City Council - Regular Meeting

I know. I'd be firm.

All right.

The time is now 531. We will go ahead and call the regular city council meeting for the city of Durango to order the for September 15th, 2026. May I please get a roll call?

Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Koso here. Mayor Pro Tem lawyer here. Mayor Woodruff here. Councilor Yazzie here. and Councillor Gonzalez.

Thank you. May I please get a reading of the indigenous acknowledgement.

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

Thank you. Council, I'd like to move that we move item number 5.3 before item 3, opening remarks. So the public update on the Police Department City Hall information before opening remarks.

Second.

Discussion?

We get a roll call, please.

Thank you.

motion passes all in favor dave woodruff jessica lawyer gilda yazzie kip coso shirley gonzalez great thank you uh could we please get an introduction of the translator hi thank you so much

My name is Liz Torres and I am here with my colleague, Sam Guzman, and today we'll be your interpreters with the Community Language Co-op. Thank you for your commitment to language justice so that everyone can hear in the language of their heart. If you're listening to us or if you're watching us from Teams meeting online, please go to the More menu and then select the language of your heart from there. If you're having any trouble, please let us know. Buenas tardes, mi nombre es Liz Torres y estoy aquí con mi colega Sam Guzman. Estamos aquí con la Cooperativa Comunitaria del Lenguaje y queremos agradecerle por su compromiso con la justicia del lenguaje para que así todos puedan escuchar en el idioma de su corazón. El día de hoy voy a interpretar de inglés al español y si usted está reuniéndose a esta junta por medio de la aplicación de Teams, Por favor, vaya al menú de más, que son los tres puntitos, y ahí podrá usted seleccionar el idioma de su corazón. And we can go ahead and get started.

Thank you. Because of the agenda modification, we will go ahead and move up to 5.3, public update on police department city hall information process.

