out down the future um where we know that we can plan on maybe 27 we're able to kind of look at and see hey here's some ways that we can plan on it. Here's some more ways that we can put funding on it. I think that's an easier way to go about it. I think if we're doing construction projects like uh if we're doing a main avenue infrastructure, that's something we're planning on. That's something we can put more funding aside knowing that that's coming up. I just think on things that happen uh right at the bat, you know, things that are unexpected also are going to be unexpected for us. And being able to have cash at that amount may be very difficult. Not saying impossible, just saying be very difficult.

Yeah. I I'm just I I guess I'm a little worried that it's not the business owner that's at fault here and yet if the city is contributo to the problem that we're saying because we're tied on budget, we won't reimburse the business owner. So, this is probably a topic for a larger conversation, we don't need to be having it here, but I guess I I'm not totally sold on it being limited at a five or 10. So, let's leave some flexibility in the conversation for that.

Yeah. Um, so I do think it's a delicate balance um, between like the funding and I mean I'm a small business owner. I understand the city's economic health depends on small business. However, the city's our finances um, we're not an insurance company. And so we have to find that balance of if if there is a way we can support small businesses and make sure they don't go out of business from something that wasn't their fault, like I am here for it. Like let's figure it out and let's do it. But I do think that there's a delicate balance. The main avenue infrastructure project's a perfect example of that project. It is not uh unforeseen. We are going to be planning for that years in advance. I think that's a mitigation, not not a funding like okay, how can we open up access on in the alleys? How can we put up signage? Like can we contribute in those ways? Mitigation ways versus funding ways. And I think that that is imperative that we do. And we can't because it could just become an endless stream of people asking and requiring these these this money. And it's easy for us to say, I can see three instances in the last three years. But once this is out, how many people are going to apply for it? How many people are we going to tell no to because it doesn't fall within these requirements? how many amazing business owners that are such an integral part of our community that give back that you know volunteer on nonprofit boards or we're going to have to be like that doesn't fit and and that's what gets to be it gets to be harder I think once this is out there and so I think we need to have strict guidelines and I think we need to really be fiscally responsible with this fund and make sure that it's like what's best for the city and the businesses and you financially responsible to our citizens. Um, again, I support recovery fund for unforeseen disasters, but for planned infrastructure projects, I think the

role should be mitigation, not reimbursement. Um, I think uh tangible mitigation over cash revenue. I do not think I think it's really hard for us to determine estimated loss sales from someone um and you know what their books look like and how much time is it going to take our finance department to dive into all that stuff versus it's easier to audit specific on reimburseable costs. This is how much the cleanup was. This is how much this fix was if that makes sense. And so that makes more sense to me than this like intangible like loss of revenue. um at you know and again I'm trying to look at this both sides like business owner and um and where does the city's responsibility come in we can't save everyone and everything and I you know as a business owner you know you walk into risk that's part of life and it's part of owning your own business and if there's part of me that's like if you don't have the guts for it or the like you know I can go and make a paycheck working for someone else now but there's also a part of me that's like we should support if things happen out of our control. So it's again I'm trying to find this balance versus like saving everyone all the time. Sorry you're standing there and I'm like ranting and not actually giving you a question. Um how I so I would want to know how the policy defines a trigger event. I think that's important to delineate once you like dive in a little further. Um, if a business claims lost revenue, how does the city plan to audit those claims equitably without creating an administrative nightmare for our finance department? Um, I think funding sustainability like are, you know, how many years are we doing this for? What is the outlook? Is it going to be a pilot program or are we going to, you know, financially sustain this fund forever? And if that's what we're going to do, financially sustain this fund forever, should we look at

other things that aren't fully funded before we do that transit and other I don't know. Just throwing that out there. I think you did a wonderful job throwing this together and utilizing the resources we have. Yes, to region 9 and that loan component because I think businesses could really use that, especially load to no interest. Like that would be huge to help supplement some of those like being able to take 60 grand and like pay it off over three years versus having to deal with it all right now. I can make my business work with that. Does that make sense? And so that combo I think would be like on it. Okay, I think I'm done. Thanks. Thank you.

I I just wanted to comment briefly. heard the statement made that this program could possibly end up in council approval of applications and legal will never be able to recommend that. If you guys choose to go down this path, you you need to establish a fund and then have that fund administered by the administration. It's just too rot with I mean you're going to get if you leave it to a council approval of an application, it becomes politicized and I'll be defending you guys forever if it doesn't get a word or whatever. So the advice is and I think I gave this to councelor Koso originally when he came this idea is yes you can do something you just have to create a vehicle you have to create a fund and you have to let it get administered by the administration not voted on by the council for individual claims

I just in response council lawyer um I I I have a hard time when we keep saying that the city is the priority and not the small business in this in this instance it it seems to me like the conversation keeps saying here's all the things that could go wrong and here's the slippery slope that we could slide down and there's going to be all these potential problems instead of going back to a small business that had sewage blown out because of city work being done and not getting paid back for an incident that was not their fault. So I I guess I want to I feel like we have to keep limiting this conversation to the very rare event that it is. It's one a year from from what we've seen in the last three or four years. So, the time, the money that might be invested, I don't believe that it's going to be so impactful that it could could have supported the transportation fund or whatever else we're talking about in regards to to to where this money could go. And and I think it deprioritizes the small businesses that we really are relying on for all of our sales tax. So, at some point, I really do feel like we need to prioritize a small business in this in these conversations. Um, I would just like to also maybe paint a a better picture the the business flood because there's also no backflow prevention by the by the building owner. So, it wasn't just the city's fault. I think there was there was complicity with the building owner that that there could have been something to do prevent that. So, just just for for clarity sake. Um, and then also the business doesn't pay the sales tax. The people pay the sales tax. The business remits. And so the people are the ones that that pay the sales tax. So just I understand that we rely on those small business. They're the ones that are doing the risk. But I I I feel like yes, small business is the lifeblood of our community, but it ultimately it is the people shopping there that are paying the sales tax. the the the the

middleman is the is the business for emitting that sales tax. And just real quick too, sorry. Like I Oh, well, you said that sales tax ver or city city versus business owner. And I just want to say it's more like taxpayer constituent fiscally responsibility. Not necessarily protecting the city. I mean, we are that's our job, but like I'm responsible to the And so when I get an email saying like we don't save one business because I did like that's not our that's not your job as a city counselor. You just have to like I just want to be aware of everything. That's all I'm trying to do is find that middle ground, not not taking into account small business.

