City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Check, check. One, two.

the time is 5 33 and i will call the city of durango regular city council meeting to order uh for june 16 2026 can i get a roll call please thank you mayor woodruff here mayor proud time lawyer here counselor yazi

Councillor Koso here and Councillor Gonzalez.

Thank you. Can I get the introduction? Oh, I'm sorry. The reading of the Indigenous Land Acknowledgement, please.

This is a call to honor and respect indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. As residents and visitors of Durango, we're called upon to educate ourselves about the history and cultural heritage of the land that we inhabit. The city of Durango is situated on the ancestral homelands and territories of the Nitu, Ute, Hickory Apache, Pueblos of New Mexico, Hopi Sinom, Hopi, and Diné Navajo nations. The original stewards of this land were forcibly removed and exposed to countless atrocities by the United States government, including repeatedly broken treaties, forced assimilation, the tragic legacy of Indian boarding schools, and the loss of ancestral homelands. We recognize lasting generational trauma exists within Native communities today. We affirm the continuing importance of ancestral sites to descendant communities as integral to the living cultural landscape. This acknowledgement only becomes meaningful when combined with accountable relationships and informed actions. May this serve as a step towards inclusion and reconciliation.

Thank you. May I get the introduction of the translator, please?

Yes, hi, good evening. My name is Liz Torres and I am here with my colleague Sam Guzman from the Community Language Co-op. Thank you for your commitment to language justice so that everyone can speak and hear in the language of their heart. Today, if you're joining us from the Teams app, you will be able to access the interpretation menu through the More button. You can select English or Spanish from there. And if you have any trouble, please raise your hand. El día de hoy, si usted se une a nosotros por la aplicación de Teams, usted podrá tener acceso a interpretación por medio del menú de más, que son los tres puntitos, y ahí podrá seleccionar el lenguaje y de ahí seleccionar el español. Si tiene algún problema, por favor, levante su mano. And we can go ahead and get started.

Thank you. Moving on to opening remarks by Mayor and Council. Councilor Cozo.

Thank you, Mayor. It's been a month of celebration, so I wanted to make sure we acknowledged those. Mesa Verde had its 120th anniversary celebration. The Animus Mobile Home Park, I see one or two residents here, had its five-year celebration on June 6th. Powerhouse Celebration and Library Neighborhood Group Picnic on June 7th. the local first annual member celebration on June 9th, and the KSUT 50th anniversary celebration on June 12th. There are also a couple of boring old meetings with BID and La Plata Community Food Equity Coalition, but it was a fun month of celebrations. So thank you very much.

Great.

Thank you. Councillor Gonzalez.

I just want to thank everyone that came to see me at my office hours. We had quite a few guests come, and no surprise, the biggest concern was water. So we'll eventually get a presentation here about what our options are, I think, as the year goes on. But thanks to everybody who came to see me and is really concerned about sustainability and water.

Great, thank you. And then moving on to number four, presentations and proclamations.

And so the first presentation is a summary report of the 2025-2026 emergency warming, excuse me, emergency warming center operations.

Hi, I'm Mike Todd. I am chair of the Warming Center Council, and thank you for allowing us to make this report. I think you got something I sent you earlier, but this is going to be a little bit more in detail. So first, thanks to Jose, Jamie Lobko, and Jose's staff for working with us to prepare this resolution. And also deep gratitude to you, the City Council, the volunteers, our partner organizations, Nina Manna, the Red Cross, Sacred Heart Parish, the Diocese of Pueblo, and the neighborhood for making this important venture a success last year. This was, I think you all can say, a strange winter. We expected certainly to be open about 25 nights, but we were able to keep people warm and safe for at least eight nights last year. Even had we raised the temperature to 20, it would not have made much difference because this was into the 20s into the 30s. Compared to the previous year where we served 180 individuals over 20 nights, this year we served 125 individuals over eight nights. Of the 125 people, 60 were unique. So we had unique people, a lot of repeaters. During the season, there were 71 people transported to and from the EWC as a result of the cooperation of Sarah Hill and Ken Leonardo, the transit supervisor. Participation was slow initially, but at the end, we were transporting on average three people to the EWC and 10 people back to town. This service was vital to ensure guests would leave the area and not linger toward Park School or in a neighborhood. This is a necessity for the coming year. The police department was amazing. From the period of December, and this is according to their report that they shared with me, from a period of December 11th to February 24th police report of activity in and around Sacred Heart, there were 32 police involvements involving Sacred Heart. The police made approximately 24 visits to check on how things were going. And this was really, really important to ensure both the guests and the volunteers that safety was our paramount concern. The police also made four visits to deal with behavioral issues, and frequently those people were escorted out. There were also six other issues involving parking, citizen assistance, vagrancy, trespass, and one instance of misbehavior at the church office, but the police handled that quickly and well. According to a police report, and I added this because one of the questions that arose is, is this going to cause a disturbance in the neighborhood? So according to the police report of all activity in the area around Sacred Heart Parish Hall, again, there were 56 officer involvements from December 11th to the 24th. Of the 56 officer contacts with the neighborhood, 32 involved Sacred Heart when it was open or closed. The remaining 22 contacts over two months when the EWC was not open were concerned with other issues. Of those 22 incidents included parking problems, harassment, DUI, noise disturbance, trespass, fraud, and fraud. Of the 22, nine involved issues associated with Durango housing residents. So on days that the EWC was not open, there were very, very few incidents. There were no incidents. One conclusion was that the disturbances in the neighborhood as a result of the EWC were minimal. Guests did not come back or linger or cause problems. And also when we met with Karen Chesser in June, one of the things we asked her is, so what was the impact of Park School? And she said there was minimal or no effect on Park School this year. We also evaluated how volunteers experienced the EWC. They were very positive regarding how the EWC operated and their concerns included raising the threshold to 20 degrees and better handling of behavioral issues. Guests were also interviewed and they shared their views and greatly appreciated the emergency warming center. They also wanted the threshold raised. And that you can see in your resolution. Resolution now reads 15 to 20 degrees. So currently we are working on the following. Sacred Heart Parish and Father Beto have agreed to have the EWC operate for another year. And Donna just told me that the Bishop has now approved the MOU. So we are good to go with the Diocese of Pueblo. Ensuring that once we make a commitment to the homeless that we will be open, we must maintain that commitment. We will consider the 20-degree threshold if we can obtain a sufficient volunteer base to cover all the shifts or funding to support hiring from the 2.30 to 7 a.m. shift. This is really critical, and this is something that is dear to my heart. We're not going to promise them something that we can't deliver on. And again, finding people for that last shift is tough. It's very tough. So if we raise it to 20, we can go anywhere from 25 nights to 50. That's a big demand on volunteers. We will be working on raising money to support the operation. Clearly, we need to continue the transportation element, and we agreed with Jose that this would be done on a matching situation basis. Currently, we don't want you to shoulder all the costs. We will now work with Community Development Department to determine the requirements for a temporary use permit should the resolution be adopted by the Council tonight. Again, the Emergency Warming Center was a success. People were warm and safe. We hope that the Council will pass a resolution so this vital and compassionate program can continue next winter. Thank you. Any questions?

Councillor Cusseau.

Yeah, Mike, just a quick one. You talk about temperature being an issue because of the volunteer network. Is there also an issue if there was more beds or more beds available, would you have some constraints just based on staffing?

More beds? So we currently, we had 20 beds.

Yeah.

We also had from time to time, if it got really cold, people would come in and sit. But one night we had probably 25 people in there and it was too many. while the space looks very big but when you get 25 people in there you get a different kind of interaction and so we're gonna we're gonna maintain it at 20. i mean in firm k you know if it's really zero degrees out and somebody walks in they can sit in a chair but no more than 20 should be sleeping okay that's great and thanks for everybody's time and energy and efforts uh for this population so we really appreciate all the work you guys have done thanks counselor gonzalez

Thank you, Mike, for the update and the presentation. So you mentioned 60 individual people came, but not everybody slept? Or how did it work out such that you only have 20 beds but 60 people?

Well, what we had is that if you look over the eight different times, we had 68. different individuals who use the service over those eight particular visits. So we only had 20. I mean, we had 20 beds, sometimes there would be 22 in there. And then by the morning, there would be 16. So people would come and go. But once they came, they had to stay. And once they left, they had to leave. So again, it kind of vary, but we had an average of about 20 to 22 people at any point in time. But again, it was 60 different individuals who tended to come back.

And how does that compare with the last year?

Last year there were 80 individuals over 20 nights. I think there were probably fewer. There were 180 individuals over 20 nights last year. So we averaged about nine per night. And this year we averaged over 20 per night.

Okay. Did it have to do perhaps, or do you have feedback? Was it because of the location?

Because of what? The location? Oh, I think it's because people could sleep. Oh, okay. In the previous emergency warming center, it was a Donna Mays community compassion outreach. People essentially had to sit at a table and just rest their head on the table because people could now come and sleep. That's why we had a really positive response.

that's good to hear so um and i guess if improvements could be made what what suggestions would you recommend if what uh improvements well i think we have to do

Well, one is we have to do a better job of dealing with behavioral issues. And we have to do, I think, better training of our coordinators. I mean, they were very good at what they did. One was really exceptional because she works with this population all the time. I think we have to figure out what to do with the stuff that people bring. I mean, if you watch these folks walking around the streets, they have carts and carts. And one of the conditions that we had last year is that we couldn't bring the carts into the emergency warming center. But you can't keep the carts outside the emergency warming center because people are afraid their stuff is going to get stolen. And so we'll work with people to get on. volunteer base so that if we raise it up to 20 degrees and that becomes now the new expectation, how do we continue to meet that? And finally, we got to raise money. This is not something that you get funding for. I mean, Donna has already told me she's tried a number of foundations around Denver and we've gotten no response. So we're going to need about 40, probably 40 to $50,000 to operate this. Okay.

Thank you. Thanks for all you do.

Yes. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for your continued work over the years. You, Donna, everybody. I'm finding a solution where we can keep people warm and be successful and that you're continuing to try to make it better. That makes me feel like the decision we made was right and we're going to continue making it better and better. You mentioned that you met with Karen last month. Did you meet with anyone over at Park during the course of the

No.

No.

Because we were told not to meet with anybody at Park over the course. So we decided. We met with Karen Chesser and Coleman in June, but we were asked by Karen Chesser not to talk to anybody at Park.

And that's been, thank you for- Yeah, that's fine.

That's Karen's wish and that was fine. We respect that.

I just, as one counselor, would love to see like when we are doing these debriefs and like all stakeholders in the community that are feeling like they could be impacted, give us a report. Like there was no incidents. There was one, there was three. I'm not concerned. I'm kind of concerned or whatever. Does that make sense? Like I would love- Because they had a big voice and they're in the neighborhood and it's a school and we should listen. But it would be great as a counselor to get that. Maybe we reach out to Karen and ask for that and request it. I don't know what the right answer is, but I was just curious if you know.

I think it's a good idea. Again, what she shared with us was that it had minimal impact. I mean, she was really pleased by that. And the fact that she's not here tonight, I think, speaks to that. But again, I think the police did a wonderful job of making sure that people and we also when people came into the center and they left in the morning, we made sure that we even walk with them to move them toward Third Avenue or get them on the bus. And we really told people, if you don't. Leave the neighborhood. This is going to impact whether we're going to have a center or not. And they got it. They figured that one out. So again, I did not see a whole lot of issues and Bryce can probably talk to this. But again, they did a good job of also patrolling when people were leaving. So again, we moved them out of the neighborhood so there wouldn't be issues.

Good. I appreciate you saying that if you don't have the staff to handle the 20-degree change in threshold, because that's when I was reading the resolution, that's immediately my concern, is if you advertise for the 20 degrees and then you can't staff it and people come and you're not open because you can't, you know, you don't have the volunteer base, that's usually when, you know, people get a little bit nervous. you know, aggravated or they're expecting, you know, like that's when I think, you know, so I, I appreciate that you're recognizing the staffing and hopefully taking steps like this time last year, we were panicked that we wouldn't find a spot for this. Right. And you were like, and that was all your effort was there through, I think you and I were meeting in September even. then now you can focus on fundraising and staffing now, hopefully, since you have a space for next year and be successful. Because I think the 20 degrees is great, but I don't, you know, that expectation for people and that consistency, you know, I think it's super important. Right.

I think, Jessica, the way it's going to work is that we look at the temperature, and if we look like we've got a solid volunteer, we don't announce that it's going to be open. The way we do that is that we have flags at the transit center, flags at MANA, flags at the police station, flags at the library. We don't announce that the EWC is going to be open until we have that volunteer base open. you know in hand so if we say it's we think it's going to be a 20 degree night and we can't get the volunteers we just won't announce it it's going to be open and i don't think that the people you know are going to know because they don't know what app we're using so they're not going to track it But again, we're going to be very careful. Even if it's 15 degrees, we've got to make sure that we're going to have it. I mean, alternatively, what we are looking at is can we hire people for that last shift? And that would ensure that we're going to get the staff. But we did get it last year, but again, we had to make special appeals. That's a tough shift to do it. But we're going to make sure that if we commit to doing it, we're going to do it. Because again, this population has been disappointed too many times and it only adds to their trauma to have another, hey, we're going to help you on them. No, we're not. So we're going to be very careful.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks again, Mike and Donna. May I ask you a couple of quick questions? Okay. I think you guys have done a great job and I loved seeing this program continued and I'm kind of in agreement with Counselor Lawyer that we just need robust stakeholder input as we kind of see year to year what this looks like in the future and making sure that this is going to maintain being a win for all community members and it's a community benefit for everybody. So did Karen mention at all what the minimal impacts were, like how the school was potentially impacted? Did she go into any sort of... No, she just said it was minimal to nothing. Okay, great. It was like she didn't experience the effect of it.