Okay, thank you, Mayor and Council. Just wanted to give an update on the PD City Hall project. As many of you know that there were some emails that were being exchanged over the weekend and in an attempt to provide some more information, some information that was out there on the PD City Hall project. I had a lot of productive conversations with citizens I was able to kind of talk to and explain a little bit more about the process. So I did think on Sunday that it would have been a good idea to go ahead and put a city manager report on it and update not only for the council, but for the community. This project spans a long time, it feels like. And so there's just a lot of pieces and parts that go to it. And sometimes as time goes on, there's things that get left, things that you've got to go back and recollect of how the decisions got made. So I'm going to do my best to keep it on topic, but also be able to provide a presentation that can be referred back to to maybe answer some of those questions that people may have of where did we get here and how did we get here. First off, this is under our goal of organizational stewardship. So how was the site identified? Actually, the site was identified back in January of 1994. There was a plan that was done by Reynolds Larson Associates and the appraisal group where they were looking at a feasibility study for a master facility plan for the city of Durango. Their forced choice alternative was the rehabilitation of the 9R property into a new city hall complex. They did in their recommend in that forced choice was to demolish the rear portion of the administration building, as well as a demolition of the arts and sciences building. To the right or on this slide, you'll see there is the Durango City Hall. It's labeled as the 9R building, and then you'll see the parking around it. They did have in that study an alternative two, which was to move police into choice one alternative. So this was something that had been considered in January of 1994. That was not the driving factor of this portion of it. I believe for those that have been here in the community, they will remember that actually this kind of all got started with the fire station possibly going to the 9R complex and the big picture building and then a call for that to be changed in a swap with River City Hall and in that the city acquired this property based on a little bit at least that this had been a consideration at a prior time of being a municipal campus. We had a conceptual design, and I think this is a lot of where we've gotten a lot of the questions in regards to the design that was presented. The first part of it is just kind of what a conceptual design is. It's an early illustration of how this project could come together. We used it as definitely a starting point for public input, beginning to see how we could get some cost estimates evaluate alternatives, have discussion with the public to which we did a even before we acquired the property. But then once we did kind of what are those things wants and needs that they would see in a PD City Hall project? A couple of things of what it's not. It's it's not a final construction plan. There's not a guarantee that every illustrated feature will be built. This wasn't a formal construction design. but was an opportunity for us to kind of set and see what this property possibly could be in some of the major components that could go into it. It did include an underground parking garage. It also did include the big picture. Well, sorry, the school district has asked us not to call it the big picture building anymore. So I'll call it the community development and engineering building as it's causing confusion in the public with it. But it used to be what is now our current community development engineering building having an addition added onto it and being rehabilitated for a police department. One of the things I think is important to point out is we did know at the time that this may not be something that we can accomplish because it was a conceptual design. And so I put this part on this page just to kind of show that there was an acknowledgement publicly. We did have a meeting in February 27, 2024. So this would be a little bit of a year, a little more than a year before the ballot language was called. It's still on our city YouTube page. I think it starts around the 28th minute. We did have a citizen ask me directly what happens if the underground parking comes back is too expensive and the police station seems to be cost prohibitive. The response that I had in there, obviously this is kind of paraphrased, but that we would make design changes with the design team and then go back out to the public and explain the need for the change and what changes are occurring. And I just utilize that to say that from the beginning, we knew that the conceptual design may have some parts where pivots were going to be needed because they weren't actually based on construction or engineering drawings. After this, as the conceptual design was kind of completed, we did have some discussions with the city council in the May of 2024, June of 2024, and June 17th of 2024. All of these conversations centered around a possible debt issuance for this project. We did receive an original construction cost opinion by FCI, who is actually right now currently our construction manager. In May of 2024, the estimate they gave was about $83 million for this project. The council discussions in that part was at that time, it was to move the alley improvements from the project budget and utilize 2019 and 2015 sales tax options for funding of those improvements. looking at selling City Hall and PD and applying for grants to drop that $83 million into something that we think could be of use and feasibility financially for us to build this project. An important part on there is that the Buckley Park improvements were not part of that project. We did not actually obtain Buckley Park until June of 2024, so it was just relatively new as we had gotten into it. So there was always a discussion there too as well with the council in regards to that being used for park sales taxes that needed to go through its own master planning process with input from the community of what Buckley Park should look like and how it would interact into the city hall designs. So I put those both in just to let people know that those projects are still ongoing. They just have a different set of funding. They haven't been stripped from the overall vision of this site. We are just utilizing different sales tax portions to continue to fund those areas and not the project budget. But again, things that were done even before the ballot language was called on that for those portions, they were identified using different sources. The council at this time also considered keeping the sales tax rate the same or actually increasing it by an eighth of a cent that would give us more financial flexibility. The decision by the council was made to keep the sales tax flat. They believe there is more of a successful ability for a reauthorization vote for the sales tax, and that would be something that would be looked at as the voters more favorable with that. And they did decide to pursue a reauthorization of the 20 to 2005 sales tax, but to do so in April. The ballot language, this is what went out to the voters after, and this is what was passed with a 67% approval. That was 3,200 votes for and about 1,500 votes against. I put in green the three components, and this is something that when working with our city attorney that we always want to make sure that we point out in the ballot authorization of the three kind of main components that it authorizes. It authorizes $61 million in debt funding. It's the restoration and equipping of the historic Durango High School building and adjacent facilities for use as a new city hall and a new police facility. So those are the requirements that we have for utilizing the $61 million of debt funding. We have a design advisory group that was formed after the ballot was passed that we've been working with. It's led by HDR, who's the lead designer. It also includes Roth Shepard Associates. They are a firm that specializes in police department design. We have FCI, who's our construction manager. Then we also have Artaic, which is our owner's representative. And then on staff that is leading this design group and has been placed in a lot of time into it and is Erin Heider, our Assistant City Manager. She actually leads the City Hall portion of this project. Bob Brammer, our Assistant City Manager, leads the Police Department portion of this project. And it also includes Jamie Lopko, our Community Development Director, John Harris, our Public Works Director, Scott McLean, our Parks and Recreation Director, Gloria Platt, our Chief Financial Officer, and then Bryce Currant, our Chief of Police. So they're the ones that have been involved working with the design schematics, looking at how these buildings could work, office space planning, in those types of decisions that are being made in the actual designing of this project. In December of 2025, it was noted in the design group that we would need to have some design changes to this project. The first one was the underground parking structure. In that