City Council - workshop

Check, check, one, two.

Up one.

Yep. Then properties. Change it from default to remote.

And say okay.

Check, check, one, two.

Good morning.

Certainly it is today.

It's been a walk here.

So sweet. Yeah. That follows. All right, since everybody's already deathly quiet in here, we might as well get this started.

Man, rain comes, everybody's just like, shh, go ahead, it's raining. All right, anyways, let's go ahead and get this started. We are here for the joint study session with Durango City Council and the Plata County Commissioners. Let's do a quick little introduction and go around. I'll go ahead and start. Dave Woodruff, Mayor, City of Durango.

Kip Koso, Council Member. Jose Madrigal, City Manager.

Marsha Porter-Norton, La Plata County Commissioner.

Matt Salka, La Plata County Commissioner.

Shawna La Garza, County Manager.

Jeff Hughes, Deputy County Manager.

Mark Morgan, City Attorney.

Excellent, thank you. We'll go on to discussion item B, Collaborative Wins. Sub-item I see are Kinderwork 2015-2021 completion and ribbon cutting. We, I got a chance, gosh, I think it was Mrs. Porter Norton, Ms., I'm sorry, Councilor Gonzalez, and then Kip Kosa was there. We get to really hang out and really celebrate that whole corridor being expanded. Elizabeth Philbrick was there also. And yeah, we had a great time being able to get that open. And there wasn't as much fanfare as I think we would have anticipated being such a major corridor and having all the construction impacts for the one plus years that was going on. But yeah, I thought it was a really good project that we all got to meet on. And then Marsha or Matt, you want to chime in on it?

Yes, Mayor Woodruff, thank you very much. I apologize that I wasn't able to be there. I was on a much-needed break, and I celebrated with a beach beer, so congratulations on this win.

Yeah, thank you, and thanks to the city. I know you were the operational side of it, of building it, and I was able to read something. A former commissioner whose seat I took many years ago, it feels like only five and a half, but Gwen Lackalt, Commissioner Lackalt, had that idea. She had that idea because she saw people who were differently abled, disabled in wheelchairs using 250, 251, and 32nd. And with like Lumion going in at that time and all the housing we're seeing, all the growth in over by bread, those townhomes and stuff, you know, it was like, we really got to do something. And so I think oftentimes when governments are successful, it makes less news than when we're having different policy disagreements or whatever. And so I'm just glad It got done, the city did it. And anytime a resident called in to me with a concern, Jose was right on it and got the appropriate staff to answer those questions. So thank you.

Fantastic. Councillor Crossell, you want to add anything?

Just a comment that the Metz Lane intersection has had some concerns for the neighbors. We're following up with that. Had some multiple discussions with folks. So that's still kind of an ongoing concern. Hopefully we're going to have a couple of modifications there, but wanted to acknowledge that that intersection was not optimal. but it's according to the rules. And so we're working on how we might adapt some of the changes in that intersection to make it a little bit better for the residents around that area. But otherwise, a great partnership and really appreciate the work that was done on an important corridor.

Great.

Thanks so much. And then item B2, Emergency Operations Center Agreement is signed. So another quick win there. Mr. Madrigal, do you want to Yeah, I'm assuming this is for the building and then the 911.

Yeah, it was absolutely good to get that over the goal line and get that finished up. And I think it has really got the concerns that were addressed and was a pleasure working with the county on that part to wrap that up.

All I can say that's a huge win and I'm glad it's passed us. We all are in agreeance and yeah, let's talk about other topics now. So thank you.

Moving on. All right, fantastic. And then agenda item B3 wildfire and watershed protection fund program update with the Office of Emergency Management.

Do you want to kick that off? Yeah, come on up. Yeah, wherever you want to sit. Yeah, welcome. for La Plata County.

It's good to be with you all. I put together a lot of slides in preparation for today's presentation. The first half of the presentation really focuses on what fire mitigation is and why it's needed. And I think in this moment, I'm just going to go ahead and skip that section and go to the core of this, which is what is the WWPF and what have we done?

Where are we headed?

