City Council - Regular Meeting

our city's municipal or excuse me, the multimodal transportation plan. We've had this plan for a number of years. It was most recently updated in 2023 and adopted by the city council. The safety goal of this multimodal transportation plan is to improve the overall transportation network safety with emphasis on vulnerable road users by working toward a zero fatality and serious injury transportation network. Falling underneath this safety component, we have a few objectives in the plan. The first being city council adoption of Vision Zero resolution. Objective four, improving the city's response time to community transportation safety concerns. And then nested under that is to implement quick build projects to quickly respond to safety concerns prior to future capital improvements or achieve low cost quick wins. Another objective underneath this safety goal is to use proven innovative technologies and best practices when redesigning a street or conducting maintenance. This also aligns with the city's 2024 Reliable Infrastructure and Community Connectivity objective in our strategic plan to invest in transportation and infrastructure systems that maximize safety, mobility, innovation, accessibility, and user satisfaction. So lots to say, but the strategic plan and the multimodal transportation plans are just two examples of plans, policies, goals, and objectives that we have as a city, which have played into the importance of embarking on a speed management plan process. A little bit of demonstrated need presented on here as well. This data is in part from some data and analysis that went into the 2023 multimodal transportation plan update. But between 2016 and 2021, there were 71 crashes resulting in injury. and seven crashes resulting in fatalities. Both of these are on the city's roadway infrastructure. This plan, the speed management plan, will create a consistent and holistic approach to reduce speeds and crash potential on Durango's roads. That's really our main goal here. A couple things to highlight, again, with the importance in this demonstrated need is that if you are traveling across a road and hit by a vehicle which is traveling at 23 miles an hour, you have a 10% risk of death. If you're hit by a vehicle traveling at 32 miles an hour, you've raised that to a 25% risk of death. If you're hit by a vehicle traveling at 42 miles per hour, you now have a 50% risk of death. So within at least the city's local collector and arterial road networks, we see folks traveling at all of these speeds. And the importance here is just to provide safety and connectivity while also ensuring that we are reducing speeds and the crash potential. Two key efforts for the Speed Management Plan update. Effort one is doing speed data collection, reviewing existing plans. I mentioned a couple of them. Gathering input from the public, emergency services, utility providers, and other unique stakeholders, and identifying safety challenges and developing strategies. This was done in part by the city and HDR, who we used as our contractor on the Speed Management Plan, both the demonstration side and the toolbox itself. Then we are, for effort two, using this data to choose two test locations, which these two test locations include a local arterial street and a collector street. We are focusing on high-speeding and crash potential areas where we can measure that there has already been a demonstrated problematic area of interest and or received a lot of inquiries over time on these different arterials and collectors. And then last thing for this effort two is developing a process and strategies to address speeding concerns that are replicable to overall Durango streets for our holistic connectivity and safety. So the toolbox itself, the plan that we're referring to, so the speed management plan, it's a bindable plan that we're used to seeing, but it really acts as a toolbox and tools in our quiver to be able to find opportunities to address speeding and safety concerns with different strategies for Durango streets, so very context sensitive. So the city, again, HDR is our contractor that we have for this process, developed a speed management plan to reduce speeding and crashes. This consists of a toolbox of strategies. These have all been pre-vetted, reviewed, and approved-ish. Of course, everything will go through a whole separate process when anything is proposed. But by engineering, emergency response services, utility providers, there's been a lot of education, and then there's enforcement opportunities, which are in here as well. These strategies all reduce speeds and follow the national best practices that we have in place, as well as standards which are pre-adopted by the city and or required by the state and are context sensitive to Durango itself. These are all community supported strategies from the different outreach efforts throughout this process, which I'll briefly go over. These provide permanent and quick build solutions for Durango, provide scalable improvements, which can be deployed across Durango, and a clear process for implementation to work with folks when we do receive inquiries. So that was the plan, the toolbox. The demonstration side of the plan, the city received in 2024 Safe Streets and Roads for All. So this is the SS4A. This demonstration grant fund was received by the city to the tune of just over $300,000. And these grant funds did include a required demonstration component. So the demonstrations and the grant funds as part of the demonstration piece were postponed longer than we anticipated. There were some federal shutdowns in 2025. So the city was initially anticipating to install these demonstrations across Durango in 2025. We did not receive the demonstration grant funds by the Federal Highway Administration until earlier this year. which is why we are now doing them in 2026. So these demonstrations are aimed to test speed reduction effectiveness, road maintenance impacts, emergency service access, although of course all access is maintained, potential for broader implementation, and again, an opportunity to collect data and test these different scenarios on different types of street classifications. There's an opportunity here with these 12-week demonstration periods for the public and the city emergency services utility providers to experience these different strategies and to give feedback. So hopefully this isn't too long-winded, bear with me. I'm gonna go through a little bit of the background just to inform the update for where we're at currently with the speed management plan. So beginning in 2023, again, the city adopted that multimodal transportation plan followed by Also in 2023, this vision zero goal, which I mentioned briefly on one of the previous slides, but this plan did include a goal for the city to adopt a vision zero resolution. This is a separate effort, but it does play into general goals and objectives for providing safety and connectivity and reducing speeds. In 2024, this received $307,800 in Safe Streets and Roads for All, that SS4A grant fund I mentioned, for the Speed Management Plan itself and these demonstration projects. This led also to a citizen interest in Vision Zero, which was brought to the City Council. Following this, staff presented to City Council an overview of the Vision Zero at Council's request. 2024 also kicked off the Speed Management Plan process, And the city began working with HDR on contracting out this plan and the demonstrations. In 2025, city staff presented the speed management plan process and opportunities for engagement during an Engage Durango forum, which also opened up a public survey, which was open for a little while. And we received, I believe, over 600 responses to that survey. The demonstrations, again, were initially scheduled for installation in 2025. These were postponed. We also received community feedback and analyzed this feedback as part of that public survey and also inquiries received to date and during that time about the speed management process and the demonstration locations. There was a city council update provided by city staff on the speed management plan and specifically the demonstration process in 2025. The demonstration areas were updated. As you may remember, the 7th Street local street, which was one of our classifications, was removed from these temporary installation scopes. But we did continue to move forward with design and processing different demonstrations for Riverview and GigLine. There was also a city council update on the speed management plan toolbox process and next steps following this demonstration update. In 2025, in the fall, we had a community open house which was hosted by the city and HDR to discuss the speed management plan process and the demonstration process itself and how this anticipated timeline had shifted due to those grant funds not being released yet. Jumping into 2026, again, we received those Federal Highway Administration funds and we are moving forward with demonstration projects. The speed management plan itself, that toolbox element, was finalized by HDR in March and the city has been working with them to find ways to formally adopt that. Brings us to now where we are installing our demonstrations. We will install these two speed management plan demonstration projects for up to 12 weeks or three months on Riverview and Gigline Gulch. Riverview is a local collector street and Gigline Gulch is a local, I shouldn't use the word local because that's also a classification, is a collector, GigLine is a minor arterial. So it allows us to gauge these different strategies on roadway infrastructure that we already have. During this demonstration period, we will be soliciting community feedback midway through that demonstration installation, allowing for the city, for community members, for residents, for commuters to be experiencing these different strategies and what's working, what's not working, what could be toggled to be able to move forward. We anticipate part of this community feedback to be a farmer's market booth, which we're hoping for mid-July to get some city staff out there to talk about the speed management plan demonstration projects, get some feedback from folks who have been experiencing these for hopefully around a month. And then also, if anyone has any questions on general multimodal programs, we'll be out there. We look forward to bringing a resolution to the city council for consideration in the fall of this year for the speed management plan itself. This would be via a resolution. to be consistent with other city policies when we adopt plans. And we can talk a little bit more at that point about the demonstration impacts and the data we've received. The future state we look forward to here is being able to use these findings from the demonstrations and the speed management plan toolbox once it is formally adopted to assess opportunities and ongoing different strategies and ways to meet goals and objectives in city adopted plans. And again, bringing back that overarching goal of the speed management plan itself to be consistent and have a holistic approach to reduce the speeds and crash potential on Durango's roads. A quick caveat I wanted to add for the demonstration installation. Durango's a small town. We have a small pool of contractors we're able to work with. They're great contractors, but we have to compete for time sometimes. Branson is who we'll be working with on the striping efforts on Riverview and Gigline. They're also doing all the striping temporary and permanent on the current College and 8th project. So right now, while they're out there milling and paving, Branson is going to be following whatever roadway has been torn up that day, doing temporary painting. Then once the final asphalt has been poured, doing the final painting. So we are not able to do these demonstrations until their time is freed up following the College Native Project. Bear with me here and maybe Evan can help me out. I hope this doesn't make anyone too dizzy. I tried to find a way to illustrate how to find and check out our speed management plan toolbox itself. If you're able to press play, it's a video. This is on the city's engage page. If you navigate to the speed management plan, we have a whole separate engage page for that. In the document library, we have the speed management plan linked. This is all ADA compliant. This plan goes through a brief overview of the process. but then really dives into each step of the process that HDR has drafted. Again, to ensure that there's a consistent approach to at least navigating the different inquiries we receive, preparing plans, working with collaborators, and then installing them, evaluating the data and effectiveness, and then working on ways to make these different strategies compliant over time. So these are the different steps. And again, each one has checklists. They're all brought in. to meet Durango's existing needs, requirements, and adopted standards. It's all been reviewed by the Durango Fire Protection District, our different affected city departments and divisions. We have different ways to illustrate these strategies. We have decision trees, depending on if you live at an intersection, if you don't, if there's a crosswalk, if there isn't, things like that to just help us hone in on what strategies might be most effective and where. And then we have the different strategies which are currently in Durango and then a few that aren't yet. to try to figure out ways to, again, meet the goals of the project, but find context sensitive opportunities for speed management and connectivity while maintaining safety for all road users. There's also some information in here on checklists, not only for city staff, but for if we do end up working with partners, be it volunteers to help deploy some of these around town, or if we're working with emergency respondents and things like that, questions that we need to make sure that are answered, permits that we need to apply for, things like that. And that's the end of the video and presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. But it's a great plan. I encourage you all to check it out. And then this summer also to drive through Riverview and Gigline, if that's not already on your commuting route, to see how these are going and give us your feedback.

Great. Thank you. Counselor, lawyer.

Yeah, I'm glad these are finally moving forward. Thank you for the presentation. When I was doing my walk and roll up in the Hillcrest neighborhood, they were super, this is back when this was going to get implemented potentially that summer. You know what I mean? Last year. Two years ago. I don't remember when it was. How are we, are we making sure we're communicating and getting feedback from the actual neighborhoods adjacent that are like, is it, Do we have an email list, all the things?

Yes, we have a mailing list for those specifically and with a lot of other projects we work on. So specifically for these, we've sent out postcards to everybody flagging them. And again, because we thought we were putting these in last year, they had already received postcards a couple of times on this project and the impacts that they may be having. We also send out citywide utility mailers. So in everybody's mail for these projects. and the installation process and everything else. So those were received last year, erroneous dates at that point. And then this year, we've sent out postcards again with a refresh on dates, a refresh on who to contact for information. We haven't received any feedback yet after those have been sent because people are probably in the know at this point, hopefully, or just when are these happening. And then we will be sending out utility mailers this month citywide. And then the We also, again, for that midway engagement, whatever that looks like, the survey poll that will be posted online on Engage Likely. And we have a mailing list that we will especially target folks. But then we'll probably send out mailers again at that point to the folks that are in those direct proximate areas if we aren't already capturing their feedback. And then we're also looking at opportunities for some in-person feedback, be it walking and doing some door knocking for the folks there and people in those areas have a direct line. And so once we have a set date from Branson on when they'll be done with College and 8th and when we'll be moving forward with these installations, we will also be doing door knocking in both of those areas.

Okay. I just know that neighborhood has like a neighborhood group or whatever. They've been engaged with us for the solar deal up there. And so I know that there's been lots of emails from that group and then they email their group, if that makes sense.

And so I just want to make sure we're not

I'm sure they're going to know. I'm sure they have contact with us. But, you know, you just don't want to miss someone.

Totally. And if they're helpful, yeah, circulating that information. I'll make sure they're on our mailing list. I want to say that they already are. But if not, we'll make sure to follow up with them directly.

Okay, good. That was one. And then two, can you, like, just kind of summarize real quick? Like, I know that you have a whole list here in this presentation that I saw. But, like, what – metrics are going to be used to see if a project is successful or not. Can you summarize it a little bit? I know everyone's... Yeah.

