City Council - workshop

It's 2.02 p.m. on August 4th, 2026. We'll go ahead and start our city council study session. May I please get a roll call?

Mayor Woodruff.

Here.

Mayor Pretem Lawyer. Councilor Yazzie. Here. Councilor Acoso. Councilor Gonzalez. Present.

Just a quick note. Councilor Lawyer said that she's going to be running late. She should be here about 2.30. Okay.

I'll note that for the record.

Excellent. Thank you. All right. We will go ahead and move on to the reading of the Indigenous Land Acknowledgement.

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

Thank you. We'll move on to staff presentations.

FIRST PRESENTATION IS THE POWERHOUSE UPDATE.

Thank you. As we look for opportunities to renew and reinvest in the public plaza and museum and our downtown riverfront. So the city and the museum have been partners over the last 27 years in developing an acre and a half property owned by the city at the city's downtown location next to the downtown fire station. In 1999, the city had owned the historic power plant property for about 16 years, and this was the state of the building. IT WAS FULL OF THE ROOF WAS COLLAPSING. THE CITY HAD REMOVED A FOUR STORY SHEET METAL BUILDING. A CITY STAFF MEMBER AT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT HAD SECURED THE FIRST LARGE GRANT TO TRY TO RESTORE THE BUILDING. IT WAS A $310,000 GRANT FROM THE STATE HISTORIC FUND. AND CITY COUNCIL WAS HAVING A SERIOUS DEBATE OVER WHETHER THE BETTER COURSE OF ACTION WAS TO RETURN THE FUNDING AND TEAR DOWN THE BUILDING, BECAUSE ONCE THEY ACCEPTED THE GRANT, IT OBLIGATED THE CITY TO COMPLETE RESTORATION OF THE BUILDING, AND THEY RECOGNIZED THAT IT WAS TRULY A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT REQUIRED, AND THAT $310,000 WAS A VERY SMALL INVESTMENT TOWARDS THAT TOTAL. At that point, the Children's Museum of Durango approached city council with the request for the opportunity to try to redevelop the property. Children's museums function as community infrastructure alongside schools, libraries and parks to support thriving families and contribute to the quality of life of residents. High quality children's museums are character defining features of communities and a symbol of the positive value we place on children and families. they often anchor downtown and waterfront redevelopment projects. Three years ago, we started working with city council to look at the mission and strategic plan for the museum, and it allowed us to rewrite our mission statement and our vision statement for the museum, embracing the opportunity to be a place for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, focused specifically on younger learners through interactive experiences, discovery, and play with the goal of building a community of curious, capable, and science-literate problem solvers. That plan included five elements. First, the Power of Bright Futures, serving as the premier place to support children before they reach school age. The work related to that over the last three years has included redeveloping space in the center of the museum for infants and crawlers, New programs for early learners not in full-time licensed child care, including music, art, dance, yoga, and gardening. And most significantly, the opening of Wonder Lab Early Learning at the end of this month as a licensed child care space for toddlers and preschoolers through year-round extended day care. That second priority is around the power of curious kids. It's engaging school-aged children through educational and enrichment programs that inspire curious and esteemed literate students, especially at the elementary level. That includes field trips and our summer camp program, out-of-school time after-school enrichment programs, and supporting regional science and engineering competitions. Third is the power of place. Developing the powerhouse campus and the surrounding area as a compelling riverfront destination for Durango residents and visitors. We've brought in a number of new exhibits. We adopted a new museum master plan governing the development of that space and that campus last year. And last month, we kicked off a community-wide planning process funded by the Colorado Health Foundation to reimagine the half-acre plaza from the front door of the museum to the river as a public park and community space with the goal of bringing a plan forward around March of next year for what community members see would be most impactful as developing our downtown riverfront experience. Fourth is the power of welcome. ensuring that programs are welcoming and accessible to all, especially our underserved communities. That includes our comprehensive Open Doors initiative that provides free and discounted admission to the museum, need-based aid for our education programs, and rural outreach in La Plata County, Archuleta County, and Montezuma County. Finally, the power of performance, maintaining high operational and financial standards in the governance of the organization. And for us, that's included five years of positive net operating income, reaching record numbers of visitors and members last year, completing a feasibility study in preparation for what we hope to be a large capital campaign to reinvest in the museum over the next three to five years. As we look at the work we're exploring and intending, we see strong alignment with city priorities. I was here a month ago when Mayor Woodruff read a proclamation in support of Parks and Recreation Month. As I was listening to his proclamation, many of the items he read really struck home to me as how we see our work in the community as well. Children's museums are an integral part of communities. They provide programs and facilities that promote health and the well-being of our community. Their educational activities such as out of school time programming, summer camps and field trips are critical to childhood development. They play an essential role in supporting children and their caregivers before they reach school age. And they increase economic prosperity by increasing property values, expanding the local tax base and increasing tourism. When I think about those statements around Parks and Rec, they align so closely and reflect the spirit and the intent that led the city of Durango to partner with the powerhouse to redevelop this critical and important city-owned property starting in 1999. Where is our reach in the community? How have we been serving the community in that time? Since our opening, over 300,000 visitors have come to the museum. We serve an audience of almost 5,500 children in our local county. And over the last three years, over 2,200 families have partnered with us as members of the museums by enrolling their children in our summer camps or in our childcare center. Over those last five years or six years, we've seen incredible growth at the museum. Our visitor numbers are up 45% from pre-pandemic levels, to over 30,000 visitors this last year. Already this year, we're seeing continued growth of 10.5% even over last year's record numbers. We reached a milestone of over 1,000 member families last year. That's an increase of 240% from 2021. And the revenue for the operation of the museum is up 168% to $372,000 last year. So we're seeing great interest, engagement, and need within the community for the work we're doing. In addition, we have invested $8 million in this city-owned property since 1999. The city has also partnered in investing over a million dollars in the property, but for every dollar the city has put into the property, we've invested and leveraged $7 in federal, state, and private philanthropy. This next year, we expect to support $3.2 million in workforce participation, primarily through families who are able to enroll kids in the Wonder Lab and be able to return and stay in the workforce. We anticipate 106,000 hours of employee availability by providing summer camp opportunities, after-school support, and licensed childcare in the community. And since 2023, we've invested over a quarter million dollars in need-based support to the community through our Open Doors initiative. In the first half of this year, almost 1500 individuals came to the museum for free or through a deeply discounted admission. We had a third of the children enrolled in our childcare center are receiving need-based aid, and we've made the effort to keep the cost of care at no more than 10% of household income to complete a commitment towards maintaining accessibility across income levels for this critical service in the community. However, in that time, the museum has operated at a net cumulative loss of over $400,000. We cover 79% of the cost of operating the museum through earned revenue and philanthropic support specifically for museum exhibits and programs. How is that possible? How are we still standing here 15 years later when we look at that level of operating deficit? The reason for that is that people confuse the powerhouse as an organization with the children's museum as a program. In this year, the museum is actually about a quarter of what we do. The child care center, our education programs, our ability to serve as a community event venue gives us a wide diversified source of funding. And we draw from the success of those other programs to backfill the work that it takes to keep a public museum open to the community. As we look forward, especially as we're looking at the potential of making a multimillion-dollar investment in renewing that facility, we're trying to do it in a way and ask the question, is there a path to sustain the full cost of operating a high-quality public museum without drawing from the revenues and work in the child care center and our education programs? So what are we looking at as we think about the future of the museum? We worked for about nine months with a museum exhibit consultant with lots of community involvement to explore how the campus could function better, meet the needs and expectations of the community, and be a more impactful space to support children and events and gathering space for the community. This is just a quick conceptual rendering of a more open, engaging space for children that we would try to be creating through this process. And there are six things that we see happening as part of an interrelated set of investments to make a high quality functioning critical community space. Childcare Center will open August 31st. We've invested over $1.3 million in renovating our education center to support up to what we expect to be about 60 children enrolled when we're at full capacity. Primary funding for that project came from the state of Colorado. Project that we wanna talk about today most deeply is around the museum entryway. And working with consultants, they've proposed a plan and we're working with an architect on how to transition the entryway from into the boiler room and make that a multifunctional space to support the work of the museum. I'll speak in a minute to the why, but because this is a city-owned building, we think it's important that city council understands in detail how we intend to implement that goal. what the outcomes would be and ask for your affirmative endorsement that this is a reasonable and appropriate adaptation of the building to support the needs of the community. Part of that, the city council helped fund some historic assessment work of the building. The powerhouse was built in 1893. It was restored at a cost of over $5 million. There is a deed of conservation easement between the city of Durango and the Colorado Historical Foundation governing the exterior of the building. And in assessing that, we've identified about a half million dollars of maintenance work to maintain the building in good, safe condition and intend to engage in that work over the next year and a half. As I mentioned, we're in the midst of a community-led design process to redevelop the half-acre space from our front door to the river as an engaging community, family-friendly space and a pocket park along the river trail. also includes creating natural play spaces for preschoolers and school age children in front of the museum and in the current back garden area that will functionally double the size of the museum during our peak visitor seasons. And finally, and most importantly, developing updated exhibits within the space with a target audience of two to 12 year olds. That's the defining feature of the museum and is an area of deferred investment over the last 10 years or 15 years since we've opened. What are we trying to achieve with moving the transition or transitioning the entryway to the boiler room? Top of mind is improving the safety and security of the museum. Currently, there are three unlocked doors that enter into the museum when we're open to the public. What this would allow us to do is create a security vestibule and a space separate from where children are playing and engaging to help ensure that we're creating a safe, comfortable space for families. Second is the importance of including classroom space within the walls of the museum. That classroom space is where we support field trips, host after school and camp programs. It's where birthday parties happen on Saturdays and Sundays. And it's a space that functions as a similar type of space as the meeting rooms at the library and the rec center during the week. Third is having indoor restrooms. We had a board member ask us, what are the advantages of outdoor restrooms that you might lose by moving them inside? And the answer is, there are no advantages of outdoor restrooms. Those outdoor restrooms are stopgap measures that have been there for 15 years. They violate the terms of the facade easement because they obstruct the historic building. They provide a supervision challenge when a parent with more than one child is in the museum and needs to use a restroom or needs to accompany a child. The idea would be to move those restrooms into the boiler room to serve all of those goals. Then finally, what that does is by moving the entryway and all of those support spaces inside the boiler room, it allows us to open the museum gallery as a larger, more functional, more flexible space that doubles the space for events and exhibits without moving the walls or changing the historic footprint of the building. So here's a concept of what the building might feel like at the completion of the project. This is standing at the south wall of the boiler room, looking towards the entryway into the main museum. On your left, you're seeing that there is some non-historic infill masonry blocks that are removed and placed with a glass entryway that is a secure entryway into the museum. We maintain as much historic equipment as possible. So you're setting the scene and setting the context for the history and story of the building with historic interpretive signage. And then you enter from the front desk and entryway into the museum itself. And once you pass through that door, that's a space that is truly dedicated to kids and interactivity. So the elements to make that all happen. Having a glass entry door placed in place of the cement block infill currently. It would mean stabilizing and securing the fronts of boilers in their current location, removing the masonry firebox behind there to create space for restrooms, classrooms, and exhibit workshop. In the corner, there's a wall in the museum that has been there since we opened that no one who's visited the museum has ever been to or see. There is a stack of a generator and a condenser behind that wall that would be removed in order to create space for an elevator and a stairway to access the second floor at the museum. Would also in the center of the museum, if you've been there recently, you can picture where the Tinker Lab walls are, those half walls kind of in the center of the museum. There's a stairway down to the basement and there's some red walls around that corner of the building. All those walls would go and stairways would go away and that would create a large central flexible space that would be dedicated for exhibits and available for community event space. And then finally, removing our lovely outdoor restroom structure. Here's a conceptual rendering of the type of feel we're trying to achieve as you come to the new front door of the museum. So large glass entryway, maintaining an industrial feel that mirrors the look of the building, that exudes light and activity so that as you're approaching, you see what the building's function is and invite folks in for engagement. I wonder if it would be helpful to stop for, I know I've given you a lot of information about that project. Before I continue, I wonder if it'd be helpful to provide opportunity for questions or if you'd prefer that I finish talking and reserve questions at the very end. Dave, do you have a preference?

I don't have a preference. I mean, I had the chance to meet with Sydney and Bill Carver to go take the tour. So I get to have all my questions in, but I'm happy if anybody has any questions currently to take a quick pause for questions. Right, Jeff? Yeah, go ahead and continue. Thanks, Jeff.

