City Council - Regular Meeting

ahead and call to order the city of durango city council regular meeting for july 21st 2026 the time is 5 32 p.m and could i get a roll call please mayor woodruff here mayor pro tem lawyer counselor yazi here counselor coso here and counselor gonzalez 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-Sinan, Hopi, and Diné Navajo nations. The original stewards of this land were forcibly removed and exposed to countless atrocities by the United States government, including repeatedly broken treaties, forced assimilation, the tragic legacy of Indian boarding schools, and the loss of ancestral homelands. We recognize lasting generational trauma exists within Native communities today. We affirm the continuing importance of ancestral sites to descendant communities as integral to the living cultural landscape. This acknowledgement only becomes meaningful when combined with accountable relationships and informed actions. May this serve as a step towards inclusion and reconciliation.

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

Thank you. Hi, my name is Liz Torres and I am here with my colleague, Sam Guzman. We will be your interpreters for tonight where we are here with a community language co-op. And I want to thank you for your commitment to language justice so that everyone can hear in the language of their heart. If you are joining us on Teams tonight, please go to the More menu and then select Language and Speech and select the language of your heart from there. And if you have any trouble with it, please let us know. And we can go ahead and get started.

Thank you. Off to agenda item number three, opening remarks by mayor and council. I just had one. I had the opportunity to meet up with Katie Scott. I call it my organic office hours. It means I was at work and somebody hit me up about something. But anyways, Katie approached me. She's doing the Centennial Circuit, the relay for ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. Her and her family, there's a big triangle, Denver, Steamboat, and Durango. But they're basically doing a relay with these three Colorado hubs, 610 miles, just to unite communities and support families affected by ALS. And some of that vital research, it's a fundraiser. But yeah, it was really good to get a couple minutes to talk with her about something that's really important to her and her family. But yeah, it was really good to see. So if you see Katie out in the community, feel free to give her a hey, and then she can tell you all about it. It's a really great cause. And considering we just had a proclamation, I think it was back in May for ALS month, I thought it was fitting that we brought a little bit more light to this. So Katie, thanks for everything you're doing. And yeah, look forward to seeing how the fundraiser goes.

Councilor Gonzalez.

I'm having office hours tomorrow at the library from 11 to 1230. If anybody would like to join me, we're usually out to the right, sort of in the back corner. So looking forward to seeing anyone during that time. I spent this last week in Los Angeles for the National Association of Elected Latino Officials. And it was a really great event. Lots of discussions around many of the things we all do here on the council related to our city government role, but big emphasis on immigration this time, big emphasis on housing, as many cities around the country are also experiencing a housing crisis. Lots of discussions about the unhoused and affordability in general. So it was a great conference and I learned a lot. Thank you, Mayor.

Excellent. Councilor Crusoe.

Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to make a couple of comments. The Volunteers of America celebration for Elaine and Michael Morovin today, I was able to attend that. I just want to remind everybody how much the Morovins have been contributing to the community and how important they've been for so many of our nonprofits. The VOA in particular, their budget has really been devastated by federal cuts. So it's been impressive how much they've stepped up, their challenge grants, how much they've raised for a real important organization. We're doing really good work with the VOA. I also wanted to acknowledge that the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwest Colorado received the Board of the Year Award from the national organization. So a very small board and organization in Durango, Colorado was recognized as the Board of the Year back at the national conference. And then lastly, this one's for staff. I've had multiple people come up to me about traffic calming on College Avenue and universally appreciative of the work that was done there. I know we get screamed at when we're doing these traffic calming projects, but both bikers, hikers, as they're crossing across to Horse Gulch, have taken time to call me and make sure that I understood how appreciative they were of the traffic calming there. And then College Avenue in general, all the residents have stated that it really has slowed traffic and that's worked fantastic. So appreciate everybody's work on that and the results have come out of it. Thank you. Great.

All right, moving on to gen item number four, presentation and proclamations. Seeing none, we'll actually see manager Madrigal, do you have anything for Well, actually, no, that would be the next one, number five. How about city manager updates?

Awesome. The first one that we have, mayor and council, is a CityWorks business support findings and recommendations by Tommy Crosby in our prosperity office. I do believe we have some folks from CityWorks that will give a presentation on the work that they did analyzing kind of how a new business starts in the city and some things that we can do to improve and then some areas that we are really strong in. Thank you.

Thank you, Jose.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Tommy Crosby, our Economic Opportunity Manager with the Prosperity Office. I'm joined this evening by a slate of very impressive speakers. We have Erin Jolly, the Food Business Workgroup Manager with the La Plata Food Equity Coalition and the Good Food Collective. And then Laura Kelly and Ava Gardere with Cities Work under the Institute for Justice. They've been working hard over the last year to support the City of Durango to help us find ways to make it cheaper, faster, and simpler to start a business and do business in and with the City of Durango. I specifically want to highlight a little part of our mission around outstanding services because I think that the City's Work report that was included in your agenda packet this evening provides us a pretty fantastic roadmap of how to make our services even more outstanding when it comes to working with small businesses and entrepreneurs in our community. So really high level overview of our city's work project. City Manager Madrigal signed on as our executive supporter for entering into a scope of work with city's work about a year ago. Over the course of the last 11 months, we've had the pleasure of working with City's work in coordination with the Food Business Work Group on truly finding as many ways possible to make it cheaper, faster, and simpler to do business with the City of Durango. The city's work team, they spent more hours than I could possibly imagine going through all of the city's permits, our code. They had innumerable conversations with over 70 small business owners and entrepreneurs around the city, all with the hope of helping us make our services just that much more outstanding when it comes to doing business with the city of Durango. So really, this report that's included in your agenda packet this evening and the very fancy version Eva handed out to you this evening, this is about five years in the making. So this all started back in 2022 when Aaron and I started a partnership with the National League of Cities. Over the course of the last five years, we really deepened and developed this relationship with the National League of Cities. We really leaned into the services that they offered cities across the U.S., especially small rural communities like ours, of how to improve the day-to-day life of our citizens and our businesses in our communities. They helped us establish what we often refer to as our hub and spoke model when it comes to our entrepreneur support ecosystem. Once you make contact with one part of our hub and spoke model, we're going to wrap you up in a network and an ecosystem of support to try to make life just a little bit easier when it comes to navigating a touch point with the city. Or the example that I like to use is before this ecosystem was stood up, you might be talking with me at the city, and I know that you need to reach out to the health department for something. I'd probably give you the generic email or the generic phone number to call the health department. Now I'm going to connect you directly with Taylor, and Taylor's going to know that if I give him a heads up and say, hey, This entrepreneur is it's their first time ever getting an inspection. They're primarily a Spanish speaker. I'm going to call Priscilla and Taylor. I'm going to coordinate. I'm going to let you and Priscilla take it from here. You guys are going to coordinate. So Priscilla can provide translation onsite during that inspection. It's that the art of the warm handoff is really what we've come to master over the course of the last few years. Priscilla has really grown into that bilingual business navigator role, helping countless, not just food businesses, but that naturally has grown. bubbled and rippled to all sorts of businesses across the community. And that has all culminated this past fall of the National League of Cities connecting us with the city's work team who selects certain cities in the United States that they want to work with, whose momentum that they could take advantage of to move their organizational goals forward, while again, helping us make our services just that much more outstanding when it comes to doing business with the city. That partnership kicked off last fall, and over the course of the last 11 months, we've really started to develop the outcomes and the findings in this report that you're going to see and hear about a little bit more this evening. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Erin Jolly.

Thank you, Tommy. Good to see you all. I've been here a few times talking about our food entrepreneur work in Durango and beyond, and I'm really happy to come back here and see this work move forward. We've been working in partnership with the city for four or five years now. In addition to County Public Health, CSU Extension and 14 other service providers who have been building that ecosystem work for a long time and really building that foundation. And we've been able to do things like create digital tools like the food business startup guide in Durango that we can actually help point to from market research to opening your doors. We have hundreds of users who use our Good Food Collective commissary kitchen database so that they can find infrastructure so they have a place to start their business in a certified kitchen. We have our business directory that we also see people accessing as a digital resource. We have our bilingual business navigator. Dozens of entrepreneurs have gone from idea to opening and operating in our city. That is awesome. It's worked on an individual level and kind of building out those programs, those tools. What I'm really excited about with City's Work is this is a systemic change. This goes beyond just helping food businesses. This is every industry who comes across Durango as a place to start, bring their families, start their business, or grow. They will have access to more support if we are able to adopt some of these recommendations from the City's Work team. They've uncovered a lot of valuable insights and in-depth analysis that no organization in Durango had the capacity to do. what they have spent at no cost to Durango is valuable. And I really hope that we get to see the leverage of the four years of laying the foundation, the amazing contribution of this organization who's led cities around the country in this process. So we could just join those other cities in modernizing and upgrading and enhancing the awesome place in that we live and kind of use these findings to help build our entrepreneur system. for here on out. It doesn't matter the program or the person, these will be recommendations that will outlast all of us. So thank you so much, and I'm excited to hear and pass it over to CitysWork for their findings.

Yes.

Two very warm introductions.