And I mean, the different successful things that we'll be looking for, that's different. Obviously, if speeding has already been identified as an issue in these areas and on these segments of roadway, which they have been, and we have that data, we'll be looking at if there's a reduction in speeds. So that will be part of the data. And if it's successful in reducing speeds, We'll also be looking at if these are successful with those adjacent land owner or property owners to figure out if it's working for them, if there's something we can toggle because having these be well received by especially those that are directly impacted make these projects successful over time and allow us to also see if maybe it doesn't work here, but it works in other areas. So the feedback received sometimes can be that, okay, this actually worked really great on Riverview and A similar street to that would be X, Y, and Z. We can see about putting it there because it then kind of presents data that we can be using for other roadway infrastructure things. The city has some raised crosswalks. We have speed feedback signs. We have a lot of known mechanisms for ways to enhance safety, ways to decrease speeds, but we also have a lot of strategies that we don't currently have locally on any of our street network, but they've been successful in other communities. And so these demonstrations really allow us to look at best practices, look at things that other cities have done that are successful in providing that safety connectivity and speed reduction before needing to do a major CIP project, which can take many, many years. So yeah, looking at embrace from community and or feedback, things we might be missing or things to bolster it, which could be done through a formal capital improvement project if people hate that The shakings are just, you know, candlesticks. Great. You know, maybe that can be landscaping with a formal process or something like that. And then looking again if speeds are reduced.

Once we have our toolbox, we're like, yes, success, success, success, middle success, depending, no, right? How quick can we implement things? Like there are obviously people complaining about speed and danger and all over Durango, right? And some are completely valid. like how quick can we implement them once we're like, all right, what I don't want is like, oh, we have this beautiful toolbox. Great job. You know, you guys, we have a speed management plan. Great. But now it takes us like two years to get anything installed. Like, will this be quicker? Is there, what's the benefit of having this?

Great question. And multimodal gets that a lot of why we don't ever finish projects. Um, and so this is an exciting opportunity where, um, I'll say a little bit annoyingly that it depends in some ways, but the whole focal point of this plan, and if you dive into it, the different six steps that are outlined in it come with time parameters, which of course, this is an adopted plan. We aren't bound by this exact time, but some may take much less than that. Some may take another week or so for the permits or whatever, but these are all intended to be much shorter timeframes. The biggest thing we'll run up into because we get constant inquiries. We get constant opportunities to work with people to achieve these goals. It's a funding mechanism. So once these are in place and once the community is a little bit more used to seeing more delineators or seeing us out on the street doing what we do and trying to get some data, we'll be able to also start going after more and more grants to help bolster these funds and do more and more of these. Because the longest term, I think, for these six steps as it's adopted or as it's written in this plan is 12 months. But again, some of these, if it's painting a crosswalk and engineering agrees, streets agrees, we're all good to go. We have the infrastructure on either side of the crosswalk. That can be done in a much shorter time frame.

I mean, 12 months, great. We've been talking about speed management on GigLine since before I was on council. So if we can get it done in 12 months, I'm all about it. And I'm not like, pointing fingers, like I get, it's, it has taken me five years to understand the process behind government decisions and execution. And it takes forever. There's a reason for it most of the time, but, um, as a business owner, it's frustrating. Cause like when I want something changed, I can change it right now. Um, and so I just want things that we can actually say like they're happening and we have tools to do them quicker. And this is why we did this and look at us go.

Yeah. Same. And I think part of that too is staff capacity. And we do have within the multimodal division, the multimodal coordinator who is uniquely qualified to be helping with these different projects and who will be tasked with uniquely working with all of these different community members, residential groups, already answers a lot of inquiries. And we have a repository of received public, you know, can we do this here in different areas? So public requests. So it will allow us to have his time spent on, with as much money as we have and as many opportunities as we can to focus on a lot of these speed demonstration project or speed management plan strategies, short term or long term. Okay, thank you. Yeah.

Councilor Cusum.

Thanks, Lily. Appreciate the presentation on this. What tools are going to be missing because Council pulled the 7th Street local?

Sure, and I wouldn't necessarily say it's a tool missing. you know, again, these three roadway areas were identified because they represented three different roadway classifications. Seventh was the local roadway classification where we had already received several inquiries on speed concerns and things like that on seventh. And so knowing that that was already kind of identified again in that repository and that there was a speeding problem as we've identified in our data collection process, that it would have allowed us to test this one other type of strategy being that back end. We also have residential streets in a lot of our established neighborhoods that are quite wide. So it would have allowed us to just see if that type of strategy would be successful in a residential area because we don't currently have that in residential areas in Durango. So it's not necessarily going to falter this plan or cripple it, but it will just mean that we won't have that data to back up if we ever do bring that up on another plan in the future.

Okay. Great. Thanks. Are there any goals that have been talked about to reduce speeds on any of those street classifications universally to take them from 30 to 25, 25 to 20, whatever that is?

That is a great question. I know I've received a couple of those inquiries and it's kind of piecemeal. So holistically, there have been some folks who just ask, you know, can we just decrease the speed limits and elsewhere? And that's kind of a multifaceted answer where that we need to talk about enforcement and what that looks like. And if PD even has the capacity to take that on, if that would really be successful. With the roadways design, that's often more of the problem than just the posted speed limit. If it's straight and wide, folks don't really have the psychological need to slow down. If it's a little bit more, has more character with either a little bit more curvature or has more landscaping components, things like that, there's a natural decrease in speeds. So we get those a lot for larger corridors like North Main or things like that. But I think decreasing the speeds generally would more affect the city's adopted model traffic codes, which falls into engineering.

That was a nice little dance with curvature, too. Thanks for the visual on that. So nonprofit partnerships. I just wanted to ask a little bit. Bike Durango had put in the candlestick. Were the candlesticks that were up there? Some waves. Some waves. Yep. So they got busted pretty darn fast on that. And I know we had some back and forth on the emails. This is kind of a Bike Durango project, and I get that. That being said, it seemed like a pilot test to me how fast some of these things can get beat up pretty quickly by drivers. They had to be intentional, right? It just didn't seem to me like there was, that was all accidental run-ins on that thing. So do we learn anything from this? And then what do we do about those kind of partnerships where we've got invested nonprofits and citizen groups that I think benefit strongly from working with staff?

Totally agreed. Yeah. And that was a Bike Durango initiated project. Like you said, they had received some grant funding through AARP to do it in front of Hamburger on East 2nd a couple years ago and then do the second installment this year. Unfortunately, there were a lot of downed delineators. It's something that the city on the sidelines can kind of learn from, too, of the types of those delineators where they really didn't get beaten up very much the first time, but they did this time. On that project specifically and that type of delineator, Bike Durango, I think, tried to replace and fix as many as they could. A lot got beaten up pretty quickly. They ended up getting a refund through the manufacturer on those. And so with that extra money, hopefully we'll see another installment with the Bike Durango project in the future where the city has an established list of priorities, be it CIP to take many, many years and a lot of money. or more of these demonstration type things, which are informed by the speed management plan and other opportunities to just have quick solutions with stuff we already have. So we'll continue to have those, but we do have our list of priorities. And Bike Durango also is able to kind of fill in some gaps in the meantime with their advocacy work. We've been longtime partners with a lot of different organizations in town, nonprofit and public and private. But just figuring out ways to continue to use them, and that's part of this plan as well, is how to effectively work with these partners moving forward because that's been seen through data, through other communities, through best practices as the best way to make these projects even more successful over time is either those collaborative efforts being on funding, on roadway infrastructure, because we have a lot of roadways in Durango where it's city, county, city, county, and things like that. So just better ways to establish those partnerships, be it with nonprofits and things like that. So we'll continue to do everything we can to support their projects. And they, you know, are continuing to elevate our projects to their long list of supporters. So it kind of goes both ways. But yeah, hoping to continue to collaborate. And also our multimodal coordinator, Dylan, is going this summer to be working on a new volunteer-based program where we'll be pulling in folks who just you know, are either frustrated that projects take a long time, they want to see this quick fix, they have some extra time, and they want to help with painting a crosswalk, with installing some landscaping barriers, things like that for existing priorities we already are working on. So Dylan will be working directly with a new volunteer program to start rolling out more and more of those projects.

That's a great idea. Not only are we getting some work done, but I think we're engaging our citizens even deeper than what we need. So great.

Thank you very much. Yeah.

Councilor Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you for the presentation and the timeline reminder. And you reminded me about the Vision Zero resolution that we never did formally adopt. Is that something we should do? Would it benefit the program?

It would not hurt the speed management plan program in any way. It's an adopted goal or objective within the multimodal transportation plan and that was adopted by council. So if council directs us to move forward with a resolution to formally adopt a vision zero statement throughout the city, we are absolutely excited and willing and able to do that because it does align with a variety of other city goals. Be it strategic plan, multimodal transportation plan, and we'll help benefit and give some teeth to these speed management plan strategies as well.

Yeah, I think we should do that. We'll talk about how that gets done. I'm not entirely sure, but I'll look for some feedback on how we do that. Because it used to be tied to not necessarily funding, but technical support. Does that still exist?

Yes. For certain grant funds and technical support on projects, like you said, and you know much more about Vision Zero than I do, they often, it's kind of a checkbox whether or not it's a non-starter for does the city have an adopted Vision Zero? Yes.

I know a lot of it was geared towards communities of color. And so I don't know if we probably don't qualify in that regard. But I would hope... I know at one time there was a lot of funding available as well. So what happens, you mentioned here in the funding, the Safe Streets and Roads that came from the federal government, I think that was part of the Biden administration. So is there any funding currently that we might pursue?

Yes. And again, with that SS4A, the Safe Streets and Roads, all grant programs, they have a few different types of of that grant program. The one that the Speed Management Plan had received funding for was out of the planning and demonstration facet of that grant program. The other one is implementation, and they like for you to have the planning done, they like for you to have the demonstrations done, and then they have more wherewithal to give funds for implementing these actual construction capital projects. We just applied a couple weeks ago for about $10 million, so cross your fingers, for the SS4A implementation grants, specifically for the Camino Crossing project. And part of that application did ask, does your city have an adopted Vision Zero goal? It won't necessarily hinder our application too much, but it is an opportunity for us to be more competitive in the future.

Well, I'm glad to hear that they're continuing with the program. I do. Perhaps it just got overlooked. I can't imagine. Well, anyway, well.

It was, I think, more of just the formal administrative release of those funds, not necessarily the bucket itself is my understanding.

Yeah. Well, that's great. And I mean, I think currently, and I say this with hesitation, but aren't we currently at zero? Could we be a model for the country in fatalities related to traffic collisions? We have some existing fatalities.

We are not at zero.

In this year? Because the ones you mentioned, it seems like we're 21. 19 to 21.

Yeah, the data I showed was from 16 to 2021. We do have some that have been more recent than that. An example being on Animas View Drive. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

And so, well, I think in many ways, even though we are a small community, I feel like we are doing a lot to protect our citizens as they move around our city. And I think we're a model for the rest of the country in how we address some of these traffic issues. And some of the pushback in the community is also very normal. That's part of the learning curve as we try to change the culture of driving in cities. So that part's normal. We just have to continue to push I think be flexible and sort of push where we can, but not too much so that the community continues to support us because I know from experience you push too hard and then we don't get the support we need to ultimately get the funding to help us implement some of the projects. So I'm really proud of you guys. I think it's quite an accomplishment. So I'll look to perhaps a new business to see how we can advance that resolution. I'll just look for guidance to how we do that as we proceed. So thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Leigh. I have maybe a couple of questions. Thanks for kind of helping walk through some of the nuance to all of that. As for when we're collecting data and getting the findings from the demonstrations, are we looking to implement in the future like more temporary installations to reduce, you know, speed and traffic fatalities? Are we looking for some more permanent structures or permanent CIP or permanent? I mean, right now we're using what I've seen, but at least what I understand are like temporary tools to try to manage how people are interacting with cars and pedestrians and bikes. Are we looking for something more permanent in the future? Is that kind of where the rubber meets the road? Yeah.

I'm going to try to answer the question, and if I don't, tell me. Yes and no. So we are going to continue in our lane of using our 2015 half-cent sales tax portion for multimodal capital projects. We've got some really exciting stuff in the pike. And then on the other end, we have a limited fund, but working within this non-capital budget process, we have some operational funds within the city's transportation department budget and then the multimodal portion of that, where, again, we can buy things like signs, we can buy things like delineators and paint and stencils, and those can be fairly impactful. They're temporary sometimes in nature where we have to, you know, restripe things, repaint things, but really what we're looking for at this point is less demonstration-based projects. Learning from these demonstrations to have some data to move forward with adding these as mechanisms that we know some outcomes to move forward with proposals for more permanent type things. But maybe the process for those don't have to be as long as a capital improvement project where we can know that, okay, this is possible. We can do it for 20K. That can be our priority for our operational budget this year or something like that. So Less temporary, although, again, if we get additional grant funds in the future or if we end up working with these volunteer bases and we see some things rising out of the cracks that are really excellent opportunities for some temporary demonstration but aren't needed to be funded by this federal funding source, which there are a lot of guardrails for, where we can continue to implement some temporary measures, that's great. But ideally right now we're looking at more permanent solutions to enforce speeding and safety mitigation on these areas.

Great. Kind of leads me to my next question. As you're collecting all this data from the demonstrations, are there areas of focus or how are you collecting data to implement what we've learned more permanently in other areas of the city?