And so we're at a place where we're operating at capacity. We've secured tax incentives through the state of Colorado that would fund up to half the cost of the redevelopment of the boiler room. And we've secured over $3 million in seed funding. There is the urgency to it, especially with one of those tax credits requiring us to complete this renovation by the middle of 2028. So we're asking city council to provide direction to us and staff around three areas. The first is requesting a formal statement supporting the changes that we're proposing. As the property owner, it's really important that we can communicate that there is understanding and support from the city of what we're attempting to do and that they see this as a community benefit. The second is asking to review the terms of our current lease with the city. We signed a 25-year lease in 2007. We're in year 18 of that 25-year lease. That was a lease that was signed before we even constructed a museum. And part of the expectation in terms of the lease is that the parties would revisit the terms at least every five years to make sure that they're serving the city's interests the museum and public benefit. And that's a review that hasn't happened, I don't think, since the lease was signed. So asking to really do a pretty comprehensive re-look at how that agreement functions to benefit the city and the museum and the community. And then finally, ask for consideration around project funding. The city as the owner of the property is both an opportunity and a potential barrier. That 100% of what we do to the building is your property. I might've just spent a million dollars on a childcare center, I actually built you a childcare center. And so from a donor's perspective, when they make a gift to the powerhouse, they are actually making a gift to the city and have expectation that there's some shared investment of the property owner. We did a feasibility study over the winter, and that was a question and concern that was raised repeatedly by potential donors. The city has taken steps towards that in wonderful ways. We've received over $367,000 in support from the city over the last 4 years, primarily in support of facility renovation work. The city. We requested $241,000 for historic preservation last year. City Council funded half of that in the 2026 budget with the hope that they would consider a second round of funding to complete that matching fund in the 2027 budget. That's real meaningful co-investment as an owner that is impactful as we talk to donors. And finally, we're asking that the city consider prioritizing the museum redevelopment project for a funding opportunity through the Department of Local Affairs. The Energy and Mineral Impact Assistance Fund will provide up to $1 million in funding for a community project. That funding would need to flow to the city in support of the project on the property. And the powerhouse would be responsible providing any matching funds to that grant. at the end of the day the um the question from the from the department of local affairs is where does a project like this rank amidst other city projects and we're asking city council to consider putting this as the top priority for funding opportunity in 2027. um and i'm going to leave this last slide up of just the range of things that we hope might be included as we review the terms of our current agreement with the city and open the floor for questions

All right. Councillor Gonzales.

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the update and the presentation. I really love the powerhouse. It was one of the first sort of places that I went when we moved to Durango because I have little children. We're always looking to occupy their time. And so it was just a great place to take the whole family and relax. So I have really enjoyed it. and all the things you've done up until now. So tell me, you mentioned that you've had some really great growth numbers over the last few years. Can you talk about why that's happened?

Yeah, I actually think the biggest part of that is us recognizing who our audience is in the community and that that audience is younger than we maybe thought five or 10 years ago. And so it's allowed us to really focus our exhibit development work in ways to really make this a place that's comfortable and welcoming engaging for the folks who come most frequently so i think that's a big part of it um i think we've created ways to open up the museum gallery through small investments like moving our front desk removing some very small walls that have made the space feel and function better um yeah i think i think it really is the quality experience and truly knowing who our audience is

And you mentioned something about visitors. Do you see an increase in visitors or is that maintained or what has that been like?

In terms of non-local visitors? That's correct. Yeah, great question. To be honest, we don't have zip code data of where visitors come from, but we can tell based on March, June, July, August, and November into December that those are very heavy non-Durango outside visitor months. But I don't have specific numbers for you, but those are by far our busiest months of the year. And those are the months that tend to be paying guests as opposed to about 40 percent of our visitors in a typical year are local members who are using their membership benefits. But the numbers skew strongly towards paid admission during those peak visitor seasons in the community.

OK, because I think that would be a wonderful attraction for visiting families who go to the train and everything else. I wonder if there was any marketing benefits. around attracting people with families during those visits, or any relationship with the Visit Durango group?

Yes, yeah, we work closely with Visit Durango, and I think that's our hope is that we are promoting this as part of the cluster of amenities that make Durango a family-friendly destination that supports that visitor economy.

Okay, great. And so you mentioned the child care center will open in August, that you have 60 slots available. Are they all accounted for?

They are. In the first year, there's about 45 kids enrolled. That was intentional on our part because we wanted to skew our enrollment younger so that kids age into that older demographic and we have space for a new cohort of kids next year. So, yeah, we're fully enrolled at 45 students, but expect to be at 60 as we probably I would expect next year.

And are they three and four year olds or?

Yeah, it starts at, uh, we're licensed as low as 12 months. We're currently enrolling starting at 18 months and up through five.

Okay. That's great. That's a tough, tough area to cover. So I think anytime we can get someone to cover those, um, it, it's a real benefit to the community. So just regarding, um, your funding requests, which, you know, I, I, I, fully support anything we can do to support childcare. I know that's been a big initiative of our city. But I think, you know, maybe I don't know if this is a question for Mark, or maybe somebody in finance. Has the city ever Or have you ever taken out a loan using the cities as your collateral?

Yeah, I think honestly that is one of the things. The final item under this item for consideration is I know City Council has been dealing with the challenges that VOA is experiencing with city-owned property that they operate, we run into the same issue. So we actually just took a loan as part of the child care center. Again, we had just spent $1 million on the building. We borrowed $350,000 through the Child Care Capital and Infrastructure Fund. And the lender really struggled to underwrite the loan, not because of our finances or the business model of the child care center, but the lack of collateral. Because all of that $1 million is city property, And so I would say there are some strategies for how to do that. And what I've heard from lenders, it feels like probably the best path for that is there is a provision in our lease where we can assign the lease to as part of a loan agreement. And what that does in theory is if we defaulted on a loan that the lender had the right to place a tenant, no one expects they would ever do that. But that is a tangible asset that they can use to collateralize a loan. And that's a provision in our current lease. So that feels like our best strategy. answer and it's an answer that doesn't obligate the city financially but it requires the affirmative approval of city council for us to do that yeah We have not yet. We have applied for a state historic fund grant funding. We have not been successful yet, but intend to reapply at the end of this year. And we are intending to apply for commercial revitalization, commercial historic preservation tax credits in January.

Okay, great. I know every potential, every opportunity for funding, you know, leave no stone unturned, as they say, so we can try to get everything we need for our community and also just great job to you and your team and your, oh, in fact, that was one of my questions. How many people, how many employees?

I believe we now have 14 full-time employees. That number just went up about 50% as of this week with our early childhood center employees starting full-time this week.

Okay. And those childcare employees are employees of the powerhouse?

They are. Yep.

Okay, great. All right. Thank you very much. And, you know, I love the powerhouse and all that you all do there. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right.

Councillor Lerner.

Thank you, Jeff. First, I want to start by apologizing. I saw Bill in the crowd and I did not return your text. And I want to say I'm so sorry. I try to be better than that. And right when I saw you, I was like, oh, dang. I was like a family vacation. I have two kids getting ready to go away to college. And so once... August 20th hits. I'm going to have so much free time. I'm not going to know what to do with. So I promise I will respond. And anyways, apologies. I support the powerhouse. I've loved it. My kids before they were going to college frequented there quite often. And I appreciate the presentation. I, sorry, I was missed the first part of it, but I saw the slides and the presentation handout, but Um, I appreciate it. It's not just about like a funding request and it's like how we can work to, um, create a better public private partnership, um, accountability for everyone involved and how to like maximize the success of the powerhouse. Cause I think framing it that way is, um, exactly what we should be doing. So I appreciated that. Um, I've been on council for, um, six years now, something like that. And we've seen a few presentations from you in different iterations and the addition of the child care, which I think is fabulous. And, you know, it's a strategic plan goal of ours is to try to increase child care. So I appreciated that direction. And I've appreciated seeing how you guys can pivot and change depending on, you know, the needs of families. of the center and such. I know as we're talking about lease agreements and the best success, right now we're in the process as a council of actually selling the land that the VOA leases from us for a dollar a year to them for some of the same reasons you're citing, that you don't have any assets. I just think making sure we're taking into account all potential possibilities here just because, you know, what is going to be the best for the community and the city and the powerhouse collectively, I think is super important. And so, you know, just keeping in mind, like all the different varying options that we potentially have out there, not just, you know, here's X, Y, and Z, and this is what we should do. If that makes sense.

Um, I have a few questions that I wrote down here.

um so as you mentioned the current lease has no performance or reporting requirements um and you're asking us to formalize a partnership what annual metrics do you think the city should receive so council can evaluate whether this public investment continues providing value like you know i was possible attendance and Durango resident participation and, you know, all like, is there anything else that we're not thinking about?

Yeah, no, I do feel like some of the items I highlighted in this presentation are things that I think we should be reporting to and accountable to the city on a more regular basis. And for me, I think that when I think about community impact investments by the powerhouse, the things that I see in there are our investment about financial accessibility and affordability of the space. whether it's the childcare center, our summer camps, or admissions to the museum. So I would love to see an agreement that puts a concrete number on some accountability there. That's something we value, but I think that aligns and reflects with city values as well. So I think that's one. I think a second one is around reinvestment in the development of the city-owned property and facilities. that when we are taking the old sand shed from public works and turning it into a licensed childcare, that I think documenting and sharing that intent and that investment as a net benefit to the city and for around community impact, I would hope is part of that. And then I think that third one, to Councilor Gonzalez's point, is I would like to see us tracking our visitor metrics by location of visitor so that we really can speak to our role and support within the tourism ecosystem in supporting such a big economic driver for the community.

Excellent. I think one of the biggest concerns for me, and it has been since the first day you and I met, is sustainability. You've consistently operated in a deficit for as long as I can remember. I don't have exact figures in front of me, but I know from various presentations that this has been a topic of discussion. And that's concerning. You know, there's no rent really that is paid in a sense. I also know from my business and talking to a few employees over marketing and social media that there isn't a big budget for that, but it also is any business and being profitable, it's important. And so finding that balance of how do you fix the deficit in the best way possible without always relying on the city or grants or whatever to sustain and help fix it. So my question shows once the expansion is complete, So here you have it. What does long-term financial sustainability look like? And will the expanded facility improve operations enough that we aren't revisiting operational support requests in the future?

Yeah, I think I would... I would say it's a complicated answer. Working with our museum consultants, we currently serve about 30,000 visitors a year. We think that by the investments we're making, we grow that capacity closer to 50,000. So an increased volume of visitors helps. I think the quality of experience would probably support a different price point for coming to the museum. So both of those things help with the operating model. I would say kind of at the core of those, I think one of the challenges that I would maybe put back to city council as part of the conversation is, is it the highest priority that we generate as much revenue as possible? Because there are ways to do that. But for us, I think we think our mission role is really to balance that with community impact, financial accessibility, and other pieces. And I would just share that, you know, again, I know it's not the answer you want, but that most museums that thrive in this space have a municipal partner, that their local government is co-investing in making those spaces accessible, high quality and truly part of the community infrastructure. Again, alongside the way we invest in parks and libraries and spaces like that. But that is 100% city council discretion. So I'm not telling you there's not a path where there's no level of city investment, but I would say that would put as far outside the norm, especially for a community this size, to not have some level of public partnership in keeping the museum at a high quality of experience and highly accessible to the community.

And I agree, there's some obviously organizations and different establishments within the city that do require municipal benefit, but there's only so much that we have. As you mentioned, the library, we're at a deficit with our transit, we're at a deficit with water and sewer, we're at a deficit, there's so many things. There's only so much money we have. And so are there things that the powerhouse can do to operate more sustainably? And that's the question I have because I, as one, I'm only one counselor, but to say that we're going to always be able to offset and like partner in the way with the powerhouse when we have all these other things and priorities. um it doesn't seem to be surfacing to the top in my six years on council or whatever it's been right so in my time on council it hasn't surfaced to the top the powerhouse in in complete funding of it and so my question is how do we get to a spot that is sustainable um where we can contribute let's say the 367 000 over three years so a little over 100 grand a year we been putting in where we can maybe drop that back a bit because, you know, what I've heard from council over the past seven, eight years is housing, is childcare, is transit. Like those are the priorities. And so not saying that never, and the things that you're doing are great. I'm trying to just be a little bit more just realistic. I think it's great. Sorry. I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm just saying, how do we find... After I spoke, I was like, ah, Jessica, calm down.