Hi there, my name is Laura Kelly. I'm with CitysWork, which is an initiative of the Institute for Justice, and we work with cities across the country to make it cheaper, faster, and simpler to start a business. We launched Citi's work in 2022 with our barriers to business report, which analyzed 20 mid to large size cities across the country and compared their regulatory processes for starting a small business. What inspired us to start Citi's work as an initiative was we noticed a gap in the research that no one was quantifying the barriers from the entrepreneur's point of view. And we really wanted to step in and fill that gap. After launching our barriers to business report, We started working individually with cities to do deeper dive city studies and work closely with entrepreneurs, departmental stakeholders in those cities, and be able to recommend highly tailored policy recommendations. So that's what we did here in Durango. We were really excited to connect with Aaron and Tommy last year. As Tommy said, because we are a nonprofit, we're donor funded by people who believe in our mission. We get to do all of our work free of charge, which is incredible, but also comes with a responsibility to make sure that that impact remains meaningful. But we are incredibly excited about the opportunity to work with Durango because the city and its partnership with NLC, with the food business work group had already been doing so much work to create such a strong foundation for improving the small business environment. And we were really excited to jump in on that momentum. So we were able to come in, do our backend regulatory research. We hosted a variety of round tables across the city with both entrepreneurs and departmental stakeholders. I'm seeing some, I know we had Councilwoman Gonzalez. We saw you at one of our round tables. Good to see you again. And ordinance drafting. So you'll see in the end of the report, some reform recommendations. We were able to do all of that at no cost and we're committed to staying involved with the process. We're going to remain in the conversation and make sure that those reform recommendations are implemented as the city and its entrepreneurs desire, and we'll be here to assist with that. So how the research process played out. We started by mapping six different business types based on reading through the code, looking through city websites for permitting and licensing processes. Those six business types were a restaurant, a retail business, a food truck, a home-based tutoring business, a home-based childcare, and then adding a liquor license to a restaurant. After we did that regulatory analysis just based off of the code and the LUDC and the websites, we hosted multiple roundtables both in person and over Zoom with entrepreneurs. Those were entrepreneurs of various business types, business sizes, business locations, even languages. We were able to have a roundtable entirely in Spanish thanks to the bilingual business services, which really strengthened our analysis and our insights. And we also talked with over 11 different staff members across county and city departments and agencies. So we were able to gather a really robust picture of Durango's regulatory processes for small businesses. And our main takeaway was that Durango has a host of resources and it has city staff who really want to see entrepreneurs succeed. But both entrepreneurs and city staff are operating within a system that's highly fragmented across portals departments, agencies, forms. And so to open one restaurant in Durango, an entrepreneur has to navigate 52 steps across 12 different agencies, 20 forms. There's a whole host of fees that are also in there and some in-person activities. But that's the high level. And the main takeaways from the entrepreneurs were that they want to comply, but they don't know how. that there were surprise requirements that arrived late in the process for them that forced redesigns, delays, or additional expenses. We talked with some entrepreneurs in our roundtables who actually weren't able to ever open their doors, who found that those delays or those additional expenses were too much of a barrier to surmount, and they weren't able to open a business in Durango. Some of them opened in nearby cities. Some of them didn't open at all. And finally, entrepreneurs want the city as a partner, not just a regulator. We heard throughout our conversations that many of these entrepreneurs would not have been able to open their businesses had it not been for the help of city staff and that city staff were always ready and patient with them, but that they really wanted a deeper culture of partnership and collaboration towards shared goals of small businesses, the small business environment in Durango. So like I said, there's 52 recommendations in the report. It's a whole menu. It's not a do this, do this, do this. It's a what fits best for the entrepreneurs and the city staff. So just to highlight a couple high level ones, three administrative no cost actions that we could act on today from the report. We can move the liquor license application online. We can formalize and publish plain language inspection checklists to increase transparency and level set expectations between small business owners in the city. And we can launch a business welcome packet. Something that emerged out of conversations with entrepreneurs was they said when they started their business, they wanted to receive something that was like, we're so glad you're here. We're so glad you've chosen Durango. Thank you. Here's how to do it. Some higher impact target areas that may take a little longer, may take a little more work. Easing zoning and parking requirements. Streamlining the food truck permit from a series of temporary use permits to a singular easily navigable permit, as well as lifting the visitation restriction on home-based businesses. Now I'll hand it back to Tommy. Thank you guys so much for your time.

Thanks, Laura. As Laura mentioned, and as you'll see in your packet, there's 11 pages of potential recommendations. I think there's 52 of them. We said we should really think about this like a menu. This is really a great example of eating the elephant one bite at a time. There's the full spectrum of recommendations that cities work found everything from updating broken links or outdated language and dates on the city's website all the way to. potentially significant code reforms or fee table reform. So I think that's really one of the great things about this report is we have a lot of different avenues and ways to approach it. Citi's work isn't recommending that we need to hire five new staff and immediately put out 100 different fires. Their approach is really finding the best fit for our community, our staff, and our entrepreneurs that start and run businesses that aligns with where we are at. I really want to stress that as you're reviewing all 52 of those recommendations. It's kind of a choose your own adventure, for lack of a better way to put it. I'm going to double click on something that Laura said. Cities work doesn't wipe their hands off and walk away now that they've put the report together. That's one of the incredible parts about this program is that they stick with us. They offered their staff time and their resources to pull from their deep well of national resources to help us shamelessly rip off and duplicate best practices in other cities to not need to reinvent the wheel. And they do that continuously. at our side. They don't expect us to magically find a solution to all 52 recommendations, but they're really doing this in continued partnership with us. And in continued partnership with us also are the entrepreneurs that helped guide some of the recommendations of this report. I think that's going to be a really interesting area and outcome is how do we continue to lean into those entrepreneurs as partners I think, you know, whenever I'm talking about my job at the city of Durango, I always tip my hat to Jose and how we've shifted the city into more of this partnership dynamic and less of this black and white You're the governing entity. You are the taxpayer. You will abide. But we've started to bridge into more of this partnership territory. So that's one thing that I'm going to try to be a good squeaky wheel about is how can we think about these changes and recommendations through that lens of partnership? That was really one of my favorite findings in this report is the fact that that kept coming up, that entrepreneurs craved and wanted that, and that they're ready and willing to work with us to help guide some of those best practices and illuminate some of those paths forward that maybe we have certain blind spots too. I would strongly recommend if you're available from 5 PM to 7 PM tomorrow evening, come join us at Zia Cantina. We're going to have a little launch party for this report where we've invited a lot of those entrepreneurs who helped guide the findings in this report, as well as those entrepreneur support organizations. that have helped accelerate a lot of the work that Aaron's doing and leading with the food business work group. But we really encourage counselors to be a part of the conversation. Faye and Ben publicly noticed the meeting, so you guys are covered. You're good to go. And I think there'll be some free nachos to enjoy as well. I mentioned that this work started five years ago. This started through the lens of helping small, tiny food business entrepreneurs find opportunities to formally start a business in Durango. This work has continued to snowball. The ripple effect has gotten larger. The waves have gotten bigger. The impact keeps spreading. As we've been building out and developing our prosperity office, I come back to this idea that prosperity is success that brings everyone along. I think if we're able to really dig in, lean into some of the findings in this report, if we did a third or a quarter of those findings and we successfully implemented them all, we'd be making the path towards entrepreneurship and starting a business in Durango just a little bit easier for someone, for a family, for someone who's starting to build community or call this place home. And I'm so, so, so excited that this opportunity fell into our lap through the hard work that Aaron's done, the partnership that the city was willing to lean into with National League of Cities. Just really thrilled that that all culminated in the report that's in front of you this evening. I'm happy to answer any questions or kick it to the city's work team. I know we're probably running short on time, but Thank you for the city manager update time tonight. And a big thank you and shout out to the city's work team for joining us in person this evening.

Mayor, I guess I just want to ask a question. This is kind of a city manager update. We're usually pretty limited in questions, but I've got a lot of questions on this one, so I'm not sure how best to handle it, to be honest. So can I ask for an exception and we do some questions? Sure. Okay. Is that all right with all of council? Cool. All right. Thank you. Shirley's first. I'll go after Shirley.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Tommy and team. I really like these kind of reports that are, you know, community feedback, like people with lived experiences going through this together and that you did comparable cities. I really like it. And I had an opportunity to read through it. It makes sense. It's readable. And I look forward to implementing some of the things that have been suggested. I did happen to come into one of the events as a small business owner. I didn't realize exactly what was going on. I just heard that it was City's Works, which I was familiar with. Did you have a name change somewhere along the way, or have you always been City Works?

We've always been City's Work. We're an initiative of the Institute for Justice.

And I think being part of the Institute for Justice, I was intrigued. And so I happened to go and sit in one of the meetings, and it is as presented, many of the things that were suggested. And so I'm really grateful for all the work and the time that you put in. I guess one of the recommendations that I did not see in the report was like a mentoring program. Did that ever come up at all?

You mean like a small business navigator?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Small business navigation is something that does come up in our conversations. As Tommy touched on, one of the things that we try to do with our report recommendations is make recommendations that can remove barriers. And so instead of hiring an additional person to serve as a navigator, what we're trying to focus on is how can we make the process more navigable? We know that the food business work group is already doing a host of to help navigate those systems and we have a lot of, or Durango has a lot of partner orgs like SBDC, Local First, and we were able to talk with those ESOs and one of our recommendations is for the city to better highlight those existing resources for navigation assistance.