initial cost opinion, the category four upgrades were not included in that and would be needed, adding about $8 million of additional cost. The other part of this that sometimes does get overlooked is that there would also, for code, need a second entrance, which would mean that the parking garage would either need to probably come out onto the alleyway or on 12th Street. And both of those creating its own set of problems of how they would functionally work. Specifically on the 12th Street, it would be right there next to an intersection where the stop sign is with 2nd Avenue and 12th where they intersect on an alleyway, putting traffic on an alleyway that... been pretty uh it's not as been as active as many other ways could also provide a problem as well as just how does it fit and how does that turn uh portion went out uh also and i have it there but i'll say the community development and engineering building formerly known uh was they went through it and got more of the design this is where we could actually look at construction costs with our design group as well as fci they found out that the renovations plus the addition that was going to be needed onto that building and to upgrade it to a class, to upgrade it for category four would cost at a minimum about 1.5 million more than building a new police station. So with the efficiencies that would also be gained with the new building designed specifically for police operations versus a building designed as a high school, we were proposing the choice for our new police department building to be built actually behind where the city hall is going. And then we propose offsite parking and we propose utilizing the current Police Department and City Hall sites as surface parking for this for this project. We did present these design changes to the public. We came to the City Council January 21st and the Council meeting to let the Council know some of the pivots that we were looking to make from February through March. You'll see the community presentations that we've listed to all the groups that Aaron and Bob went out to, talked about the changes, the reason why they needed to be made. The feedback we received was generally positive and understanding. We did receive the concern on using the current PD and City Hall lots is not as the highest and best use and a concern of the community wanting to see maybe those being used to be redeveloped and not as surface parking lots. And based on that, the City Council has directed staff to seek other parking options that we're currently doing. These other parking options will enable the sale of current PD and City Hall properties. So those aren't right now on the table to be used as surface parking. We are absolutely looking at other options for both of these sites. Boards and commissions have been involved in this project. We have some meetings here where the Historic Preservation Board has had meetings regarding this project at different parts of its process. concluding in July of 2026, where they approved the alteration certificate of the historic high school. The Financial Advisory Board has also had many presentations in regards to this project or update, and then we put in there where we talk about the five-year CIP plans for the 2015 sales tax, the 2025, and the 2019, because in those are where the alley improvements and Buckley Park improvements are listed. within that five-year plan showing that there is a commitment for those projects to still go forward just using different funding sources. And then we did have our Board of Adjustment August 2026, the variance denial. So boards and commissions have been involved in this project as well, and we are taking it through the necessary boards and commissions that are involved. We also had some public design input sessions after we got the design advisory group together. We did these in February 2026 at our Engage Durango forum. We also had a May 26, a community update to get feedback on our secure parking fence designs, garden amenities, the city hall interior palette. We did another one in June, which was on the police department, the exterior, the entryway design and security parking fence designs. Getting back to where people who had gone through, they would put little stickers on what they saw as things that related to them and what they felt that the building should feel like and look like. We also had the opportunity for voting comments and questions. We're also available on our Connect and Engage PD City Hall page. So if people couldn't attend those events, they could still submit their preferences through our Connect and Engage website. We have done some public input incorporation to date. Here are some of the things that we've added on to our made decisions in our design to incorporate based on public input that we received. If we look at the site, you can see an enhanced rose garden based on the public input. We also put in there that we're not using the current police department and city hall for surface parking. We're selling both properties. We're planning to sell both properties for a higher and better use. When we look at the police department, one of the big ones is the parking lot security fence. We did propose an eight foot fence, but due to community input, we have lowered that to the six foot fence and using the light control, dark sky, landscape buffering and a wrought iron mixed with a masonry pillar. So that's coming directly from the public input of trying not to make it look as a big, tall eight-foot fence, but more as a six-foot neighborhood fence to look at more appealing. The city hall also, we definitely have taken public input using the auditorium for the council chambers, court functions, and community space. We also are looking to make sure that we Take we preserve the original hardwood floors, the slate chalkboards, the wood builtins, the wood doors, the historic light fixtures are preserved or feasible, and then the landscape and interior color patterns were informed by using community voting. What's next? Obviously parking. We're still working on incorporating the input we received from the Board of Adjustments as well as incorporating the identified parking lots that was that was discussed and mentioned during that Board of Adjustments meeting. So staff is working on that too. to solve the parking portion of this project. We have started asbestos abatement at the new City Hall, 215 East 12th, which is the Community Development Engineering Building, is slated to begin asbestos abatement on October 12th, pending permit issuance. A permit has not been issued, but that's kind of where we're targeting and slating on the date. The City Hall Police Department major site plan review. We know we've been asked for plans, and where are the plans? The plans for submission are being finalized. We anticipate complete plans on September 28th. Staff is targeting a presentation information only because the City Council does not approve those. Those actually go to the Community Development Commission. So for those in public or reading this, just wanting to make sure they know it's just an information only presentation to the Council, but we plan on presenting it to the Council on October 6th. We also plan on holding a public update session soon after. Staff's finalizing the dates of when that would be to show those the community as well in a community dedicated form, the plans that have been submitted. Staffs targeting, man, can't even speak, targeting the October or December meeting for submission for the Community Development Commission approval. If once approval is, groundbreaking will follow. So that's another portion of when does groundbreaking occur. It actually will occur after approval from the Community Development Commission major site plan. The construction budget, we've had a lot of discussion also about what is the budget. Here's where we stand today. It's important that we see what's in those parentheses. It's not final. It's going to be subject to change until we receive a guaranteed maximum price. We estimate that we receive that in late November. But working with FCI, our construction and our designer, our construction budget is $61.2 million. Current total with some accepted value engineering changes that we've made, we're at $61.1 million. So we are currently under budget about $112,000. Again, this is all subject to change because we have to wait till we get our guaranteed maximum price. So assuming the market stays stable with construction material, we anticipate this project to be within budget. In closing, what I'd like to say just to the council and the community, when it comes to engaging the public and disseminating information, there's always room for improvement. This is a big project that has taken a lot of time, that's gone through a lot of iterations and years. And there's always ways that we're looking at internally of how do we incorporate some of the feedback we received and how we can make the public engagement and the dissemination of information more readily available. We're committed to adapting as the project involves with feedback received, and we will always continue to update the PD City Hall Connected and Gauge page throughout the process all the way until ribbon cutting to keep the public informed.

