City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone.

We'll go ahead and call the Durango City Council regular meeting to order for July 7th, 2026. Can I get a roll call, please?

Mayor Pro Tem Lawyer. Here. Councilor Gonzalez. Present. Councilor Coso.

Here.

Mayor Wood.

Here.

Councilor Yazik. Here.

Thank you. May I please get a reading of the Indigenous Land Acknowledgement?

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 relationship and informed actions. May this serve as a step towards inclusion and reconciliation.

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

Yes. Hi, thank you. My name is Liz Torres, and I am here with my colleague Sam Guzman. We are here with a community language co-op, and we want to thank you for your commitment to language justice so that everyone can hear in the language of their heart. If you're joining us from Teams today, please go to the More menu and then select Language and Speech from the menu and select the language of your heart. Buenas tardes, mi nombre es Liz Torres y estoy aquí con mi colega Sam Guzmán. Estamos aquí con la Cooperativa Comunitaria del Lenguaje y quiero agradecerles por su compromiso con la justicia del lenguaje, que significa que todos pueden hablar y escuchar en el idioma de su corazón. Vamos a interpretar simultáneamente y si usted se une a nosotros por medio de la aplicación de Teams, puede tener acceso por medio del menú de más y ahí seleccionar inglés o español. and we can go ahead and get started.

Thank you. Moving on to opening remarks by Mayor and Council, I do have a couple, just really quick. About seven or eight years ago, members of the Pawnee Tribe in Oklahoma, including the Chief, came through Durango asking if we had any scrap metals that we'd like to donate for some of their jewelry making. Faye was fortunate enough to recently meet back up with some of the members, and Faye, is it okay if I let you get the update?

Yeah, the two members came through again indicating their chief had been here several years ago looking for raw materials that were going to be recycled by the city for their vocational. Their kids do artwork and welding and learn all kinds of vocational trades. They actually came back into town to donate to the city examples of some of the artwork that was created. So the display in the lobby right by the front door to the left has two really awesome belt buckles that they made out of our water meters. And there are two copper bracelets there as well that were made out of the copper tubing that the city donated. They were just passing through town once again and asking if we had any other recycled materials. And we were able to send them up to Lake Durango, who had some recycled materials for them to take a look at.

Fantastic. Thank you. And then, yeah, I encourage you all to take a look at the display cabinet out there. It's beautiful work for sure. Also, one of Durango's own, Quinn Simmons, got second today at the fourth stage of the Tour de France. So he was, you know, carrying his teammates so he could get across the finish line first. And so he got second. But yeah, definitely a testament to Durango's own representing on the international stage. So I thought I'd put that out there for everybody. Thanks, Mark, for helping me with that one. I am done. And then Kelso Coso.

Council, it's been three weeks with a lot of activity there, so I'll try and split it between opening remarks and liaison related items. I wanted to express my appreciation for the clean commute activities that happened on June 17th. I think staff did a great job and they even resurrected the Carver's Brewing baked goods. We hadn't seen those in a while, so it was nice to have those out and about. lots of fourth of july activities i'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit but very appreciative of the huge amount of staff time and energy that went into that celebration i had three separate business owners tell me they had great customer numbers over the course of that weekend so i think that was a success all the way around um 250 251 ribbon cutting and then i wanted to acknowledge that i went to green drinks and they took time for a special acknowledgement of longtime durangoans katrina And Pat Blair and her mom, Pat Blair, who both passed away recently. And I thought that was a really nice mention and wanted to bring that up as well. So I'll talk a little bit more at the liaison portion. Great, thank you.

And moving on to presentations and proclamation with 4.1.

Proclamation recognized in the month of July as Parks and Recreation Month. Good God. Celebrate. Thanks everyone for being here as I fumble through this.

All right. Whereas parks and recreation activities are an integral part of communities throughout the country, including the city of Durango, and whereas parks and recreation services and programs promote health and wellness, improving the physical and mental health of people, And whereas parks and recreation promotes time spent in nature, which positively impacts cognitive performance and well-being and alleviates illnesses such as depression, attention deficit disorders, and Alzheimer's. And whereas parks and recreation services encourage physical activities by providing programs, facilities, and access to natural resources that promote active lifestyles as well as the environmental well-being of our community. And whereas parks and recreation programming and educational activities such as out-of-school programming, youth sports, and environmental education are critical to childhood development. And whereas parks and recreation increases a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses, and reduced crime. And whereas the U.S. House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month. And whereas the City of Dragno recognizes and promotes the benefits derived from Parks and Recreation Resources. Now therefore, be it resolved by the City, Durango City Council that July is recognized as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Durango.

Mr. McLean, would you like to come say a few words?

All right, thank you. So, one, just thank you for the opportunity to recognize July as National Parks and Recreation Month. National Recreation and Parks Association has come up with a theme of the power of for the month. So I've kind of broken down some of the highlights of what we do and what the power of. So the power of community connection and belonging. Facilities such as our parks, the Community Recreation Center, Chapman Ice Rink, and the Animas River Trail create opportunities to meet new people, build relationships, and strengthen our community by bringing people together. The power of play. From our playgrounds, the Whitewater Park, our youth programs and adult sports, play provides a break from our responsibilities and the opportunity to recharge while fueling creativity, joy, and lifelong learning. The power of nature. Nature restores and inspires us. Forests sculpts, the river corridor, our urban forest, our parks and trails ensure everyone has access to its benefits. And the power of well-being. Parks and recreation promotes health, resilience, and lasting community well-being. None of this happens without our dedicated team who cares for our parks, maintains trails and facilities, teach programs, coach youth, preserve our open spaces, and serves our community every day. Their commitment helps fulfill the city's mission to provide outstanding services and experiences for our community and our department's mission to enrich lives daily. As we celebrate National Parks and Recreation Month, I encourage everyone to get outside, explore our park, find a new trail, or participate in a recreation program. I would also like to provide an invite to our Parks and Recreation celebration at the Community Recreation Center on Friday, July 17th at 4 o'clock. On behalf of the Parks and Recreation Department, thank you to our community, the mayor, and council for your continued support of Parks and Recreation and for recognizing the important role you play in Durango, making Durango the exceptional community and special place we all enjoy. Thank you.

Yeah, the cool kids are leaving. All right.

Well, guess we just shut down the meeting. Thanks. Just kidding. All right. Moving on to agenda item number five, city manager updates.

Item 5.1 is the July 2026 water supply update with John Harris.

Okay, thanks, Mayor and Council.

John Harris, Public Works Director. Wanted to give you a water supply update as we head into the peak water use season. This, as you know, managing our water resources is one of the ways that we provide reliable infrastructure and community connectivity to meet that strategic plan goal. You know, you're probably getting tired of seeing these graphs, but I think graphically is the best way to represent this. We hit our peak discharge in the Animus about May 15th of this year. It was 1460 CFS, which is quite a bit lower than previous years. Same conversations we've had in previous updates. This is the discharge graph from the Florida River. That dashed line at the top is the 30-year historic average. So you see the trend. The trend line looks similar. The blue line at the bottom is this year. Obviously, a much lower rate of discharge. Although it's trending the way it would typically. Same picture for the animus, right? Dash line is the 30 year historic average and the blue line is where we are in this year. So you know, just roughly we would we would typically be seeing about 3000 CFS discharge of the animus and we're seeing about 750 CFS. That's quite a quite a difference. You all know that we are in stage one water use restrictions. One of the things I wanted to emphasize is that our community should not confuse our stage one water use restrictions with our stage two fire restrictions. They're not at all related. We are still in stage one water use restrictions. At this time, I don't anticipate moving to stage two water use restrictions, but I wanted to make that clarification. These are the restrictions. I've highlighted the no water Wednesday. leading into this graph the community is doing a great job all of those low the blue line is residential usage the orange line is our non-resolution non-residential commercial usage and all of the dips in that blue line are wednesdays through the month of may so people are truly not irrigating on wednesdays on no water wednesdays and we really appreciate that as we get into the peak season late July through August, it'll be imperative that we have those Wednesdays to allow the terminal reservoir up at the water treatment plant to recover. Our Florida River raw water supply and the animus supply are declining. We actually just had a call. We've had calls on the Florida River all year long We had the first call last week that affected a city water right. So the RF18 right, we lost that right. So that reduced our supply by about a third of an MGD or about 330,000 gallons a day. We're still doing okay though. It's not doom and gloom yet. Other changes since the last time we talked, the governor, Governor Polis, he activated Phase 3 of the Colorado Drought Response Plan and declared a statewide drought emergency. That really is a setup for asking for federal funding to help the state. It also gives DWR, Divisional Water Resources, more authority to implement calls on water supply systems as they need to. And I believe last time I was here, I told you that we were starting to test the pumps that move water from the Animus up to the treatment plant. It's a good thing we did that because the big 30 inch line that's in Gigline blew apart. The pictures on the right will give you some sense of the scale. Those are Public Works crew members that are down next to that pipe, and you can see how large that pipe is compared to our employees. That pipe is repaired now, and we've been pumping out of the Animus for the last couple weeks, basically every day. So between the Florida River supply and the Anima supply, we're doing well. We're meeting our demand. But I want to emphasize again, we're going into our peak water use season. This is when, you know, everybody wants to put water on their grass because they don't want to see it turn brown. We're asking the community, hang in there with us. Continue to not water on Wednesdays. Limit your outdoor irrigation, particularly to the extent that you can. We need to get through another month and a half, and then it's all downhill from there, right? If we still get questions about various restrictions and what stage we're in, what are allowed uses and what things are not allowed. I got a call from a childcare facility recently and they wanted to know if they could turn on the sprinklers so kids can run through the water. And you know, it's a tough message to deliver, but I had to say no, we'd ask you not to do that at this time. And that person really understood that. But all of this information is available through the city's website. I did want to, you know, it's great that we just recognized the parks team. The park staff has done an amazing job in reducing their water usage. So parks account irrigation usage is down 50% this year compared to the five year average, and they're obviously one of the largest users in the city. So great job to Scott and his team for that.

That's all I have, unless you have questions for me. Councilor Crosso.

Thanks, John. Would parks and recs decrease? Would that be reflected in the commercial? Because your graph, if you can bring the graph up for commercial and residential drops. Yeah, it doesn't seem to me like commercials.

This is May data, by the way. Because of the holiday, we've not processed the June data yet, so it may not be as obvious in this graph.

OK, all right. Would parks and recs drop be reflected in commercial on this line?

It would. It's considered, you know, we have two types of accounts, residential and we call them commercial. It's really everything that's not residential falls into the other category, which would include parks accounts.

Okay, great. The cost of animus pumping, I know that that costs us some money. There's X number of dollars in the budget. in X number of days that we might be doing this? Have you gotten to a point where you're figuring out if we're going to be exceeding the budget or not?

We're just starting to do that. We do carry about $70,000 a year every year in the budget, just in anticipation of having to pump. We're probably going to exceed that, although we have money in the water fund to cover that. At the start of the year, we looked at what the cost might be if we had to pump for three, four, five months out of the year, which is more than we typically would. It's still a relatively small percentage of the overall water budget. It was like one or 2%, so I'm not necessarily worried about that. That's why we have contingency funding and those sorts of things.

Great.

I don't have an exact number for you, though.

That's fine. I really appreciate these. Would love to see the June numbers whenever you get them and maybe not necessarily wait until the next Council meeting. Thanks.

Alright, Councillor Gonzalez.

For the update, so you mentioned in your opening remarks that water restrictions and fire restrictions are not related?

That's correct.

And so could you elaborate? So the city determines water restrictions, the fire district determines the fire stages?

That's correct.

But it comes from the council. Didn't we make the announcement at one of our meetings that we were in stage two?

Yes, Councillor. We do the fire restrictions also for the city, but I think for what John was trying to get at is we're at stage two fire, but that's not a correlation that we should be at stage two water. So I think that's what your point was just trying to make the clarification why we're at stage one on water and why we're at stage two on fire. They don't coincide with each other. They're different parameters.

Yeah, a couple of weeks ago when the stage two fire restrictions kicked in, we got a flurry of phone calls about what does that mean for my water use and became obvious that there was some confusion that stage two fire restrictions are not related to our water use restrictions.

But equally dangerous. for our community. I guess, you know, that we need to take both those seriously. I just, I think as a constituent, like they're both very urgent. You know, stage one doesn't seem like that urgent, but it actually is quite severe. And so I don't know if that, how many stages are there and when do we need to be alarmed?

Are we talking about water use restrictions?

Yes, water use restrictions.

So technically we have four stages of water use restrictions. We're obviously in stage one. And you all know that we revised the actual restrictions in stage one. If we had to move to stage two, and I want to say right now I don't think we're going to have to do that, we would reevaluate what those new restrictions would be.

And I guess, you know, that's also as when one looks at the animus, it looks very low. Like the lowest I've ever seen it. So is that not a correlation of the water usage? The fact that there doesn't seem to be hardly any water flowing in certain parts?

So I would agree. I think if you looked at any flowing body of water in this part of the state right now, they're all flowing lower than they typically would. I would say that for the counselors that sat in your seats 100 years ago, they were really phenomenal investments that were made in water rights. Some of our water rights are more than 100 years old. So when we lose our right on the Florida, we have an older, higher priority water right on the Florida that we retain. And so, you know, we're doing well in that respect. There are some irrigators that I know in the area that aren't as lucky and when they lose their water right, they don't have another right to fall back on.

You know, that's sort of where my questions lie, because I've heard you say, and I think here before, that we are not at risk of not having sufficient water, that we actually have sufficient water through the sources that we have. But I don't know. It doesn't appear that way. So perhaps, I don't know if you could, is it really just based on usage, based on the restrictions, that we actually have sufficient? Because many people have approached me and said, why do we keep saying that we have sufficient water?