Been having some problems with OneDrive and it looks like this. This may have kept an old version, but we'll get over it. All right. The WWPF is a joint commitment between La Plata County, the City of Durango and Durango Fire Protection District. This was formalized in 2021 through an intergovernmental agreement. And expanded in 2024. At that time, WWPF was taken out of pilot phase and the deadlines were extended until any party withdraws, and so there's no term on the current intergovernmental agreement. And what it does is it is it sets forward some commitments on each party. There's a cash and staffing commitment from La Plata County, and there's a cash commitment from City of Durango and Durango Fire Protection District has made an in kind commitment. So what does that look like? Well, there's 1.2 FTE staff positions funded through this IGA. That is me as the WWPF coordinator and .2 of a grant specialist within La Plata County. And La Plata County and City of Durango share that 50-50. Durango Fire's in-kind commitment is to provide the boots on the ground implementation expertise and project coordination as well as community outreach. The governing body for the WWPF is an advisory committee. There's two members each appointed by the entities and one at large member appointed by committee. But of course we couldn't do this without a large partnership with other entities. These are just a handful, but we partner with federal, non-governmental, state, local government, local business, HOAs, really the full suite of stakeholders make this work possible. The goals of the WWP effort to provide education and outreach around fire mitigation and assist private landowners to complete mitigation. The focus of WWPF is really on private lands. Coordinating with partners to achieve a landscape scale impact. We have a number of cross boundary efforts that I'm happy to report on today, WWPF has provided work on private lands and partners have provided work on federal lands, for example. The goal is to protect community assets. This includes source water protection for the city of Durango and increase the resiliency of forests and watersheds that provide those services. We also develop and implement plans that help those goals and help with emergency management and create economic opportunities within the community. as well as identify secure and manage funds to support the above and that last bullet is you know it's relatively small but it's important in the grand scheme of things that this work doesn't happen without funding and how do we best leverage that taken as a whole the WWPF provides significant and stable leverage towards grant funding to support these goals here's a timeline that I put together for some of the projects and tasks within the WWPF. I don't want to spend too much time here because these projects are, they're quite broad. For example, the Florida Watershed Project is a group of projects that we could go into much greater detail on. But generally speaking, we got started back in 2022 and got implementation on the ground right off the bat. There has been a really strong effort in the Florida watershed. Recently Durango West and Rafter J have kicked off, but those projects were planned all the way back in 2022. 2024 the IGA was amended and. The current efforts we have ongoing are the Durango West and Rafter J as well, and that's funded through the water infrastructure improvements for the nation, which is being managed from Durango Fire Protection District, as well as a cross boundary project at Durango Hills and watershed ready action plan. That's just in a proposal state right now for the Animas watershed. So some of what we do, outreach and education, obviously a top goal among the WWPF. Risk assessments, these are in-person site assessments to assess wildfire risk, typically for homeowners. I think probably 99% of these risk assessments are for homeowners. In the five years of its history, the WWTF has tracked 578 risk assessments completed. We also host community meetings and events as well as participate. including the Fire Ready Expo, which is annual. And we meet with HOA groups to garner buy-in and help them navigate what a grant reimbursement would be. We also meet with contractors to gauge what the limitations there are and how we could help business. And we have the Wildfire Resource Center, which is online and has information including current fire restrictions, emergency alerts, and a mitigation map. Treatments to date, this slide got a little busy, but I hope you can understand this is the core of what we do. So far, we've awarded $2.1 million in grant funding, most of which has gone to fire mitigation. That has resulted in 938 acres treated. including 43 miles of roadside clearing. And when I say included, actually some of those acres are not captured. Some of those miles of roadside clearing are not captured in the 938 acres treated. So apologies for that. How that money is distributed is typically through cost share. That's a match up to 1550% of the landowners cost to mitigate. That can be up to 80% for disproportionately impacted. And then we do have special projects funding allowed, funding allowing. There are special projects that can carry 100% share of the mitigation costs. And those are reserved for projects that have a particular importance in the landscape to fire mitigation and are cost prohibitive to implement with any other program. Two major grants have funded the majority of this work. That's the Colorado Strategic Wildfire Action Programs, Landscape Resilience Investment for 2022, and Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation. La Plata County was the fiscal agent for CO-SWAP, and Durango Fire Protection District was the fiscal agent for WIN. And then forest planning, approximately 1,400 acres of treatments have been scoped. That's an advanced program I wouldn't necessarily call them shovel-ready because they're not scheduled, but we do know what the treatments are, where those treatments would occur, and can start to plug funding in to those treatments. That includes planning for Durango Open Space Parks. There are five forest management plans that were funded by the Forest Restoration, Wildfire Risk Mitigation, or FURWRM, and that amounts to about 1,100 acres of those scoped treatments. This is a slide that shows the grant reimbursement process. The call outs next to each and see if I can use the clicker or the pointer here. This is going to be hard for me. I'm not going to try. The call outs here are bottlenecks that I've tried to identify. It's not comprehensive, but it is an attempt to show where this process has some bottlenecks that were actively trying to alleviate. The little green indicators next to each step are an estimate of how long that step takes. Obviously that's variable. And this is also for a defensible space type project where we're clearing vegetation out around a structure to protect it in the event of a fire. There are other projects that might not fit into this reimbursement process quite as neatly. So it starts with an intake. We get a request from a landowner. That's followed by an assessment where their risk is assessed and a report with recommendations is generated. That's the piece that's specific to defensible space. After that, the projects are scoped. That is a document that's produced showing what will be done with that grant reimbursement and standards in mind. We do apply practice standards. across all these projects to ensure that there's really consistency in those fuels treatments. Access and feasibility are a bottleneck at that phase, but really we start to hit bottlenecks when these projects start to go out to bid. The bid is solicited by the landowner. They take the scope of work provided by a wildfire mitigation expert and look for a qualified vendor they'd like to work with. That can sometimes have limited response, resulting in a lack of competitive pricing. And there's often slash disposal and biomass utilization bottleneck here. Those tasks are expensive, and sometimes it's just very difficult to find out where the biomass can go to be used or the slash can be disposed of. For example, pile burns aren't always, they're not always preferable in a lot of these spaces. Then we go to an award. This is a document that sets terms on the grant reimbursement, acceptance of terms and conditions, and an unfavorable reimbursement are bottlenecks at this phase. Once we get past the award, though, typically landowners are not moving out of the process. They'll move forward even though the next two steps represent the most time in this process. Implementation. is shown currently as a lengthy process. That's typically because contractor capacity is stretched and you're lucky if you can get a project started within a month of you hiring a contractor. We're right now in the middle of the season, more like two months out. There's also been supply chain disruptions through COVID and other bottlenecks with this particular stage. But by far and away, the largest bottleneck is the reimbursement phase. And so we go from having the landowner incur the costs to show that proof of payment before we start a chain of reimbursements. Most of these grants have had a subcontract. Well, the CoSwap grant used wildfire adapted partnership as a subcontractor to help with some of this landowner outreach. they would invoice us after the landowner has incurred costs for what they expect to make an award. We then take that reimbursement, pass it on to the state. If the work is approved, they'll reimburse the county. County reimburses Wildfire Adapted. Wildfire Adapted reimburses the landowner. As you might imagine, that could be a lengthy process. Just the state's turnaround time from us at the county has been over 30 days in most cases and has exceeded 60 in some. All told, I mean, we could be looking at 90 days before a landowner receives reimbursement. And when you're talking about a project that could cost $5,000 to implement, floating $2,500 on a credit card is just not something many people are going to do. And that leads to, I think, a fair number of people not going for grant reimbursement for this mitigation, which does give us the ability to apply those standards gives us the consistent results on the ground. In 2026, we've had a really huge year so far, treated 65 project units for a total of 300.9 acres. I broke out those different project types on the left. I am happy to go through what those different projects sort of entail. This is not something we have formal programs for, but something that I broke out for the purposes of this presentation as well as the report to the WWPF Advisory Committee, because I think it's helpful. There's a lot of variation in some of these projects. We also completed 50 risk assessments and completed those forest management plans for Durango Open Space Parks, or to be precise, a contractor completed the forest management plans. We delivered them to City of Durango. These acres represent 30% of all acres treated so far by WPF, and this was only possible due to DFPD's willingness to float project costs and contract these special projects directly instead of have the landowners contract and then be reimbursed 100%. This, however, is not a sustainable model. Just to give you some idea of where that money has been spent by community, I've got a list of communities on the Y axis and on the X axis acres. These are communities just sort of defined by area, not actual subdivision or HOA. For example, there's one parcel in here that's not in the Rafter J HOA, but is off of County Road 142. And so I called it Rafter J for simplicity. And so we didn't have a big bucket of unincorporated. You'll notice City of Durango has about 23 acres. A lot of those projects were at the Rock Ridge subdivision, including defensible space work around the water tank up there. WWPF provided the, it was a special project on a private parcel that was adjacent to that water tank and implemented by Durango Fire. So that there's there's additional protection to that water tank outside of what would have been possible just on the city's parcel. I do want to talk about some success stories, so this is a map showing a shaded fuel break. Well, parcels that have been treated to create a shaded fuel break around Durango West. You can see the key on the the lower right. Basically, the the takeaway from this Durango West has been almost entirely surrounded by fuels treatments. These are fuels treatments that thin the overstory canopy and all but completely remove ladder fuels. And so a fire moving towards Durango West from basically right now, the north, the west, or the east would see its fire behavior moderated significantly due to those fire treatments. we say shaded fuel break this is not a clear cut this is a wide swath of thinning designed to have that fuel drop down from the crown back to the back to a surface fire does anyone have any questions before i move on to next chapter i do

Couple questions for you. The fuels mitigation. So I think part of what you were talking about was the fact that there's just nowhere to dispose of the slash.

In a lot of cases, they're expensive tasks. Running a chipper is particularly expensive and not just on labor, but also on equipment. And so that typically drives bids up to a point where it might not be something that the grant can reimburse enough and the landowner can carry the remainder of the cost. So that's what I mean by a bottleneck there. But On biomass utilization, definitely. In Southwest Colorado's forests, we have a lot of timber. Not very much of it is marketable. And there are fewer and fewer wood products industries, seems like every year, who will use them. There is some good news there. There's a proposal for a new mill that I think can do a half million board feet a year in Bayfield that National Forest Foundation has helped secure a grant for. There's also a lot of local organizations here who are helping to fit that need, but the amount that we're talking about, even out of one of these projects, is considerable. And if you take it across the entire landscape, it's quite a challenge.

OK, and then what about composting? The groups need these kind of fuel elements for that as well. Have those conversations netted anything?

You know, I've been in this position for about three months, Councilman. Very sure. So I haven't had those conversations myself, but I know that Farm to Table in particular and their new organics composting facility is going to be very helpful towards this effort.

Great. Well, I'll look for that more later. Then in regards to the reimbursement hurdles, you talked about the multiple entities taking usual amounts of time to try and do the reimbursement. that the fire district has been inserting itself as kind of a float, reimbursing the landowner at this point and just waiting for that reimbursement to come back to them. Is that correct?

And in a lot of cases, contracting directly and so opening a purchase order for a contractor, the landowner has has effectively no money on the table. They sign a right of access and that has terms on you know mitigation will be completed on your property but they they are not required to pay anything for those those projects that are contracted directly and I should be clear that those are for parcels of interest that have a really important place in the landscape and would affect a number of values that is not something that we'd be able to do for a number of reasons across the entire landscape There's also funding requirements. Most of our grants have a match requirement, and so this is only possible after those match requirements are met.