I think what I would say is, yes, we have run the museum better than it's ever been run before. We've seen more visitors, higher revenue, all that. We haven't closed the gap yet, but we're getting closer that over the five years that funding gaps about 21% of operations in the last three years, it's been between four and 14%. So we've really closed that substantially. I think part of the way we try to do that is what you're seeing us do already is as we're a larger, more diverse organization, that's running a year-round full-time licensed childcare successfully and profitably when we're running a large camp program. When I came to the powerhouse seven years ago, our budget was $600,000. This year it's $1.5 million. And as the museum becomes a smaller part of our budget, We can sustain some operating loss in that space if we needed to. So there's some of that. And I think there are some harder choices about the model of what kind of museum we are. If that truly is the direction of council is, look, at the end of the day, we want to see the museum profitable no matter what it takes. There are ways to do that. They're painful decisions, but there are ways to do that. So yeah, I think there are paths. The only other thing I would say is this project has been kind of in the works and in development in different iterations for seven years now, eight years now. And part of the path to try to get to this day was understanding that if we ever in a world where we're competing against the police department, we're not going to win that world. That's not a world we're going to win. And so dating back to 2005, the consistent answer with the city and understanding was the most appropriate way to find a funding stream for an amenity like a museum is through a lodger's tax. And that's why in 2021, bill led the effort to really try to raise that tax that's going to generate over 40 million dollars in new city revenue with the hope that city council would choose to to dedicate a portion of that to meet some of those goals and community benefit opportunities So, yeah, so I think that's it is we don't want to think we're in a world where we're trying to compete with compete within the general fund for affordable housing. But our hope is that there might be a role for us within that tourism economy piece and the lodgers tax that feels appropriate and within the intention of that voter initiative.

Can you go back because you have 3.2 million in seed funding the what what is the ask from the city for money?

The only ask right now is we had asked last year for about $241,000 for historic preservation. Again, I understand that I think half of that was funded in the 2026 budget. And so our ask is that the other half of that request might be considered in the 2027 budget. And then we would be matching that dollar for dollar through grant funds or other revenue at the powerhouse. so right now the entire project the restrooms the like everything that you just went through you've you're oh no no we're starting okay yeah we are actively fundraising for that so um but i would say we do not have an active request to the city to support any of the facility changes we really are asking the city right now to focus on historic preservation work okay those are all my questions no that's great thanks jessica yeah council yazi

Wow. Okay, Jeff. Well, you know, when I saw that, the mess there, you know, 20 years of whatever sitting there falling apart, you know, beige, the beige metal falling in. And what it is today, it's just simply a miracle and it's amazing. So thank you to the powerhouse people for going forward with presenting a place where children can come and learn the museum. And now with the addition of the childcare, I think that makes you more well-rounded than in the evening. Sometimes we go down there and we can listen to somebody lecture about their books or you can go down to the green round table at lunch. So I do think that for me personally, I think this is a very valuable community service that the powerhouse provides for the city of Durango. So I appreciate it. And I'm all for trying to go ahead and support the other half funding for 2027 because I do think that for the area here in the four corners, this is very unique. There isn't anything else like this for children. So thank you for all your work.

Just real quickly, thank you, Sydney and Bill, for being great stewards and showing me the property, showing me behind the facade to be able to go back into the belly of the beast and really look at the vision for what you all want to do at the powerhouse. And we talk a lot about child care and housing. how we what is our 10 20 30 40 year vision for this community and how do we grow our community and i really feel like that is done through getting young people and families into our community and so we focus a lot on the house the housing and the child care side but i think it's also we can do it in parallel to have activities and educational opportunities for kids when they are here when we do finally find the right mix of housing and childcare opportunities in this community, be able to have a place for them to go and having great stewards that are really helping guide these kids in these early formative years. And so I look forward to how we can continue to support the powerhouse, but to counsel lawyers point like we have to make sure that we're good stewards of of community and taxpayer money and ensuring that we're doing the best possible thing with the least amount of money and You guys are doing an incredible job. I look forward to really hoping that we can find whatever path forward that is and continue supporting the organization and the vision for, for the power. So thanks for all the work that you've done and we will continue to do. And I look forward to, you know, truly having a partnership moving forward. So thank you.

Thanks everyone.

All right. Uh, moving on to capital improvement projects with parks and multimodal.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Excuse me, Gloria Platt, CFO. Just wanted to give a few comments regarding the timeline before we get into the projects. So tonight, or over the next few study sessions, we'll be presenting the five-year CIP. Tonight is parks and multimodal, and next study session will be public works and other capital funds. The PHAB-related projects have been presented several times over the spring and summer as we work through this process. And then we are working through the budget process at the same time internally, and so we'll be refining these funds and projections so that we'll have these to present to the council at our budget retreat in October. So I just wanted to give a little bit of the timeline before we get started, and I'll turn it over to Parks and Multimodal.

Hello, City Council. I'm Lily Oswald, the Multimodal Manager with the Transportation Department, here to present, hopefully at a pretty high level, but the scope and merit of the 2027 through 2031 proposed capital projects as they relate to multimodal, which are funded out of the city's 2015 Half-Cent Sales and Use Tax Fund, which is shared with the Parks and Recreation Department. And Scott McLean will dive into those following my presentation. A very quick blurb on how some multimodal projects are identified and prioritized. At a really high level, the city has several different adopted plans, policies, and standards. Some of these are local, some are statewide, some are federal. These include but are not limited to the multimodal transportation plan, which is our biggest piece of prioritization for multimodal projects, as well as the city's strategic plan, the comprehensive parking management plan, the EV readiness plan, the ADA transition plan for transit, and then some standards included in the manual on uniform traffic control devices, which is adopted within the city's code of ordinances. And forthcoming is the city's speed management plan, which is still underway. We also highly encourage and fold in public engagement and input depending on the scope of projects, and then also rely on crash statistics and data and opportunities to fix some of our existing bicycle networks, transit networks, and then lean into data and analysis for bicycle and pedestrian crashes, and then identifying high injury networks and where we can better address connectivity, safety, equity, sustainability, and public health and community for multimodal projects. This is the city's current 2026 through 2030 adopted CIP capital improvement projects list as they relate to multimodal projects. As you can see, there are a lot of green projects on here, which are in design. And a lot of the questions we get are when we're going to be finalizing these projects and constructing them. For the proposed project list for 2027 through 2031, you'll see a lot more orange. We will still be continuing with design of other prioritization projects, but we are looking forward to wrapping up some of these longstanding projects with construction. For 2027 specifically, just for whatever it's worth, one of the things we've heard a lot is improving and maintaining the city's existing networks and routes. And about 84% of the projects next year that we are proposing are maintenance and improvement projects for about $3.26 million. And then we're proposing new infrastructure to fill in some of those gaps to the tune of about $600,000 or 16% of our total proposed project cost. Diving into 2027, the first project we're proposing is the construction phase of the 8th and 8th Traffic Intersection and Connectivity Project. This is currently under design in coordination with a separate project, which is the city's utility CIP project in the area. The utilities portion runs to the intersection of College and 8th, so this yellow tag needs to be a little bit longer, but along 8th Avenue up to the 8th and 8th intersection. The multimodal portion is on 8th Street, and including intersection improvements at 8th and 8th. Here we are hoping to improve safety and crossings, sidewalk improvements and connectivity in an area that does not have sidewalks, and then curb ramp improvements at that 8th Street and 7th Avenue intersection. uh continuing with our big projects is um the more noteworthy one for 2027 is the north main ada improvements project this is again the construction phase we are proposing splitting the construction of this pretty lengthy project which runs from 17th street to animus view drive along north main into two phases unsure exactly what that looks like right now if that's going to be east side versus west side or cutting it to 32nd street and going south versus north That's worth coming. But an important thing to note for this project is its aim to improve accessibility and curb ramps, improving sidewalks and connectivity, and most importantly, improving transit stops in this area. And the city received $4.5 million in grant funding for this project. The smaller scope project for design proposed for 2027 is the Gigline Gulch Connection Design, for lack of a better word. And what we're looking at here is in this image on the right, the missing sidewalk segment that connects into the shared use path going along Gigline Gulch and into the city's new infrastructure project on College and 8th. to connect some accessibility routes here and taking into account what we can see here for overhead utilities, fire hydrants, and then some retaining wall and drainage, which will need to work into the design of this project. Sticking with some smaller scope, we had a design completed in 2025 to improve curb ramps at West 2nd Avenue and 30th Street. You can see there's a curb ramp here. It is not ADA due to the slope and the alignment of the curb ramp itself. This is a safe routes to school route. So this is one of the city's sort of lower hanging fruit priorities, but something we were able to get designed and hoping to cross that T with getting this constructed in 2027. Also in 2027, a new project we are proposing for design is for now what we're calling the City Hall PD full-time modal connection project, which is, again, a bit of a mouthful. This is the design which is in anticipation of, but separate from the City Hall and PD project. This is aimed to integrate into the Midtown Safety and Connectivity project scope, which those designs have been completed, and then integrating into the Camino Crossing project, which runs along 12th, so in this area. And then providing ADA improvements, cycling route improvements, and walking route improvements to this new campus at 12th and 2nd. Jumping into 2028, we are proposing construction for the Junction Street traffic calming project. This includes sidewalk improvements, traffic calming road features, a mini roundabout at the Clovis and Junction intersection there, and a shared use path on the east side, mostly of Junction Street. This profile here represents the majority, but not the entirety, of what this project will look like as it goes along Junction. And it goes from West 2nd Avenue all the way to the Dalla Mountain Park, trailhead, which is also the city boundary. In 2028, we are proposing construction. So again, trying to close out more of these multimodal projects as we design them. This is like that, like I've noticed, or like I stated, that small sidewalk segment and curb ramps along this area here on Kigline. Also in 2028, like I stated, this would be the phase two. Also TBD is what that looks like, but the second phase to close out the construction portion of the North Main ADA Improvements Project. Going into 2029, right now, we are earmarking this year for the construction for the Camino Crossing project. Important to note, we do not anticipate having anywhere near this fund balance in the city's 2015 Half-Cent Sales and Use Fund. So the city's Transportation Department is actively applying for grant funding opportunities to fund the construction phase of this project, which is contingent in getting grant funding. This, again, is constructing an ADA-compliant underpass under Camino Del Rio or Highway 550. at 12th street where the existing hawk signal is now the other big project in 2029 for construction is the 32nd street traffic calming connectivity project this runs from east second avenue near north city market all the way to Holly, where it will tie into the recently completed 250-251 project. This project includes sidewalk improvements and installing sidewalk where there are some existing gaps, traffic calming road features, including some small medians in the area, and a roundabout on 32nd and East 3rd Ave intersection near that park there. and improved and striped crossings for pedestrians and cyclists across 32nd Street at various intersections. We are also proposing the construction of the before stated City Hall PD multimodal connection project. This again is earmarked for 2029, but it is in anticipation of and separate from the City Hall and PD project, but it will need to be coordinated as part of that project. So this will just be contingent on how the construction process is going for that campus-wide improvement as well. And one thing I'll note on this too, there's a higher price tag on, oh my gosh, on this slide, and that is representative of including this construction with the Midtown design plans. So we would be, in any case, combining this multimodal connectivity to through around this campus to the Midtown plans and making any changes we may need to to the Midtown designs to make them integrate into this campus. So for 2029, we are also excited to be proposing design funds for the Animus View Drive corridor. This is a pretty large corridor here, which spans from where it meets with Mile to Wild at that intersection with the signal all the way to the Red Cliff Apartments to the north side. This is sort of a TBD for now as to what the designs will yield, but that is why the cost estimate is fairly high, is based on our best ability to make these cost estimates for design based on a project scope this large for what was a county road and will need to be retrofitted to fit city standards and provide some accessibility and safety improvements. For 2030, we are proposing construction funds for the West Park Avenue traffic calming project. This includes intersection improvements and a right-of-way reconfiguration on 16th Street, so right over here at this large intersection here. The Alamo Street intersection, again, a large swath of pavement, and sidewalk improvements, connectivity throughout, as well as bike lanes, and a bike slip lane. If you've been biking on West 2nd Avenue southbound, you've seen that. Right now, all of the... Delineators and paint that are in the area are more or less representative of the areas that will be reconfigured as part of this project. And those are in part installed right now so that people can begin to curtail their speeding behaviors for this neighborhood before it is constructed in 2030. We are working with the community right now on some updated aesthetic improvements to these pilot project areas. So we may see those coming in the next couple of years. Also for 2030, our design funds proposed for the Highway 160 Shared Use Path project design. This integrates into the Roosa Avenue intersection, travels along Highway 160, and terminates at the Twin Buttes Avenue intersection. This is aimed to improve connectivity, improve safety, and perhaps separation for people walking and biking and rolling throughout this corridor and as it meets with large residential areas existing and proposed in this area, as well as a trail network here to provide some connectivity for trails. This also is aimed to improve transit stops where they are applicable along this route. In 2031, we are proposing construction for this Highway 160 West shared use path. And until other projects are reprioritized, that is what we have so far for the year of 2031. And that's all I have for you. I ran through those, but I'm happy to take any questions.

