City Council - Regular Meeting

Time is 5.31 p.m. on September 1st, 2026. We will now call to order the City of Durango City Council regular meeting. May I please get a roll call, please?

Mayor Pretone, lawyer. Here. Councilor Gonzalez. Councilor Coso.

Here.

Mayor Woodruff.

Here.

Councilor Yowsey. Here.

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

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

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

Hi, thank you. Hi, good evening. My name is Liz Torres and I am here with my colleague today, Andrea Steadman. We're here with the Community Language Co-op so that we can have some language justice and everyone can hear in the language of their heart. If you're joining us on the Teams app this afternoon, you will have access to the interpretation menu. by clicking more, which is the three little dots, and then you can select language and speech and select the language of your heart. Buenas tardes, mi nombre es Liz Torres y estoy aquí con mi compañera Andrea Stedman. Estamos aquí con la Cooperativa Comunitaria del Lenguaje. Muchas gracias por su compromiso con la justicia del lenguaje para que así todos tengan derecho a hablar y ser escuchados en el idioma de su corazón. And we can go ahead and get it started. Thank you. We now go move on to opening remarks by Mayor and Council.

Seeing none, I'll move on to presentations and proclamations. We have none, and then that moves us on to agenda item number five, city manager updates.

Yes, good evening, Mayor and Council. We do have three updates for the City Council. First up is our flock monthly updates by Chief Curran.

Just real quick, just for the record, Faye, Councilor Gonzalez joined us at 535. Thank you.

Evening mayor and Council. My name is Bryce current and this is the monthly flock presentation for July. So the first slide is the.

DPD users by offense type and should be getting used to seeing these slides by now. So the users conducted 1282 searches in July, so the top examples this month or the month of July. are drugs, hit and run, wanted persons, vehicle theft, larceny, assault, and battery. And vehicle theft was actually lower. So the top search in June was motor vehicle theft at 32%. And in July, it was narcotics at 41%. And motor vehicle theft was actually down to 6.8%. So this is the flock use by case number. And as you can see, the case can generate up to 100 searches as officers continue searching for one high value case. If you've noticed, we had zero stolen vehicles in July and you may ask why they search for stolen vehicles. And so the searches above were incidents that were assists to Bayfield PD, La Plata County Sheriff's Office or stolen vehicle reports we received, but they were unfounded like people Came out of the bar late at night and forgot where they parked or or their keys gave their keys to a friend and so and and some of the others are investigator follow ups from previous months throughout the year. The wanted person incident is was 76 searches as an example was a SWAT operation for an individual that had a felony sex assault warrant. So. As asked, organizations requesting access. June 10th, we reduced it to the four states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. So in July, we approved only two requests, Williams, Arizona PD, and Broomfield, Colorado PD. We rejected requests from 59 agencies in July. So now we share with 144 organizations and... Just over 1900 share with us and that's down 80 organizations in July. So the custom hot list summary all hot list expire after 60 days and must be reentered if still needed. 10 hot list entries were created in July and 15 were either updated or deleted in July. So the hot list reports the total alerts were 1,891. 482 of those are Durango's custom hot list alerts. The other 101 custom hot lists are from other agencies. And the official hot list are 1308, and those are the NCIC CCIC, which actually one could be three, so it could be one third that number, as I've explained previously. So total vehicle reads in July were 2.9 million total vehicle reads. And year to date, That volume is 17.4 million and our July retention is set at 30 days. Was set at 30 days. So total unique vehicle reads out of the 2.9 million unique plates passing through were 396,473. So remember, unique vehicle reads catch each plate only once. And our transparency portal captures that a little different. It only shows about 180, which is probably more accurate. It's about half of that. And it's just because of our cameras and how it counts the unique reads, whether it's per day or throughout the entire year. And those numbers aren't as important to me as the numbers we're actually looking at and what we're auditing and what doesn't get deleted. So slide. So stolen and recovered vehicles for June and year to date. So we had in June, as reported previously, we had 12 stolen vehicles and 12 recovered, which was 100% and one attempted stolen. Year to date we had 35 stolen vehicles reported and 32 vehicles recovered, which is 91%. And last year we had 43 stolen and 41 recovered and zero thefts in July, which is super interesting. Um? So there's some safeguard updates. August 13th, FLOC released some more changes, and some of the new safeguards were suggested, reduced default retention, case codes required for every database search, automatic abnormal use detection for suspicious search activity, proactive user lockouts, pending review from a supervisor, And mandatory enhanced auditing review tools for all law enforcement by the end of the year. I don't know if those are yet, but we are conducting audits currently. Safeguards already in place are permanent audit logs, standardized offense types required. And customer local control of data. 30 day default retention and federal sharing default off. And then lastly, the sensitive search restrictions that I've talked about before for immigration and other issues they've had around the United States. And so regardless of the technology, it has an audit trail and misuse as a consequence. So as we continue to meet with community, legislators, law enforcement officials, professionals, we continue to listen and we've updated our policy to reduce retention period to 21 days. after which data is deleted permanently. We also reduce the same query searches to seven days without supervisor approval, where supervisor actually reviews the reasonable suspicion for the search. Trust is earned, and when we're transparent about what we do, accountable for how we do it, and willing to place meaningful limits beyond the ground floor of the Constitution while balancing public safety. I think a lot of, Chiefs around the country are based on a lot of their technology on that ground floor instead of building on the ground floor of the Constitution. Just make that note. I continue to stay connected with Colorado legislatures, national ALPR experts, and will continue to do so. So some of the successes were we had two separate hit and runs in the third and the 11th. Witnesses had the cars right, but they had the plates wrong. and so the officers conducted 17 searches for one and 14 searches for the other, and using the descriptions and partial plates, they identified both drivers. There was another insurance fraud where the driver blamed a mystery fourth vehicle for rear-ending them, and the camera showed that the damage was already there. There was no fourth vehicle, so it was old damage, new story, citation issued, and also charged for the false insurance claim. And then on the 27th, After an incident where a driver pointed pepper spray at somebody else after a hit and run, flee and minutes later the officers worked the case and were able to find the driver and issue that citation. We've had several other cases that are big high profile type cases that are ongoing investigations that I'm not going to speak about today. So, uh. That's the end of my flock presentation. I do have one more update, and I feel like it's an important update. So we're not going to renew our FLOC contract in 2027. We're going to transition to Axon, which is a longstanding partner. This is not a sudden decision. We've evaluated other platforms for some time now. We're waiting for the technology to mature in safeguards, auditing processes, data control and accountability. This is not about FLOC failing. FLOC helped demonstrate the value of ALPCPR and has made significant improvements. This is about continuing to evolve our program as the technology continues to evolve as well. What is Durango's standard? I think our standard is local, trusted control of our data, strong privacy protections, meaningful auditing and accountability, Control and transparent data sharing. Integration with a broader public safety technology platform that we have currently with Axon. Continued community trust. So why did we choose Axon? So Axon's a longstanding partner, already trusted with sensitive public safety data. It's an ALPR platform that meets those standards while integrating with the technology that we already use in the cloud that we already have control of. So why now? We listened, we evaluated, we waited until the technology and the safeguards and budgetary timing all aligned. We can preserve the public safety value of ALPR while strengthening how it's governed. So this is the bigger point. The easy choice is to choose safety, and I see a lot of law enforcement and chiefs doing that around the country. or to choose privacy. You don't have to look very far on social media and everywhere else to see people just choosing privacy. The harder decision and the more responsible choice is to choose both. And privacy without safety leaves people vulnerable. Safety without privacy gives government too much power. The extremes are easy. Leadership requires balance. That means protecting people from crime and unnecessary government intrusion and using the technology where it meaningly improves public safety, limiting it where it does not, and putting safeguards around its use. So when tragedy or controversy or politics or pressure pushes towards an extreme responsible leadership, resist that swing. So we don't bend to public pressure, but we do listen to public input. The goal is the constitutional sweet spot where safety and liberty can coexist. As you've heard multiple times, the Benjamin Franklin quote, we've heard it multiple times in this meeting, actually. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. So Franklin's warning matters. And public safety and liberty are not enemies. Government should neither sacrifice essential liberty in the name of safety nor abandon its responsibility to protect the people in the name of privacy. So the responsible choice is to protect both, like I said before. Colorado has a big opportunity right now to take that measured approach. So we're working with legislators, DAs, chiefs around the state to introduce legislation that would establish safeguards to make misuse of crime. We'll use the technology where it's meaningful, where it meaningfully improves public safety will restrain where it does not and will govern like the public's trust depends on it because it does. So questions I know there will probably be additional questions on that, but also the previous part of the flock presentation.

Counselor, yeah, thank you for the presentation. I have a couple questions on the flock presentation and then I have some questions on axon.

Is that what you call it?

Make sure I wrote down right? So it says we are, you said that we're down 80 that share information with us. Is that normal? Like, or is that because we're not sharing with other people?

That's correct.

Is that so like we don't share with them. So they're like, we're not going to share with you anymore.

Right.

But it's fine.

I mean, I just was wondering if there's not a, I mean, it's not a huge number. No, I think a lot of people understand that people have different policies and they have public safety in mind.

Yeah.

And I think others maybe just have a, If you're not going to share with us, we're not going to share with you.

How often do we request of other agencies that aren't in our like immediate region?

We requested about as much as we could early on, but now we mostly focus on the four states around us and our partners here. And with Axon, it starts with zero sharing. And so we're going to be a lot more intentional in our efforts there and continue to work you know, continue to look at the reason why. And I think all law enforcement officials should be very purposeful in their sharing.

So we rejected 59 and approved to do searches this last month or whatever. Are the 59 that we rejected, are those people that we have agreed to share with like in the region?

No.

No, they're just other people just requesting.

Yes.

Okay. I just want to make sure.

Yeah. And they're either outside the four states now. So that number is going to go up or 287G compliant within the four states.

One thing that really caught my attention was the 536 narcotic searches because we haven't had that many to date on typical reports. Usually it's the car theft that is reported. way higher than any other search. And so for some people, when they're first seeing these, I see some new faces in the crowd too. So first seeing these reports, maybe for the first time, 536, but that's not five that I want just to reiterate. I know, I know this and you've said this, but that's not 536 narcotic searches. That's like you had 173 searches on one case, 106 on another, 105 on another. Is that all our officers doing those searches? Yes.