Yeah. So a little bit similar to Counselor Lawyer's question, We'll be looking at some not necessarily intercept surveys midway through, but an opportunity for engagement midway through. That was also prescribed as part of these grant funds just to make sure that we have this community engagement piece. The community engagement itself, there is some flexibility. So we'll look at doing some in-person opportunities. Again, maybe walking these areas with folks and getting feedback, going downtown, just being at a place at a certain time where people can talk to us. And that includes the farmer's market, things like that. sending out a survey where it will be similar in some questions to the survey that was released in 2024 to help inform some of the speed management plan process to be able to see a before and after of how folks felt about these demonstrations after they had been implemented. And to be able to use that data, because speeding data we have, it's constant, it's ongoing, we have that going at all times. And then we also work with the police department to put out additional opportunities to catch speeding data in these specific areas before, during, and after the project installations. So that'll all be part of it. And then we can see if through the engagement and the feedback we receive is if it's something a little bit more fluffy on the aesthetic or this could have been moved 20 feet and then I could be able to back out my trailer, you know, things like that. make it more successful over time. So getting more of the fine-tuned details anecdotally will allow us to figure out what to ask going into the next projects, things to keep in mind. Also, because part of this is city utility and services, if trash and recycling thinks that having it instead of an eight-foot chicane out into the street, a six-foot would be better for their operations, we can use that moving forward with different roadways too.

OK, great. Thank you so much. Any other questions?

Thanks for your time, Lily. Appreciate it.

The next item up is composting and steps organics mid project update.

Good afternoon, Council.

Marty Poole, sustainability manager for the City of Durango.

I'm here to give an update on the research and exploration of compost ordinance options. If you'll recall, last year, early 2025, council directed the city manager and staff to investigate options for organic waste management here in Durango. That's most commonly food waste and yard waste. After that resolution, I applied for and was awarded the technical assistance through the STEPS program. And today, I'm joined by Rachel Pearlman with RRS and Audrey Wheeler with EcoCycle. And I'm actually going to hand it over to them to give the mid-project update for our research. And this falls under organizational stewardship most notably environmental sustainability and responsibility. And we are looking into the ways that we can manage organic waste in a more environmentally friendly way here in Durango. So with that, I will hand it off to Audrey and Rachel. Are you both able to chime in? Yeah.

Can you hear me all right?

Yep.

Hi everyone, thanks for having us. Yeah, so we'll be walking you through an update, mid project update for this work we've been doing with Marty during organic waste ordinance analysis. So you can go to the next slide. I'll give you some background on the steps. We just advanced to the next. Yeah, great. All right, so this project is part of the Strategic Technical Expertise for the Public Sector Program, or the STEPS program. The STEPS is funded by the Colorado Circular Communities. So Colorado Circular Communities, or C3, is a statewide program that provides financial and technical assistance to enhance circularity across the state and helps communities achieve their waste diversion and aversion goals. As you may know, Durango was selected to receive this no-cost consulting from C3's STEPS program. And Resource Recycling Systems RRS, where I work, and EcoCycle, where Audrey works, are working with Durango on policy recommendations for increasing organics diversion. So that's just the background of how this project was funded. We can go to the next slide. Great. So for, yeah, sorry, yeah, the agenda. So what we'll talk about today, background, why we care about diverting organic materials, project overview and timeline briefly. We'll give you an overview of the engagement activities we've been doing with community to hear from different members of the community. We'll spend the most time on the policy options. and we'll offer some preliminary takeaways from the community engagement and then have time for discussion. Next slide. So you are probably pretty familiar with some of this information, so I'll run through it quickly. Why do we care about diverting organic materials? When we speak about organic materials or organics, we're really referencing food scraps and yard trimmings, which you can see some photos of here. And organic materials make up a large percentage of Colorado's waste, estimated to be about 37%. And it's really important to get these materials out of the landfill, diverting them to compost, which prevents greenhouse gas emissions, helps retain water in soils, improves soil health, and reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. through absorption. So there are a lot of environmental reasons to compost and it's already happening already in the city with the success of the public private partnership with Table to Farm. About 5300 residential accounts and between 600 and 900 commercial accounts are served by Table to Farm currently.

Great, so the timeline here.

This is just the general timeline for this, the project process. We're here in June where that star is located. We're in the phase of completing analysis. And this project started in October of 2025, but had the previous process of application and the resolution for that. So, and Marty, feel free to jump in here. So Durango offers some organics management programs currently with Table to Farm and community interest has grown in this area. So council directed staff to explore the potential to expand options. So our current phase is we're researching options that may be best for the future of Durango. And just want to emphasize here that The next step is that council will take this information and make a decision on how organic waste is managed. So we've been doing a lot of community engagement as part of this project to ensure we're capturing input from different audiences in various ways. So I'll go through this quickly and we'll talk a little bit about the focus group and survey results later. So we did stakeholder interviews. We spoke to 12 stakeholders about challenges and opportunities around organics to gather information and opinions and hear also questions about different policies. These stakeholders included city staff, private haulers, and a whole number of other organizations especially with input on businesses and how businesses are managing organics. We also ran a focus group. We led a focus group for residents and businesses together. The purpose of the focus group was to understand opinions around composting and the group discussed benefits and challenges for several of these possible composting policies for the city. And then we also ran a survey which was launched in April and opened for about three weeks. we're currently processing those results and we'll speak to some preliminary results on those later.

So with that, I will hand it to Audrey. Hello, my name is Audrey Wheeler and I work with EcoCycle, a nonprofit based here in Colorado. I'm going to cover the policy options that we're suggesting for the City of Durango, and I'll go into each of these in more detail on the coming slides. The options include a requirement for residential organics collection service, a requirement for commercial organics collection service, an organics diversion requirement, operational improvements and program expansion, the status quo, which is an opt-in system with a contracted hauler, and additional policy options such as requiring organics diversion and reducing food scraps at city buildings and buying and using local compost and mulch. And the status quo right now, just a little bit more on that last slide. Thank you. The status quo right now is that residents and businesses in Durango can opt in to food scraps collection with a hauler that is contracted with the city, table to farm. The city provides curbside recycling and trash service and an optional subscription for food scraps collection. This compost service is voluntary for residents and businesses, and there's a discounted compost service program for income qualified residents where 90% of their compost service costs can be covered. Currently about 15% of the city's waste hauling customers subscribe to Table to Farm's curbside compost program. Now I'll go into a little more detail on each of these policy options. Next slide, please. Thank you. First is a requirement for residential organics collection service. This would require all single family homes to have curbside organics collection service. There are a few different ways this could be structured, but in general, residents would pay a mandatory fee and either the city or a contracted hauling company would pick up organic materials, including food scraps and yard trimmings at people's homes. This is similar to how trash and recycling work, where you pay for trash and recycling through the city. This option would just add compost service to that. And there are many different examples of communities that do this. Many Colorado communities, including Louisville, Lafayette, and Golden, have a contracted hauling company that charges one fee for trash recycling and compost, all three services, based on the size of the trash container, to incentivize people to recycle and compost more and keep their trash containers small. Residents can choose to opt out of receiving a compost bin, but the fee that they pay still covers all three of those services. And then the city of Denver has a slightly different version where they also, the city halls trash composting and recycling for its residents, and all three are covered under one fee. But residents in Denver need to opt in to receiving the compost cart rather than automatically receiving the cart and having to opt out if they don't want it. But it's no additional cost in all of those communities. So that's a system that really incentivizes people to try to throw less in their trash bin and put more in the recycling and compost streams. Next, on the next slide, is a requirement for commercial entities to have organics collection service. This policy can require commercial entities, including businesses, government buildings, and multifamily residential buildings with more than eight units to have organics collection service through a hauler of their choice. So the city can't force them to choose a certain hauler, they get to decide who they choose for their hauler. To support compliance, the city could initially focus on educating businesses about how to meet the requirements rather than relying on fines or penalties to enforce the requirement, and that can encourage cooperation and build early buy-in with a requirement like this. Some communities in Colorado that require commercial entities to compost include Denver, Boulder, Aspen, and Longmont. And Fort Collins also requires grocery stores to compost, but not other commercial entities. This type of policy can be phased in, starting with certain types of businesses that generate large amounts of organics, such as grocery stores, restaurants, institutions, or landscapers. So there's a few different ways that it could be phased in over time. Next policy. is an organics diversion requirement, which is a city-wide requirement that prohibits residents and businesses from disposing of food scraps or yard trimmings in the trash. This is similar to how electronics are banned from landfills, so residents and businesses can choose how to divert their organic materials through something either backyard composting or curbside collection. This can be enforced by the hauler through fines, warnings, or refusing to pick up carts that have obvious amounts of organic materials in them. And this leaves it up to individuals to decide how to avoid putting organics in the landfill and provides more options for people on how they want to participate in composting, but it can be harder to enforce. This type of requirement is usually paired with city organized hauling or an open market of haulers that offer curbside compost collection. that ensures that people have options that they can use for organics collection. And an example which is in the picture here is the South Canyon landfill, which is owned by the city of Glenwood Springs. So I know that's a different setup than what you have in Durango, but the South Canyon landfill does not allow yard waste to be dumped in the landfill. It must be brought instead to the brush pile or the leaf pile which are at the same site for composting. And the landfill set this up by raising the tipping fee for bringing in organic materials to a really, really high amount. So if anyone brings a load of yard trimmings to the landfill, they are directed to bring it to the brush pile or else pay an astronomically high amount if it's contaminated with trash. Next option is operational improvements or program expansions. These could be pursued instead of a policy change. So these are less of a requirement and more of increasing the options that are available in Durango. Some of the options include providing curbside yard trimmings collection for either several weeks each spring and fall or a weekly collection throughout the summer. Another option is to provide drop-off sites for residents to bring their food scraps. And another option is to offer more seasonal collections at designated drop-off sites like leaves, branches, Christmas trees or pumpkins. These options could be offered to residents and or businesses and just provide more options for people. And next is the final policy option. These are some more operational policy options for the city rather than community-wide policy changes. These would be smaller changes that the city could make internally. So one option is to require organics diversion and reducing food scraps at city buildings. This would primarily affect city staff, but it could help build a culture of composting and lead by example for others in the community. And another option is to pass a policy that codifies buying and using local compost and mulch on city projects, such as parks, facilities, or landscaping. Durango already uses local mulch on city projects, but a policy can make sure that those practices continue into the future. And on the next slide, As Rachel mentioned, we conducted a focus group and a community survey to gather information on these policy options. The survey results are still preliminary and we're doing more analysis that we'll present in greater detail at our next presentation. But our focus group participants showed the most interest in the operations improvement and program expansion options. They did show mixed support for requiring single family organics collection service and the same mixed support for requiring commercial organics service. All participants were opposed to the idea of the organics diversion requirement or not allowing organics to be thrown away. Stakeholders recognized that mandatory programs would result in greater diversion and more participation in composting than the voluntary programs, but they also shared concerns about increased costs for residents and businesses and It's important to note that the cost of recycling will likely soon be covered by Colorado's new producer responsibility program, which will begin reimbursing communities for the cost of recycling this summer. The program is funded by companies that produce paper and packaging products in Colorado, and they will be paying into this program, which will lower residents' utility bills and could potentially make it more feasible to add compost services in the future. Next slide, please, and I'll pass it back to Rachel.

Great. Yeah, so this is just a snapshot of a small number of the learnings from the survey. We're still processing the survey responses. 237 survey responses in total. I do want to acknowledge that the survey was not a random sample, so there's always a possibility that the responses can be skewed with opt-in bias that people who choose to take the time to take the survey are typically people who are more engaged. So that's just kind of a caveat there. But when asked about what programs they would like to see in Durango, respondents ranked the following options the highest. more options for regular curbside food scrapped collections, and operational improvements to the spring and fall cleanup to ensure yard trimmings are kept out of the landfill. So those were ranked the highest. And then 81% of respondents said they support a requirement for residents to have a regular collection of food scraps, and 94% percent of respondents said they support a requirement for businesses to have regular collection of food scraps. So that was a pretty high level of support, slightly higher for businesses. So that's an interesting finding. And respondents also would be more likely to support requiring composting if it were paired with more options for waste collection rates to be based on trash bin size. So that's the pay as you throw concept. or with cost savings due to producer responsibility. So going back to some of the things Audrey was mentioning around what's coming next could reduce collection rates. So those overall waste collection rates. So those could, that may be beneficial in terms of sentiment around composting. You can go to the next slide. So these are some additional takeaways from the engagement overall before we move into some final slides. So the focus group participants are supportive of composting and are environmentally conscious. This is in line with how Durango residents typically respond positively to being supportive of environmental initiatives. Residents are concerned about rising costs of living. So that could affect sentiment feelings around and reactions to any service fees increasing around for if there were a requirement around composting. Residents are interested in more yard waste options. Businesses are concerned about additional costs or requirements. Focus group participants are interested in pay-as-you-throw systems. And Durango already has a version of pay-as-you-throw with two different container sizes for trash. Education and outreach are crucial to ensure willingness to participate and keep contamination low. So there was recognition of the importance of education and outreach. So next steps. So City Council, you will be receiving the final report once it's complete, and then we will be presenting again in September with that final report. And this effort on organics and composting doesn't end there. With this information, Council still has to decide what to do in terms of direction and potential ordinance. So we're happy to answer questions. And the next slide is just a thank you. We appreciate your time. And Marty, Audrey and I are here to answer questions or engage in discussion.