So then could a government entity, whether it's the city of Durango and it's 23 acres of the county, in some way be taking the place of the fire department? I'm talking from complete ignorance on if this is possible or not, but could they then be the entity that's just waiting for the reimbursement to come back? They could. They could. So that's a potential help on a reimbursement problem.

That's something we're exploring within the county, but it's early stages yet.

Great, great. And then capacity hurdles seem pretty large. With the chain of hurdles that you were talking about here, is the capacity to hire contractors to do this something that slows everything else down as well? If we had more money and it seems like we've got unending numbers of acres, If we had more money, are there people to do that work for us in this region?

I believe so. I believe that, I mean, in a process like, oops, I'm sorry, I'm using the wrong button. In a process like this, I mean, when we talk about bottlenecks, the throughput of this process is really the size of the narrowest bottleneck. And so if we can widen one bottleneck, we increase the amount that we can put through the entire process. And so I do think, and I think our 2026 accomplishments are proof of that, that when we can float project costs and really put this money to work hard and at scale, another contractor and cost constraint is mobilization. And so if you've got someone working on a parcel and there's a parcel adjacent, it's the most cost effective thing to to make it a larger project. Keep them out there for longer. These are the types of things that are very difficult to do with small, small cost share projects. Easier to do with large scale projects.

So I think you you stated it, but what's the number one and two tightest bottleneck right now in this process?

It's a good question. know i think we we would honestly um so co-swap is a great example of this uh the the geography for co-swap was originally the florida watershed and it needed to be i'm sorry the colorado strategic wildfire action program we got about a million literally like 50 acronyms yeah and i'll do my best not to just throw acronyms It was about a million dollars we received from the state of Colorado. The focus area, actually not the focus area, the grant geography was the Florida watershed. There was not as much interest in that watershed at the time. And so in order to get the money spent, the grant geography needed to be expanded. Now we're seeing interest, but there is these things ebb and flow and especially on private lands. Landowner willingness is is enormous and that starts with education and outreach. I currently put that probably as our tightest bottleneck is education and outreach. And. you know, the, the following buy, then the buy-in that the results from that.

I don't know if, if I was gonna say that that was like probably early on, that was like a lot of the bottlenecks getting landowners and, and people that have homes to come to the table. But then the DFPD has done an incredible job with, like you said, floating the projects and then have just done an incredible job, just outreaching, getting out there and knocking on doors and talking to people. So can't say speak highly enough for what DFPD has done to help get this going and the, and the team. Um, but yeah, I would say like early on in the process, trying to get people to buy into it and tell them they had to cut their trees that they planted 15 years ago for that or five feet or closer to their house. That was a big, you know, um, challenge for a lot of people to, to, to consider. But I think with a lot of, um, now that, that we have so much, you know, wildfire mitigation that needs to get done and you see everything around us that has been, um, burning it people are like okay well maybe it should mean now it is maybe not a really good time to do that so um now that there's funds available and you know having some of these partners that are covering the costs and the reimbursement process is slightly easier just just mention of that that it's just like earlier on it was much more challenging and then because of the work of this group i think it's been much easier for people to come to the table to to ask for some of this work to be done

It was literally built from zero. And so because our region is so risky, we know that, right? With everything happening, as the counselor and the mayor said, all around us, we actually didn't even have to apply. We were a co-swap community. And what that means is they're not going to automatically give us money because it's a granting source. But they are very interested in this work because we are so risky being so far south and the urban, wildland-urban interface issues, the water issues and the river issues and all of that. So I think one bottleneck that we're going to get to, I think, to talk about is money because then immediately, thank you again for Durango Fire. There was another million sitting on the table from a federal grant. I won't go into all the machinations. That's called WIN. And Durango Fire stepped up to administer that grant. So the county's been doing co-swap, Durango Fire's been doing win. That money is coming to an end. And it's taken an incredible amount of staff work to figure out how to mobilize it, given what the mayor said. But we're going to have to figure out how, and Ben is on this, like we're working, like how are we going to get $2 million over three years replaced? It's likely not coming from our budgets. You know, maybe grant matches and like that can come and Ben's salary, but Just a little background. And the reason that mitigation in the county helps the city is initially how the then fire chief, Hal Dowdy, said something that stuck in everybody's mind, which is it doesn't matter where the fire starts. Any of these fires in Lightner Creek and Durango West and Rafter Jay, we all know, look at Monticello right now. They're all looking at potentially evacuating from the Babylon fire. So We know that our western front is also an interest with you in a big way. So I hope that's a little bit of background. I didn't mean, Ben, you maybe were going to say all that anyway.

No, I appreciate that. Thank you, Commissioner.

It's like what's in it for the city water source because we know once a water source is polluted with ash that it's forever to get it back, right?

Yeah. I can't speak for other councilors, but I totally understand what's in it for the city. Yeah. Who's lived here a decent amount of years understands.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just where's the bottleneck is what you're asking about. Yeah.

After that, I think I'd probably say the reimbursement is the largest bottleneck. I don't know how many people we turn away because we haven't. We haven't surveyed that. We don't track that, but it certainly seems to me like a limiting factor to float those costs for that long and then followed by the bidding process. I think those are our biggest bottlenecks. So I'll just move on to next chapter. We have learned some lessons through this whole, well, the last five years. And really top among that is that a process determines the product. If we have a good process, we can put more through it and it'll be a better product at the end of it. And so we are working to build a bookshelf of project types or programs and implement standards and guidance for each of those. so that we can have these programs be consistent across time and not fluctuate based on whatever grant they're being funded from. We also want flexibility in grant geography and project timelines. That goes a little bit to the point I was making. And then also detailed tracking provides better decision support, allows us to make fine adjustments instead of larger ones later in the process. So tracking our burn down rate on funding sources and cost per acre for treatments. And then of course, contractors and the local businesses that support this work are integral, and developing relationships with them, understanding what's their need, and those are really important lessons that we've learned. So next chapter, we want to ramp up projects and spending. As Commissioner Porter-Norton said, that means applying for new grants. We are targeting a couple, but more to come, a lot more to come. The two on screen, CoSwap landscape resilience investment 2026. This is analogous to the the one we're just closing out from 2022 and then also regional conservation partnership program that's through NRCS and that's a collaborative proposal for all of Southwest Colorado. Certainly not the the amount of funding for the entire WPF, but like I said, more more TBD on that. And then establishing a fund that can carry costs for a short period that would do two things. reduce the reimbursement processing time for caution shares and allow us to contract special projects directly formalizing program areas i already talked a little bit about that and then developing a website for landowners to request and receive bids that's an idea that i'm happy to steal from from scott nielsen with durango fire um think it'd be great for landowners to have a portal they could put their scope up on and get competitive bids this would be independent of any county or city procurement requirement since it is the landowner putting those up so that's that's an idea but it would help alleviate that bottleneck and then update existing plans and develop new plans that's the the Community wildfire protection plan for La Plata County and the wildfire ready action plan for the animus watershed. That one is in the proposal development. WWPF along with partners is seeking funding to provide that that plan and I'm I'd be happy to talk a little bit more about the plan. There's also a stakeholder meeting tomorrow at the library from 1 to 3 at this time just to gauge our proposal with with stakeholders and see if we need to adjust it before submission.

I'll take any more questions you have or if we want to revisit any topics, I'd be happy to. I just want to acknowledge and introduce Councillor Gonzales.

She is on remote right now.

Councillor Gonzales, did you have any questions or comments about the presentation?