That's my presentation.

Right, Councilor Koso.

Thank you for the presentation. Appreciate the update on this. Multiple questions, so bear with me on this one. If we could flip back to the ballot language. I guess I'd like a clear explanation on why restoration and equipment equipping of the historic high school building and adjacent facilities suggests that it's OK to mow down the arts and science building.

So I'm going to advise that you don't answer that question. I wish you were going to. You're going to ask that because that is the exact subject of the litigation that a resident has filed against the city. So any comment here outside of that core proceeding would be inappropriate.

So do what guardrails do I have to work within in asking questions about the presentation that just got?

I think you're good on the presentation. It's just that specific question about the ballot language. A judge is going to decide that on November, October 15th or 16th. OK.

Going to the initial budget for $81 million, category four upgrades. The budget came back, category four upgrades cost an extra eight million for an underground parking garage. I am under the assumption that an initial budget of 83 million had that eight million in it and it was deleted. Or why did we miss, why was it an $8 million delta on the cost of the underground parking garage?

So, Okay, just trying to make sure that I know there's people involved and I'm not pointing to stringing people into it. So that's why the pause is there. The construction cost opinion was actually not derived by the city. It was actually the first conceptual designer who asked FCI to make that estimate on the construction garage for the underground parking. FCI happened at that point was just a third party that the designer reached out to. FCI is now our construction manager. When they were on there, they were the ones who informed us that their estimate did not include the category four for the parking garage. Is that a fair assessment, Bob?

Could you mind just coming up, Bob and Aaron, just in case there's some other questions? Thanks.

So then the $8 million was never part of the initial budget. that was proposed that we came back to. Am I correct that the initial budget came in at 81 million and we brought that back down to 61 million?

We never had a budget. It was a construction opinion that was given to us by FCI. So just to make sure.

Happy to say that construction opinion came in at 81 million and we brought that back down to a construction opinion of 61 million. Is that correct?

What we have now is not a construction opinion because now we've got design documents and drawings and engineering analysis. So it's going to be more of a construction budget that FCI is giving us real-time numbers of what they believe these costs were going to be.

What was used during the ballot 2A initiative?

$61 million was proposed in the proposed- Yes, because that was the maximum amount of debt that you could take without raising the sales tax.

With the sales tax at a flat level. Yes, sir. Okay, great. Thank you. And do we- Category 4 does not have to be part of the building code right now in the building that we've been inhabiting on a temporary basis for 40 years. Do we automatically have to go to Category 4 construction when you build a new building?

No, it's when police operations are involved. So anything that has police operation has to be Category 4 under the International Building Code.