Okay, and so we just are researching for new footage, new...

Yes. Yeah, and those are big cases, and that's what we expect the officers to do, but those should also catch our eye. That's what the auditing process is for, and we should be asking why.

Yeah.

And we do. Yes. And those are some cases that I'm not going to talk about today that are ongoing, and the officers are doing a really good job, and I wouldn't sell drugs in Durango.

Yes. Great. Don't worry.

But that's the type of stuff that we should raise your eyebrow as a supervisor and say, hey, why are you searching this? Okay.

Well, I think that's the point of these reports. And regardless, I just was one counselor, regardless of what system we go to, I think these reports of as we're getting new technology, as we're doing new things, public safety is important. And I appreciate that balance. I was just talking to someone the other day on a different matter, city council matter. But I was like, if we walk out of here and we both feel a little bit screwed, Probably is like the best outcome for everybody. No, and and we don't want to take public safety lightly. We don't. That's it's important. However, as we hear every day, so is privacy and making sure that we're using these tools correctly and weighing the pros and cons and cost and you know all the things. Have our audits identified any searches that were inconsistent with policy, lacked an appropriate case number, otherwise raise a concern?

No, not yet. I mean, in the past, we've had some that didn't put a case number and those officers are approached and talked to and they look at the case, they find the case and insert the case number, which I hope that's what the audit processes do if somebody doesn't. I mean, but I know you're not talking about paperwork issues.

Well, yeah, I mean, I do through these questions and then looking at these reports, like the auditing that we're doing and how we every month something new comes up we change guardrails we're doing something you're listening to the public you're listening to us you're listening to other people like the guardrails are working in some regard um and i hope that that continues even though we don't have like the name flock potentially next year what like overseeing durango or whatever it's happening um these guardrails it still is important it's absolutely important yeah and so i just want to but I also want to reiterate that we are paying attention, you know, a lot more than some other community. I mean, I was in, as a side note, I was in Maricopa County three weeks ago and we had two vehicles stolen, um, out of a secure location. And I think that they, he was telling me the sheriff of Maricopa County was telling me they did, I don't know, 2000 searches for these two vehicles in 24 hours of my vehicles. And I was like, that is Wild like but they have obviously it's bigger area and all the things. But anyways. For the axon. Who controls? So I think one of the big complaints that we hear about flock is like where the information is stored and who controls that information and where it's stored. Who controls the information and where it's stored with axon?

So you know, I've heard of different. groups have told us like hey veil or whoever has their own database or whatever and i guarantee um those databases i mean if you look at i mean if you look into europe where they have a lot of their own databases those databases are breached all the time yeah um and so that's one of the reasons law enforcement has partnered with third bar third party databases forever is because of the security and because of the contracts and because of the teams of people that they have to keep it secure to keep it CJIS compliant. And I think that's the key is to have those contracts airtight and have those, you know, and, you know, so there's been third-party data forever, but different companies are more proven. And I'm not saying one's more proven than another in this case, but we have had a relationship with this company for over a decade where they store our most sensitive data, which is our body cam, Um, are in car cam and these are critical incidents, um, that have never been leaked out or breached. And, um, and then the straight forward conversation that we've had with this vendor that you control your data and we cannot access it without your permission.

Okay.

And so my question is, okay, but what if you want to test your AI systems or something? We still have to have your permission. And then we're going to encrypt it with one half of one plate that is from somewhere and then half of a plate that's from somewhere else. So it's not even a real plate. But regardless, we don't have to give permission for them to access our data.

And they cannot access our data without our permission.

And that type of straightforward language is very important. And the other thing is a partnership. We don't look for vendors. We look for partners that are willing to change when we hear from the public and when we hear from the legislature and everybody else that we're able to pick up the phone and call. We've been able to do that for years with Taser, with our body cam, and with this company.

And that's what I was going to ask. What you said, a 10-year relationship. Is it the body cam footage? That's what we've been using them for?

Yes.

Okay. I think those are all my questions for now. Counselor Gonzalez, you're up next.

Thank you, Chief. So my questions are now sort of changed, but let me just start with what I originally had. And so do you use this flock system to stop for traffic violations, for traffic stops?

No. And I love that question because the technology doesn't take an oath. Technology doesn't find probable cause. Officers do. And so any technology we use, And that's why I love the question about safeguards because it comes down to the safeguards. And that's what, if people really look at what we're using and how we're using it in the safeguards, then we're going to have that public trust. And so any information we get from any technology needs to be confirmed by the officer. It's very similar to if you get a call, there's a DUI and I'm following a DUI. You don't know who this person is calling saying they're following a DUI and you get in behind that car. you're gonna wait to see if that car is actually swerving, if they're gonna cross the line or if it's a friend or ex-spouse or something that's irritated with them and call them the dispatch center. So yeah, the technology, like I said, it doesn't take an oath, we do. And so we have to confirm that information.

So, and how many traffic stops do you think you all do a year?

I don't know.

No, it's not...

So, and I, you know, we, we have 45,000 calls for service. Um, I know that, but I don't know how many of those are actual traffic stops or post patrols.

Okay. Well, I just, I, I think I've shared before, um, you know, that in my previous role, um, I think we lost five officers. Um, you know, we're killed, um, during the traffic stop. So I know that those are one of the most dangerous, um, interactions that officers have. So why not use it for that purpose? If that's, well, I think you explained it, but I, you know, I've often wondered that just given how dangerous it is, that, you know, this technology is not being used for traffic stops.

Not being used? That we should use it?

Well, and I'm just curious, you know, given the danger of the interaction.

Well, You're actually onto a good concept because anything, and that's why we've got to balance privacy and technology, right? Privacy is our greatest fundamental human right, but also the ability to walk around and feel safe. And in the middle, you have these officers that took an oath and they took an oath to put their safety above everybody else. Our job isn't to go home at night. Our job is to make sure everybody else goes home at night. And with that, we want the most information we can possibly get within the bounds of the constitution and not the floor of the constitution, like I said before, but what's built around the constitution. through community values and what your community expects of you and what your state expects of you. And you want to use that information and to make it safer. Absolutely. You know, the drone as a first responder program is, I mean, that's what it's the biggest de-escalation tool I've ever seen. And it provides information. And so, yes, we do use it to provide information. But if we're going to make choices based on that information, we still have to do it by confirming the information. I mean, you may get a zero instead of a, you know, or a D might look like a zero or, you know, you never know what. The technology is generally pretty accurate, but you can't trust it.

Well, perhaps in another presentation, you can tell us how many traffic stops you typically do in a year.

I'll email you. I'll look it up on my computer in just a second.

So I guess regarding the Axiom, how much does it cost and are we able to use existing hardware?

No, not the same hardware. And, you know, during negotiations, I spoke to them about not charging us until the last one is up. So we're not going to lose coverage either because that's a big concern of mine. And so it's relatively the same cost. And, you know, we're going to have probably about the same amount of cameras. I'm not sure yet at this point. But, you know, for 20 cameras, I think it was 58,000. And Axon, I think we were paying close to 54 for 13. No, that was plus 5, so the 18. If we had had 18, we would have been paying 54. And that's what we were working towards.

So I think you mentioned in a previous presentation or somewhere, 13 cameras, and that that was the appropriate amount you felt like for our city, given the size of it. And that obviously it doesn't want to be, you don't want them everywhere. Right. Which then leads me to my next question. And I mean, this is more like for the record, if you could explain the difference between surveillance and tracking, because it came up in one of our meetings. And I think it's just important for the community to understand what the difference is.

Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, I'll just address the number of 13. I mean, and I don't remember the conversation. I don't know, you know, I don't know that I can say what number is appropriate. I think I can say When I feel like we have too many and I do think that agencies need to keep that into consideration, you can look at case law and that's what goes back to your second question is. You know the difference between. It's my wife calling on my phone on my watch. I didn't turn off so. I mean what you could the the difference between tracking and surveillance. Those words are critical. And there's many other words. If you take 25 or 30 of the most important case law that have to do with geofencing, trackers, cell phone tracking, getting information from cell providers, and you take the keywords and definitions out of each of those, you come up with a paragraph of what the courts want and what they know to be surveillance and what they know to be tracking. And tracking, it has a definition, and it's in case law. And it's being able to map somebody's movements before or after an event. So if you have a point in time capture, that is not surveillance, and that is not tracking. But I think if you have the aggregation of too much retention or too many cameras, you're gonna get that. A lot of law enforcement professionals are like, oh, there's a case, it's case law. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public with your plate. Well, that may be true, but that case talked about four cameras. It didn't talk about 40 in a town like ours. And so I think the amount of cameras you have, the amount of retention you have, Um, and the amount of rummaging you can do, there's a lot of keywords in a lot of those cases, uh, can create surveillance and can create tracking.

And chief, if I can just interrupt you for a minute, um, that you were kind of getting into a full discussion about legislation that we're going to have coming up. It's going to be introduced at our next meeting. Just general reminder, we're in that portion of the meeting where it's supposed to be information, limited information, not full discussion. And I would never interrupt except that I expect to have this same discussion in much greater detail. at our second meeting after that, after that resolution, I'm sorry, the ordinance we've been working on gets introduced.

Yes. Yeah. We do have an ordinance that we're, you know, I think, I hope it's still valid since it looks like perhaps there's some changes. And I think some of those were specific to flock, but hopefully we will have a further discussion on that. So yeah, it was a bit of a lengthy conversation, but I think we have some new information being presented to us today as well. So yeah, Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. Yes, Counsel. Thank you.

That's a good one.

Chief, thanks. I really do appreciate the iterative process that you've had over the course of these last few months. I think you keep reexamining the system. You keep tightening down safeguards. We're moving forward and you're examining the system through a good pair of eyes. So I really do appreciate that.

A couple quick questions for you.

Existing standards that we've evolved into with FLOC, do we consider that those would be carried across to the new system?

Yeah, absolutely. The retention periods and stuff for the same reasons I just explained.