Thank you, Rachel and Audrey. And I would just like to, before we jump into questions, acknowledge all the excellent work from RRS and EcoCycle and the STEPS program overall. I know Council directed this exploration to begin at the beginning of 2025. We had a bit of a longer runway because I found out about this program and it was really serendipitous. I was like, oh, this is exactly what we need. And so when we were accepted and able to kick off working with RRS and EcoCycle through the steps program, I believe the quality of the research is just that much higher than we could have done internally here as staff, just given the extra expertise and additional capacity that they brought. So I just want to say, Thank you to everyone that's helped out so far. And I will also say that Rachel and Audrey and Randy really gave a shout out to Durango's engagement structure. They said it was pretty exceptional and some of some of the best they've seen working with different communities. So Gesundheit. So I think we can pat ourselves on the back for that as well. Yeah, but with that happy to answer questions all. Be the main one answering questions, but I'll hand it off to Audrey and Rachel. If there's something that I can't speak to.

Great cancer goes so.

Thank you, Marty. Hopefully you got some of my questions ahead of time, so I've added a couple from the presentation. So diverting materials helps reduce our costs transporting materials to the Bondad landfill. Is there any substantial number that comes from the 37% or if we had a 50% reduction and it was 16% anything along those lines to see what kind of savings we would elicit out of not transporting to the landfill? So.

We pay tipping fees to throw our waste in Bondad landfill. If we were, as a community, we're sending less material to Bondad, we would be in turn paying less tipping fees. So that's how we would see a savings there operationally. And then the question is, how do we reflect that in the prices that our workers Customers are our residents and businesses are paying for fees on trash, recycle and compost. And as Audrey mentioned, there are so many different models for how communities choose to kind of package together those fees. But that's where you would see the savings is those reduced tipping fees.

Yeah, sorry, it was maybe a little unclear. If we do reduce 50%, was there any conversation about if we do reduce 50%, we net X dollars? We know what a tipping fee costs us. We know what half a ton less might save us.

Yeah, we can run those numbers, but this effort isn't doing any kind of rate study or like deep financial analysis because there are still so many options on the table. The amount of time we'd have to put into, Laying out that level of detail for all the options just isn't what we want to do until we know the direction that council is interested in, or maybe like the last final two options that you're weighing.

And it makes sense because different options will probably have different percentage of decreases in tipping fees and all the rest of that stuff.

So yeah, the financial and operations around these different ordinance options really vary. Okay.

the proportion of food waste that is commercial versus residential, what's the biggest impact if we choose between one or the other?

So we don't have a perfect breakdown of residential versus commercial just because of the way our city operation or collection operations work. They can just get combined into the same trucks and dumped in the same loads. That said, we can make some some decent estimates based on the number of, I'm sorry, the number of residential customers far outweighs the number of commercial customers. I think it's three or four times as many. And then also majority of people are eating food at home, right? So residential is the largest volume of customers and most likely the largest volume of organics uh, diversion options that said in terms of, uh, like the smallest number, the hotspots, I guess, would that would be food service. So that would be grocery store restaurant. So kind of obvious. That was a long way of saying a really obvious answer.

No, it's fine. I appreciate, I appreciate being obvious. I need it. Um, Yard waste cleanup seemed to be where a lot of folks kind of resonated on. And so to my way of thinking, if we increase the frequency of yard waste cleanup, we start decreasing the amount of material we're probably collecting. I'm not sure that's true or not, but does that tend to follow if we start collecting more frequently throughout the year? So instead of the spring and fall, we're doing it four times, six times, something along those lines. Would the cost just be a multiplication? If we do it one time, it's X dollars. And if we do it six times, it's six times X.

So I wish it was that simple. And this is a good chance to remind council how our spring and fall cleanup operations work. So the fee is paid for on our trash and recycle bill, but the actual service is provided by our streets crew and that crew and equipment. And so essentially the city uses that fee to supplement the cost of providing those services by the streets crew. Historically, the reason that the streets crew is involved in that is because they had a lull between their summer and winter busiest times for plowing and streets maintenance. That lull is decreasing and our streets crew is really maxed out. So they there's not any staff or equipment capacity to really take on regular community-wide collections to the degree that you would see for spring and fall cleanup um so it wouldn't just be as simple as you know multiplying a you know By a certain cost, we'd really have to rethink how those programs are funded and the operational staff and equipment and how those are structured. I will say we do offer and have for a long, long time bulk collections for people, but typically that's not something that residents take the city up on for their, you know, summertime yard waste collection.

So a lot of residents wouldn't have a place to store it to get it up to a bulk level, right?

Yeah, exactly. Or people just keep it until fall or spring or whatever, you know.

Last question. After years and years of education and outreach to reduce recycling contamination, do we have any faith that education and outreach would work for organics contamination? Are we low contamination with our recycling after all these years?

Yeah. So Durango, as far as I've heard from when we talk, you know, for instance, we did a tour of the – material recovery facility a number of years ago, and they said Durango is among the best of the loads that they receive. And, you know, I think as Rachel and Audrey said, we have a very environmentally conscious business and residential community here. So we expect to be able to continue that and recycling on composting. You know, there's going to be a learning curve. It's a new thing. We've seen some, you know, there's been some horror stories from other communities that maybe went too far too fast. in the front range. And, you know, that's been some of the benefit of the slow build of opt-in that we've gone to at this point. So, yeah, all that's to say is it wouldn't be whatever council chooses to do moving forward. It wouldn't be a flip of a switch. We would have to have an on-ramp design. Yep. Great. Thanks. Councilor Lawyer.

Yeah, I have some duplicate questions that I'll skip, but I just wanted to say a couple things. It's obvious the support this program has had since the inception when this came to us. I don't know, a year ago, a little over a year ago was on the agenda. The council chambers were packed. The amount of emails that we got were astounding. So I want councilors that weren't here to. remember that and i'm sure when this comes back up we will see the same again um but uh i think that's important for us to realize that it is important to our community um like you just said we are a very environmentally conscious community and so i think it's important i also think it's important um and i want to thank the team um this was way more than i thought we were going to get originally when yeah same yeah which is so great um it's amazing that it like serendipitously kind of came and we were able to jump on board with the STEPS team. And so thank you for your work in that. And then thank both the ladies that presented today and all the work that they did. And I appreciate that it wasn't just assumed that our community wanted like a mandate, right? And we can look at that and we can see what other communities have done. But I really do appreciate the approach of, you know, that balance of, you know, affordability and, you know, what we can accomplish without much of an increase in fees potentially. And then what we can do maybe slowly. And so, you know, thank you. And I look forward to the, you know, reports coming out and what we get in September, um, to see how we move forward.

So thank you. Thank you. Yeah. The value of bringing in just external, you know, neutral parties. I think that also, you know, looking at having them review the survey, having them present at the focus group, it was really apparent that we were getting a, you know, that holistic, uh, exploration. So we'll see. Yeah.

All right, Councillor Gonzalez.

Thank you very much also for the presentation. I felt very informed with all the things you presented. So could you just go back to some of the feedback, the surveys? And I guess, so you mentioned, one of the ladies mentioned that the people that participated tend to be supportive. But was there any education that had to happen or people knew what they were contributing to? I guess because even for me, it's kind of new that cities were doing stuff like this. So how does one go about educating?

Sure. So I think there's a lot of parallels that you can draw with recycling and how trash and recycling systems work already. Durango I heard me say before we're a bit ahead of the curve in Colorado in terms of how we handle recycling as a municipality. So I think drawing some parallels to existing waste management systems is a great start for education. I think people are increasingly familiar with the idea that you can take organic material, whether that's food scraps or yard waste, and you can compost it. I mean that that's pretty common knowledge, A lot of the details of the different types of ordinances or requirements that we could employ as a community were things that the focus group or we had to explain in the survey or with the focus group, we had to spend some time presenting the options as Audrey did for you all today. So yeah, I mean, I think the nitty gritty, not only the structure of a potential ordinance, but then even a layer down of how that is actually designed to roll out potentially. Yeah, there's a lot there and it'll take multiple conversations to kind of help everyone understand where we're at.

Yeah, I think, yeah, of course, composting is not new, but that the city would offer that service, I think, is something that's really new. And so I think it would take some time to educate the community, although I feel like Our constituents are very well informed and also very willing to give feedback. So I guess, has there been pilots? Or was that part of the presentation? I know that we have our private services that could perhaps share feedback. But have there been any pilot projects?

There have been some. I would say the expansion of the on request leaf collections as part of fall cleanup has been an example of a program expansion we've done recently to add on to and improve the offerings from fall cleanup. We contract that out with Table to Farm. Another is that discounted discounted option for income qualified residents to get 90% of their table to farm bill covered. That's been a little bit slower to take off, although we advertise it to anyone that applies for our food tax and rebate programs. So those are the only two that I would consider a pilot. And then obviously for the last five years, table to farm has been operating their services. The last thing I'll say is, again, there are the ordinance structures and then within a particular ordinance there's all kinds of operational contractual models you could use so if you did do a city right requirement for residents that could be single hauler that could be multi hauler that could be the city doing collections and then contracting out for where we take the compost that could be you know there's so many operational contractual ways that can be designed that are not being you know again we wouldn't Investigate those until council gave further direction on the. Where you want to go?

OK, great. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks for just a couple of quick questions for the business requirement. Are we talking about all businesses for organic waste diversion or is it primarily food production or ancillary businesses that do food production?

So we haven't decided. It's just the one category of option would be. commercial-focused requirement. Most communities that do that tend to focus on food service and those areas of high organic production first.

Gotcha. Okay. And did I hear right that the cost could be subsidized by the statewide producer responsibility program?

Indirectly, yes. So the producer responsibility program that myself and Public Works are working on right now has the potential to eliminate the recycling fee for for residents, and so it's not guaranteed. We don't have the numbers and the contract in hand from the state, but that is in theory how the program is designed from the state. So yeah, if people were saving anywhere from 8 to $12, residents were saving that much on their monthly bill by just now no longer having to pay directly for recycling services you know we could evaluate where how that savings is being implemented do we just do residents just see a reduction in their bill do we keep the bills the same and you know change different um fees in other ways and of course one one last thing i would add is It's pretty apparent from the focus group and some other engagement that people see their utility bill as a collective, as like just a single dollar amount, even though it's several line items and different services. And so that is a challenge when we're also looking at water and sewer rates, base rates and consumption rates, trash, recycle, the sustainability fee, all of those things. Residents just kind of focus on that sum total, which is understandable. So that's something that council has to consider in their decision making.

Okay. That's good clarification. Thank you.

Yeah.

Councillor Kosso, you have something else?

Yeah. Marty, what's the follow-up from here between now and the decision-making? I know there's some more survey results to pull together, but what else?

Yeah. So I'll be working with Audrey and Rachel and the STEPS team to put together the final report, and that will include all of the detail and pretty much all of the information that Council would need to have in hand to then – decide how to move forward. And at that point, you know, I'll work with Jose to make sure that we're approaching that next step in the correct way. But it really is that at that point, it's in council's hands to decide what we feel like is, you know, the best fit for the community and what path we want to start going down and start actually putting detail to.

The element that was balancing out a change in fees associated with bin size. So the more I recycle, the more I divert organics, the smaller my trash can can be. And I get some kind of cost reduction by using a smaller trash can piece. Is that going to be an element of this? It does seem to be something that was kind of adjacent to, but not necessarily a focus on.

Yeah. So again, that's one of those things that if that seems to be the direction or the type of program structure ordinance requirements, that council is interested in and thinks represents our community, then we would explore those options. But that's really Public Works' realm, our trash and recycle services. So we're not going to brainstorm a dozen different ways to structure those costs until we know which way that council would want to go. And then once we have that direction, so many different options uh throughout colorado that we could pull from in terms of um models for for fee rates and service uh schedules and things like that that presentation would come at a regular council meeting yes it will be a short operational update and you'll get really it'll be that document um and then we just go from there

Kind of interesting to me, we're in a study session and it allows a little bit more conversation, but we're not necessarily talking what council might be a little bit more interested in or not interested in in regards to the options. I don't know if council's interested in having that conversation now or not.

We could certainly talk more about it, but I mean, I think we're probably just trying to collect this information, probably trying to synthesize like what the different options are, like in terms of like mandates versus softer language around. Is that what you're looking for, Councillor Koso?

Yeah, just, I mean, study sessions allow an opportunity for a pretty robust discussion that we don't have in the regular meetings. So if the next thing is a regular meeting where decisions getting made, it feels like this is an opportunity for us to sit there and say, you know, the commercial fees is not something I'm all that thrilled with, for sure. I hope we try and go in a different direction. I mean, some of that has some merit, I think.