Any questions by council? Oh, sure. Councilor Guzzi.

Ambitious.

Yes. Hey, I had a question on the, what is it? The 30th Street curb ramps. Okay, so what's wrong with this ADA ramp currently on the corner? Why isn't that compliant?

Why isn't it compliant? It was likely installed, who knows when, as part of a general sidewalk installation, as part of some residential construction in that neighborhood. It is no longer, or perhaps never was with slope, compliant with ADA and, oh, it's gone. The Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines, PROAG, which are the other set of standards that we use for public rights-of-way, It's due to the slope and cross section of that curb itself and the orientation. Right now, if you are a person wheeling or wheeling someone, you are kind of going out at a 45 degree to an intersection. Whereas right now, accessibility standards, you see curb ramps on either side to either have you cross perpendicular on second or perpendicular on 30th versus going into the middle of the intersection, having to make that maneuver. and then cross the way you need to cross. The other alternative that sometimes you see is just a wider pan for that curb ramp and it's just narrow right now. So what we see because of the cross slope, when you hit the dip, wheelchairs can fall backwards and it just, it doesn't meet that accessibility.

Thank you for that explanation. Okay, out of this type of ramp in Durango? Yes. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you. Councilor Gonzalez.

Thank you. Thank you, Lily, for the presentation. Have you always used this model to present the capital projects, the slides and the way that it's presented today? Very similar.

Yeah. I kind of go off of templates that were used prior and many of them looks like this, but I might have made some tweaks. I like it.

So, um, it's very easy to read and I like how it's presented. So I don't know if it's the first time I've really noticed, but I like the way that it's presented and sort of the, the way that the timeline for the years. So anyway, I don't know, maybe I just never paid attention. Um, but you mentioned a couple of times in your presentations about grants, um, are those grants still coming in or is it likely that we'll receive them years in the future?

We hope so. Yeah, the grants that the transit department or transportation department receives vary. And a lot of the times those grants fund things that aren't necessarily multimodal related projects. But we do try to go after any and all applicable grant fund opportunities for multimodal projects, noting that it is a shared fund balance with 2015. And it gives us the opportunity to complete more projects while still avoiding some construction fatigue to increase that fund balance. We've gone after a couple bigger grants recently, mostly for the Camino Crossing project because it has such a large price tag and because we have a little bit of time to do so. We also looked at other opportunities for applying for grants for the Junction Street Improvement project because that is a couple of years out. and it it potentially would have been a good match but we met with some folks and it wasn't so um grants are hopefully going to continue to roll in it's hard to say what the uh the horizon will look like for grant funding in general and a lot of these programs that we go through are state and federal funding opportunities which are competitive um and we just yeah we try to put our best foot forward so hopefully you continue to see some grants offset some of these projects but uh

i can't say for certain how many opportunities are going to continue in the future and the grants um are the grants are um i guess when you apply for them does it say specifically that i have to be used for engineering or that they have to be used specifically for um capital well this is a capital project so i don't know is it can they only be used for one

Yeah, good question. For example, yes. And for example, RUSA, which is now under construction, the grant that was received by the city for that project was only for the construction phase. And so we spent obviously quite a bit of money engineering the designs for that project over the years, and we could not get reimbursed for those design funds because of our CDOT pass-through grant funding for that grant and for the construction. Once we got concurrence to award to that local contractor, then those upcoming invoices can start to be reimbursed. But for that one, that's only eligible for construction. For projects like the speed management plan, which is also grant funded, that included, because there's different types of safe streets and roads for all grants. That one specifically was only for planning and demonstration activities. And we recently applied for a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant for implementation. So we're hoping to kind of use whatever grants we can for the areas we need. And now that we'll have the speed management plan complete, that will give us some teeth with some upcoming grant opportunities too.

I guess, and then just regarding the underpass, given the cost that we can anticipate for Is that, can you just elaborate a little bit more on that project? I know it's for 2031, right?

Is that?

2029 is where we currently have it. Let's see. There we go. And I guess we still have to seek additional funding for that project. Is that right? That's correct. So we're just, so I guess this is, Well, you presented it here. So what would that look like? We still have to go out to get additional funding. We probably have to.

Yeah. Just for that. We will go after any and all grant opportunities that will allow us to construct this. And we have it right now for 2029, which allows us to. um put in cost of inflation over time based on our last received cost estimate for this project as well as landscaping plans third-party engineer inspectors and things like that which is how we get to this approximately 13 million dollar number um but that said if it's 2029 and we haven't received a grant yet it won't be constructed in 2029. So we'll just be cautiously optimistic that we can, you know, prove that we'll have the designs ready at that point, which also helps with grant opportunities and that we would be ready for construction, but also understanding that there's a lot of community interest in having passages like this completed prior to 2030 for some obvious reasons is kind of lighting a fire for us to try to

um get a couple of these construction projects which are key linkages completed when we can great thank you thank you mayor great council lawyer yeah just a few questions um kind of similar to what counselor gonzalez was asking um i i know many of them can leverage uh state and federal dollars which projects are most competitive for outside grant funding and is there any that we should prioritize because they can unlock significant outside dollars

Projects that have been seen to be pretty successful in receiving federal and state funding aren't necessarily multimodal projects. They can be highway projects or rail projects and things like that. But in terms of multimodal, it's a good problem to have for now. And knocking on all kinds of wood, often grants are given to communities when there are more fatalities. in certain areas, which just proves more of an issue with public safety. And so what we do is really try to lean into the community emphasis that Durango has. And when anyone is hit by a car, whether that's severe or not severe, that causes a ripple effect in the community. And we are grateful that it hasn't necessarily become an issue of people getting hit and killed at 12th and Camino. However, that is something we see with some grant funds. I wouldn't say there's necessarily one project that stands out over another just because there are different grant funding opportunities that might be better fit for other ones. And we just try to match whatever those look like. And if we do receive grant funds for something that becomes available, that's cause for reprioritization. And that's happened before.

Yeah. Okay, great. Speaking on safety, we recently adopted the Vision Zero principles looking at the five-year list, which projects will have the biggest measurable impact on pedestrian and bicycle safety.

I would say I'm just going to try to go to this table really quick. There we go. The biggest impacts to Vision Zero would be high centers of pedestrian and multimodal collision points and where safety is a big risk factor or separation is not possible. So we're excited for things like junction. We're excited for things like the West Park Avenue Traffic Calming Project. The North Main ADA Improvements Project is big because it allows for pedestrian and transit accessibility. And then the Camino Crossing Project is a big one because that represents a freight corridor and a highway point of contention there. And then the Highway 160 Shared Use Path, additionally, that's a... A highway, and then the animus view corridor animus view drive will continue to be a big project of focus.

on each of these when they're coming forward and we're doing community engagement and all the things, obviously there's a lot of times in communities and specific neighborhoods where people don't like change and they don't like what's being done. I mean, I have friends that live on Riverview and they're like freaking out or whatever, but will there be like measurable statistics that we can have that show like city council has adopted vision zero. We should do this test. or this temporary measure to see that if it aligns with it, and we understand that there might be community pushback, but it's important because it aligns with our Vision Zero commitment, like council, shot down one of the temporary measures that potentially could have been a part of the vision zero. And so I feel like we're at this like, kind of like, Oh, we want this. But if someone pushes back on us, we immediately collapse. And I, and I, so I'm trying to like, say like, if you want vision zero, like, is it, are we going to be getting measurable results? Are you guys going to be making sure that you're, you communicate with that with us and the residents? I guess that's my question.

yeah and we are happy to communicate any sort of um speeding volume traffic studies that we do as part of these projects speaking specifically to the speed management demonstration projects at a high level as you know those were part of the ss4a grant received which required us to have these temporary demonstrations which represent best practices and known ways to provide safety and speed management techniques, but they are not present here. It allows us to temporarily test them without spending multi-millions of dollars on these infrastructure projects that may or may not work for Durango in its context in these different classifications of roads we have. But I guess twofold answer, we will have the speed management plan for the city council's consideration for adoption this fall and that will include that menu of options and tools in our toolbox for things like addressing either short-term or long-term opportunities for speed management techniques and when we get these inquiries we can actually have something that council adopted this it includes this strategy streets has already vetted it durango fire protection district has already vetted it we can now work on installing it and getting some funds And so we are excited to have that as an opportunity. And then the Vision Zero piece will allow us to bolster our grant applications and will allow us to use these different techniques and a holistic approach to these roadway improvements, enforcement and education, as it involves any sort of infrastructure, roadway improvement approach. or projects in the multimodal parks and recreation and roadway streets division realm. Yeah. So it's kind of twofold, but they will work together.

Great. Last question. We are constantly trying to balance this like, oh, we love shiny new things and then maintaining what we have. Do you feel like this, the projects and the slate we have in front of us does that like gives us, you know, new things that we are benefiting our community, helping us with a better multimodal, you know, safer community, as well as taking care of what we've already built and preserving it.

Yeah, I think what we see in the next slew of proposed projects represents some reactivity for opportunities to tag into other projects that are happening, which is a cost saving for the city, but also some maybe low-hanging fruit and opportunity for connectivity and accessibility improvements, but then also these sort of long-standing projects which neighborhoods are really invested in, which will be these sort of shining star projects. And I think of Junction, I think of West Park, and I think of the community's want and echoed response for Animas View Drive improvements. So things like that will continue to be exciting elements and Camino Crossing, of course, for us to continue to work on.

Great. Excellent. Thank you, Lily.

Thanks so much. Oh, you have another one? Go ahead, Councilor Yazzie.

Sorry, I just had one more thought. Okay, so on this Highway 160 shared use path project, will that be open to all kinds of bicycles, the motorized ones?

don't i don't bike so i know how to bike but i just it's not my thing so will all bikes and scooters be able to go on this path um that might be a complicated uh answer i will say right now the way we're thinking about it is that it would operate as an opportunity to separate folks off of the highway and access either residential areas commercial areas or recreational areas Often the city's shared use path requirements and perhaps the Parks and Recreation Department can shed some more light on this. We do have standards for types of vehicles, motor vehicles or non-motorized vehicles that are allowed on those shared use paths. And so if this ends up being adopted as the same umbrella or terminology of those, it would be subject to the same rules and regulations and restrictions as that, or if it operates a little bit differently and is falling under a different category, then it might be open to Class 3 e-bikes and scooters and things like that. For now, what we're doing is looking to design it to best practice for a shared use path, which is at minimum 12 feet width to allow for a variety of road users to travel together and or pass safely. And the actual use of which I think the city's going to continue to discuss for the next few years, too, of who, how, and what use our different shared use paths.

Thank you for that, because I know that a lot of people are concerned where they could ride their bikes and not get in trouble with the motorized bike. But this is going to be a highly used path once it gets put in.

Probably, yeah. It's already a big corridor, and if folks feel safer traveling on this corridor and not in the existing bike lane and buffered bike lane that's along Highway 160, it would likely draw in some more traffic.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Great. Thank you all. Thank you so much, Elaine.