Okay. There's an opportunity from my perspective for us to also experiment with tightening some of the restrictions as we exit the flock system, tighten some of those, see how if that causes operational difficulties and just it's an experimental zone for me for the rest of this year before the contract expires. Just throw that out at you as an idea. And then the current

contract was having some edits and there was some some work being done to talk about what the contract should be like with flock i believe right now um will all of that conversation carry over to the accent contract yeah absolutely um i think all the alpr platforms are all learning you know from um the last couple years and a lot of conversation with flock as well but um yeah we were able to tighten a lot of that up a long time ago actually with flock

Okay, great. Thank you.

Just want to piggyback on what you had, Councilor Koso. Having sat in along with Councilor Gonzalez in some of those, well, all the surveillance conversations with the Attorney's Office, with you, Chief, and your team, along with citizens that are fully engaged in this process, I think the policy, if we do end up passing it, will put those naturally more progressive restrictions. And I think we'll have pretty robust conversation about that over the next couple of meetings. So, yeah, I think if we do propose that under new business tonight, I think we will probably see an organic, you know, more intentional way around how we keep those restraints, you know, on the program.

And just as a reminder, this is a long work in progress. It doesn't even come up on new business. It's going to be introduced at our next meeting. If I wasn't on last week, it would have been introduced at this meeting. But we've done all the work. We've got it approved. It will be introduced at next week's meeting, and then it'll be under consideration at the meeting after that. And it is a broad ordinance that is designed to incorporate flock, access, face recognition, anything that might come down. It's kind of a state leading. We're going to be the first jurisdiction to pass one if it passes, where it's a mass surveillance ordinance that brings up all of these issues under one umbrella.

Thanks for the clarification on that. Appreciate it.

Alright, anything else for chief?

Thank you so much. You can appreciate it. Moving on to rank choice voting presentation. Sorry.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Faye Harmer, your City Clerk. At the request of Council, I've prepared a very high-level overview of Ranked Choice Voting and how it might impact the City of Durango elections. This presentation will fall under Engaged and Informed Community Strategic Plan Goal. And with your permission, I would like to play a short video that I think explains how Ranked Choice Voting actually works and how the votes actually get counted.

With Ranked Choice Voting, you can rank up to five candidates in order of preference, instead of choosing just one. So, I've ranked my favorite colors in order of preference, with green being my top choice, then blue, and so on. Each LEGO stack represents one person's ballot. But with so many choices, how do we figure out the winner? Once the ballots are in, all first choices are counted. If a candidate gets more than 50% of first choice votes, they win the election, and that's that. If no candidate gets more than 50% of first choice votes, balance will be counted in rounds. Round by round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Red has the least votes, so if red was your top choice, then your vote goes to your second choice candidate. The process continues. If you voted for blue, your vote goes to your next highest ranked choice candidate. In this case, red was already eliminated, so your vote goes to yellow. This keeps going until only two candidates remain. The candidate with the most votes wins. And green wins! Happy voting.

So ranked choice voting is allowed in the state of Colorado under Colorado Statute 1-7-118, which includes various requirements. The first is that the equipment must be certified by the Secretary of State. The municipality itself, which is us in this case, is responsible for any additional costs that are incurred from changing to ranked choice voting. And the city is also required to plan for voter outreach and education. That is all part of the deal. As you likely know, we contract with the county to process our city's election ballots and the county's current voting equipment is not programmed for ranked choice voting at this time. It is possible to upgrade that software for that program, but there are obviously some costs involved with that. This slide gives you kind of a breakdown of the additional costs that may be involved. The voting equipment upgrade and training costs, we're estimating at around $24,200. That is at today's cost. Additional ballot inserts, which would be part of the voter outreach, increased mailing costs, and then the flyer itself printing. We're estimating around $4,000. And then any additional voter outreach that our public information office or community engagement department would like to do in addition to that. So we're looking at current election costs that run around $50,000 for our April elections. The first year, if we went to RCB elections, ranked choice voting elections, it would probably run around $80,000. The following years will run between $55,000 and $60,000 with that additional voter outreach component. As a good note, this county clerk did indicate that she would need adequate lead time to upgrade the software, train her staff, get all the ballots ready to go. And she anticipates that 2029 would be the first time that we could even consider using it in an election. Other municipalities across the state are using Ranked Choice Voting. I've listed those here along with the dates that they started using them. You'll see from Boulder and Bloomfield, both took a couple years to get their systems in place as well before they actually started using the system, although they adopted it sooner. I have contacted these municipalities. I have not had a chance to hear back from any of those yet on how they worked or what the citizen feedback was at this point in time. However, if they do reach out to me,

have a chance to get back to them i will provide that additional information to council as well i'm happy to answer any questions counselor lawyer um yeah would um implementation require a charter amendment ordinance voter approval or some combination

I actually reached out to the city attorney's office with that exact question today. I don't know if you had a chance to look at that up there.

Will you just let us know when you know what the steps would be for doing that? It was late this afternoon. No, that's fine. And I should have reached out when I was researching this.

Yeah, I did not see anything specifically in the charter that calls for plurality voting, which is what we do now. Most votes win. But, you know, there may be some... other items in the charter that break that out. So I would defer to Mark on that.

Has the county been talking about or implementing this at all? No. County commission? No. They have no interest?

No. If we chose to do it and they were helping us with our elections as they do now, they would be willing to do that for us.

Okay. And then let's say we do it, we implement it, we buy all the equipment, and then they decide they want to do it, they would just use our equipment.

Well, it's their equipment. It would be a software upgrade. So, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes. And then I would be definitely interested before we even have a discussion or make any decisions on what similar-sized Colorado municipalities experienced with doing this, if there's ballot errors or Exhausted Balor, voter education, all that stuff. I had one more question and it just left.

Yeah, I think Boulder's been doing it the most, and I will continue to reach out to that clerk and find out some more information.

Do you see that there's a huge benefit? Is it worth $30,000 plus 5 to 10 every year for our city council elections? I don't know. Because it would only be for this position, right? Yeah.

Yes. For ballot issues, it's a yes or no. So there's nothing to rank. So there's arguments on both sides, quite honestly. I'm interested to see what the other clerks feel like the citizen response is.

Okay. Thank you. But never mind. There's a group that is pushing this somewhere. Is there? Okay. And will they be willing to donate or fund any of this or they just want to? I have not heard anything about that. Okay.

Thanks.

Those are my questions for now.

Councilor Gonzalez.

um thank you uh so um i'll have to watch the video again i didn't get it the first time so maybe i need a couple of iterations um but i i don't i don't know that you can really answer these questions fab um but it's more of a um you talked about there being a an upgrade required um from our city does it impact The fact that we're all mail-in voting? I guess not, because all of Colorado is mail-in voting. Yeah, all of Colorado is mail-in voting. So the communities that are doing it now, obviously, are using mail-in voting. So that's not impacted. So you did some research on these. And I can't get my thing to adjust. But can you go back to the number of communities that are using it? OK, there you go. Because you have the dates here. So this is not necessarily something new. Looks like Basalt's been doing it since 2002. Carbondale since 2003. So it's not like something new that's trending. Looks like some have been moving to that. But I was just curious if it was like... something trending, if it was different states that were doing it, you know, perhaps states that are not using mail-in ballots or other states that are using different systems, do you have any information about, is it easier if you're not using mail-in ballots?

I don't know about mail-in ballots versus in-person ballots. I think probably in-person, maybe people can ask questions about exactly how to fill out the ballot perhaps, but that would be the reason for the flyer to be inserted in our mail-out ballots. would be a flyer explaining how that works and how to fill out the ballot properly. It has been around for quite some time. It kind of ebbs and flows. There are, like I say, strong proponents and there are strong detractors. It just depends on which side you fall on.

Yeah, it's new to me. But people definitely are supportive of it. I've heard a number of people, including the organization that was mentioned earlier, that are promoting it, and others, just because I think people feel like it's more fair. uh to to use this system um but i i i think you know i don't know perhaps i don't know how one would decide i mean there's obviously a cost involved but um i mean currently it's about 50 000 to run an election could you go back to the slide that gives the costs associated with so currently it's 50 so it would be 30 more right if we um for the first year if we move to this um model at the cost currently today yes if the upgrade was done a year from now software costs change every year so um that's an approximation based on our costs at this time and then it would eventually go back to the 50 to 60 000. once you did it the first time you'd have like one upfront fixed cost and then um uh and then it would balance out

right we still have some of the voter outreach costs involved but we would not have the software upgrade costs okay uh yeah depending on how much outreach we do and how much you know as far as the inserts and mailing and but it would likely there could be an increase every year but just because things go up um and i mean it could be 55 next time or however there's just an increase yeah those are approximations

Well, I guess we don't have a lot of people working polls because we don't have polls. So there's nobody working the vote. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for the presentation.

Councilor Griswold.

Hey, I want to say thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. Tiffany Lee, the county clerk, and I have been working on with Courageous Colorado to try and push for ranked choice voting. I'm a big fan of it, so I'd love to clear up a couple of things and maybe go a little bit deeper than what we saw necessarily with this presentation. In no way do I want to take away from what Fay has said, but there's different types of ranked choice voting. Presentation focused on basic single winner model, but Durango, we elect multiple council members at once. I believe council should understand both the single winner and the multi-winner proportional ranked choice voting systems, how they work, what each could mean for Durango. So a deeper presentation can go into that. The why is really missing here. could be giving voters more choice, a greater ability to express their preferences. We could be reducing concerns about vote splitting. Two candidates are pretty close and they're splitting the vote. And the third candidate that I would have never picked gets elected instead because those two other candidates split my vote. Depending on the model, potentially creating broader and more representative outcomes. So the cost estimates are there. Many of those communities have fundraised and been paid for by the people enthusiastic about ranked choice voting. And so it's not necessarily an impact to the city budget. for the implementation cost. It could be an impact on the ongoing voter education that happens as we keep going. I believe we should have a follow-up presentation from Tiffany, see what the county clerk says specific to the implementation issues, the positives and negatives. And then Amy Spicer, I'd like to bring in from Courageous Colorado, who can walk through the different rank choice voting models, how they work, potential benefits and trade-offs, and then options for Durango specifically. Courageous Colorado has been coming to communities throughout Colorado and asking what the community is most concerned about. So they're not pushing rank choice voting per se. They're just trying to get the citizens in a community to rally around some topic that they find mutually, are mutually interested in. So there's a difference between all of the communities on what Courageous Colorado is working in, depending on the topic. Lastly, Tiffany Lee is a very big fan of rank choice voting. And so there may not be doing it at the county level, but she's been there. with me through several of these presentations and so i just wanted to bring that up for council's um consideration thank you uh real quick faye um you've reached out to other municipalities but have you not heard back from any of them yet

not from the other communities now gotcha um i'm wondering like what they would use ranked choice voting for besides city council voting i mean are they using it in other like local elections where there's multiple outcomes or i i don't know okay i'd be really interesting to know like how far the benefit of the investment could be. If it's just for one election every two years, is the investment worth it? Maybe it is. I don't know. But it might be good to see what other qualifiers or other votes that they can leverage this type of voting system besides just one every two years. School districts, county districts, for sure. Okay. All right.