Yeah, if I may in so the report will be finalized in September and that will be what's on your agenda at a regular meeting and it'll be a much shorter update. Just say this is done so it seems like the timeline would be following once you have that report in hand and you have a chance to review it and counselors have their opinions on various options and you're able to talk with Jose. Then. we would go from there. So maybe a study session, maybe.

Yeah. Perhaps September might be better when the data is collected and synthesized, then we can kind of look at it and see if we want to have another.

Every now and then I like to turn to my right and say, council, we want to chat a little bit because this is the venue for chatting. So if it's not going to work on this one, that's fine too.

So I get it. Yeah. I think September might be a better, more appropriate time to discuss further.

Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like I've already used up all, all my time and then some today. So, um, Yeah, thank you so much. If there are any other questions. Yeah, we got one from Councilor Yazzie. Councilor Yazzie, sorry.

Thank you, Marty. I think this is a good program. Like it's more than I anticipated. So thank you for that. OK, so I would like to add and I don't know if they've taken. The low cost method you know that we just went through a rate hike on the sewer and water and we just went through a pretty vigorous. tax increase. So I kind of feel like people don't want to add to their utility bills. So I'm wondering if there's an option to like do self service where we have a drop off place so they could bring their compost in there, you know, and then they wouldn't have to pay another fee. That might be a good starting point. Yeah, there is going to have to be a lot of education on how to do clean composting.

Yeah, that is absolutely true. So I would put what you're describing into either status quo in terms of how the report is kind of categorizing the options before you. So one would be status quo. The other would be what we're calling programmatic improvements. So incremental improvements to various offerings. So for instance, maybe city-hosted drop-off site in coordination with a contracted compost provider. So, you know, even incremental improvements have a cost, but they're, you know, they vary depending on what you choose to do. So, yes, those will be options that are presented alongside the others.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah.

All right.

Any other questions?

Great. Thanks so much, Marty. Thank you all.

Item 2.3 is grant approval update with Tommy Crosby.

Afternoon, Mayor and Council. Tommy Crosby, Economic Opportunity Manager. Quick grant approval update for you this afternoon. At tonight's regular meeting, we will have two renew grant applications up for consideration. Quick recap on how the grant process works. Staff reviews all grants to make sure that they meet eligibility criteria. Today's focus, the renew grants, differ from some of our larger grants. We don't actually use a committee review for the renew grants. We just go directly to city council. These are lower dollar. We try to turn these around intentionally quickly for our small business community. And all of the supporting documents for these two renew grants are in your regular meeting agenda packet tonight. Again, we have two projects up for recommendation this evening. Total amount requested is just over $4,500. We're making our way through our 2026 Renew Grant budget. I imagine we'll probably exhaust all of our Renew Grant funding in July, maybe August, based on some of the interest we're receiving of additional renew grants that are going to come before Council, but happy to answer any questions that folks might have about their two renew grants on tonight's regular meeting agenda.

Did you have anything? Councilor Koza?

Yeah, Martin, you know what I'm going to tell me, you know where I'm going to ask. So the second grant that was really around parking lot improvements, I just I'm not sure that I understand how this is applicable for any grant, to be honest with you. It seems much more functional. It seems like we might be It's not a huge amount of money, I know, but do you have any kind of support for why asphalt patching is part of this grant?

Yeah, great question. So with the Renew Grant, we intentionally market it as... property or building improvements. So that leaves the door open to sidewalk repairs, to landscaping, to parking lot repaving, restriping. Past precedent that has been set recently with parking lots specifically was the Strader Hotel. They recently paved over their gravel lot and they received a renew grant for those parking lot improvements. So we do try to leave the door open for the entire property being eligible as long as it's visible from the public right of way. So they're not creating a new avenue or going down a channel that hasn't been trodden before. There is some past precedent for parking lot specific improvements being renew grant eligible. Okay.

Okay. Thanks. You're welcome. Any other questions?

All right. Thanks so much, Tommy. Thank you. Appreciate it.

All right. Moving on to agenda item number three, council requested items.

Item 3.1 is the immigration task force updates.

Good afternoon, Council.

Thank you for inviting us. My name is Scott Smith. I'm the former chair of the Community and Cultural Relations Commission for the City of Durango. So early on when Council kind of asked to form the Immigration Task Force, I was kind of involved in setting up some of the framework along with some other folks. And since I've kind of been chosen as the mouthpiece, now you're all stuck here listening to me. So we have a concrete set of recommendations that have come out of the task force. Several of those don't have any budget or monetary implications. Several of those do. But ultimately kind of with the theme of understanding that while some immigrants are citizens, some are undocumented, but absolutely all immigrants are human and vital to the community of Durango. Kind of the goal and the purpose of the recommendations was really to promote safety of all, promote inclusion, dignity, and community trust, encourage informed civic participation, improve communication between residents and institutions, strengthen public safety through collaboration, support transparency and access to accurate information, and ultimately foster a welcoming and united Durango community. The task force believes firmly that every person deserves dignity, safety, and the opportunity to thrive regardless of immigration status, language, or cultural background. And I think I don't need to go into this because I believe you all understand, but the economic impact of immigrants in our community is immense. I think every business, restaurant, food service, construction, landscaping, immigrants are absolutely vital to that fabric within our community on the economic level, let alone on a personal and human level. So I think immigrants are part of our community and are extremely important and are already woven in It's important that we make folks feel safe, welcomed, and heard. So as part of the strategy here, it's kind of a multifaceted approach. It involves building partnerships within the city and several different departments, as well as community organizations, schools, businesses, and general residents in the community. Some of the things that we're going to go over and that we recommend are launching a public awareness campaign that promotes belonging, empathy, dignity, and respect. Additionally, organize inclusive community events and cultural engagement activities, encourage multilingual and culturally responsive outreach, and readopt a city resolution affirming values of inclusion, safety, and civic participation. And lastly, evaluate community impact through feedback, participation, and ongoing collaboration. So an ongoing kind of feedback loop around communication. So specifically for the public messaging campaign, and this could look a myriad of different ways, and I think the task force would be happy to elaborate on this if you all had more specific questions, but really it's a public messaging campaign stating that Durango was welcoming to all. This would really reduce division and tension, encourages unity and compassion, strengthens community identity, and helps all residents feel welcomed and valued.

Additionally, another recommendation was to have a welcome program.

So for immigrants arriving at the community or that are already here, have some educational workshops on local laws. Some examples are on like DUI, intimate partner violence, traffic laws, driver responsibilities. We firmly believe that if people know, especially immigrants, if they know the laws, they will abide by them. Also information about police, fire department, code red, emergency preparedness, and guidance on accessing services, courts, public meetings in a safe and responsible manner.

This is a recommendation that does involve some monetary or budgetary implications.

So the task force recommended that the city create two bilingual community connector positions to help the immigrant community access information, resources, and community services. So if there's a small business owner or someone who wants to open up a small business and predominantly does not speak English, one of these community connector positions within the city could help that person file for the correct fees, get all their licenses in order, all their ducks in a row so they can open up a business. That's just one example of what these community connectors would do. Another thing that does have a slight budget implication but is also very common practice in the private sector and nonprofit sector is providing salary incentives for bilingual police officers. Um, I, that's a common place. I'm a social worker by trade. And if usually if people are competing for social work positions, if they're bilingual, they usually come in a slightly higher salary. But again, we recognize that as budget implications. Um, but ultimately it reduces the language barriers between residents and institutions and improves communication between the city and immigrant communities, ultimately resulting in greater accessibility, inclusion, and trust within the Durango community. Another recommendation would be to revamp the 2004 immigrant-friendly resolution. So we would like council to review, reaffirm, and modernize the city's past 2004 immigrant-friendly resolution to reflect current community needs, strengthen public safety, and promote trust between the immigrant communities, institutions, and the Durango Police Department. And I think, again, this is really leaning towards the goal of promoting transparency and accountability.

and trust and ultimately safety.

Another recommendation would be to create a peaceful protest guide. The expected outcomes would be safer and more organized public demonstrations, increased civic engagement, public understanding, and stronger trust between residents and local institutions. Really looking and dialing into the task force was really set on having a stronger relationship with the Durango Police Department. I think strengthening that collaboration between the DPD and the immigrant communities through things like education, communication and community engagement initiatives would only further trust within the community. And I know the DPD has already put a lot of effort towards that. And I think that's been reflective and a lot of people appreciate that. But I think continuing that. would be the recommendation. Additionally, holding some community safety workshops that are bilingual or multiple languages and accessible as well, I think was something that came out of the task force that would be a strong deliverable. And then again, expected outcomes, increased trust, communication, safety, and reduce fear and misinformation. So really, this is kind of going back to kind of ultimately the collaboration between the community and different departments within the city and Durango's immigrant residents. So really, it'd be increasing more services and reducing duplication. And it would, again, promote preparedness, community safety, and help families become more informed. So again, really emphasizing on the community connector roles within the city. So those two staff positions. Again, I realize they have budget implications, but I think they would be vastly helpful for everyone in Durango. And really kind of bridge that gap. And some of the things that this position or these positions could also do is on Durango's social media feed, make sure that things are translated into multiple different languages. Same with Durango Police Department. So making sure that critical information going out to residents is in the language that they speak.

And again, I think stronger community trust, safety, civic participation are the overall expected outcomes.

We do appreciate the opportunity to come to you all. I do anticipate some good questions from everyone. So I did want to kind of get through some of that initial information, and then we can open up to questions.

All right. Councilor Gonzalez, do you want to start us off?

presentation and it was great. So I guess is the chief here?

Or I don't see if you want to come up. I have a few questions for you. Hi, good afternoon.

I guess is there currently any programming like a coffee with the cops or sort of general where like scenarios where you go out into the community and just talk to people?

We've currently just been on a program where we've been out speaking to the different community members about technology currently. That's been our biggest push recently. Also meet with this group every time they meet. We've set it up where I can meet with them as well and I mean, we do periodic. We had a community presentation last night.

I mean, we have multiple. Do any of your officers speak Spanish or other languages?

Yes, and we have one that speaks Portuguese as well.

And so I guess I've seen in other communities where there's just regular interactions with the police officers, usually not always the chief, but perhaps somebody in the designated role where they frequently go out to the community and just talk, talk about, I mean, sometimes there's topics, sometimes it's just an opportunity to hear what's on the mind of the constituents. So perhaps, I don't know if that's something that needs to be done by ordinance or you can just create a model where once a quarter or whatever time you deem necessary, that you just go out and talk to specifically this community. If you haven't done that, perhaps that's something you could start. Would you be open?

No, absolutely. A lot of it's opportunistic, like the west side, when we all went over there and met, when we welcomed them in the community, but also Olivia set up different, and it's been very beneficial to me with the actual, the immigrant community, and We met late at night a couple of times. You could tell they're tired, ready to go home, been working all day. They just want to bring food. They just want to talk more. And so it's very beneficial. And we want to do as many of those as we possibly can, truthfully. You know, a lot of it is up to kind of the climate and how everybody feels at the time. And that's why we work through this group here to try to figure out the best times and places for that and not interject ourselves in but have – really be there more for the community and their needs. And that's why we, you know, want to work through this group here. But yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I think it would be beneficial. I know it was something that was, we did regularly, we coffee with the cops, and we would go to usually the McDonald's, that was kind of a, you know, buy everybody a cup of coffee, and just talk. No real agenda, just, you know, what's going on in the neighborhood. And so I would welcome that opportunity, perhaps with the mayor or something like that. So I think that would be a great idea. And it shouldn't be. Hopefully we can buy people coffee. I don't know what the budget looks like.

It's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's great. The little kids come up and call me by my nickname and everything else, you know, because they've seen us in the mock courtroom that we do in here and other things. And it's, yeah, it'd be great. Coffee's not expensive.

Great. Well, thank you for that. I guess the other question I had – thank you, Chief. I think the other question I did have was regarding some of the things that you talked about with, like, community – a campaign, like, that you sort of opened with – And I wonder, I had the same thought when we were having our previous presentation about education and sort of public campaigns. You know, how do we do that, Jose? Is that something that, is there a budget for, or for example, you know, I don't know what category this falls under. Is there a budget for, I don't know, activities or things like that?

The short answer is probably No, it just depends on what it is. So if I know what the campaign is that it's been going through, it's within different places. And we I think typically in the organization that we are here, we're very responsive with where we're at. So I think what Bryce was trying to say there is kind of probably come off the level guard. Do we talk to you? Yes, there's plenty of times that we have. We have a citizens police academy. He's out at neighborhood association meetings. We are doing it in a manner that may not be as systematic or have a program name like Coffee with a Cop. We don't quite have that, but there's other opportunities that we do. On the one that I believe that you were showing, it showed more of maybe a partnership with the business community as well. And so I think some of those things would be, I don't see that that's a high-priced item. It's probably more of a coordination with the Chamber of Commerce, the bid, somebody like that to say, hey, there's this recommendation that came in. How can we partner with the business community to do some of these things that you're asking for, if I'm understanding you correctly.