Um thank you Jessica. Okay. So, Tommy, I was wondering since you're still doing um Shirley, are you there? Oh, I'm here. I wanted to just ask a question when the time comes. Mayor, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Okay, go ahead. Oh, okay. Um, thank you. So, I guess Tommy, could you elaborate on the program at Pagosa Springs? I think you mentioned it in your comments, but um is there can you tell us a little bit more about the program or if they had a program?

Uh I'd be happy to look in um look into what PAOS is doing. I think what I referenced in my presentation was the emergency impact loan program that region 9 has. Um it's not uh it's not always activated. It's uh uh it's activated upon need. So the most recent activation was um the flooding this fall in Viaceto and Pagosa. Region 9 reactivated that emergency loan fund um specific to the incident of the flooding in Pagosa and Viaceto.

But there was not a reference to the program that or or did they have a program on Main Street in Pagosa? Uh, I'm not I I don't know if they have stood up their own proprietary program directly related to the Main Street renovations. I'd be more than happy to look into that. Um, but off the top of my head, I'm I'm not sure if they do have a program or not.

Okay. Well, I would be interested. Um, I I just I seems like I heard that they did. So, if you have any information you can share, I would appreciate it. Um, and that's all I had. Thank you, Mayor. All righty. So, my question, thank you, Shirley. Okay, Tommy, could you look at maybe Okay, I see this as a boond doll. You know, it looks like it's way we're way out of our lane. So, maybe if you could investigate um if we could give like a donation or some kind of funding to region 9 to implement it for the city of Durango in case we need this kind of assistance long term. that might be an easier solution. And if you could look into that and then and also I'm a little bit concerned about um um the need for some people to always focus on special interests because we all are here to look out for the whole city of Durango, not certain people or certain businesses. And I'm just stating that broadly because I really am concerned about people bringing forward projects or initiatives that focus on their friends and family in special interest when we're supposed to be here for the whole city of Durango. So, thank you,

mayor. That was a very lightly veiled accusation that I'm bringing up a special interest thing. So, I'm just going to push back massively on that. I've got no interest in any of the businesses that have been involved in the incidents or or the use of this fund. So, I've been accused of prioritizing small business over the people that pay the sales taxes and I've been hit with the fact that I might have been doing this for a friend. So, I guess we can just go ahead and move this conversation on, but that's not going to stand as a public comment without some kind of push back from me. All

righty. Any more comments? Um, mayor, one final note. Uh, would just like to clarify on uh tonight's um regular meeting agenda. Um, council will see the local event marketing grant. The prosperity office prioritized this presentation um over a local event marketing grant presentation and study session. We'll get back to that regular cadence of presenting um our grants prior to regular meetings um starting in March. So, just wanted to make that brief clarification for tonight's regular meeting and the local event marketing grants you'll see on the agenda. Mayor, I'm unsure that we Thank you, Tommy.

I'm unsure that we've given any direction on what should be happening next. There's no direction. Well, what this council is looking for, he had he had multiple questions in his presentation. This was a study session and we've done our study. So, unless there's any more questions on it, it looks like our time's up at 3 at 4:20. 3:20 there to uh move on to the next next topic. Nobody asked for a vote for direction, but Tommy had questions on what staff should be looking at to further this topic.

I I read that as like things to consider when we do talk about it. That's how I took it, but I I could be wrong. So to consider it, somebody will need to bring this up again as a new business to restart the process. Yeah, I feel confident if there's something Tommy needs to address, he would have addressed it. The next topic.

Thank you, mayor. The next presentation is the recreational vehicle parking presentation. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tim, uh counselors. Happy New Year and thanks for asking me to come up in here and uh present to you today. Um I am Chris Gonzalez. I'm the deputy chief of the police department and I'm here representing safety and quality of life. All right, find my space bar. Um, the purpose, uh, I'm here to provide city council with a clear summary of existing regulations cons concerning and governing Oh, thank you. to leave the chief to bail me out. Yes. Uh, governing on street parking of RVs, boats, and commercial vehicles in residential areas and to request direction Uh the key points uh long-term parking or storage of RVs, boats, trailers, and large commercial vehicles are prohibited on residential streets. Short-term parking is allowed for loading, unloading or trip preparation, and our enforcement at this time is complaint driven and focuses primarily on voluntary compliance. Um the council action requested is to provide us direction on whether we should maintain our existing code as is to return with a policy or code amendment option for you to review or to expand our public education outreach efforts. Um something I want to bring up a point is there is a difference between parking and storage. Uh the ordinances address parking which is how you put your

vehicle on the street. The land use and development code is what you can put on the street. I'll refer to the land use development code as code and the ordinance uh as ordinance throughout this. So to get started uh the code there are three of them. One is uh 3513 recreational vehicles. The next one's 22 which is boats and trailers. And the other one I want to point out to you guys is 23 which is commercial vehicles. In 3513 recreational vehicles, it says specifically RVs may not be stored in the public right of way. That's our streets. Uh this is uh uh in not just residential. This is actually in the U standards for the entire city. In 3522 it says boats and river rafts may not be shall not be stored or encroach upon any right ofway including sidewalks and trails. So that's streets, sidewalks and trails. So for both RVs and boats, this is a shall not be stored. This is not a uh any length of time. And so and final one before I go into a deeper explanation is this is in the residential code. Um, commercial vehicles are not allowed to be parked on the right ofway, which is the street, and that includes trailers. Uh, if you own a commercial vehicle that is small, you can park it in your driveway. If you have two, one, one has to be in the garage. So, something to think about is now we're telling uh explaining to you that RVs, boats, and trailers cannot be parked in any of our streets in the residential areas. What does this mean? Per the code, no RVs, trailers, boats, or even commercial

vehicles should be stored on city streets unless actively in use, such as a commercial trailer being used for renovations at a house or or if it's being loaded or unloaded. Illegally parking these vehicles is a code violation, not an ordinance violation. This goes back to the fact that parking tells you how to park. code tells us what we can park. There is no associated offense or repeated offense enforcement tool in our ordinances when it comes to this type of parking issue. So for recreational vehicles, long-term parking or storage on residential streets is prohibited. As I stated, RVs may also not be used for living or camping anywhere within the city limits. That means even in your driveway. Third, temporary parking is allowed and this is generally for up to 24 hours. Now, here's the fun thing. This is supposed to be for on your property and it's it's very loose here and it's not very well defined. Our code enforcement officers have been giving people 24 hours to to deal with loading, unloading, and trip preparation and takeown. By the code, if you park it overnight, that's storage. And they're not supposed to be doing that. And so that's where we start getting into confusion when it comes to enforcement with our community. Um, there is not to be any utility hookups, no power, no sewer, no water when it's parked on the street for any period of time. It's just not supposed to be. The only time they're allowed to do that is when it's on the private property, such as a driveway. Now, let's talk about boats. Uh boats, it's just plain and simple.