Yeah, I don't recall saying that we're not at risk. If I did say that, I misspoke. I think any time with any kind of, contingency plan, whether you're talking about water use or fire restrictions, anytime you start to enter stages of reduced usage, there's there's cause for some alarm, right? There's cause for some concern. We're not going into a water use restriction because their water is plentiful. What I'm saying to you is right now, I think that the water that's available to us and and I think I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's great to have a water rights, but you can't drink a water right. Water rights only is good. as the water that is available through that right we're able to meet our demand with the water that's available to us right now we may get into july or august and uh and i may have a different story for you right now i'm not seeing us trending in that direction okay well thank you for clarifying that and for easing at least a little bit of concern um for myself i think it's good to hear you say it out loud um because you know it does

it just feels different than I think I've sensed it before to have the high concern with the fire and then the water restriction as well. So is it common that we would have be both in stage one and stage two?

I would say it's not uncommon, you know, when water supplies are low and it typically means that, you know, the area is dry. So I think those two things are related. And if we were to have a fire within the city limits, within our water service area, that's another reason that we would want to have the reservoir full and be able to provide that fire protection water as well.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. And you mentioned here, and I think you answered my question regarding commercial use and residential. So you're saying everything that's not residential is commercial. So is multifamily residential or commercial?

Multifamily in our community is considered a commercial account.

Okay, commercial. So because they're obviously going to have more water usage just based on the number of units in the building, but that's considered commercial, not residential.

It's considered commercial right now. That may be something we think about changing in the future, and there might be some reasons for that. But right now, yes, they're considered commercial accounts.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. And just a point of clarification, we're always in stage one fire restrictions. So going from stage fire restrictions, we're always in stage one. So moving from stage one to stage two is a step, but so is going, we're not always in stage water restrictions, right? So the stage two fire restriction, yes, it does sound, if you look at the numbers, like more stringent, but we're consistently always in stage one throughout the year.

So, and is that, when you say always, like historically the last 10 years or always?

I've been here and I don't know how I've been here. I'll be here six years. So it's been since my, tenure. I don't know how far back that goes.

Yeah, so we're always basically in a stage one restriction as far as like classification with the Forest Service or the Fire Protection District. That's just what we live in with the regulations we currently have in place with our city codes. And so when we move to stage two, it's because they're moving up, they're elevating their level. So we're just matching that. So in a typical year, going back decades, we're always in a stage one on a normal day. But when we move to stage two, it's because there's some critical areas of concern.

Okay, that's good to know. Thank you.

Okay, Councilor.

Yeah, I just have a couple questions. Sorry. So if conditions, you had mentioned that you don't foresee us going into a further stage for water restrictions, that things are trending. Not good, but we're maintaining. If conditions do worsen later this summer, What tools does the city have available before mandatory restrictions become necessary?

Yeah, the biggest stage two change that I think we would see would be going from three-day-a-week irrigation to two-day-a-week irrigation. We chose to go to three-day-a-week irrigation and split the days up, as you know, based on odd need and even number of addresses because most folks in our community were already irrigating their lawns three days a week. it just distributed that burden on the water system throughout the week. Instead of everybody irrigating Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in theory, half-ish of those people are now irrigating Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Going to two-day-a-week irrigation would be a change for the community. So those that are used to irrigating three days a week would now have to they would lose a day of irrigation. There would be other changes, but I think that would be the big change.

The biggest. The Wednesday, no water Wednesday clearly is working, according to the graph. Has there been much enforcement or has the community just sort of rallied around it?

Yeah, I have heard of very little enforcement action. I think in my three or four months here through this tough season, I've maybe gotten one call from the who saw their neighbor irrigating on a wrong day, and we talked to that person. They just didn't know.

You showed us the photo of the broken pipe on Gigline. Is there any other infrastructure concerns that we should know about heading into summer?

That's a whole different discussion. A whole other presentation.

TBD.

We're staying on top of everything. Right now, the concern was that 30-inch pipeline. It's interesting. There's about a 40-foot segment of that pipe, and it goes all the way from the Santa Rita pipeline water reclamation facility to the treatment plants, pretty long pipe. But the failures over the last couple of years have all happened within this 40 foot segment. So when the pipe broke this time and we had to wait on parts to come in to repair it, we actually put a camera in the pipeline and looked downstream and upstream and the rest of the pipe looks pretty good. So that's our highest focus right now is making sure that we can fall back on that Animas River pipeline when we need to.

Great, thank you.

Great, thanks John.

Brings us to 5.2 flock camera flock monthly updates.

Evening Mayor, Council.

My name is Bryce Current, Chief of Police Durango. This is the monthly ALPR presentation for May. So ALPR use by officers. We had a total of 696 searches by Durango. Sorry. 696 searches by DPD users in May. Some of the examples we've seen are vehicle theft, drugs, hit and run, larceny, arson, battery, welfare checks, missing people, domestic violence, harassment, DUI, wanted persons, and more. A single case, as you can see the top case there, generates multiple searches. One stolen vehicle case generated 66 searches by multiple users in several days. And so 85 unique cases accounted for those 696 searches. Any Any search missing a case number is audited directly with the officer and addressed through either corrective action or just finding out the why for non-criminal events like welfare checks or something of that nature. So in reference to the organization's requesting access and some of the questions last month, as noted last month, FLOC does not track this and we began manually tracking it on June 10th. And so next month we should have more data on that. But we're probably not going to have that many based on community feedback and discussion. I suspended most nationwide sharing until the audit process becomes more robust. We've suspended sharing with all agencies except those in Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. And while continuing to deny all 287 components or partnerships within those states, if there are any as well. The result on reduced sharing from 648 agencies, and if you remember, we're getting a lot more shares over 2,000, but reduced 648 agencies to 148, basically a 77% reduction. And so we have the custom hot list summaries we discussed last month. And that allows agencies to temporarily look for specific license plates for documented law enforcement purposes, such as a missing person, hit and run, domestic violence, or other investigations, or the three or four hours it takes to actually enter the information into NCIC and CCIC. You had some questions about that last month. And following last month's discussion, I decided to for all custom hot lists now to expire after 60 days and the officers can put those back in as needed. So hot list report. We had a total of total hot list produced 2323 alerts. 817 of those are Durango's custom alerts. And then 289 custom hot lists are from other agencies. Official hot lists are 1,217, which are the NCIC and CCIC, which can be duplicate and triplicate, like I talked about last month as well. So total vehicle reads. And so 2.8 million total vehicle reads through our town from May 23rd to June 2nd. And there's deletions every 30 days. And these numbers are rolling every 30 days. And they're not customizable, like I spoke about. And so we have to capture those. And moving forward, Tess is going to take a snapshot at the first of the month, every month. And so the dates will actually match here in the presentation as well. And similar to streets, we're a month behind every time. Total unique vehicle reads out of the 2.8 million, the total number of unique plates passing through town is actually just 368,000 or 368,800 for the same time period. And remember, unique vehicle read counts the vehicle or the plate just one time. So with stolen and recovered vehicles in May of this year, so we had seven vehicles reported stolen, six vehicles were recovered. Two arrests were made and it's last month, so those are ongoing. We still have DNA and other investigative tools that we're looking at and those cases are still open. But year to date we had 32 vehicles reported stolen, 29 vehicles recovered, so 91% and 12 arrests made. So we're up to 38% year to date, but also still investigating specific groups with that. Last year we had a total of 43 vehicles stolen and 41 vehicles recovered. So the ALPR assisted in arrest. This is kind of a big topic. Last month, even though I said that we can't really get that data, a lot of that data was used. So we started slowly with flock cameras in April of 2024 with one. We have had our full fleet of 13 stationary flock cameras since March of 2025. So I've found a total of 95 arrests, and also not included in this slide are multiple high-risk cases attributed to ALPR, including lifesaving, non-criminal cases, suicidal cases, runaways, missing persons, homicide, kidnap, and more. And as I said last month, we can only track a fraction of the ALPR successes. arrest unless we manually capture them. So 95 is obviously going to be a low number as well. And what I was able to find last week was 34 and we have some new technology that I'm trying to that can capture a little more data and hopefully we'll be able to capture more in the future with that technology and our reporting. So I'm going to this goes to some of the questions last month as well and some of the comments throughout the community. The cost of crime, so seven vehicles stolen in May. In Kelley Blue Book, the average is $26,000. That's $182,000 for those vehicles, according to the average in Kelley Blue Book. But in Durango, we get most of the vehicles back, right? And they're returned. And so the Rand Corporation, I looked to the estimated cost of a stolen car, returned or not, is about $9,500 due to the damage and all the ancillary costs as well. And so the average cost of an accident also can be about $8,200. And what the RAND Corporation does is it uses a victim cost methodology that focuses on the overall burden of crime in society. So estimated average societal cost of crime. So it goes into everything. And, you know, like homicide can, and this is the cost per crime, can be over $9 million. Aggravated assault, $90,000. Motor vehicle theft, as I said, over $9,000. The kind of an important one that cost communities a lot that people don't realize is larceny and shoplifting can cost over $2000 and what they're looking at is they're looking at, you know, victim medical rehabilitation. They're looking at loss of wages, productivity, insurance payouts, premium premiums, property loss, damage, police, courts, prosecution, corrections, reduced quality of life, and then the broader economic impacts that it can have in the community. Just kind of all the things. So I think it's important to know that our total ALPR investment year to date is $153,068 since the original date in 24 that I cited. And so crime sends a bill to every taxpayer and ALPR simply helps reduce it. We can calculate the cost of crime, but we cannot calculate the value of the life that never becomes a victim, which is obviously our mission and our vision to prevent crime from happening in the first place and create a deterrent here in Durango where people come into town and say, don't commit a crime in Durango because you're probably going to get caught. That's the goal while protecting our privacy at the same time. So the last slide, just some of the successes in May. So on the 5th, We had an ALPR alert that led to a traffic stop. Driver arrested for DUI failure to appear, two DUI failure to appear warrants and cited for other violations. On the 12th, it was linked to a stolen license plate and it was on a stolen car and leading to its recovery and then five other vehicle recoveries within the month, as I already stated. We had a hit and run in Walmart. The driver was arrested for DUI Obviously hit and run fictitious plates, no insurance and restrained license and then on the 30th help track missing persons vehicle providing the location information to the investigating agency in Arizona and we assisted there and then since 2024 you've already heard about the multiple life saving successes. We've also had with a LPR so open for questions. And this will get shorter as we move forward.

There were just a lot of questions last month. Sorry, we're going to cancel our lawyer.

I just have a couple real quick. The investment that we've made, can you go back to that slide? Okay, $153,000 since inception, so that's since April 2024. Are we anticipating that that's the same, an annual investment, or will it be less than that since our initial investment?

I think we'll continue to keep that and maybe a little bit more. More of the same amount of money every year? About $2,500 to $3,000, depending on, there's a little bit of a cost for setting it up, and then there's a yearly cost, but about $3,000 per camera per year. And if we increase the cameras, we'll increase that cost.

Okay. Excellent. I think that's all I had, actually. Thanks.

Thank you.

Chancellor Cusso.

Chief, thanks so much for adapting the questions that we had the last time into the presentation today. So really appreciate that. Love to see that we're kind of taking that 77% reduction. I think it's a good idea until we kind of solidify how we want to approach these things from going forward. Can you talk just a little bit more about the one vehicle causing 66 searches? I guess I still don't quite follow.

Absolutely. I, you know, that may raise some eyebrows, but it's going to raise my eyebrows if they don't. Yeah. Hopefully they're searching for those vehicles because we've had a rash of stolen vehicles. There's the TikTok challenge with the Kia vehicles. And if you think about, you know, Kia's aren't Mercedes, you know, there are people going to work and they're just being stolen like crazy for joy rides and everything else. And when they get the vehicle back, the door's broken. And so it's still unsecure. And so we have been working very hard. Every shift that comes in, better be looking for them. Better be looking to resolve this. And we want to create a deterrent here in town. If you're going to steal those vehicles, don't do it with our public. Don't do it here. And so I want the officers working really hard.

Okay.

And that's those searches. And that's what we like to see, truthfully. It's not an alarming thing to see, especially with what's going on right now.

Yeah. For sure. The other thing is the total program investment is $153,000, but that's not staff time. That's not inclusive of staff time, correct?

No.

Okay.

No, and I think that's a great point because that's almost – I mean, that's a little more than one staff position. And we're just trying to be efficient and smart nowadays with our – I just sat through another presentation. There's a lot of things going on in the city, and we're going to be real careful before we just throw positions at everything.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Councilor Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chief. So that return of vehicles is a phenomenal record. I feel like having studied some of these things, it was like less than 1% of vehicles were recovered in my hometown. And so I think this is a phenomenal number. Do you have what you had before the flock cameras, how many vehicles were stolen and then returned?

There were a lot less, but we still had, and I don't have that number. I'll get it together for you. But I mean, my predecessor and when I came here, I mean, we work really hard to get results and we try to base all of our key performance indicators with our strategic plan back to our mission and our vision. to get results. And we look at stats and trending. We look at it really hard. And that's the foundation that was set even before I became chief. And we're continuing it, but we are ramping it up because of the technology. And we're going to continue to use the best technology and balance that privacy as well and have more precision. And like I said last month, and I'll argue, we're going to go for more privacy and more precision using this technology to focus on the individuals stealing the cars and finding the cars. And that's what our officers are doing. And it is an outstanding number.

I mean, it's really phenomenal. And if I remember correctly, it was actually an insurance company that funded officers to address all the stolen vehicles. Maybe it was State Farm or Allstate or a big insurance company that funded that program. And I always remember being really shocked because they almost never recovered any vehicles. And I was like, well, I wonder why they keep funding it. if they never recover any vehicles. And, you know, it was a very large grant that the insurance company gave. Are you familiar with any of those programs?

Yes. Not the specific one you're talking about because there's many. But you bring up a very good point. And the reason is it goes back to the RAND Corporation. It goes back to who pays all this money. Every time a vehicle is stolen and we incur that cost, insurance goes up. And that's where that study comes from is what the cost that the community incurs, not just the individual. you know, the individual is what we look at, the victim that has three jobs and has a wrecked car and somebody took off or has their car stolen. But there are a lot of grant opportunities because of those costs incurred in multiple facets. And like I said with that study, all those different fact, all those different people that are losing money that it costs, that's where a lot of that grant funding can come from. And a lot of it from the state as well. We get a lot of those locks for the steering wheels. You see that on our, on our Facebook page and everything else that a lot of that comes from grant funding as well.