Good evening. Scott McClain. Good afternoon, I guess. Scott McClain, Parks and Recreation. And I will be going through the five-year budget for the 2015 Parks and Recreation projects and the 2025 tax-funded Parks and Recreation projects. Starting with just how we identify projects, that we have a Parks Open Space Trails Recreation Master Plan. that this last version of it was completed in 2020. We are just starting the process for updating that. So a lot of community outreach, surveys, public workshops, meetings to identify what community priorities are. We also compare what we're doing to benchmark communities and national communities as far as population size versus number of amenities provided. And that really drives kind of our big or larger CIP capital projects and what we want to try to accomplish for the next seven to 10 years. In addition to that, we have our parks inventory and future needs assessment that was completed at the end of 23 and the recreation facility inventory needs assessment that was completed in July of 23, where we had a consultant look at all of our facilities and our parks to an inventory of those and then rate concerns, issues in those parks as very poor, poor, generally OK, very good or good. And we're using that chart is kind of our checklist as we move forward of trying to take care of all the items on the very poor, poor and moving those forward, getting those improved and trying to get everything back up to good or above at this point. And then, as always, public engagement input plays a part in how we prioritize projects. The master plan is written in a way where it provides a general roadmap, but allows some opportunities. So if we have some opportunity like Durango Mesa Park would be a good example of just how that's grown and been able to shift towards that a bit more than we originally thought as a master plan was put together. So our 2015 tax fund, we've got outlined here for the next five years, highlighted the ones that are construction projects in orange, the ones that are maintenance more in blue just to kind of show the difference. Obviously the ones are The construction and orange are higher dollar projects than some of the maintenance projects. So that it's not just the number quantity there, but. And then I also just want to point out that we do have a number of higher cost projects over the next couple of years. The Greenmount Cemetery irrigation is one, the river trail projects that we're doing, and that there's going to need to be some strategy in saving one year in order to pay for a project that's going to take two years of revenue to pay for that. So the Animas River Trail, Santa Rita, Nature's Oasis, That's about a $5.5 million project with the bridge replacement there, so that would be one that we're going to need a better part of two years' worth of revenue in order to do that project or get started on it. So breaking apart or looking at the 27 projects that we have for construction is Greenmount Cemetery, and I've got slides that I'll get in more detail on that, and then maintenance, about two-thirds of what we have in our budget for 27. So starting with Lake Nighthorse, we've got $105,000 just under that budgeted for doing some maintenance and replacement to the acre and cabling system for the wave attenuation that is by the boat ramp at Lake Nighthorse. So this keeps the wave action to a minimum so that boats can get safely in and out from the boat dock. so replacing the anchor and then also adding some additional the wave attenuation as you see here in the photo for 28 we have a replacement of this boat dock to a paddle craft dock that we've had some Significant erosion on the bank here, which has caused a greater difference in the elevation of the start of the dock down to the dock. And then just the way this dock was originally set is it's quite a bit higher than the water elevation and it makes it challenging to get into the paddle craft. So for a larger boat, it works, but if you're trying to get into a canoe or a kayak or something, it's a big step. The next project we have is the Greenmount Cemetery Irrigation System. As you all know that this last year we replaced the water line from the Animas River at Schneider Park up to the cemetery. The irrigation system at the cemetery and Schneider Park is both raw water that's pumped from the river. The pipeline is kind of the most critical piece of that. was buried deep to start with. They put fill on top of that as some of that development around Manist Soup Kitchen occurred later. So if we had a problem there, we would be out of business for a while. So that was priority. That's what we got done first. Second priority is replacing this pump house. The pump and all the electronics are situated in here. This is probably 50, 60 years old wood starting to rot. The price on it is for what looks like a shed is expensive, but the pump that's in there needs to be replaced every couple of years just because it's used to water out of the river. It's got a lot of sediment in it. It wears the pump itself. So the roof has to come off this structure in order to get a new pump in and out every time we do that. And then there's a whole wet well system that sits underneath what you see here is the green building that we need to make improvements to so that it is safer for our staff to get in and out of as they need to to clean that pump out. And then in 29, looking at getting into replacing the irrigation system that's at the cemetery, as you can imagine that this is a lot more expensive, more challenging than a new construction irrigation type project that all the main lines will be running within the asphalt sections. We'll have to repave the asphalt and then just working around grave sites and the existing structures at the cemetery. For 28, we have the replacement of the Schneider Park restroom. This was on the list a couple of years ago. We needed to use that budget for pickleball courts and we did some maintenance improvements, cleaned them up, repainted them, but still have on our list for replacement of the restroom structure there. 29, we have a million dollars budgeted. This is a placeholder for the Buckley park redevelopment. So we are. I'm in process of doing the Buckley Park redevelopment master plan. Two weeks from Wednesday, we have a consult up. We're providing three different concepts. The price could be somewhere around a million dollars if the project's more just kind of a renovation and cleaning up Buckley Park. If we get into looking at a permanent stage instead of our temporary portable one, the price obviously would be quite a bit higher, but we'll get that information here in the next couple weeks, and then that'll be used to drive the future budgets. And then in 2030, we have the replacement of the Animas River Trail from Santa Rita Park to the Nature's Oasis, including the bridge that's in the photo here. There's numerous utilities, fiber that are located on this bridge. Those will need to be relocated to the new bridge. So we are working on the section from 29th Street to behind the high school currently. That's scheduled to be done next summer. And then moving into this project after that, that will complete all of the updates from the asphalt to the concrete for the Animas River Trail. Community forest management plan. We have $100,000 that we budgeted to just help support our community forest. And this goes to planting of new trees. There's a number of the older, larger trees that our lift is not tall enough to get to. So hiring contractors to help us with some of that work, but taking care of the urban forest as well as adding additional trees to it. next couple projects are recreation facility um maintenance replacement type projects the first one is at chapman hill on the back side of chapman hill we've got this concrete pad which is where the zamboni brings all the ice shavings out and then they need to be transported from there off the this pad to the ground the pad has started to crack and slough so we've got some slope here that gets very uh Slick in the winter time, once it gets ice on it snow on it, the got limited clearance as an expensive piece of equipment. So we want to be careful that we don't damage that any further. So, looking at replacing the concrete pad at the back to better provide for operations at Chapman. The Community Recreation Center is 25 years old this year. The fire alarm system does not meet current code. It has been grandfathered in, so we're legal at this point. But we are starting to see where we're having a lot of issue, long lead times for replacement parts, making repairs. So wanting to get ahead of that and replace the fire alarm system to meet current code. The spring floor at the Durango Gymnastics, the gymnastics facilities in Bodo, the spring floor is the kind of largest, probably most used piece of equipment within the gymnastics. It is a springboard that goes underneath the foam pad that all of the jumping routines, practice was done on. So this is critical to the operations and what we're teaching there. The current floor is over 20 years old and time to be replaced. Back to the Recreation Center, looking at removing and replacing wallpaper that's in the public-facing portions of the building. So this would be the main hallways, the conference rooms. Again, just the building being 25 years old, we're starting to see some wear and tear on that and trying to kind of just chip away a little piece at a time as opposed to just letting things get worse and then having more to address. The photos on this one, this is kind of our five-year outlook or the same as the projects I've already discussed. As we move forward in the next couple of years, some of the other things we have for the recreation facility improvements would include there's curtains in the gymnasiums that help separate one basketball court from another use or pickleball on the other courts. The wall padding that's in there needs to be replaced. Locker rooms are starting to show age and deteriorate and patches we've made there. The tile's a little bit different each time. But updating those, continuing to update the workout equipment and utilities at the rec center. Any questions with the 2015? Or I can go ahead and go through the 25 and do all the questions at the end.

I think we're done. Yeah, keep going. Thanks.

So the 2025 tax fund is a quarter cent for Parks and Recreation. Again, construction in orange and the more maintenance-type projects in blue. We'll walk through these in the slides. The 2027 projects, we've got about the opposite on this one where we've got two-thirds are new projects and a third would be maintenance. This first project is the Durango Mesa Bike Park. As we've shared before, this is bike park itself is a three-year three-phase type project so we're looking at this so 26 we're working on wrapping up the the first phase and hoping to have those parts of it will be open this year or have been and then the majority of it will be open uh early summer of 27 and then in 27 continue working on projects so we have 1.4 million in the budget for 27 A MAP THAT WE'VE SHARED IN THE PAST WITH YOU ALL, THE GREEN SHOWS, THE GREEN AT THE TOP OF THE SLIDE IS THE UPPER TRAILS, THE UPPER ZONE. THOSE WERE TRAILS THAT WERE COMPLETED IN 25. THE ONES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SLIDE INCLUDE, THERE'S A TURF EVENT TYPE CENTER, THE PUMP TRACK, AN ADAPTIVE SKILLS ZONE, PARKING LOT, AND A DOG PARK THAT THOSE SHOULD BE AMENITIES THAT WILL BE OPEN early summer next year. The yellow would be kind of the middle zone of the bike park. And then in 28, looking at the pink that's in between the yellow and the green is more of a play zone, playground, strider park for kids. And then at the bottom, the smaller circle here would be a campground that would be developed as part of the development. And then what we see is that that would be a contractor operated, managed, and that the city then would get some revenue percentage of that to help support some of the cost for maintaining the bike park. And then this area would be equestrian zone. Durango Mesa Foundation is still looking at trying to get some support for creating an area that would be separate from the bike zone that people could get up there and have trails to ride that again are separated. Both on the bike park development and the maintenance, which I'll talk to you in a minute, Those projects are all 50-50 cost share with the Durango Mesa Park Foundation. And this is a slide that just kind of more recent, but the kind of event space is right in here. If you can see the cursor, it's about the size to give you some scale of Buckley Park. And then right below that is where the pump track is being developed. This picture is probably three or four weeks ago and been significant progress since then. All the contractors there have got a lot of the underground drainage pipe installed, starting to work on the tracks above that. This area to the north of that is the adaptive skill zone with the parking below. So dog park would be down here in this area, future campground to the left. We've been working with the Durango Disc Golf Club that has partnered, put up some funds to develop a disc golf course that would start here at the parking lot and then come up this drainage, the lower part of it, and wrap back down. So progress happening there would be the funds to continue developing there. And then we've got 145,000 budgeted for maintenance. Again, 50-50 cost share. Currently, the Durango Mesa Park Foundation has staff that is serving as project manager for both these projects and overseeing the maintenance. We are working with the foundation and putting together an operations maintenance plan with the goal of having that completed end of the year that really kind of gets into how do we transition that from the foundation to being a city operated maintained as these facilities are completed. Next project is the City Hall Administration Office. So Parks and Recreation are tight on space, both at the Community Rec Center for offices and at the Moore Park Shop. We are looking to have three full-time offices at City Hall and then space for two seasonal part-time. that help support the financial person, but this will help provide just kind of better collaboration between the parks and rec director position with other directors at city hall, our business operations manager, which is the finance person for parks and rec is in the same building as the finance department and our parks open space trails design manager who spends a lot of time working with community development on the CIP group would be in the same office as well. Smart 160, we've got 400,000 for budgeted for continued design engineering for smart 160 trail did share with you guys think a week ago, just kind of an update on where we're at with that. But still working towards both. Getting these men across the gill and property and working with and C dot on the section by by the sale barn. Parks, trail and recreation improvements that we have 472,000 set aside or budgeted for 27. this would go towards replacement of the playground at the triangle softball complex up at Fort Lewis college. We've been doing replacing upgrading the landscaping in front of the recreation center and phases. So this would give us the last phase for that doing some improvements to the playground at the recreation center. and then irrigation upgrade at Crestview Park. That was one of the ones identified in our facilities plan that's older, does need to be replaced. Looking at that as an opportunity to work with the neighborhood, still have some functional turf on that smaller park, but also set an example of how you can shift to some non-functional turf or other versions of landscaping that are more efficient with water use. And then moving forward, we're looking at probably like $450,000, $500,000 a year is kind of what we're looking at. What projects can we get done in future years for about that amount? And then similar with the open space maintenance, we have $400,000 set aside for wildfire mitigation, oxygen suite abatement, trail maintenance, working with Durango Trails, open space stewardship, and conservation efforts. the next couple years making uh just more trail improvements signage i'm looking forward to the 28 29 and 30 bike races that are expected to be in town that is that if you have any questions or think additional i can provide right counselor lawyer put down my hand sorry

Okay. In terms of asset management, so it seems like there's a lot of facility improvements, Chapman Hill, rec center, gymnastics, equipment, roofing, HVAC. Do we have a comprehensive asset management plan that tells us when these major systems should be replaced or being proactive instead of reactive?

There's two ways we're doing that. With the recreation facilities, yes, we have an asset management plan that the HVAC, the roofing are all on kind of a time schedule. And as we get closer, there's some discussion of do we need to do this two years earlier or can we push it or where we're at priority with other things. And then we have the recreation facility inventory assessment that we did as well, which also highlights that.

what we need to be looking forward to great um for every new park amenity we build have we identified the long-term maintenance and replacement costs as we're doing this you know that we have big projects i mean obviously like smart 160 and you know different things that are going to add a lot of maintenance costs are we taking that into account as i would say we are in transition of doing that we're in the past we have not but we're starting to do that with our new projects yes Excellent. The rec center in particular was a significant investment by our community, and it's going to continue to be a significant investment. Which improvements will be most noticeable to residents for the next five years, do you think, for the rec center?