Now, has Park School gotten rid of homeless people? Probably not. But during the days that it was open, and they knew when it was open because they were notified according to the safety plan that Bob Branner wrote, she just said there was very little or no impact. So again, I think again, people were not moving toward Park School and we were really clear, don't go to Park School because you're gonna blow this for everybody else. But I think you should engage her and see what she says. great well i look forward to more conversation around how to make this program better and and to see its longevity yeah yeah bigger bigger and better well we have to find we have to find a different space to make it bigger but again we're set on sacred heart um and again jamie posed the idea that if we found another place it would be suitable we could have put it into resolution but we can't find another place huh

Yeah, we can't take questions. If you'd like to talk offline with Mike, you're more than welcome to.

So we will continue to look for hopefully a second space, but right now we've got Sacred Heart. They're very happy to host us, and I think we're in pretty good with the neighborhood. And again, we did notify the neighborhood if there were issues, they could call us, and I didn't get any calls.

Okay.

And we have a guy across the street that watches the church like a hawk. And I said, Ray, any issues? He said, nope. The only issue we did have toward the end is people would come and sleep at the entrance after the center closed. And what we did is we simply put up signs. And then I and my wife would go by there because we live a couple blocks away and make sure that people weren't sleeping there. But again, Father Beto and Kathy, the church secretary, were there.

they they were fine with that they said you know that's going to happen people do that anyway so okay okay well thanks for all you do appreciate it mike oh excuse me i just sorry i didn't realize counselor yazi um mike i'd like to say thank you because i remember us working last year and the year before to try to get this organized so i think under your leadership and guidance with nina it's um it's been a good thing for the community so thank you

Well, as Hillary Clinton said, it takes a village, and our village is pretty big, and it includes all of you and the city management staff. So thank you. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.

The next item under presentations is 4.2, presentation and review of the 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. I'M GLORIA PLATT, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER. TONIGHT WE'RE PRESENTING THE ACFER OR THE ANNUAL COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL REPORT FOR 2025 IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE AUDIT. AND THIS IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH STATE LAW AND OUR CITY CHARTER. In just a few minutes I'll introduce our auditor. He's online to provide a high-level overview of the audit report. But first I wanted to acknowledge just what a great amount of work goes into preparation of this financial statement. This large report is very detailed and has many requirements as set forth, but this is prepared by our city finance team and is audited, examined extensively, of course, by our auditors along with our internal reports as well. And sometimes, you know, in finance, when we talk about the external audit, we take for granted and feel like everyone knows what goes on in an audit. So I just wanted to mention just a few of the things, definitely not going to go into everything that the auditors do, but just for the public and you as well. So one of the things that they do, we send out to all of our bankers, investment pools, debt holders, confirmations so that they send these to the auditors and provide confirmation verify all balances that the city has on hand and so that that they can ensure that what we're reporting on our balance sheet is accurate and provides a low risk of any misstatement of these cash balances also similarly the auditors They go through all of our revenues and expenses. They compare with the prior year. They ask us for reasons for variances. They look at the budget to actuals as well. And so they ask for the documentation so that we can show them regarding any variances that we have. And then, of course, they are looking at our bids and contracts so that we can ensure that we are in compliance with our policies. They look at individual invoices throughout the year for various expenses and all of our capital outlay for our capital projects. Additionally, they look at our accounts payables or any payables and receivables on our balance sheet so that they can verify these and verify that those revenues and expenses are recorded in the proper year. And these include things that we're paying after the end of the year, but into 2026. So these are not unique processes. This is very similar in most cities that have external audits. But I just wanted to go over a few of those items. And of course, it takes a lot of time. Here we are, mid-June, about to present this report. Part of that is because we are accruing revenues and expenses back for two to three months after the close of the year. So I definitely want to acknowledge the finance team who worked tirelessly to complete these year-end procedures. and the financial statements for both the city and the airport. And so Heidi Wise, our deputy CFO, is here at the meeting tonight. Her and Diane Gersh, our reporting compliance manager. Her team, Helen Brockbriar and Teresa Hill, they work the heaviest on the audit, along with Marissa Rupp with the single audit. That's a large undertaking as well. And then other members work on various pieces and procedures. And so I just wanted to list their names as well. Rhonda Cundiff, Adrian Lyon, Kim Skinner, Christina Leos, and Kaya Fields. Of course, we have extended teams in budget purchasing, even our customer services and fleet and facility staff help out. So it's a large effort, but we are happy to present this report and have the auditors go through the high points of this for you tonight. Of course, we also thank city management's leadership and support as well as the council for your support as well. And we did receive the GFOA award for excellence and reporting for the 2024 audit. And we do expect we will submit this report as well and expect to receive the award this year as well. So I'll go ahead and introduce Paul Kane with our auditors. I'd Bailey, he's online and he will go through this presentation for you.

Thank you so much, Gloria. Can you all hear me okay?

Yes. Awesome. Can you see my screen as well?

We can.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you. I'm really happy to be here tonight to present the 2025 Act for, yeah, Gloria broke down a lot of what we do in an audit, you know, 700 and 800 hours later. Here we are. We start the process in the fall. come out in the field a couple of times in April, worked through the audit there, wrapped everything up in May, and I'm here in June to present it all to you today. I'm Paul Kane. I'm a partner here at our firm. I'm in our Denver office, and I have been working with Durango since our firm took over the audit at the 12-31-2019 audit. I'm going to jump ahead. Before we get started, I also want to thank Gloria, Diane, Helen, Heidi, Teresa, the rest of the finance team. It's a very, very smooth audit process this year. They've got it down. They know what we're asking for. We have a good system. They're very responsive. They're very, very wonderful to work with. I think this is the earliest we've been done in all the years we've worked with you. So it's a constant improvement in processes and we're getting better every year. So this is our seventh year working with the city. It's my sixth year as partner. on the audit as well. We've seen so much improvement over that time. So getting this report issued and presented now in June, like I said, before the state's June 30th deadline and GFOA's deadline to get that certificate is a big win for you all. So today I'm going to talk through a financial statement audit, quickly touch on the single audit, go over required communications to use Council, and then open it up for questions after that. So transitioning to my first slide, is the financial statement audit i'm going to hit on the independent auditors independent auditors report this is really what you pay us for there's four pages in your financial statement and this big giant act for document that the city puts together that we contribute um and these four pages are in the document starting on page 11 it's 20 page 23 of the pdf but it looks like this it's the report on on the audit of the financial statements um And really, I'm going to quickly touch on what is here. So this is a clean and modified opinion. That is the headline. It's the best opinion that you can receive. So it's on, like I said, page 11 through 14 of the report. The first paragraph really talks about what are we auditing. We're auditing the financial statements of the city. The second paragraph, front and center, is our opinion. It says that the financial statements are fairly presented in all material respects. And then it goes on. The third paragraph talks about the basis for this opinion, what standards we follow, the guidelines we follow, and that we followed all required standards and we were independent of the city to do this work. The second page breaks down responsibilities, both management and auditor responsibilities. Management prepares the financial statements, according to discussed, and they evaluate things like going concern. We perform the audit under generally accepted auditing standards or GAS, and then also government audit standards. And it lays out really a bunch of other things that that means for us as well. The third paragraph of the opinion, the third page of the opinion goes into all this other stuff in your document. So it's a 200 plus page report as introductory section, as major discussion analysis, a bunch of statements, notes, required supplementary information, other information, statistical stuff. We don't honor all of it, but these couple of pages break down what we do audit. The basic financial statements we audit, which is what the first page said, required supplementary information, which is management discussion and analysis, and the schedule of changes in pension information, budget to actual schedules. We don't audit that. Other information, combining individual non-major fund statements and the local highway finance report on the back end, we give an in-relation to opinion, which means that it's consistent and accurate in relation to the other information that we do audit. introductory statistical information, also not audited. Fourth page of the opinion is summarized comparative information, discusses that, and then other reporting required by Gagas, which is generally accepted government audit standards. It also sounds like about how it feels sometimes when we have to follow these standards. That's really it on that opinion. Moving forward to the MD&A, really the city continues to be in a super strong So a few financial highlights I pulled out. The city's assets and deferred outflows exceed its liabilities and deferred inflows, which is essentially the equity of the city in basic financial terms by $453 million. That's out on page 17. Overall full accrual net position. So like if the government, the full accrual statements, the front combined statements, net income for the year was $315 million. compared to $12.3 million in 2024. So $19 million increase over last year. And of that 2025 change in net position, $30.8 million was related to governmental funds. And the difference was the business-type funds. So sewer, water, trash, that stuff increased by $806,000. Fund balance. Net income increases fund balance. It increased governmental funds by $30.8 million from $300 million to $330.8 million. just super. Statement of net position, which is your balance sheet. So total net position, you can see, I like to kind of talk from the MDNA. So the management discussion analysis, which is the first few pages of the financial statements before you get into all the statements. There's a couple of good pages there, which I'll show in a minute, which are summaries of this year versus last year, which you don't really see in a government financial statement other than in MDNA. So MD&A shows both comparative information and management has to provide some analysis. So what happened for the year? So if you really just read the MD&A, you should get a really good idea of the government's financial position. The statement of net position is the balance sheet. So total net position increased $31.5 million to an ending balance of $453 million. Like I just broke down the governmental component, the business side component of that. Of that net position, Capital investment in capital assets is 75% of it, which is really consistent with cities your size. Overall, really great positive net position, both governmental and business type activities. So this page from the MD&A is that statement. And it shows, like I said, just 2025 versus 2024, breaking down total net position is this far right column. You can see it from 421 to 453. And just breaking down what changed and what kind of were the biggest increases. So total assets went from 495 million to 592 million, which is massive $96 million increase. A big component of that is proceeds from new debt. So there was new debt taken out this year, $61 million bond issuance has not yet been spent. It's earmarked for future projects. That money is still sitting there as a restricted asset. but it definitely is in this massive increase in current and other assets. Capital assets also increased from 357 to 384, about $27 million, which is just investments in current year infrastructure and things like that. So the liability side only went up about 60 million, which is really that debt itself. So the long-term liabilities are from 56 million to 115 million, which is the increase in the payable side of the debt. So the assets sitting there and the payables sitting there, overall assets increased a lot more than liabilities did, which is why your net position increased by about $30 million. The next page is the statement of changes in net position. So this is your income statement, revenues and expenses. You can see the net income numbers here. The change in net position is your net income, 30.8 million for governmental activities, 800,000 for business type activities. Overall increase is $31.5 million. And this is also just a page right out of your MD&A. Like I said, it shows the comparative information for all these categories of revenues and expenses. I'm just breaking down really what changed here. So revenues are up 110 to 135, expenses only up 6 million. That $25 million increase in revenues is mostly related to sales and use taxes, capital grants, and charges for services. And then expenses are up about $6 million, which really were in public safety, parks and rec. Overall net position increase, like I said, $31.5 million. Just fantastic. And then the last slide on the financial statements I put together, just overall net position trends since we've worked with the city. So you can see governmental activities, business type here from $236 million in 2020 up to now $330 million at business type from 115 to 122. It just really shows a very healthy trend, something we like to see. You're going the right direction. Significant note disclosures. So after your statements are a bunch of footnotes, which give a lot more detail, accounting policies, what's in your cash and deposits, what's in your investments, breaks down the capital assets, leases, debt, things like that. These are what I think are the most significant disclosures. If you want to go read the disclosures, I think keying in on these are the most key ones. um i'm not going to go into them just want to point that out and that's something that we talked about later in our governance level as well and and that's it on the funny statement audit so i'm going to switch over now to the single audit which was not in your packet but i think gloria did email it to you all this afternoon it looks like this it's called the federal awards reports in accordance with uniform guidance so So what the single audit is, it's our audit of the federal dollars the city is spending in addition to the financial statements. We do it all together, issue it all at once in one single audit. So that's how I got its name. This package is 13 pages. It includes a couple of different reports, which is that we give this first report, which is a report and not an opinion. The second one is an opinion on compliance suit. Breaking that down in the slides, the first report on financial statements and internal controls is required by Yellow Book to be issued when we do a single audit. So it basically says that we do not audit your controls. We only gain an understanding of your controls. That's required to develop our audit procedures. And we would report any significant efficiencies or material weaknesses that were identified as a result of those procedures in this report. There were none, no issues, no deficiencies that we identified during these procedures, which I'm happy to report to you today. The next three pages are the uniform guidance report. Uniform guidance are what we follow when we audit federal dollars. It basically says that we audit the city's compliance with the OMB compliance supplement. So Office of Management and Budget put out this compliance supplement that basically dictates what has to be audited with the federal funds. We go through a whole risk assessment process. We identify programs that need to be audited and we audit them. It's all dictated by these rules. We are issuing an unmodified opinion on compliance. We only had to audit one major program this year, which was the airport improvement program. And I'm happy to say also there were no findings identified in that audit. The schedule of expenditures of federal awards, which is also known as your SIFA, is part of this package. And it is... In here, it looks like this. It shows all the federal spending you spent for the year. And you can see it's $14.3 million. Of that, the airport was almost $12 million. So by testing the airport, we covered about $12 million out of your $14 million expenditures. We're only required to cover 25%. So the main increase over last year, last year, federal spending was 10 and a half million. It's only 14 and it's up to 14 and a half million this year. So that big jump in the airport, which is 11.9 million this year, it's like 4 million last year, which was really related to the terminal expansion going on up there. If you look at one page in the single audit report, it's this summary of auditors results. This breaks down everything I've kind of talked about. Um, Our financial statement report is unmodified. There were no mature weaknesses, no significant deficiencies to report, and no not compliance noted as part of our audit procedures. And then we, like I said, we went through federal awards, no mature weaknesses or significant deficiencies of the single audit as well. Issued an unmodified opinion on compliance for the major program. And no findings were identified. So we go through it. It also lays out our threshold for distinguishing type A versus B, which is that risk assessment process. You are a low-risk entity, which means we'll have to cover 25% of your expenditures. Therefore, the airport program got us there, got us like almost 80% of your expenditures. And A versus B is a million-dollar threshold, which is defined by the feds. These two slides are fun. No fire statement findings, no single audit findings. And then an airport audit update real quick. We also audit the airport. The city is administratively Runs the airport essentially. So it's half owned by the city through a joint venture. Half of the airport's balance sheet essentially ends up on the city's balance sheet through that joint venture. Increases in the airport's operations hit the city's financial statements at the same 50% split. And so we do that audit while we audit the city, issue the airport's financial statements at the same time as the city's financial statements. So those were issued at the same time. They are also in your packet with the same June 10th audit report date. And that's all on the single audit. That's all on the airport. And I'm going to dive quickly into this letter, which is communication with governance. It is a four-page letter. It looks like this. Audit standards require us to give this to you. My understanding is it was provided to you. um it details a bunch of stuff we're required to communicate but peeing in on what those high level things are is that we comply with professional standards including all ethical all ethical requirements while we performed our audit on the city adopted gatsby 102 not 103 typo by me certain risk disclosures it was called no impact really on the city's financial statements. It's just some things that need to be thought about with footnote disclosures. So pretty easy one to implement this year. We do list significant risks identified by the auditor during planning in this letter. They're not risks really specific to auditing a government more than just specifically the city. Those risks are what drive our procedures. Financial statements include sensitive footnotes and disclosures because of their importance to users of the financials. And I call that what I think are the most sensitive disclosures. a couple of slides ago. There were no audit adjustments at all. We performed, you know, as a result of our procedures, which is fantastic. One really little small pass adjustment related to bid property taxes that was immaterial and passed on. Happy to say no disagreements or significant difficulties dealing with management. Future considerations, super fast. GASB standards are always doing new stuff. Coming up, they are changing the financial reporting model. Next year is when this all hits. It's pretty minimal. It impacts business type financial statements and the MD&A a little bit and the way things are reported in the MD&A, which we will work with management as they implement this next year's audit. Next year, I can point out a couple of things that changed as a result of that. And really, not a lot happening right now at Gatsby. They just came out of a really big time of this year. A lot of things that impact all our lives. And that's it. So opening up for questions now. Thank you all so much for having me.