No, no, no, no comments or questions. Just just listening. Thank you.

Great. Ben, thank you so much for the report. Appreciate your time. Thank you.

Alright, moving on to agenda item C, MANA 2025 outcomes and 2026 requests for joint sales tax funding.

Hi guys, welcome.

All right. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Marissa Hunt. I'm one of the co-executive directors at MANA.

And I'm Chris Andrews, the other co-executive director.

So first of all, I just want to say thank you for hosting us today. You know, MANA has received support from the City-County Joint Sales Tax Fund over the past years for serving as the regional navigation center. So today we will be presenting on MANA's 2025 operations and what we are looking ahead to. So I'll pass it over to Chris to go over our programs.

Thank you.

Yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and get started. I'm just going to briefly try to go through all of our programs. I can't really give you all the information, all the metrics. We'd be here for a couple hours. But I know we did send some documentation with like some totals for the year and some more in-depth information on all of our programming. So I'm going to just report out Uh, for the year 2025, uh, so yeah, Amanda's community kitchen distributed 43,139 prepared meals to individuals and families experiencing food insecurity of those meals. 34,205 were provided through matters, low barrier, hot meal, take out window, uh, where anyone could receive a hot nourishing meal without proof of identification or income. An additional 1,228 meals were distributed through Amanda's community refrigerator, ensuring food remained available when the kitchen was closed. The remaining meals were distributed through community partners, including Community Compassion Outreach, VOA Community Shelter, Adult Education Center, and other local organizations. This flexible model allows MANA to reach individuals without access to transportation, kitchens, refrigeration, or safe food storage. MANA's Resource Center provides a centralized low barrier location where community members can access food, hygiene supplies, Resource navigation and basic needs systems at the center is the participant choice food market. Offering fresh produce, dairy, meat, frozen foods and shelf stable groceries during 2025. the food market recorded 12,515 individual visits and distributed 308,396 pounds of food participants select food. The best meets their, their meat, their household size, dietary needs, cultural preferences and cooking abilities. Through partnerships with the Durango Farmers Market and local producers, MANA also purchased surplus produce, increasing access to fresh food while reducing waste and supporting the local agricultural community. Additional services include showers, laundry, computer and internet access, mail services, transportation assistance, identification support, employment resources, prescription assistance, SNAP enrollment, and bilingual resource navigation. Manna's backpack program distributed 6,119 food bags to children experiencing food insecurity through a partnership with Durango School District 9R. Each backpack contains seven nutritious, easy-to-prepare meals that help to ensure students have reliable access to food when school meals are not available, supporting both student health and academic success. Manna's culinary program provided seven workforce training sessions for adults and underserved youth including students from Big Picture High School. The program combines hands-on culinary instruction with food safety, resume development, interviewing skills, teamwork, and workplace readiness. During 2025, 43 students enrolled, 35 graduated, and 23 graduates obtained employment. All graduates earned both a certificate of completion and a two-year state-recognized food handler certificate. Through the shared kitchen program operated Excuse me. Through the shared kitchen program operated with La Plata County Food, La Plata Food Equity Coalition, MANA also provided the commercial kitchen access to underserved food entrepreneurs. During 2025, two entrepreneurs utilized the program.

And MANA Garden.

In 2025, MANA's garden produced 2,147 pounds of organic fruits, vegetables, and herbs, all of which were incorporated into MANA's prepared meals and food market. The garden also serves as an educational space where volunteers, participants, and youth learn about gardening, nutrition, and sustainability. And Manos Community Resilience Project. So Manos Community Resilience Project serves 25 individuals experiencing opioid use disorder and co-occurring challenges. Services include peer support, individualized case management, recovery planning, transportation, healthcare connections, employment, and education support. Housing and Advocation and Assistance Meeting Essential Needs. Participants complete what's called the Recovery Capital Index assessments measuring health, housing stability, purpose, supportive relationships, and community connection. During 2025, participants reported an average of 20-point increase in recovery capital, demonstrating meaningful improvements in supports and stability needed for long-term recovery. Excuse me. And Manizwadi's program, which is a reentry program, served 36 individuals returning from incarceration with the goal of reducing recidivism through holistic support centering on employment and education. Participants received case management, employment and education assistance, transportation, work clothing, mentoring, housing assistance, behavioral health referrals, and basic needs support. During 2025, 55% of participants obtained employment or enrolled in full-time education. and 61% of those maintained those placements for more than 90 days. This is the exciting piece for me, is Manna's recidivism rate among all wages participants currently sits at 7% compared to the Colorado statewide rate, which is approximately 24 to 31%, depending on how you read that. Manna Street Outreach Program served 182 unduplicated individuals living outdoors, in vehicles, or in other places not intended for human habitation. Outreach staff provided hygiene supplies, cold weather gear, basic needs assistance, referrals to the VOA community shelter, and connections to MANA's Resource Center and other community services. The program serves as an important first step in building trust and connecting individuals to housing and long-term support. And in 2025, MANA received a generous donation of a three-unit apartment building, creating a unique opportunity to expand our continuum of housing services. The property is owned and operated by MTSK LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of MANA, and currently provides stable, affordable housing to four low-income seniors and individuals with disabilities who may otherwise face significant barriers to maintaining housing. Over the past year, MANA has focused on preserving safe, affordable housing for current residents while developing long-term renovation plan. I think the important piece to note here is the house was built in 1888, so there's significant renovations going on there um and after this process um the man resilience house which we're calling it will transition into supportive transitional housing creating new opportunities for individuals experiencing homelessness to stabilize connect with case management and supportive services and successfully transition into permanent housing this project reflects man's commitment to addressing housing insecurity through innovative long-term solutions that strengthen our community pass it back to marissa