And there's no explanation that can be shared in this room on why we missed that fact in the initial budget being proposed to folks through Prop 2A. It just seems like a large miss. I guess I'm trying to figure out.

It seems to be mostly going to interject here because that that miss is the source of some potential litigation, so I wouldn't want you to assign that to any of our contractors or people that helped in the development of some of these proposals. OK, I apologize for that, but I just I don't want to compromise anybody, the city or the other parties that might be involved.

Is there any opinion on why residents who have voted for the project on 2A feel like they didn't understand the flexibility that was going to be happening with the project. I was one of those folks. I was campaigning on this and pushing it. It's a very different project than what I had pushed while I was campaigning as well. So while we cite times that we've iterated to the public that there needs to be flexibility in this, I'm not sure I understand why that didn't come across more. And if that was just me campaigning, but I'll be honest with you, I had two of the counselors up on this dais that were campaigning beside me, and nobody even once mentioned that the underground parking garage may turn into surface parking with staff being spread out across the city. Nobody talked about the building being torn down rather than remodeled.

A lot of questions there. And I mean, I think For me, I don't know if I'm able to answer the opinion of somebody who voted for it and how they would know or what they knew when they did. What I can tell you is during the many open houses that we've had and people would come up and ask because there was a very familiar question to us about the underground parking, could we afford it? And I would always say, if we did not, while I have that in that public meeting, that wasn't the only time I had done it. I had done it with private conversations with people who would come up and ask questions on it. I know our staff has done the same thing. Why that wasn't disseminated, you know, that's just not something that I would say that from staff we had thought of to disseminate. We were just answering questions as we got them. I would also kind of point to Mark just a bit on this because once you call the election, we are very regulated in what we can say and what we can put out. So that does hamper our ability to communicate substantially.

Yeah, just generally under the Colorado Fair Elections Act, once the council voted to put that particular ballot language on the ballot, No public funds or no public resources can be used for anything other than just presenting known facts. You can't present speculation. You can't do anything that would be interpreted as lobbying for one side or other of the Proposition 2A to pass.

One more thing. Up to about six months ago, I had raised some concerns that the city manager position was the sole determiner of any changes and what actually got proposed to architects and through construction. That's the ballot language. That was the administrative task that the city manager position had. Is there any reason why we didn't think even six months ago about incorporating more citizen involvement into any possible changes that might occur to the project or that citizen involvement being engaged with changes that made it to this point?

So I think there's, it's a very general statement and I'm not sure it's absolutely accurate. Okay. This project isn't given to me at a sole discretion of changes. What it does do, and this is where I'll look at Mark to make sure that I insert, is it gives me the responsibility to administer the project and complete said project. However, I would say that I have come to council with design changes. The council has agreed to those design changes. They've shifted on the parking lots that were supposed to be that I had proposed for surface parking. So I don't believe that there's a part in this that says I'm the sole determinator. I think that if there's any point in some of these designs where the council as a body, which would be three or more, has concerns about the direction that it's going, they have the ability to change direction or provide something different to which they have done.

That's a good point. I think in my conversations with the attorney, city attorney, it's been stressed that the city manager position, not you, but the city manager position has the final authority on all changes that happen here. That there is no approval that needs to come through city council on a change from the proposal that happened through the ballot 2A to the point that we're at right now.

I think that's going to be his answer.

So the ballot language is a voter mandate. the obligation of the city manager, once that mandate passed with whatever percentage it passed with, was to accomplish the project with fidelity, that's the word in the law, to the ballot language. I hope that answers your question, but that's the legal obligation. It's a voter-directed project under the ballot language. His obligation and the finance department's obligation with the bonds and such is to have the So fidelity in the application of the ballot language. And you are correct. I have told you many times that once that happens, once the voters approve that, it's no longer a council decision. It's up to the administration to execute that. With the caveat of the master plan has to be approved by the community development department.

Could the administrator at any time had decided that there was a public or citizen board that also was involved in the decision making process in the approval process?

The concern with that is what if the citizen award is in conflict with the voter mandate?

OK. Thank you. I do appreciate the presentation.

Councilor Gonzalez.

I guess I'll start here with this bond language or these bond numbers. When the city goes forward with the bond project, do we first determine how much funding is available or do we first determine what projects we want to do?