It's Jose, the city manager. Just wanted to say thank you to you and your team for all the work that you've done in helping us. I know when I got here in 2020 and we had to do two audits in one year and the place we've gone, it's awesome to look back and see over the past almost six years how much we've improved in being in a strong financial position. And then also just want to thank our finance staff for the hard work that they have to put into budget gets done in January, but they're right back at it doing the audit side on the audit part of the house. So to the finance staff, thank you very much. And then just also to the staff and our executive leadership team for their commitment to financial excellence and everybody helping out and being a part of this. Thank you very much. It's always good to see how far we've come and how we continue to set the barrier very high for us. So thank you. Absolutely.

Great. We'll move on to council questions if you don't mind, Paul. Councilor Koso.

Yeah, thanks for the presentation, Paul. Really appreciate all the work going here. I got a couple questions for you, and then I wanted to just make a statement to council as well. And I'm not sure how to refer to some of the tables, but I've got a couple of questions. When we're looking at long-term expected rates of return, there's an asset class cash that's expected to get 5.5%. And I didn't know if you could clarify for me how we get 5.5% out of the cash. I don't know. I'm not sure if it's just straight cash or if that's inclusive of CDs and other investment vehicles.

Where are you seeing that table?

Yeah, it's page. So we have three page numbers because of the way that our agendas are structured. So it's either page 61 at the bottom, I think might be the right page number for you.

I'll bet. Okay, hang on. Asset allocation for the FPPA. Oh, it's in FPPA. Yeah.

It's in the pension note.

Got you. That all comes straight from the actuaries of the plan. So that is not audited other than we take what is essentially these pension footnotes. FPPA puts out these old hire plans that you're in. They put out an actual report for every single plan.

Okay. And

that comes straight from their actuary into your financial statements. So that would take some digging, but it's a good question actually.

And I can circle back with staff on that one as well. So just one other question then in a general sense, miscellaneous often is a fairly high number. I'm looking at page 124 where the miscellaneous is calculated out at above a million dollars. So is there in the reporting and the auditing, is there ever a situation where if there's an item within miscellaneous that is over X dollars, that that's broken out in a footnote? or we list out the top three or top five components of a miscellaneous category.

Yeah, so I guess in general, if things are in miscellaneous, I'd say in grand scheme of reporting, if it rises to an amount that becomes significant, like you're saying, I don't know what page you're talking about, so the million you're talking about, is it under the 911 Communications Fund statement?

It is the Tourism Fund, Durango Tourism Fund.

Okay. Yeah. I don't know. It's the way things get classified and grouped and reported, and it can always be broken. Everything can always be broken out, I guess, more aggregated, disaggregated than they are. Yeah. If it's a significant material amount and it's in miscellaneous, we will dive into it to figure out what's there to make sure it's reported appropriately. The combining or the breaking out is all based on how management wants to report things. Go ahead, Gloria.

This specific line, I didn't find the page because I think mine is numbered differently. But I do recall that I believe that's the MOU agreement. Whenever Durango, sorry, Datto, I can't remember what all the letters are.

Datto, yeah.

Yes, Datto. Whenever the city took over the operations and there was an MOU that we signed together. And that was what that revenue was for.

Yeah, I pulled up that page because it was an example, but there were multiple categories where there was a miscellaneous line and some of them were relatively high. So I just was wondering kind of how that was treated and if in the future we could break out some of the major components. Because sometimes those miscellaneous have fairly large top three that make up the majority of those miscellaneous categories. So I hear that that's an option if that's something we want to pursue.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's not a normal type of revenue that we would see in that fund. Most of the revenue is lodger's tax. So it's kind of a one-off, and that's why it went there, but we can definitely explain that better.

But, Gloria, not to beat a dead horse, but we have the miscellaneous category and multiple funds, right? That's not unique to this one. I think I saw it three or four times represented in the reporting. Is that correct?

Yes, and a lot of times it includes investment income and other smaller revenues. Great. All right.

Cool. And then I guess I wanted to just mention to Council, the audit is incredibly complex. And I mean, one of the slides that Paul just put up, we saw a $3 million increase from 2024 to 2025 in property taxes. I have no idea why we would see that. And so there's pieces where this audit comes through and we're crossing our T's and dotting our I's and it's showing good results. But there's some analysis here that I think is worthwhile for us to go through. One of the key things I would point out is page 197 210 whichever it is, but there's a 10 year comparison between what has happened for the past 10 years and a lot of categories. I think there's some merit in us looking at that and seeing kind of what some of these categories are doing over the long term and having some conversation about that. It seems like it's a good preparation for the budget conversations to come for 2027, so I just want to leave that with everybody. I might talk to you individually afterwards about it, but there's there's some really interesting components in this. And unfortunately, I think what happens with audits, I've seen it time and time again with the nonprofits that I've been, we just kind of go through and if there's no significant findings, we kind of move on to the next thing. And I think this has got a lot of great content in it that could be very beneficial for our budget discussions. So, all right, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Great, Councilor Gonzales. I'm sorry, one more thing, my apologies. I did, I came up with, you know, 20 questions. So I've got a meeting on Tuesday, the 30th of June with Gloria and Jose. If anybody else is interested or anybody else has some questions, happy to share that meeting with anybody. Thank you. Sorry, great. Councilor Gonzalez.

Thank you and thank you for that Councilor Koza. I think I had the same thought. It's a little lot of information I think would be nice to to go through it and and so it just leads to me to my question about you mentioned that you've been reviewing this audit for seven years. And that sounds like a lot. How often, or rather a long time. So how often do we, I mean, I mentioned this goes out for bid and we interview different firms. How often do we go out for that audit?

We did go out for bid for this when we had the original engagement and then we had a clause for a certain amount of renewals. I believe we're in our second year of renewals possibly, but I would have to check that to make sure I'm giving you accurate information. So every two years we.

I don't know if it's every two years. I want to say we've done two. There was one back when you were first hired in 2019 for the 2019. And then we did another request for proposal maybe two years ago that you were awarded again.

Yes.

I think there's been twice that it's gone out.

Okay.

Yeah, your policy, I would say, is every five years. So I think we did five years. So I was a manager at the time. Another partner was the partner on this audit. I became a partner as COVID hit April of 2020. And so the old partner, Kim Higgins, she stayed on until she retired in 2022. And I was there helping her, but she issued this audit. My first time I issued an audit was 2023. Yeah, like Jose said, we won the rebid against whoever else bid on that RFP back two years ago. This is our second audit now under the new contract. We were awarded for five years, two years ago.

Well, it seems like there's pros and cons. So obviously you've seen it a number of times. So you've seen the improvements and changes we've made. But I just wonder if a fresh set of eyes is, you know, when you see the same things over and over again, how do you I mean, each year it's a completely different process.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it absolutely is. I don't think we constantly are implementing new standards. We're applying new unpredictable procedures. Our firm's changing processes as we go. I think over time, I think it does make sense to get new eyes in every few years. But I think it takes two, three years really to just get to doing a good audit. It takes so long to learn a city your size that by the time you really get to where you really understand it, your three or four years in, you really have a good grasp of everything that's going on. But yeah, I think, I don't know if you're making a statement or if you're asking me a question.

No, well, it was a little bit of both. You know, how often we, part of it's probably for staff, like how often we go out for bed. But I understand what you mean. I think I feel the same way about going through a budget. This is just my second time going through a budget like ours. And so, of course, we're learning things all the time. I think that's why I was grateful for Kip's suggestion. And I guess, you know, that I think this is also for probably staff and probably not for the consultant, but this is strictly a financial audit. So not an audit of the department's or, you know, how well they're managing their budgets. That's not included in here. Is that correct?

So there is, I mean, budget to actual reporting throughout the financial statements. So we are looking at, you know, at the end of the year, we are reporting on how closely we met our budget. So there are statements that show the budget, the original budget, the amended budget, and the actuals. And there are some differences in the way that we budget and the way that we report throughout the financial statements. And so those differences are stated on those reports as well.

In this document, so is this part of the job of the consultant or is that internal?

It's to verify basically the expenses and the revenue. So they go through and verify those numbers. And they look at our adopted budget that council has adopted and they verify that's what we have in our systems. And then they also verify the revenues of the expenses that we have on our financial statements that these are accurate. And then we show a comparison of budget to actuals. And so they are in that way auditing because they're making sure that is in fact the budget and that those are in fact the revenues and expenses. And there are comments in the notes as well in areas where if the budget was exceeded, we do comment on that.

Okay. And so even that was, there was no findings?

There's no findings. So that doesn't mean that we didn't exceed the budget in any area. There are a few places that are noted, and we can look at that if you want me to specifically go to that page, but those are noted in the financial statement.

Okay. Well, maybe I'll learn more as we kind of walk through it, because I think that I would imagine that would have been part of the audit, but it's a little bit hard to distinguish that this is a financial audit that was done by a third party versus our internal auditing that we do for each department and how that reflects in the documents.

Totally. I think just a quick comment on that. I think there's so much misnomer out there about what we do in an external audit of a financial statement versus what an internal audit looks like or what a performance audit looks like or what. There's so many ways and different types of audits that you go under. I'm happy to talk with you offline about everything that we do as well and what that covers and any other concerns you have about what it doesn't cover, if it would help in any way.

Great. Thank you.

Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Great.

Councilor Lawyer.

Yeah, I just have a couple questions for Paul and then one for Gloria. From an auditor's perspective, Paul, is there anything in the city's financial condition that would cause concern regarding its ability to continue normal operations or meet its obligations?

Nothing at all. We would call that out if there was. Yeah.

I just wanted to say too, like since I got on council and we see these every year, one, they're on time now, which is great. Like I feel like the first year I was on, it was like, I don't think we got a presentation until like September or something. It was like hot mess trying to get it all together. And then I think we had two that first year that we were presented and there was always finding not, I mean, I don't want to say like we were doing Like, but there was always findings. There was always things we were getting, you know, getting better at. And then the next year we only had one, but it didn't get done until like July. And then the next year. So every year I just feel like we're, you know, you know, meeting those goals and getting better and better. And so thanks to Gloria and the team. And thank you for, you know, working for us for so many years. Were there any control, internal control issues, trends or concerns that council should be paying attention to over the next few years?

So nothing that has really risen to a reportable matter, but you know, as you grow opportunities for further formalization of processes or enhancing your review controls and things like that can always be improved over various departments. We don't audit control. So we gain an understanding, you know, what's happening, what's there. We don't test those controls. We just really like make sure we understand what the key controls are. I think a more detailed internal audit process, type audit of certain control processes could identify opportunities for improvements, but nothing came out of our financial statement audit that I would report to you today.

Excellent.

Thank you. And Gloria, we had someone from the public raise concerns regarding the city's fund balance and reserve levels. Can you help explain how the council's reserve policy works and how much of our assigned fund balance is available in the event of emergency or unexpected revenue downturn?