Thank you so much, Chris. So as you know, MANA has really transformed in recent years, growing beyond the traditional soup kitchen model into this comprehensive resource center where our goal is to provide more services under one roof, reducing barriers to services that strengthen food, housing, and economic security. Beyond the comprehensive programs that Chris told us about, we have also taken an increased approach to housing stability within our community over recent years. We have several housing programs that serve community members in La Plata County and the neighboring counties as well. and in twenty twenty five we spent eight hundred fifteen thousand dollars on housing support in our region this included assistance with temporary housing rental assistance security deposits utility assistance and application fees while also providing non monetary support around housing including housing stability case management navigating the local housing market application assistance and landlord tenant mediation These services ensure that people most at risk of housing insecurity in our region are able to receive comprehensive services that help stabilize them and support them in maintaining their housing moving forward. A few of our programs include rapid rehousing, which is specifically for people transitioning from homelessness to housing, where we're able to provide long-term rental assistance and support to make sure that people can maintain their housing stability after the program concludes. We have homelessness prevention, which is for people who are at risk of losing their housing. They've received an eviction notice or rental arrears notice. We're able to help get them caught up and provide case management and rental assistance moving forward to help them stabilize. We work really closely with Housing Solutions of the Southwest and other regional partners to ensure that we are, as a community, being good stewards of our resources and minimizing duplication of services. So we share an intake sheet. And so someone who goes to Housing Solutions is going to do the same rental assistance intake sheet as they do at MANA. And we gather once a week to match people to the most appropriate housing resource at every program. has a different criteria. In 2025, we operated a bridge housing program, which was temporary housing for people exiting out of homelessness. So say someone received a housing voucher, there's a period where they would oftentimes remain unhoused until they were able to sign a lease. Our bridge housing program helped bridge that gap and expedite that access to housing helping people to ease that transition process. We will be sunsetting that program as I will speak to in a minute about impending just grant funding cuts. Lastly, we also have a program funded through the Colorado Trust that provides housing stability assistance to monolingual Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities, so helping reduce the unique barriers that people of this community experience when navigating housing. Additionally, our WAGES Manna Community Resilience Program and the Manna House supported people with attaining stable housing last year. We also prioritize maintaining flexible housing funds that allow us to provide emergency assistance to those who need support but don't fit other grant criteria. Overall, our housing program served over 300 households in Southwest Colorado last year, leading to housing stability support for over 500 residents of Southwest Colorado. And we've been really able to increase our housing assistance in recent years due to multi-year grants from both states and foundations. However, this will soon change. Unfortunately, MANA, along with many nonprofits across the nation locally, are facing significant funding cliffs now and in the coming years. This is due to the end of COVID-19 era funds, shifts in federal funding priorities. and highly competitive foundation grants. So for instance, I mentioned that our housing budget in 2025 was $815,000. This year, it has been cut in half to $414,000. And we expect this trend to continue, which will impact our ability to respond as quickly or as flexibly to community needs as we have been over these recent years. And ultimately, the forecast for the coming year shows an increase in community need with a decrease of responding resources. MANA's incoming food donations were nearly 30,000 pounds less than we received in 2024, so we couldn't distribute as much food as the year prior. Federal budgets passed in 2025 will cut $187 billion from the SNAP program over 10 years. suggesting that around 4 million people and 1 million children nationally will have their food benefits reduced or eliminated. New eligibility requirements also pose significant barriers to people applying for the program. And at the same time, federal funding cuts to programs like the Emergency Food Assistance Program that provides us with a lot of food, their resources are decreasing too, which leads to fewer donations that we're able to distribute. So these reductions have already started and will continue to put a strain on low income community members and food access agencies for years to come, especially in rural mountain communities like Durango, where the cost of goods do continue to increase. Feeding America reports that in 2023, 13% of La Plata County residents experienced food insecurity. That's about 7,000 people. And that there are about 10.4 people are sorry in 2023 the census also reported that 10.4% of the pot of county residents live in poverty and 39% of residents are living below the asset limited income constrained employed alice threshold the circumstances make support from the city and county extremely critical and our hope is that the city and county will continue to maintain the same level of support years forward as they have in years past. But it's not all doom and gloom. We have been really trying to work on being proactive to this situation that you know we've seen these funding clips kind of coming down the pipeline. So last year we created a sustainability plan and a strategic plan to really help give us the tools and roadmaps to navigate these changes. Our sustainability plan helped us develop a two-year approach to rightsizing our programming and reinvigorating non-grant fundraising to ensure MANA can sustain our core programming for years to come, especially through this different era of public funding. In turn, we have created tiered prioritization of our programs to help us determine what we should focus on in these coming years, developing a whole organization funding plan, taking a greater approach to community education and fundraising events, strengthening and expanding our donor base, and overall diversifying the people that MANA interacts with as donors, volunteers, and participants. Our 2026 to 2028 strategic plan focuses on maintaining MANA's incredible growth over the past few years from the soup kitchen to the comprehensive resource center. And if we achieve what is outlined in this plan in five years, our goals are to achieve full staffing and maintain a thriving team with sustainable funding mechanisms in place to cover all programming and operations. establish a brand that accurately reflects our work and our reputation in the community, and deliver mission-aligned impactful programs driven by the community, resulting in increased housing security for both housed and unhoused participants. So over the next three years, we'll be working on building sustainable funding streams, advancing community engagement and education, addressing community needs through dedicated programs and services, sustaining a vibrant and dedicated team, and implementing systems to help us measure our impact. So all that to be said, thank you for your ongoing partnership and support of our work. Our ability to serve Durango and La Plata County would not be possible without backing from our city and county. And we look forward to ongoing collaboration, and that will help us achieve our vision, which is to build strength, resilience, and equity in La Plata County through innovative and holistic services that cultivate a sustainable future with our community. And that being said, we'd love to answer any questions.

Thank you, Marissa and Chris. So what I heard, I mean, thank you for all the great work. Appreciate the partnership with Southwest Housing Solutions. I sit on that board. My question is, what I heard was at the same level of previous years. Does anyone recall, I think it was 200,000? That's correct. Okay. Will you be requesting additional funds from, because La Plata County does pay funds to you from our budget.

Will you be same levels as the county support funds? We would be open to that conversation. I know that we were granted $20,000 through the open grant fund this year. So if we did need to make adjustments between joint sales tax funding and applying for grant funding, we are absolutely open to discussing that. At this point, oh.

This is me not alluding to, like, you don't have the funds or the city, whatever that is, what I'm trying to, I guess my point is, is just me preparing mentally for our budget year that's coming. We're soon to hear to have those conversations. So I'm just seeing if there's going to be any surprises on our side. So which I, it sounds like, no.

No surprises.

Great, great. Thank you.

Yeah.

Thanks so much. Really appreciate all the work going on up there and a couple of questions. The navigator program I thought was really an incredible piece that you guys had added in, but I think that was mostly COVID-related money. Has that program been decreased or is going to be decreased soon?

Like the resource center?

Yeah. Within the Man Up building, you had three or four navigator positions, I think.

That is something that we intend to carry on. We've prioritized having the food market and supportive services within that program. building all continue to work comprehensively and still provide case management to folks, it just might reduce the amount of services that we are able to provide. So, you know, if MANA isn't able to provide the services due to funding cuts, it's, you know, doing our best to refer people to shared resources or being creative.

Yeah, I think all of the programs are very important. Don't get me wrong. Some of these may have to be prioritized, obviously, with some of the incredible cuts you're going to be going through in funding. But the Navigators, to me, always seemed to be a really strong program. The 30,000 pounds of food that you saw decreased this year, was that because of the large donors that decreased their food, or was that just a community-wide decrease in donations?

Mostly our large donors, like Karen Scherr, Regional Food Bank, who's also impacted by federal cuts. In 2024, they would distribute probably about half, or sorry, twice the food each month that they were able to in 2025.

So you'll probably see that in perpetuity, if not even get worse, because it can't be made up by community donations, probably. Can't be made up by community donations since they were such large.

That's correct.

Okay. Yeah. All right. I wanted to give a little bit of special praise. Joseph Kuzma has been doing a fantastic job, both on the marketing.

There he is.

Anyway, I've been very impressed by how much man is in the community. I think you're doing a great job of getting the word out and getting people to understand better all of the services and things that man is doing. So I hope that continues and I'll even give him praise publicly on this one. So I appreciate that as well. I think one of the things that's cropped up in my understanding is that felony convictions have been a big hurdle for people to get into housing. And I'm not sure any of the programs that you're doing right now overcome that, or is that just an institutionalized thing that people trying to sign up for a lease, if they've got a felony conviction, they're already out?

I mean, it's definitely a huge barrier. And I said we have some processes in place to support that. We have specific landlords we know. We'll work with us also, like, looking on Craigslist, not going through property management. But it is definitely a barrier and a hurdle that, you know, unfortunately, sometimes we're not able to overcome directly. But I think just being flexible in how we support folks, like, really exploring what all their options are, whether that be, like, a family member they can get into a roommate agreement with or something else there to support.

Do you see that the Durango Crossings project, for instance, is a project where we were significantly involved in making it happen? A lot of folks were. But can we do requirements that those management companies that we eventually hand these kind of projects over to decrease the hurdles that they've got for those kind of leases? Have you seen anything like that happen?

Not necessarily. I mean, I think that there have been, like, We've had great success in partnering with, oh gosh, what are they called? The residences and getting people placed there. But if there is collaboration that can happen to intentionally ensure that we can create more stable housing paths for people with justice-involved records, we would be happy to continue that conversation.

Yeah, I'm going to correct myself. I just said crossings and I meant residences on that one. So there's too many projects in my head at this point. Thanks. Last question is, how much work are you doing with Aspero and some of the housing that's involved right in your neighborhood, VOA, Aspero, et cetera?