They cannot be by code stored on any public street. Now, if they're being loaded, unloaded, or um prepped for trip, but that's an active use. That's allowed. They cannot encroach on any public rightway. Um they do we do allow the short-term and parking but by even by code long-term storage must occur on private property. It says that very specifically. Now again finally on the commercial vehicle portion of it and this includes trailers, this includes box trucks, uh large vehicles, not just a small panel van. Um commercial vehicles are not allowed to be stored on any residential street at any time. uh if they're actively using it for work, then it's allowed, but even by the way the code's written, they can't park it on the street overnight and leave it to be used the next day. We've been a little lenient with these um in the enforcement area, and I'm going to talk about that here in a minute, and that's why we're asking for some direction. Uh in no way uh shape, or form are they allowed to block any of the sidewalks or any of the rideways. Now, here's one I want to talk about in long-term versus short-term parking. As you could tell in the picture, that's a long-term parking of a camper. Um, short-term is considered to be again loading or unloading or trip preparation. If someone's not actively loading equipment in or taking away from this vehicle, trailer, um, or doing some sort of prep for it, that would now be considered storage. Uh we have been just out of our interpretation giving people 24 hours on a public street for trip preparation saying that it's not being stored. But that's not set in code or ordinance. That is an interpretation that we've developed and that we've been using

based on um a 24-hour clause that allows them to plug in the vehicle for 24 hours on their property. That's purely what we base that on. Nowhere else is the code is there a 24-hour time limit. You often will hear about a 25- ft rule that if they move the the vehicle 25 ft, it resets the timer. What that rule is is that is actually in the ordinances about parking. That if a vehicle moves 25 ft, then we cannot consider it to be abandoned. So, if we have a vehicle that stays in one spot for an extended period of time, 10 days is the total, um, we can consider it abandoned. But if it moves 25 ft within that area, we can no longer consider it abandoned. But people are taking that and interpret it to mean that if they park a camper on the road and every now and then they move it 25 ft, that they're okay. I'm going back to tell you that any RV on a public rideway, including a residential street, they're not allowed to store it. So 25 ft movement or not, it's not supposed to be there. Again, long-term parking is considered storage and it's prohibited. And our enforcement is generally complaintbased. We don't go out looking for these problems. We usually go off of either report into uh our communications department or a cclick fix complaint. And that usually causes retaliatory complaints between neighbors as they start complaining on each other throughout the neighborhoods. So what enforcement enforcement action do we have at this time? We typically give a notice of violation which is in code a warning. Uh there's no fine associated with it. There's no penalty associated with it. Uh the next tool we have is called a cease and desist which is a more stern warning.

um by the code. If someone receives a warning for one of these violations, we are not supposed to give them another warning. At that point, they're supposed to be cited or summoned into court by our own code. However, we've been uh allowing multiple warnings to be given to try to get compliance. Uh the next step for us is a citation. Um not a summon, a citation. But the problem is by code code requires for us to have a fine associated with the citation to write them that ticket. There is no fine schedule. Um we had we asked the court to look for it. We couldn't find it anywhere. Uh so we have no associated fine schedule for these type of infractions. And so we cannot cite somebody for this type of infraction which leads us to our next step which is a summon into city court. Now, if we were to go out and summons every RV owner that parked on the street into city court, I think Mark would be very mad at us right now. No. No. Okay. Um, and for us, we've been trying uh through voluntary compliance to gain u most of our resolution to these issues. And then the final solution for us for someone who's absolutely unresponsive is impounding the vehicle. And that is expensive because um tow companies do not like taking campers. They do not like taking boats. Um one because if the owner never pays for it, it's very difficult for them to turn them back over and make a profit off of it. And so they are very hesitant to take these type these type of vehicles and these pieces of equipment. Um plus also if you think about it from her perspective, I take somebody's work trailer with all their tools in it, I've just now put them out of business and that's not good. So, we want to figure out a better way of dealing with these issues when it

comes to people um parking against the code on the public streets. So, what we're asking from council is one to uh accept the summary of the existing land use and development code regulations as it relates to on street parking of RVs, boats, and commercial vehicles, and provide us, and I'm going to delete a word, not policy direction, but provide us direction on whether additional code amendments, enforcement strategies, or public outreach efforts should be pursued. And with that, and in the words of cousin Eddie, I forgot the ending

that there is an RV. So, yes. Questions, please. And Tom let me down. He was all into this joke and and he failed. Don't ever lean on Tom. Yeah. Uh, so excellent clarifications. I was completely lost in the 25 foot rule. Yeah. And so that's really clear. The Can we go back one slide? Sure. To the um if I can manage it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, apparently I cannot. There we go.

So, so a complaint based system makes sense. Um, warning first, cease and desist. Second warning is basically a cease and desist. Correct. Correct. Um, and then a citation. It seems to me the gap here is that there's no fines on that citation. Correct.

Okay. So, I I just need to and I was going to say earlier he's correct. There is no specific fine, but there's a general provision in the code that any violation of anything that appears in the code falls under this catchall. So, I think what he's pointing out is that the council has never decided to make specific fines or give a schedule or make a specific penalty, but there's a general provision that says any violation of any prison code is punishable by a fine up to 2,000 something dollars and 364 days in jail. We would never put anyone in jail for parking an RV, but it is out there and should the police department bring us something, um, my office would make a decision on prosecuting or not. So, again, you're not wrong. I just want that clarification that generally we could if we chose to prosecute anything that he's brought up today. It's just a lot easier once you guys once a council gets specific about what they think the penalty should be. Makes it easier for the judge. Makes it easier for me.

So there could be a next step there could be a next step that is asking for PD with in conjunction with the attorney's office to come back for a schedule of fi with a schedule of fines.

That's one option. Uh, another option is to bring uh RV and or illegal parking into the parking ordinance and allow us to issue citations, tickets that they can just clear up and pay uh in the front office versus actually having to go into court and argue it there. And we could actually at that point even bring it under the existing parking requirements because right now if you receive a parking ticket and you don't resolve it, you receive another parking ticket, you don't resolve it, we can then boot the vehicle and then 72 hours later if it's unresolved, then we can impound and remove it. That actually streamlines that system a lot. Um, but it's a repetitive process. Um, putting a definitive fine schedule as to the in the code portion of it allows us to write a ticket and have them come in and pay it for that that particular infraction. Now, if they don't want to pay it, they want to take it to court. That's where Mark's point comes in where it's up to $1,000 or 90 days in jail. We're not going to do that. Um, but it's the judge's discretion as to where that ends up, but there's no schedule associated until it gets in front of him. any idea from the PD perspective on what's the more efficient system? I mean, we're trying to get somebody to move their vehicle, right? So, at the end of the day, that should be the goal. You you I think either direction has an enforcement tool. Right now, there's no penalty whatsoever for a person to leave their ve their RV on the street uh illegally for an extended period of time. And we give them warning after warning. Um, having either a citation through the ordinance or a citation through the code is an applicable consideration because it puts a penalty there and makes it less expensive to go put it on the storage lot versus leaving it on the street.