Well, if I remember correctly, this program from insurance companies funded officers. And so, you know, if that opportunity exists, I would hope that you would look into it, you know, because it wasn't funding technology. It was actually funding people on the street. And so anyway, this is phenomenal. I mean, I would be curious. perhaps you could do a comparison of similar size communities, how often vehicles are returned, because I've never heard of a number quite as impressive as what you're presenting today.

You're right, and I'll look for the grant opportunity. We continually look for the grant opportunities, obviously, but with this, we've looked at other cities that have had their cameras up longer than ours, and we've looked at those comparisons, and all of them are way better now than they were. Um, the numbers are completely, uh, they're all higher, but we haven't had them long enough to, to have those same comparisons. So we've been using the other cities, but pretty soon we're going to have our own comparisons as well.

Yeah. I, well, I'd be curious to know what was before too, just to see, I mean, maybe again, like it wasn't, I mean, the city had probably 400,000 vehicles stolen a year, but none were returned like 0.01 was returned. So, um, I think anyway, this is great. Um, I'm glad to hear that. That's a, that's happening in Durango. Thank you, Chief.

All right, I'll take a note of that. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Chief. A couple of real quick questions. So before in your presentation, you had mentioned that hot list expires in 60 days. Does that mean it's expunged from the record or does that mean it?

There's really not a record. It's just for the office. And really, and it's a good question because the only the officers that put in the hot list information get the alert. And so It's an in-house alert system for, and a great example that I used was say there's something that you want to put in CCIC and NCIC and it's a dangerous person and people are going to get hurt or could get hurt. You have that window of time before it shows up in that system. And so they put it into the hot list. And so when Councilor Coso asked that last week, they are taking those out, but I felt like they were maybe taking a little bit too long. And so I just looked at it deeper after the question and thought, why can't we just put a deadline on there? And then it causes more work, but they can put it back in there and it'll keep it fresher.

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. And then walk me through the warrants on ALPRs. So If there's a warrant locally, or is it just a warrant anywhere in NCIS or. Cause I mean, cause yours need a PR to, to serve warrants essentially. Right. So where are the warrants coming out? Are they locally or are they just from wherever? It can be both. Okay.

Yeah. And that's where, even though we're not every agency in the U S doesn't share with us. And obviously we reduced our sharing to the four states. NCIC and CCIC, we can still get that data. So it's, you know, it's that balance, right? You know, you want as much information as possible, but we're still going to get the critical information.

Gotcha. So that will come up as an alert, you know, vehicle or something matching that description comes in, they have a warrant, then we would, you know, make contact.

Yes, sir. Exactly.

Okay. All right. Great. That's all I had. Thank you. Any other questions?

Awesome. Thank you so much to appreciate your time. All right. Moving on to item number six, committee board and liaison reports.

Yeah.

Counselor lawyer.

Yes. I'm going to start with Joseph at MANA asked me to mention the cleanup art community event that MANA is sponsoring. It's Saturday, this Saturday, July 11th. You meet at MANA at 830. They're going to provide coffee, pastries, donuts. They're going to provide gloves, trash bags, pickers for trash, safety vests, water, and more for everybody. And then we're going to go and divide up and clean up the River Trail until noon. And so it's a great event. And so anyone who is interested, Manna Saturday, July 11th at 8 30 AM. I had the alliance meeting board meeting this last week. We talked about our internship program where we expended $20,000 to 10 different internships across different organizations in our city. We talked about the air park economic impact study on August 15th. That study is going to be published officially. There is probably going to be some additional asks from the county. There's a potential for a new LPA substation up there, which would be interesting. There is a little bit of a hiccup with Four Corners gravel. There's another access road that's going to be required in order to develop this a little bit more, and it has to go through that property and. We don't know if what the. Potential ask is going to be there. So anyways, there is that the hot Springs has organized a opportunity zone application. It goes from the hot Springs to purgatory and includes Honeyville, James Ranch, Purg them. It's going to be a health and Wellness corridor that they're pushing for. It's a bunch of grant opportunities there. So that's super interesting, and the Economic Development Alliance is kind of assisting with that. And then the summit tickets are on sale for the Alliance Summit, which is in September. It's one of my favorite business conferences in the region. So get your tickets. They are on sale today. So there you go. Thanks.

Thanks, Councillor Cusso.

Thank you, Mayor. Airport Commission meeting on June 18th. There was a lot of robust discussion around parking. We're in our fourth year of building 150 to 250 spaces up there, an awful lot of asphalt, but the demand is there. So we're also talking talked about renewing hang releases, which we'll see later on in our meeting tonight. Engaged Durango Forum around ADUs on June 23rd. The feedback that the presentations really are emphasized, but only 15 minutes or so long and people don't understand the meeting of the department heads is kind of the main focus. So that's feedback I got from a couple of participants there. June 30th, we discussed the City Council work with Naomi Reese, the candidate for District 59, and I also attended the Camino Crossing update. where substantial time was dedicated to hearing from the attendees, and that was very appreciated. I heard that from many of the attendees. I am going to follow up with several of the business owners that have some construction-related concerns, and I'm happy to include any other counselors in those meetings if they wanted to attend as well. I had the initial orientation for the Region 9 Board on July 2nd. Looking forward to that. And then at my office hours, I had numerous folks show up talking about composting commercially should focus on groceries, restaurants, and landscaping. We need to think about a landscaper's drop-off point and redirect landscaping waste from the dump. Talk to an individual about a yard waste bin similar to the trash and recycling bins and workshops on backyard composting. uh two people asked to reinstitute the infrastructure and parks and rec boards i had a re a request to refresh and follow up on the animus river corridor plan uh with attention paid to put into it to put in traffic and parking and then lastly chef tracked f by the library um a preference not to see housing go there so thank you very much thanks counselor counselor

Thank you, Mayor.

Alrighty, so let me think. Oh, on June 22nd, 23rd and 24th, I went to the Colorado Municipal League Conference up in Westminster, California. So I had the opportunity to network with quite a few people. It was a real fulfilling conference because I also attended the board meeting where we elected Jose to be on the municipal board. So that was a real thrill. I got to vote for him. And then I didn't realize that Bryce and Luke were going to do a presentation at one of the workshops I was attending. And so the name of their workshop was Relationships Must Be Built Before the Crisis. So there was a lot of good information that they presented from how they conduct their management style to the rest of the Colorado leaders. And it was real fulfilling attending that workshop. And then I also had a chance to have a luncheon with Governor Polis. So I got a picture. I forgot to send it in, but that was real revealing and you know, just mentions about maybe what's going to happen with him in the future. But I just mentioned to him that we still need help with our infrastructure funds and that if he could pass any money along to our firefighters, that would be excellent. We'll see what happens. And then also, it was Kip, Dave, and myself on the 4th of July, we helped carry the American flag down Main Street Now that was really exciting, I thought, because that it was the fire department flag and it's like 20 feet by 30 feet. And so carrying that thing up that, you know, don't hit the ground, try to stay focused. So that was a real thrill. Other than that, that's all I have.

Thanks, Councilor Yazzie. I'll piggyback on that one. I was fortunate enough to join Councilor Costa and Councilor Yazzie on that. My son decided to join as well. So we all got to carry the flag down Main Street on the 250th anniversary of the United States being founded. So that was really fun. I agree with Councilor Yazzie that that was a really prideful moment for me and my family. Also had a meeting in mid-June with the Powerhouse Science Center. I got to take a little look at their new childcare facilities. So really excited about that. feeling a critical need within the community. Then also they gave me a tour to look at some of their capital projects that they have going on that we will get a study session on in the near future to talk about. So really excited with some of the work that they're doing there. We also had municipal judge interviews in the middle part of the month and then subsequently appointed a new municipal judge, Judge Beth Padilla. So really excited to have her acumen and expertise in the municipal judge position. So Really excited for that. I also had a resilience and recovery fund conversation with the chamber bid and local first, just talking through ideas of what could we do, what the possibilities are, how do we make this potentially work, but talked about some of the constraints that there could potentially be as well. So, Anyways, really good conversation there. And then also got to join Councilor Gonzalez and Councilor Coso at the 250-251 ribbon cutting. It was good to be able to celebrate the joint venture between us and the county, celebrating mutual success on a corridor that is obviously being built out and to get some critical infrastructure and road work done. So that was really nice to be able to get done. And that is all I have. And we will move on to consent agenda item agenda number 8 please.

We do have people signed up for public comment, Mayor.

I mean, I probably should be pretty pretty important. My apologies. We're going to skip back one to public comment on agenda items not under consideration of adoption.

And we do have one person signed up. If Tom would run the recording, please.

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 items 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.

Mark, we do have several people signed up for the public hearing. I'm assuming that those folks would actually speak during those public hearings as opposed to now.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was talking to Mike Paul. What was the question?

We do have several people signed up to speak on the public hearings. I assume they would speak actually during the public hearing section as opposed to now?

The second two public hearings, yes.

YES, OKAY. SO THEN WE HAVE ONE PERSON SIGNED UP TO SPEAK, ALLEN MILLER ON 11.1, DIVISION ZERO GOALS.

THAT'S YOU, ALLEN.

I APPRECIATE THAT.

MAYOR WOODRIVEN, COUNCIL MEMBERS, I'M WATCHING THE CLOCK. MY NAME IS ALLEN MILLER AND I'M A RESIDENT OF DURANCO. I'm here to speak up in support of Councilor Gonzales' resolution regarding Vision Zero. I believe this is a good thing for our city, and in particular might provide access to additional funding sources for multimodal projects. However, I would also add that Vision Zero is not enough. Yesterday, I rode my bike past the White Cross on Ann Arbor Street Drive that marks the spot where a pedestrian was killed in 2023. There have been no physical changes to that spot, except that someone is taking the time to cut the grass around the site and hang a fresh pair of white tennis shoes. There's nothing to prevent the same crash from happening again. My point is not to shame the city, but to point out that we are far better about taking input and talking about things than actually making the built environment we drive, bike, and walk through safer. And I'm concerned that Vision Zero would be more of the same. So I'd like to take this opportunity to call on you all to demonstrate that city does actually care about people more than cars and lower the city wide speed limit to 20 miles an hour. This would be an actual move that would make our city a safer place and crashes more survivable to vulnerable road users. I know that lowering the city speed limit would be controversial and that you all would take a lot of grief. This might be the only thing that would give you more grief than actually talking about parking. But if you want to make Vision Zero more than just words or grant applications, I encourage you to do something in the real world and lower the speed limit in our town. 20 is plenty. Thank you for your time.

That was the only person in this section.

Thank you, Faye. Now we can move on to consent agenda, please.

Agenda 8.1 is approval of meeting minutes with 8.1.1, the approval of minutes of the City Council regular meeting on June 16th, 2026. 8.1.2 is approval of minutes of the City Council special meeting on June 18th, 2026. And 8.1.3 is approval of minutes of the City Council special meeting on June 29th, 2026. There are no final reading of ordinances. 8.3.1 is a resolution accepting the annexation petition For OSS Enterprises, Track 1-R-A, addition to the City of Durango, 1164 Carbon Junction. 8.3.2 is a resolution approving an implied consent agreement, ICA, for a utility service to 9 Elk Ridge Lane. 8.3 is a resolution to adopt the Local Event Marketing Grant, 2026 Round 3 Grant Recommendations. 8.3.4 is a resolution to adopt the Lodgers Tax, Arch, and Culture Round 2, 2026 grant recommendations. 8.3.5 is a resolution to adopt the renew grant funding or renew grant recommendations. 8.4 is approval of other administrative items with 8.4.1 approval of a new entertainment liquor license for the Southwest Maj Club LLC at 835 Main Avenue, number 214. 8.5 is a request for a public hearing. 8.5.1, a request to set a public hearing for the annexation and initial zoning and lot consolidation of AAS Enterprises Track 1-R-A to be held on September 1st, 2026. 8.6 is introduction of ordinances with 8.6.1, an ordinance regarding the annexation, initial zoning, and lot consolidation of AAS Enterprises Track 1-R-A to the City of Durango and declaring an effective date. 8.6.2, an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with Don L. Gosney and Kelly C. Gosney for an aircraft hangar at 1452 at the airport. 8.6.3 is an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with DBL Management LLC for an aircraft hangar at 1490 at the airport. 8.6.4 is an ordinance authorizing a ground lease for John W. Sabo for aircraft hangar at 1544 at the airport and there are no requests for excused absences.

Anything for removal from the consent agenda?

Mayor, I'd like to pull 8.1.1.

Make a motion to approve the consent agenda minus 8.1.1.

Second. Take a roll call, please.

Under electronic voting. Oh, I forgot.

The motion passes. In favor, Dave Woodruff, Gilda Yazzie, Jessica Lawyer, Shirley Gonzalez, Kip Kosso.

Alright, Chancellor Kosso.

Council on the meeting minutes for 8.1.1 I on page 24 there's a paragraph that just needs a clarification. I think it it states. When asked by Councilor Yazzie if he understood that he needs a public brew, a brew pub license to operate, Mr. Harvey responded that he understood the distinction, but he didn't serve alcohol and that the distinction on and on. He meant hard alcohol. He meant liquor. But the minister state that he was stating that he doesn't serve alcohol at all. So I'd like to just have a clarification parentheses added to that to state that it's hard liquor.

Council Cosa did speak to me about this before the meeting. I agree with him. Yeah, I think the gentleman just misspoke. We all knew that he meant that he wasn't serving hard liquor. He used the word alcohol. That's pretty common. So having it reflected in the minutes that he intended, I would just put in parentheses hard liquor behind the word alcohol. Absolutely.

We can do that. I'll make a motion to approve 8.1.1 minutes of city council regular meeting June 16th, 2026 with the modification of hard alcohol being added.

Second. Discussion? Roll call please.

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

Right, moving on to general item number 10 public hearings.