Yeah, we have great partnerships with our neighbors. Aspero is right up the street. We partner with them on our rapid rehousing program. So every person that moves into Aspero does require a security deposit. And because it's low-income subsidized housing, it's usually not within the resident's budget. So we partner with them to provide security deposits for every person who moves into a Sparrow. We partner with the VOA to send them daily meals to reduce their food costs to feed their residences. And there's just a lot of kind of back and forth that goes between all of our agencies up there.

That's great to see. I mean, we don't have enough cross work. being done by the nonprofits trying to serve the same population in many areas. So thanks for setting the bar high on that one. So appreciate all you're doing here.

Thank you.

Well, thank you so much for the presentation. I really do appreciate it. But I just want to make sure I heard a question from here about your funding. So you just want to stay at the same level going forward. Is that basically it? That would be our ask, yes. I'm shocked. Because I would expect you would ask for a little bit.

Well, I mean, we're not. We're not against it, but it's a Christmas surprise.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, Mayor. Thank you for your work. Can is it easy to suss out how many individuals across all these programs you serve?

Yeah, we estimate we serve about 3,500 people a year. That's about 2,000 through the resource center specifically, like the resource center food market, and then about 1,000 through our take-home backpack program and other programs that are a little separated from that core resource center building.

Great. And putting on my county hat here, we know that people are living on county land behind you.

Mm-hmm.

And our sheriff's department actually purchased equipment to go in and clean up the camps. I was wondering, are we seeing more people living there, less people living there? Do they come to Manna? Do they not come to Manna? I was going to get for this meeting what our cost is, but it's not insignificant.

The area you were talking about?

Right below the Hogsback.

Okay.

You know, the test tracks and that whole area. I think it's called the dump area. You know, it's by the recycling center.

I think it's cyclical. So like as soon as folks will move to one area until they start to get more attention there and start to move to another area. So I think one way or the other, they're going to be somewhere because they're for the most part not going to leave. So they're going to be somewhere. I think that's wherever they have the least interactions.

Do we know the numbers? How many people are up there?

That's hard to gauge.

Are we talking Because before we closed Purple Cliffs, there were 239 people. So are we looking at that? Are we looking at 50?

Less than half that. Probably 70 to 90.

I feel like one of the reasons to state it is we do, the county does have a cost in cleaning those areas up. But also for the community to know that exactly what you said is people are still living out there and they're tucked away. And that area really concerns me because of the fire danger.

Absolutely.

And thank goodness it's raining. But it's a very concerning area. We're talking if you go to the recycling center and go up and then to the left. So yeah, and I know you're trying to fix it. I just wondered, I don't have a handle on the numbers.

I don't really know to date what those numbers look like, and I think that people can kind of move around a bit. But would you like to talk about our cleanup this last week?

Yeah, so for anybody that didn't hear about it, so we actually had a community member who's part of our lived experience advisory board who does kind of his own river trail cleanup. So I met with him a few months ago and he said he wanted to try to coordinate a bigger event that was kind of more of a community event. And his thought was to try to get Durango Police involved and try to get Hilltop some community service. So I reached out to Chief Kernett and some folks at Hilltop and was able to coordinate a pretty decent sized team. I think this past Saturday we had about 30 volunteers, including rangers, police officers, the executive director from Hilltop. I was out there walking. And yeah, went down up and down the Animas River trail. Um, I don't have the numbers in front of me. I think it was like 51, 51 large construction size trash bags that we picked up. Um, one wallet that had some, some vital documents and money that was recovered and a couple of bikes that were recovered. Um, and with that, the plans to try to set, have a, have a follow up meeting with everyone involved and kind of set that on a regular cadence and try to maybe do that quarterly.

Yeah. And I think that one natural partnership that could evolve from that is maybe doing a similar cleanup on the county side where we are going back into that area and getting community to help.

I will get you information, Shawna. I can work with you on that to figure out our costs of cleaning, keeping that area somewhat habitable.

And I will mention, I think the goal of this last one was to also try to have some members from the county involved in that planning process. I was never able to get anybody from the county. Maybe I just didn't have the right connections, the right person to speak to. But again, first planning meeting, we really wanted to get input from the city and the county of where some good spots were going to be to address. So I think that's something in the future that we could have the county as part of, so we can kind of look at some of that.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you both so much. Appreciate you.

Thank you.

All right, and then moving on to Gen Item D, Durango Public Library and Library District Ballot Issue. Yeah, of course.

If I may, just one. First, I want to state the Durango Library is very important. So what my comments are going to come from this is not due to the fact that I'm against the Durango Library, but I do want to state or at least express concern is that moving forward I would really appreciate if the city can sit down with the county when we have discussions on future items of potential ballot measures especially like the during a library district would be one of those items would be able to have an opportunity since it is funded by the JST I think some community input would from the commissioners would be valuable to be able to discuss one another item is I really understand why it's not going to ballot La Plata county when we worked on ballot measure one a Commissioner Porter North, myself, and many volunteers worked really hard. In the end, when 7 o'clock hit, I was very surprised that it passed. And so it was one of those items that I'm very thankful for, but would really appreciate when we're talking about potential ballot measures in the future for the library, potential library district, if that's a discussion that we'll have in the future, I would really appreciate a moment of those times. Maybe it's the chair or mayor to have those discussions or at a bigger picture at an open meeting like this. that we have those conversations. Really hearing from today from the WWPF, I will tell you what my vision is. And that is that three-fourths of the county pays a library tax in their library district that they live in. And I think that moving forward, whenever those discussions do happen, is important. With that, we really have conversations about the WWPF and just the concerns of funding and availability. JST would be a perfect model. Talking about 911 communications, that's another perfect model. Road infrastructure, another great use for JST. MANA, another great. So all these services, I really, you know, that's at least just one sole county commissioner. I'm not speaking for Commissioner Porter Norton or Commissioner Philbrick on this, but this is an item where I think JST is a great tool. But to be able to, if we could secure funding for the library, that would free up $3.2 million to do a lot of other cool stuff. Again, I'll rephrase Durango Library is very important and I think it's something where I'm still here to support it. But gosh, if there is an ability or if there is a temperature for residents in that potential future library district, let's go. I'm willing to stand up in front of the community to talk about those items. If any pushback or those that are in support of it. But I see $3.2 million is an ability to solve a lot of Funding concerns we heard from Anna today and thankful for them and all their hard work and not asking for additional funds. But it's going to hurt many other operations and services here. But gosh, I would really appreciate this. Please welcome us to the table to have those discussions when that time does arise and come forth.

Just a quick reply on that one. There's representatives from the county and the city on the library advisory board. These conversations happen throughout the library advisory board. It might have been a mistake on my part. I was serving at that time. Gilda was there before me. The assumption was that all that information was getting processed through the commissioners. And so there was a little bit of a mistake in the assumption on that one, I think.

When I was on the library board, that's when Clyde was there. At that time, they had already done the survey and then it kind of went to sleep. So I was a little bit surprised when this issue came up when it was put to sleep because we all understood our financial status. And I do understand exactly what you're saying, Matt. But my last point is, it's all good and grand to work together, but I forget the meeting where you invited me to the 1% 1A meetings to talk about that sales tax increase. Yeah, I think, you know, you forgot there.