That peer-to-peer model, Some of what you guys did, I think, organically here, but tends to be really helpful that a small business owner can go to another small business owner that's been through it and ask for guidance. I see what you're saying.

I completely agree. And we have a mentorship program through the food business work group and food business projects that we do through our navigator. When she can't help somebody specifically on a technical issue, she will contact them up with a mentor. I know that there are other service providers, SBDC and others who also provide mentorship. So I think you're bringing up a good point that we could do better at connecting when somebody goes to the city to better connect with those programs that do offer more mentorship because it is available and it's not always accessible or folks don't know about it. So making those stronger connections is something that I think is part of the recommendations of bridging services with the regulations and the licensing permitting process.

Well, thank you very much. And, you know, just as an aside, I mean, I love that you still printed something, like an actual print, that it's not just online. And I think it makes for just a nice presentation. And I guess, finally, that there was no cost to the city. for this really valuable information is also in a tremendous plus for us. And I just look forward to the implementation because I feel like I've been involved in a number of these activities that actually don't lead to implementation. I think that's on us as a council to adopt some of these suggestions And I hope that we do, because I think what makes Durango so inviting is that we have so many small businesses. You know, you can go to any city USA and go to any chain anywhere, but I think we have some really unique, creative entrepreneurs, and we want to continue to support them. So thank you for the presentation and for all the work.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Councilor Caruso?

I'll say a loud amen to Councilor Gonzalez's last point there for sure. So really appreciate that. Erin, you got to stop spreading Priscilla so much. She's going to break at some point. It's just incredible. So I wanted to thank her publicly as well as you, Rachel Landis. I think you guys are doing incredible work at Good Food Collective. Every time we interact, I enjoy the interaction. So thanks for all the hard work here too. And Tommy, thank you. for leaning in on the staff side, too. A couple of questions. Can somebody share with me the economic development orgs that are in town, SBDC, Alliance, all of those orgs? What kind of input or participation did they have in the process?

Yeah, absolutely. So part of the model that we did was that we had a lot of these lead organizations host those roundtables. So it wasn't just me, Erin Jolly from the Food Business Work Group, reaching out to Art Network, It was asking Tim from BID. It was asking Mary from SBDC. It was asking all these different organizations, Priscilla with the Spanish-speaking businesses, to then reach out to their networks as well to bring together a big swath of businesses. So that's how we did it. We kind of had these leads who jumped in to help kind of with that community outreach piece.

Great. Okay. Thank you very much for that. The ongoing tracking and the resets that will probably have to happen. So we've got a menu of opportunities here. And so how is, I almost need a little bit of help on the next step. How do we start choosing from the menu? And then when we are trying to decide on some things, it doesn't go very well. We want to replace them with some other things. How does all that play a role? Because you stay connected to us through the process.

That's a conversation that we're actively having right now. The report is fresh. We're hoping that at this point it's going to lead to some frank and realistic conversations with staff, with department leads of what seems genuinely obtainable in the short term. What are some of those small to medium tier items that we might be able to take a week or two, maybe a little bit later in the year when we have more capacity to do a bit of a website refresh to create that business welcome packet. And then how can we use resources like presenting the same information to the Community Development Commission to kind of see what type of appetite there is there to one, just let them know about the great work that was done and the feedback we received about a lot of our city processes, but seeing what sort of appetite there is there. But to be quite honest, the report's relatively fresh off the press, and I think those are conversations that we're actively starting to engage in. I'd kick it to Laura, maybe what's worked at other cities.

Yeah, I think usually because it's a menu, tomorrow night at our launch with our entrepreneurs, we'll be gathering their feedback as well on what are some of the biggest things they want to see. And I know that Tommy had mentioned like a study session if the council wants to dive deeper into these recommendations and talk about, okay, what are the most logical next steps for us as a city? We're happy to host opportunities to synthesize both that entrepreneur feedback, what the council's interested in, what's feasible for departments. We're happy to jump in with ordinance language, best practices, wherever we're needed. And there's no binding commitments on, okay, we're going to do this policy. Oh, now we're locked in. It's really what the community wants, what's feasible, what's going to happen.

There was a concept that we're doing this for Durango and we've bonded with you, et cetera. But how do we export this a little bit and help out the county, Bayfield, Ignacio, surrounding municipalities that could be benefiting off of this as well?

Yeah, I think that the spirit of the recommendations is widely applicable across the county and surrounding areas. And I invite anyone outside of the city to take a look at the report as well and think, oh, okay, where could we standardize our processes? Where could we publish an inspection checklist? What resources do we already have existing that we could digitize? The nice thing about working with cities across the country is a lot of these are best practices. So while we went to the effort to tailor them specifically to Durango, their sentiment is widely applicable. And we'd be happy as well to do any sort of like technical assistance or one-off consulting with the county or with Bayfield. If they are really interested in doing X from the report, but they want to know how it could work in Bayfield, we're happy to take a look at their code, help them out with that as well.

Yeah, Council, earlier on we talked a little bit about partnerships and reaching out more, and this seems like a great idea in some way, shape, or form, and I don't want to direct staff or anything along those lines, but hopefully that can be part of the conversations as we move forward.

Absolutely, I totally agree, and through the Good Food Collective, we have invited some county staff to be involved and to closely track this, invited them here tonight, invited them to our event tomorrow, and some follow-up conversations with City's Work so that we could figure out how to use this framework and have a larger impact across the county and the region.

Great. Last question. The freeness is appreciated, no doubt about that. But you are an organization that needs funding, et cetera, et cetera. So have you had other municipalities or folks that you've worked with that have shown their thanks in some other way than straight donation? Or you just would like the donation?

Yeah, no, absolutely not. We've never had a city be like, oh, thank you so much. Here's a donation. We started Citi's work with a grant fund from the Kauffman Foundation out of Kansas City. But ultimately, the Institute for Justice, all of our work is just supported by donors who really believe in our mission and who believe in the work we're doing to create economic opportunity across the country. And they want to donate so that that can happen for people. And it feels like a blessing to be able to do this work based off of their donations and for communities who deserve it and are working collaboratively to make it happen. So, yeah. Yeah.

All right. No city swag, no Frisbees, nothing.

No, I mean, no. My my my my compliance team would instruct me to say no city Frisbees, even though I I might enjoy.

We all run into that. Thanks so much for all the work. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Mayor. Just to piggyback on. Sorry, Joseph, some more time. Yeah, just to piggyback on what Councillor Costa was saying, you know, just when you think you couldn't be more proud of staff and organizations like the Good Food Collective and the La Plata Equity Food Equity Coalition and working with community partners that go in and look at, you know, how could we be doing things better? Just super proud of the work that is being put in. But then, you know, to kind of also piggyback on Councillor Gonzalez's statements of really keying in on stakeholders and constituents and figuring out where are the choke points and how can we make this to be a more business friendly environment because i will tell you i mean we just had it two weeks ago we um accused a lot of being business averse or there's a lot of narratives around you know that cities you know don't always uh give a lot of latitude and freedom to businesses and so I'm really appreciative of this work to see how we can do things better. And so, yeah, thanks for being receptive, Tommy, to some of these. And Aaron, thank you. And Priscilla for all the great work and the mentorship program. I think this is a really awesome core group of folks. And I'm looking forward to really diving through some of this. to really figure out where we can, you know, find some some impact and be like where the rubber meets the road and how this actually goes from ideology to actually implementation. So really excited about that process. So thank you again. Councilor Guzzi.

Yeah, well, thank you guys. I really do appreciate the. The effort to put it together in a pamphlet because. We're not business adverse. I did go to business school and I've been a business owner in my past, so I really appreciate the tools put together to help other businesses get started because there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get a successful business going in Durango and plus the seasonality and the tourism and we're a service economy, so there's a lot that goes into it. So thank you very much, Tommy, for helping this issue because I know you have a lot of knowledge in economic development, and I'm glad to see that it's all coming together and working for everybody. So thank you very much.

Right. Thanks all so much.

Appreciate it. Right. 5.2.

Yes, Mayor and Council, every and every once, but this is a really great example of our employees coming up with a tool to help us make our presentations better. And just another decision point to highlight to the city council that as we're looking at projects, programs and recommendations, they found a way to figure it and how it would align with our vision. So Mike's going to talk a little bit about how this tool, how we use it, how it can be used for council. But I think it's just a great example of our employees coming together from all over the departments and coming up with some really good tools to ensure the vision is always first and foremost with the actions in the daily job that we're doing.