Okay. Yeah. One more question. Are there any other unique differences based on neighborhood? I I had heard that Third Avenue had some unique restrictions. There were not restrictions elsewhere. It just sounds to me like this has been an applicable code. We just haven't enforced it. Correct. There are I could not find a single exemption in a residential area for boats, RVs, or trailers or commercial vehicles in any way, shape, or fashion. Now, we often get people quibbling over uh what is sitting on the ground. For example, we have one of our community members that says that that's actually a trailer sitting there. and disregard the boat that's sitting on top of the trailer. Sure,

it's just a trailer sitting there and since it's not a commercial trailer, it's exempt from the enforcement action. And so we we get into a lot of interpretation uh that we have to deal with out in the field. But uh for us there I through my peru perving per viewing of the uh codes there is no exemption in residential area for any of these items. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, I mean what really boils down to is people suck. Um, [laughter]

I'm just kidding. Kind of I'm not allowed to say a little bit, but not really. Um, so I'm struggling with a couple things on this one. One, I've lived in up Florida Road, Animus City, North Maine, and now up Clovis a little bit, and I have never had seen an issue in any of the places I've lived in Durango with this. And so, um, and I've gotten one [clears throat] email complaint from a citizen in my five years on council now, will be five almost five years on council about this issue. And so, for sometimes for me, I'm like, are we stirring the pot that doesn't need to really be stirred or are you seeing something that is a big issue and people just aren't complaining it to to us to me about it. They're obviously Kip has a different um scenario. Anyways, that's one.

No. Okay. You Yeah. So it it depends on what time of year it is. Summer. Yeah. So the summer it gets worse. Yeah.

Uh in the fall is when we really have to start ramping up because we have to pull the vehicles off the road to get ready for snow season and that's when we get a little bit more stringent with our enforcement. And really it depends on the neighborhood. Uh it some neighbors are more tolerant of campers parked on the streets. Um some are not. And uh actually one of our code enforcement officers just recently uh developed very similar to our homeless camp tool, an RV tool with all the complaints um that we're getting. And it's not just RVs, it's commercial trailers, commercial trucks. Um, if you saw those pictures that I put up there are all within the last uh couple of weeks that they've taken for us to use um in the presentation, but these are all current complaints that we're receiving, not just the stuff they're finding as they're driving around.

Yeah. And so, uh, it is much more of a summer thing and a fall thing than it is winter and spring. But it is it is enough of a thing that, uh, like I have one gentleman that is, uh, um, cross complaining on his neighbors and they're complaining on him because he owns the trailer that has the boat on top of it. And so I guess for me what I'm trying to get at is I don't I don't get enough citizen complaints or I haven't yet to like make this a huge issue for me. But if it's an issue for you and your staff then I feel like you coming with us with solutions is the is is one of the best options. Um second I love that we are a recreational town. I love the Animus River goes through it. I love that people love to be outside. That is why people move here. We want to encourage people to camp and bike and boat and do all the things and so super strict like you have to actually be you know which you're not doing enforcing it seems like like moving things in and out of it seems a lot for like to have your boat there so you can float the animous after work or I don't do that. I'm not ad like I'm not saying that I'm that type person but I'm just saying like I appreciate that about our town. Now, I don't have 50 rafts parked out in front of my house. And so, if I did, would I feel the same way? I don't know. Um, all I'm saying is that I want to be cognizant and careful. Like, I don't want to put contractors out of business because they have to move. We, you know, like you said, like taking their trailers full of tools. Like, that's not like let these people work and do their job. And we should support that as a city, I feel like. Um, now do I want our streets to look trashy and littered and you know with things? No. So again, here I am. I think there's a balance hopefully here. And so what I'm asking, I guess, is if this is an issue

for you and your staff, if you could come to us with a solution that you think would be a good Thanks, Bryce. Yeah, I can't hear you. Sorry. I'm not going to let him jump in. Sorry. Oh, sorry. [laughter] Say that again. Well, no, you're good. This is a great presentation. and I appreciate um all the information.

The that's kind of how we're coming to the council today is we're not wanting to bring a solution. That's why I'm glad that we're in a study session. I I appreciate the city manager giving us this opportunity to do this in a study session um with the council. We want to know what the values of the community are. And we can't, you know, we can't um be values based unless we know what those values are. And it's very hard to know with this situation. Like you said, it is a recreating town. We get both. Um we get individuals that don't want them then we have individuals that do want them. We have individuals that only want them during certain times of the year and are looking to store them at other times. And so we're just kind of we want to bring this forward and it could revolve around more conversation with citizens um some um meetings and some other things and not that we have to make a decision today. However, he did a very good job I think of explaining what the laws are.

So yeah and what some of the things that we could do. Yeah. I had no idea on half of that. So, it was super thank you so much for, you know, really diving in. And then the third piece I wanted us to make sure we're aware of, if it's, you know, three people giving us 500 complaints every summer, again, people suck. And you have to tell them that and be like, "Okay, I hear you, but this isn't an issue to any of the other neighbors except for you." So, your problem,

I can listen and be cognizant, but maybe it's not my problem. I don't and we don't want to overregulate, but we want to do what's right for the citizens and what the values of this community want. And so, we're just bringing the information forward. And we are getting um it does seem like sometimes some groups are small but very loud and we're not certain what we have in this situation. Um if it's 50/50, we don't have the percentage. Um but we do get quite a few complaints on this and we're not asking to the council to provide us with a solution to make our day easier or our job easier. Um, this just is a a a pretty significant issue within the community right now. Yeah, thank you very much and thank you for Thank you.

And if you want, I can through the city manager send you all the number of complaints we got in 2025. Okay. We'll we'll get you that information.

I I think it's worth stating that enforcement is always a bit of art and a bit of science, right? I I mean what we're talking about here is these laws exist on the books. We we probably could put a little bit more teeth into them so that when officers choose to in to to aggressively more aggressively enforce because of the situation, then they've got the tools there that don't allow somebody just to ignore the citation over and over. And I think that's the extent of this. I I feel like sometimes we're talking about all of a sudden you guys are going to go out and just start ticketing RVs, you know, like you have nothing better to do. So, so that's a real key point here is there's nuance to this and I think enforcement is always art and science at the same time and so you know your discretion give you the tools to do what you need to do and then and then you guys can interpret the the rowdy neighbor versus a person who's just a chronic abuser of a privilege versus you know what needs to be enforced.