Yes, thank you and appreciate your support on that. Gilda, I think where we might be coming from is just and please correct information. I think that's the important part about being able to have tough conversations and then celebratory conversations. We, you're right, the library advisory board and Luke is here. He correct me on any of this and Commissioner Philbrick is not here and she is our representative. So I want to be fair to that is that, um, before we knew it, the city council had decided not to go to ballot. And so that wasn't at the advisory board level. And maybe there was something missed on our level. And so I think what I would back up what Commissioner Salka said, completely get your reasoning and get why, I mean, I think doing any kind of property tax right now is difficult. And then I also understand, I think what you said is that you may be having to have a ballot for Durango Fire. That's a whole other conversation. But It's sort of like we have such an embedded interest in the joint sales tax, and that was a vision dating back to 22, that it just would have been nice to be consulted, I think is what we're frankly saying. But it's not solely our decision, although if a ballot were going to be sought, it is our decision because there's part of the library district that is in the county. And we're not trying to like shame and blame here. I think these conversations are These meetings are a time to have the easy conversations on the hard conversations.

I guess maybe just a point of clarification. Did we say no, we're not going to go to a ballot or just not give direction for staff to pursue the ballot initiative? Those are two different things.

That's a great nuance. What is your...

I was at all the meetings. In February... Here's where it gets confusing. All the way back in March 2023, we got discretion to get look at a petition process. And we were never able to move forward with that petition process because the group we gathered, and I was just a liaison, but the group that gathered and I would liaison between the county and the city, the information, their decisions, they sort of decided, hey, we need to pause and look at the 2025 sales tax for Parks Rec, City Hall, PD. We can't do both at the same time. Some of us are going to be on both of those And also, we don't think we have enough information in a survey should be, you know, because we also got information from city council that between being told, hey, look at a petition process in 2023 and 2024, a lot of people's sales tax came in as higher, but the actual amounts that the county receives in library districts was lower. And that was very confusing to the public. And basically every city councilor who was getting any information from the public, it was overwhelmingly negative. So then we were just given information as a library, hey, we should probably do another survey. And that was ready to go live in 2025 in October. And these issues with the fire district, public works, transportation, prosperity offices, housing innovation division, all sort of came together that If we just ask the question about the library district and hey, it's going to be $22, not $13, because had we gone with the mill levy we had originally, it would have not funded at the level we thought it was going to way back in 2022. If we change all that and just ask that question and don't include the other information, that is not going to be a valid survey. So what we brought to city council was we're not not let's not do this in any specific year. It was as basic as we don't have the information because if we felt like if we went for the survey, even if we put that information in there. City Council has not given us any direction as an city staff any direction on what we're going to do one way or the other with library district. Sewer rates in 2027. Looking at funding mechanisms for a prosperity office or So if we didn't include some of that or all of that, we could have an invalid survey. If we included any or all of that, it would be presupposing city council direction. And third, we had not done almost any education to the public on these issues. So they would be being asked a question that they would not have the valid information. So it wasn't as if the city said, hey, don't do anything. It said, there are some very serious issues. And as a reminder, The city would be 90 days after the county. Either there's a petition process and the county verifies it, and then 90 days later, the city opts in or opts out, or the county starts it all together because part of it's in the county, not fully in the city, and then 90 days later, the city opts in or opts out. They gave no direction or never have in public whether they would opt in or opt out of a library district. I just brought to them, if you want to do a community survey Right now, I believe that would require new direction because we have new information.

Yeah, I think if I can, Luke, just a little bit from the staff perspective, because that was a direction kind of given by staff and supported by council. It went dormant in 2023. After 2023, we have other issues and challenges that have been brought to light. The Durango Fire Protection District is the big one. We didn't do a fire. We hadn't done our study yet about what was it going to cost us because in 2028 we're out. We only have a contract with them. So in 2028, either we join the district or we go to a contract and that contract would be way more expensive than joining the district. So for us financially. This is a huge issue for us. We we can't function without being in the Durango Fire Protection District. That is about a four mil increase on the property tax owners. to join in that district. So that was the part when the survey came back up. It was voters need a complete picture of what was going to happen. The 2005 just got renewed. The county got your sales tax. So all of these taxes were coming on board. And we were very cautious about like, we're going to talk about a library district, but we didn't quite have the information what the Durango Fire Protection District was going to be. These are a lot of things that are coming. And This is on top of a 15% increase that we had with water, a 10% increase that we had with sewer. The council is getting, and I'll let them, and I don't mean to speak for them, but there's a lot of feedback coming from our financial advisory board right now that they are done with all these extra fees and all these extra taxes that we need to take care of the basics. And so it's kind of 2023 when it went away, kind of went out of sight, out of mind for all of us because nobody was bringing it back up. We were like, okay, what do we need to do for the city? But I don't think there was ever a decision from the council that was we're not going to do a ballot. I just think from where we were looking at is that right now we need to focus on Durango Fire Protection District. We have transportation that has a fiscal cliff in two years that we'd have to drastically reduce public transportation, which will obviously hurt our community and those portions of it. And we still have housing that doesn't have sustainable funding. So there's needs out here that we're still trying to figure out. And that first domino being the Durango Fire Protection District.

Yeah, Mayor, like I said earlier, I think that's why we have these meetings is so we can clarify information. I'm simply reading from AI. So I'm glad we're having this. And nobody gets trying to figure out priorities more than we do after last year's budget process that we went through. So I completely respect that you have all the sudden sewer needs and housing needs and all of that. So I completely understand. This says Durango City Council decided to hold off placing a library in district ballot measure before the voters, opting instead to prioritize the city's potential inclusion into the Durango Fire District. I'm not at all pushing back on that. You all have every right to make any decision you need to make. I think what we're just simply communicating is because the library is funded from the joint use sales tax, we feel like we have not a voice in your decision making, but a voice in that. So not trying to like pick fights.

Yeah, totally.

We're not trying to bring up things that are uncomfortable in a way that isn't fair and getting accurate information.

I'm going to own that on the Library Advisory Board, I didn't look around the room and it's true that the county commissioner representative was in each of those meetings and understood where the things were headed. So I could have looked around the room and come back and made sure that everybody was connected. i'll own that to a certain piece and then i think on the county commissioner side whoever the representative was supposed to be in that room and in those conversations there were multiple conversations that's on them as well but but you are correct i i understand what you're saying and i'll own the fact that every now and then we need to pause look around and go okay are the key players all informed on where the direction is going on and i'll just say as a staff member it's my role to be the liaison to the library advisory board and five out of five of the voting members were

unclear and had similar concerns that you did when I relayed this information to them. They had not, we had talked about it at the library advisory board, so we're already implementing communication improvements for the board members. I am happy to do that for our board liaison for the county commission. You know, it's easy because we meet with city staff daily because we're a city department, but there really was a highlight that there was communication deficiencies at the board level. So it wouldn't surprise me that the county commissioners were not as aware of what these steps were coming. Because I can tell you that AI is incorrect. The city was made aware that they do not make the first decision the county does. That's the only way the process can happen. That was one of the slides that I have right in front of me that was given at that time. And so sometimes that nuance gets lost. But the overall message not being clear to the county commissioner is something that I'm more than happy to help correct.

And frankly, it could have been on our side too. So we can always all improve communication. I'm certainly not here to blame. It could be on our side too. And this is why we like AI is because we can vet in public whether it's accurate or not. I didn't mean to jump ahead of you, Mayor.

Mayor. Mayor. i just want to clarify not an attack on the city of drango either and i i back what commissioner porter stated and so if it's on our and some of it's on our side or all that's on our side we'll own up to it and uh i'll i'll dive a little bit deeper on our side but again i'll go back to 3.2 million could go to housing that's a joint operation with the county in the city so these are things that i i i foresee i would love to i'm here for two more years and darn it i would love to be an opportunity to do some cool JST projects together. Thank you.

You know, since we are talking about the library district and, you know, when I was on the board, I found it very interesting, the relationship we have, and it was real revealing. But going forward, if we do anything with a library district, I would be the first to advocate that we separate it out and we don't have a joint agreement between the county and the city, and it just goes to The library district. Uh, there's a lot to unpack there.