Thank you, Jose. Mike French from the Prosperity Office. Mayor and Council, as a result of our Trails to Excellence initiative and journey, the Performance Improvement Team has created six strategy teams. They're made up of different departments, divisions that all come together, as Jose alluded to. Each strategy team takes on a formal strategic planning process, and works on a problem statement that would impact the city as a whole. What I'm going to talk about is the IHED Vision Advancement Tool. You'll see this presented by every single department as they bring action to council. So this is an update to give you a heads up of what you're going to see, and I'll go through the tool and show you how that's going to work. The problem that we are trying to solve for is that our strategic plan gives long-term direction, but staff lacks a consistent method of showing how individual actions and projects and initiatives that are brought before council align to our vision. There's not a common evaluation tool. There's not common language. It really varies from department to department, director to director. And then we don't have a simple way of our community connecting to the day-to-day business that the city does. So the opportunity is to make vision executable without really changing that vision. What the tool does is, and you'll see a glimpse of this, is it gives a structured framework to use before council when we're providing presentations. It'll be at the very end of the presentation, right before recommendation, sort of as a summary, as a narrative of how it aligns to vision. What's interesting about the tool is as directors prepare for this or presenters prepare for this, there's some homework to do. There's 25 questions that people answer. Those 25 questions are automated into a web-based tool around the rubric that's based on our vision. And I'll go into that in a little bit more detail. And now it spits a summary. The rubric is direct correlation to our vision. This is some work that the team did. They looked at the vision and pulled out some very specific words and defined those words, multi-generational, authentic, diverse, engaged, thriving, and environmentally responsible. In those definitions is the 25 questions that people answer. And that then again creates the vision alignment. It's a practical way to show how day-to-day decisions advance our adopted vision. This is what you'll see. This is the summary. This is what the end graphic or tool that spits out from the rubric. People have an opportunity to then copy and paste this into their template. And it really is about not a score sheet, but it's about how we advance the vision. Different initiatives, different projects will advance the vision in different ways. Some will not advance the vision as holistically as others and that's okay. We originally started as a scorecard and we realized that everybody was trying to maximize the score and we even called it a vision alignment score. And we had to back off of that. We went through, what you did not see is we went through a trial period in our agenda meetings for several months, ran the tool, got some feedback and then made some adjustments. Tommy had stated that we do a decent job of borrowing best practices. We reached out to three of the five entities of municipalities that have been Baldrige Award winners. That included Fort Collins, that included Henderson and Germantown, and they really helped us get to this place. The unlock, though, came from Crested Butte and their Compass Project. And so if you ever look at the Compass Project, you'll see how they strongly align to their vision. And that's where the genesis of the tool came from. So again, it's a web-based tool. This is what you'll see in every presentation. And I say this often, but I get to stand here and give the presentation. But there is a lot of people that went into and hard work that went into this. Jamie Lobko helped me be a team lead for the I had strategy team, so I have a lot of gratitude to her and everybody that participated in that team.

But wait.

There's always a question from Kip. There's always a question. Can I go ahead there? Yes. Yeah. Just quick. We saw two different versions of it. We saw the abbreviated version that was here and then a longer version in our agenda packet. Is the intention that one of those comes and not the other?

You'll see the shorter version in the presentations.

In the presentations. We'll see them in the agenda packet. Will we see the longer version in the agenda packet?

Actually, we hadn't talked about putting that in the agenda packet, but we can. We certainly can. so that you see how we got to that summary slide.

Yeah, yeah. I thought that was interesting, at least every now and then, or maybe on something that's a little bit more controversial. Last question. Did you guys talk at all about even weights on all of those criteria versus weighting them in a different manner?

No. I think when we looked at them, we felt like the vision had pretty equal weight, and we didn't want to tilt the scale one way or the other. Our objective was not to redefine the vision it was to keep the vision as is uh really define that as best as possible and then put a rubric around how we advance the vision rather than how we score it so when we tried to wait it when we tried to modify the vision uh as a matter of fact when we started this project We were going down a direction where we wanted to even consider, does the vision need a redefinition for the sake of our different stakeholders? Does it need to be interpreted in different ways? And we were very fortunate to have Jose come in and say, that vision is a sacred cow. We're not going to redo the vision. That's up to council. So your job is to determine how we advance that.

When was this vision last reviewed?

Thanks. 2024.

Oh, OK. Great. Yeah. All right. Thanks for all the work on this. Really appreciate it. Thank you. That's a yes.

Thank thank you, Mayor. OK, so this. Can you quantify facts in this? You know, say like for an evaluation.

Yeah, so the purpose is is twofold. Number one, it gives the team an idea of how we're communicating vision within projects, internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, hopefully they can see how this aligns to vision. In terms of quantifying it, there is a score, but we're really trying to get away from scoring it. It's more, are we advancing to a vision? What we are doing behind the scenes, counselor, is we are keeping all of the scores and measuring this And so we went through a trial period and we have collected all that data. We plan to visit out of the performance improvement group. We plan to visit all of these metrics on a quarterly basis and see how we're performing and are we performing consistently quarter over quarter, year over year, and in which one of these areas in our vision is outpacing the other. So we're gonna collect quite a bit of data as we go through this process.

Thank you, Mike. I find this really interesting. So thank you.

Thank you. I'll just add briefly, blown away. I mean, give you all and the rest of staff enough time and energy and latitude to do something like this is incredible. I'm just looking forward to seeing how this progresses and and how this i mean the strategic plan and the vision is everything to us right like we base all of our decisions and all our policy around this and so having a tool that that really helps um just consolidate all that and then really refine why i mean that's what it is it's like how do we solve the why of how we're advancing this i'm just I haven't had a chance to dive down deep into this, but truly from face value, super blown away and kudos to you and the team for really doing something unique out of the box that really progresses. How we're doing things and why so super proud.

I appreciate the comment that this this really exemplifies the why it's.

Counselor Gonzalez.

Don't get it.

Tell me what I'm just like trying to figure out.

Like what am I missing that my colleagues are all understanding? I mean who who? Who determines these metrics?

Whoever the team that's working on this, the internal stakeholder will will go through a. A scoring system. Again, we're trying to get away from scoring systems, but they're answering 25 questions. From those 25 questions, this summary report gets spit out in an automated way through a web-based application. And I think, counselor, as you start to see the vision alignment and hear the narratives of people talking about where the alignment is, as an example, Jay Derosier from Prosperity Office will come up later today. And in a first reading of an ordinance, he'll talk about how that ordinance aligns to the vision. And he'll give a short narrative that matches this report.

But it's still done by his or her own feeling about the topic? Or it's not AI-driven based on?

It's not AI-driven. The 25 questions are as objective as possible.

But isn't that going to make a lot more work for the staff?

Excuse me?

Won't that make a lot more work for the staff member that has the data?

Yes, there is a little bit of work, but it's a pretty quick assessment, 25 questions, scoring one through four. It probably takes 10 minutes, if that.

Okay. Well, you know, I don't know. It's not coming naturally to me. So hopefully after I see it a few times, it will make a little bit more sense. But, you know, I don't know. Yeah. I'll give it a chance.

Councillor Gonzales, I will follow up with you this evening. We do have an executive overview that we've drafted that I will send to the rest of Council as well.

OK, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike. Alright, moving on to agenda number six community. I'm sorry, Committee, Board and Liaison reports.

Council Koso.

Yeah, just a Couple of items to talk about. I did meet with the Metz neighborhood. This is Metz Lane neighborhood group about 8 or 9 neighbors about their concerns around the 250-251 intersection. Sent that email around, but it was a great meeting, very illuminating, and I'm looking forward to trying to work with them in the future. Also airport Commission meeting happened as well. The highlights from that meeting year end the first quarter for 2026. Still are seeing increases in passengers at 11%. Seats increased 12% year over year. But the average load factor is still flat at 83%. We're just doing great out there and continue to kind of break records. The other thing I wanted to highlight was that the domestic fare, average domestic fare decreased $30. This is an ongoing decrease in the domestic fares, shrinking the difference between us and where most of our leakage happens to Albuquerque. So the work that's going on at the airport is just great. And we're really seeing some fair decreases driven by the work that Tony Vicari and his team are doing out there. Thank you very much. Council Yuzzi.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, so I did have my office hours on the 15th. And a couple of the topics that came up was, of course, parking. So I got a lot of input on that and what we should do. And then, well, I can't remember. Oh, just general activities at the rec center because I held my office hours at the rec center to see if I could draw in a different dynamic there. And so we got a lot of people also coming by just talking about how they enjoy the rec center. And, you know, we don't see city council. And it's like, well, I'm here. So I thought that was a good change of pace. But there was all good reaction. I didn't have any blowback on anything. So thank you.

Great. Thank you. I had a few meetings this past week. We obviously all had the URA board meeting on the 13th. We talked about a few different things, but the big one was revolving around a potential URA designation for South Durango. And so there's a lot of conversation around that and We'll move forward with that. I'm sure the next meeting, we had a city county joint meeting on Tuesday of last week where we talked about a lot of successes that have been shared by both the city and county. And then we had conversation around a potential library district and kind of the historical narrative and kind of where we're at now. So. Good conversations had around there. And then I was able to meet up with Mr. Jeremy Mustard and Eric Burgos on Thursday of last week. They are a part of. mission ready durango veterans stand down event and basically uh they have i think a stand down event uh every year but this is going to be a little bit different um and they're really creative and thinking about how they could really try to reach out to more veterans uh locally and regionally and so it's a really cool conversation to have with those guys now that i think about it i owe eric an email to get some of our federal elected officials involved to see how they could help with providing federal resources and having a seat at the table so Yeah, really good conversations around there. And then yeah, obviously I also talked about the centennial circuit relay for ALS that I met with Katie yesterday. And yeah, good. Yeah, just had a really, really busy week last week. It was great. Councilor Ghazi, I'm sorry, you already, that's right. Councilor Gonzalez, you good to go? Perfect. right then we will move on to agenda item number seven public comment on items on under consideration thank you mayor and um no one had signed up for public comments for agenda related items tonight so we could probably move forward great and we will go ahead and get a reading of the consent agenda please

All right. And then on tonight's consent agenda, we have, excuse me, under approval of minutes, there are no items. Under 8.2 final reading of ordinances, we have 8.2.1, which is ordinance 2026-35 regarding the annexation and initial zoning of the Vero Bridge addition to the city of Durango and declaring an effective date. 8.2.2 is ordinance 2026-36 regarding the annexation and initial zoning of the intersection of Three Springs Boulevard and U.S. Highway 160 annexation, which is 29026 and 29064 Highway 160. And then 8.2.3 is the amended ordinance 2026-22 amending impertinent part The Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 4, Animals, Article 5, Impoundment, Section 4-97, Disposition of Impounded Animals. There are no items under adoption of resolutions by consent. There are no items under approval of other administrative items. No items under request for public hearing. And then under 8.6, introduction of ordinances, we have one, which is an ordinance authorizing the City of Durango to execute a sublease with Fort Lewis College for space in the main mall to establish a collaborative community hub. And then under 8.7, requests for excused absences, we have a request for excused absence for the August 4th, 2026 City Council study session and regular meeting from Councilor Koso.