Yes.

Because we just changed our reserve policy, correct?

Correct. And so our reserve policy does include all of the categories of fund balance. There is a description of the detailed definitions of those classifications within the notes, for instance, restricted, committed, assigned. And so the I think the comment may be related to the fact that the reserve for that we have for the general fund requirement is it is categorized within the assigned category, and that is because Council has set that reserve. And so if you look at that definition on the note, so I was trying to get over to the page, but it basically says that these are things that are managed by the city managers as adopted by council or directed by council, something like that effect. And then there's a portion of that reserve that is also the TABOR requirement that is 3%, and that is in the restricted category because that is something that the state of Colorado requires, but that is counted in with the reserve requirement as well.

Excellent. Thank you. Last question, Jose, in terms of the RFP question and stuff, don't we have to every contractor or subcontractor, is it every five years that we have to go back out to bid with an RFP?

I think it's with our audience.

Yeah, I believe it's, so this contract I think is over in the five-year period and we have to go back out. I don't think that there's a requirement that we change just that we go out for the RFP or the request for proposals. and qualifications. So, you know, we can, that can be something that we look at if that's something that council desires.

And then just a point of clarification to ensure that there were two council members that were on that RFP review, the mayor and the mayor pro tems. I believe it may have been yourself and Councilor Ghazi that were a part of that. So it is reports directly to the council. As we went through that process, the council did want two council members, I believe the CFO and myself, to be part of that. And then that was presented to the council with the findings and then the council approved the auditor. So the auditor reports to the council with the report. It's not picking solely by staff and we ensure that the council is the one who selects the auditor.

And then last question, Jose, this one's for you too. We do get a lot of good information in these reports every year. It's interesting looking at the continued growth costs of healthcare and that sort of thing. Looking three to five years out, what financial risk concerns you the most?

On healthcare?

Well, it could be anything in terms of like our budget, like what we have going on. What should we be looking out for, I guess, as we're, you know, seeing these numbers and these trends come across?

Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, what we're, I think probably you hit it on the head, you know, your healthcare costs are things that we can't really We can do things to mitigate, but the controlling it points can be things that happen outside of our control. People go through medical emergencies on that, and that does have an impact on your health insurance fund on those portions of it. But I do always say that your financial health, this is just one part of that puzzle. Your audit's a part of it. Your budget's a part of it. The debt, the parts that you have as a part of it. One of the things that we just went through, which was our bond rating, is really your overall look at it because they take a look at everything because those are people looking at how credit worthy you are. And we received a double A plus, which is the second highest that you can receive. So financially in a very good position in which I believe, feel confident that we can withstand anything that comes our way. We just hope that we don't have everything that comes our way. That's a challenge, but we continue to show. And I think it was even, as Paul said, a very strong financial position and we'll continue to do that. And we just look at it. We do everything annually as we go through. Do we have to make pivots? Do we have to make adjustments? We did so before, especially in health insurance, where we just had the PPO. And then I think about a year, year and a half after I got here, two years, we introduced the high deductible plan to help build in a partnership with that. So those are some of the things that were there. I think even at one year, the self-insurance fund health care was flagged by the auditors because of where we were at. And so we had to make adjustments and now getting outside of that. So those are just areas that we continue to look at. And all areas are of concern for sure.

Plans are up a million.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your team's work. And thank you so much, Paul. I appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Great. Thanks for your time, Paul. Thanks, Gloria. Thank you all. All right. Moving on to item number five, the manager updates.

And 5.1 is a notice of revisions to the fair share housing administrative procedures manual.

all right good evening mayor and council for the record i'm brian devine i'm the city's housing policy and planning administrator i'm back again with another fair share housing administrative procedures manual revision notification as a reminder this is a piece of the land use and development code that among other things authorizes staff to prepare procedures for the implementation of the policy And when we do so, we are required to give a notification to council. The notification for tonight's agenda is yesterday's update went into effect yesterday, and it is our annual update to incorporate price and income data that are released on an annual basis. by the house department of housing and urban development and the colorado housing and finance authority so among other provisions of fair share as you'll recall we do have to adopt income restrictions rent limits and home price limits for homes in the fair share program and we do update those generally on an annual basis that is the bulk of the update that we're notifying you of today So we've incorporated the annual price and income data. We actually saw incomes, the median income in La Plata County actually fell slightly in this report. It's a very small decrease, but that actually also leads to a decrease in the allowable rents for fair share homes. This is also decrease in allowable rents in state programs like in low income housing tax credit programs. We have adopted the federal and state formula for translating those incomes into for sale home prices. We were not using that formula previously with the the incorporation of the new income data. And the transition to that federal and state formula, we actually see some of our home prices fall in the fair share program and some allowable home prices actually rose. Overall, these are very, very small changes. We're talking on the order of single digit percentages or less. uh very very small changes to uh incomes rents and home prices um the final notification um for you is we've taken one other technical change to the program which is to simplify the calculation of fees in lieu so you'll recall that one of the options for developers in the fair share program is to pay a fee in lieu of providing the housing on site as part of a mixed income development We previously had two different formulas for calculating fee in lieu. We've collapsed that into a single formula that uses construction cost data from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority. All told, the new manual and all the new changes were published onto our website yesterday and sent out to our partners and fair share developers in an email yesterday as well. The last remaining step is today's council notification. I'll be happy to take any questions that you have.

Got one question, Brian, if you don't mind. So the income and then the housing prices equation that you're now using, are you using that in lieu of AMI or is that an AMI part of that calculation?

It is an update. The AMIs or the table of area median incomes is updated annually by HUD and then we incorporate it in this update.

Okay, but that AMI, instead of being a single metric to judge everything by, it's now being incorporated into a formula to be able to get a more precise metric?

So the incomes themselves are reported annually by Housing and Urban Development. We take their numbers for income and make no changes. We do translate those incomes because you can't sell a home, for instance, to somebody based on income. You have to have a home price for the home itself based on the characteristics of the home. So we do use a formula to translate that income into those income data into price data. We have changed how we do that, but we do not actually edit the incomes themselves in response to any local data that we receive. Does that make sense?

Yeah, just so you just revise that formula.

Correct. We've made it more consistent with the formula of the states and the federal government. I see.

Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Awesome. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. Appreciate your time.

And the next item is 5.2, which is, I believe, just an informational update in the council packet for the flock monthly stats for May 11th to June 9th.

Chief Currant will come and do a little brief presentation on it.

Thank you, city manager. Good evening, mayor, city council. My name's Bryce Currant. I'm the chief of police here in Durango. I wanna just thank Mike for his earlier presentation and just all of our community partners. Public safety is not a police issue, it's a community issue. And so it's nice to have that communication. He was calling us weekly during that, as well as many other partners around the city. As requested, this is the FLOC transparency update from May 10th to June 9th. The request was for utilization by officers, jurisdiction requesting access, and also access granted to other jurisdictions. And so this is our ALPR, License Plate Reader Technology cameras. So you have a more robust outline that my staff, I was in Fort Collins this week when they sent that out, than what you actually asked for. And I just sent, Ben, did you pass that out? um it's just a more condensed version um that could be a little simpler to follow um and uh and i'd like some direction now that you kind of look at both or whatever i'd like some direction maybe through the city manager as we move forward um on what you're what you're looking for how you'd how you'd like it shared and also um just know that we also want we have some new software coming in so i we could do some uh cut dashboards with live updates and other things but i have to see what that looks like first and what we can formulate and provide so any direction on what you're actually looking for as we move forward and then a little bit of leeway in how I can adapt to that and what we can actually grab, capture or gather. We currently have 14 flock cameras and we conduct audits quarterly. Our monthly stats start from, like I said, May 10th to June 9th and they are as follows. So we had 776 individual searches and that's actually only 96 incidents. And so how I would explain that is there may be um, one incident that searched multiple times, uh, multiple times or dates. Um, so the 700, 776 individual searches are actually only 96 incidents, which you can kind of see exactly what they are. There are things like alcohol offenses, assault and battery. Um, most of them are stolen vehicles, stolen plates, as you probably noticed. Um, there's, uh, burglary, child abuse, neglect, um, reckless, uh, road rage type incidents, destruction, damage to property, narcotics, hit and run, we have a lot of hit and runs, financial crime, homicide investigation, indecent exposure, larceny, missing, endangered, welfare checks, harassment, and so on, welfare checks, et cetera. So we had approximately, so there's about 17,500 police agencies, state and local, in the US. 216 agencies currently share with Durango PD. We share with approximately 600, not approximately, we share with 648 agencies. and we get about one request per day and our analyst looks at those uh those requests and their affiliation with 287g and does an audit before granting or restricting access she denied access to two of them today when i was in her office talking about this um within the month we had a total of 2 148 hot list alerts and so those are ncic ccic and um they're also custom hotlist so one alert will sometimes provide three alerts and so if you look at the math and divide that by three that's probably like 716 this month the only thing is you don't know how many of those are custom or not but I mean over 700 probably instead of 2000 and then those alerts probably about 24 alerts per day. I think our officers will respond to three or four of those per day because of their shift and just what they're doing all day. And so that could be nine to 12 responses for everybody during the day, unless there's a custom search of some sort. And then about three individual searches per day by the entire shift per 24 hour period. So the one more robust copy that you have has the outcomes, the one that I submitted. Those are hard. We really don't have the ability to tie those together. There's a lot of outcomes, as you saw, a lot of good outcomes. However, we really don't have the ability to connect everything because there's a lot of different reasons we catch people or are able to arrest people or prosecute people. I mean, it could be, you know, the drone is a first responder program. It could be a mix of several things and we don't have the databases. But with our new implementations that we're going to have this year, Trulio and Peregrine, which I talked about in the technology update, we we're going to be that's one of our main goals with our strategic plan is to be able to measure everything that we use, measure the effectiveness of it and be able to report on those things. And the more robust report, as you can see, vehicles read locally, total unique reads. There's unique reads, and those are cars that are not counted twice because they're the same vehicle. It may read it over and over, but the system reads approximately, read approximately 2.46 million vehicle passes and 315,000 unique vehicle reads. And that's the difference between those two, which the data is deleted every 30 days. And then you can kind of track that back to how many we're looking at per day, maybe trying to track three per day. Um, and so really it's like being struck by lightning if your plate's ever going to be looked at. Um, but, um, that's the update, uh, 37%. I thought another key number was 37% of the vehicles, uh, or the hits were stolen vehicles. I think that's kind of high right now. And, um, There was some Facebook posts about it. Archuleta posted with some of our help. We've got some individuals going back and forth right now in our community stealing vehicles. So that's kind of high the last three or four weeks. So any questions or?

Councilor Christo.

Yeah, thanks, Chief. I appreciate it. And I think this is going to be an iterative process. Multiple presentations, we'll work through it and see what we can do to make it a little clearer. The statistics are kind of mind-boggling at times when we're talking about 315,000 different vehicles that are being looked at. I guess for the purposes of this conversation, I wanted to zero in on the hot list. I don't necessarily understand the custom hot list versus the hot list for the entities that you talked about. And so is a custom hot list coming from one of our officers? Are they creating a hot list of vehicles that they're looking for?

That's correct.

Okay.

Off of cases that we are working.

Okay. And then how is somebody assigned to a hot list? I would imagine the officer chooses to put that on. How do they come off a hot list?

When the case is resolved. Okay. So if, if. Okay. Similar to a warrant or anything else that we've done for years.

And is it, is it always, if I'm on a hot list, it became because I have a warrant or there's an active investigation that involves my car and license plate.

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Okay. Something active going on.

Okay. And then the hot list that you talked about from the other entities, we're creating custom hot list and then these folks are actually going on to another group as well. Okay. Could you ask that again, sir? Sorry. Sorry. The hot lists that we were talking about, I think you said that there was multiple groups that run hot lists.

Okay, so there's NCIC, CCIC, and then there's our custom hot list, which might be three hits on one vehicle.

One vehicle could be on each of those lists and be counted individually for some of these numbers. Right.

there's a lot of nuances there that i shared um in different ways that actually the numbers are a lot smaller than and even if we reverse engineer some of the the vast numbers of every car that comes through durango and passes one of those cameras that gets deleted after 30 days if we reverse engineered how many of those got contacted when our officers are only responding to 9 to 12 per day and you know i could only guess how many it's different every time but how many of those people are actually getting contact because they're already long past the camera and so the real constitutional policing and the real work's begun by our officers to go out and actually find them and build those cases um and so you know you reverse engineer those numbers they're very small also so so you're getting dozens and dozens of folks that have

hit and capacity wise, we're only able to do nine to 12 in a given shift.

That's correct.

And are the nine to 12 determined by likelihood that, you know, is there, is there a reason those nine or 12 are picked or it's just the best you can do with the volume that you're getting? Type of crime.

I mean, I'm sure the officers type of crime warrant hits all day and they're typing reports. They're on a serious crime or they're on a traffic stop or something of that nature.

And last question, if my license plate's thrown on a custom hot list that one of the officers pulled together, it will not come off until the investigation's over. So even if I'm cleared, I'm still existing on that custom hot list until the investigation's over? Is that fair to say? No, until it's resolved, until you're found. Okay. Once I'm clear, then I come off the hot list. Right. Okay. Great. There's going to be a lot of questions as we go through this stuff. And I appreciate your patience with it. And as we kind of turn this into, you know, a stronger and stronger process, plus just understanding how this all works is a piece.

And one thing I love, I just got back from Fort Collins and I was at a summit with a bunch of other chiefs and researchers and people that have just amazing people in the room. This is what we discussed for two and a half days. And the, uh, The systems that are coming out and the ability to provide more robust tracking, more better dashboards, everything, it's changing by the day, which is great.