Yeah, that I think that is definitely I would love to have that opportunity to be able to have those discussions.

So what would be separated out?

OK. OK, a library district answers directly to a governing board that would be either jointly appointed as it currently is or completely new mechanism. But there would be a. temporary board that would have to work with the parties involved to create an intergovernmental agreement. That is part by statute that cannot change. Now, what that intergovernmental agreement looks like, that is when those conversations happen.

Mayor, I have a couple more questions or thoughts. Is that we don't have two elected officials here today, Commissioner Fobrick and who am I missing? Jessica, I'm sorry. I am wondering, I'm truly asking this from a very neutral perspective, is that is it worth it the next time we meet to have a discussion and maybe get input ahead of time from the library board? This has been hanging out there for four years, actually before Commissioner Westendorf started this conversation. And the blunt facts of the matter is that the library takes 75% of the joint sales tax. I mean, that's just a fact. And I think she rightfully said many years ago, if anybody doesn't know, former commissioner, she said, is there a way to provide equity and more funding for the Durango Library and equity to people that are shopping in Durango that then pay property tax to another library district? So we've been wrestling with this. And I think Jose said it well, it goes dormant and then it comes up again. And in 22, we missed the boat. We had a survey that was 75, 70 or 75% support.

Unfortunately, that survey came in October. So that wasn't 22 when we could act. And so that was a survey looking forward to 2024. So it was a tough one. Now, could we have done that in 2020? That's the question.

Yeah, so eyes backward are never as helpful as eyes forward. But we had a very good survey and didn't somehow put all the pieces in place to go to ballot. And maybe given what Jose said, you know, our ballot Durango Fire went to ballot. There's a lot of needs out there. You know, you've done your reallocation that funds, yay. I'm really happy for you all on funding the administration building, the new, what's the title? City Hall. Okay, sorry. And police department. So this is all great. And I just wonder if we couldn't have a brass tacks conversation to put it to rest, at least as of our administrations, and say we're interested in this or we're not. I don't know. I don't know if that's a helpful conversation. I don't know if it's a polarizing conversation, but I feel like it kind of keeps rearing, coming up and coming up and coming up, and oh, let's do a library district and it'll free up 3.2. I think it's actually 2.9. Do we just need to have a conversation at some point of like, given all these other needs, given ballots that seem to have

so many things on them is this something that we still want to do i don't know i speak only for myself um i think the conversation absolutely needs to happen i think the time right now is not the appropriate time to have the conversation but i know it's been hanging out there a long time but there are also a lot of things that are in the near future coming up for for both of us um and then things in the recent past that have also come before us that have also taken precedence so I'm speaking for only myself that I think that, yeah, I think it's worthy of a conversation to figure out what potential next steps there could be. I just don't feel like right now with the economic environment locally, nationally, internationally, there's a lot of other pieces at play right now that I don't think it's, I think it'd be a lot of conversation around how do we lose less. Personally, I think, you know, I think we're going to spend a lot of money and time and energy into something that's not going to pass. So I think we get past some of these, you know, junctures that we got coming in the near future and then have a conversation in the future. But I'm not going to have the conversation anytime. But what I don't want to do is to spend a lot of time and energy knowing that there's not going to be a lot of bandwidth for us to be able to be champions for this.

I will. And I completely agree with you. I think now with the economic situation we see with gas prices and food prices and all of it, it would be a terrible time. And the fact, as you point out, we just had some tax increases in our county. So I'm in complete agreement. I think it's just being transparent. And I kind of feel like our library board might be hanging out there a little bit. I'm not saying that in any kind of a negative way, but like, are we going to do this or are we not going to do this? And maybe, again, having the full set of electeds here and maybe what we need to transparently do as well. And we started that today is to say, what are your priorities? Like you're having sewer rates go up. We know housing is a crisis in our community. You know, like what if we were going to do a library district, not only what would we use that money for? I think that is a very important discussion. Who would vote for something if they're like, well, that's just going to produce 3.2 million that we don't know where it's going. But I just think having the conversation in an open way and if it turns out like this isn't going to work because of the politics of getting something passed, you know, Again, nobody was more surprised about 1A than we were because of that same situation. I mean, pleasantly surprised. But on election night, I was fully expecting people would have said like, no, we can't do another sales tax. And I'm glad that they supported that as well as supporting the fire districts and Upper Pines tax increase. But it's a lot on people.

Is there some comfort? I mean, we couldn't do the district election anyway until 2028, correct? Isn't it?

Yeah, it has to be an odd year.

So if we put something on the calendar for this discussion in 2027, that feels like we give ourselves a little bit of time.

If you're comfortable with that.

Happy compromise here.

If you're just starting a conversation in 2027 is good, but it just depends on when the ballot issue for DFPD is going to go out. You know what I mean? So again, you know, I think if we have the conversations in early, mid, whatever, 2027, it allows us to hopefully put Yeah, the building blocks for DFPD election kind of precedent before that.

So that would be a property tax. You would attempt to if I'm understanding the news correctly, which obviously I don't always. So is it a property tax that would then fund your portion of Durango Fire? No, I'm wrong on that.

You would be officially going into the district. So we would be in the district. We'd be able to elect representatives to be in the district. we have now is a combo contract that we didn't join the district, but there's a property tax that pays some of it. And then we use sales tax to offset the rest of it. Got it. And we're not part of it. So this would be joining in the district and then we don't have to worry about it. It's DFPD. And then we have representation on that board for operational costs.

Just recently I had a presentation where they give us like four different options of, you know, you can do this and go all in all at once. You can tier it over the next three years and They gave us kind of a few different options to potentially consider as we think about what this could look like.

Yeah. And I just want to say none of this was about anything. You know, we're not trying to say somebody did something radically wrong here. If anything, I think it's like our job as elected is to take on the really tough issues. And the really tough issues is how we're going to fund stuff. And, again, I think we have to be fair that if this isn't going to be – if the – well,

I was going to say the dog isn't going to hunt.

Is that the right, you know, then I think we need to have that conversation. And I think in 27 is fine. And that way we're being fair to the library because I think there's a lot of hope. Correct me if I'm wrong, that a property tax completely acknowledging maybe this isn't the great time to be talking about more taxes would be able to allow you like to have more hours be open, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And there's a litany of options that I think Luke would love to be able to consider.

So I want a good library for Durangoans and immediate county people. We all want that. And it's like, how would we get there? And are we going to have the tough conversation about funding?

And that's the only discussion we've had is looking at the library district as expanding hours, services, staff outreach. Something we've never looked at is if that's too high a bill, We look at lowering the mill levy to this is how it costs to sustainably keep the services we already have. That is another thing that we can bring as an option in 2027 is like these are two different price models and looking at that because that's something we haven't looked at because that was simply not the economics of the situation four years ago. As economics change, we're happy to bring you more options. That's the library's only ever done is bring credible information so that elected officials can make decisions based on it.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. And commissioners, I do love the idea of taking on some of the tougher issues. It feels like everybody's been walking on eggshells a little bit and we've got to dive into some of these because all they are getting kicked down the road over and over and over again. So I appreciate that. I'm looking forward to having, you know, an agenda that's got a couple of OK, you know, this is we're going to dive into this. So I would look forward to that as well.

And any of you that supported, I can say this now, on a public mic since the election is over, any of you that did support 1A, we greatly appreciate it. You've probably seen some press. We're deploying it all over the county, and we greatly appreciate it, and we hope that helps city residents as well.

Yeah, we have to remind Durango at times that we are a member of the county.

Your county residents as well.

Absolutely.

All right. Great. We'll go ahead and adjourn. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.