That's a good question. I'm thinking about it. I almost feel like Hopefully they're not that noticeable. A lot of it's going to be the aquatics and upgrading the UV system that treats the water or the heater and things like that that are kind of, they're not as visible.

the rec center is just one of those things like everyone uses it. It's a huge amenity. It's one of the places that, you know, I mean, my family has used the most probably since living here, but it's also the thing that I think has gone from in my time in Durango for the last 25 years from brand new shiny thing to, you know, now you walk into other rec centers and other gyms and ours looks very old. Um, and so it's trying to find that balance of like, How do we keep it as this asset?

That's so great. I feel like that'll be something that we, as our, we do our master plan to kind of get into that view as well as what are the things that we need to do to upgrade or to update, um, the rec center. As far as taking care of it, we've always done the yearly annual week closure where it's all hands-on and a lot of effort goes into maintaining, cleaning, repainting, those sorts of things. But then a lot of this trying to be To spread it out, there was a lot of little things going on every year as opposed to just a complete remodel at one point, I guess.

Great. Last question. I'm super excited about the bike park making progress and you have a lot of these great projects coming up, but which projects most improve accessibility for seniors, people with disabilities, young families? I want to make sure we're like this multi-generational community and we're not just focused on one demographic in particular. I do one personal opinion, and don't get me wrong, my kids had a BMXer. We mountain bike. We love it. But for many years, I feel like it's been so focused on our biking, if that makes sense. How are we incorporating all demographics and all ages and all abilities? Okay.

I would start with Durango Mesa Park and just that's been a goal and a vision all along is that it's a place for all levels and that the vision of having a strider bike park. So toddlers are going to be out there learning how to start at that level and then bump up that entry level on up. Having hiking only trails out there that will again some of those people that may not be interested in riding but want to walk. We've got a multi-use trail that circles the park again for that's to grade that's accessible i think the animus river trail is definitely our highest used asset and the continued improvements that we're making there definitely supports the community great thank you that's all my questions council yazzie uh thank you scott okay since um jessica had mentioned asset management

Going forward. So I'm wondering for Durango Mesa park, since we're gonna be starting maintenance at some time, have we started thinking about where that money's gonna come from in the budget? Like, are we gonna like readjust maybe one of our taxing, um, entities or how are we gonna pay for that?

That, that has been a big part kind of of our, our operations and maintenance and like, how, how do we get to, um, paying for that? that we've had this big vision and now we're getting into the weeds of it. So we're wrapping our arms around it. I think it's part of the vision for Durango Mesa Park Foundation is to have that facility be accessible to folks. So it's a little bit different than like our model at Chapman Hill or Lake Nighthorse where we can charge an entry fee, and everybody's paying to come in to use the facility. But there is opportunity there for, I mentioned the campground is one opportunity that if we have people that are up there camping, and then we're making 20% off of that, or that that is revenue that can go back into the operations maintenance of the special events, looking at how we reprice those. It's kind of that balance of there's a lot of what we do that are it's the high school championships. We want to do that for the high school kids and for the community. At the same time, there's events that we should be able to charge more than we have typically charged for special events and have some revenue that we can put back towards the park. And I think looking at There's definitely kind of two different models. We have the soccer tournament that comes and uses Smithfield and Riverview and all those fields. And with all those people that come to town for that weekend, that increases the sales tax overall for the city by having those extra people in town. And then there's a model where we have more of a direct revenue back to Parks and Rec where The Ignite horse is a good example of that, where there's an entry fee. If you want to rent a paddle board from Four Corners River Sports, that we're getting a percentage of that. Or if you want to sign up for a class, an angling class, you do that for Parks and Rec, but then it's a contract. If it's actually providing that surface, again, we get some of that revenue. So trying to work through that, find a balance of making it accessible, but also helping cover the cost for maintenance.

All righty. Thank you guys. Just curious as to how we're going to go forward with that. So that's a good start. Thank you.

Great. Awesome. Thank you so much, Scott. Thanks. Appreciate your time. All right. Moving on to council requested items. Presentation updating the city charter.

That's the end, there's the beginning. Okay, so this is a presentation that was initiated by Councilor Gonzales about potential charter changes. I expect that as we go forward with this, some of these presentations will get very technical, very semantic focused, very legalese focused. So for this presentation, I tried to make it a little bit fun, which you will see very shortly. Again, this is a request from the City Council for a study session concerning possible updates to the Durango Charter.

Thank you.

Okay, so I've gone with a Star Wars theme here because as you know, Star Wars came out in 1978, actually came out in late 77, but it was re-released in 78. One of my earliest memories was going to see Star Wars on my 21st birthday in 19, my birthday on the 21st in 1978. The point being that the same time Star Wars came out was when our charter came out. And as you know, Star Wars has had multiple, like there's been eight movies since then. There's only been one significant upgrade to our charter, and that was in 1993. But what does a Home Rule Charter do? Well, it establishes our form of government. It defines the powers and responsibilities of the city council, the city manager, and other appointed officials. And it establishes very important processes, such as our elections and our budgeting. Again, there's been no major revisions since 1993. The charter sets the checks and balances between all of the players in local government. And I'm going to kind of comment on some of these pictures if you're not familiar with Star Wars, but this is Luke Skywalker balancing Yoda on his foot while he's trying to use the force to balance a rock. I circled the rock. Sometimes it kind of feels like that's what we're trying to do. That rock might represent the public that we're all trying to serve, and it's a difficult balancing act. But it does set all these different powers, the powers of citizen initiatives, which we went through recently, the city council, city manager, my office, state law, the municipal court judge, and the city department. So that's one of the things that our charter tries to do, and it's a difficult balance that we've all experienced. How can the charter be changed? I got a picture of Yoda here. If you don't know Star Wars, Yoda is the wisest of all of the Jedi Knights. He's the oldest one. If you have young kids, they probably like baby Yoda. Baby Yoda is the baby of the Yoda that I have pictured here. But he is the wisest person in the first series of movies. He was what I would go to ask how to change the charter. I learned that it can only be changed by ordinance of the council or petition by citizens. Each one of those methods is required to go to voters for approval. So once the council approves something, it still has to be approved by voters. Citizen petitions sometimes come in and change the charter, but those are usually amendments as opposed to sweeping charter changes, and we'll get into that shortly. How does the process work? The initiation and ordinance amending the charter has to include a ballot title. It's proposed by the city council after considering options. Then it goes through our normal ordinance process where it's introduced, it's considered, and there's a final reading. And then, of course, as stated earlier, it goes to the vote. That vote has some very, very specific requirements on it. The city council publishes a notice of the election to be held not less than 60 days and not more than 120 days after publication. The note shall include the full amended text and be published within 30 days after the adoption. And if the changes must pass by majority vote of the electorates. I don't really know what this picture is from, but it looks like they're trying to plan something. I can tell you that Carrie Fisher admitted she was doing a lot of cocaine when they filmed these movies, but it was the 70s. So, you know, it's a different time. She's passed, so I can say that, you know, without getting in trouble. OK, the council must chart a course for charter changes. And that's really what this presentation is about. This is about me giving you information about how the process works. And you guys, after this study session and after asking some questions, decide which course you would like to take. I would receive direction from you guys at some point in the future on which path you want to take. And what I've done here is that this is a slide from I think they're trying to find an older Luke Skywalker and charting through the universe. But we can start with a simple modification. We can move on to tweak very specific provisions in the charter. We could redefine the authorities within the charter between the city manager and the council. That's kind of a tweak, but it's a little more significant. We could actually restructure the way the council represents the community by going to districts or increasing or decreasing the number of people on the council, or we could completely change our form of government. And what follows is a slide on each one of these different changes. Simple modernization, that is simply correcting obsolete language or deleting obsolete provisions. C-3PO is just a walking computer. It's kind of a mindless task to go into the charter and make those changes. It's nothing that requires a whole lot of debate or decision-making. It's just merely a cleaning up. You could tweak specific provisions. Examples of that would be, right now for ordinances, we have to have an introduction, a consideration, and a final reading. A lot of communities in Colorado, a lot of communities around the country have shortened that process of passing an ordinance to two meetings instead of three. So that's an example of something you could tweak. Council salary is something that has come up in discussions. Currently, council salaries are set by ordinance, but the charter actually says when those can be applied. We had some issues about the mayor pro tem selection that hit the media. That would be another tweak that we could make to the charter. And then election timing requirements, as we know from the no mask ordinance, can be very restrictive. They're a little bit confusing, something that Fay and I talk about a lot. But again, these are just examples of tweaks from my experience working with you guys over the past three years that we might want to make to individual ordinances. This is R2-D2 being parted out by the people in the first movie, and I thought that might represent a tweak to something. The redefining of authorities. We can revise provisions of the charter, assign specific duties and responsibilities to the council, the city manager, the city clerk, city attorney, department heads, boards and commissions, with or without changing the form of government. In other words, our charter, and you've gotten memos from me, that detail the balance of authority and responsibilities under the charter. This is an issue that's come up multiple times in my three years here. And certainly we could tweak or redefine those authorities if they're not working for you as a council, us as a community, or for the city manager's office or my office. This is the famous scene where Luke, I am your father. I thought that was an interesting way to say redefine authorities because Darth Vader is trying to rule the universe with his son and balance the dark side of the force and the light side of the force. Again, one of these other modifications we make is we go down that different pass of your chart, we could restructure the council. And really, That's wide open. You could do it any way that you chose to. And I said, you could remember everything has to be voter approved, but you can increase or decrease the council from, you could decrease it to three members. You could be like the county commissioners. They only have three, or you could add members, go seven, nine, 11 or 11. It's really kind of whatever you would want to put before the public. You could align your terms instead of stagger them. You could go to district-based representation. You could go to an at-large mayor as part of that district. You could do rank choice balloting. That is where you go into the mail ballots. But that mail ballot would say, okay, we'll pick the three candidates you want for mayor, but also rank them first choice, second choice, and third choice. That was just actually adopted in Boulder recently, and they've had kind of mixed reviews about it since then, but that's a change you could make. You could also go to partisan primary elections, which specifically now, that is prohibited in our charter. But again, I'm not suggesting any of these things. These are just possibilities representative of the types of changes that can be made. You could actually completely change your form of government. You could go to, right now we are a city manager, we cancel form of government. You could go to a strong mayor with a weak council, with or without an administrative aide or a chief administrative officer, or you could go to a weak mayor, strong council. There are all different forms of government, not only in Colorado, but around the country, but these things are established by your charter. And this is from a much later episode of Star Wars where they're in their Senate, which is kind of cool if you've ever watched it, because it's so big that all these little flying discs, when they speak, they come out of the wall and they come up and make their presentations. The city council may appoint an advisory committee or ask a task force to make recommendations on the charter. We do that all the time. That is an option that is available to you to set up either one of those entities or whatever you'd like to call it. You can actually go out to the public to get input from them in small groups. And that's why I've got the small group pictures there to assist you in making recommendations before you adopt an ordinance that would go to the voters. However, depending on the level of change that you make. We just went through five or six slides, the different types of changes that can get made. As you move down that continuum, you get closer to a state requirement that you do it by a commission. The formal charter commissions are required by state law when the municipality seeks to comprehensively overhaul or replace an existing charter. If you go that route, the commission is elected by the voters. It's not appointed by you guys. You actually have to have people sign up and campaign to be a part of your charter commission. And then that commission has some very specific regulations under state law. It has to be an odd number of members between 9 and 21. So you can start to see that if you're going to make a major overhaul to your charter, it gets very expensive, it gets very time consuming, and it gets very complicated and you as counselors give up that control of the initial part of forming your charter changes. So you should be wondering, well, when do I cross that line from when the council can do something by ordinance or with a committee recommendation to a state mandated commission? And what I can tell you from my earlier slide where I'm showing that charting a course, you've got to get pretty far down that line before you're required to use a charter commission. And there is a state law definition about when you're required to do it, but it basically says that you guys have the authority to decide if a charter commission is required or not. And then this next slide here is gonna play the music again, and it's gonna show you the state law that I'm citing. I do. And I'll talk over from you from that. I did not get any help doing this. So your lawyer has some PowerPoint skills to get this done. What that definition said is it just basically repeats what I just told you, is that there is in state law, it defines with some kind of difficult to understand terms of when you're required to go with that commission. But it says that it's up to you. And evidently, that was taken to court back in the 60s, because that's where the court decision came from. I mean, it looks like there was another case in 2015 where that was clarified. That gets to our last slide. The music is going to come on again. But at this point, we're ready for questions and any discussion that you guys would like to have. And hopefully, someone will ask me why the Jurassic Park picture. So questions or discussion amongst yourselves, this would kind of be the time for it. Again, this is just a roadmap on what the possibilities are. And our next step, if you choose, would be to give my office some direction based on what we learned or what we discussed here today. Fantastic. Jurassic Park came out in 1993. That was the last time that the charter was changed. And there have been seven Jurassic Park movies since 1993. So the point here is that we are kind of behind the curve here on... things getting modified, changed, or redone. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some movies are just classics. They stand alone. You can watch them and they're great. But it has been a very, very long time since the charter has been looked at. Just one more.