Yeah, that's excellent point is we usually can resolve these with the first or second warning. It's what we have trouble with the enforcement is is the third, fourth, and fifth and so on warning. [snorts] And and we talked about seasonal variation. I would imagine density of neighborhood also you would get more complaints out of denser neighborhoods just because of the limitation on parking. And so when an RV does park in a dense neighborhood that's already limited on parking and sits there for 10 days or over the summer, then we've you've got more of an issue and more complaints coming from that direction. That's correct. And we also uh we have less complaints in HOA run neighborhoods because the HOA usually takes care of that problem

because they can directly find just walking up and doing it. So great point. Thanks. Thank you, Deputy Chief. Um have we ever find someone even without a fine schedule? Like have we for some for an infraction like this? Not in the year and a half that I've been here. And as far as I know, we've gotten everything resolved through the multiple complaint process. We have never find someone and we have never impounded a vehicle.

Okay, great. Um, and then I'm going to ask an ignorant question because I I just really don't know the the difference from an enforcement standpoint. So, code versus ordinance. Um, is one take more precedent over the other? Like if you're enforcing a code versus an ordinance, would it still be like complaint based or does PD have a a higher duty to enforce if it's an ordinance that's that's that's written within our ordinance schedule or are you going to enforce both an LUDC code violation versus an ordinance violation the same way?

So I said I love the police and never do anything wrong. But we're probably going to talk afterwards about that statement there being a difference between an ordinance and a code article because that's a little bit of a nuance. So I don't really, you know, that dig in on that one. And I'll stick by my statement that anything that's written in that code we can take to court and get the judge to make determine if it's a violation, not an issue, a fine. So there really should not be a distinction. And if there if we talk about it and he convinces me that there's some distinction, we'll have to clean that up. But there should not be a distinction between an ordinance and something that appears in a code article. I mean, that's how code articles become code articles by the the ordinance vehicle. Yeah. I was wondering why we there was a need for one or the other or

I have a very good reason for saying that, but we didn't he and I didn't talk about it beforehand. Um and and I will add that it's very this is an issue that's common in every community around this country, right? And it's very well established that no one has a right to a reserved spot on public property. Storage of a vehicle is a is an asset or it's has economic value to it and the government can't give away things um of economic value. So and it hap usually what happens is people want to reserve parking spot in front of their house in a historic neighborhood and there are certain communities that were putting out signs saying yeah this is reserved for the res. You can't do that. It's very very well settled law, but we live in a community where it's very tolerant that people, you know, accept these boats being parked around. So, you guys are just going to need to be careful in your enforcement efforts and your legislation because if like you adopt an official policy not to enforce, it opens up to litigation that we have now given an asset to someone that we didn't give to someone else, i.e. a place to park their boat or a place to park their RV. So, the laws are on the books for a reason. Um certainly enforcement is always an art like we've suggested here today and it reflects our community values. Right.

So this is a tricky subject and I guess my reason for turning on the mic is just to make sure that everyone knows that despite the the values of this community, we cannot give people unrestricted parking of the recreational vehicles, boats or commercial trailers on our streets. Thank you. Um there are things we can do. We can set up zones and all kinds of other things that permit, but we're we're not there yet. I I completely agree with councelor Koso that um

you know there's nuance. You know, it is an amalgam of both science and and um art in this. Um and I guess I think of you know a commercial vehicle because commercial vehicles are are are stated in in there as well. Correct. Or is it a commercial trailer? No, all commercial vehicles but that's limited that restriction is limited to residential parking. Okay. Those same restrictions aren't in commercial zones, right? Right. So, if if you know Joemo owns a plumbing company and he parks his plumbing truck in front of his house and he's renting and he has no parking, then that would be a commercial vehicle in a residential area. Correct. And that would be a violation.

And I understand there's nuance there, but I think if if there's potential heightened enforcement, it'll turn this into a potential witch hunt. We're like, I can't park my trailer, but you going to let that guy park over there? So, I just I think you're right. There's nuance and I think that we need to really be intentional about this because I don't want to open up a whole can of worms. We're we're hurting the everyday person just trying to make a living and we're we're trying to, you know, to to counsel a lawyer's point to um to correct something that that may not be as big of an issue as we think it is. But I'm not saying that it's not. I'm just saying like how big of a stick are we willing to to wield to try to to field these queries and these these concerns. So that's all I'll say.

Okay. Thank you for that presentation. And I I want to let you know that um I did go on a rock and roll and I can't remember if it was in the fall up in the Crest View area, Delwood. And the concern was that there was a couple neighbors that got a citation or a ticket or something. And then when I went on the rock and roll, walk rock and roll, uh, we had about 15 people come and one of the concerns that came out of there that there there were parking issues. So, I don't know if it was illegal parking or what because when I went there, people were coming back and forth from work and so forth, but one of the concerns was the fact that the children were running out into the street between the cars, the vehicles, and that was a worry for them.

But yeah, so there has been complaints, but um it wasn't about commercial vehicles parking. was more about the safety of the children, you know, because it's a a residential neighborhood and the kids are playing, you know, in the I guess in the street. I mean, it's one of those 50s neighborhoods where it's just houses. Um, but that's just for your information. Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. Oh, hi. Hi, Mayor. Shirley, can I chime in here? Yes, Shirley, go ahead.

Um, so I guess I I am I trying to understand all the nuances about this this issue. Um, is this something that might go to a community development commission? Um, I don't know or if it's been through uh before. Um, is that is that something we might consider? So yes, community development actually is uh what would you say the is Jamie the owner of this code. Um but we often end up being the enforcement tool because code enforcement is primarily housed in our office. Um so this might be something Jamie's stepping up here

now. The only reason that community development commission would step in is if we made a change to the lane and development code. That's the only time it would come into their realm. Um, no. That will probably likely go in the code of ordinances, which would come straight to council.