So this is a different project because what happened is this came about in creation because of the Durango Fire Protection District having the 9R campus and wanting the River City Hall site for their downtown fire station and wanting to do a property swap with the city to swap those properties. So this wasn't a traditional staff came to the city council. We always knew there was a need for a city hall and a PD. but this was coming because of a negotiation with the fire district and wanting a swap of properties. Then when we did go out to the, we did have a public engagement session with the community about if the city took this over for a PD city hall site, would they be supportive of it? That came out to be supportive. Based on that, the council then worked with the Durango Fire Protection District to swap the properties and purchase this property.

Okay, so it wasn't like, you know, our bond rating is AA plus, and we've done X number of projects. They've all come in. And so our bond capacity is 61 million.

No. So that happened. So once we secured the properties, which we paid cash for, it was an exchange with some additional cash. If you see here in May and June of 2024, our financial advisors met with the council and study session and went over Here's the maximum amount of money you can raise with your current sales tax. Here's what you could raise if you had increased your sales tax from when the council saw that to our construction opinion. We believed that with $61 million, we could build a new PD city hall. And I think that's probably why you see with the bond language, it's flexibility with that. And that's where we're moving forward and delivering on.

And so I just know that that historic Redevelopment in historic neighborhood and adaptive reuse. I mean, they're just very hard to do. And it's very hard to. I mean, it's very hard to try to make it an old school. Was it originally the middle school, right?

It was always an old school, big picture.

Yeah, it was a middle school built in the 1960s at Arts and Science Center, which was a supplemental building to the 9R and a smaller building. Did they build it to be a school?

School function.

Oh, I see.

Oh, OK.

So rebuilding for Smiley Junior High.

I see, I see. So I mean, I just know like trying to make. A school or an office. Into like modern police facility. It's just really expensive. It's complicated, right? It's not as I mean the HVAC alone. must have been a million dollars. I mean, I can imagine how expensive it was to redo those things. So I guess, you know, that's, I can understand how these things can evolve, especially when you're trying to make things fit where they don't necessarily, they were never intended, right, to be there. I mean, it was never intended to be a city hall. It was never intended to be a police department. Like we were never Our city and cities all over the country were never designed to have so many cars. They were designed to be walkable. And that's why everything was within a mile of each other. Your church, your school, your park, your library, like everything was in a quarter mile of each other. That's how cities were designed. And then we try to fit all these cars in. So, I mean, it's a very complicated layering that I think we've had to do here. And, you know, it just doesn't always work out. And I think that's where we have to be, like, really, really primarily, like, concerned with the budget because we can't go over budget, right? We can't. We've got to make it fit into the funding that we have. So I guess, you know, I mean, I know I'm disappointed that we're not keeping that building. I know I, as much as possible, want us to do adaptive reuse. It looks like it was attempted and then just didn't work out. So, you know, I don't know. I think it's a little, it's disappointing, but yet I understand like the need to really conform and to stay true to the budget. And so I think we end up having to do what we can, you know, within the constraints of the budget and what the voters approved and what the voters expected, because that doesn't always happen. it's not always exactly the same, like what the voters envisioned and ultimately what our budget looks like. So I guess, and there was no consideration for the fact that like, I don't want to say consideration, but it seems like when you do adaptive reuse or you do historic preservation, you need to anticipate that things are going to be more expensive. Or I mean, we're just the budget's the budget. We just have to work within that.

I mean, those are the good points. I think when it looks at the big picture portion of it, it wasn't something that we were looking to do. It was as we were going through the cost estimates, the designers and the construction pointed it out to us that there's a lot of money being placed in this. You could actually build a new PD that was designed specifically for it and save money. And so when we saw that, not only just the saving money, but the efficiency of having a building designed for police operations, that's when we came back to the council and said, this was the decision we were making. So yes, there's a budget component to it, but it wasn't that we came in and said like, oh, this isn't going to happen. Let's do it another way. We saw the ability to capitalize not only on the budget, but also the efficiency of the building.

I

I understand how all this has come about. I think the idea that we ended up doing this land swap is also, they're not that simple, I guess, to do land swaps. And so now we've done a land swap and we have to make our operations conform to what's being presented here within the constraints of the budget. So I think a lot of parts about it are disappointing, but yet I think I accept you know the way it is and we have to work within that. So thank you. That's all I have.