Yeah, and I will reach out to the counties again and see if I can't get some feedback.

Yeah, I don't know, like, how they're using it and how they found it, you know, whether it benefits or what sort of issues that they've come up with. That'd be great. Awesome. Thank you. Counselor Yazzie.

Thank you, Mayor. All righty. So I understand the need to – educate voters on just voting. I think that's probably where we should spend our money instead of trying to train them to do something new, because I haven't seen very much dysfunction in our elections here. You know, we get a winner, then we get, you know, the other few, and we count the votes, and whoever gets the most votes wins. it's pretty simple that way but if we're going to spend any money i would advocate for voter education and how the system works and just get people out there to participate that's my two cents thank you yeah and we do have a couple of proposals for um additional voter outreach um you know if council is interested in those i could send those along as well yeah yeah i'd be happy to email those out to you yes please uh counselor gonzalez

I just forgot to mention one thing, Faye, if we can get support for another presentation so we can learn a little bit more. If it does increase voter participation, I think that would be curious to know. I think Colorado has amazing voter participation. I think it's the second highest in the country. And in fact, I think Durango had like 33% participation for municipal elections, which for some may sound not that much, but it's INCREDIBLE COMPARED TO OTHER PLACES. 33% OF VOTER PARTICIPATION IS AMAZING. SO IF WE COULD INCREASE THAT, YOU KNOW, I THINK WE COULD BE A MODEL FOR OTHER CITIES AROUND THE COUNTRY IF IN FACT THE OTHERS ARE ALSO SEEING AN INCREASE IN PARTICIPATION ONCE THEY HAD A NEW MODEL. AND IT COULD BE EVEN THE VOTER EDUCATION PIECE ENCOURAGES PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE MORE BECAUSE IT'S SOMETHING NEW. So I just thought I would also add that if we see an increase in participation, or perhaps the other communities have seen an increase in participation as they've changed their models.

Sure. I will ask that specific question. Thank you.

All right. Thanks so much, Faye.

Next up, Mayor and Council, we have the Comprehensive Plan Engagement Kickoff Week events with Jamie Lopkin.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I just wanted to put in a quick plug for our comprehensive plan, both for city council as well as the public. This marks our first major round of engagement for the comp plan with multiple opportunities. You can see on the screen still left for September 2nd through the 4th. Listening sessions, drop-ins, outreach, our open house. They're intended to gather our early input on the community's values, priorities, challenges, and opportunities as we begin shaping the long-term vision. We want to be very clear, though. These September sessions are only the beginning. We've already had people ask whether there's going to be additional opportunities. The answer is absolutely yes. It will continue throughout the next year. As the plan develops, we'll continue to share our results, our summaries, our follow-up materials, so residents can see how we're using their input. So we want to be clear that the comprehensive plan is the community's plan. And so in order for us to get it right, we need to get input from as many voices as possible. So whether you've lived your whole life, you've just moved here, if you want to attend in person, you want to online, your perspective matters. If you can't make it this week, still going to have many opportunities through the coming months. Best way to stay up to date is to follow our comprehensive plan project page on the Engage Durango website. It's going to host our event calendar, questionnaires, summaries, draft materials, and absolutely opportunities for feedback through there. So we encourage everyone to check back often, share it with your friends and neighbors, and participate in every way that works for you. And I don't think you have any more questions, do you? Thanks, Jamie.

Thanks, Jamie. All right, moving on to agenda number six, committee board and liaison office.

All righty last week, I had the opportunity to go to the cast meeting, which is the Colorado association of ski towns meeting was held in carbon Dale. And so basically we get a update on mountain communities that are similar to Durango, and we meet each other, we talk, we figure out what's going on in their communities, and they tell us about, you know, stuff they're doing. One of the most interesting things that I heard when I was at the meeting was that from Parachute to Aspen, they created a childcare district. So it'd be similar to a fire district or a school district, but it's a childcare district. They actually passed a sales tax to fund that. And so this year they're working on setting up the administration for it, how they're going to go about selecting the facilitators to carry forth on childcare in that whole wide area. And I thought that was really, really that somebody came up with the idea of a child care district. OK, then we also heard about leveraging AI and how that works with housing and government. Apparently the Bell Community has a closed system with using AI, so they have a couple different programs that they're using to help look at their housing and all the different questions that come in for housing. and how they can give out quicker answers to their clients. And they have a big rental and housing market there, so it actually helps them. But I think that having a closed system and they have an individual who works really closely with a contractor to implement this, that's a big deal. But they also had a regional statistical analysis project And I got some books here for the counselors and also for Mike French, give it to Jose. But this is about Northwestern Colorado and some of the statistics they got on ski towns. Yeah, so even though it's the Northwestern Colorado, they think that the stats and the economics of how they put this together should be helpful down here in southwestern Colorado. So that was my week.

All right. Thank you. Councillor Gonzalez.

So thank you, Mayor. I'm newly appointed to the library board, and we had our first meeting, and I really enjoyed meeting everyone. They were a very dynamic, very committed group of individuals who are part of our community at supporting the library. There was some discussion from the county commissioner regarding a library district. So I think we'll have a presentation on that eventually. But that was something curious that perhaps we'll have more discussion about as time goes by. But just grateful to be appointed to the library board as the library being one of my favorite places here in the city. Thank you, Mayor.

All right, thank you, Councilor Gonzalez. Just really quick, I met with Creatives Colorado a couple of weeks ago to discuss free choice voting. Last week, I was able to attend the Agile Space Industries ribbon cutting for their new facility out at the airport. And then also right after that went to the Wonder Lab, which is part of the powerhouse. Their child care, the new child care center, they had a ribbon cutting as well. So really cool to celebrate economic and nonprofit leaders and what they're doing in our community to make it better. Also, along with Councilor Koso, I attended a child care strategy meeting with other civic leaders to talk about capacity, where we're at, what's our vision for the future. So it's really good to have that many great leaders in the same room kind of all talking about some things that are really important to our community. And then lastly, at the end of last week, I attended the Southern Ute Tribal Chairman Inauguration where Christine Sage was sworn in as the new Southern Ute Chairwoman. So it was good to be able to meet her and talk to some of the other tribal counselors and reconnect with them. So really good times to be at. Counselor Christo.

Thank you, Mayor. 820, we had the airport commission meeting. The airport's doing great. Very nice to see all the changes going on out there. 822, Durango Natural Foods Harvest Festival, celebrating local food. A really nice event over at Rotary Park. As you indicated, Agile Space Industries, new building ribbon cutting. I always like to highlight that they've got about 160 employees right now, and they'll be growing to about 300 to 400 in the next several years. So it's a company that's making a big impact in our community. The Wonder Lab ribbon cutting is the only one I've gotten so soaked at, but nobody ever left. So it was pretty impressive to open a child care facility and do it while getting drenched. And then last, Big Brothers Big Sisters had a big fundraiser on 828, participated in that, and it was a very good event for mentoring and the kids for the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Thank you. Councilman Gonzalez?

I forgot to mention that I have office hours tomorrow at the library at 11 o'clock, so I look forward to seeing anyone there. Thank you.

Great. Moving on to agenda item number eight, the consent agenda. Can you get a reading of the consent agenda, please? Oh God, I just I would have been terrible. Well, we'll see you later. Anyways, we'll backtrack one to agenda number seven, public comment under consideration of adoption. Whoops, yep. Maybe next time. Just kidding. I'm really just kidding.

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

have one person under this item uh mayor we do have several um under item 13 but one ted wright under this item ted wright yes

Okay. Thank you for this time.

I do want to say that you are terrorizing me. And I'm here to ask you to stop terrorizing me. Here's the letter.

June 30th.

It's September 1 now. What's this letter say?

It's from you.

It's on your letterhead. It contains your stamped envelope. Run through your machine on June 30th. What's it tell me to do? Tells me to prepare for holy hell from you. It's five pages long. It says your letterhead, your stamp envelope, your city attorney. We have learned that this column, know what that is? but is heavily influenced by disinformation provided by Ted Wright. Please be advised that I intend to pursue all available legal remedies, including claims for defamation and libel. That's what you're telling me. Prepare to be sued. And I want you to understand what that means.

I'm going to give you five pages of what that means.

That means your wife's telephone. Oh, my laptop. Her laptop.

Nick Satter's laptop.

Oh, let's see. I talked to Charles Shaw. His laptop. His phone. Okay. You know what? I talked to John Simpson once.

He's on the list.

You've got to list them. I heard it. He had a bad hearing session. You were there. Okay. You were there. You were there. Joe was there.

Joe didn't know that you would be there.

Was that an ambush? We have learned. No, you did not learn. You have not learned. What you say you learned, you did not learn. You learned that I am not involved. I have a media press release identified here. I'll give it to Faye. If you want to sue me for free speech over that, that's what you're deciding to do.

You want to sue me for free speech. It's right there.

You all need it. Is that what you're doing? You do not want me to sleep. You have a chance here in the next 25 seconds to retract this and say, you're not going to sleep, okay? And I want you to get advice from your counsel. Go get advice from your counsel. First, ask him if there's any conflict of interest.

Thanks for your time. That's what I get for it. I don't know if you get it. Anybody else, Faye?