Any other um questions? I see. Well, I you know, I have lots of thoughts about it, but Not sure what but um all righty Shirley so thank you for your input. Is there any other questions from up here? Okay so let's move on to the next issue. Thank you. And

the next presentation under council request presentation is the fire protection and emergency services study. Good afternoon, Madame Mayor, members of council. Bob Rammer, assistant city manager. Uh before we get into today's presentation, I'd like to provide a brief background, some context on what this is going to be, as well as make some introductions. So, I'm joined this afternoon by Chief Randy Black. Uh Deputy Chief Mike Kupa is in the back, and Matrix uh consulting group, Robert Finn, who's going to be giving the presentation. Um, as the council's aware, the city of Durango has historically been provided fire and emergency medical services through an intergovernmental agreement um with the Durango Fire Protection District since 2013. And this agreement is set to expire at the end of 2028. Um, in anticipation of this agreement's expiration, uh, the city partnered with Matri Consulting Group in 2025 to evaluate the options available to the city council to ensure the continuity of delivered services um of these critical services. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Robert Finn.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm Robert Finn with Matrix Consulting Group, and I'm just here to provide you the uh study results and happy to answer any questions you would have at at the conclusion. So our scope of work for this project was conducting an analysis of the delivery of the emergency services provided by the Durango Fire Protection District to the city. looking at their staffing, deployment and performance of the system as it related to uh providing those services to the city. Conducting financial analysis on different options for the provision of uh fire and emergency medical services and then looking at what options were available for the city to consider as it moved forward um in the known time frame of the contract expiring. So the fire district and city were instrumental in assisting us with with uh collecting data, setting up interviews, making sure that we met with key stakeholders and and heard uh and received various input on to what ideas were acceptable for the city of Durango, which were more palatable, which uh which were were were less less desirable, but to make sure that we fully vetted each one of the um ideas that were brought forward to us. uh fully vetted them, looked at the costs, and were able to allow you to make an informed decision as as this uh process moves forward. Um these findings uh from our analysis were then developed into a draft report with recommendations to the policy holders. The recent election changed a lot of the financial terms. So, we're we're fine-tuning all those tables in the report. So, we'll have the the actual final report to you uh in the next couple of weeks once we get those financial changes that happened due to the recent election.

So, in terms of looking at the options, the first is the status quo contract expires, fire district uh renews it with no changes and everything stays like it is costwise and and um you just continue down the existing road. The second um more likely scenario if if the contract were to expire and you continue with the district would be a modified contract um to make sure that the city's paying its fair share for the services that they're using from from the fire district compared to the areas out in the fire district that are outside the incorporated city limits. Uh the next one was forming a municipal fire department. Some challenges with that is that all the assets are owned by the district. So there would have to be some agreement into what assets you could purchase verse having to construct new facilities, purchase new apparatus and equipment. And obviously the costs with this one, as we're going to show, are considerably higher than any of the uh other options, especially the initial upfront startup costs. And then the final option that we looked at was putting it to the voters to annex into the district as and uh the city becomes a formal part of the district. You're you're treated as part of the district and and now the city gets a voice on the on the district board which you don't have to give some local control into how the uh fire protection services are delivered. So you can see right now the the city inside the city limits there are three fire stations uh that that the district has. There's currently through the recent referendum of a fourth station going to be constructed in the Three Springs area. Um so they're they're working on that now which was one of the early recommendations in the report but then the funding happened so it's kind of moved forward faster than than we had

anticipated uh in the fall when we were finalizing the report. You can see the calls for service density um goes along the the major thorough affairs as as well as the population centers and the the three spring area out by Wilson Gulch Road is is uh starting to see significant increase in call volume and as as uh we'll show in uh you'll see in the maps in the report present uh significant time and distance from the existing station locations due to its its locations. So, like I said, a fourth fire station is needed in the Three Springs area. The funding has been approved with the recent um election results. They've started design, which is going to mirror the uh fire station 2 downtown, which will speed up the design process, save on some uh design and uh architectural costs, and be able to speed up the the timeline for construction. So, they're looking at a potential July 2027 opening of of that facility. Longer term, um, as development continues to occur, a fifth fire station would likely be needed in the northern portion of the city. So, you can see we looked at fiveminute travel times. So, existing, you can see that three spring areas completely outside of the 5minute travel time capabilities uh, of the existing fire stations. And then with the location of the of the station that's proposed and and uh being planned now uh it puts three springs in in a good coverage area. Obviously anything without a road network doesn't show up in the uh in the areas which is which is why we do these instead of the the circles. So status quo like there would be no changes to the current service delivery model and and the current method for the

fire district is they they develop the costing structure for the city as if you were annexed into the district. Um residents are paying a portion of of that cost and then the city's offsetting those through uh general fund dollars generated primarily from sales tax. So the the challenges with uh status quo obviously you're still not represented on the board. So you have no direct control in uh in any of the governance of of the fire district which which gives you no local control of the services if they decide to scale up scale down uh redeploy assets. That's a determination and a decision of the district and and the uh city would know have have no direct voice in that. you don't own any of the capital assets. So, the equipment, tools, supplies, uh fire stations, um are all owned by the fire district. So, um in the status quo, you don't own those. And there's never a guarantee that the fire district is going to choose to renew the contract with the city to provide services. When we looked at a modified contract, uh the benefits are there there's no startup costs. you're modifying the contract, there's going to be a change in the in the cost structure and relationship. Um, in that you don't currently have performance standards, but you could say these are the types of performance standards we want measured and reported back to council. We expect, you know, travel time uh to an emergency call to be in x minutes 90% of the time. um this type of fire prevention activity to occur inspections and and these things, you can put those performance standards in the modified contract and then the uh fire protection district would have the obligation to meet those

contractual requirements which does give you some now local control and say in how the uh services are provided. the district would still remain responsible for all the staffing, deployment of resources, and uh managing the day-to-day operations of fire and EMS services. The challenge is again in the modified contract, unless you stipulated in the contract, you'd still have no ownership rights of those assets unless contractually you you stipulated a uh a cost sharing if the relationship were to [clears throat] end of of what percentage of the assets you you owned. Moving forward, you would continue to have no representation on the board. And based on our analysis and the your demand on services, there would likely be an increase in the cost to the city for uh continuing the service under a contract if it were renegotiated. A municipal fire department. Uh the biggest benefit is you guys have full local control. You make the decisions. You determine the performance levels. You you're purchasing the apparatus and and you're in full control of all the operations of of fire and EMS services. You get to determine those performance standards which then determine how many fire stations you need, where they should be best located uh based on the local desires of the community. And and you're going to own all the capital assets. Once you purchase them, they're yours. and uh and you own and then have that responsibility for maintaining the assets moving forward. The challenges are first is the significant investment in capital. Um fire trucks currently 750,000 for an engine about a million4 for a ladder truck and you're looking at a threeyear wait time for delivery. So, so you you