Yeah, the biggest concern will continue to be, I think DPD is doing a great job of labeling their stuff and justifying why. It's the other jurisdictions that are accessing our data. That's going to be my biggest concern going forward is, do we have an understanding of why they're doing it and are they doing it in a responsible way? I think we're doing a pretty good job here. I'm more worried about the other jurisdictions. So just for reference.

Yeah. And the companies are doing a good job at hearing that and creating robust systems as well. Great. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Great. Counselor Gonzalez.

So is it a human that makes the request for the data? I mean, is it another chief in another community?

I'm confused.

Is it a person or is it just a person? I don't know, a bot. Like, I mean, who makes the request? I mean, do you actually get a request from a human wanting to see the information that is with Flock?

Are you talking about people entering the information into the system?

Or requesting it.

Or requesting it?

Is it an actual, like, law enforcement officer in another community?

That calls us on the phone and asks? No.

How is the information transferred or requested? It's like just a bot that says, we've had these hits. We want to see all of the transactions, everything that Flock has identified.

It's a system in which the license plate information goes into NCIC and the CCIC system that we've used for information on the radio. We never coordinate. Like if there's a warrant for somebody, we never coordinate with those departments. We don't call those departments and ask. It's in the system. And then we can call and confirm if the person has a warrant. It depends on the type of crime on what we need to confirm or not confirm. But yes, it is in the system and it's similar to how we've always done it. Um, but there's an alert attached to it through reading the plate and the plate information is still sent to the same place where we've called on our radio for years.

So, um, I, I guess that's why I'm, I'm because it's just so much information that how would a person or an, not a, like an entity or an organization, a law enforcement agency. if they were trying to make a request for information, they don't communicate with a human on the other side. It's just in the cloud.

Yeah, the information is stored in CCIC and NCIC. It's a database that we enter all of our information into.

And I guess that's where it's still like as I'm trying to understand like where the protections are. It's the third party that protects the data flock or other companies that do this work.

Yeah, there's state and local guidelines and there always has been for CCIC and NCIC. Um, there's audits that take place and it's the system that we've, if you have a warrant, um, that's the system that it goes into. And then you can call and confirm on that warrant when you have somebody pulled over. Um, there's still constitutional policing that has to take place. I mean, you, you have to account for the fact that it might get a zero or a, or an O mixed up. Um, you still have to have probable cause to be able to pull a vehicle over and then investigate and see if it's the right person that fits the right crime, et cetera.

Okay. So like even just this data that was pulled, one of your staff members pulled this to present us today, like created this. Okay. So you still, I mean, there's still a person who's having to do all the work. So, but I mean, a person who is a law enforcement officer.

Yes. Everything we do essentially goes to, to an individual officer.

Okay, I think that's what I'm trying to get at. It's like there's an individual officer requesting information, just like you pulled it up for us here. It's an individual not so I don't have access to that. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay, so only people that are in your office as a law enforcement officer can have information.

yes yeah i mean we have to be certified we have to be able to take a test uh people can't even walk through our um our police building without a badge because they can see on the computers i mean there's very strict compliances and we've we've had these third party there was a uh a bill on the table this last year to get rid of all third party uh systems for police and uh that's every system we've ever used we'd be back to writing on pen and paper and And they didn't realize that, that every system we have, but they have compliance. They have to be compliant to the state and federal rules.

So I guess I know there used to be a system that like any person could access, for example, how many calls for service had come to a particular area, right? So I could block off a mile around where we are right now and say, how many calls for service have come to this area? Does that exist here in Durango?

That any person could find that information?

Any person. I, as a citizen, could just enter like how many calls for service have come to this area in the last week or whatever data you chose. It could be a week. It could be a month.

No, you can request it from us. And if we have that.

Well, it was just a database. It was like data somewhere. You could just enter it. Like you could see how many sex offenders lived in your neighborhood. You could see how many. violent crimes had occurred in your neighborhood.

Well, we do have some public facing databases such as sex offenders where the public can't look at those and they're set up for that purpose. But there's other information that we don't set up for the public.

So there's nothing that I could go into myself and enter and I say, I want to see this information just like the ones you presented us today.

Not unless it's on our public facing dashboard, which we do have a dashboard, but it doesn't provide as much information as I provided to you.

Okay. And so even just this, is this information available to the public or is it just for us?

Well, it was posted for the public.

Okay. So it is available to everyone. Okay. Okay. Well, just, you know, again, trying to understand like how all of this information is protected and, you know, like how we can continue to do that. I think that's where the issue always arises is that, How, you know, who has access? How easy is it to get access? And then, you know, when you have it all compiled, you know, what is the end result? And, you know, currently we're using it as a law enforcement tool, but can it be used for other things? I think that's always what the question has been.

Yeah, and I think that's the balance, and that's the balance we need to think about in all law enforcement and the balance between safety and privacy and how transparent we're going to be. There's a lot of agencies that don't even share where the cameras are around town. We decided to share that. And so, you know, this council, I'm waiting for direction, continued direction. Like you said, it's going to continue to be a process of what we provide, but there needs to be a balance there also. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Counselor lawyer.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I know this is going to be a work in progress and like trying to tweak it all and stuff. I have a few questions. A couple of things stood out to me when I was reading the one in the packet. I personally like the one in the packet better because I like the percentages and I like it ranked the way it is. You can see which one is more. Does that make sense versus this one? I don't know. Yes. Personal preference. I don't care what everyone else looks. okay great um counselor coso agrees so there you go we're good to go no just just kidding um another thing that i felt when i was uh reading a 292 motor vehicle theft but you said that's numerous it could be one vehicle searched by lots of different people by agencies it can be okay that's a lot um you said 292 yeah 292 searches for motor vehicle theft stolen it says right yeah some of those some of those can be multiple yeah which is 37 of all the searches which is crazy there is also i think a typo only because i was looking at mostly like the type top five and number three goes into number four and so i don't know what number four is on the in the packet just fyi um but it's that's okay it's not like a deal breaker i just wanted to let you know um can we see so it says here that we share information with 648 jurisdictions. Now, is that just this month or is that who we're in contract to share with?

So that's who we are sharing with currently.

is so it's just open total so basically we say we'll share with you and then they can access at any point in time they can like put they have a license plate that they throw in there and then it just automatically searches right so you get a so they have certain so everybody like we have over i said 2000 we have over 2000 sharing with us yeah we only share with 600

or 648. So we have, and that's the way it is with most Colorado agencies. They don't share because of our laws and the MOU at the very beginning that everybody has to read over. And so So in order to share with us, state and local, we don't share with federal agencies. We check and ensure that they're not connected to any 287 requirements. So the jails in Texas, for instance, wanted to share previously, but every jail in Texas was required to cooperate with us. So we mixed all of the jails in Texas. And so that's why our numbers are so low compared to what we're actually getting from other. Um, but if a local or state agency wants to the capability to share in Durango, and that's why the high numbers you see, because they'll just share, they'll search nationwide for a plate. And then we're included in that search.

Is there a way to get in? I don't know if it'll be helpful or not, but in our monthly reports, get a list of the agencies we shared with during this month. Does that make sense?

Yes. So I looked at that actually and asked Tessa if we could get that. And there isn't anything that there we're working with flock to see if we can actually get that list or we'll just have to start compiling it ourselves manually, which is not a big deal if it's monthly. Cause I said one a day and she's already started doing that actually, because I wondered if this question, because I wondered it myself.

Another thing that stood out to me is like the amount of, of things we're able to accomplish regionally or whatever because of this is quite outstanding now that we're not back in 1980, writing paper tickets and trying to call people to see if they've seen someone. It's astounding what we can accomplish. And so it's finding that balance of privacy control and time effectiveness and how to take care of our community in the best way possible. Sorry, I'm kind of all over the place because I keep thinking of questions. So let's say my vehicle is stolen and I call the police and say my vehicle is stolen and then you potentially could put it out to Would you just automatically put it in the system to 2016 agencies and ask if anyone's had a hit on this license plate in the last 24, 48 hours or whatever?

With the agencies that we share with. We're just going to probably get a hit in this local area.

So when you pop it in, it just automatically goes to everyone that we share with?

That's correct.

Okay.

That's why we're glad agencies still share with us even though we don't share with them.

Totally. So, and that helps, I mean, me in my head answer Councilor Gonzalez's question. It's not like you're calling, you know, Farmington and saying, hey, I have a vehicle. Can you share with me the flock data? You just put it into the flock system and you automatically get all the information from all the agencies.

Right. And that's how we were able to track the vehicle that came from, um, Utah because it went through at Farmington and Aztec and then was coming towards us. So we were able to prepare the homicide suspect. Okay.

Um, okay. I think that that was, those were my big questions. Can we see what agencies this month? So flock could do that. I think if we get to continue to have pressure on them to be able to do that for us, that'd be great. Or I hate for you to do manually and, you know, not waste time, but like, you know, we're trying to make it. efficient here and get information at the same time. Yeah.

And efficiency is great and it's a wonderful byproduct and we love that. But what we, we focus on more with our strategic plan and people think that this is the antithesis of it sometimes, but reality, we want to provide more privacy, more precision and exoneration. The word exoneration people don't think about very often, but when you have five sedans that match the the description of a vehicle that committed a crime and you're pulling over two or three of them on the edge of town um and and if it's a weapons crime you might be pulling them all out of the vehicle um we're looking for more precision more exoneration and um dealing with the individuals that are committing the crime and leave everybody else alone not even view their plates not even look at their stuff just look at the precise so that's what we look at also

And then just for clarification, this report or a report like it, as we hammer out what we like, what we don't like, will be in a city council packet every single month, and therefore it is public information. Right. Okay. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Chief. A couple of questions. I kind of the same thing with with Councilor Koso, the custom hot list, you know, being the largest, you know, number of of requests that came in. Is there is there any way to get like a smaller breakdown or is it like there's like a sub classification of where those, you know, whether it's a. you know, an arson or the theft, or I'm trying to think of like, it's just such a large number that it's just, I think we're all just like, oh man, there's, there's, there's so much there. You know, what, what is a custom hot list hit? And then how do we kind of break that down just for more, more information about what those are?

Um, so on that second form that I handed out, Look at that list and what do you think there? Because that's 776 of those.

Are these the custom hot list?

What's that?

Is this the custom hot list data? Or is this just the...

Yes, this is the custom hot list.

Oh, this is the custom hot list. So it's already broken down.

realistically it's real close to the number if you divide by three hits on each plate which i don't think we're going to have three for every custom so i think there's there's a there's going to be some missing here but let me let me get with our analysts and see what we can do i mean if this could be part of that reporting like hey here's the the sub uh menu for that custom hot list report just to again it kind of breaks things down a little bit better and

You know, as we're talking about this and rolling through this and one of the big concerns with a lot of the people that wanted to deflock was that the transparency and why we're using this system and this, I think whenever you say a custom, it could be anything. Right. And so I really feel like this is an important tool to be able to convey the reporting side of this. When you say custom, it gives a little bit cleaner breakdown of what that designates. That just means one counselor but thank you for the clarification there. And then again, kind of aligned with the counselor lawyer to be able to get some of that outside agency data of who's requesting the information. And then is there, and I don't want to make a ton of work, but is there a way to get, to figure out what they're looking for as well? I mean, kind of like we break down our information, is it possible or is it, was that too onerous to figure out what it is that they're trying to access and why?

that that's what we're keep pushing these companies to continue to to work on um because those are robust numbers when they're just randomly searching the entire us for one person when they had a stabbing in georgia and we're connected to that um you know we're going to be reporting

sure but um but i'll look into that also and if it's possible i i know that we're in the very infancy of all this and and i think it's only going to get better and more robust but you know i think that again how do we figure out a a better way to report out to our community about how this this technology is being uh leveraged so um if that's possible great um

Because one of the things we were looking at is a way to reverse engineer. So you have that large number, you know, the 445,000 or whatever searches that were in Durango, cause they were nationwide reverse engineer. How many of those were actually, um, were contacted in Durango? Um, and I know that number is going to be small because they're going to call us. That's good.

That's great information, right?

They're going to say, Hey, we just got a hit in Durango. Can you go check this out? And so the numbers, you know, you're going to be able to count it on one hand, but yeah, it's just, it's impossible for us to do that at this point.

Sure. Sure. Well, I think all that information is good to have at our fingertips for sure. And then I just want to clarify, you know, if we share with an agency, do they just be able, are they able to access all that information freely or do they have to make a request to access that information? Or does it depend?

Well, once they have permission, they're able to access, but all they know is that there was a hit in Durango.

I see.

And which we have jurisdiction. So we're going to get the call.

Gotcha. Okay.

So that's one of the things we want, you know, cause we had like the, the example I gave of the SUV that was at the store from Albuquerque that had four individuals in it. And there was a homicide in Albuquerque and the person that was killed, that was their vehicle that was sitting at the gas pump with four individuals that couldn't answer why they were in Durango. Um, and those are the type of calls that we want. That's why we want the more, more of the sharing capabilities. Um, those individuals don't have jurisdiction in our town. It's just going to be information coming to us.