Item number eight is a consent agenda with 8.1 approval of minutes. There are no items. 8.2 is final reading of ordinances. There are no items. 8.3 is adoption of resolutions by consent. With 8.3.1, a resolution electing to carry forward La Plata County's 2026 State of Colorado private activity bond allocation assigned to the City of Durango. 8.3.2 is a resolution approving an applied consent agreement for water utility services to phase two of Elevation Park. 8.4 is approval of other administrative items with 8.4.1, approval of a beer and wine, the liquor license for Mountain High Catering, LLC, DVA Mountain High Diner at 2915 Main Avenue. 8.4.2 is approval of a new tavern license for the pub, LLC, doing business as the pub at 2075 Main Avenue 101. There are no requests for public hearings, no introduction of ordinance, and no request for excused absences.

Alright, thank you. Anybody like to pull anything from the consent agenda? Seeing none, can I get a roll call please?

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

Any discussion? Cripes almighty. Alright, get a roll call, please.

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

Alright, moving on to agenda item number 10, public hearings.

This is a public hearing for the annexation, initial zoning, and lot consolidation of Oss Enterprises, Tract 1RA.

Nice.

Yeah, support. Wrapping. I like it.

Really interesting annexation.

It smells bad or something. I don't know.

the liquor licensing. Yeah, the new liquor licenses.

I'll pause for dramatic effect. Alright, good evening Mayor Woodruff, members of the Council. The item before you now is a public hearing for annexation, initial zoning and lot consolidation for a lot in South Durango. While this is simple procedurally, I think it's a great illustration of a few bigger elements of how the city operates and the importance of long range planning. So I'll try and hit on some of those things as I move through what otherwise is very straightforward and kind of procedurally simple. Overall, the project aligns well with the strategic plan, the comprehensive plan, and helps to advance The vision, as you can see on these two slides, particularly related to infrastructure and coordination of infrastructure with new development. So before jumping into the specifics, here are a few maps and images to get us oriented. You can see the subject property here just to the northeast of Walmart. and north of the kind of expanding Durango Motor Company campus. What's unusual about this annexation, it's a five foot wide by 640 foot long strip of property. The reason that we're coming back and annexing this piece of property after, as many of you may remember, annexing the larger property to the south is because there was some unclear title around the ownership of the property. So this is first where I'd like to just point out how staff, the applicant, surveyor, the surveyor for the applicant, and the attorneys, both the applicants and the city attorney pivoted when we discovered this uncertainty around ownership of this property to avoid unnecessary project delays. Durango Motor Company had bought this property that used to be Tarpley RV. They wanted to develop what is now their new used car dealership and service center. We discovered this five-foot strip and this lack of clarity as we were moving through that process, and we could have kind of thrown up our hands and said, oh, you got to figure that out. We're going to pause everything. You can't move forward until you understand exactly what's going on here. That's not what we did. We worked together. We found a way to get that property annexed, allow them to move forward with their development while this issue was resolved. And I feel like the reason that we could do that is because of the clarity we had in the comprehensive plan and other long range planning documents saying this is a commercial corridor. This is where commercial development should go. And staff had that sort of backing to make that decision and allow the project to proceed. So just highlighting how important that future land use map and the comprehensive plan and other policies around economic development, process efficiency, customer service is when we make those decisions as a staff. In after May 2025, when the larger property was annexed in December, the district court granted ownership of this property to us enterprises through quiet title process. Unless you're kind of a planning or legal nerd, you probably haven't been involved in a quiet title process. It's kind of exciting is my first one and they took it. I could have told the whole story to all those people. So I went through the district court process. The court settled the issue and ownership was clearly granted to us enterprises and now they're annexing it and consolidating it into their larger property. Obviously a 5 foot strip doesn't have development opportunities or anything advantageous to them other than sort of cleaning this up for the record and then making their property a little bit larger. The initial zoning will be commercial general, which is consistent with the comprehensive plan. So this just shows that future land use map. So Highway 550-160 corridor, obviously sort of a highway commercial or regional commercial corridor surrounded by open space in the BLM land and the hills beyond just the commercial area. So there's a lot of standards and regulation around annexation and state statute in our charter. It talks about annexations need to be consistent with the comprehensive plan. So another important function of the comprehensive plan and the importance of making sure that's up to date and relevant. And then in our own standards, there's a review criteria for annexation and initial zoning. Staff finds that the criteria for annexation and initial zoning are met, The Community Development Commission unanimously recommends approval. And if you you can move forward with the public hearing now and then there's a slide under first consideration of ordinance with a recommended motion. Thank you.

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

Get a roll call. Do we need to put on a yes we do. OK. The roll call please.

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

No one assigned it. Right. Alright, so we're going to close the public hearing.

Move on to I'd like to make a motion to modify the agenda. I'd like to move the resolutions below public comment.

Discussion.

My my key thing is it'll just flow us enterprises. We can check all these things off. And then anybody here that's trying to do public comment, we can get that taken care of before we have the discussion around the resolution.

Okay. Any other discussion? Okay, roll call, please.

The motion passes. Four, Dave Woodruff, Jessica Lawyer, Kip Koso, Shirley Gonzalez. One, opposed, Gilda Yazzie.

Moving on to agenda item number 12, consideration of an ordinances.

Item 12.1 is an ordinance regarding the annexation, initial zoning, and lot consolidation of Austin Enterprises, tract 1RA to the City of Durango and declaring an effective date.

I'll make a motion to approve an ordinance regarding the annexation, initial zoning, and lot consolidation of Austin Enterprises, tract 1RA to the City of Durango and declaring an effective date.

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

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

12.2 is an ordinance authorizing the City of Durango to execute a lease with Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center, Incorporated, Doing Businesses Access Health Systems.

Good evening, Mayor and Council, Erin Sider, Assistant City Manager, presenting the first consideration of an ordinance authorizing the City of Durango to execute a lease with Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center. This lease is similar is a similar need as the reasonably approved sub lease in the Innovation Center for the Prosperity Office and is one of the pieces necessary to facilitate the City Hall and Police Department construction project. Also similar to the Prosperity Office approach, the intent is to use available space within an existing community partners facility to meet the temporary city workspace need. during construction. From a strategic plan perspective, this primarily supports organizational stewardship by providing a cost-effective temporary workplace solution while maintaining continuity of operations. So as we prepare to move forward with the construction of the City Hall and Police Department project, employees in the community development and engineering building will be impacted in requiring us to temporarily relocate those operations. The proposed solution is to relocate our community and development and engineering team members to the second floor of the access health system building at 150 Mercury Village Drive. This allows the two departments to remain together and continue serving the public from a single location while their existing building is unavailable. When we began looking for temporary space, we had several operational requirements. We need a workspace for approximately 18 engineering and 14 community development staff, space that either had conference rooms or meeting rooms, accessible to the public, a reception area for visitors, parking for city employees and fleet vehicles, space that didn't require significant tenant improvements. And those were our requirements. Our preference also was looking for a space where we were able to keep these two departments together in the same location. given their daily collaborative work. The access space meets those operational needs, importantly, without any significant tenant improvements. What you see here is a footprint of the space illustrated. For reference, the leaseable space is suite one, which is purple, suite two, which is green, and suite three, which is tan. In this space, it does provide for a conference room, two private offices, and an open space that's easily configurable for workstations and synergies across the two departments. From a timeline perspective, tonight is the first consideration with the final consideration scheduled for September 15th. Upon Council approval, the lease is anticipated to begin around October 1st. Staff will then coordinate the relocation of the community development and engineering teams into the access building in advance of the abatement of the existing building. So looking at the lease details, the proposed lease space is approximately 4,291 square feet. Monthly rent approximately $9,000 a month equating to An approximate annual cost of $108,264, which equates to the equivalent of $22 per square feet. Utilities are included in this base rent and there's no additional operating costs associated with the rent costs. For some additional context, $22 per square foot is below the comparable market price for office space in town, and we believe this is a reasonable lease rate for the city. Oops, the I did it again. The initial lease term is anticipated to be one year with the ability to continue month to month if necessary. This does provide us with some flexibility if the construction schedule changes. And finally, this is an anticipated expense funding for the temporary relocation was contemplated as part of the City Hall project planning and available in the 2026 adopted budget. will be included in the 27 proposed budget. This operational lease advances the city vision as illustrated here by maintaining accessible city services during construction, makes use of an existing community partnership and existing office space, and allows us to continue moving forward on this important community project. With that, here is the recommended motion and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Move to adopt an ordinance authorizing the City of Durango to execute a sublease with Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center, including DBA Access Health System located at 150 Mercury Village Drive. Second.

Discussion?

Councilor Cusso.

I just have a couple of questions. The lease starts on or about October 1st. Is that a flexible date or is the plan to sign up for October 1st, even if we didn't need to move on that date?

The start date is dependent on our need to relocate our staff before the second week of October pending or based on the abatement schedule for the community development and engineering team.

And the abatement schedule would go forward no matter what's happening on the parking variance side of the equations. Is that correct?

Correct. The action last night does not impact the initial phases of the project.

And then is anyone currently in those spaces? Do you know?

No, it's vacant.

They're vacant spaces.

Okay, great. Thank you. Councilor Gonzalez.

And so just regarding the payment of the lease that comes from general fund or where does that come from?

It's in the project budget. In the project budget for the? For the City Hall Police Department project.

Is it part of the bond? Like the voter, rather than.

I might need Gloria's help.

OK, my phone a friend here.

It is in the same fund as where the bonds are, but we do have additional revenues sources that are going into that fund, such as interest. We are pursuing some grants, so there are other revenues that are supporting these pieces. Can you say that last part again? See, there are other revenues that are being combined with the bond issuance into that fund. It is the sales tax capital improvement fund, and that's where the budget would cover it. Okay, thank you.

Councilor Lawyer.

Yeah, I just want to reiterate, the city did examine sequencing construction differently, potentially, to avoid this But avoiding it would be the $108,000 lease would apparently produce $650,000 in additional project costs plus another year of construction. That's correct. Okay, thank you.

All right. If there's nothing else, can we get a roll call, please?

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

All right, moving on to agenda item number 13, public comment on city manager, city manners not under consideration tonight.

The first person signed up is Treven Verduzco.