Alright, would anyone like to pull anything from the consent agenda?

Alright, great. Can you get a roll call, please? The motion passes.

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

And Mayor, I apologize for clarity. This skipped past me, but there was no motion or second to approve the consent agenda. I just went for the roll call.

I make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Thank you. And then let me clear this and set it one more time.

The motion passes.

Three in favor, Kip Kosso, Dave Woodruff, Shirley Gonzalez. Two absent, Gilda Yazzie, Jessica Lawyer.

We will get it.

The motion passes. Four in favor. Gilda Yazzie, Dave Woodruff, Kip Kosso, Shirley Gonzalez, 1, absent, Jessica Lawyer.

Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number 11, resolutions.

Thank you, Mayor. The first resolution is 11.1, a resolution regarding the Homestead Subdivision Preliminary Plan.

Thank you.

Evening, Mayor Woodruff, Council, Daniel Murray in the Community Development Department. The item before you is the Homestead Subdivision Preliminary Plan. Housing projects such as this align with the city's strategic plan goal of innovative housing and economic development. Looking at the process thus far, it started with our Community Development Commission, who considered the conceptual subdivision plan that was in October of last year. Then a series of meetings proceeded to annex and zone the parcel. They went to Community Development Commission and then actually went before Council three different times. That was approved earlier this year. Then the preliminary plan that is before you went to the Community Development Commission last month and they provided a favorable recommendation. Then the item before you is here for action of a preliminary plan. If it's approved, the project will proceed, pull building permits, and then the final step in the planning process is known as the final plan or an as-built plat for a townhome development, which is an administrative review. For context, we see the parcel shown in blue. It's about 1.4 acres. We're about a third of the mile up Florida Road from East Animas, County Road 250 intersection. It's really interesting to see this patchwork of pink and then aerial imagery. So the subject parcel is pink. It's been annexed. And you see how the city is growing in a rather incremental manner. This isn't the farthest out city limits, but it is towards the edge of where the city is growing. And then you have some remnant parcels that are still shown in the county. It's a very common pattern of development on the city's edge. So the subject parcel there shown in blue. With respect to the comprehensive plan, we rely on our future land use map. This is the map you see in front of you. It categorizes this parcel as residential high density. That's our highest residential density, which makes sense along a corridor such as this where we have good proximity to services. In proximity to the city limits and now in city limits. When it was zoned, it was zoned residential high. Again, our highest zoning classification, which is consistent with the also darker brown parcel across the street. And the density is consistent with the overall, the range is 12 to 24 units. So with 17 units, this is 12 and a half units. So just in the lower end of that allowable density. So now I've switched the view. Note that north is to the left. Did that just to get everything on the page. This is the current parcel. It's home to a single family residence. And then the proposal is for a 17 unit townhome development. You can see in the beginning of this image here, this is a five plex of five townhome units. This is Florida Rd. And then there's four different groupings of three townhome units. The site plan includes typical elements such as a trash enclosure here, fire truck turnaround. There's 29 parking spaces, four of which are EV, another two of which are ADA. There's a minimum required 10% open space dedication on the southern back portion of the property. That would be for the use of residents. It also coincides with a portion of the property that can't be developed. It's 30% slopes or more. There's a retaining wall here to distinguish that hillside from the developable area. There's also a retaining wall here to separate it from the property to the east. Series of internal sidewalks allowing for circulation and then there is a sidewalk being built. This is common along Florida development build sidewalk. At times people may see that being rather incomplete. It is the nature of development. We get the improvements as we go and overtime it creates a corridor. The drainage plan will be the last item I'll highlight here. Great is naturally sloping towards Florida, so there's two detention ponds. Sorry, these are some renderings of the property. This upper left would be an interior view and then you see to the right more interior view. The bottom left would be the view you'd have from Florida Road. You see that five plex up front, the two detention ponds. This is where you drive in and well landscaped property and overtime it'll look this good. Some elements that staff take into consideration are the two story massing. This is consistent with the surrounding context. It's a very residential corridor. We have traditional front porch elements. This defines the entrance and the pedestrian scale. It's where people can hang out, creating a small neighborhood. Both the wall plane and the roofs create a series of offsets which help break up the massing, and the color scheme does that as well. The parcel is subject to the Wildfire Resiliency Code. That's a newer addition here in 2026. So the structures will have materials that are hardened as well as creating defensible space around the property. This illustration is actually a little too too much vegetation, but we have a site plan that's being analyzed and landscaping plan that will ensure there are not combustible materials within five feet of the home. The review criteria I've spoken to thus far, we talked about the comprehensive plan, zoning, compatibility with surrounding development, site plan features. A few other items I'll mention are the project is being served by City Water and Sewer, And a big consideration in our community is compliance with the fair share affordable housing regulations. So at this time the applicant is proceeding with what's known as a standard fair share agreement for intermediate ownership affordability. These units are for sale units. They're going to be owner occupied as well as restricted to 150% AMI for a period of seven years. And that will be a deed restriction that's recorded and helps the city achieve this goal. of intermediate ownership affordability. There is an alternative plan in the works. You may have been informed the city is working and the applicant is working with Durango School District to purchase a portion of these units for employee housing. That plan has not been formally submitted to the city yet. The school is actually waiting on this preliminary plan approval. If Council approves the project, then that gives the school district the ability to move forward with their contract and the developer. So in that case would actually come back to you with a revised fair share agreement, and that's something we we do hope to be the case. The absence of a fair share or final fair share plan is is not problematic. Final fair share is required at final plat. That was that last step I mentioned. So for purposes of this evening, you're able to move forward on preliminary plan. Thus far, no public comments received on this project. Staff is recommending approval as it meets the review criteria and the land use and development code supports our strategic plan goals as well as the comprehensive plan. There's two conditions in the recommended motion here, one having to do with landscaping and the other having to ensure compliance with all engineering comments, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Move to approve resolution number R dash 2026 dash 0065 for the Homestead major subdivision preliminary plan with the findings that the proposed complies with the land use and development code criteria for major subdivisions. So long as the following conditions are met, landscaping plan is found to meet all code required code standards. Applicant addresses all engineering comments and engineering division. Provides final approval and second.

Alright discussion. Councilor Gonzales.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. For the streets that are in the subdivision, are those maintained by the city or by the private developer?

The what part?

The streets.

Streets.

Or the thoroughfares.

They're not fully through streets. Parking lot.

Yeah. That's by the city or by the developer?

The private. So by the development, the HOA.

Okay. And is that pretty standard for the type of development they are maintained by the developer?

It is.

Okay. And you mentioned part of the fair share program, but is there something in here that says it cannot be sold to developers? Do they have to be sold to homeowners? Or is there any restriction on that?

They have to be owner-occupied.

Have to be. Okay. Okay, great.

The traditional model, and that's for a period of seven years.

Okay, so only for seven years they have to be unoccupied? Okay. All right, thank you. That's all the questions I have.

Councilor Cussell?

Daniel, thanks for answering some of my previous questions, but I've just got a small one for you. The internal circulation, it just wasn't feasible to build any internal circulation, so all of the sidewalk ends up out on Florida. Not the most pleasant walking in there. Do we ever do... not formal circulation but trails or anything through when you've got this 30 slope you've got areas that are unbuildable do we ever try and encourage internal circulation using paths through there or anything i know it's an odd question but yeah you know human nature is creates those circulation and the city does on the land behind this property so it's not entirely out of the question that

trails or walking paths will be built that would connect to something greater, which in this case is the Fort Lewis Mesa College campus. There could be a connection there in the future.

Yeah, not necessarily. There's never been necessarily a requirement to build an informal internal circulation network.

Not for pedestrian. We would require that for larger development if it were vehicle needs, but this doesn't trip that threshold.

Plus the 30% grade would be tough for some pedestrians.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Some switchbacks.

Great. Thanks.

Thanks, Daniel. Just real quick. Correct me if I'm wrong. Does this site plan need to have something defined as 10% open space? I saw the CDC talking about that in their meeting, but...

The PLAT.

The PLAT.

Accomplished that.