I'm sure everyone else is here to have something about what movies they can put to their PowerPoints.

That's what they get for putting me last.

Oh, man. There's lots of them out there and all the time you guys have.

It's a very serious topic. And if we go down this road, it's going to get very technical. So I don't mean for the presentation to take away from the seriousness of what Councilor Gonzalez asked us to do, but I did think it was a fun way to introduce the topic, which we may be dealing with for quite a while.

Great. Thanks, Mark. Councilor Gonzalez.

Thank you. I enjoyed it because it is usually like a very serious topic. And people that regularly do charter amendments spend a lot of time on the technical part, on the legal part. It's like quite like an ambitious thing to go through. But so I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to discuss in this study session. So some of the questions that sort of came to mind are, you mentioned in one of your first points um that we do two readings um in when we on this dais so um and i know there's a lot of technological advancements that have happened since 1993 so you specifically mentioned that but are there others that came to mind oh that there

There are lots. Faye's office has a book of changes that we would need to go through. So yeah, the example that I gave is that technology has improved, like you mentioned. People move a lot faster. They process things a lot faster. Information goes out a lot faster. I believe that since this has been updated since 1978, before email, before all the different forms of communication we have, it was very intentional that the process to get an ordinance passed was slow. a first reading, a consideration, a second reading, a final read. So that's just one that my office in trying to assist you guys, I use as an example, because we could move that process faster. And I think that would make the public happier. Again, we can't take it too short because then we'll get accused of doing.

Yes, but then there's that too, right? Then we're not getting our money's worth if we made the meetings too fast. So I guess that would be like on Faye to then present other technological changes that we might consider if we decided to form a charter commission or what might that look like? Because I suspect that there's many. Is that something that would be like sort of evaluated through a commission?

so that that's was the difficult part of putting this together is that we really need guidance from the council on where you think you want to go and that may take a series of one-on-one meetings with you about it but it's just extremely difficult to answer your question because It's so wide open. The charter itself is a very small part of what you see when you go in and you start looking at our code. I mean, the charter is just the first 10 articles, and then there's an entire municipal code behind that that defines all those things. So it's a fairly limited document, but it's a very powerful document because it's the only thing that the voters themselves actually approved. So I hope I'm not being evasive, but there are lots and lots and lots of changes that can be made. And that was the point of this presentation. I just need the direction from you guys of how far you want to go or how you want to chart that course.

Okay.

And that may take more meetings.

Yeah, I would think so because – I'm not the most technologically savvy person, and I know there's updates. In fact, that we just started using this device up here. I was always concerned about some of the processes that we were doing because we were not using this feature, which I thought was also, like, required in voting. So anyway, that was one thing that came to mind. You also talked about... So my very first time that I went to CML, there was a presentation by a group of lawyers that were talking about eventually requiring cities to use some other form than at-large. And, you know, I think it's been a year since then. Has there been or could you give us some information or insight about what that law was and whether or not we would be required to take that type of action that we cannot elect at large?

What I can tell you is that that is on the state legislator's radar. Um, I don't, I can't tell you standing here today where it is with them. I know that it went through the legislature. It didn't, I don't know if it didn't come out of committee or if it didn't pass, but nationally. at-large elections have been shown to disadvantage certain voter groups. In the South, in my old jurisdiction, they actually got sued in 1986, paid out a $500,000 judgment because they did elections like we do here. And those elections disenfranchised African-American voters who were a growing part of that population. And by having at-large election, you always elect the five people who are representative of the largest demographic. So when you split into districts, what the federal government requires to do is create minority majority districts. So you'd have a district where the majority of the people in it were a minority, which guaranteed them a seat on that council. In my old jurisdiction, they came back, The first year I was city attorney there and they tried to do that again and they were claiming that there was a second seat required on that council. Unfortunately, their demographer had really kind of botched the information and they hadn't actually gotten to the tipping point where a minority majority district, second minority majority district was required. And there's been changes since then because the law has changed the federal government changes and people in Department of Justice change. So that provision in the South is no longer applicable. So what's happening in Colorado is I think they've kind of looked back and seen, okay, well, some of the problems the South was experiencing, Colorado may be moving too. So we may need to start looking at doing these, prohibiting these at-large elections.

So, and I guess prohibiting at-large elections is, does maybe maybe this is like for investigation but does it mean that right choice voting supports that potential or that eliminates that problem i didn't hear the first part um if does at-large elections um like remove the concern of having to vote by single member districts it can

OK, it's just unsettled in Colorado right now. There are a lot of jurisdictions in Colorado who do it exactly the way that we do. And I can't at this point without being directed to specifically investigate where we are, where the demographics are, give you a definitive answer about it. I can just give you the history of what happened in the South and what generally the legislature was was looking at and why.

Okay, well, I know. So well, I think that'll be one thing to consider as we as we move on. And then I guess you mentioned potentially advisory committee or I mean, we could do it ourselves. Do we need to have an advisory committee?

You do not.

Okay, so we could do it amongst ourselves. You give us presentations, we give you feedback. Ultimately, we adopt some changes, send it out to the public.

Correct. Okay. And that's going to be a subjective decision based on what you're talking about changing. There are some changes that you might be considering where I might advise you, this is one you might want to have a committee on. But again, until I really get into it, those decisions are down the road.

Okay.

You're going to want more community input than just doing it. And you will have community input because, again, it has to follow the ordinance process. So whatever you choose to do, we'll have to have an introduction, and you could take public input at that point. It has to be considered and discussed by you guys and debated, and you have public input at that point. And then at this point, there's a second reading where you could even have additional public input, although we kind of discourage that because it's doing the same thing twice. And you can always call a standalone public hearing on the proposed changes outside of a standard council meeting just to engage the public more deeply on what you're thinking about doing.

And so if, for example, when we go through this exercise, Would it be appropriate to say every four years, every eight years, every 10 years or whatever, you have to review the charter?

I didn't put that in my presentation as an idea, but that is something you could put in a charter. You could be in there. This charter shall be revisited every two years, four years, whatever you choose to

Yeah, I think that might be appropriate as well so that we're not going 30 years and then the public's not used to it because I think that's also one thing that concerns me is that in the public, this probably almost maybe, well, that's a stretch, but most of us haven't voted on a charter amendment. I mean, if it's been 30 years, most people haven't done that. And so it just creates confusion amongst voters if they haven't ever done that before. So hopefully we get into some sort of rhythm where we're reviewing it every four years or two years or whatever. Probably two is too soon. But five to ten or whatever amount is – is determined to be appropriate. So I look forward to working on it. I'm not so nerdy that I love the technical stuff. I more like the political side of it, that we're engaging with the public about priorities. I like that part a lot. And it's one of the things that a charter amendment can do, is that it's another opportunity for us to engage with our communities and see, also where their priorities lie, sort of on a larger scale that's not necessarily issue by issue. So I look forward to it. I think it's kind of fun in the way these things can be fun. And I really liked your presentation. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. I will say, because someone will point out that there was a charter amendment in 2012. I left that out of my presentation because that was a super technical charter change to deal with franchises that I believe, without spending a lot of time researching it, was required by state law. So there was a charter change in 2012. It added a section on franchises, which you will see, which didn't exist in the charter before. But I'm guessing that that was a state law requirement. And it wasn't a true charter change like it's being contemplated in this presentation.

All right. Counselor Lawyer.

Great. Thank you. So from your perspective, are there provisions on our charter that are clearly outdated or creating operational challenges today? Or is this primarily an opportunity to modernize language and improve clarity?

It's both. Both. There are some parts of our charter that make me a little bit nervous because there are things that have changed in the way we do business, whether it's because of court decisions or whatever, they're parts of our charter that we don't follow to the T. So that's one of those cleanup things. That's when I said obsolete provisions. That's what I'm talking about. Does that make sense?

Yeah. In terms of public engagement, if a council decides to pursue changes, what public engagement process would you recommend before drafting amendments so residents feel ownership of the process since the charter really does belong to the voters, the community buy-in I do believe matters?

It depends on what direction I get on how far down that charting a course you want to go. If all we're going to do is amend the obsolete language and the obsolete provisions, at that point, I think that your public engagement would only be necessary in that normal ordinance process. If you start tweaking the balance of power between the city manager, the city attorney, the city clerk, the departments, and the council, I think you're getting close to having some public instrument requirement beyond the ones I just described, but you're still in that arena of how the internal government works and you're not truly affecting the public. When you're looking at that balance of power or that you're redefining where the responsibilities are as far as employees and everything else, That's still an internal council administration tweak where I would say that at that point, most of the public is not going to understand exactly what you're talking about, how that works, why it's important. So having the input just at the ordinance process would be okay. If you start going into changing how you're represented or leaving the at-large system, at that point, you're directly affecting the way the citizens are represented. And I think at that point, you start bringing them into the fold and asking them, would you feel better represented if you had a district or are you fine with the way things are now? So again, very difficult to give you a definitive answer, not knowing how you guys are gonna direct us to go.

speaking of if you're separating it ish i know there was lots of different options you had four or five that you went over but if you separate it into like minor we can do quickly and then the major one what are what are costs of those like what is the cost if even the easiest tweaks we can make what is the cost going to be of changing our charter conducting election

Because even if you do the minor, minor tweaks, you have to conduct an election, which from my recent experience is in that $50,000 to $60,000 range.

So $50,000 to $60,000 just for the election, and that is on any, doesn't matter how big or small. So $50,000 to $60,000, and then your time, staff time, public, how much does it increase if you go to the bigger? Double, triple?

I mean, so if you go to where something that requires a commission, you're two elections, so you've doubled that 50 to 60 and made it 100 to 120,000. And at that point, I think you would want to bring in outside counsel to advise the charter commission, because at some point, we'd want to balance that. We wouldn't want everything just to be running through the city attorney's office here. You'd want a broader attorney representing that commission. So I would anticipate that the attorney's fees could get, I mean, attorneys are just expensive, right? I mean, last time we had an attorney, they were charging $900 an hour. So that could become a very expensive proposition. I guess the answer to your question is you start off at the cost of an election and it can exponentially increase to an election, additional attorney's fees, additional costs of advertising. And a lot of that goes out of your hands because once you have a charter commission in place, I don't know the answer on, I don't know if you have to fund them or not. but you're talking about a whole nother board of people, they may come to you and say, hey, we want to do this and this, and we need to hire somebody. I mean, it could get very expensive. And then the control of what happens leaves the council in the setting we talked about before, and it goes to a different party that's elected between nine and 21 members. I mean, do you pay those people? I don't know the answer to that question. If they're a charter commission for six months and they each are entitled to a salary, it's just really, really hard to say.

Okay. What are the biggest risks you've seen when communities begin revising their charter? Are there areas where seemingly small changes can have significant unintended consequences?

It's always possible. I think that if you haphazardly make charter changes, like if you start making charter changes that are issue specific oriented, that's where you run into those types of problems. I'm confident in my abilities, my staff's abilities to make sure that we don't do that. So I think that the risk is fairly low. But again, as you go into bigger changes, I think that risk could increase.

It's like realistic timing for this. So if we were to say we wanted to go through with X, Y, or Z now to election.

So December the 16th, the last to do it in April, which is possible beginning of December in December where you would have to have it. And now, so you're going to put it on the ballot. So the quickest you could accomplish a change would be April. And you'd have to have that change ready to advertise by this December. Um, that would be the fastest one. If you go the route of appointing a charter commission to elections, it had to be two different cycles. So you're looking at upwards of a year and a half to two years, maybe longer.

Um, sorry, hang on. Um, Here we go. Do you like thinking about these like costs, like 50 to $60,000 doing it every couple of years? Like, absolutely not. There's so much better. I mean, in my mind, absolutely not like better. So do you suggest like taking small, like doing it more often with smaller incremental changes or do most Colorado communities like do it once every 10 years and it's just on that cadence and they take a big comprehensive look?