Council, this is a continuation of the public hearing regarding Durango Beer and Ice. I do see Mr. Harvey in the audience if you'd like to come up. When we recessed that hearing last time, my understanding, you guys wanted two things. One, proof of 2025 licenses and or 2026 licenses, and you wanted an explanation from me about the discrepancy that was raised about the type of license that was required. I'm pleased to report that Mr. Harvey and I were both correct. The law changed in 2015. He started his business way prior to 2015, so he was grandfathered in, meaning he'd get a wholesale liquor license, and he was not required to get local approval for his sales room. The law changed in 2015, requiring local approval of sales room, but people who had their sales room established before that were grandfathered in. Unfortunately, his license lapsed, which means he has to get a new license, which means he is no longer grandfathered in. So when I was reporting to you that he does need local authority or local approval for his sales room, I was correct because he had expired. Mr. Harvey has provided documentation of a 2025 license from the state. We have not been able to verify that with the state, but I have no reason to disbelieve license that he provided because the state is not always consistent in providing us the documentation that we request so where that leads us today is that it's the city's attorney's office position that mr harvey's been operating his business since september of 24th of 2025 without the required license he did have a 90-day grace period with the state that expired on december 23rd 2025 And in that window, even though it's expired, he can get it renewed without having to get a new license. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that he did that, so he has been operating in the city without a license since September 24th of 2025, arguably only since 1223 of 2025, because that's when the 90 day state redemption period expired. So from there. Certainly we should give Mr Harvey an opportunity to address you. I can provide. evidence that he continues to operate his business without the license as recent as this afternoon, and we can go forward from there. If you do find that there's a violation, we would move into a penalty phase where I would then provide you a chart and documentation on what the state guidelines are for an appropriate penalty for operating without a license.

Good evening, Council.

Hope you had a good 4th of July. And it was safe and Enjoyable. Anyway, I want to just make a couple statements. As the city attorney had said, I provided copies of the licenses. There was a question about a 24 license, a 25 license. I didn't misspeak or lie to the council. I didn't misinterpret anything. I provided those licenses. I had those licenses all along. What I've learned since our last hearing is this body is based on the tone and tenor. Questions and comments operates without the fundamental foundation of innocence until proven guilty. And the city attorney's decree that we could not host a piding contest because he stated we have not and do not have the proper licensing to serve alcohol. That's an arbitrary and capricious decision. On the one hand, and it's a punitive action by the city on another. The attorney acknowledged the hearing is not complete yet to cancel the piding contest. For what reason? For what benefit? I don't know. That's certainly guilty before proven innocent. Not innocent before proven guilty. My caution to fellow citizens, we may come before you. That raises the question, does the city attorney have authority to make such a decree? Did the council meet to discuss this? If the city attorney is working as an advisory capacity, which I believe he is, how is he empowered to make such a decree and cancel a piding contest? At the last hearing, I was accused of being irresponsible, among other things. But my responsibilities as a business owner and as a licensed beer manufacturer do not depend on a piece of paper. We don't suddenly disobey the rules and regulations. We don't start to serve minors or over-served patrons or operate outside of business hours. No different, I argue, than the driver who realizes his driver's license expires, begins to drive recklessly, and disobey traffic laws. That driver goes to motor vehicle, the licensing authority, and gets his license renewed and pays the penalty if there is one. That's what my business is in the process of doing. For getting a new license, there's been no malfeasance or misconduct, only administrative oversight. Too often in my experience, government officials become punitive rather than working to assist the government. My recommendation is that this council that seems adversarial to work to be more of an advocate for business. It would serve the community interest if officials work to facilitate compliance and work together to achieve desired results, whether that is to meet city codes or satisfy regulations, which should otherwise improve the community, both for business and individuals. The issue here is whether or not my business is operating within the legal framework posed by the federal, state, and local governments. I submit that it is. We missed filing a renewal deadline. The brewery has been licensed since 1990, and I have obtained licenses since 2002 without incident. Again, our operations didn't suddenly change because the license expired. We continued to operate as we have historically in compliance with applicable rules and regulations applicable to beer manufacturers and wholesalers. We applied late for a city business license, but for some reason we've not been issued that license even though the checks for the payment of that license have been cashed. Let me try to again point out that the city is not the licensing authority for beer manufacturers and wholesalers in Colorado. The Colorado Department of Revenue is. That's not different than car dealers, electricians, plumbers, or beauticians. Municipalities do not issue those licenses either. A local municipality Colorado cannot directly suspend or revoke a state license auto dealer license. If a dealership was found selling vehicles without catalytic converters, that's against the law. But the municipality has no authority to suspend the license of a dealership. It's a state action. It's handled by the Colorado Motor Vehicle Dealer Board within the Department of Revenue's Auto Industry Division. The Department of Revenue has outpolled licensing authority. That's who we are governed by and regulated by. This council seems somewhat bothered by that fact. But it has been that way for quite some time, at least several decades. An attempt to admonish me and my business in the manner thus far is indicative of a government body overreach. I don't know what motivates this, but without precedent, I know. If the city attorney feels that you need to establish some sort of a municipal code or ordinance affecting one business, I would state that the man hours and legalities involved in that endeavor are a waste of time and taxpayer money. If the city should choose this course, I would have the opinion that you need to increase and justify the city's legal budget because you'll be facing headwinds from all Colorado state beer manufacturers and likely the Colorado Department of Revenue. My business and indeed other businesses like mine in Colorado are regulated by the state, not local governments. That is not to say that local governments don't have any say. There are local zoning and land use rules that must be satisfied and general business and tax licenses, which are the province of local governments. From the Colorado Department of Revenue webpages, some summaries I would like to read. An executive summary. A local Colorado municipality does not hold direct regulatory jurisdiction over state issued malt beverage licensing. Colorado Liquor Enforcement Division maintains exclusive authority over manufacturing and wholesale privileges. However, the municipality retains sweeping control over physical facilities, zoning compliance, land use, local tax compliance, and retail sales room approvals. The law did change in 2015, as the city attorney mentioned. So getting a new license today requires approval by the local authority, which would be the city. That I have an application for a salesman. It won't change the manufacturing or the wholesale, but it could change the salesman.

But here's what I'm pointing out.

On the application, it says the local licensing authority can object to the approval by the state if the issuance of the permit would impact traffic, noise, or other neighborhood concerns in a manner that is inconsistent with local regulations and ordinances, or if granted, that the permit would result in violations of this Colorado Liquor Code or the laws of the local government.

Or the permit would violate local zoning laws.

Those are the three criteria that the city council would have to weigh. If one of those is in dispute, then that license could be effectively denied. I would find it hard to believe anything here now would apply to my location at 3000 Main Avenue after 35 years. The scope of state jurisdiction, this is also from the Colorado Department of Revenue, in Colorado, alcoholic beverage manufacturing is distinct from retail operations. Retail tiers, such as taverns, liquor stores, and restaurants, are subject to a strict dual licensing framework requiring independent local and state approvals. Conversely, manufacturing licenses are governed exclusively by the state. Consequently, a municipality has no legal standing to directly revoke, suspend, modify, or add restrictive conditions to a state-issued malt beverage license. The legal authorization to produce a wholesale product is granted entirely by the Colorado Department of Revenue's Liquor Enforcement Division. Again, while the municipality cannot invalidate the state license, it does possess extensive jurisdiction over the physical business operations, real property, and local commercial activities. The manufacturer must remain compliant with all local mandates to operate legally. As I mentioned before, zoning and land use, building fire and health codes, and premise inspections subject to Colorado Liquor Regulation 47-700 pertains to manufacturing premises and storage areas which are subject to both state and local authorities if they deem so.

One other note.

If the manufacturing facility engages in the local sale of branded merchandise, kegs, or packaged products directly from the premises, they must maintain a valid municipal business license and sales tax, which is what I've applied for, which I've had for 24 years. So where we're at now is that the license has been applied for, the new license, because we're outside the renewal period. In talking with the state, They requested certain documents be provided. I had to get new fingerprints. Surprisingly, my fingerprints were deemed invalid after five years. So a new requirement.

Go for it, you're done. So they've asked for sales records for both wholesale and retail beer.

And what will happen based on my consultation with Brewer's Guild attorney is that we will be fine. There will be action taken by the state, independent of what the local government.

So the state will enforce things, but they're not suspending my license during this process. So some of this information has been provided piecemeal, fingerprints,

separate request there was a premise i think it's called premise management plan which has been prepared that's relatively new that we've had before and so some of these things are getting caught up and updated the state again is going to take action on their own as they are the licensing authority there will be consequences so i would suggest or ask but you wait and see what those consequences are before taking any action on your own.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Chancellor Lear?

I just have a few questions.

Can I just for a second? I want to compliment, do you mind? I want to compliment Mr. Harvey on his presentation. I think he did an admirable job of representing himself in front of you guys. There's a couple of things that I need to point out. He used the word direct authority saying that you don't have direct authority, but you do have authority over local licensing. It is a dual licensing operation that we operate under. He was grandfathered out of that, but when he let his license lapse, he's no longer grandfathered out. So he is subject to the dual licensing authority. I did speak to the attorney from the Brewers Association. He agrees with me that he's in violation because he has not had a license since December 24th of 2025. and he cannot be selling alcohol without that license, which he continues to do as of today. I think that it's unfortunate that he is holding himself out as a wholesaler when his business is a retail beer business. He does the exact same thing that Animus Brewing Company does. He does the exact same thing that Allen Rockery Brewing does. Those guys all hold brew pub licenses. So when he comes in here and says, I'm exempt because I'm wholesale, he's not truly wholesale. And that going forward is how he needs to be treated by the city. So he is treated the exact same way that those other businesses doing the same business are doing. It was kind of a loophole that these guys were getting these wholesale licenses and then operating sales room without local authority. He benefited from that for 23 years, but he let his license lapse and now he's subject to the new rules and he cannot sell alcohol without a license. And he's been doing that for nine or 10 months now. As the local authority, you have the authority to fine and punish him for selling alcohol in your jurisdiction without a license. That's what the dual licensing provision allows. That's what the statutes say.

With all due respect, Counselor, There is a distinction between a brewpub license and a wholesale license. There is, absolutely. Okay, so we have a wholesale license. We do not have a brewpub license.

I understand that. You shouldn't have a brewpub license. Brewpub license is subject to dual license. That is correct. Yeah, so a wholesaler's license with the salesroom, sir, since 2015.

Okay, the salesroom license, as I read to you, is attached to the wholesale license.

I can still hold a manufacturing license and a wholesale license. But you can't operate like you're operating now with just that license.

Okay, and the other distinction that you made was that we're the same as Animus or Anarchy. The fact of the matter is we can sell wholesale. We can sell kegs to accounts. They cannot. Yeah, but you don't do that. You operate just the way they do. I'm sorry. We don't serve hard liquor. That's a distinction.

Yeah. Okay.

We also sell wholesale beer to accounts in town. To who? To accounts in town.

I still don't understand yet.

Accounts in town.

Accounts in town. Okay.

So that's a distinction. Yeah, they are small distinctions. They're not wholesale.

OK, did you sell alcohol today without a license from the state? State, did you sell alcohol today without a license from the state or the city? Yes or no?

I'm not gonna answer that alright.

Thank you. Council, I like to introduce exhibit one, which is a sales receipt for the sale of alcohol from his business today. I like to. Introduce exhibit two, which is a printout from Facebook of promotions for the sale of alcohol three days ago. Six days ago, sorry. And on June 24th, so those will be exhibits 123 and four establishing that he's selling alcohol in the city without a license.

It's worth pointing out again that the state has taken no action on the

You do not have the license to sell alcohol in the city since December 24th of 2025. Common.

You seem to have a personal agenda, which I don't understand.

I don't have a personal agenda.

You seem to. You seem to.

Facebook is making me your enemy as a defense. Every email I have sent you has offered to help get you in compliance. I don't. You didn't respond to me until this morning. I was on vacation. I'm glad you're on vacation, but I'm not out to get you. I'm not putting stuff on Facebook about you personally. I didn't come in here and start my presentation about a pie contest. It has nothing to do with this.

That's exactly my point.

What? That's exactly my point.

Counselor, lawyer, would you like to continue?

Okay. I asked for, when you were here the last time, documentation, 2425 licenses, which you provide. Let me finish. And then I also asked for the date you and documentation of when you started to file this new round of applications for your licenses.

I provided a copy of an email between myself and the state.

Do we have that date? Do we know that date?

What he attached was blank. So he never sent me a filled out application to the state. Unless that was in the email that came this morning.

What I sent you a copy of was a email from the state giving me the application for the license. And I had a conversation with them a week or two prior before receiving that. And I stated that in my email to him.

Again, I never received a filled out application to the state for his 25th birthday.

I just wanted to know the date you started to actually do your...

It was before the date of

I don't want you to tell me it's before the date. I want to see something that says what the date was, and that's what I asked for. I have, at our previous hearing, you indicated that you obtained the appropriate state licensing. Can you clarify which licenses you currently hold today?

We are, I guess, in the lingering position of a wholesale license and a manufacturer's license.

You hold no current licenses today?

It has not been invalidated by the state. The license expired and there was a 180-day window to renew. We're outside of that window. And so we applied again.

Yes. You haven't held a license since October 24th, 2025. September 24th, 2025. Okay. But also, again, emphasize the 180-day window to renew. So you said you have an application for local sales tax licensing.

Yes.

But you also said that you've held it for how many years?

For sales tax?

Yeah.

20-something.

20-something years. Have you ever let it lapse? No. Is it current? You currently have your sales tax license current right now. So why do you have an application if you currently have a sales tax?

Room license. Sales room license.

Sales room license. But your current business license or state sales tax license is up to date with the city. Okay. At the last hearing, you stated that code enforcement officer held at gunpoint and served papers. Can you clarify? Are you saying an actual firearm was pointed at you when the papers received the papers?

I was told by an employee that the code enforcement officer entered the premises with a firearm with a firearm. I don't know more beyond that.

I can't characterize anything other than is there someone from staff that can clarify? Do code enforcement officers have a firearm as part of their issue like as part of their day to day? uniform tools. They do not. So they don't have a gun. They don't walk around with a gun. They don't. So my point, does code enforcement walk around with a gun?