Sure. Okay, great. And then kind of getting back to the human element of all this, would you say it's plausible that there's a human on one side of it inputting the information and then that information in a database is automated and populated to different agencies? So the end user would then have access to that information. So it's not like... it's just a bot or AI making these requests, but it's more a human on one side, but then how the system is work built within the firmware and the firewalls within the system that goes to the agencies that it's allowed to, would that be fair assessment?

yeah so at the very beginning i thanked mike and community partners and stuff like that well community partners are also people that will call up and say hey i don't like this system you know why and when we listen we're able to push back on these companies and say hey we need x y and z help me help you and we did that and we were a major part of flock um you know when you get on there uh in it and it shows um it's a it's basically a mini mou before you can even get on the system now that's because of durango um, and our, our citizenry. And so there's all those changes that take place. One of the other ones was, um, inputting a case number. So that goes right back to what you're saying. A human inputs that case number as to the reason for the search. And so everything's auditable and trackable. They have these, um, the new audit processes, and then they, um, you know, the more revisions to where we have to have a case number and a reason for the, even though we were already doing that, the sharing partners have to be able to do the same thing.

Perfect. Well, thanks for all the work on this. I know it's the first one. I really appreciate you and the team taking the time to put all this together. And I look forward to seeing this evolve and get better reporting for all of us. So thank you, Chief.

Absolutely, Mayor. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions? Yeah. Councilor Yazzie.

Bryce. Okay. So basically, it was a great discussion. So thank you, everybody. So these are people who've had some kind of offense that was against the law that are on these pages here, right?

Right. Maybe some missing endangered folks, stolen license plate or stolen vehicle.

And then there's like a multitude of others who probably got voted by flock, but we don't care about what they did, right?

Correct, and it's going to be deleted in 30 days, never seen, never viewed.

Okay, thank you.

All right, great. Thanks so much, Chief. All right, moving on to Gen Item No. 6, Committee, Board, and Liaison Reports. Anybody want to kick us off? Council Yazzie?

There you go.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, so since our last meeting, I did have three meetings. On June 10th, I attended the Joint City and County 150 and 250 meeting. And so what we're trying to do there is put together a a program for fourth and fifth graders in La Plata County, Montezuma County in southwestern Colorado to go around the city and look for unique features that we're deciding what they are and then they'll match up those features and then we'll have a winner in the future. So it's actually turning out to be quite a nice little project. And this is for the 150-250 celebration. And then on June 11th, I went to our Regional Housing Authority meeting and we hired a new facilitator. So she came and met the regular board members and we had two other new board members join up. And so we just did a big review about what we intend to do in the coming years and also look at the possibility of trying to find some sustainable funding. And then this afternoon I went to a Buell Foundation reception up at the Center for Southwest Studies and had the opportunity to meet some of the people who give money to nonprofits in the in southwestern Colorado. So that was very few from because I had opportunity to touch bases with Linda Baker and Heather stopped in and a few other notable people. So that was all on up and up. That's about it. Thank you.

Thanks, country as a counselor Gonzalez.

Thank you. So I should have mentioned it in my opening remarks, but I did want to say that I went to the farmer's market on Maine and I got to see Jamie there with her team asking about their strategic plan. And your booth was crowded and full of people and lots of dots all over talking about their strategic plan. And so I was just really grateful to see you guys out there trying to get feedback. And what a fabulous farmer's market we had. It was a beautiful Saturday. And I know eventually we'll get some feedback from the bed about how the businesses feel, but I had a fabulous time. So thank you.

Great. Thank you. Counselor lawyer.

Yes, I went, or I had the Alliance meeting. We heard from Shauna LaGarza, the new County manager about her background and her vision for her position in the County. We heard from Corey Finney, who's part of howdy partners or like an investment firm into, you know, regional businesses um and how to like put money and jobs back into the economy which was great and then dan hunt from the mobile home park network um helping mobile home parks um kind of by invest in themselves and the first one um that was done was animus u park um that he lives in and i was a part of on council as well right when i first got um elected so there you go

Great. I had a couple of meetings. I met with Regional Director Seaman with the US Department of Health and Human Services to advocate for our local and regional health care system and where we see some of the most critical needs. And so, yeah, it was really good to meet with her to discuss health care in our region. We also had our Chamber of Commerce quarterly meeting this morning. Board of County Commissioner, uh, Philbrick, uh, Elizabeth Philbrick was there at the meeting. She talked about land use development code. We talked about, um, tourism, a whole bunch of stuff. And yeah, it was really good to hear her and what's going on on the County side. Um, there were also conversations around a Hispanic chamber affinity group as part of the chamber. Uh, nothing's, uh, finalized yet but priscilla newbold who is also part of the good food collective she also just joined the chamber and she's been an invaluable addition helping take a lead on providing resources and tools to members of the community that did not have access previously so she's really great asset to have on the chamber And then the Chamber is also currently working with the Good Food Collective on Spanish translation for up to 12 hours of Chamber programming. So it's good to see they're getting that rolling. They also had the Girls Gone Golfing event this last weekend. It was a big success for the Chamber. They sold out. Everybody had a really good time. uh really good fundraiser for the chamber and then lastly um we had a new leadership la plata class that's been selected for the 26 27 year um and so yeah they will start um taking classes in september um so yeah looking forward to seeing how that goes and that's it from my end council coso good perfect all right uh moving on to agenda item number seven public comment on items under consideration of adoption

Public comment is encouraged on agenda items set for consideration and a vote by the Council tonight. Public comments on items not set for consideration by the Council come later in the meeting. Please begin your comments by stating the agenda item set for a vote you intend to speak on, your full name, and if you are a resident of the City of Durango. Make your comments directly to the Council. Do not expect a response from the council or staff. Comments are limited to three minutes per person unless modified by the council. Unused time is not transferable to other speakers. Comments must be specific to the item you identified when you began your comments. Profanity, hate speech, personally derogatory remarks, speech unrelated to the item you identified, or other speech that is disruptive to the meeting will be ruled out of order by the chair and any remaining time will be forfeited by the speaker. Exceeding the time limit infringes on the rights of others and is out of order. Only a majority vote of the council can modify time limits. Please note, you must sign up prior to the mayor calling the item on the agenda. Signing up after the item is called will result in your name not being called to speak.

Thank you, and there's one individual signed up to speak on an item that council will be voting on tonight, and it is Mike Tott, and he'll be speaking on 11.1, a resolution authorizing the city manager to annually approve an emergency warming center located at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church Parish Hall in the city of Durango.

I pass.

I've said everything.

Thanks. Come on.

all right moving on to uh item number eight uh the consent agenda cutting a reading of the consent agenda please yes thank you mayor uh on tonight's consent agenda we have 8.1.1 which is approval of the minutes from the june 2nd 2026 city council regular meeting Under 8.2, final reading of ordinances, we have 8.2.1, which is ordinance 2026-31 ratifying resolution R2024-69 approving the renewal of the City of Durango's cable franchise agreement with Charter Communications, Inc. 8.2.2 is Ordinance 2026-32 authorizing the acquisition of parcel number 5667-321-06-005, Lot 5, Rivergate Subdivision, and the execution of all necessary land acquisition documents for the purposes of workforce housing development. Under adoption of resolutions by consent, we have 8.3.1, which is a resolution electing to carry forward the City of Durango's 2026 State of Colorado private activity bond allocation for future multifamily housing projects within the City of Durango. Under approval of other administrative items, we have 8.4.1, which is approval of a new beer and wine liquor license for Durango Bike Project LLC at 225 East 8th Avenue, Unit B. There are no items under request for public hearing. And then under introduction of ordinances, we have 8.6.1, which is an ordinance amending, in pertinent part, the Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 4, Animals, Article 5, impoundment, Section 4-97, disposition of impounded animals. And there are no requests for excused absences.

Great. Anybody like to pull anything from the consent agenda? Okay, can I get a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second. All right, go ahead and enter our vote.

Oh, that's right.

Shirley.

The motion passes. All in favor, Dave Woodruff, Jessica Lawyer, Kip Koso, Gilda Yazzie, Shirley Gonzalez.

Council, I think that there was someone here that wanted to make a public comment on an agenda item, and they didn't know how to sign up. And I'm wondering if we can suspend the rules and allow him eventually to make a public comment. Oh, I thought that's what I was trying. You didn't get my sign language. Okay, not an agenda item. He's going to sign up for it later. Never mind. Take it back. Just kidding.

All right. Nothing on agenda item number nine. And then agenda item number 10, public hearings.

Under public hearings, we have item 10.1, a public hearing to consider the renewal or suspension and revocation of a business license issued to High Trestle Brewing LLC, doing business as Durango Beer and Ice Company.

Mark, do we need to step out of our, oh, sorry, go ahead.

No. So 10.1 also includes your meeting as the local liquor license authority over the liquor license. I can tell you that item 10.1 that was just read is actually moot now because the business license has been brought into compliance by full payment to all the past due sales tax collections. So the only thing left to proceed on under item 10.1 is your meeting as the local liquor license authority to consider the suspension or revocation of the liquor license under state statute 44-3901 under your authority under 44-3601. I know it's a public hearing and you guys are used to kind of a different public hearing. This is a public hearing that's required by state statute. It actually proceeds as more of a quasi-judicial hearing. I would request that I be allowed to do an opening statement. The business owner, if they're here, they can do an opening statement. I would then call three witnesses, Steve Barkley, Vicki Kling, and Ben. just to testify about the status of the business license. The owner could then call witnesses. We'd each do a closing statement. And then if you guys find a violation, I would advise you on penalties for finding the violation.

Do we need to adjourn out of our meeting now and rejoin as a liquor licensing board?

I've said it on the record. So as long as you guys acknowledge that you're going to now put on your hat of liquor license authority, I think we have the basis covered. The only thing I don't know is if the business owner is here. He appears to be here.

Great. Why don't you say that? We'll get to opening remarks here in a little bit. We're going to wait for the public. We're going to wait until you have your time to come up here and speak to the liquor licensing authority.

And Mr. Harvey, that'll be very, very quickly. This is your opportunity to say anything you need to say to the council, and we'll call you to say that. My opening statement is very, very brief. It is the city's position that the business, High Trestle Brewing, doing business as Durango Beer and Ice, has operated without a liquor license since 2024, which is a violation of state statute 44-3-901H. And that's as simple as opening statement as I can make it. So now I invite Mr. Harvey up to address you guys in the form of an opening statement about his situation.

Mr. Harvey, step on up.

So we've had a license in 25. I can't produce it right now because it's been misplaced. I don't know where your research or your accusation comes from, but I don't think it's accurate. So there was a renewal period that came about at the end of 25. That's an annual thing, I think. It could be two years, but I'm pretty sure it's annual. It was sent into the state. It was, I guess, misplaced is what I've been told. For whatever reason, they didn't receive it. So in an attempt to renew it, which there is a process to do that when it's late, you basically pay, much like with some city licenses and some other things, you pay a late fee, all things being considered. It's renewed. That's been the case. We've been in business and I've owned the brewery since 2002. We've been paying our taxes, been conducting business here for quite a long time. There's never been an issue. There's never been any citation or fraud or problems with the licensing in any point in time in the course of my ownership and management of the business. So this comes as kind of a surprise. Now, I'll grant you that there could be a licensing issue. But when I contacted the state, and normally there's a renewal process that we would follow, being late, again, you pay a fine and you move on. In this particular case, the regulations have changed, and they said after, I think it was 80 days, you have to apply for a new license, basically start the process over. The license we have is a manufacturing license, a wholesaler license, actually a three, and a sales room license. It is not a brewpub license issued by the city. It's a state license. So technically, the city would have no jurisdiction over that licensing. So the state required us to resubmit our application like we did in 2002. Luckily, I had a lot of that paperwork from 2002. I submitted it again. It's under review. It's been accepted. In fact, today I had an inspection, which is required by the state from the liquor enforcement people. They came out and inspected the premises. They basically looked at the layout of the land and basically operations He indicated to me with a revised drawing of the premises that it would be issued again So I think it's kind of a moot point at this point I've operated for this long without one for you to suspend the license at this point seems like You know the cows out of the barn in my opinion So I would ask that the cities at least give me another 30 or 45 days Necessary to get the license from the state and we'll be in full compliance

So if that's your opening statement, I like to go ahead and call my first witness and I'd call a officer, Steve Barkley. Mr. Harvey, you can sit in that table. You can sit back on wherever you're comfortable.

So Steve Barkley, head ranger during the police department, overseeing code enforcement as well.

Mayor, do you want to give him an oath since he's a witness?

I'm sorry, say it again.

I want to give him an oath. I'd ask Ben to do it, but Ben's going to be a witness too. So all you have to do is ask him to tell the truth.

Mr. Barkley, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

I do, sir. Okay, great.

I saw it on a movie once. All right.

Good job. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Barkley. Go ahead.

Officer Barkley, have you ever been to the High Trestle Brewing Company doing businesses, Durango Beer and Ice? The location of the establishment. Have you been there?

I was assigned to go there to serve show cause papers. And on the date that I delivered those papers to the senior person on duty, I believe I saw one customer inside. The papers were signed for and we departed.

Okay. And was that on May 26th of this year?

I believe so, but I'm not positive. You don't have any reason to disagree with that? Yeah.

Okay. And what did you see inside when you were there? Did it appear to be a manufacturing facility or did it appear to be a brew pub?

That I could not tell you. I was just serving papers on the day that I was there. I did not go into the back rooms or anything beyond that.

Okay. But what did you see? What did you observe?

It looked like a regular bar-type facility that served both food and alcohol. I believe, like I said, I saw one individual that was a customer, but I do not recall if any alcohol was being served at that time.

Okay. But you saw seats, you saw a table, you saw a bar. Yes. And you saw taps? Yes, sir.

Okay.

Thank you. I don't have any other questions for you, but you would please answer any questions that Mr. Harvey might have.

I do not remember seeing any liquor being served at that time.