Okay. And so I'm assuming the... The area behind the retaining wall will be designated as the open space. What is the spirit behind the open space requirement when submitting a plot? Is it to have usable open space or is it just to have open space to look at?

Yeah, the code is does not give us the clarity to then require that it be usable if it were a larger development is when we get into the requirement for parks. This size of development is not requiring that more active. open space and allowing it to be a passive open space.

I see. Okay. Thank you for that. And then second question, as part of the traffic access, it said that there was a need to remove a street tree. Is there a plan to replace that tree with a plan of another tree somewhere else, or would it be kind of in the roundabout the same location?

Yeah. The landscaping plan that was submitted does account for tree removal, and they are doing a mitigation rate for trees on site.

Oh, perfect. OK, great. Alright, that's all I have. Thank you so much. Alright, thanks Daniel. Appreciate it. Any other questions or comments?

Alright, can I get a roll call please? The motion passes.

Four in favor Dave Woodruff, Gilda Yazzie, Kip Kosso, Shirley Gonzalez. One absent Jessica lawyer.

Thank you, Mayor. And the next item is 11.2, which is a resolution amending the 2026 capital budget.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Gloria Platt with the Finance Department. Again, this item is for the 2026 mid-year capital budget amendments. I apologize that the date on this slide says April 21st. It is, in fact, July 21st. This recommendation for capital amendments is in line with the organizational stewardship goal. And I did want to note that normally we do have our mid year amendments. We have the capital and operating together. We did split that out this time, so we're doing the capital tonight and we will have the operating portion on our next regular meeting on August 4th. Also, all funds presented tonight except for airport were presented to FAB on July 9th, and we will show their recommendation in a later slide. So, first, this summary shows all funds that have budget requests this evening. We have revenue requests in the amount of $1,828,276. and expense requests in the amount of $1,447,645. So we'll go through it by fund. The first fund that we will talk about is 2015 sales tax fund. We do have revenues making almost that entire total we just talked about of $1,808,276. These are mostly made up of grants, as you can see divided by project here, for Roosa Avenue College and 8th and North Main ADA and a donation in the amount of $13,000 for the surf wave feasibility study. Additionally, we have increased expenses that we are requesting in the multimodal project for the Roosa Connect safety project in the amount of $48,807. and then a transfer that we're requesting from 2025 in the amount of $330,598. So the expenses for this fund that we're requesting is $379,405. So this is just a little more details on these items. These grant funds were actually budgeted in 2025. They were not received or recognized, and we have a need to roll these forward to 2026. The way this works is the grant reimbursements are received or they're submitted for after the project expenses are paid. And so we are asking to roll these into 2026. Additionally, we did receive the funds for the surf wave feasibility study. And so we are recognizing those funds as well. In the expenses, the RUSA additional funding is needed for required third party inspection services for this partially funded CDOT project. And then in the 2025 maintenance transfer, this is a transfer that was also from 2025. And this is associated with infrastructure costs. And due to a timing issue, a portion of this transfer was omitted. And we're requesting to add this to the 2026 budget to ensure that these revenues for the general fund are recognized and the general fund is in fact whole. And we do have, we do have a couple of these. I just want to go ahead and note that there are this, you'll see this again in the 2019 sales tax fund and the 2020, sorry, 2025 sales tax fund as well. This is the project slide for the RUSA connection project with additional details and Lily is here from multimodal to answer any questions that you might have as well. So next we have the 2019 sales tax fund. We have expenses that we're requesting in the amount of $293,812. This is made up by an increase in the alley reconstruction and paving project in the amount of $64,678. This was needed for the low bid on this project. This is the delta in what is budgeted and that low bid. Additionally, we have a request for $229,134. Again, this is included in part of that 2025 transfer that we are asking to go ahead and roll forward to 2025. I'm sorry, 2026. Again, we have the project slide for the annual alley improvement program. So you have the details on that project and John Harris is here as well to answer questions that you have on that project as well. Moving to the 2025 sales tax fund, we are requesting additional 20,000 for revenues and this is for a donation for the Mason Park play structure. And then we do have the corresponding expense associated with this donation that we're asking to increase by 20,000. Additionally, we have $21,507 that we are asking to carry forward and those maintenance transfers. And I did. Kind of go through this already with those details, but we do have the project slide here for the that playground and Scott McLean is also available tonight for any questions you have on this project as well. We have the airport construction fund next and we have a number of projects. Some of these are new projects and some of them are adjustments to existing projects. The net here is an increase to expenses in the amount of $590,000. And we'll let Tony come up and go through his project slides. Some of these are new, as mentioned, and provide the details on these.

Good evening, Council.

Tony Vicari, Aviation Director at the Durango-La Plata County Airport. Do a quick run-through on these. The first four are new projects, as Gloria mentioned, and then the last two are amendments. The first new project is the runway 321 pavement maintenance design. This, along with the next project, are standard FAA AIP grant funded projects to the tune of 92% grant funding. The FAA capital cycle works a little different than our fiscal year cycle. We typically work on scoping over the winter and then ultimately design through the summer and fall and construct the following year. So this is simply just enabling these new design projects on the standard AIP cycle. This first one will incorporate standard pavement maintenance design on our one and sole runway. The next project, similarly, another FAA AIP grant funded project to the tune of 92% is for our commercial apron expansion. This will expand the apron to the north, expanding another concrete hard stand to accommodate larger mainline sized aircraft as we continue to grow and add service, allowing us to add another parking gate for aircraft and increase our capacity. also better aligning the apron with the physical footprint of the expanded terminal. Next new project is for an airport water supply alternative study. As you may know, the airport owns and operates its own independent water and wastewater facilities. We do not have access to central utilities currently at the airport, nor have we in our history. As we continue to see extended periods of drought conditions in our area, much as we're familiar with the conversation in the city, the airport feels those drought impacts We're users of the Florida River just further downstream from what the primary water source for the city of Durango is. As these continue to be threatened, we're looking to establish an alternative study to look at options to augment our water supply into the future. The last such study was completed about 12 years ago before my time at the airport. It needs updating, and also we've had a lot of changes at the airport in terms of our growth trajectory as well as drought condition changes during that period. So this will look at options for us to augment our water supply into the future. And the last new project is the replacement of a fleet vehicle at the airport. This was a surprise project. We typically replace vehicles on a standard interval. However, we had an unfortunate incident with an electrical fire that caused a vehicle to be totaled, and so we're looking to appropriate this now so we can get our fleet restored to its full capacity. And that project is partially offset by insurance payment funds for the total of that vehicle. And then the last two are amendments, the first being parking lot expansion phase three design. This project is already an appropriated budget for 2026. We're looking to expand this by $110,000 to incorporate anticipated phase four of the project. Originally, we had kept phase three to be strictly to a roadway and modest parking expansion. However, as we continue to see strong demand in the parking lots at the airport, we had a suggestion from the airport commission at a recent meeting to revisit this design and potentially incorporate the next phase of expansion into the design process, allowing us to try to continue to maintain our position ahead of demand at the airport and not fall behind. I thought that was a good recommendation, and so we're bringing that forth to be able to do that. There's limited risk here. Be able to design that project and the intent is to Keep phase four as a bid alternate on next year's construction bids. If we are in the financial position to execute that, we can potentially include it in next year's construction project. If not, we have that design ready to go on the shelf and we'll be able to move at what point it makes sense financially and operationally for the airport. And lastly, this is an amendment to the rental car quick turnaround facility design project, increasing that project budget by $450,000. The original appropriated budget contemplated us moving through concept and schematic design, with the intent to come forward in the future once the concept was fully proven out to put the full budget forward. At this point, we have moved far enough through that design to feel confident that the site layout and details will meet our future and anticipated long-term needs of the rental cars. So we're looking to appropriate the full budget to allow us to move through that full design here in 2026. And then these are offsetting. This slide looks like it cut off slightly. There's another project that should be above that. But there are four projects that did come in this year below budget, substantially below due to competitive bidding, and that offsets a significant amount of the costs associated with the new projects that we're enabling.

Okay, next we will go to the Water Construction Fund. Here we are requesting $70,768. This is for carry forward of project management fees from 2025. This one is a little different than the previous transfers mentioned in the sales tax funds. Basically we offset 5% of project costs to the CIP team as a option instead of consulting these management fees out. And so we have project increases throughout the year. We have, so this was a timing, And so we're requesting to roll forward this $70,768 to 2026. The same thing in the sewer construction fund for the sewer projects in the amount of $69,895. And then we have a small amount in the trash and recycling fund. For $2,258. And so this is our basically this slide is covering our fab fab recommendation. The Financial Advisory Board. This meeting was on July 9th. The fab did recommend approval of these budget amendments with some conditions, so we did have a typo as we talked about those funds that we're requesting to roll into 2026. Earlier from the 2015 fund, we had a typo in one of the projects, so they wanted to make sure that that was corrected. We did send that out to the fab and that has been corrected in the slides tonight. That was on the college and 8th project. Also, they did want to. They requested that these transfers that we talked about tonight in the slides that we presented to the fab. While we were planning to discuss and provide narrative on that, we didn't provide that in the slides. And so they asked that we did provide those notes in our slide tonight. And so these are examples of recommendations that the FAB has made that we have brought forward to the council in your consideration of this item. And then we have a recommended motion tonight and be happy to answer any questions that y'all have.