Sorry if I absolutely butchered your name.

V-E-R-D-U-Z-C-O. Treven? Skip to the next one, Mick Souder.

Good evening, Mayor and members of City Council. I'm Mick Souder, 266 Robert Street in Three Springs, Durango. I was a member and organizer of the Visible ID No Mask Ordinance Citizens Initiative. With the recent ruling against a similar law in New York State, there's no point in going forward with anything similar unless we find a case where the Fourth Amendment outweighs the Constitutional supremacy clause, so I guess we're done. Although until the New York ruling, we looked at restarting the petition drive using the city attorney's language. I want to talk to you about the decision on April 21st to sue the defunct no secret police petition committee and to name its organizers personally. This isn't personal and it isn't about the mask ordinance. It's about how the case was handled. I want you to hear from someone named directly in it, how it looks like to me, lawfare intimidation. The city has told the public more than once that this isn't adversarial, that it's neutral. But the caption reads, City of Durango versus No Secret Police Citizens Initiative Committee through its agents Ted Wright and Michael Sauter. Versus means against. And if this were neutral, why, as the city said, the ruling could be appealed? Neutral outcomes don't need to be appealed. There's also a timing problem. The committee legally ended April 7th when the Certificate of Sufficiency was delivered. The city sued two weeks later on April 22nd against a committee that no longer existed, naming two private residents as its agents instead. And the legal question the city says it needed a court to resolve, administrative or legislative, was never discussed publicly until it surfaced in an April 21st executive session the night before filing. That was a choice, not a requirement, and its effect concerns me most. The 50 neighbors who gathered at the rec center in January to collect 1,700 signatures had no legal team and no budget for appeal because they were never supposed to need one. Three and a half months after the court ruling, there's still no clear guidelines telling potential petition teams the difference between administrative and legislative ordinance language. Without that, this case sets a precedent. Future citizens initiatives in Durango may need to hire a lawyer just to petition their own city. I'm asking you to recognize what it looks like from the outside, a well-resourced government using the courts against volunteers with a petition. Thank you for your time.

Ted Redd has also signed up under this item. Next up is Nathaniel Miner. Hi, I'm Nathaniel Miner.

I'm the resident of Durango. I was here to speak about flock. Given the chief's announcement, I probably have new things to say, but. Right now, the threat of unregulated mass surveillance is growing every day. Every day these tools of fear and control become more deeply entrenched in our community, in our schools, our grocery stores and our neighborhoods. The surveillance state is here in Durango. Freedoms once enjoyed without question are now in danger of collapsing. As you all know and seem proud to admit, Flock is a leader in this race of power. There's a lot to say about Flock, a lot that has already been said. I know you have heard much about it, so I don't want to touch on things that have already been said many times, but it is worth mentioning. as the flock contract continues for at least another year. All of the problems previously mentioned still exist and will continue to exist, such as failure to claim real ownership over the data and lack of warrant requirements on the searching of a database that collects hundreds of thousands of plates every month. But really what I want to say to you is to ask a question. And that question is what sort of future do you desire for our community? The future with Flock is a future of fear and deception where the working class labor force, which is the vitality of the city, feels the need to cover their face as they leave their home. Or to purchase specialty eyewear to avoid facial recognition or design intricate routes around the city to avoid spying cameras. And I just wonder if this future where their government expects them to cheer for sleepless cops and endless tracking is the future you desire. Or is it a future? Where we don't have to hide from our police. I would ask you to help us join the fight and to let Durango be another example of a community that stood its ground when things have gone too far. Help us use Flock now that Axon has entered the picture as a stepping stone to combat the growing evils that innocent people face every day and help to make Durango a safer place for its residents. Thank you.

Next up, it's Jeremy May. Hi, good evening, Council.

And thank you, Chief Currant, for your presentation earlier. And I think you all had great questions on the Council, so thank you for those. I am concerned about the LPRCs, the license plate readers. I trust Chief Currant and the DPD to use these cameras in good faith. The concern I have is that even if we trust the DPD and Axon with our data and are certain it's hack-proof and it's not going to be sold or shared with somebody who might also share it, we need to consider what might happen in the future. Governments change at all levels, local, state, federal. Today, so this is about any government in the future, not necessarily one that currently exists. Today, though, in an increasingly authoritarian society, government that has consistently changed precedent and overstepped the Constitution. But again, it could be any government in the future. How easy would it be for that government to co-opt the data or for companies like Axon to start cooperating, even though they don't now, and sharing the data? Perhaps after, for example, an executive order that a president might say that You have to share this data now for national security. For example, that suddenly the government has an incredibly powerful and dangerous tool. And again, currently in an administration, excuse me, that's calling liberal groups and things like Antifa, which isn't even an organization, it's just a movement, they have been labeled as terrorists, domestic terrorists. So it's not hard for me to imagine a scenario in which this tool is used against our community and journalists and political opponents. They're asking for our voter rolls and against all of our constitutional rights. So for sure, there's value in public safety and recovering vehicles and especially violent crime. At the same time, there's also a very real cost Both financial, which could be used, for example, for drug treatment programs instead of the conventional war on drugs, which has proven pretty ineffective. But I think a much larger cost in the risk of how this could be very quickly used against our community and others in unintended and unjust ways. I've spoken with Chief Curran at length. We had a great conversation and mostly agree, including about the potential dangers of surveillance and the inevitability of abuse. One thing I don't think we saw the same as whether these cameras constitute surveillance. And I I submit that when sharing with over 100 organizations. These can end. Retention times can change. These could easily become very dangerous surveillance, so I encourage you to pump the brakes as much as possible, including the seven day retention time. Thanks.

Next up is Meg Wilmot.

My name is Meg.

I've been living here for about a decade now. Like everyone else in this town, I want our community to be safe. I support our local police. I want them to have the tools that they need to solve crimes. But there's a fundamental difference between investigating someone suspected of a crime and creating a dragnet system capable of tracking the movements of law-abiding citizens, which traditionally would require a warrant signed by a judge. Every generation must decide how much power is it willing to hand over to the government. Rarely is power taken all at once. One generation gives an inch or two, the next, the next, and so on, This adds up to miles. The justifications are always convenience, good intentions, and a naive assumption that it will not be abused. We've heard assurances about strict guardrails, yet there have been over 100 documented cases of law enforcement abusing a system. In Thornton, one officer conducted over 20,000 searches, with only 23 connected to actual cases. In Texas, hundreds of outside agencies accessed the department system beyond those that had been authorized, generating more than 1.5 million searches. We still don't know who accessed all that data. As we heard the police chief say last meeting, our police department technically owns the data, but it's stored with Flock. He stated our data is not at risk, yet seemed to contradict himself. That's what's confusing to me. How can we trust a company founded by venture capitalist billionaires to care about our well-being over the shareholder value? Flock uses vague, broad legal terms that allow for significant unwanted disclosures. Think about it this way, council members. Would it be reasonable to expect privacy when your neighbor's looking at you from his porch when you drive past? Most people would say no. However, imagine instead they follow you every time you leave your house, write down where you go, what time you arrive, what time you leave. Most people would find this deeply unsettling, and we're told it's less concerning simply because it's the government doing it. I would suggest the opposite's true. You need only to look to the People's Republic of China, the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea to get my point. We cannot allow technology to become a loophole around constitutional rights. The Fourth Amendment's protection does not simply disappear because our government suddenly thinks mass surveillance is okay. Benjamin Franklin once said, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither. Whether you agree with every word of that, quote, its central lesson has endured 250 years. Once liberty is surrendered, it's rarely reclaimed without great difficulty. This council has the authority to decide whether our city will take another step towards routine government surveillance or whether it will affirm the privacy of its law-abiding citizens. As our police chief said, Skepticism of government is actually good, necessary. Public safety technology should be questioned. The Constitution's protection over our privacy is not contingent on the government's justification of that violation. One crime does not excuse or justify another. Council members, this is ultimately more than about one company or one contract. It's about what kind of community we want to be. I urge you to cancel the contract and implement an ordinance that will prevent this from ever happening in Durango again. And please reconsider using Axon. They not only work with ice, but manufacture weapons and arm them. Public safety matters, but so does privacy, freedom, and the Constitution. We shouldn't have to sacrifice one to protect the other.

Thank you.

The next three folks are online. The first is Benjamin Peters.

Hi, everyone.

Can you hear me OK?

We can.

Hi, my name is Ben Peters. Good evening, Mayor City Council. I'm resident of Durango. Many of you have met with me and I do want to echo some of the other comments. I do really appreciate the dialogue that y'all have been having around surveillance and I appreciate the effort that the PD puts into these presentations, I think we've made a lot of, we've made some good steps. I mean, I do think that reducing the number of agencies we were sharing with was a good step and reducing the retention period. It's worth noting that FLOCs suggested default retention is now seven days instead of 30 days. And I also wanted to say that the permanent audit logs that are maintained by FLOC are not permanent or immutable. Late last year, FLOC redacted a bunch of data from the permanent logs, leading to departments having less insight into which license plates and officers were searching their networks. And this was in response to people like myself making records requests and resulting in less data available to be inspected by the public. I do think that the police chief has taken some of our concerns to heart about FLOC's data policies. I do think that I do hope that the policies at Exxon are more straightforward and less squirrelly than FOX policies are. And I know that I've shared with all of you a letter in support of the ordinance language we introduced back in April and now it has a different form with this ordinance that should be before you. Regardless of the contractor, regardless of the surveillance, technology being used, we're still asking for a warrant requirement. We're asking for a warrant requirement to access surveillance data and analytics generated by an ALPR system. And a warrant's required in most cases to search somebody's phone, somebody's car, somebody's home. And so we believe it should be required to access a location history of somebody's vehicle. And whatever company we use, Flock, Axon, they can claim to have safeguards and processes in place, it's up to us and especially like the government and elected officials like y'all to make sure that we have meaningful processes in place. And for our ordinance, what we propose is regular independent audits of whatever surveillance technology is being used and to validate the claims by these different contractors. So, you know, and it's worth saying that, you know, there's been a lot of improvements to FLOC But there's still incidences of abuse that are climbing and I don't want a member of our community to be a victim of stalking or their city to be subject to a lawsuit. So I think the audit the ordinance will be a good step in the right direction and I we hope that you will continue to support the measure. Thank you.