Yeah. Maybe the employees thought it was a gun.

So you can see how this feels. Your statement that At gunpoint, someone was served papers. At first, you said you were served papers at gunpoint. And then later on, after your rant, you said that you weren't even there. And now it's a taser. And she's not sitting here right now. They do wear vests for protection. But the Little blonde officer that was sitting there in a vest maybe seemed intimidating to your staff member, I guess.

With a tactical vest and whatnot.

Yeah, that's their dress.

What appeared to be a holstered weapon.

She wasn't at gunpoint is my point. She was never held at gunpoint, served at papers, and that's what you said. My concern, sir, is that you're coming in here right now about pie eating contests going on about. I don't even know what half of what you really said, and you're not taking accountability for you serving alcohol in the city limits and not holding to this day in active license. There's the. Not say it that way. The air of you could care less. is astounding to me as a business owner to stay. Sir, let me finish. The mischaracterization that we don't support local business. I am a business owner in this community. I've lived here for over 25 years. I am pro-business. So that's a mischaracterization. You feel that way? Sir, let me finish. I let you speak. Be respectful and let me finish. the characterization that you think that that's how we feel, all because you didn't do your paperwork. You didn't do your job, not for one month, not for two months, but for nine months you've been operating without proper licensing. That is not our fault. Sir, that sits on your shoulders. And the fact that you come in here with this attitude blaming us for God knows what is wild. That is where what you're saying is anti-business is not. It's accountability. And I think you just need to take a look within and instead of being like, oh, they don't like me and they don't like me and they don't like me. Maybe it's something you did. Saying I'm sorry and I'm going to do better. I'm going to make sure I have a notice in my calendar when my license expires every year would go a long way.

Fair enough. But for 20 four years, we didn't miss the deadline.

We're not talking about 24 years. We're talking about today. We're talking about, no, you don't understand because you keep fighting. You keep making the same repetitive cyclical argument. You don't understand. So local licensing authority, dual licensing authorities do have the power to revoke or suspend your liquor license. That's it. Your sales tax license, your sales room license is different than your wholesale license. Nope. I know. So you have to file and apply to both. And so when it says directly on your application that whenever you apply for your sales room license with the state, it says, if selected for on-premise consumption, please file this application with the local licensing authority and the state licensing authority, both dual licensing authorities. We do, the local licensing authority does have the power to revoke, suspend, or or to get rid of your license altogether. We do have that licensing authority. In CCR 23.203-2, regulation 47-303 states specifically, any licensee whose license has been expired for 180 days or more must apply for a new license pursuant to section 44-3-311 CRS and shall not purchase or sell any alcoholic beverage until all required licenses have been obtained, obtained, not applied, unless otherwise authorized under these regulations. So we keep, But you're still serving and you're not even apologetic for it.

I can't. It doesn't make sense to apologize for serving alcohol, does it?

You're serving.

I'm serving alcohol without a license. Is that what you want to hear?

You're operating without the appropriate license. You're operating unlawfully. You're operating against the law. You're serving alcohol, a drug, to people. Nope. You're serving alcohol to people without appropriate licensure. This isn't the Wild West. You can't just do whatever you want. I understand that you've been acting responsibly for the last 22 years. Thank you for that. We're not talking about the last 22 years. I'm talking about since September 24th, 2025.

You've also been acting responsibly.

No, you haven't. You're serving alcohol without a license. That is not responsible. That's acting unlawfully.

Difference of opinion.

There's no opinion. It's the law.

I'm sure there's somebody on this council that are driven without a valid driver's license.

No, we're not talking. Quit deflecting. We're not deflecting. Just just accept responsibility and accountability that you made a mistake and you're operating unlawfully.

What do you want to do about it?

This isn't a nail salon, man. We're not talking about nail salons. We're not talking about a hair salon. We're not talking about an accountant.

My point was I'm making a distinction what state regulations and state licensing covers.

We are a dual licensing system. You have to go through both. Whether you agree with it or not does not change the ramifications of the law. Understood. And I will tell you. Every single one of us have served on the Economic Development Alliance, Region 9, Chamber of Commerce, Local First. No one up here is anti-business. Me personally, I believe in an equitable playing field for everybody to operate on. When everybody's playing by the same set of rules, there's equity. And if you're not playing by the same set of rules as everybody else, again, this isn't the Wild West UK. Just do whatever you want. That's how lawlessness happens, and we don't get any sort of regulatory oversight of a responsible alcohol service. State licensing authority is going to take – We are the local – I don't care about the state licensing authority. You have to go through us as well. We're not talking – the wholesale, we can't – you're right. That's the state. The salesroom license is a local licensing authority. We have the power to revoke or suspend straight up. I don't want to have this argument again. That's the law. That's what the law says.

I accept that.

What's that?

I accept that.

Thank you. And to piggyback a little bit on what Counselor Lawyer said, you're an owner and operator for your business and it's up to you to know and understand the laws.

I do.

Ignorance is not... I just want you to understand that we're not trying to... There's no agenda here. I want the more people we have to operate and run their businesses, the rising tide floats all boats. I think it's great if you want to operate your business, but you still have to play by the same set of rules as the rest of us. And it's up to you to know the rules that you've known for the last 22 years. And you've got to take ownership of that. I have. You're not. You keep having these arguments that you're trying to validate your decision-making and you're trying to justify your decisions that you've made. And you're not taking responsibility for operating without a license. You're selling alcohol without the appropriate licenses. And it says directly, I just laid down the rules. You can look it up. If you're over 180 days, you're not allowed by the state or the local licensing authority to serve alcohol.

The state has taken no action.

It doesn't matter. We have the ability to take action.

I'm just telling you the state is taking action.

I understand, but we're not talking about the state. You keep having the same argument. It's the state. It's the state. The local licensing authority has the authority to do what we want, to suspend or to revoke your license.

Mayor, it feels like we're walking over caltrop ground here.

All right. So I'm good.

Counselor Gonzalez, go ahead.

So I just have a couple of questions.

I think for, perhaps it's Faye. So again, like this is all new to me. I've always been concerned about why we don't have briefings beforehand. I've never been briefed by any licensing agency, and yet we are often the licensee for institutions like this, marijuana, other things. But we've never had a briefing by the state or even here in the city. about what's required. So I'm hearing it for the first time. But I did want to ask, you know, as we are talking about dual licensing or even the issue of having a license, does the city go, once a license is issued to a business, does the city go and inspect or have any oversight over that business? Not just alcohol sales, but in general. Is that under your – I don't know if it's a different department, but is it Faye or your department? Once a license is issued, do you ever go to inspect or to ensure that those licenses are current?

Do you want me to answer that?

Yeah. We do issue the licenses out of our office. The licenses are approved through – All the brick and mortar licenses that have like real buildings in town are approved through community development, through the fire district. If they're serving food, the health department has to weigh in. Sometimes the police department has to weigh in depending on the license. After that, we are quite honestly responsive and just reactive if we get a complaint on a business. Okay. But we don't have the capacity to go out and check every business.

To ensure that licenses, do you get them like a... Nothing in your system that triggers when a license is expired?

Yeah, we send renewal notices out for every license in our system. The business licensing system actually pings the business license owner every single Tuesday until their license is renewed.

Okay, so we do have a system to remind people of that. But this gentleman has never had – you didn't get reminded because you never had the license. Is that fair?

I think the city clerk is – referencing city licenses, sales tax license.

Right. Well, I am sort of asking just generally speaking, do we normally remind people that they're, and are they renewed annually? All business licenses?

Business licenses are renewed annually. Liquor licenses also receive renewal notices and they receive those 90 days prior to the renewal of their license. But again, because we didn't have a sales license, room license for him, that renewal reminder. That's possible.

He never got a reminder because we don't do that from our office. So, okay. And I'm just trying to understand, you know, functionally how it works, because, you know, there's been a delay. It seems like you're trying to rectify it, but you haven't rectified it yet. You haven't applied for the local license yet. You mentioned that the state has not, has taken no action, or you will eventually get a fine, but they have allowed you to, the state has allowed you to continue to operate under your current license that's expired. That's correct. Okay.

And I mean, you're soliciting answers from him, which are not correct. We do have.

No, I mean, I have to ask the question. I don't know. Right. I mean, I'm asking, did the state allow him to operate?

No. The answer to that question is no. I mean, he says yes. But the answer to that question is no. His license expired. And the state has not reissued him a new one. They are forcing him to go into a reapplication process as a new licensee. So when he says they take a no adverse action to me, that's not correct. Because they are not renewing his license. They are forcing him to be a new application. That's why he had to give new fingerprints. I'll also say that we have two code enforcement officers that do do inspections. This gentleman's been on notice since at least, at least May 26th that he's in violation. And he's continued to serve alcohol since May 26th until today. So I'm sorry for interrupting you, but he's taking your kindness and spinning it to his advantage and making a false record.

I mean, having worked under a state license, they do often give you a grace period. So that's why I'm asking. I think you said 180, 180 days. Right. OK, so I mean, I'm just trying to understand from a licensing perspective, which is, again, like we have never been briefed by any organization, any state agency about what's legal and what's not legal. So I'm only hearing it for the first time since there's been two incidents since I've been on the council and about a year and a few months related to alcohol sales. And I often don't feel fully informed to make a decision. So I can only ask questions as they're being presented now. So just trying to understand, again, having worked under a state license, they can often give you a grace period. They can often extend your license if they choose. It seems like this alcohol sales is not the same as other industries. So I'm just trying to understand. I think that we are going to issue a fine. There's going to be some repercussions. And so trying to understand how severe those should be. So that's why I'm asking some questions about how often we inspect and then how often we as a city communicate with are vendors or licensees or small businesses. So we have never been briefed on any of those things. So I'm just trying to get some understanding of how to appropriately address this issue. So thank you, Mary.

I appreciate that, Counselor.

And if we get to the point where you find that he's in violation, I have prepared a chart for you on what the state limits on suspension and fines are. I just thought it would be premature to do that, you know, to hand out what the sentencing would be or the fine would be prior to any finding by you that I don't feel like I'd be doing my job correctly. That would be presumptive that there would be a finding of a violation.

Councillor Yessing.

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to make a motion to revoke the business license for Since he doesn't have a business license, do we just go to the penalty phase?

So he...

Okay, then I call the question. Let's get on with the recommendation, then let's vote.

So this is a little different. This is a hearing. So I'm going to ask... My request is that there be a finding of a violation of 49... Sorry, 44-9... 44-3-901H, which is the sale of alcohol without the required license. So I would move that there be a finding of a violation of that ordinance, or that state statute, which is the sale of alcohol without a license. At the end of the day, we talked about a lot of different things, but it gets that simple. His sales tax license, when we were here last time, we dismissed that hearing because he had gotten that paid up. He's satisfied. The only reason 24 and 25 come into play is that aggravating or mitigating circumstance to the violation. But the first thing that you guys have to do is based on what you've heard from him, what you've heard from me, what you've heard from the witnesses last time. If you believe there's a violation and that violation is the selling of alcohol in the city of Durango without a license.

Do you need a motion?

OK, so the motion would be that we find I trust old beer brewing LLC has violated licensure in the city of Durango.

Is that step one license?

We're selling alcohol without a license.

I'll second.

Council discussion.

We're saying he's in violation, right?

That's all we're doing right now is that he violated state statute 44-3. Something age 44-390-9018 channel age that that he was selling alcohol without an appropriate license. That's all that we're finding right now. Any discussion?

Oh, Counselor, will this be submitted to the state?

I'll have a conversation with the state. I mean, it wouldn't be fair for him to be punished twice. But if you guys do a punishment and levy a fine and a suspension, we'll report that to the state. They will. I don't know what they will do.

I don't know. Like, you know, we haven't had a case quite like this before. Can his testimony be included so they understand, like, what he's trying to say and what he's doing and the air of how he thinks his business should run. And if someone wants to issue a liquor license to someone like this.

I mean, if they request it, we can send them the minutes of this meeting.

Could we just send it with our ruling and stuff?

I mean, there's nothing that prohibits that. I mean, I feel like we will owe the state an explanation of what we did on this one.

surely double jeopardy wouldn't come into play. I mean, okay.

No. And again, all of these, some of these rights, people talk about double jeopardy in the office. Those are, you do not have a right to sell liquor. That's a privilege. So there's no legal right or constitutional right to sell alcohol. That is a privilege that is granted through the licensing process. So the rights, you gave them due process and all that, but no, that would not attach double jeopardy. Okay. Double jeopardy is only in criminal cases. Right.

Okay.

in the conversation all right if you get a roll call please can i request a voice roll call you'll hear it pop over all right thank you the motion passes all in favor dave woodruff jessica lawyer gilda yazzie kip coso shirley gonzalez

Mark, you want to outline the potential next steps for? Sure.

I mean, having found a violation of the liquor licensing ordinance or statute, you now move into the penalty phase. This is the chart that I've mentioned a couple times for each one of you. And the state law says we're making determination regarding the type of penalty imposed for a violation of the Colorado Liquor License Code of Rules, a state licensing authority or a local licensing authority, that's you guys, shall consider the severity of the violation based on the category of violations, any aggravating or mitigating circumstances. The calculations find shall be equivalent to 20% of the estimated gross revenues from sales of alcoholic beverages for the following. Level one violations, seven days. Level two violations, 14 days. Level three violations, 21 days. Level four violations, 28 days. Your chart explains to you under the type of violations what level this falls in. I would suggest to you that it falls under a level two violation operating with an expired license. The suspension for that is 14 days. So you'd be not allowed to operate for 14 days. If he continues to operate how he has been, the city could physically shut him down. Fay is very familiar with posting the suspension notice on the front of the building that he's not to be operating for those 14 days. The fine is calculated by 20% of the gross alcohol sales. We have determined based on his payment of sales tax that his alcohol sales equate to $384.20 per day. If you multiply that by the 14 days, you get a fine of $5,378. So the chart's there for you to peruse and make a decision. My recommendation is you find a level two violation, suspend his operations for 14 days, and issue a fine of $5,378. Mr. Harvey, you have a comment? No.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, it's just the law.