Move to approve the budget amendment by resolution, amending the 2026 capital budget, increasing appropriations for the 2015 sales tax fund, 2025 parks, open space and trails fund, the 2019 sales tax fund, the airport construction fund, the water construction fund, the sewer construction fund, and the trash and recycling construction fund for the mid-year budget amendments for the city of Durango, Colorado. Second.

Any conversation questions? Councilor Kosovo.

Just a clarification, since we're getting $12,500 back from the insurance company on the airport vehicle, do we not offset the $85,000 request or is that handled in a different way when it's an insurance reimbursement? Just an education question more than anything else.

Well, I can answer the part of it. So basically the insurance will come back as revenue. So we would pay the full expense.

So we need to keep the $85,000 so we cover the full cost of the vehicle, but we'll receive that $12,000 and it'll be tracked as revenue.

Correct.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. One other thing, Council, I just want to put a pin in the idea that we are building another parking lot out at the airport. This is the fourth year in a row that we've been adding 150 to 250 spaces. out at the airport. So the beast keeps needing more and more parking. If we are a town that is set on environmental responsibility, I think we need to start investigating alternate things to do to provide transportation in and around the airport, then just keep building another 150 to 250 parking spaces. I'll leave it there. It's future discussion, but I just wanted to point out that it is the fourth lot in four years that we've been planning. Thank you.

All right, Council Yazzie.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, so on the Water Construction Fund, it says $70,768 for project management fees. Are you hiring an outside contractor to do the management, or who's doing the management for that?

This is our internal CIP team. We budget 5% on the projects that they manage within the city. And those funds are paid to the general fund to offset their costs.

Okay. And that's the same with the other project?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Could you get a roll call, please?

The motion passes. Four in favor, Dave Woodruff. Gilda Yazzie, Kip Koso, Shirley Gonzalez, 1, absent, Jessica Lawyer.

Moving on to item number 12, consideration of ordinances.

Thank you, Mayor. The first ordinance for consideration is 12.1, and that's an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with Don L. Gosney and Kelly C. Gosney for aircraft hangar 1452 at the airport.

Good evening, Council. Tony Vicari, Aviation Director at the Durango-La Plata County Airport. We're here to discuss an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with Don Gosney and Kelly Gosney for aircraft hangar 1452 at the airport. This is in alignment with the city's strategic plan, specifically the reliable infrastructure and community connectivity goal. A quick summary here. Don Gosney is an existing lessee at the airport under a ground lease for an aircraft hangar improvements that are located at 1452 Airport Road. That's in our South General Aviation Complex. It's a box hanger with dimensions of about 60 by 60. That existing ground lease has expired earlier in this year and is currently in a month-to-month tenancy, and the lessee has formally requested a new lease term for continued utilization of that hanger for aeronautical purposes. Consistent with our leasing policy guidance, the airport staff have prepared a draft ground lease with a base term of 15 years. Here's a quick aerial map of the existing hanger at the airport. That 15-year base term was developed using the following bullet points. First, the airport always looks to ensure that any improvements are consistent with our existing airport layout plan. In this case, they are. The existing hangar improvements are also looked at for existing age. These are currently 30 years of age approximately from initial construction. With that being the case, we don't look at terms longer than 15 years since they wouldn't be appropriate unless there's a significant additional investment by the lessee at that point in the lease term. As we limit those to shorter terms, it allows us to ensure that long-term utilization of the land at the airport remains consistent with our ALP, and we track the age and condition of structures over time, as well as match market conditions. And the lessee has provided a professional engineering third-party report indicating that the structure is in good condition and can maintain its capacity through the proposed lease period. From an ALP perspective, as we noted, this is consistent with our current ALP. The Airport Advisory Commission reviewed this draft ground lease in its June 2026 meeting and unanimously recommended its approval, and the City Attorney's Office has also reviewed the proposed lease agreement. Fiscal impact, this ground lease would be at our current 41 cents per square foot annual ground rent rate, resulting in just over $3,500 in total annual ground rent with future CPI adjustments included, and it also produces fuel flowage fees and water and sewer utility fees on an ongoing basis. Over the full 15 years of the term, this will produce a little over $63,000 in total approximate ground rent for the airport. This produces long-term stable ground rent for the airport, as well as ongoing aeronautical use of our South GA complex and ongoing fees. And as was introduced earlier tonight, this is a quick look at the vision alignment for this particular project. Here you can see that the vision alignment is not particularly strong, just given that this is more of an airport business item as opposed to something that has particularly strong alignment with some of the specific aspects of the city's vision. However, I don't think that should sort of disincentivize the intent to move forward with a standard business practice here. You can see that it does meet some of our engaged and thriving goals, in particular out at the airport. With that, there's a recommended motion.

Move to approve an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with Don L. Gosney and Kelly C. Gosney for aircraft hangar 1452 at the airport. Second.

Any discussion?

Only the briefest of praise. You took this through multiple airport commission meetings. I think you talked to the airport hangar owners. You talked to a lot of folks and I was there front seat watching the whole process. So I thought you did a great job working with the commission and finding out a happy compromise here, Tony. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Thank you.

In the discussion. Right, get a roll call, please. The motion passes.

Four in favor Dave Woodruff, Gilda Yazzie, Kip Koso, Shirley Gonzalez, one absent Jessica lawyer.

Thank you and that moves us forward to item 12.2, which is an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with DBL Management LLC for aircraft hangar 1490 at the airport.

Council, Tony Vicari, Aviation Director. You'll notice a strong theme between the next two agenda items, very consistent with the previous one. I'll move through these relatively swiftly. These are all the same, different hangars, of course, but same situation in which an existing ground lease is expired or about to expire and proposing a new lease term. hangars are all similarly situated all have same lease terms and they were intentionally brought forth as one packaged for consistency both for the airport commission to review as well as ultimately the city council which is why they're all back to back to back here so as noted this was an ordinance with dbl management for hangar 1490. same consistency with the city strategic plan summary here is also the same just slightly different location as well as lease term. That one expires in August here in a handful of weeks, so we'll be soon ready to term out and ready for a new lease. Location is just slightly south of the one we just looked at here at the airport in the South GA complex. Same 15-year base lease term that we previously discussed. Same regulatory and legal points. The airport commission also unanimously approved this in their June 2026 meeting. Fiscal impact, again, our standard base rate of 41 cents a square foot. Slightly less annual base rent just because the leasehold square footage is slightly less for this hangar. Fiscal impact is just over $55,000 over the full 15-year term and same long-term airport benefits that were previously discussed in the prior item, as well as a similar vision alignment for the airport. So with that, there's a recommended motion for this item.

Move to approve an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with DBL Management LLC for aircraft hangar 1490 at the airport. Second.

Any discussion?

If you get a roll call, please. The motion passes.

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

Thank you. And then the next ordinance up for consideration is 12.3.

ordinance authorizing the ground lease with john w sabo for aircraft hangar 1544 at the airport hello again council tony picari again for aviation director at the durango lapata county airport uh again similar to the two prior items this is a ordinance authorizing around lease in this case with john w sabo for hangar 14 or 1544 at the airport again very consistent a few deviations here this is a slightly larger hanger 70 by 70. And that lease expired a couple of weeks ago in July. Again, brought forth currently into a month-to-month tenancy and ultimately into a new lease that's proposed here. The location is just one more down the line of the three we've currently or most recently reviewed. Same 15-year base lease term based on the same methodology previously discussed. Regulatory and legal, again, remains consistent. I would again highlight the Airport Commission unanimously approved this ground lease in its June 2026 meeting. Fiscal impact consistent again with the 41 cents a square foot base ground rent resulting in just over $3700 a year in annual ground rent for the leasehold and about 66,000 and change in total lease term revenue for the airport. Airport benefits remain the same and consistent with the prior items reviewed as well as the vision alignment. With that as a recommended motion.

Move to approve an ordinance authorizing a ground lease with John W Sabo for aircraft hangar 1544 at the airport second.

Any discussion?

Take a roll call, please.