Next up is Peter to jealous. Peter, you should be able to unmute now and speak.

Okay, can everybody hear me now?

We can.

Oh, thank you very much. Hello, everybody. Yeah, I would just second what Ben just said, but I want to stick to the basic ideas and keep it simple. I really don't like the idea of my city being complicit in a program of mass surveillance through violation of the Fourth Amendment that you guys swore to uphold, you know, that was the part that says probable cause is required to get a warrant, particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. And I think we need to keep that warrant thing in mind and where it all comes from. It is a safety rail and we don't want to lose it. On a kind of primal values level, though, I want to think that a society, I mean, I do think that a society that allows the killing of over 40,000 people per year through gun violence to uphold any incursions on the Second Amendment ought to be able to tolerate the theft of some automobiles and to hold the line against incursions against the Fourth Amendment. Thank you very much.

And the last person signed up is Karen Pontius.

Karen, you should be able to unmute now. Karen, if you're having difficulties, control shift M on a Windows machine or Command shift M should unmute your mic on a Mac. Again, Karen, you're able to unmute now. Uh-huh, I got it.

My name is Karen Pontius and I live in Durango. I'll address two issues, mass surveillance and immigration. We know that the current federal administration wants as much data as they can get on all of us. I can confidently say that a majority of Durango residents are against mass surveillance. I'm glad to hear that the DPD will not renew with flock safety, but acts on is still equal surveillance. Whether the camera is bolted to a light pole or sitting on the windshield of a patrol car, the end result is the government quietly building a historical record of where ordinary people travel. It's still government overreach. It sounds like DPT patrol cars already use Axon mobile um as dash cams and body cams i'm not sure but sounded like it was how long are those records kept can historical reads be searched by plate who has access to that data and what oversight is there to prevent abuse in 2024 axon bought fusus it's spelled f-u-s-u-s it's a global leader in real-time crime center technology officers with access can load the app on their phone And then can access any camera in the city that would include city on cameras and cameras. Businesses have given the real time Crime Center access to as well as a fleet of drones that live stream to the app when they're dispatched. It's quite dystopian. In my opinion, these mobile systems deserve a lot more scrutiny than they're getting. Currently we know our federal governments pressure campaign to force states to give up huge amount of voter data and it won't end there. What will DPD do when they get a federal subpoena to turn over all their data? And we aren't even talking about the data centers needed to support this mass surveillance. Number two, the Durango Immigration Task Force has left out some of our most informed voices. While the recommendations I read about are positive, none of them address the kidnapping and stalking of members of our community still daily. The actions of Department of Homeland Security and ICE personnel in our city have led to lawsuits by our district attorney and the ACLU. The first court date here is next Thursday the 10th at 10 AM. I hope these lawsuits result in actions against the agent involved. DHS has operated without checks and balances, injured and killed so many people nationwide. These actions need to stop. I love this city to stand firm against the abuses of the federal government. Just because our city resolutions cannot override federal actions, we can let our residents know our intention is to protect them all. Thank you.

No additional books have signed up under this section.

So thank you.

Just a clarification we move 11.1 to after 13 hours after 14 after 13.

So then we move back to resolutions 11.1 is a resolution waving the attorney client privilege relative to the investigation of Councillor Koso submitted by Councillor Gilday-Yassi.

Okay, I make the motion to waive the attorney-client privilege relative to the independent investigation of Councillor Koso.

I'll second. Discussion? Councillor Koso.

Council, at 5 p.m. today, we all received a copy of a letter to the editor that Councilor Yazzie had sent to the Durango Herald on June 17th of this year. The letter has a host of concerns and inaccuracies for me, but more important than anything, it shares a portion of the findings of the independent report that we are discussing. Those findings were clearly protected by attorney-client privilege when she wrote the letter in June. Councilor Yazzie appears to have violated the attorney-client privilege in her letter, that same attorney-client privilege that's being asked to be removed right now. No one has had time to review the letter and see the breadth of a violation, but it's clear that the independent report carried a restriction on the sharing of the contents. On May 6th, the city attorney specifically wrote that the report is attorney-client privileged. I'm moving the table to resolution before us while we are all allowed time to review the letter and the city attorney can weigh in on the extent of any ethics violation.

I just moved. He moved the table. Yeah.

Mark, would you care to guide us a little bit?

So a motion to table is on the floor with a second. That is not discussed. It's just voted on. Because the motion didn't provide a specific meeting to table it to, it would automatically be tabled until the September 15th meeting.

Discussion we have to hang up.

Alright, could you get a roll call please?

The motion fails to in favor Kip Koso, Shirley Gonzalez three opposed Dave Woodruff, Jessica lawyer, Gilda Yazzie.

Procedurally, Council Koso would still have the floor.

That's Koso.

So I guess I'd like to ask if there's an ethics violation that happened occurred back in June and no matter what happens today.

How does those how do those affect each other? So.

Can you ask the question one more time? So I wanna make sure that I give a very accurate answer.

Yeah, I find it disturbing that we're moving forward. There's a real concern here that the letter to the editor in June violated the attorney-client privilege.

So I'm not sure how we're discussing now until we clear that off.

And all that was being asked was just to wait the two weeks. So you have time. We've got this letter at 5 p.m. today, 20 minutes before this meeting started.

So. Breach of the attorney client privilege isn't necessarily an ethics violation, and that was part of the first question you asked, but I didn't hear it in the second one. If you're asking me to provide an opinion on how potential violation of something. Affects the motion that's on the floor. That's really up to you guys as a Council. I mean, you guys are self regulating between each other. If there was, behavior by one of you that is objectionable and how that relates to it's difficult to associate those two issues because this is strictly the waving of a privilege and you're asking me to balance that against a potential violation and that's that's not something that I can do off the cuff sitting here so counselors the letter is clearly aggressive

It's character assassination. It is. Has counsel read the letter? The letter we received at 5 o'clock. No, I've been in a meeting. Then why are we moving forward with it?

These are two separate things. These are two separate items.

Yes.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

All righty, so let's let's.

Sorry, Councillor Koza, did you did you have more?

If it's OK with Council, I'd like to lower my hand. I'd like to just reassess what I want to do here.

Sure.

Is that in the wrong direction? I'm happy to let the process move forward. Thank you.

Councillor Yazzie.

Thank you, Mayor. OK, so. You know, I I still think the resolution waiving attorney client privilege relative to the independent investigation of counselor Koso should move forward. I'm in favor of this. Resolution and my reasoning is this. It pertains to. This past election when I had written an opinion piece to. The Durango Herald, which they decided they did not want to publish the truth about what I wrote about why I went forward with my selection of nominees. I feel like they would rather pursue literature that provides false information, sensationalism, and they want behavior that's unprofessional. Of course, my opinion piece was by the book, just straight out there, no violation of client attorney privilege at all. And I think at this point, we should not confuse the issue with whatever emails came through RIGHT BEFORE OUR COUNCIL MEETING WHICH I HAVEN'T SEEN BECAUSE RIGHT BEFORE COUNCIL WE'RE CONCENTRATING ON COUNCIL AND I THINK THIS SHOULD GO THROUGH BECAUSE AS OUR RESOLUTION STATES WE NEED TO BE TRANSPARENT AND LET THE COMMUNITY KNOW THE THOUGHT PROCESS UP HERE ON THE DIUS You know we make the best decisions for the city of Durango and sometimes they're hard choices to make. And thank goodness I was there to make the correct choice during the last nomination process. So I would like to proceed with this. This vote, that's the end of my discussion.

That's earlier.

Yeah, I'm gonna keep it short for me. This isn't about prejudging the findings or about any individual counselor. I think it's a separate incident. If there's something that happened in the email that we haven't reviewed yet, then there's something that may have happened in the email that we haven't reviewed. But an independent investigation involving interactions between an elected official and city employees was authorized and paid for with city dollars. That investigation is now complete. I believe transparency matters, particularly when public officials are involved. If our attorney confirms that this resolution narrowly protects the city's broader attorney client privilege, I believe the public should be able to review the independent investigators findings and draw their own conclusions. I also think this establishes an important standard for all of us. Transparency shouldn't depend on who the counselor is or whether we personally agree with the findings. I think we're in this situation, unfortunately, because not all views are equally represented in some media outlets, and it's becoming now like back and forth between counselors, and that feels ugly and not okay. But I think that if everyone is just transparent, isn't hiding anything, has their North Star and is going forward as we should, because we all care about the city, then we should have nothing to worry about. So that's my two cents.

Excuse me, just briefly. To me, this is about whether citizens should be able to understand how their government responded when concerns were raised about the conduct of an elected official. There's a few points that I'd like to point out as we potentially move forward. Transparency should not depend on whether the findings are comfortable for us. As elected officials, we ask the public to trust us with significant authority. When the city spends public resources investigating the conduct of one of its elected officials, I believe that there should be a strong presumption that the public ultimately understands what was investigated and what was concluded to the full extent that the law allows. This goes for any of us on council currently or in the future. Moreover, the public should be able to see the whole story. The investigation involved interviews with city officials, staff, review of documentation, council meetings, the charter, and the applicable ordinance. And the investigator expressly used a preponderance of the evidence standard. If portions of this investigation are going to become publicly known anyway, I'd rather the community have the investigators actual findings than competing characterizations of what the report supposedly says. And the release of the report doesn't necessarily mean the condemnation of a counselor. Transparency is not the same thing as punishment, and transparency allows the public to see both the concerns and the findings. I would agree that a counselor's privacy interest deserves consideration, but elected officials conduct in office is differently than a purely private personnel matter. I respect that no one enjoys having an investigation involving them discussed publicly, but those who voluntarily hold elected office accept a higher level of public scrutiny concerning how we exercise that office. I believe our obligation is to balance legitimate confidentiality interests against the public's legitimate interest in the conduct of its government. I also believe that there is an argument that public money creates a legitimate public interest in the outcome. When taxpayer resources are used to commission an independent investigation concerning how the city government is functioning, I believe we should have a compelling reason for keeping the outcome entirely from the taxpayers who paid for it. And finally, I'd like to think that I'd apply the same standard to myself. If an independent investigation were conducted into my conduct as mayor, then the investigation were complete, I would expect the same standard to apply to me. I think in the end, the report exonerated me. There have been no issues reported even anonymously since the report came out. The report's now four months old.