Yeah.

All right.

I'll make a motion to consider this a level two violation with a fine of $5378, 14 day suspension of the business.

Yeah, that's all I have to say, right? Yeah.

That's a lawyer.

Yeah, I just want to say I'd be much more apt to Over the past two hearings that we've had with you, Mr. Harvey, I would be. More apt as I did with the first violation of the last instance that we had brought up before us to give a much. Much less fine or must much less. Actually, probably suspension of days of your business. If you would come forward and said, you know, I understand I've been operating without a license. I apologize. putting my best foot forward and I'm taking the steps to rectify it and haven't been so defensive and argumentative and. I just don't know how to put that nicely. Hang on, let me finish. I don't know how to, I want to say something else and I'm trying to say it tactfully. The air that you have when you're standing here, when you're talking to us is narcissistic. It's completely entitled. This is a privilege. It's a privilege to sell, to own a business in our community. It's a privilege to have employees that you provide work for. I want you to succeed. The air and the accountability that you are showing us shows me that it doesn't matter to you. And that's unfortunate. And I'm hoping after these 14 days, you'll start to understand that it matters. It matters to your employees. It matters to our community. It matters that you're responsible. It matters that your secretary of state license should be in good standing. So maybe over these 14 days, you can get all of your, nope, it's not, I'm looking at it right now. I'm looking at all of your licenses and I'm telling you that maybe you can take these two weeks to make sure you have dotted your I's and crossed your T's to get this license active, to get the new license that you have to have with the city active and to come out with your best foot forward and like show this community that your, your business is a place we want to, you know, go to. It's a place that everyone wants to go to and that you want to be successful in this community. And that's, I'm not asking for an argument. You can obviously chat with us, of course, but all I'm saying is that is why I'm voting the way I'm voting.

Not on personalities.

So I would ask you to consider that.

I would ask you to consider that.

Council, I think going after the Max here is just a little bit punitive, and I agree that there's been disagreeable interactions going on here, but it doesn't. It seems to me that we've got a situation where the. The license. And the serving has happened for a distinct amount of time. I'm not sure that in my head, if I'm just looking at that, that it deserves the maximum of the level 2 so. I don't know. I mean, shouldn't count any of the hearing from some other counselors and then maybe coming back on.

So let me explain it. It's not really a maximum. If you wanted to go with the maximum, you would find a violation under level four. If you find a level two, there's a minimum based on his gross sales and there's a maximum based on his gross sales. But what the state law says is that the fine shall be 20% of his gross sales. So there's not discretion within the levels. There's discretion between the levels.

Any discretion I would have would be to a level one.

Correct.

Level two. I have to pick a level and then the level's automatic.

Correct. And to his comment, you know, aggravating and mitigating factors are cooperation with the investigation or at the hearing. So you can actually incorporate. He said just the facts. It's not just the facts. It's the aggravating and mitigating factors, one of which is cooperation with the investigation or at the hearing. I will tell you, for the 14-day suspension, that should start on the day that he gets his licensure correct, not today, because you don't have a license to operate today. And after today, any inspection where he continues to serve alcohol is a new violation with a new fine and a new suspension period once he gets licensed. That's the way it's intended to work. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. people would just, you know, make their money and pay their fines.

Councilor Gonzalez.

So, right. And it's not just the $5,000 that we're suggesting today. It's also the 14 days that he'll be closed. So every day he loses business. I suspect you still have to pay your employees for some time. Otherwise, they'll all go out and get other jobs and you won't have any more people. And also that we do have flexibility. I would suggest the minimum fine, as this is the first time in all of the years you've been operating that this incident has come up. And again, it's a licensure issue, which I feel differently from some of my colleagues about how punitive we need to be about particular licensing. And the fact that, again, we have I haven't been fully briefed by a state agency about how to handle these things. So I would support a minimum fine. I believe that you've got to get your in compliance. And as soon as that happens, then we can start the 14-day penalty. But, you know, I hope that you can, you know, get your work in order and then continue to operate your business.

And if it benefits the council, I'll comment right now. A level one, the fine as defined by the state would equal $2,689 in a seven-day suspension. I recommended the level two. I've already given you that number. Level three would be an $8,068 fine and a 21-day suspension. And then the level four, which is the maximum, is the $10,757 fine with a 28-day or more suspension.

Councilor Guzzi.

Mr. Morgan, just for clarification, you had stated something about the state penalties. So these would be overlapping or no?

This is the state guideline for penalties that are administered either by the state licensing authority or the local licensing authority.

One or the other.

Under the dual licensing system, the local authority is required to use the same penalty scheme that the state uses, which is what we've been talking about. We're not allowed to go outside it. Okay. Thank you.

All righty. I do think level two is the correct level of penalty. And when I read this aggravating factors, it says deliberate noncompliance. And this is what I see as a pattern is that for what, nine months he's been not able to come up with a license or fill out the applications. You know, to me, that is, you know, deliberate noncompliance. And 14 days, that would give him a good amount of time to try to see if he is able to fulfill any of the requirements of getting a license.

Well, with all due respect, I'm sorry, I thought you were done.

And I would be...

You know, I am supportive of the business community. In my past, I have been a business owner, and I've always done my licensing, my insurance, all that stuff. It's just part of being a business owner. It's like nothing special. You just do it because you have to do it. You know, it's kind of a plug and chug. But, you know, with this deliberate noncompliance, level two penalty phase is the correct penalty phase.

Thank you.

Any other discussion? Can I get a roll call, please? The motion passes.

Four, in favor, Dave Woodruff, Kip Kosso, Gilda Yazzie, Jessica Lawyer. One, opposed, Shirley Gonzalez.

All right. Thank you.

Moving on to public hearing 10.2.

10.2 is a public hearing on the Vero Ridge Addition Annexation, Initial Zoning, and Lot Consolidation, 455, 541, and 589 High Llama Lane, submitted by Scott Schein.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Scott Schein with Community Development. Thank you for having me for the public hearing for Vero Ridge annexation and initial zoning. City staff have been working on this project for a number of months and feel that it really does align and advance our adopted vision, particularly around being a multi-generational community and thriving. It also aligns with strategic plan goals related to housing and providing additional opportunities for residential development in close proximity to city infrastructure. So to get us oriented as I start, here are the three properties that are being proposed to be annexed. City limits are currently immediately adjacent on the east side of these properties, and they are eligible for annexation in accordance with Colorado revised statutes. Here's a quick summary of what's being proposed. There are three parcels, as I mentioned, a total of 28 acres. They are all designated in the city's comprehensive plan for residential medium land use. That's a density per acre of between 5 and 11.9 units per acre. Importantly and timely with John Harris's previous presentation, We did talk extensively with Public Works and utilities about specifically our ability to provide water to this property and for what we expect to be proposed to be developed out there. I've been very impressed with the professionalism and the quality of information we're getting from Public Works and the utilities team right now. And as you know, they're undergoing a utilities master plan update, and that's going to give us even more tools to assess annexation requests, development requests, and their impacts on things like water supply, traffic, and other things. So I'm excited for how our tools are being developed in that area. The properties are in the South Durango Sanitation District, and they've indicated they have capacity to provide wastewater treatment conveyance and treatment services. Importantly, in kind of a new provision, the properties are overlaid by the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code maps. It's in a Class 2 fire intensity classification. The draft annexation agreement includes a requirement for compliance for all development on the properties to comply with the WRC standards around site design and what's referred to as structure hardening. That was a little bit of a unique case because part of the properties were overlaid by the maps and part were not. But because annexation is really a discretionary process, we decided to have all development on the property apply with those standards. The applicant has been receptive to that. They feel like it's the right and proper thing to do in any case. Future development is not really what's being reviewed tonight, but I wanted to let you know that we have been working with the applicants on a conceptual subdivision plan that envisions up to 195 residential units on the property. They're looking at a mix of townhomes, duplexes, and single family homes. The CDC has seen the conceptual subdivision plan, and the next step is for them to submit a preliminary subdivision plan. That will include full engineering and all the necessary reports that will go to both CDC and will come before council. So just to give a little more close-up shot of the properties, three residential properties, and then as most of you know, the property does start to get steeper as it goes to the west, gets up into another large residential property and then into BLM land. The majority of the development that's contemplated is kind of on the eastern side up against High Llama Lane and on the flatter sections of the property. The steeper parts will be more conserved for open space. This is a quick snapshot of the comprehensive plan. You can see all three properties have the same land use designation. The annexation review criteria, there's some in the land use and development code and then there are a lot of other standards and process requirements in Colorado statutes. As I mentioned, the properties do meet the contiguity requirements. It will be a two-step annexation. So the two properties along High Llama Lane will be annexed first, and then that creates contiguity for the smaller third property. That's pretty standard practice. We have received annexation petitions from all owners. and it meets all other applicable annexation criteria. The requested zoning is residential medium, which is in line with the comprehensive plan as required by the LUDC. We have not received any written public comment on the annexation. At the last CDC meeting, there was a gentleman who I believe is here tonight who commented on the future subdivision of the property. but it wasn't on the annexation, bit of a distinction there. Staff finds that the proposed annexation and initial zoning comply with all applicable criteria. The CDC unanimously recommended approval of the annexation initial zoning in May. And so we are recommending approval and I can provide specific wording for a recommended motion later on the agenda under first consideration of the ordinance.

Thank you.

You seem to open the public hearing, yeah?

Yes, that's OK. I just need a motion to open the public hearing.

Make a motion to open the public hearing 2nd.

Discussion. Get a roll call, please.

We do have two people signed up under this item and then one person signed up under the Vero Edge ordinance section. So I think all three would come here for the public here. Yeah.

The motion passes.

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

The first person signed up to speak under the public hearing is Laura Godfrey.

Good evening, I'm Laura Godfrey. I have been a resident of Durango since 1982. when I bought my first home for $74,000 on 3rd Avenue, about a block and a half from here. I currently live and own the property that's under consideration for annexation, the small parcel 541. During my tenure in Durango, I have seen tremendous growth. I've seen people priced out of Durango. I have seen an influx of lots of folks. And I don't know that I'm speaking specifically to annexation, but in a global way, I want to support this project. There's a desperate need for housing in Durango. You all have the responsibility and the authority to address that need. Where we are is no longer an idyllic rural area out there. If you go past Maverick, there's a car dealership, there's a McDonald's, there's a Starbucks, there's a senior center, and there's a hospital that wasn't even there when my husband moved out there many decades ago. So I'm here, I guess, in a more generic way to say I support this project. I would have loved to have continued to live in a quiet rural setting, but this has been planned for 10 years for this to become residential and mixed use across the street. It is not a sweet little country lane. So please, I encourage you to go forward with this as expeditiously as possible. Thank you.

The next person signed up to speak is Wally White. Good evening, counselors.

Thank you for this opportunity. I am Wallace White. I've lived here since 1979 in the county and owned property 589 High Llama Lane for that 46 years. And I'm also the personal representative for the estate that owns 455 High Llama Lane. So I've been involved previously with some other developers who did not want to do a high density development. That ended up falling through due to the numbers didn't work out. And I'd have to say for the past about 26 years, those of us who live on Hiawatha Lane have realized that we'll see development out there primarily because, at least in my mind, because of the geographic challenges that Durango has to meet places that need development. We've seen a lot of work done out in the Grandview area. When I first moved there, I woke up one morning, the winter of 79, 80. I looked out the window and I had about 35 elk in my front yard. Things have changed considerably since then. And it is, as my wife just said, it is no longer rural area. The elk have been driven out. Um, we still have deer in the area and some small wildlife, but, um, yeah, I've enjoyed my time out there, my 46 years living in a rural, uh, atmosphere, but it's not that anymore. And I believe that, uh, the project that is promoted for this, the Vero Ridge is meeting the needs of our community. They have a nice mix of housing and it's very similar in some ways to Three Springs where they have condominiums and townhomes and single family homes. So I would encourage you to approve this project and continue to

work for better conditions in housing for our community thank you for your time and the last person who signed up to speak is tom stultz excuse me good evening it's been a long night mayor council i'm going to be very short sweet i just you know it's simple the it's too much congestion 195 units they've they've just put in condos and yes durango needs housing but this is just too much congestion it's excessive that's all i have to say thank you all right any other commenters any other no one else signed up under this item okay great go ahead and close the public hearing

Sure, I mean, if the council can ask questions if they choose to, but they shouldn't discuss their position on it yet. That'll come when the when the ordinance comes up. So there any questions they didn't get answered from on the on the presentation. You could get clarification for that now, or you can wait and do it when the ordinance comes up. So it's kind of just up to you guys how you want to do that.

Yeah, let me. Great.

Do you want to go? Go ahead. Council Yazzie.

All righty, these questions are for Scott. And thank you for doing the presentation. It was very nice. I just have two questions. Now, are we certain where the water line goes and we're not going to have any problem with an exterior boundary of the Ute reservation? Good question. Do you guarantee that?

The boundary is further south from here.

Okay, good. And also, okay, so with potential development being 195 single family residences. How will that impact our water? Are we going to go ahead, going forward, maybe charge these people more for water?

They would just be charged as all other water users in the city. The developer would be required to build all the infrastructure to serve the new subdivision, and they would also pay plant investment fees or impact fees for water, not for sewer because it's in SDSD.

Okay, and so the sewer, what, South Durango sewer, sewage, they have agreed to take the sewage from this housing development forever, right?

Correct. And again, they receive a pretty hefty impact fee up front to account for the impacts of the growth on their facilities. And who pays that impact fee? The developer. Well, they pay it at the time of building permit.

So whoever pays the building permit.

Thank you.

Councilor Cusso? Scott, the The wildfire resiliency code, I just want to talk about this a little bit because it feels like this is the first time that we've had a situation where it's only a portion of the land, and so it might be setting a precedent. So I've got some extra questions for you here. The class two intensity, why when two-thirds of the lot, if I have these numbers wrong, correct me, but two-thirds of the lot's outside of the designation and only one-third is in. So there just seems to me to be an automatic that we're assuming the developer's got to do the whole lot according to class two when only a third of the lot is actually in the zone.