Yeah, and I think some of those like low cost ways to get that campaign out there are through like social media. So partnerships like that would be relatively inexpensive. I think the task force would be happy to provide some actual content, but I think if that could be shared out through social media, there's other ways too that again would probably come at more of a cost, like maybe some banners, things around entering Durango, some physical things that does come with the cost, but I think there's some low entry points around cost that we could achieve pretty quickly.

Great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I'll chime back in later.

That's a lawyer.

Yeah. First, I want to say thank you, Scott, for one serving your time on the CCRC and then for heading this up. I, you know, we appreciate your work and I know that this is all a volunteer position that you guys take on for us. And when we originally put this task force out, I know that adding those extra meetings and stuff is a time commitment. And so I just want to say thank you to everyone that served on the task force and on CCRC and everything. So thank you for your hard work on that. Can you talk just briefly a little bit? I know because I've been in emails and stuff. How many people were on the task force? How many other people did you meet with to come up with these? How many times did you meet? Just give us a quick little overview.

Yeah. So I think in the formation of the task force, I was involved along with some other folks about interviewing different community members. I think met with well over a dozen community members and kind of interviewed, got some good ideas. Then the kind of size of the task force kind of narrowed down or whittled down to about five, six. And we're meeting on a fairly regular basis. I actually stopped going to the meetings around March, I believe. But I think they were meeting at a regular cadence. So if I had to put a number on it, I would say well over a dozen meetings. But yeah.

Excellent. Thank you. The next question before I get into specific questions, Jose. As we're getting this presentation and we're kind of discussing ideas and things up here on the dais, how does this look with implementation or like? I don't want this presentation to come to us and be like, oh, we like this and we like this and then it just dies. So do we have to specifically bring this up to staff plan to bring this up? I know sometimes task force stuff staff will kind of summarize and be like, this is what we recommend, and then we can make a motion and maybe change it or not or whatever. How does this look?

Yeah, that's a very good question. I think kind of in my mind is this is a presentation from them kind of talking about their recommendations. After this study session, you probably have a official document that you would accept from them accepting their recommendations. And if those are accepted, that's when staff would then begin looking at them and then coming to you either during budget requests or things like that on how we could implement them or not and then get decisions on each one of those.

And then as we're getting these, there is some that are no budget requests. Could we implement potentially sooner? If so, when they give us our recommendation or they email it over to us or however this looks, is there stuff that you could potentially start doing sooner than later?

Yeah, as soon as the council does an official action to accept their recommendations, those are when that would be telling staff that we accept these. and we would start working on the ones that would not have any budget implementation as soon as it's been accepted.

So do we need to put down a new agenda to accept this, or will it just be on?

It'll go there. I think this is the opportunity to kind of just present, have the council ask any questions, see if there's maybe direction, not direction, stop me on that one, Mark, but maybe some comments that there maybe need to be changes or something like that. It's that first part of doing it, and then it would come back on a document that says resolution, city council accepting the recommendations from this task force.

Awesome. Thank you. I just, yeah.

Part of that motion or process to potentially accept and move forward with some of these recommendations as an official motion would come to the dais, would that be the opportunity to probably either have conversation around what we like and what we don't like and leave things out or add things in or would that be inappropriate or we're just going to do a full acceptance of what that is and then

That would be appropriate. You could talk here even in the study session of things that you like or don't like. You can't obviously say three of us don't like this, but you can kind of present that and that may give them feedback as task force that maybe they want to make changes before they submit a final recommendation. Maybe they don't, but that's an opportunity to have that conversation here at this point. I think some of the things that were on there, I see there's a lot of possibilities there that are easy wins. A lot of those things we're doing in some capacity doesn't necessarily mean there's We're doing it correctly. There's some areas I think that maybe we can maybe establish more of a public outreach on some of those things that might be more targeted specifically towards the immigrant community. But there's not anything that I really saw in there outside of the two new positions that I think will be very difficult within the budget just based on the priorities that we have throughout our organization. And that's just more of a discussion when it comes to budget at that portion. But the bilingual pay, we already have a bilingual pay established program here in the city. So that one's already and then the rest of it really just seems to be relationships with the community in general and how we can make it a friendly, inviting place. And that's kind of what I was getting from that. And I think most of that is, I mean, budgetary, when I look at it, that's not like budgetary where I'm like, oh, I gotta go find that. I think I can find some of that funding to be able to do those things.

The welcoming program included in that.

Yes, I think though that one's gonna probably need to be more of a participation with the chamber in some of those areas and get their input and what they're comfortable in doing. Because I think that's going to be an important part when we look at doing some of that public outreach. I think the city is a major player, but so is our business community in that. And how does that partnership work together?

Seems to me that if there's a formal acceptance, you know, there could be a breakdown from staff saying, hey, these are things that we're already implementing or in process of opening or like this is what we're doing in kind of but it seems like to me there could be some education to counsel about what is going on administratively and operationally that we've already instituted and then we can kind of maybe go from there is kind of what I'm I'm hearing okay great and then sorry I wasn't meaning to take away did you have anything else council lawyer yes please yeah okay no and you're you could I don't mind people jumping in did you want to add something Olivia

More than asking, I want to add something to the welcoming program. Bienvenidos. This is a curriculum that was developed around 20 years ago. Of course, it's updated for current needs. Back in the day, the municipal court used to use this curriculum to give consequences or hold accountability for those people that commit traffic infractions. because of the lack of knowledge on the new culture. That was the idea, to prevent infractions by educating new community members or newcomers with the recent regulations of the new country that we are encountering. The reason why we believe this is really a strong recommendation is because we know that sometimes when immigrants are committing into infractions, there are if they happen to be undocumented or they don't have the proper documentation to show driver's license and why not they might be creating a higher profile and therefore more prompt to get truly just kidnapped by ICE and deported and so we're trying to prevent that to happening by educating our community members and how to prevent getting into situations like that such as the driver's license, losing points, or running a stoplight, or even a lot of people don't understand the domestic violence rules in this state. So it's a win-win situation. Maybe the Connectorist, if you will, to accept that recommendation can provide that training. And I think it's a really wonderful circle where everybody will win. I hope that was okay. And I mean, if you have any questions.

Thank you. No, of course. So in reviewing the recommendations and stuff, it does seem like a lot of these things potentially we might have or have started, but maybe it can be more intentional, a better cadence, like that sort of thing. Like I was looking at the public messaging campaign. You know, we do a great job with our social media, but maybe intentionally doing like a monthly, you know, we do a monthly red cone report or whatever it's called. Why not a monthly messaging campaign around, you know, this community storytelling or something of that nature. And so I think. Like a regular cadence or something intentional there. Same thing with so the welcome program. I was wondering, is there other community partners that do a welcome program that we can? Because some of this stuff I think could be more beneficial if the city didn't do it. If it was someone else that the city may be supported or. you know, advertised or, you know, whatever helped.

Right. Yeah. I think with the welcoming program in particular, I think that would be more of a partnership with the community and other folks or organizations. Like perhaps the city could volunteer some space so people get a little bit more familiar with some of the city government space. But the curriculum and the people facilitating that could be other organizations or other partners. Wouldn't have to be city staff. Does that answer your question?

Totally. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. And then... When we're talking about revamping the 2004 immigrant-friendly resolution, we reaffirmed that resolution and changed it in November. Didn't we change something? We did something.

We did a new resolution that I believe you created or modified from a different one. I don't know where you pulled it from. I think we used the 2004. Okay.

It was 2004 and there was another one. There was two. The later one. Yeah. And then you updated it and modernized it.

I want to make sure. I'm like, did we do that? I thought we did it. But sometimes I, you know, dream things and think that things get done. Did you look at the new one that I threw together? No. Okay. It would be great in the recommendations if you looked at the one, I think it was November that we did, and tell us what you want us to change or make because I sort of, you know, took both of them. I talked to you. That's right, I did. I remember. I called people, I feel like, and did this. So it would be good to say, like, okay, you're doing good stuff, but you could have done it better by doing this. Because I don't think City Council would oppose passing something new, especially if we miss the mark in a little bit of a way. Does that make sense?

Totally. Can I also mention that what is the stintic about the 2004 resolution is there is the vocabulary language that assure our entire community that no municipal resources will use to apprehend or help ICE into, you know, into what they're doing. That's very clear on the immigrant friendly resolution from the 2004.

And I think I put that, I made sure I put that in there. I think, I don't remember.

I haven't read the other one. I will do the homework and definitely, okay?

Just make sure, that'd be great. Bryce, real quick. I remember when all this was originally happening and we were doing the task force, we had talked about a peaceful protest resource or guide or tips or something. Did we ever do anything with that? Did it ever get published? I feel like some, yes. I was like, I feel like I saw it on social media, actually. Thank you. I'm seeing Tom's head nod.

Right. No, there's been some discussion with certain individuals and groups, but not everybody. And there's not a, you know, a consensus on whether people even want that or not, but we're more than willing to do that. And we've been willing from the start.

Um, how hard or how many, how much resources would it take to put together a little guy? You were doing a class or something, weren't you?

Oh, we were talking to different groups and people afterwards, but yeah.

Um, anyway, I, I just want to see if like, that would not be that hard. Okay.

When I saw you at the Smiley building, that's who I was speaking to that day or whatever, but

Okay. I think those were my biggest thoughts and questions that I had for everybody off of it. Thank you for all, I know it takes so much time and there's part of me that like does these things and, you know, we push together this like immigrant task force. And I think like, these are, I don't want it to just be like, oh, you know, well wishes. And, you know, we try to, like, I want something hopefully to come out of it. So you were, you know, and so I hope that there's something that we can do, you know, moving forward in this day and age right now to like, make an impact together as a community. So thank you.

Yeah, and we feel the same way. And I think when we do give you formal written recommendations, we can organize them in a way too with around different timelines. And if it's a big lift or less lift. So I think we can organize it where here's some things the city can do now, pretty accessible, like let's do it. And then some other things like some of the positions and budgetary things will be on there, but we'll organize it in a way where there's some timelines of action items that can be done immediately.

Yeah, thank you.

Just a couple of small follow-ups. Again, piggybacking on, thanks for all the work and I appreciate it. I don't quite understand if you're pinch hitting for the CCRC at this point in the immigrant group or how your role is, but I know it ended officially in May. So thanks for the extra time and effort that you're putting in here. I did want to follow up. The West Side example is a really good one. When we went out for that celebration, I know Councilor Yazzie was there, and I think a couple other folks here were there as well. One of the things that really struck me is the councilors showed up, and there was mediocre enthusiasm to have the councilors there. When the chief showed up and the officers showed up, the kids lit up, the smiles were there, and it was interesting to see. how much connection they had had with a lot of those residents. And I've seen that repeated in other situations as well. So I do think the officers, while they're not holding a class or doing coffee with cops at times, it's been obvious that there's been connections with the immigrant community in very positive ways. And you can see that in some of the celebrations. So I just wanted to make sure I tagged on that the welcome program. It's an attendance thing that I've got a question on and how much we would see from an attendance of folks that are relatively new to the community and as well as given the environment that we've got from the federal prosecution. So any thoughts or any discussion that occurred within the group around would we be able to even get attendance at those kind of programs?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's some concrete things that always help with attendance, like whether the time of day that it is folks have jobs offering some sort of child care option. So I think having some of those things and also getting kind of a grassroots word of mouth out, I think would make it successful. So I think at the risk of having low attendance, that risk isn't great enough to not try. And I think figuring out some ways along the way about how to increase attendance. But I think some of those things are always good standbys that work.

Great. Okay. And then the community connector positions, we'll see some kind of cost estimate on what that position would look like. I know that it would be challenging in the budget environment, but would still like to see some kind of financial.

I mean, just kind of, you're probably looking at for both of those, like total end, because you have to put the retirement and the benefits that go with it. You could be looking anywhere from 120 to 210.

Based on that. So I know we're revamping the community engagement specialist kind of position. And I would just say like, as we're going into like the next year and we're getting, maybe getting creative on different positions and different things, like, is there a way to, cause that's sort of not the same, but if you had someone who was bilingual that got that position, I'm not saying that, that's what we don't, I, whatever.

Sorry.

Anyways, I'm just saying that like maybe something creative there, if, since we already are getting creative with that position.

That kind of piggybacks into like, I have some questions, but I don't want to steal anything. Um,

Can I just ask something?

Is there anything with the Food Equity Coalition in terms of the food program support? Like, Priscilla Newbold with the Food Equity Coalition, like, she does that, like, business, food business, like, being bilingual and helping them navigate the system. So, like, where is the low hanging fruit from leveraging what has already been implemented through other organizations? that we don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel or what resources are already available that we can leverage that give them like the feeder, those warm handoffs, you know what I mean?