because the fire district would likely have to reduce some of its inventory due to a smaller service area there. There may be an opportunity to purchase some of their uh equipment used, but you're still going to have to be planning then for for future replacement and significant costs. There are a number of additional city staff positions that would be needed to now support these city personnel. So, HR, payroll, IT, uh significant increase in in fleet in to be able to maintain the the increased emergency vehicles and to work on on firet trucks, which is a emergency vehicle technician specialty uh me mechanic certifications. And then likely in the best interest of both parties, you would want to enter into an automatic aid agreement with the district. So, if your resources are taxed, they would respond in and help provide services in the city. And likewise, if there's something going on outside the city limits, you would assist the uh fire district in providing services for those larger scale events that tax the resources of either one of the now smaller organizations. Annexation. [clears throat] Uh the key benefit is now you do have board representation. you uh people from inside the city limits can serve on the board, provide input and governance into how the district is operated and make sure the the interests of the city Durango are fully represented as part of the board. The the funding would be stable and consistent. Sales tax um funding which you're which you're using to do part of it now is, you know, dependent on the economy. It's dependent on tourism. So, so it's a little more volatile and can fluctuate uh where property taxes um and and use a property tax scenario is is typically a more stable funding mechanism. Um your

existing service delivery model remains. the fire district continues to provide the service, but now um you're fully funding your fair share and you're treated holistically as part of the district instead of as a as a contractual customer of the district. Um and then the district remains responsible for all personnel deployment matters and all those ancillary HR, finance, payroll, uh fleet things that they they currently provide. the uh the challenge is is voter approval. So the the key to the voter approval um is educating the voters on what is going to happen because there are certain general fund tax dollars that are used to offset the costs of fire and EMS services today that would no longer be needed. So making sure those voters are educated into okay what what's going to happen with those those dollars. You know, there are a number of services that can be enhanced public safety, transportation, parks and recre recreation and and any other unmet city needs where freeing up those tax dollars uh to help fund the the other much needed initiatives of the city can be used. But educating the voters on what those are so they can make an informed decision and not just think that this is another reason to uh to increase their tax burden would be very important. Again, you have less local control than a municipal fire department because you're one voice on the board or as many seats as you get, but you're you're a voice on the board and not the only voice. So, uh the unincorporated areas of the district also have a voice in in how the fire protection and EMS system operates. When we looked at the the cost, you can see your status quo. Um the residents are currently contributing 6.3

million from the mill. Uh the general fund kicks in another 5.7 mills at at 5.2 million roughly. So 11.5 million and to an average $750,000 home. That looks like around $326 a year. When you modify the contract, again, the residents are going to be paying their portion of the mill. But now, the general fund contribution based on your current service demand um usage of the system, we projected it would likely go up to around $8.8 to $9 million. So, the total cost would go up to to around $15 million if and when the contract terms are modified. municipal department. Like I said, you're looking at roughly $90 million in capital upfront costs depending on on new versus uh existing apparatus. Um your general fund impact is going to be about $9.5 million a year. So your first year is is $98 million. Um, and then continuing general fund impact is going to be higher than what you're paying to to offset today. So, probably doesn't make sense financially for you really even consider this. The services, as you'll see in the report, they're providing high level of service to the city. Nothing's broken and uh to put this kind of investment towards something that's that's working well uh would not be in the best interest of the city. The fire hydrants you do own. You own them. You own the hydrants. They're on the city water system. [laughter] So, uh then we looked at the annexation and that would bring the resident uh up to

um 8.9 mills the first year. So the way we looked at was was phasing in where it's a softer increase on on the taxpayer. Um so they're their tax bill goes up about $100 that that first year. um the full residential cost over a three-year buy in into the district where you're lowering the general fund obligation each year. And uh and then increasing the the residential um is would would bring it up to $592 on a on a $750,000 home. But again, the district would then be responsible for all those capital costs and and the and and [clears throat] own the assets. So, we recommend that the the city explore seeking voter approval to annex into the into the fire district. Uh if approved by the voters, you gradually implement that 5.7 mills over 3 years um using the general fund to pay 3.7 in year one. two goes to the the residents 1.7 in year two and then in year three it drops to the full burden um on the residential and and commercial tax base. So with that I'm happy to answer any questions and as well as the uh chief and assistant city manager.

Wow. Thank you Robert. That that was a good report. I have one question now. If we went to ballot on this, is this going to be a countywide vote or just in the city? This this is city residents voting to annex into the district. Okay. So, no county. Okay. They've already they've already made that vote. They're in it. I appreciate the presentation. I think it all makes total sense. A small question. Typical performance standards in a modified contract. I think you had talked about response times. Are there other typical performance standards that sometimes get written into a modified contract?

So the uh the performance standards which which are typical are when you're there's there's controllable factors um the dispatching of of apparatus in the fire service. It's it's 1 minute 90% of the time is the best practice. Turnout times, so how quickly to personnel get up, get out of the station. Um, a minute 30 is is fairly typical for a daytime when they're awake. Um, a lot of agencies do a different one from 10:00 a.m. to 6 a.m. when you, you know, you wake up and you've got to get to the station. So, so, but but a minute 30 is the uh typically accepted performance for getting your gear on, getting on the apparatus and wheels rolling. And then most suburban communities, the National Fire Protection Association standard 1710 has a one-sizefits-all 4-minute travel time standard, which doesn't fit most communities and certainly doesn't fit what's what goes on here with your road network and, you know, the hills and the winding roads and various things. So, a community like this, somewhere between six minutes and 30 seconds and eight minutes might be the uh the community expectations and doing that. And then beyond that, it's it's more the frequency of the fire prevention work. So, how often how often do you expect community education events to occur? What types of community education events are are designed in the town? And then what types of fire prevention activities? Obviously, it would cost more if you said we want every business and every multif family housing inspected every year compared to low risk every 3 years and moderate risk every two years and your your higher risk high assembly things that would cause large loss of life potential or large economic um loss to the city as well as those

statemandated prisons, hospitals, schools that need to be inspected every year. Um, so if you did a tiered then making sure that the businesses are getting inspected and things don't fall off are important. And all of those performance standards could be implemented from a fire board if we annexed into the district as well. Correct. Correct. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Just a couple questions. Our contract expires 2027. 2028. Yeah. December 31st of 2028. 28. And then um how long was that contract? started in 2013. So, it was a 15-year contract. 15-year contract. Okay. Um, and before then, we did have a municipal fire department, right?

Uh, 2002, I believe, is when you became the the municipal department ended in um December 31st, 2001, which is when the consolidation started, but it was a functional IGA at that point. And then the district was actually formed in 2014. And that's when the current contract, it was voted on in 2013, started January 1st 14, but that's when the current contract that we're under started. Cool. Awesome. Thank you. Yes.

Shirley, do you have any questions for the fire? No questions. Thank you, mayor.