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

Thank you. And the next item is 12.4, which is an ordinance authorizing the City of Durango to execute a sublease with Fort Lewis College for Space in the main mall to establish a collaborative community hub.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. My name is G.H. DeRosier. I'm the Prosperity Administrator with the Prosperity Office. What we're bringing before you today is an approval for a lease with the City from FLC. This aligns with the Innovative Housing and Economic Development Strategic Plan goal. So a little bit of background, as you are aware, the city needs temporary office space while City Hall construction moves forward and the current Community Development building is vacated eventually to presumably be demolished. The Prosperity Office is one of the departments located in that building, so we have been searching for a new location to stay in the interim. The opportunity came up with some of our work with FLC to move into the Center for Innovation. The Center for Innovation is currently undergoing a strategic realignment. They have decided to shift their focus from being a co-working space to instead being a more strategic economic consortium. So really trying to bring in strategic partners from around the community to participate. This ended up being very fortuitous timing. Not only does it solve our officing needs, but it also creates an opportunity for strategic engagement with the community. A couple other, so the Center for Innovation will have a number of partners. Their focus is on economic development, entrepreneurship, workforce development, and regional collaboration. The FLC AI Institute will make its home at this new consortium. and the city's presence here will help anchor the partnership. We want to really make sure we're leaning into the public-private partnerships. Timeline, we were approached in Q2 of this year by FLC with this opportunity. We are introducing and having our first consideration of this ordinance here with you today. Next council meeting, we hope to have our final reading, and then late August and to early September, we anticipate move-in. Those timelines are, of course, flexible. One thing worth noting is that FLC and the Prosperity Office are interested in potentially renewing this lease in 2027, but that is not before yet this time, but it will likely be in the future. A quick layout. The design will be very similar to what the layout and design and configuration will be in the new City Hall building. This allows us to already stress test some of those layouts and items, and that way we are ready to hit the ground running. once we move into the new City Hall. By the numbers, the space we will be renting is approximately 1,200 square feet and change. Total annual rent at $23,870. Those will be paid quarterly, and that comes out to $19.25 per square foot, which is actually slightly below market for the area. and well in line with other leases that the city has. Confirmed partners at the FLC Center for Innovation, 360 Durango, the La Plata Economic Development Alliance, as already mentioned, the AI Institute, Colorado SBDC for the Southwest region, the Durango 2030 Mountain Bike Championships, SCAPE, and the Colorado State University Extension are the confirmed partners right now. And I know that FLC is looking into getting some others as well. As mentioned for vision advancement, this was also included in the agenda docs in your packet, the full scope of this vision advancement if you want to dig into the particulars, but we find this meets, advances our visions in a couple of ways, particularly around the authentic as this makes us more accessible to the community and more available to our partners. And we do have a recommended action.

Move to approve the ordinance authorizing the city of Durango to execute a sublease with Fort Lewis College for space in the main mall to establish a collaborative community hub located at 835 Main Avenue.

Second.

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

The motion passes.

Four in favor, Gilda Yazzie, Kip Koso, Dave Woodruff. Shirley Gonzalez one absent Jessica lawyer.

Alright, moving on to agenda item 13 public comment on city managers not under consideration tonight. Thank you, Mayor.

We have two folks for public comment.

If we could have the recording played. Public comment is encouraged on city-related matters even if they are not set, for consideration by the Council on tonight's agenda. Please begin your comments by stating your city-related topic, 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 council unused time is not transferable to other speakers comments must be specific to city matters profanity hate speech personally derogatory remarks or other speech that is disruptive to the meeting will be ruled out of order by the chair and any remaining time will be forfeited by the speaker exceeding the time limit infringes on the rights of others and is out of order only a majority vote of the council can modify time limits please note you must sign up prior to the mayor calling the item on the agenda signing up after the item is called will result in your name not being called to speak thank you and the first individual signed up to speak is meg wilmot

I THINK THAT'S VERY COOL. THERE'S LIKE A PUBLIC GUITAR NOW.

ALL RIGHT. I'VE GOT MY LITTLE SPEECH. HI, EVERYBODY. MY NAME IS MEG AND I HAVE BEEN A RESIDENT OF DURANGO FOR TEN YEARS NOW. I AM URGING CITY COUNCIL Please cancel our contract with block cameras and have these cameras removed as possible as soon as possible. As many of us have seen Fort Collins just recently had all of their cameras removed, not just contract canceled, but all cameras removed because of the public outcry from their community. I want to know why our city council thought it was okay to spend $169,050 on these cameras without asking our community. There was no vote on a ballot and many people here don't even know what this technology is and get it confused with your traditional license plate scanner or CCTV. A lot of folks don't know that we have 21 of these facial recognition cameras throughout our town and that we've been working alongside flocks since 2023. We have been told that this is to help keep us safe, but I don't know if I feel safe in a city that installs a surveillance network that tracks where its citizens drive, where they go to worship, or who went to what protest. The right to privacy does not come with an asterisk attached. All across America, we have seen cases of law enforcement abusing this tech to stalk ex-partners or even random women. We have seen cases where this technology has been used to track down women who have had an abortion in another state to prosecute them. This technology is currently being abused by ICE to track legal immigrants and protesters exercising their constitutional rights. I don't believe that this is the type of vision that Durango has. I believe that if you've committed a crime, the police have every right to investigate you. But if you've done nothing wrong, the government has zero right to build a digital trail of your life. Once this data exists, it is very easy to abuse. Many people online have demonstrated just how easy it is to hack into these servers. In the wrong hands, this is not only a threat to our national security, but to many people just living their average life. Durango does not need more surveillance. We want affordable neighborhoods, prosperity for small businesses, affordable childcare, protections for our farmers and our ranchers, environmental responsibility, and police who know our community. I strongly urge city council to choose freedom and the right to privacy over fear and to choose the community of Durango over Big Brother. Please get Flock out of Durango. Thank you guys. Thank you guys for letting me speak. I appreciate it.

The next individual signed up is Bailey.

Hi, my name is Bailey tears. I've been in Durango for almost 15 years now. I'm a local small business owner. I train horses and mules. So this is not my... normal area either, but I would like to talk about the flock cameras as well. From what I saw, the community vision alignment says that the community values authenticity. Well, I can promise you that with this type of surveillance, this Orwellian, if I said that right, surveillance is going to ruin that. Nobody's going to want to be authentic if we're being watched every second. There's some more, sorry. There's not enough regulatory oversight to safely have this type of AI driven surveillance. I think that's very obvious that at this point in time, we don't have enough regulation at a national level to know what's being done. that takes me to the next point we don't know where this flock company is selling all of the data and all the information where where is it going there's just not enough regulation in that respect um let's see i think that i was surprised to know that this that we have 21 cameras around town that's cr that's just too many that's It's a third-party AI company that's growing exponentially. I don't know if you all have seen this, but this is the guy that runs that company. His frontal lobe isn't even developed. Look at this. That's too much, right? So that's a billionaire that runs Flock who believes that we should be surveilled at all times, right? I'm not putting the blame on city council or anybody else. This was done, I think, under the radar. And now people are waking up to it going, okay, and this company is counting on the fact that we forget they're there. They don't want us to remember that they're there. And that's why so many have popped up. And lastly, I'd like to just say that I am a mother as well, and I do not want my daughter's face to be read, recognized, and analyzed on every street corner for the rest of her life. This is not the legacy that I want to leave for the children of this community. So thank you so much for your time.

And that was all for public comment. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. Moving on to Janetta number 14, other new business.

Thank you, Mayor. And agenda item 14.1 is a resolution expanding the interview teams for the Community Development Commission and the Financial Advisory Board to include any counselor who chooses to be included. Go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, sir. Council, hopefully this isn't too controversial, but I wanted to bring up that the two critical boards that I feel should have any counselor involvement in reviewing for application should be the FAB, which has the Financial Advisory Board, which has a three-year term and a very wide breadth of involvement for the city decision-making. as well as the Community Development Commission. It acts as a quasi judicial body and council members might want to be involved since more since appointments have direct decision making authority. And so there's a couple of reasons why I think we ought to open up interviewing of applicants to any council members who are interested.

We still need a motion. Yeah, Mark.

Sorry, you're right.

Right off.

Check to make a motion.

And financial advisory board to include any council that chooses to be included. Second.

Any discussion?

Yes.

All right. Council Yazzie.

You know, I'm a firm believer in leaving it up to the people who are in charge of selecting the committees and pairing them with the counselors and the times and the applicants to meet because it's very hard to get to these appointments sometimes. I think they're very equitable in how they make the assignments and who they put on these teams. Now I have heard a counselor COSO say before that these two teams, the FAB and the Community Development Commission, that there's some kind of higher up than the other teams on the, or the committees on the With city council. No, I do feel like all these teams are equitable. Everybody who puts in their application to be on a committee and they choose their committee and they're looking forward to working with the city, they should all be treated equitably. And that the people who are going to do the interviewing, I think that it needs to be the way that they've been setting it up, I think is great. You know, they just can make it and then you make it. I think having too many counselors there, having their opinions is going to be too complicated. So having the two with the staff person there also, I think is the way it should be, which is the way it is now. Thank you.

Council Cosa.

Yeah. Council, I just don't think this makes any impact except you do have two boards or commissions that have a greater impact on the city and so i think they are elevated in a certain way and that importance should be weighed out by council weighing in on the um the appointments so um council yazi i just don't necessarily see where there's that much difficulty adding in even if all of council wanted to do it You're only talking about three more people on top of the two that were already assigned to the Commission, and I very heavily doubt that there's going to be three more counselors that would want to add in.

I just have a quick question. Would they be a voting member of the interview team or they would just be there to watch, ask questions, and provide input? Or would they actually have a vote?

My inclination was to have them as a voting member.

Well, I mean, which would, so they would be a voting member.

Yeah.

Just a gentle reminder, no final decision tonight. This is just a business. If it gets the majority vote tonight, it comes back to and can be fully debated at that time.

Right? Alright, another discussion. Your roll call, please. The motion passes.

3 in favor Dave Woodruff. Kip Koso. Shirley Gonzalez. 1. Opposed. Gilda Yazzie. 1. Absent. Jessica Lawyer.

Thank you. And the other item under new business is item 14.2, a resolution waiving the attorney-client privilege relative to the independent investigation of Counselor Koso submitted by Counselor Yazzie.

Okay. I'd like to withdraw it for this evening.

Noted. Anything else under new business? Seeing none, I adjourn our regular City Council meeting. Thanks.