Right, yeah, 100%. And I think that's really valuable. And I think kind of the goal with having two positions or if you ask for two, it's easier to take one as opposed to asking for one and taking zero. Yeah. But I I think one of the goal of that is to have a kind of like one stop place for the city of Durango, where that's also a resource hub. So folks can call. They're speaking to someone that speaks their native language and can say, Oh, well, you talk to this person, you talk to this person. Have you talked to the food equity group over here? So it's kind of like more of a resource hub. It would be kind of like the first easy contact and really connect the community, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And if I can real quick, Council Tommy, would you mind kind of coming up? Because I know you've done a lot of work in helping people set up businesses and entrepreneurial, uh, that English isn't their first language and have done really a lot of things on the warm handoff. So if there's some things you could speak to of what we do now, and then just kind of use that as maybe some participations that we can kind of help a little more in that program.

you've done a lot of great work and it's been just say tommy was going to take this position too and i think that's like i did not say that to tommy thank you an extra 100 grand did i hear i heard him say 210. um but i i think what uh mayor woodruff touched on is one of the one of the ways that we've been really easily able to accelerate this work is supporting Priscilla in that role and the work that the food business work group has done. That work has really rippled out. It started with the focus on just food businesses, but the line at Priscilla's door now includes many entrepreneurs outside of just the food business realm. That's started to share an orbit with the Durango Chamber of Commerce. I think one really interesting way I know the city's a big partner with the Chamber, but one interesting potential pathway that's being more and more illuminated is Durango potentially having its own Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. It's best practice in a lot of larger cities, but really propelled by the work that Priscilla has done. They're starting to crack the door open. So I think As the city continues to partner with the Chamber, that's one way that we might be able to support this work out of the economic opportunity budget. The last two years we've been able to directly invest in a contract position supporting part of Priscilla's role through a contract with the La Plata Food Equity Coalition. I think that's another way where we can continue to build on this work a bit. And then the last thing I'll touch on, which Council will hear about in July, is the work that we've done with a group called Cities Work. And they are doing more or less a free comprehensive audit on five different types of businesses and what it takes to walk through all of the steps that it takes to stand up a business in those various lanes, whether you're a childcare business, a food business, a retail business. And they're looking through that. they're navigating that with the lens of what would this look like for an English speaker? What would this look like for a non-English speaker? Where are the blind spots that we have at the city for our entrepreneurs? If we can create a system that works for a non-English speaking entrepreneur to fairly and easily and cost-effectively navigate the steps in the city services required to open a business. If we've set that up for someone who is a non-English speaker, we're also setting that up for folks that are lifelong English speakers as well. So I'll pause there, but that's a few of the ways that I think we've started to build upon this work and some of the avenues that we could continue to invest in And potentially, you know, support some of our community partners like the Chamber of what would a partnership to, you know, maybe next year instead of investing in mornings at El Morro, we redirect that towards work around a Hispanic Chamber or what Jeff at the Chamber has done a really great job at is inviting more Spanish-speaking business owners just to become Chamber members. you know, sponsorship opportunities of expanding that reach. I think there's opportunity there.

No, I appreciate you, Tommy. I know it kind of puts you on the spot there, but I do think that that kind of ripples through your organization is we have staff doing a lot of different things, and we sometimes don't name it in a way that looks obvious, but there's a lot of work going through. So when you accept these recommendations, if you accept these recommendations, I think there's already a lot of work that's been done towards this that the council would not be aware of, even I may not be aware of, We have just great staff that are taking initiatives and running programs through. So it'll be a good opportunity, I think, for us to point back to the council. Here may be some of the recommendations they made, but here are all the other efforts that we have ongoing that's already kind of started some of that framework to support.

I did find, too, that we do have how to peacefully protest on our city website already. And so taking that with maybe some other tips and things that people need and distributing it some way would be great. But anyway, so like you said, we already have some of those things. But I think just condensing them, making them more, getting them out there more in the community, to your point.

I wanted to say thank you, by the way. The idea is not to duplicate efforts. The idea is to really create a collaborative model. And truly, I'm so proud of the Good Food Collective and all the efforts they're doing to help people become entrepreneurs. I think the task force can totally contribute with any gaps that they might find. He says something about outreach in the community. I think that's the strength that we have. And as an example, I wanted to share, we are confident that we can bring the people to the Bienvenidos meeting, to the focus groups. We are confident we can bring the people. And as an example, I want to tell you that probably like eight months ago, maybe a year, when the new administration came on board, um we organize a few group of people including me organize a meeting when the police department where we have around 120 people show up so i think that's a sample an example of what we can do because we the community needs to be in in tune with people they trust so we can be the conduit and if you hire uh If you decide to create the Connectora role, I think that will be amazing because that can be the liaison and also the conduit to outreach the community, the immigrant community member. He mentioned something about different types of outreach. What works for the Anglo-American community may not work for the Latino community. We do need food sometimes, and we also need childcare and organizations and people that we're going to trust. Another thing is that the task force can also serve as a catalyst to create that unity among other nonprofits that are already working. And we definitely identify the efforts with the immigrant community. Thank you.

Just maybe one more, just even an idea. As we're talking about this potential community connector position, I would like to think that there's probably some grants available to be able to Fund some of these administrative costs and whether that is a nonprofit has a better chance of an application to whatever grant authority to provide some of these costs for a community connector or municipality. I don't know who would have the better opportunity to find grant monies that could potentially be available. And maybe Tommy has more of a line that that's even. a reality. But I do think that something where I mean, we're in the 21st century, you'd like to think that there'd be some, some sort of grant mechanism available to fund, you know, part way or even full wave one position of where this person, whomever they may be, is, you know, funded, either from another organization where they still reap some of the benefits, or something that that comes from some other, whatever. So do you think that you found that that might be better coming from a nonprofit or maybe a municipality in terms of like?

I think it really strengthens the city's position and how the city really is trying to be welcoming of communities to have it be housed with the city. So I think the advantage there is really big to have it actually be a city employee. That's kind of like I think the thought of the task force is it really be advantageous because it sends a message because it's a city employee. Um, that being said, I think collaborating with nonprofits around that and maybe even like braiding some funding streams from grants with other nonprofits, I think would be a good option. It kind of is the best of both worlds.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe it's some grants from nonprofits as well as like they're, they're putting some money in the kitty to help. Right. Take some of the administrative costs. Right.

And it could be kind of like maybe a joint position. I mean, I think, you know, as with budgeting coming up, it really, there's opportunities to be creative there. So I think. I think we're just making the recommendation. We're happy to partner with the city on what that would look like, but I think being flexible and keeping an open mind, but I still think having it be an actual city employee is really sending that strong message.

Okay.

If that makes sense.

Yeah, totally. Thank you. Councillor Gonzalez.

Thank you. So I'm reminded of a program I've worked on before. Do we have community health workers as city and city staff?

Health workers are handled by the county.

So we don't have them. Olivia, are you familiar with the promotoras program? So it's a community health worker program that is used for a variety of things. It can be used from, we use them a lot for COVID to inform the community about actual, the truth, the myths of COVID. We used it for voting rights. We used it for domestic violence prevention and, you know, drug prevention and a lot of different programs. But they were very targeted to the Latino community because it's more of a peer-to-peer program. And so I'm reminded of that. And, you know, there's lots of examples. And so when we're talking about perhaps, as Councilor Lawyer was mentioning, the redevelopment of the engagement coordinator, perhaps, you know, it ends up being something like that. It's a very common program in Latin America and in Latino communities. So anyway, it's just a thought as we are exploring alternatives, also called community health workers, but maybe it ends up being something kind of joint. So I just wanted to add that to the conversation.

Thank you. Can I also add that if given the opportunity through the Bienvenidos program, it's not like The connector is going to be the educator is rather the organizer and they will bring the health Department, the police Department, alternative horizon, say so, and other community members to illustrate the topics. I just and I think it it's it's a, you know, collaborative effort and I think the city can gain a lot for him.

Great, any other questions? Great, thank you both so much. Very much appreciate your time in this.

All right, on to agenda item number four, proposed new agenda items for discussion. I don't see any. Is this the time for us to bring up new potential items for? All right. Chancellor Cosso.

Yeah, I've got a couple of things. One's just a discussion. The Library Advisory Board letter that came back to Council. I just wanted to talk as a group for how we might want to follow up on their letter. The key thing is they were urging reconsideration of the public survey and a commitment to a study session to further discuss how the library can secure funding to ensure its future amid economic headwinds. So that was kind of the key sentence out of the letter that they sent. So I didn't know how Council felt about this. As a reminder, Councillor Gonzales will be taking over on the Library Advisory Board and I'll be stepping off to move over to Region 9. Just was interested in making sure that it just didn't fall through the cracks and then we had some kind of discussion as Council.

We. Recommendation that we that came back from Luke.

I want to say it's just a study session. That was what I I yeah, it was just it's just a study session.

When we should do another community. We did a community survey two years ago.

There was no recommendation. It was. It was to say like if Council had the appetite, then they could issue a new. community survey just to get to to gauge interest in that from the library district.

I recall correctly this comes out of the presentation where the staff had identified the funding gaps that we have that don't have sustainable funding, your transit, your housing. We were talking about water and wastewater, and one of those portions had to do with the library survey. And it was more of a discussion of last we had talked, but it was a couple of councils ago. There was a lot of support for a library district. and they were getting ready to do a survey specifically for, do you support the library district survey? We had concerns from a staff, specifically myself, of putting that survey out with the property tax increase without including anything about a potential Durango Fire Protection District, because that's the other thing that has to have a decision by the 28th of, by the end of 2028. And that if they were to send that out and say, yes, and this has a lot of support, but it didn't include anything about the fire district, Are we getting a survey that's going to be rightfully telling us information in regards to would they still support that if they had a fire protection district? We were getting close to the line for an election to be able to call a date. So at that point, it was there was not a desire from the council to call an election currently. I think it was in November and that we would move that on to something else. But there wasn't anything that we got from the council that said the library district creation was a priority at this point. Obviously, you all can change at any point, but that's Kind of where it was at.

Was it a county? Was it a county joint discussion we had then? Because I remember something where property taxes had just gone through the roof and they had just finished a community survey, the first one that they did. Or didn't we do one?

Yeah, that was like 2022 or 2021.

So we did a community survey and property taxes had just gone through the roof and then we had just started talking about the library district and We said, no, we're not going to deal with the library district until after either property taxes come down a little bit, the fire district is figured out, and I don't remember.

There was close because there was a part to it before that when this was first created, the library district was going to have like a bond, not a bond, what's it, an election support. They were going to rally the support at this point. This was going to be a couple years ago to get it on the ballot. Yeah. At that time, I believe that's when appraisals went up and there were significant appraisal increases. And they came back at that time and said, not a good time to go through it. So that's what actually stopped it. The conversation with Luke happened like a couple months ago. So that was kind of like the part two of that iteration. But the complete stop, per se, was the very beginning when there was a lot of momentum, but then appraisals went up and they were like, this isn't a good time to go forward with it.

That's correct, because I was on the library board at that time. So that's what happened, yeah.

Yeah, and it spans. I think the county council probably also wanted to have this conversation in a public joint meeting. I'm assuming at some point they're probably going to want to talk about the same thing.

The letter that got sent?

No, not the letter, but I mean, I assume probably in a joint council county meeting. Okay. This will probably be brought up at some point.

So we should go back and tell the library board that we'll bring it up at the joint meeting?

I don't know.

forward the fire district is really critical this next election cycle so that's what we decided previously that we were waiting for the district and that's what Luke shared with the group for sure so I mean the justifications were shared I guess I just again I've got we've got a functional letter that was sent to us what's the response from council and I just don't want it to turn into a response but there was I mean it was there was none it's non-committal right because I was speaking on behalf of all of council just as you know what next steps potentially could be and

You know, my concern is, is there a need or do they just want to create a fire district? Because currently they have the budget split between the county and the city.

I mean, it would essentially free up three plus million dollars in a joint sales tax towards fire.

I think they understand all that, but they're still saying library district is the way we want to go. So, Councilor Gonzales, this really is kind of a handoff to you, and I'm sorry it got a little messy here, but the letter came. You and I are switching. I don't know if you feel like there's anything you want to take back to them on your very first meeting.

I have a point of clarification, if I may, because this process is still a little bit confusing to me because know what if i want something to go on a study session is now the time to ask for a study session and then we vote on it in our regular meeting or to see if we want to have because i think that's again like where i get a little bit confused about like are we i understand there's no action to be had but if i want to bring up something for a future study session i still need to do that in the regular meeting yes counselor gonzalez if i may be able to assist this was

There was a gap, I think, within our process where you have to bring it up kind of cold at a regular meeting, and you may not know if you'll want to bring it up cold yet. Maybe you just want to throw it and see what the reaction is first. So that's what this was here of, of an ability to throw something out there, just see if you want to actually bring it up at a council meeting and be placed on an agenda.

Okay, because I think, again, I feel not fully – informed about what is the proper way to do this, because you all know that I have requested a study session about the agenda, or rather, I'm sorry, the charter. And that will be later for discussion or now discussion. I think that's, you know, it's on there formally because I made a request. So if I make a request for an item for discussion, I'd do it again later.

Yeah, we're not... To kind of piggyback on what Jose was saying is that this is just the soft pitch to the rest of council. To be able to have more robust discussion because we can't have the discussion when we're giving council direction on a new business item during new business, right?

So if I want to talk about the potential for a charter amendment, I should do it now?