Yeah, good question. We talked a lot about it. We asked the state if they had any guidance, and they kind of said it's up to local jurisdictions to figure out how they want to get it. I would say it's probably more around half the line where it comes here. We didn't do a detailed analysis of how much is in and out. The other thing is kind of confusing or counterintuitive. The upper part, where all the vegetation is, is actually out of the map and the lower part, which is grazing or grassland, is in. So when we looked at all that together, we figured for this site, it made the most sense. The annexation agreement gives us a lot of, like I mentioned, discretion. So I don't think it's necessarily precedent setting for non-annexation projects. We'll still have to review it. We have drafted a policy, an internal policy, to guide us, and we'll finalize that for different types of projects. Annexation is a unique process that does give us a lot of discretion.

And probably we wouldn't know what a designation of a class two would do from a cost perspective for the developer, right? I mean, we know it's going to increase, but we wouldn't have any numbers that we've used.

Specifically the developers here, if you wanted to let him speak about to that, but when we first discussed it and we went over what the requirements are for structure hardening, it's like metal roofing, you know, non-flammable siding, those types of things. He was like, he was kind of like, yeah, we're going to do that anyway. And so the reaction was not, oh, that's going to cost me so much more money. Yeah, that's anecdotal.

But yeah, and I appreciate that. We want to be as safe as we can on this. But I am kind of interested as we start wading into territory we just haven't been in before to understand what those costs are. So, Wes, I don't know. Do you guys have an idea what the what what those cost additions might be?

Sorry, we're going to have to have you hit the microphone. Thank you.

Sure. I don't feel like the cost impacts are really that substantial for any other construction. You know, we're still, you know, it's common to use hardening materials. It has been for the past 20 years, you know, and so we don't want to build a product that's going to be a problem for fires and for insurance anyway. So, you know, no wood soffits, you know, We use cement, hardy board, you know, and the hardening materials as much as we can. So not a concern.

Great, thank you. You're welcome. Appreciate that.

Do you guys have any other questions for me while I'm here?

No, my last one's for Scott. Anybody else have a question they wanted to... Councilor Gonzalez had one, but... Yeah.

Just keep moving.

Scott, later on, there's a... Requirement that if the applicant does not fulfill the requirements of the annexation agreement or begin development of approved developmental plans within three years of the execution of the agreement, the city may initiate formal public hearing proceedings to rezone this property to the least dense zone. Can you tell me why that's a?

It is. I can speculate. I don't know why it reverts. It's kind of a reset after three years. Now we're working with the developer. They have a plan. The zoning fits their plan. So we're moving forward kind of in sync. If that goes away, I think the intent of that code provision is it kind of resets and it gives us an opportunity to say, okay, have conditions changed? What's the right density? What's the right, you know, layout for a project three years down the road?

Okay. So this is kind of a blanket application for most annexation agreements type thing. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Councilor, Councilor Gonzalez.

Yeah, my questions were for the developer. If you could just come and introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about your company.

Yeah, so my name is Wes Hill. I've been in Durango 20 years. I I've been building the entire time here. I've done commercial construction. I've I've. been a part of all the crater ranch development out there so I've developed about 75 acres out there responsible for a lot well all of that new development the cells the Maverick the McDonald's the Starbucks I'm building the Hilton Hotel out there right now and so I represent a group that um I was actually part of this development previously. It was the Elk Grove development. And as Wally said, you know, at that time, we couldn't make that development pencil. And so this is a new group that I've brought in to assist us with this development. Oh, great.

Thank you. And what is the name of your company?

Sandbox Developers.

Okay. And good. So you have experience doing all of these types of projects. So I'm glad to hear that.

Yeah, extremely diverse. Yes.

And how about, do you all do environmental studies on the parcels?

Absolutely, yeah. And with the previous development team, we did all of our environmental studies. We did find a couple, they're called wrecks, and we mitigated those as well. So there is no concern with that anymore.

Okay, that's good. And so that mitigation is done by yourselves or by the city?

That's been done by myself with the previous development team, correct? And that that's been recent. That was. I think within the past year that was completed.

OK, great and so you have plans to break. I guess there's you got a three year window to complete the project or at least break ground.

What's our schedule?

Yes, schedule.

so um our our plan right now is to um have the project approved and ready to go this fall so that we can start the initial infrastructure there is um substantial water sewer um you know road sidewalks right aways that have to be built out there and i've personally installed about 12 million dollars worth of city right away in three springs so i'm very familiar with it And so our plan is to break ground this fall. What we found is that we can work through the winter installing the utilities and then we would work with the city to hopefully start foundations sometime spring, early summer of this next year and have products ready to sell by quarter three, quarter four of twenty seven.

Alright, well, that sounds great. Hopefully everything moves according to plan. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's all the questions I have. OK, anybody else?

Thank you.

Any other discussion by Council? Go ahead and close the public hearing.

And we'll move on to agenda item 10.3 public hearing on the intersection of Three Springs Blvd.

and U.S. Highway 160 annexation and initial zoning 29026 and 29064 Highway 160.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Woodruff, City Council. I'm Daniel Murray, Planning Manager, Community Development Department. The item before you this evening is a proposed annexation, initial zoning of two parcels located at the intersection of Three Springs Boulevard and Highway 160. The strategic plan goal applicable in this case is the innovative housing and economic development. Looking at process thus far, the Community Development Commission made a recommendation on the annexation and initial zoning at their May 18th meeting. Next, this item was on your June 2nd agenda for the acceptance of the annexation petition introduction of the ordinance. Sorry, and tonight we are considering during a public hearing as well as the first consideration of the ordinance. If it's approved, the final reading and the ordinance will take place on July 21st. All of this would be followed by a minor site plan review, which has been submitted. This is an administrative level review. I can say that the proposal is for one of the two parcels, the easternmost parcel for an auto parts retailer. So similar to what you had in the item before, these annexations tend to be prompted by a proposal for development. And this is also very active. They've submitted and they're moving through the process as expediently as they can. So we're actually in a somewhat similar area as the previous item. We're at Three Springs where Three Springs Boulevard intersects with Highway 160. A lot of similarities between the two in terms of annexation and zoning. You'll see the two parcels. What's different here is these are a lot smaller. They're one acre each, so this is a two acre annexation. This is proposed for commercial use. And you see city limits right now in pink and the proposed parcels there on the South side of 160. Contiguity is one of the requirements as identified, and that's a one sixth contiguity for the area adjacent to city limits. What's unique about this proposal is that pursuant to statute, you can determine contiguity And it does not require the existence of contiguity when you have a public right-of-way in between the parcels. So to say it differently, you can subtract the public right-of-way, Highway 160, and then analyze contiguity, which if you take out the highway, and it's more than just the highway road itself, it's this area here, which is just extra right-of-way owned by CDOT. All of this is owned by CDOT.

we then analyze and have determined that the parcels are contiguous.

Also important to note, this is the first annexation of this area south of Highway 160. And by doing so, this expands annexation opportunities to other properties south of 160 who are on city water and are anticipated to be annexed. Looking at land use, the parcels there still shown in blue, They're outlined in red. This is the commercial general designation of our future land use map. That's within our comprehensive plan. So the comprehensive plan of commercial general aligns with their request for commercial general zoning. In commercial general, you have uses such as neighborhood scale, retail, restaurant, service uses, and general and medical offices of which the proposed auto parts retailer would be a fitting use for this location in general commercial. Looking at the criteria, I spoke briefly to contiguity. The next criteria is that we have a petition from a majority of owners. In this case, both parcels are under single ownership, and we do have a petition from that owner. Next is this term known as a community of interest. So this parcel is within our comprehensive plan future land use map, as you saw previously, and it designates this area. This is what area we have designated for annexation. This is where the city sees itself growing overtime. The proposal for general commercial does conform with future land use, and thus this is a community of interest, or in this case these are parcels of interest. The next criterion being that We need to be within three miles of city limits, and we're well within that. We're adjacent to city limits. Lastly, can the parcels be served? And in this case, they have the potential to be served by water. Water is actually already in this portion of the county. Currently, water does extend into the areas south of Highway 160. The development you may be thinking of, which is Elevation Park, is on city water. So these parcels would be developed on city water. There are two related considerations that actually came up previously. First being that this is also within the wildfire resiliency code classification, and these parcels would require similar defensible space and home hardening or structure hardening. And then the other unique consideration here is when parcels annex into the city, they actually need to request from Durango Fire that they be excluded from the district and come into our service area. Topic you're learning a lot about these days. So those are considerations with annexation. Looking at the review criteria for zoning, the two notable criteria here is that the parcel conforms, the proposed zoning conforms with our comprehensive plan, which it does, and that there are adequate facilities to serve the development, which it does with respect to water. Also, we mentioned this area is served by South Ring of Sanitation, so it's not city sewer. And then roads, often the other big consideration, the proximity to Highway 160 certainly enables it for development. Detailed discussions of conformance with the Land Use and Development Code are outlined in the staff report with respect to annexation and zoning. and the serviceability of the parcels. Wrapping up, we did not receive any public comments thus far on the annexation. Staff and Community Development Commission do support the annexation. This did receive a favorable recommendation from the Community Development Commission at their May 18th meeting, and we will come back as the process prescribes with an ordinance on the latter half of the agenda. Happy to answer any questions.

Do you have one person signed up for public comment under this item? Would that come now?

We need to open the public hearing first.

I'll make a motion to open the public hearing.

Second.

We get a roll call, please. The motion passes.

All in favor, Dave Woodruff. Kip Koso, Gilda Yazzie, Jessica lawyer, Shirley Gonzalez.

Alright, the one person signed up to speak is Ernest Butch Keller.

Call Butch.

I came here on vacation in. 1973 and never left. I got into the real estate business in 74. I've been in numerous business here ever since. I own the property adjacent to the one that's in for annexation right now. First of all, it's a nightmare trying to get anything approved here. We will be next in line to go for annexation. And there are a lot of hoops to jump through. And being this is approved and all the hoops they've gone through, we've already done all those criteria to give subdivisions, all of the organizations, fire and everybody else. So now years ago they had what was called administrative approval where all of this has been done. The city wants us, we want in, my neighbor behind me that's developing Elevation Park wants in. I think they should try to rubber stamp our situation instead of dragging it on We can't even legally apply until theirs is finalized, I don't believe.

I don't know that for sure, but I can tell you the hoops you're talking about are mostly set by the state. So there's not much we can do about it.

Well, they're already met, but it's just a redundancy, I think. And years ago, 50 years ago, there was a lot of things were different. But anyway, I do approve it. recommend it and we need all we can do to try to reduce these prices. And I know looking at me, I'm part of the fault too, but it's really the people that come in here and are willing to pay these high prices. It's not the poor people that have been living here their whole lives. And that goes for everything else, all the high cost of gas and everything else. It's higher here because people just don't rebel against it and pay it and go on their way.

Anyway, thank you for your time and probably see you again sooner the better.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Brings us to 11 resolutions, a resolution affirming the commitment to the Vision Zero goals and directing future implementation thereof.

Thank you, City Council.

Great to be with you all this evening. We're discussing the Vision Zero Resolution and I'll go more into depth into what is involved in this resolution and what the next steps are. I'm Lily Oswald, I'm the Multimodal Manager with the City's Transportation Department. This resolution is in alignment with the strategic plan goal of reliable infrastructure and community connectivity, but also worth mentioning that this, the trend we're heading towards for Vision Zero adoption is also directly in alignment with the 2023 adopted multimodal transportation plan, namely the objective for city council to adopt a Vision Zero resolution. It's also in alignment with various plans or goals and policies of the 2017 comprehensive plan and is also in alignment with the goal of safety and quality of life of the city's strategic plan. So tonight, again, I will, at a pretty high level, discuss what Vision Zero framework is. And some of you have received this presentation-ish, similar presentations on Vision Zero, or been involved with Vision Zero adoptions in other agencies. The commitment to these goals and what this looks like as it's framed in this resolution before you, and the next steps that we are recommending. So what is Vision Zero? At a very high level, it's a different approach to traffic safety. It's a fundamentally different approach to how cities, municipalities, and jurisdictions handle traffic safety, where zero is the goal. And zero refers to zero fatalities and zero serious injuries as they are related to fatalities on our city streets related to automobile crashes. And this is accomplished through a safe system approach The previous approach listed here or the city's current approach, and it's worth mentioning that this is not that the city is necessarily doing anything wrong. This is how things have been in policy, in practice, and in law for a very long time. And the city has adopted these standards and goals and reinforced those goals as they've become further into state statutes. But this previous approach is showing that fatalities are unavoidable and that education is emphasized to achieve no mistakes. The safe system approach, which is the Vision Zero aligned approach, is instead looking at fatalities as a preventable thing that communities don't have to deal with and bear the cost of, and that humans are not perfect in designing for these mistakes that humans will make on our roadways. This is done through multiple layers to prevent serious injuries and fatalities. There's a Swiss cheese graphic on this slide just showing some of the many layers involved with interacting with the city streets, to withstand whatever type of user you may be, but indicating on speeds, the street network itself and the infrastructure design, people and their awareness, their education and enforcement, and then the vehicles themselves, all trying to align to avoid these mistakes and designing for them. So why Vision Zero? Again, this is something that the city has had adopted in different plans and policies. Staff presented to city council in June on the speed management plan update process, and Vision Zero has a little bit of overlap in that, so it was mentioned then. Council then directed staff to proceed with these next steps in adopting this Vision Zero policy. And Vision Zero really is just looking at one fatality on a system of streets or serious injury as too many, and looking as past approaches have not been working. So this graphic here is a little bit difficult to see, but it outlines between the years 2000 and 2024, different motor vehicle deaths by types of incidents. And this is provided by the National Safety Council. Again, if you can squint and see it, this lime green line shows pedestrians and represents total pedestrian deaths. And as you can see over time, that line is trending upward.

And then let's see if I can do it better on this one.