Colorado seems to be more on the longer timeframe to do it. I know from speaking with Kofi Gonzalez that it was a regular occurrence in her prior jurisdiction, and it's just a choice. In Colorado, it seems to be a choice that it's not done very often.

I mean, I know I really want to take a look at municipalities like ours because San Antonio and probably the districts you were in, they're much larger. And if you're looking at elected entirely at large, almost every Colorado community that is our size is elected at large. And the reason is we have districts for NINR, we have districts for county commissioners, and they have a very hard time getting people in certain districts to run. And so there's a reason we do it at large. There's a reason that, I mean, I would like to see comparisons of communities like Durango and stop comparing us to other municipalities that are not like us and we can't compare to. You know, there's a hybrid, you know, potential where you have just like most members are at large and then a couple districts. Okay, fine. You know, are there similar communities to us as that? But I think it's super important that we're looking at communities like Durango because on cast when I served on that board they did a ton of charter like communities looking at charter changes a ton of communities looking at at large versus you know elected in districts and almost every one of the cast communities is at large because of Sure. Different reasons regarding that. At what point does it make sense for council to lead the discussion itself versus referring broader questions to a charter commission? So, like, where is the trigger in that? Is it specifically, like you said, like, when we're changing our form of government? Like, okay, we want... Will you tell us, I guess, if we start to get into a discussion and it's like, OK, now we're here?

Yeah, I think that's part of my job. That's why there was a specific slide where that language rolled up.

Yeah.

Because it's not definitive. It leaves it to your discretion and it becomes a political issue. How much authority do you guys have to propose a change as to sending it to an outside body to change? Um, if you remember the slide where I said, well, I can't really tell you, but it's somewhere at the end of this little path where there's Luke Skywalker. I can tell you it's somewhere in there. Um, you know, if you're going to change, and to me, as I see her today, that falls somewhere between changing the way you're represented and an entire charter change. If you guys wanted to change the way you're elected, or you want to change the size of your council, you're now interacting with how the public is represented. And I think it becomes a real gray area. If you're going to revamp the whole thing, it's obvious you have to have a charter commission. But as you move down that continuum of changes and how significant the changes are, you get closer to that.

So sitting here today, we're discussing, asking you questions, that sort of thing. No decisions can be made here. What is the appropriate next steps after this? Obviously, I mean, I'm not cutting anyone off, but I just want to know that.

There would need to be a resolution directing my office to do something. And that something could be prepare a formal memo on, you know, what changing the balance of power would look like. And if that has to go to a commission, so I need this, this, and that's why I like my slide with the whole universe. Cause literally this is the whole universe is available of changes. I need you guys to tell me somewhere in that universe where you want me to start.

So we can't do that here. We have to do that in a regular campaign. Correct. So someone needs to bring it up under new business.

Correct.

Put it on as like a discussion of council to determine what direction we want to take for charter changes. And then in that discussion on a city council meeting, give direction as to like the different, what we would like to see as an elected body go forward. Correct. And if one person wants something, you have to get. three of us on board, three people on board, right? I mean, got to learn to count three. Yeah. And that's the way it all works. Okay.

I mean, I can tell you that, you know, when I got hired here, I was quoted in the newspaper because I read your charter before my interview. And I noticed that, you know, the language in there was very misogynistic and everything else. So that was the quote they picked in the paper when they interviewed me. And someone made fun of me for doing that. Oh, we're going to hire this guy. And all he wants to do is change pronouns. But again, it's, My opinion as I sit here today, the only one I'm comfortable giving you, because everything else is truly at your discussion, is that it is time to at least do that, if it's affordable, to do that change so I can incorporate the changes that Faye's office has done. We can get rid of those obsolete things. And to me, that's just the finance. My recommendation is do it when you can afford it. But it is expensive because you do have to conduct an election.

Right. And I guess once we decide the path we want to take, we can better understand how much it's going to cost. And then would that be something that'd be like, okay, Mark, in your budget for 2027, we need you to include a charter change because you do have not included that for this year. I'm assuming, right? Yes.

And there are different ways you can do it, right? I mean, the way my office works is when we have issues that come to a head and I have to put my whole team and myself on that, we work that issue. But there are times where it ebbs and flows, where we are slower. And that's when my office can shift into working on whatever level of charter change you might want. And that affects your timeline too, right? Because if you tell me, Mark, we want the chartered changed in six months and it's a major significant change, I'm going to say, okay, but I got to bring an outside counsel because I can't handle that burden in that timeframe. I'll tell you that over the next 18 months, whatever it happens to be, I'll give you an estimate on when I can get that done based on the workload that we have.

But we need to decide which direction we would like to go before you tell us when and how much time you have.

I mean, it's part of that process. If you guys direct me to do a presentation, that would be part of what I do for you. It's like, this is something we can get done. This is something that I'll need extra help on.

I do just want to make one comment. I think our charter has served our community well for decades, and I think it speaks to the strength of the framework. We haven't had to change it very often now. Should we have? Probably. I mean, is there things in there that are giving you pause? Yes, we should have had someone say like, we should update certain things that are out of date. Absolutely. But at the same time, local government has evolved significantly since the early 1990s. I think it's healthy to periodically ask whether our governing document still reflects best practices while being careful not to change foundational checks and balances without a compelling reason and strong community involvement.

So those are just my- And I would agree in preparing this. I did not find any significant legal issues in our charter such that it can't continue to function as is. It is a decision by you guys as representatives of the community if you want to modernize it and to what level? Purely political.

I think that's great to know that it exists and we can continue moving forward without any risk to the city of Durango, because if it is undoubtedly at least going to cost us probably $60,000 to $70,000 in election and time, if we don't have it in the budget and we can't figure out where to find it from, then we need to create it in the budget coming up if it's important to council. So thank you.

um you answered my one of my questions my first one was you know how do we get from you know this broad kind of range of of what we would like to see done um and then the majority of council will decide you know what sort of um sort of changes will be made and then that i guess what kind of led to like how do we direct the advisory committee in in terms of what we are charging them to do um and so kind of led me to another question you know if we're saying hey these are the specific areas that we would like you to go out and seek input or give us feedback on um does that kind of just set the framework for what they are allowed to to discuss and and provide feedback based upon those or can they provide other feedback

if they see that there's other issues within the charter or are they only charged with the specific task as appointed desk counsel it may be up to you and you could actually do both i mean you could do a town hall and say we're seeking input from the community about potentially changing the charter and just see what people say see how much they want to be involved see what issues they might have that aren't in this presentation that you guys haven't thought of so it And I'm sorry because I feel like I'm getting vague answers, but this is a lot. I don't get changed a lot because it's very difficult to pick a path forward. What I can commit to you is whatever path you pick, I'll be standing right next to you doing my professional job of giving you advice to be successful.

It's almost always harder to be able to choose a path forward when you have so many options in front of you. So I certainly understand that. And then, you know, kind of in terms of the conversation around revisiting the charter every X amount of years, Does that, like, what does that, I mean, again, probably pretty basic in terms of like, or vague in terms of like what we decide, you know, what we do, but is that, you know, is that council deciding like, Hey, we're going to look at the charter as a, as a body, or are we going to get a memo from the city attorney saying, Hey, this is what I would recommend. Like what, like what are the paths forward? And if we say we want to look at the charter every six, eight, 10 years, whatever the case may be, what does that look like in reality?

Again, that's another decision because I think council lawyer very eloquently pointed out that it's worked pretty well for the past 30 years, but then we have another counselor where they changed it very well and that worked for her. So there's no rule to it. It's whatever you guys choose to do. Automatically requiring a charter change, I'd have to look at that more to advise you if that's something that we would recommend.

Yeah, I don't have any interest in deciding that we have to make a charter change because, well, we got six years. We have to make a charter change. I would like to potentially revisit the charter. We're like, oh, man, this is not as relevant today as it was six years ago.

I think a lot of it has to do with the size of your community. In my research to prepare this, Colorado Springs comes up as a case. Colorado Springs experienced exponential population growth that led to their charter change. Their charter change, they went from at large to, I don't know exactly what it was, but they now have a strong mayor form of government, which they didn't have previously, which required the charter to do. So what I would suggest is that as you're considering whether you make the changes or how far you get on that charter course, It's going to be somewhat related to population and that in a lot of the issues that I mentioned, a stagnant population doesn't require as significant of a charter change.

Okay. All right. Great. Thank you, Mark. Uh, councilor Gonzalez.

Clarifying points. You know, suggesting that we review the charter every 10 years is just that you review it, not that you have to change it. But again, it was just sort of standard every, actually every election, every other election, there was a charter commission who reviewed it. And if there were potentially any updates, but that doesn't have to be done. It was just a practice, which, you know, seems like it would make sense every 10 years you review. So then you don't go 35 years without a revision. But I guess I just also wanted a little bit of clarity because, I mean, we have to have an election in April and we have to have an election in November. I mean, that's just the law. And so if you added something to the ballot, is there an additional fee? I think that's to Fay, right? But it...

I'm not... And again... We are not required to have a November election.

We are required to have an election in odd-numbered April years.

Yeah, so...

You're right.

One election a year. Just to clarify my question, we're not required to have an election every night. We don't have to have a midterm. The city is not. Oh, the city. But because it's the county who holds the election. Okay. I'm sorry. I just wasn't, I don't know. I was thinking April, November, we have elections, but it's actually the county who does the elections in November.

And certainly, to your point, doubling up a charter change with other elections would mitigate the cost.

Okay. I just thought that was an important clarification because, you know, should we decide to review the process, I wouldn't suggest we have a special election. It would be done during whatever is the next election cycle. But if we decided to put it in November with a county election, then there would be a fee. that 50,000 to 60,000 that's been okay. I think that's, you know, I mean, and I guess it will, you know, to be determined. But, you know, typically it's done whenever there's an election, not a special election. So, I just wanted to get that clarification. And I guess just, you know, as we're discussing, I mean, I see a lot of problems with the charter. And I think perhaps it has become that I come from a different jurisdiction where things were done differently. This is a small town, but I also see that there are a lot of problems with the charter that address some issues related to voting rights, some issues related to representation. I see a real flaw in the way that we don't elect a mayor. So I think it's a matter of perspective. And that's why I think ultimately, should we decide to go down this path and we put a separate You mentioned a very elaborate process for a commission, which would happen only if we did these major changes. But we could also elect to put together a task force or put together, like we've done in the past, an independent group of people. We would give them a whole slate of things to review. They would determine what rose to the level of priority, and then we as a council would decide if we wanted to pursue them. without the major difference of the charter change that would happen if we decided to change our mayor, city manager mayor form of government. I mean, it's a way that it could be done. Okay. Okay. Well, you know, I think we'll be determined. So anyway, look forward to it. Thank you, Mark.

Councilor Yazzie.

I just have one point. The county commissioners are at three because if they wanted to get more commissioners, they'd have to go up to 70,000. Okay.

That's state law? Yeah.

I don't know if it's state law.

Yeah.

That would make sense. So that's it. I've been waiting the whole time to say this. As you struggle with making these decisions about moving forward with a charter change or not, may the force be with you.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, man.

All right. Thank you, Mark.

Um, then moving on to a proposed new agenda items for discussion. Anyone like to bring up anything under new agenda items? Nope. All right. Great. And then do we have, yeah, five minutes. All right. Mr. Crosby, would you like to come up and join us for the grant program update, please?

Good afternoon, Marin Council. Tommy Crosby, Economic Opportunity Manager, here with a brief grant approval update. On tonight's regular meeting agenda, you will see two different grant programs. We have the second round of the Durango Creates grant. This will... coincided with our final allocation of Renew Grant funding. We were able to eke out one additional Renew Grant using the remaining funds in our Renew Grant funding pool. As always, for the Durango Crates grants, those go through a staff administrative review, making sure they meet eligibility criteria and guidelines. That then goes to a committee review, and then it's brought before city council for full approval. For the Renew Grant, we do not have a committee review. It just goes through staff review and council approval. The Durango Crates grants, you'll have six applications up for recommendation on the regular meeting agenda this evening for just over $15,000. The total program budget for that grant is $35,000. And the six grants on this evening's agenda will use the remainder of those 2026 of Durango Crates funds. And then, like I mentioned, we have one final renew grant project that will use all of our 2026 for new grant funding um leaving uh no remaining funds for 2026 but our hope is to budget for this again in 2027. i'm happy to answer any questions that you might have about any of the grants on tonight's agenda yeah thanks so much appreciate it tommy

All right. If there's nothing else, we will go ahead and adjourn. Thanks, everyone.