Thanks. That's all the questions we have for you. I would call Ms. Vicki Kling.

Hello, I'm Vicki Kling with Code Enforcement.

Mayor. And get on the questions. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Great. Please continue.

Officer Kling, did you ever have an occasion to appear at Durango Beer and Ice Company?

I have. I was instructed to go and serve a notice that of a delinquent taxes and also that they no longer had a business license for the city of Durango.

Okay.

And what is stating this stating such.

Okay. And what did you observe when you were there?

I walked in, it was a bar setting, what you had described earlier, tables, chairs, a bar setting with bar stools. When I first initially entered and served the notice, it was only one person. It was prior to their opening. So there was only one person. It was like a cleaning person.

Okay. Did you say that you observed the licenses that were posted on the wall?

Yes. Well, the lack of, I went on another date and saw more of the license that were expired.

Okay. What did you see that day? Was it before opening? Were there people there?

The ones prior to opening, I just handed the notices. Okay.

Thank you. I have no further questions. Please answer any questions that Mr. Harvey might have.

Okay.

The licenses that you did observe, did you recall the dates?

No, not at the time.

Do you recall the license number?

I took pictures and gave those to our city clerk.

Do you recall the color of the license?

Some were kind of pink color. Some were blue color.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you. No more questions. You're welcome. And finally, we call Ben Florian.

Mr. Florian, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Yes. Thank you.

Excellent. Please continue.

Ben, who do you work for? Although we all know because you have a nameplate. I'm in the city clerk's office. Okay. And what responsibilities do you have in that office when it comes to liquor licenses?

Our municipal clerk's office, along with every other municipal clerk's office in the state, manages liquor licensing, business licensing, marijuana licensing, special event liquor permits, amongst other administrative items.

Okay. And in anticipation of today's hearing, did you research to see if the Hightrestle Brewing Doing Business at Durango Beer and Ice Company has ever held a license with the city?

Yes. High Trestle Brewing has maintained a general business license with the city as required for anyone doing business in city limits. They, like Mr. Harvey referenced, I believe his license was a manufacturer license for alcohol, along with a sales room. Those licenses are not processed with the city of Durango. We don't issue our own separate license. They go directly through the state. So while a liquor license is required in Colorado to serve alcohol, their particular licenses are not renewed with us.

Is it required to have a liquor license with the City of Durango for a brew pub? Yes, I believe so.

Okay.

And do they have a brew pub license with the City of Durango? I believe their former license was a manufacturer's license. It's different than a brew pub. And again, the manufacturer licenses go directly through the state.

Are you aware of whether or not the High Trestle Brewing doing business at Durango Beer and Ice Company has a website that advertises the business as a brew pub? I think we've been into the website, but I don't remember.

Okay.

Thank you. Please answer any questions that Mr. Harvey has.

Mr. Florian, can you tell me, does a brewpub license here in Durango entail beer only or does it include alcohol or liquor?

I don't directly oversee the liquor licenses within my office, so I'm not the subject matter expert. But I believe, if I remember correctly, that brewpubs are allowed to sell beer along with other types of alcohol if they're licensed under a brewpub.

and i would agree with that that is that's the distinction is a brew pub license require or allows liquor sales a uh manufacturer license with a sales room license allows beer sales only and that's the distinction there are many breweries in the in colorado as as well as in the united states that serve only beer and that's the distinction we can't serve wine we can't serve liquor we're not a brew pub as as defined by the state of colorado Because we use that term on our webpage, I think that's maybe a misunderstanding or a wide interpretation by counsel to try to basically incorporate a problem that doesn't exist.

Thanks, Ben. I don't have any other questions. Thank you. Council, in closing, the city attorney's office as well as the city administration takes the position that you are required to have both a city license and a state license to operate the type of business that's being operated by Mr. Harvey. I think it's been established that he has not had a license or he claims that his license is lost from the state. That alone entitles the city to issue a violation and fines. It is also our position that he's required to have a license with the city to operate the business that he's operating. He's clearly made the arguments that there's a distinction. My office has researched that and does not believe that there is. We believe that he's in violation of both not having the state license and not having a city license to operate the business that he's been operating. And we ask you to give Mr. Harvey to make any final comments to you guys. And then, of course, you're free to ask any questions that you want of me, any of the witnesses, or of Mr. Harvey.

I would find it odd and strange and problematic if after 23 years we determine there's a licensing problem. It's been set up the same way for 23 years since I've owned it. And prior to that is the same. If the city regulations change somehow, then I should have been notified by mail and not at gunpoint, as was the case with the officers that arrived at my premises, served papers that were not in an envelope for everyone to see. That's troubling in and of itself. But she also did it at gunpoint. And that's outrageous. So there is a distinction. If council will spend a little more time looking at the regulations with the state, you'll find that there is a distinction between brew pub licenses, manufacturing license, sales licenses, and a wholesaler license. A wholesaler license allows a sales room. A sales room is allowed to sell beer and produce on the premises. And that's what we do. We've done it for a number of years. We're the third oldest microbrewery in Colorado, established in 1990. There's been no licensing... Now to create one, I think there could be some personal agenda here. I'm troubled by that.

And I'll just, we have the burden of proof here. So I think there's no personal agenda. I think I've told some of you that there's an email we're being accused of singling out this business. That's simply not the case. We're just doing our job. We believe he doesn't have the correct license. He's acknowledged that his license is lost for the past year. We've made every effort we could to get him in compliance as an administration. We will continue to do that, but I wouldn't be doing my job if one of these things weren't brought to my attention, that they weren't brought to you as a liquor licensing authority.

And specifically, counsel, what have you done to help me with the license?

Not me personally, but other members of our administration. What have they done? It certainly helps you get caught up on your sales tax.

And it's been caught up. Are there other businesses that are owing sales tax?

This is not a hearing about me. This is a hearing about you.

Could you tell me if there are other businesses owing sales tax in Durango?

I'm sure that there are. Okay, thank you. I'm sure we've conducted hearings multiple times for those hearings. Those hearings go specifically in front of the city manager. I can recall three specifically in the past 12 months. There's no current sales tax due now, is that correct, High Trestle Bruin?

No, I already stated that. Okay, I just repeated.

All right. I have a couple questions, Mr. Harvey. And personally, I find it condescending that you're assuming that we don't know the difference between a brew pub license and a manufacturing license. I've been 21 years in this community, worked at a brew pub, run and operated bars. So your assumption is not warranted. I'm not done talking. Mr. Harvey, do you serve alcohol that you do not produce on site, whether it's beer, wine, or liquor? Say that again? Do you serve alcohol that you do not produce on site, whether it's beer, wine, or liquor? No. No. Do you have any liquor, wine, or beer that you don't produce on the premises? No. You don't have anything? No. You only sell the beer that you produce on site?

That's correct.

Okay. Ben, according to our records, do we have a liquor license on the books for Mr. Harvey? I mean, so you said it was lost, but there's got to be a record of it, of a payment processing, something.

No, there was never a license with the city.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about 2025 because you said that something happened to the 2025 license that it's lost. The dog ate it. I don't remember. But what happened to the 2025 license that you said was lost? Did you get a receipt for payment?

I would have to research that.

You don't know. You don't know if you received a receipt.

I would have to research that.

You'd have to research that.

License in 2025. I can verify that.

Okay, well, that's why we're here is like that you say that you have it, but you didn't bring any sort of evidence saying that you did have it.

Well, the issue is not having one this year, I thought.

You need to have a license every year. You talk about 22 years of licensing. It's not a problem over 22 years. It's an annual renewal. So we're talking year over year. I'm talking about 2025 and 2026. Are you current now? 2026, as I stated.

We were late in requesting the license.

I understand that. So in 2025, when you lost it, did you just not remember that you needed a license? I'm trying to understand where it got lost. You lost it.

I didn't know we lost it.

So who lost it? I don't know. You don't know. Okay. So you did have a receipt for that license?

What's that? I didn't not that I could produce for this hearing. No.

Okay. I think that if you were to come to a liquor licensing hearing saying that I have a license that you would bring evidence that you procured a license, I didn't know this was going to be a hearing per se.

It was a show.

You were not aware that this is going to be hearing over your liquor license format. Okay.

What were you in the judicial body?

I mean, all your questions and statements so far have led me to believe that you knew exactly the reason that you were here.

Well, I understand the show cause letter.

Okay.

But I didn't know we were going to have a judicial hearing of some sort.

Okay.

Cause I've never seen this body in that, in that sense or act that way.

Okay. Um, so. You're late in the 2026 license. You're behind the eight ball there. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And because you didn't, so is it because that you didn't renew in 2025 that you have to start the process over? Or is it because you lapsed it for too long in 2025 to 2026?

No, they said, they told me, the state representative told me that the 25 license needed was late in being renewed. I'm saying the 26 license was late being renewed from 25. Okay. So they said because it was late, over 80 days, it had to be applied for again.

Okay. And are you currently in the process of doing that?

Yes. In fact, we had an inspection today to complete that process.

So if you are renewing and it was late from 2025, then they should have had some sort of validation that you had a license in 2025.

I would think so, yeah.

Why not bring that with you today and exonerate yourself?

Because I think the issue is having one currently.

The issue is that I always have a liquor license or a manufacturing license. I'm sorry?

I'm seeing this as having a current license, not one from 23 or 1919 or 1990. Okay.

I guess I'm under the impression that you always need to have some sort of manufacturing production license or liquor license to operate. And so.

If you're going to say, you could ask the same question. Did I have one in 19 or in 20?

I'm not talking about, I'm talking about 2025 when this whole thing could have.

That's what we're trying to renew. The renewal process has changed.

Okay. I have no further questions, Counselor Lawyer.

Is there a way, okay, I think having a liquor license, if you're a brewery, are you selling beer today at your facility?

Well, not today. Yesterday?

Yeah, today. So you don't have a liquor license currently, and you're currently selling beer right now to patrons? Yes.

We have one, it's called, it's according to the enforcement officer today, we have one pending.

Yesterday, did you sell liquor at your? With our pending license. Or did you sell beer yesterday? Because you had an inspection today. Yesterday, did you sell beer at your facility? With our pending license. But you had the inspection today, so how do you have a pending license? State schedule. This is wild. State schedule to get here and do this. Here's the long and the short of it. I own businesses, multiple, lots of them. I have seven under my name right now. I would never think about operating a business without a business license, which I have from Durango, from Wickenburg, from Mexico, from Silverton. I have them all in the places that I operate. I would never think about operating the business without insurance. I would never think about operating the business without the things that I'm required to do to be a responsible business owner. Right now, you're sitting here without any documentation of, like, as he said, she said, he didn't have one in 2024. No, we did. How do we know that? I would, one, if you can prove that you had something in 2024, I would have brought it with you as a responsible business owner. I am happy to say I will postpone this for the appropriate repercussions. If you can produce something that defends the fact that you are a responsible business owner making and serving alcohol in our community. Do you understand that that's a big deal? You think that it's just like, oh, I can... We are in June... June 16th, and you don't have a 2026 liquor license. You serve and manufacture beer, sir. Do you know that you do that?

And we've been doing it for 20-some years.

And it's okay that you do it without a state license.

That's fine.

No compliance issues in that 20- You haven't had, for six months, 2026, you haven't had a business license or a liquor license. I've been working with the state to get it reestablished. Not for six months. Yes, yes. Oh, so you've been in talks with him for six months, not since she showed up apparently at gunpoint, which I have a real hard – I mean, I don't know. I'm having a hard time believing your gunpoint isn't her gun holstered while she's serving you papers, but I'm not – I didn't see the video footage, so I don't know if you're being dramatic or not. All I'm saying is that I'm asking you if you are acting as a responsible business owner in the city of Durango with response like everyone else is responsible to have their business licenses. Are you, sir?

I'm trying to, yes.

You're trying to now because there's repercussions or you're trying to because you're a responsible business owner in the city of Durango?

We've been doing it recognizing the concerns you expressed for 20 some years.

Now there are concerns because a second ago when you were talking to Dave, you were like pretty condescending and then our attorney too. But now we're concerned.

Well, there is a distinction between a group of license.

We know that. We're not dumb. Not everyone's familiar with liquor law. We know. I know. It's different. Heard. Okay. Moving on.

So we were late in applying for the 26th license.

Where's your 25 license?

I'll have to produce it.

Okay. So you lost it, which I mean, that's a more important license than a business license. And I can walk them to my office right now and produce every business license I've had for five years.

You have very good accounting and file recording, I guess. But anyway, we contacted the state after recognizing.

After she gave it or when?

Before. We were in the process. Actually, when I was going to pay excise taxes.

Actually, that's what I want to know. When did you approach the state for your liquor license? I would love to know that. I would love to see documentation of your 2025 liquor license, and I'd love to see the status of your 2026 before I can make a decision on what I want to do going forward. So I don't know if we can reschedule this for the next city council meeting so he can have time to produce the documents so I can say, is it a minimum fine or is it a maximum fine? How much are you abusing the system and your role as a business owner, sir?

I don't think there's any abuse, certainly not intentional. I mean, I can say that he's had- You want to shut me down? There's no more taxes and we can be done, I guess. But, you know.

Nobody said anything about shutting you down. I think this comes down to accountability.

In Durango, you know, you're not very business friendly.

No.

There's been some, you know, missteps recently. I've gone through some personal problems and some personal financial problems and other issues. contributed to that, but we are working to get in compliance. I've contacted the state. The state is doing what they can with the information I've provided to reissue a license. They can't renew the old license because of the 80-day, it's basically 80-day. If you don't renew it within the 80 days, you have to submit a new license.