This lemon line, which indicates bicyclist deaths, related to motor vehicle crashes is also trending upward over time. So Vision Zero approach and the Safe System approach is to look at decreasing these deaths and eliminating them in general. This sets a community-wide set of goals, including eliminating crashes resulting in serious injury or fatality at a really high level, and then reducing other types of crashes, improving travel comfort and safety, enhancing awareness and community engagement with Vision Zero, and improving data and transparency and how municipalities measure and use data to learn from changes that are being installed on our systems. The Vision Zero network has been successfully implemented across Europe and is now gaining momentum in the US. There are 82 communities in the US as illustrated on this map, but that have demonstrated a strong commitment to Vision Zero through an explicit focus on speed management techniques, equity, and safe system approach that I mentioned to Vision Zero planning. Two communities have adopted Vision Zero within Colorado, that includes Boulder and Denver. But worth mentioning, because those are both bigger cities, that there are populations of around 29,000 who have adopted Vision Zero in the United States. A couple of those examples are Kirkwood, Missouri, and Monterey, California, all the way to New York City, 8.5 million people. large span of community sizes who are looking to adopt these changes and a lot of different types of planning involved depending on those sizes of jurisdictions. So in your packet, and what I'm going to try to make a little bit less clear as mud tonight, this resolution set before you is set to affirm the Council and the City's commitment to Vision Zero goals. This resolution in your packet and for your consideration sets a vision and it builds political consensus among you and sets that teeth for staff. This resolution itself is non-binding, but it's instead a formal declaration of intent and goal setting. Again, those five overarching goals of the Vision Zero framework being eliminating crashes resulting in serious injury and fatality, reducing other types of crashes, improving travel comfort and safety, enhancing awareness and community engagement with Vision Zero, and again, improving data and transparency, And this resolution itself does not mandate staffing budget or timelines, but it does set those next steps for more legal instruments to do so. The resolution in front of you, and this is spelled out in greater detail in your agenda document, as well as in the resolution itself with a little bit more explicit language. But upon approval of this resolution and at the direction of the city manager, the transportation department staff will implement the steps outlined in the resolution to one, Form a cross-functional Vision Zero team to develop a policy and action plan. This would be interdepartmental but within the city. This would then also create a Vision Zero advisory group, and this is more of the community focus because in order to adopt a comprehensive and holistic approach to the safe systems adoption, it involves a lot of community buy-in and garnering those recommendations. Prioritizing safety and transportation planning and policy decisions. We've talked a lot about land use codes tonight and as well as Wildfire resiliency and the effect of state enforcement and emergency services. This would align with all of those efforts and third parties. Investing in data-driven safety improvements at high-risk locations and setting those priorities. A lot of this is already underway, but it's integrating all of these things that the city is doing. Implementing a safe system approach, which I mentioned, to reduce fatal and serious crashes to align with Vision Zero. and then partnering with regional agencies and the community to coordinate efforts and secure funding. So this resolution directs staff to embark on these next steps. And I encourage you to think of what is before you tonight as a three-tier approach. So this Vision Zero goals resolution, again, is making a commitment to the intent and goals of Vision Zero framework. It's non-binding, but it provides public direction for staff to work towards a Vision Zero plan and a formal policy and work directly with the community. The zero vision policy adoption itself and the plan adoption itself is nuanced in nature. It involves a tremendous amount of infrastructure prioritization, potentially some code recommended changes, and then looking at our roadway systems. And that takes some time and more than a week's time to do so if we want to do it well. So this next step after if you all approve this resolution, would be for city staff to then draft a Vision Zero policy with using the city's interdepartmental cross-functional team that we would be creating as well as that Vision Zero advisory focus group with the community. And that Vision Zero policy would be legally binding. It would then mandate funding and infrastructure standards and setting the teeth in this Vision Zero policy process. and enforcing structural and operational changes and priorities within all departments that are affected. And that last piece, which many communities do as well, which is a Vision Zero plan. And that plan itself, we recommend to be dedicated as a section of the multimodal transportation plan. Our current city's adopted multimodal transportation plan was last updated in 2023, and we are looking forward to starting a new updated plan in 2027 And many municipalities of this size, instead of creating a whole separate plan, can integrate this plan with an overlapping document. And for the city's case, that would be the multimodal transportation plan. So this would be integrated and adopted through the multimodal transportation plan as a dedicated section during that update process. There's a recommended motion here. I'm anticipating there are some questions, and hopefully we can kind of clarify what these different sections are to the resolution. but that is what is before you tonight, and that is staff's recommendation.

Thank you. Councillor Gonzalez.

I move to approve the resolution affirming Durango's commitment to Vision Zero goals and directing future implementation thereof. I'll second.

All right. Sorry. Councillor Gonzalez.

Lily, I could cry. This is so good.

Oh, good. Okay.

I mean, it's so good. I mean, it's like all I could have ever dreamed of. I mean, when I started working on Vision Zero so many years ago in 2013, it was because we had had so many fatalities. And I never really could get buy-in from the staff, especially in my previous role. And so to see that you work so hard on this and that you like really touched on so many of the things that were so important to get, you know, to include the community piece of it, to do the multi-phased approach where it's multi-departmental. And so much of the things that you included were all things like I like in my I'm just so proud of you. Really, I'm so proud. This is the best work I've ever seen from a transportation department for Vision Zero. And I got to be on the very front line of this initiative in 2013 in New York when they first started it and then started implementing it in cities all over the country. But this one really gets all the things that I feel like we really need, which is really so much of it is staff buy-in. You have to get the staff to believe that we can eliminate fatalities and that they're preventable, that fatalities are preventable. And we do so much of it already. It's one of the reasons I ended up in Durango to begin with, because as y'all have heard me mention, I have vision impairments. I don't drive that much. But when I do, I need to drive really slow. And we need to give people plenty of space and alternatives, especially for people that don't drive. So this is amazing. I hope that my colleagues feel the same way and that we can move towards some of these actions. But just to ask a few of the presentations, you mentioned community oversight. And has that been discussed? How might that happen? Because that really community buy-in piece is so important. Has that been determined?

That has not been determined. And I think, you know, a lot of the groundwork has been said, it's been adopted in plans and policies, and I appreciate the praise. It's also, you know, it's complex. So I think getting from this recommended or this, sorry, resolution with a confirmation of goals to the policy itself will take a lot of time and coordination. So I didn't put a timeline graphic up there, but just, you know, shapes. But for forming the advisory group itself, we'd be excited to work with whoever the city's new community engagement specialist will be to help kind of form that plan and what that looks like. The city has done focus groups in the past with a targeted approach to either solve a problem or create a recommendation for how the city should approach solving a problem or getting some direct feedback on a project. So it could be something related to that where that involves An application process and vetting through those applicants anonymously and figuring out who might be a good fit and representing different groups. And that would probably align with what we want, which is a multifaceted group of folks at the table with different mobilities and experience levels with these safe systems. But that has not been decided.

Yes, well, I know. And I think that's really key is because you really do need the community buy-in as well. And having that advisory group helps to like for compliance or for people to agree with or to support the projects that then we, that the staff presents. And then also the cross-functional teams were so important, you know, that the police are involved, that the law enforcement piece is there, that the engineering piece is there. that you have Public Works also there. It really does work best when it's a cross-functional team. Really everything works best. But I think especially on an initiative that is, you know, we're trying to change a culture of people always driving or priorities going to automobiles. We're making it so that everybody has an opportunity to use roads and that the safety is a priority. So I just, I think this is great. I had not seen it. I knew we were going to do the presentation, but I actually had not looked through all of the pieces of it. I was expecting very watered down sort of, you know, just approval. So I'm looking forward to working on this with you all. And just, this is great. I know there'll be steps and I'm sure we'll get updates along the way, but this is exactly what I was looking for. It's beautiful. Congratulations to you all and all the team that got the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Councilor Yazzie.

Thank you. Thank you, Lily, for putting this all together. I know we had Vision Zero mention a few different times during study sessions. Okay, so you're talking about the roads and vehicles. There's no mention about bicycles. because we have had a death on the art trails. That's more of a danger than worrying about slowing down traffic. We don't have all control of all the roads in Durango. The city and the county, in conjunction with us, have control over that. Have you even thought about how they would impact this? And also, when you say in one of these statements that the financial impact, it's not there, but then in item two on another section it says funding you know when all these words are glowing and they're just like wow this is so wonderful let's just do it um you know it doesn't make sense to me because there are no financial numbers in here and it doesn't say what we're going to do other than the fact that put a little you know blue ribbon on all these things and pat ourselves on the back i don't see any way that we can get any direct outcomes with this sure

So I'll try to answer those in order. We can't control everything. And I think this approach recognizes that. And it's similar in some ways to dark sky compliance in that a municipality can adopt a dark sky compliance certification process and retrofit all of the lights in the city to be on curfew and downlit and still directly outside of those city boundaries perhaps there's properties in the county that are still upcast and things like that, but that there's a bit of a trickle effect. And I think that's shown with other countries and the evolving municipalities in the United States who are adopting Vision Zero. It's an emerging best practice. So more and more cities, counties are going to continue to adopt this. And when we work interdepartmentally, that also includes working closely with the La Plata County Search and Rescue, 911 operations, and during a fire protection jurisdiction. So it kind of evolves out where we'll need their buy-in for their approach to things. In terms of the Animas River Trail death that occurred, that's somewhat separate from this because it's not specifically to a roadway involving motor vehicles, which is really the target of Vision Zero because more incidents are seen without fatality and death on shared use paths. That's not to say that, because the Vision Zero approach again is very systematic. It's not just decreasing speeds and calling it a day or really banking up on enforcement and calling it a day. It's trying to layer all of these different tactics together to try to make serious deaths and fatalities eliminated on roadways. And in doing so, that also encourages better bicyclist behavior, and more bicyclist behavior because people are seeing it as a little bit safer to be on the roadways than is currently there, especially for people of different mobilities. So that will likely trickle into other systems, including our shared use paths, which are also growing throughout the city. But it's not exactly the target of this Vision Zero itself, but it will continue to be an item of focus with other multimodal projects, programs, and how our complete streets adopted ordinance in our land use code currently will continue to be deployed throughout development processes. And then in terms of grants and funding, good question. It's slightly confusing. Let's see. Oh, sorry, I went backwards. The resolution, so number one that's before you tonight, we do not see a fiscal impact for that. It will not have a direct cost to the city. However, it will bolster the city's grant applications in certain scenarios, specifically Safe Streets and Roads for All has a box that you check that doesn't say that you are ineligible for certain grants, but it will make the city more competitive with grant applications involving some roadway infrastructure things. So if we have this resolution, which is affirmed, that can help with that. But this next step, so the zero vision policy adoption, where this is legally binding, it mandates funding and infrastructure standards and priorities, that has significant fiscal impacts. So that will change our capital improvement priorities potentially. That will potentially change just processes for roadway development and use. And that has yet to be fully investigated, but we anticipate that we'll have a significant funding piece that, again, for public safety would have a result there. So this current resolution is nonbinding and just direct staff to investigate these different things. Yeah.

Any other questions or comments?

Thanks so much. Appreciate it. And also, Council, I messed up. Can I get an acclamation vote to close the public hearing from 10.3, please? Hi. Yeah. Sorry, thank you.

Formality.

Sorry, Faye. All right, moving on to item number 12, consideration of ordinances. Actually, do we need to vote on the resolution? Golly, what?

She needed acclimation. Just have the minutes reflect that at 10.3, there was an acclimation vote to close the public hearing.

We still need to vote on 11.1. Golly.

It's way past my bedtime. Oh yeah, too busy mucking it up. The motion passes.

Four in favor, Kip Koso, Jessica Lawyer, Dave Woodruff, Shirley Gonzalez. One opposed, Gilda Yazzie.

That brings us to 12.1, an ordinance regarding the annexation of the Vero Ridge addition to the City of Durango and declaring an effective date.

I'll make a motion.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, sorry about that. Move to approve the Vero Ridge addition and assign initial zoning of residential medium, having found that the proposed annexation and initial zoning conform to the review criteria in the land use and development code.

I'll second.

Any discussion? Can I get a roll call, please? I think I messed up on my vote.

The motion passes. 3. In favor, Jessica Lawyer, Gilda Yazzie, Shirley Gonzalez. 2. Opposed, Kip Kosso, Dave Woodruff.

So I just would throw that vote out because they're complaining the system didn't work appropriately. So just if you can reset it and have the official vote.

Yeah, OK. Absolute user error.

I will reset now.

Alright. Boom. Cripes. Yeah. The motion passes.

All. In favor, Jessica Lawyer, Kip Kosso, Dave Woodruff, Shirley Gonzalez, Gilda Yazzie.

Brings us to 12.2 an ordinance regarding the annexation and initial zoning of the intersection of the Three Springs Blvd and US Highway 160 annexation 29026 and 29064 Highway 160.

I move to approve the Three Springs Boulevard and Highway 160 intersection annexation and assign initial zoning to Commercial General, having found that the proposed annexation and initial zoning conform to the review criteria in the Land Use and Development Code.

Second.

Any discussion? Can I get a roll call, please?

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

Sorry, it brings it to item 12.3, an ordinance abending in pertinent part, the Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 4, Animals, Article 5, Impoundment, Section 4-97, Disposition of Impounded Animals.

Mayor and Council, this is a cleanup of a mistake we made when we did this a couple of meetings back. We changed the redemption period for an impounded animal to four days. However, we did not clarify that that four days starts upon judicial determination of impoundment. So that four days starts running when the judge says that the impoundment period begins.

I'll make a motion to approve an ordinance amending in pertinent part the Durango Court of Ordinances, Chapter 4, Animals, Article 5, Impoundment. Section 4-97, Disposition of Impounded Animals.

Second.

Any discussion? Okay, roll call, please.

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

That brings us to public comments on City Matters, not under consideration tonight, but no one has signed up under this section, which brings us to other new business.

So we already have the powerhouse settled, so we don't need to bring that up in our new business, but we have.

I wouldn't say it's settled, but Aaron's working with you to find a date to make it.

Perfect.

And e-bikes. And e-bikes, a City Manager report.

Great. We have their new business. All right. Moving on to adjournment. Thanks, everyone.