After we finish up the library discussion.

Okay, okay. Well, that's what – What you know, and I think when it comes to the library, I know we've had a lot of discussion about that. You know, I would love to see us move forward with an initiative for the library. I mean, if I think that it's been talked about, I know I remember reading it in the paper, you know, before I moved here and there was a when we were hiring a library director. So it's been quite a number of years that it's been like on and ongoing. You know, I think that there's sufficient support in the community to proceed. I think we've seen that a couple of times. So I don't know. I think as we are, I'll learn more when I get on the board, but I suspect everybody on the board is really enthusiastic about moving forward. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't be on the board.

Maybe it'd be appropriate to kind of see if there's another community survey or because the times are very much different now, right? Yeah.

I'm going to say, I think that it's a detriment to the fire district if we went forward with it right now. Sure. I think we timing wise, we need to wait, I think, to get the community survey now versus closer to when we're actually going to make a decision. Doesn't make sense to me as one as one counselor. I'm just those are just my opinions. So I think it would be not just a detriment to the fire district. I think it would be detrimental to the library district if we went through with all of this at one time because it's such a financial impact. It would be crazy the increase in their property taxes if we went forward with both of them and they've had like they won't pass. I don't think because it would be so much so that's fine.

Yeah, that's fair. Could I have one point that's relevant to what she said? Because when I got on council and I in my one of my groups was the library district. And then what had happened is that they had the survey before, but then the climate to move forward with the ballot issue changed. So having the survey when we're ready to make that decision makes more sense because otherwise we waste all that money on a survey. Yeah, but that's what happened here.

homes fall and maybe everyone's having yeah again I do want to I just want to circle back how are we going to respond to the board and and I think there's choices here of of we responded to the board your email there was a response is that sufficient right we need to do something more robust or leave it with county I think this would be an appropriate you know time for the council liaison to to listen to the concerns of the library advisory board beyond just the letter and then maybe bring back Yeah, I would say that both Luke and I were in the room when we heard the concerns of the Library Advisory Board. And, I mean, they've had that session with both city staff and the liaison present. So, I mean, it could be repeated because there's a new liaison, and I get that. But, again, I think this feels a little like kicking the can down the road and not necessarily getting a formal response back to them. So maybe, Councilor Gonzalez, how about checking back in with the board and seeing what kind of response they would like? Well, the response is to go through with the- No, I'm sorry. Not positive, negative, or anything. What form the response should take back to them, maybe. I'm open to suggestions, but this is why I was confused about what's our next step here.

I mean, I guess, I hate to use the word kick in the can, but we kind of are. I mean, we kind of, like to Counselor Lawyer's point, you know, committed to making sure that we see the library, I'm sorry, the fire department, you know, Give it the best opportunity. And then weigh out options maybe after.

If I can, because sometimes this helps and I'm going to try to be very careful. Mark, I keep looking at your phone. Don't get me because I don't want to get in trouble. But let me see if I'm OK on this one. No, seriously, please don't do it because I don't want to give a direction. But I think this is what happens when people go to the body of the council. It's very hard for you to respond back quickly. Because there's different viewpoints. There's three different people. There's two different folks. It's very difficult on that side. But where you're at today is the direction that has been of the council is that they were not interested in moving forward the library district at this time. So there's always a response back to say, this is the current position and we have not changed it. And that can be the formal response. And with that, Mark, I apologize about the phone. It was a bad joke. I was just trying to be funny and that didn't quite work so well.

But we'll make sure I threw that out there.

And that's always your response until something changes, because that's what I use a lot of times. If somebody asks like, where's the council? I'm like, this is what their last current direction was, and unless they change it, that's what it is. That may be good enough for a response. Otherwise, I think if you actually want to do a response, it gets back to the tedious part of putting it on a council agenda item, you all discussing what's the formal. Sometimes it's just easier to say that at this point, I don't see the direction of the council changing, but I'd be more than happy to take it to them if you'd like me to.

It's a response. Councilor Gonzalez, are you okay taking that back to the next meeting?

I hated it. It was misery.

No, I'm just kidding. They're a great group. No, knock it off. They're a great group.

The best library I've ever seen anywhere.

I think I just heard Luke screaming somewhere.

Our physical space and also all the people that work there. So I look forward to taking over for you, counselor.

Great. What else for proposed new agenda items for discussion?

An item already on the agenda is and so I don't know if it's helpful to just move it forward now, but we all know that we have an outdated charter. It hasn't been updated since 1993. We know that times have changed everything from technology to AI. to the way that we run the council, to the way that we, well, what hasn't changed is the way that we elect our members of the council. But I think there's an opportunity to look at that again. I have always been concerned about the way we elect our members, everybody at large, and taking turns being the mayor. It's not working. I think we can all agree that it didn't work. We have a problem. And I think we should review that. And there's a couple of other items that I hope that we can take into consideration as we review our charter. I've worked on many charter amendments. I kind of enjoy it. I hope that if we all agree that it's something we want to do, y'all will enjoy it too, because it really is the foundation of democracy. It's like how our city runs and how we interact with the constituents. It's kind of fun in that way, I think. I've worked on a number of them. I know Mark has worked on some as well. And so we have a somewhat experienced team I imagine Fay has seen the charter many, many times and is up to the challenge of reviewing a charter, should the council support that. And so I hope that we can do that. It will be a rather long process, but I think there's a variety of ways we can do it, and I look forward to discussing that with you all. And after, you know, if we can get a study session.

Sorry, Councilor Cussell.

Yeah, full support for reviewing the charter. I really do like this idea. I think there's some benefits just having the discussion of what we may want to change or might not change as much as an education for council to understand all the components within the charter. So I think there's a lot of ancillary benefits to doing this process as well and look forward to having that kind of an interaction.

I'm sorry, I forgot to just add that, in fact, it has not come to the council before. So I did have Mark do a thorough look to see if, in fact, it has been discussed in recent history, and it has not. For sure not in the last four years, perhaps at least not formally in a study session on the dais. We have not had a discussion about the charter. So I thought that was important to mention so that we're not rehashing issues that have already been presented.

Uhm, so I when we've talked about updating the Charter before since when I've been on Council and the main reason was Council compensation. We did get emailed the study session packet of the Council compensation that came out of that study session because I think I would support a charter if, one, I knew exactly what we were going to go over and if we supported those things, or just a general cleanup, because I think that you have brought up that we should have a general cleanup of the charter. That is fine with me. I think bigger ticket items, council compensation, we talked about four years ago, I think it was. and there wasn't support for it and there wasn't really community support for it at all. And then we did a big, there was a big study on municipalities of our size because someone had brought up districting and how districting doesn't work for communities our size. CAST did a big study on that and so I wouldn't support things like that, like specifically those two items. And so if there's other, I'm not, I'm up for like learning and like doing like studying some things, but those specific items I don't really support changing our charter for. If it's a general cleanup of stuff because we need to, like we've talked about for a long time, I'm fine with that. So that's my kind of two cents there.

Councilor Yazzie?

Okay, I remember when we first got the council, we tried to do the amendment for salaries, and that was a no-go with the community and with the size of our municipality. I'm not really wanting to revamp the charter at this point because we have to work on figuring out how we're going to go forward with funding the fire station. you know, getting into the fire district. And I think that's going to take more time and have more impact upon our financial well-being with the city. So I would be against doing any type of charter work this year. Great.

Anything else?

Sure.

Yeah.

All right, Councilor Cusco.

Yeah, I'd like to ask for a study session around two related topics. These are the previously discussed business impact fund and a refresher presentation from city staff, probably Tommy again, on the framework that was shown previously to city council. This piece would be specifically oriented towards city projects that negatively affect businesses during construction, repair, etc., And then very close to that, the discussion to also include the remediation fund element for businesses that are unintentionally harmed by city maintenance and general operations. This would include what issues would apply and the financial threshold to stay within. Council's in receipt of a letter signed by the Chamber of Commerce bid and local first as representative voices for our small business community. And I would look for their input into our discussion via the staff as well.

One thing I would say is that I Was going to have a meeting with bid local first and the Chamber about the remediation fund, but that fell through. We had some people follow up for sickness, but I'm still waiting to hear back from them in terms of meeting up so. I'm I'm looking forward to having those conversations with them and like what you know it only be as one counselor. Obviously what they're looking for, but.

Yeah, I realized that the study session would still be two months away or so, so it felt like there was plenty of time for folks to have some of the meetings with these entities if they wanted.

Sure. The business impact fund, I mean, these are obviously two separate.

Very related, but correct.

Yeah. So it'd be two different funds potentially then is what you're asking for? Yeah.

Depending on how they're structured, but I think we need to probably have that refresher on the structure that had been outlined already that skeleton and then have some more conversation about what that might look like.

Could be one could be two, but I don't know, OK?

I'd be willing to look at this when the original research I had done when we were talking about this. They talked about marketing and promotion funds, which are the most common for helping businesses during city projects. small grant programs or low-interest loans. I found in my research that it gets sticky when the cities are just coming in to save the day when there's city projects going on or whatever, that we have to continue investing in our infrastructure, in our sidewalks, in our whatever, and businesses nationwide kind of have to. It's a burden, and while I want to help them, we can't take on all of the burden all the time. And most cities can't. I mean, that's just kind of how it is. And so as long as there's like, whether it's fee relief programs or marketing support, or, you know, maybe low interest loan programs, stuff like that, that are incorporated in there. I'm not into like, I don't think the city can support like $40,000 lump sum of money to help this person stay afloat when they should also have insurance and different things. And I get If it wasn't their fault and all the different things, I understand that.

I seem to want to come from a let's have that discussion. Let's see where everybody stands during the study session. And sometimes these conversations go to what's the worst possible thing for each individual council member that this discussion might lead to. And I feel like I'm trying to approach it from a very let's start at a base level and see what might resonate or whatnot. Marketing, non-marketing. large sums for folks who have been impacted massively or not. So the intent really is for a study session just to say, where is each counselor on this stuff? And it feels like this has been a year and a half or so slow but steady progress on having the conversation. And I do not intend to come in and say, I'm going for $40,000 or a certain threshold or anything.

The only reason why I went there was because I feel like at the last presentation when we had that, I had brought up like some of these like low interest stuff. And then there was a bigger, I don't know if it was you or who, I don't, I don't remember. I don't remember all the things, but it was like, no, I want a big like recovery for someone's fault that it wasn't their fault. I want a lump sum of money to have in our budget. And I did not support that. And that's why I was like, I don't want this going forward. And that's the way I voted on it. And that's what the only reason why.

Councilor Woodruff had suggested that there was a stronger business voice might be pulled behind this as well. So we took that, I took that off the table and went back to them. I mean, this is an iterative process and I get that, you know, there's some stuff all of us want and some of the stuff some of us don't want. And I just feel like a study session will allow us to have that and maybe find a happy compromise between all of that.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

Councilor Gonzalez.

I'm just, I still, I'm definitely open to the discussion and then we see what happens, right? That's, I still like, even just going back to my request for the amendment, like I'm just asking for a study session where we see what all the potential is. Is that, you know, like I'm not suggesting that we do particularly anything at this moment, but that we get a view of everything. So that's why I think about what Kip's suggestion is, like perhaps, We could do A, we could do B, we could do C, something like that. I mean, is that, that's sort of the way that I would like to see some of the study sessions, like here's some alternatives. And then, you know, and then ultimately come to a vote. But I know like I would, I don't love this kind of dialogue. It actually makes me very uncomfortable. I wish we could have committees. It maybe gets fleshed out through a committee and then presented in a more formal way. That's another thing we could talk about if we make some amendments to the charter. I don't know. It makes me very nervous because I feel like I don't have all the information that we need to make a good decision. So I welcome really, like, I want to support every study session that comes forward because I think we deserve to have, to be educated. So, you know, I would like to just see what perhaps some alternatives and see what it looks like. So that's kind of where I stand on this session that makes me kind of uncomfortable. I'm not sure why, but just kind of winging it from the dais.

I think in a study session and having like a conversation, although I just had a conversation with Kip, side combo, about like if we had our coffees, this might be taken out. Like we might not even need this because we would have this during like a little coffee, a coffee talk instead of a coffee with cops. We're going to do coffee. Anyways, but I actually don't, this doesn't make me uncomfortable, especially in a study session. And I would say it's funny to hear your, I love hearing other people's perspective because I don't, want to do study sessions on everything that I feel like I have knowledge on because I know how much staff time goes into it. And like, and so I'm like, oh, I have, I know how I feel about this. And so I don't support that. And so no, not that that's, that's probably a bad thing because I should, I should support it. So you have the information that you need, if that makes sense, or whoever has the info, not you, whoever has the information. But anyways, that's me.

That's the point of yeah exactly, but you can't get mad that I don't vote for it if if you have but.

And I guess if you're without those on the regular checks, yeah, we're just yeah, we're just yeah, we're literally just talking about ideas and what sticks against the wall and what doesn't. Alright, anything else for new agenda items for discussion? Alright, Moving on to section five, if time permits.

There are no items in this section.

See, nothing. We will adjourn.