So you're sitting here saying that I've gone through some personal hardships, and it's much...

I'm saying, you need to repeat that.

But listen, like It's about being reasonable. It's about telling us what's going on and being honest. Like that's what we're asking for here. We're asking for your honesty. We're asking for you to come forward telling us what your plans are going forward. We're asking for reasons that things didn't go well. Like if I can sit here and look at you and believe like this man is a part of our community. He wants to do better. He wants to have an active license, right? He maybe had one. Maybe it was lost or misplaced, right? I'm not doubting you, but when you're sitting there being condescending and rude, it makes me have a very different outlook on this whole thing than I did originally when I read the documentation. Does that make sense? We're people. We're humans. All of us care about this community. I own multiple businesses in this community, and I am so business friendly, you have no idea. However, I don't want people that are going to take advantage of our community and the systems we have in place. I don't want people that are going to put at risk constituents in our area serving alcohol to this moment without a liquor license. So I'm asking. for honesty. I don't want to hear, I had a liquor license in 2024 and then we come and find out that you didn't. You think that's going to look good for you? Absolutely not. So all I'm saying is that don't be condescending. You're not in compliance. You did something wrong and it might not have been intentional or you were trying to hurt people or anything, but you did. You messed up. Now, We're going to say we're sorry and we're going to talk about how we're going to go forward in a better fashion. And that's what we would like to see here, or me as one counselor would like to see moving forward.

Counselor Costa, do you have anything? I saw you hovering over the button.

Yeah, I just I I think we just need to get back to the facts and where we stand on things.

We're getting a little close to being personal, in my opinion, and so I was a little bit worried about that.

I would agree with Counselor Lawyer that I would like to give the opportunity to make sure that we do or don't have the documentation. And I guess I would ask back how much opportunity we've already given.

Well, I mean, he was put on notice on May 26th that this hearing was happening. So he's had almost two weeks. And let me point out, too, I think that the gentleman has a misunderstanding of the difference between a wholesaler and a brew pub and he's absolutely required to have a license to do what he's doing in this community. I mean, if you have strictly a wholesale or wholesaler brewers license, you only have to deal with the state because the idea is you're not selling directly to consumers. But he's calling it a tasting room, but advertising it as a brew pub. He needs a local license and he's never had one. Our information is he did not have a license for the entirety of 2025 from the state and he doesn't have them from the state for 2026. We feel like we've established that he's violated. If you want to give him more time to prove that he didn't, I don't see how he does it, but that's certainly your prerogative. I can certainly let you know what the penalty ranges are now or later. It's completely up to you.

The difference between here, Carver, Steamworks, everybody else serves hard alcohol or other types of alcohol. Is that correct?

That's a distinction that he's making, but I don't think that's made in the state law. It's not made in state law.

Mr. Harvey, do you serve food at your establishment?

Yes.

Okay. So do you have a, you do have like a sales license for like restaurant?

Restaurant health department thing.

Okay.

Yeah. Great. I mean, it's, it's worth noting that the state enforcement liquor state enforcement has not come down on me at any point in time. In fact, they're working with me to reestablish the license because it's a state license. Okay. And they basically said you're operating under a pending license. I was expressing to me today that I can give you the gentleman's card. Did he give you a letter? Because they usually give you a letter. No. They usually give you a letter. They usually give you a lot of things, but I don't have those things because they didn't give me those. I've had email exchanges. I had this inspector out today. His name is Noah Herman. You can call him today and ask him if he's at my premises.

Ben, are there other...

I'm sorry that I haven't. had a license up to now, but I'm working on getting that re-established because it's a significant issue for me as a business owner and to be in compliance with the city.

Are there other brew pubs that don't have, sorry, I don't know if you know this, and if you don't, maybe when we come back together, if that's what we decide to do, other breweries that don't serve liquor that have only the state license?

I don't think that there's a comparable business in Durango, except we have one distillery on, um, Maine here who is a manufacturer and they have a sales room at their location. Does Scott serve liquor? They didn't use to. Which business? Scott Brewery? Uh, they currently have a brew pub.

Okay.

Okay.

So they serve liquor.

Uh, Anarchy serves liquor. Carver serves liquor. Steamworks serves liquor.

Who else is there? I don't know. Animus serves liquor.

I mean, look, I think that he's earned enough goodwill with the city by getting his sales tax current that if you want to give him time to produce the license, if you want to give my office time to meet with him about this distinction between wholesale and brew pub, that's certainly, I wouldn't object to that as the prosecuting party on the matter. I think I know what the result's going to be, but I would not object to you giving him more time. If he can produce the fact that he had a license in 2025 and 2026, where he gets that letter from the state that says he's allowed to, and we've been down that road before. We've gotten a letter from the state when we've tried to take enforcement action, the state says, no, he's allowed to serve under our license. We were not, it's not personal. I mean, we want him to operate his business. We just want him to get right and pay whatever the required penalties are if he was wrong.

Councilor Ghazi.

Mr. Harvey, okay, so it seems like you need to have a brew pub license. Do you understand that?

I understand the distinction, but we don't serve alcohol. And that is the distinction.

I don't know if that's a distinction.

I'll have to get, because I'm not an expert on state licensing, but I know what I've been told by the state. and what the requirements are. And we've operated under the same licensing system for 23 years.

Okay, so you're making an effort to try to get re-licensed.

That's correct. And I hope to have that within 30 to 45 days.

So you probably need more time to get that completed?

I'm waiting on the state to do whatever they normally do. I've submitted all the paperwork that they requested. I had the physical inspection of the site today. And What I'm led to believe is the next action would be issuing a license from the state. I don't know the timing of that because the timing through the state is unpredictable. I'm sorry.

All right. So going forward as one counselor, just from what I've heard, you are out of compliance. And I'm just wondering if We suspended your license till you brought yourself into compliance. How much of a hardship would that be on you?

That would be a great hardship. It would probably force me to close the door.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Is there an appetite by council to kick this to the next meeting for the first Tuesday of July to have Mr. Harvey be able to procure some sort of Document or receipt acknowledging his 2025 license.

I would like I would if I could. I would like proof of the 2024 2025 and then process of the 2026 licenses. I would in some way, whatever way you can just be email that OK and print out the email and bring him in. You know what I mean? Like it's nothing fancy. I would just I think for me as one counselor I would like to see that I would like to see the start of the correspondence for this 2026 license. Did it happen on May 27th or has it been, like you've said, I'm trying to like... Before that. Before that, thank you. I would like our city attorney to get clarification on the micro brew pub versus the other licensing. And if he actually does fall under that and other operations are operating that, I don't feel like punishing you on that one necessarily because you have operated under the state liquor license. And I don't, you know, I'm concerned of a lot of things just kind of falling apart. And so I would like to hear clarification before we made a ruling on any of that. Thank you.

That's one count. That's what I mean.

Yeah, I mean, if what he's saying is facts, that can be, I mean, the state's great. I mean, we had another company that, I mean, they produced a letter from the state within eight hours of getting their notice. So this notice went out May 26th. I was hoping he would show up with that letter and we could say this was Moot 2. We're just not there yet. You have my email. Any communication you have with the state, any documentation you have, you can send that to me to get to my clients, which is the Council. And if I can resolve this for you, I will. I appreciate that.

Council Yazzie had one more question or comment.

OK, this is for you, Mark, and if you don't have the answer, we can get it later. Okay, so I'm wondering how much risk would the city be allowing him to continue to operate if we don't make a decision tonight and postpone it till our next meeting? I mean, could we get sued if somebody, something happens in an unlicensed facility that we know about?

The fact that he has represented here tonight that he is in contact with the state and the state has told him that he's allowed to act under this provisional pending status, I think alleviates us of our liability. I mean, he wasn't sworn, so maybe we want to do an after the fact, say that everything he said tonight was true just for liability purposes. I think the state would have taken action by now. understand. I mean, look, as long as you're willing to swear that everything you said to this council tonight is true, I'm going to advise the council that liability is going to shift to you in the state if something happens.

This gentleman is an enforcement officer. He was in my premises today. He said, you've got to revise your drawing and send it into the state licensing division. That's all I was instructed to do.

Do you need a motion? Yeah. I'll make a motion to postpone this hearing so that

Just continue the hearing.

Continue the hearing to the next city council meeting so the defendant can produce documents as instructed by council and needed by council and that the city attorney can clarify manufacturing versus microbrewery. And I would suggest getting a temporary license or some documentation of that ASAP so we know you're operating legally.

Well, even that temporary license would take a little time. I think I'll have a valid state license hopefully inside of 30 days.

But we have to get a second. So.

Yeah. And Councillor Yazzie, to your question, if we continue, you can't. I just had a moment. Yeah, yeah. Second. When you roll through the.

I was like, wait, no one second.

She was just going to answer the liability question as it relates to the motion. If we continue, you can't take an enforcement action until you've had a completed hearing. So by continuing the hearing, And based on his statements that the state has authorized him to keep doing what he's doing, I'm comfortable with the liability pending a continuance of the hearing until the date that you set.

All right. Any other comments? Councillor Gonzales.

Chime in because I'm not that familiar with licensing requirements for brew pubs or breweries or any of that. I own a small business here as well. and it's from one small business owner to another, it's impossible to run a business. And that the license slipped your mind after you've been in business for 23 years, I can see how that could happen. I have a lot of sympathy for your situation. It's happened to me before in a different state, in a different licensing. And it was impossible to get my license back because We allowed it to lapse, and it was a pretty significant license. So I just know I feel very sympathetic to what you're going through, and I hope we can get this resolved. I know, you know, again, like every day we're in there. Every day we're trying to make it work. Usually the documents are up there. We don't get mail like we used to. I mean, there's times in Durango the mail doesn't come, weeks go by. The post office doesn't operate like it used to. FedEx, however, the federal government or the government is used to distributing the documents, doesn't flow as easy as it used to. And so just having been in your situation, you know, we were not aware that our license had been expired until an inspector came and the inspectors would come in. every year or so, maybe two years, to come inspect our building or our business. So I just feel very sympathetic for you, and I hope that we can work something out because I want to believe that Durango is a business-friendly community, and we need to work with people. So I believe after being in business for 23 years, it doesn't sound like there was a complaint that somebody formally complained about your business, that there was a fight in the bar, that you were over-serving, that you were endangering the community. It's a document that we're required to have as all businesses are required to have. It's not a moral failure because you forgot to get your license renewed. So I just felt like I needed to chime in because I think it's, you know, I'm sorry that you're in this position.

I appreciate that, yes.

Any other comments?

Right. I'm just Sidebar. I'll just throw it out there. So the letter, the show cause letter was delivered open to my staff. I don't think that's necessarily appropriate. When the ranger came to collect taxes, it's an armed uniform, tactical gear person. I don't know that that's really appropriate, independent of my particular situation. It seems very unfriendly. When it's a matter of taxes, somebody arrives with a gun, holstered or unholstered as the case may be. And I wasn't there, so I can't say, but I was told it was a gun point. I'm just saying, independent of anything else to go serve a business, a notice that says, Hey, you guys are back. You do some taxes because you're overdue. I think a letter, confidential letter, a certified letter or something like that might be the first step or two.

So, you know, it's actually a felony to withhold. sales tax that you collect from people say that again it is a felony it is a crime a felony crime to withhold sales tax that you collect from customers it's like stealing well so complaining that the police showed up in uniform to serve you i take offense to i just think you know you get a tax letter from the property tax person or whatever hey your tax tax letter

Well, I'm not saying I never even got that.

You took money that didn't belong to you and didn't turn it over to the state.

All right.

Let's go ahead and vote. Evan?

Are you guys ready for the roll call?

Are we going to roll call or are we going to vote on the device?

I have that control.

Okay.

There you go.

Yep.

On mentoring.

Jesus Christ.

Motion passes. All in favor, Dave Woodruff. Jessica Lawyer, Kip Koso, Gilda Yazzie, Shirley Gonzalez.

Alright, moving on to.

All the information. Alright.

Moving on.

Moving on to item number 11 resolutions.

Under resolutions 11.1, we have a resolution authorizing the city manager to annually approve an emergency warming center located at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church Parish Hall in the city of Durango.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Jamie Lofko, the city's Community Development Director. We have a four-year resolution related to the emergency warming center. So this is aligned with our strategic plan goal of innovative housing and economic development, as well as safety and quality of life, for cultivating innovative housing solutions and partnerships to advance the development of housing options to support the community and focus on fostering a safe and vibrant community. All right, as you recall, Council approved a resolution in November of 2025 that allowed an emergency warming center for this past winter for Sacred Heart Parish Hall. Here's a summary earlier today from Mike Todd on the impact of that. And tonight there is a request to allow the Emergency Warming Center to continue each winter at the Sacred Heart Parish Hall without the need to come back to City Council for approval. This resolution would authorize the City Manager to annually approve this, to use only the Sacred Heart, and they would still be required to get a temporary use permit from the Community Development Department where we would confirm the operations and life safety of the facility ongoing. The location and operations would only change slightly from what's approved. The center would still operate November 1st through the end of February with temperatures forecasted to reach between 15 and 20 degrees or below. And it will be 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. for 20 guests. The only two changes you'll notice, we put to the end of February because it's going to change periodically. And then they ask for the discretion to be able to open between 15 and 20 degrees if they have adequate staff for that. but then will always target to be 15 and below. They will obviously target those dates to still be open. Sorry, I didn't update my motion to put the resolution number on there.

Move to approve resolution 2026, authorizing the city manager to annually approve an emergency warming center located at Sacred Heart Parish in the city of Durango.

I'll second.

All right.

Any comments?