No counselor's had any conversation with me about the reasons you feel my attorney-client privilege needs to be removed or that you even have an issue with the findings until this resolution was introduced. Why is there no interest in working through these solutions rather than making these public displays and the surprise to it? The letter to the editor, counselor, you never have once talked to me about this letter. You never once talked to me about the issues that are within it. Again, I've been trying to concentrate on the work, be part of the community and work for the people who elected me rather than be against the people I sit on this dais with. I may not follow the herd, but I've been respectful and I've attempted to provide well thought out arguments when I'm in opposition. I don't have a problem with releasing some of this report, but I do truly believe that Councilor Yazzie is after being able to share the arguments without the conclusions of the report. So. I think I'll just end with a direct quote from Councilor Lawyer in a recent opinion piece in the Herald that I think pertains. We have enough outrage, division, and cynicism in our national politics. We don't need to manufacture more of it here. That was a good statement, something I would heartily embrace, and I hope City Council is willing to embrace it as well.

Councilor Gonzalez.

So we never had an executive session about this issue. Is that correct?

That's correct. There was no executive session.

And so therefore, well, could you give me an example about how that would have happened? If we wanted to have discussion about a personnel matter, would we have requested an executive session? And I think where I'm going with this is that there is this assertion of attorney-client privilege, but we never had an executive session. So I don't know, perhaps you could explain that. I mean, it was never discussed in an executive session.

So, very difficult for me to answer because I was conflicted out of this, and I don't want to go into details until you guys vote, so I'm going to be very careful about what I say. But it was done by an independent counsel because of a conflict that arose because of the nature of the investigation. As to why that attorney investigator did not choose to do anything in executive session, I don't have the answer to that.

Which gives me tremendous pause. I think this is where, you know, as we're trying to understand whether or not this document should be released to the public is really a concern that I feel like we never had a discussion in executive session. And so, you know, I have some concern about that. So I don't know exactly where that leads us, but it seems that if there is a concern with one of our colleagues regarding their conduct, that there should have been an opportunity to discuss that in a way that was, whether it was in an executive session. You mentioned that there was another attorney. Why was that attorney not brought in to give us a briefing on the situation?

I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question.

The attorney that gave the recommendation, why was that attorney not brought in to give us a briefing and executive session?

Well, again, being conflicted out is very difficult, but the need for an executive session for this type of matter, usually an executive session on a personnel matter has to do with you guys discussing one of your appointees or one of the actions that the city manager might want to take against them. Amongst yourselves, I can't even say definitively if an executive session would be required. If there's some action, some disciplinary action relative to the report that you would like to take, I would advise you to do that in the executive session. But releasing the report itself doesn't necessarily require an executive session because it's just a waiving of the privilege. What you intend to do as a result of that would probably be called an executive session. like Councillor Costa said earlier, there's been no discussion of having any discipline or doing anything about this report. I'm kind of thinking as I'm processing this as I'm talking to you about it, because there's been no discussion of taking any action relative to the report, without having been the attorney who did it, there wouldn't necessarily be a need for an executive session.

Well, I think that's a distinction I needed to understand why, you know, as we proceed should there be an issue that, I mean, there was a lawyer that was brought in to give, and we were given that document after the fact, but there was never an opportunity to discuss. And I think, again, like that was a, I have concern about it. So that's all.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilor Lawyer?

Yeah, just as one side comment after we received the the report I went in my one on one when Mark was in there, I asked him what was next after it and he said if nothing you don't want to do anything then it's nothing. If you want to bring action then you put it on new business and then and so that was why I didn't bring up anything after this. Yes, I do think there's enough cynicism in the world at the moment and I stand by that. I think it grows when people believe government investigates itself behind closed doors and then keeps the results behind closed doors. There was nothing found. Again, we authorize an independent investigation. It has been completed. I think if it happened to any one of us, the public should be able to see what was found, whether those findings are favorable, unfavorable, or somewhere in between. I want to be consistent about that. If they're Is any other legitimate allegations about anything else? I think that's a separate matter. I don't think one allegation over an email that I just kind of peruse a second ago that clearly is edited and stuff is deleted out of should conflate the allegation with question before us tonight. One doesn't erase the other. One counselor's alleged conduct should be used as a reason to prevent transparency regarding another counselor's conduct. So yes. I stand by what I wrote. We have enough cynicism. Transparency is one of the ways we combat it. I also don't think counsel, I think if there's a concern, let's handle it through a process where the facts can be established, whether it's an email from the editor of the Herald or, you know, whatever. I think that's part of the reason we're in the situation we are in. And it's actually better that we just release the investigation rather than an opinion piece with someone's opinions going along with it. To be fair, I think it's actually a better thing in the end, not. But. Yeah, that's why.

Councilor Giazzi stated that the reason behind this is because she wants the opinion piece to be able to run. I guess I don't understand why you're saying that this is independent of the opinion piece.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

I think you just stated that earlier. Please, what is to be gained out of removing the attorney-client privilege?

I think a lot of transparency on city council is to be gained by releasing this document. of being truthful to our residents and our voters as to what is contained in the document. I think it would alleviate a lot of questions. I think it would smooth out a lot of tension.

That's all to be gained. Council, I think this is just dirty politics. Any other discussion? Get a roll call, please.

Can you repeat the motion on the floor, please?

The motion was to approve a resolution waiving the attorney client privilege relative to the independent investigation of Councilor Koso.

The motion passes. 3 in favor. Dave Woodruff, Jessica Lawyer, Gilda Yazzie, two, opposed, Kip Kosso, Shirley Gonzalez.

All right, we are moving on to agenda item number 15.

Oh, sorry, other, yeah, other new business.

Any other new business? Oh, sorry, it's, Could we get back to the non-voting results on the screen, please? Thank you. Councilor Croso.

I would like to request a presentation from Amy Spicer at Courageous Colorado and Tiffany Lee on the process for ranked choice election policies associated with it and examples from other municipalities. Before we draw any conclusions on ranked choice voting, I'd love to have a fuller presentation on why communities consider it. the different forms it can take and what those options actually look like in Durango. And I would love to request that the County Clerk be part of that as well.

Additionally, oops, sorry.

I'd like to put on the agenda a item discussing the formal complaint from Durango Beer and Ice that was emailed to City Council and that we haven't heard anything back from. Any decision needs to be made by Council, but in the interest of transparency, I'd like to bring that formal complaint up and have it discussed.

Any other new business? Alright, moving on to agenda item number 15.

Item 15.1 is a motion to convene an executive session to receive legal advice on specific legal questions pursuant to CRS 24-6-402B concerning the application for the conditional water rights of the City of Durango in the Animas River Watershed, specifically 23CW3044, filed in La Plata County District Court.

I'll make a motion to convene an executive session to receive legal advice on specific legal questions pursuant to CRS 24-6-402B concerning the application of the conditional water rights of the City of Durango and Animas River watershed specifically. 23CW3044 filed in La Plata County District Court.

Second. Discussion? I see none. Roll call please.

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

Item 15.2 is a motion to convene an executive session to receive legal advice on specific legal questions pursuant to CRS 2024-6-402B concerning La Plata County District Court case We'll make a motion to convene an executive session to receive legal advice on specific legal questions pursuant to CRS 24-6-402B concerning La Plata County District Court Case 2025-CV-030017.

specifically the City of Durango v. Zenner USA Incorporated, DBA Zenner USA, a foreign corporation.

Discussion? Seeing none, a roll call, please.

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

Mayor, just for the record, we'll... We'll go in the back. We'll do two separate recordings for two separate executive sessions just to keep them coming in and out, just like we should.

Of course. Yes, sir.

And then we'll report on both of them once we come back. But there'll be two separate sessions, two separate recordings.

Great. Thank you. Excellent.

The time is now 826 PM and the executive session has been concluded. The participants in the executive session were Fritz Holloman, Mark Morgan, Councilor Kip Koso, Councilor Jessica Lawyer, Mayor Dave Woodruff, Councilor Gil DeAzi, Councilor again, Shirley Gonzalez. I don't know why that was so hard. And then for the record, Council met in the executive session to record to receive legal advice on specific legal questions pursuant to CRS 24-6-402B. Concerning the application for the conditional water rights of the City of Durango and the Animas River Watershed, specifically 23 CW 3044 filed in La Plata County District Court. For the record, if any person who participated in the executive session believes that any substantial discussion of any matters not included in the motion to go into the executive session occurred during the executive session or that any improper action occurred during the executive session in violation of the open meetings law, I would ask that you state your concerns for the record. Seeing none, the next...

Oh yeah, I'll make a motion to resolve the case concerning the application for the conditional water rights of the city of Durango and the Animas River watershed, specifically 23 CW 3044 file in La Plata County District Court under the terms discussed in executive session 2nd.

Discussion. Get a roll call, please.

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

Time is now 828 PM and the executive session has been concluded. The participants in the executive session were Aaron Heider, Mark Morgan, Jose Madrigal, Kip Koso, Jessica Lawyer, Dave Woodruff, Gilda Yazzie, Shirley Gonzalez. The Record Council met in Executive Session to receive legal advice on specific legal questions pursuant to CRS 24-6-402B concerning La Plata County District Court Case 2025-CV-03-0017, specifically the City of Durango v. Zenner USA Inc. doing business at Zenner USA, a foreign corporation. For the record, if any person who participated in the Executive Session believes that any substantial discussion of any matter is not included in the motion to go into the Executive Session occurred during the Executive Session, With any improper action occurred during the executive session in violation of the open meetings law, I would ask that you state your concerns for the record.

Alright, I'd like to make a motion to resolve the case concerning La Plata County District Court case 2025 CV 030017, specifically the city of City of Durango v. Zenner USA Incorporated, DBA Zenner USA, a foreign corporation under the terms discussed in executive session. Second.

Any discussion? Get a roll call, please.

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

Alright, and we are adjourned. Thank you.