You're welcome. All righty then. If there's no more questions, you guys are excused. Okay. So, on the agenda, we have proposed new agenda items for discussion. Council, I had a couple of new ideas or new business items. I wanted to put forward um I wanted to ask for a study session allowing pr-rated fees for changes in business license status. This came up in our last meeting. Um so uh the abil just to find out what it would be to have prrated fees when a business license status changes uh by the same business. And so we just recently had um it was a marijuana, was that correct? Sorry Ben, I'm hazy on the details. but it was a mar marijuana retailer that was just changing their corporate status and they had to repay full fees in that instance. I just think it would be there'd be some merit in the staff or whomever the decision makers are being able to prorrate fees in situations where it doesn't seem fair to make a business repay the full fee again. Are we doing a full business license fee something right now?

We are. We have a I'm looking at Gloria have our master fee schedule for approval coming soon where I think we'll be finished with it to present to council. Uh and then the council can kind of take a look and see all the fees and then uh look at uh determining if there's any they would like to modify uh on that. And then staff, I'm assuring, would probably bring things that we would like to see modified. But I that schedule should be coming soon. Planning on bringing that uh second meeting in uh February and um along with any staff proposed changes to that PE schedule in inclusive of having a proration opportunity. We we discussed that in some way, shape or form. Can we just tack that on

session or is it a is it a council item or is it a agenda item? Sorry. Currently, it's an agenda item with the current fees. Um, not all fees are currently adopted by resolution. So, this is a comprehensive U model of all the fees and then any changes, you know, going forward would be adopted. Would we be able to chat about different things in that? Sure. Yeah. Can we just tie that to will you make sure that we have have got that as a note? Okay. In the presentation. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Speed discussion. Mayor, I still got a couple of things to I'd love to chat. Um I I wanted to ask council how we felt like we were going to proceed on um appointee reviews and establishing the goals. We were changing the review process a little bit. I just was unsure about what we thought the next step in that process was going to be that that it gets their salaries get reviewed when the other salaries get reviewed for the entire city. But I'm not sure we I this is me asking I I was unclear on what our next step was to try and establish that kind of more formal review. Yeah. Is there a process we someone can help us go through to like fine-tune some things?

Sure. I think what we'd probably end up doing when it comes to contracts and I'm going to look at uh Mark on this one is that we just probably need an executive session uh with us all in those your appointees myself Mark and Matt and discuss the changes proposed changes and come out of that executive session with direction on the changes for the contract.

Yeah. So my question was not about contracts, it was about the reviews themselves. We had talked about establishing goal tracking, core competencies, and qualitative feedback um with focuses each six months. And so there is some in some way, shape, or form there's a a form or whatever we're going to have to try and figure out that says what are the goals for 2026 so that when we hit six months, we can gauge against those goals. I feel like I said that in the after the [clears throat] last executive session that with some with maybe with I don't know Bonnie's help or someone in HR. I'm sure that they have something that we could have something that's a little bit easier to follow or we can just do it ourselves.

It's probably going to be something you're going to have for yourself because that's not something in regards to a review that we would have for us. That's what I was kind of do that via email since it's just for our pointy reviews or do we need to do that during an executive session? You need to So there's kind of a fundamental disconnect happening here. You guys employ myself, Jose, and the city man or the city magistrate through contract. We are appointed contract employees

and our contracts dictate when we're reviewed. And as you know, when there's a contract, both parties have to agree. So that would need to all occur in executive session. um mandating a salary review along with employees is a little bit of a square peg and a round hole because they're not they don't work under contract. They they work for Jose. They work under budgets you guys propose. So, I don't know if that answers your question, but you just have to look at the three appointed officials differently. So two things that he's talking about we wanted to do is we want to change your format that we use to and we've done that before where we went from point scaling to you know what I mean so I don't know does that have to be done in executive session

I would recommend that it is done and then in that executive session we can sit down with each of you and say we want to go to two evaluations a year rather than four right do you agree to that and then write a new contract correct Yeah. So, can No. And like it's a great example is Jose's contract, I'm sorry, city manager contract is different than mine. Yeah.

Because his his review is required to have public input by code or by the charter and mine isn't. So, I agreed in my contract to have quarterly evaluations whereas I believe his contract says you have to meet the charter review and then he has quarterly reviews. Yeah. So, and again, all that's just negotiated in the contract. Then that's properly done in an executive session for those three appointed individuals. So, do we need to just in business, right? An executive session to review, right? I think if you're in agreement, you have four, you can just place it on I would assume February seeing as yeah, one will not you won't be here on the

Yeah, we've gone away from what I was asking which is just the tool that we're sitting there and saying here were the goals, Jose or Mark. We need to do that in executive session is what he's saying.

I just think it's going to take time for us to get the tool right before we even go in and say the contract's going to be changed. They already have a quarterly evaluation happening. If we just change the way that those quarterly evaluations happen, there's no contract change here if I have this correct, right? I'm just talking about the how do we figure out the goals for 2026 and how do we measure them effectively at six months and end of the year or quarterly if we don't change the contract. Does that make sense? I'm I'm fine if going whatever way. I just didn't want this to fall through the cracks. Us go three months and then we're back to the same evaluative process for the quarterly checkins.

Can one of us draft like a I think what I'm trying to and I think you have to do that by contract. whatever, however you want. If you want to change and have a more specific evaluation process with goals and everything else that you would like us to meet, you have to contract with us to put that in our contract. Now, if you're just talking about the type of form you use, that's all it is. It's a form. Yeah. So, can one of us just draft a form and send it out to each other and say, "This is this okay for people to use this form?" And we can do that via email. It's administrative.

I mean, you employ us. You can say, "Hey, pursue your contract. We get to do these valuations. This is the form I want you to prepare for that meeting." You can do that. Okay. So, can we do this via email then? Mhm. Just get it done. I was just I really just want to get input from council in a public meeting. How do we want to proceed with this? Okay. I mean, I would still suggest that you do that in executive session because of the nature that it's going to lead to in the contract. Um because if you do it by email, you're potentially violating the open meeting laws because you're discussing public business by email outside of a public meeting, even though it's just administrative.

Yeah. I mean, there's no exemption for just being administrative. when it comes to the OML scheduling is is exempt but when you're going to make fundament not fundamental but when you're going to make changes to an evaluation process that can be done in executive session and is properly done in executive session and an email discussion of it I'm concerned that would violate the OML okay then okay so how about this okay so you're going to be gone the next meeting okay executive session the first that we and hammer come with a form. But then everybody come with their suggestions. I'll come with a form. Okay. Okay. Great. Can we put that on the agenda? Absolutely. Great.

Because you have to vote to go into executive session anyway. So yeah, it's an easy one. That's all three or just Mark and I. Do you have anything? All three. All three. I have nothing else. Thank you. Dave, Jessica, Shirley, do you have anything? No, mayor. Thank you. All righty. So, we're done with the agenda. This is where we're journ. Thank you.