OK, Mayor Woodruff had to step out for a second, so I'm going to go this next on the list. I had some questions and then I looked in the audience to someone I just had coffee with and wanted. I was like reminded of something I said in this meeting just a little bit ago and I wanted to like challenge Council to like. Think about why we're pushing what we're pushing, why we're asking the questions we're asking, what the goal is of this project, right? And be honest and authentic with that because I've had conversations with people on this council that specifically said that the reuse and renovation of that building was a waste of money. And now people are coming back and like tagging onto this and it feels not right. As one counselor during the 2A, I sat on council during that campaign and I sat here. I taught in that building 20 years ago. That was my first teaching job in 9R. I was 20 years old, 21 years old, my first teaching job. And I walked into that building for my first teaching job and I cried because that building is a disaster. And when I sat here and we were talking about 2A, I said, I asked, there's a meeting somewhere when we were getting, we were going through this whole thing. And I asked the, whoever was presenting, I don't remember who it was. I said, at what point do we say no, that it's not worth sticking this square peg in a round hole? At what point do our police officers deserve a good PD building? So what actually are we missing from this plan now? Is it a pathway to the Smiley building? Is it more of a community with Buckley Park? Because if that's what we're actually missing, let's push back on that. Let's push back on what we really need. Is it a lower fence? Is it And I said the same thing about the parking garage because I worked for a construction company for seven years and we built the Crossroads building which has the Alpine Bank in it and that parking garage made that project. Over double what it would have been if we didn't build parking garage and I said that and that mean the same meeting I said is this parking garage feasible? It is parking garages are crazy expensive before this meeting. I did a little research because I couldn't remember there was a formula when I was in construction. where that we use that if we were renovating a building and it was a percentage of like the and then we could do the same building new for a percentage that you should go with always new because the contingency you have to have on renovations and the stuff that can go wrong is worth and i couldn't remember the number and so i just did at the industry standard right now it says uh architects use is once renovations cost Costs approach roughly 60% of what new construction would cost. We're not even talking about that. We're talking about saving over a million dollars to build a building that is new, that isn't putting a square peg in a round hole. So is that what we're really fighting on this? Is that what everyone's fighting? Because I just have a really hard time believing that that's what people are fighting. Now, if there's something else. If it's I don't want people to park on Third Avenue and I want my I want to make sure that the parking is and like, let's fight for that. Right. Like, let's try to work for that. If it's I want the community more welcome in a civic center, city manager, like, let's build like something. Right. Like and we can't get our way. I'm not I'm not the expert on building city halls and police departments. Weird. I know that's not my background. Right. It's not any of our backgrounds. The experts are telling us that this is the way to do it. 67% of voters approved a new PD and City Hall like having this civic campus there is something that could be special and it's something people wanted. People voted for that. So now because we have someone. Fighting against it. Someone who fought against 2A. And they're fighting against it now and they're rallying some people. Now we need to, like, all of a sudden, like, be shame on you, city manager. Like, I don't think that this feels right to me. Like, this doesn't feel right at all. And it doesn't feel like people are telling the truth. And it feels like we're trying to scapegoat this out for something else. And I don't know why. Like, what is the purpose? I mean, how many hours of community engagement do you think you guys have done? I mean, I saw, what, I don't even know, 13. I wrote them down. I can't read. I don't have my readers on right now.

Just speaking for Bob and I, probably in 2026, easily 100 to 150 hours just between the two of us. That's not considering our collective team.

But we've done no community engagement, Erin. I mean, that's what I've been hearing the last couple weeks. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that people shouldn't tell me how they feel. And I'm not saying I can't sit down and have a cup of coffee with someone to try to find common ground. i'm not saying that you can disagree with me and i can still sit here and say hey doug i'm your friend you like taught my kids you were their principal the redhead is wild and i'm sorry you had to deal with him but like i can still i can disagree with you and i can say i heard you but i don't agree does that make sense and so I just think twisting things from what we actually believe to like this is so ugly and I wish we could just all. Yeah, so. I had questions, but that's what I'm going to say for now.

Councillor Cussell. Councillor Yazzie went first. Great, thank you. Councillor Yazzie.

Thank you, Mayor. OK, so I do understand The questions and concerns from both Kip and Shirley because they got elected when we had already done this work for like two years. Maybe a little bit longer on getting the. The land exchange with the. Police with the fire station over there in River City Hall, switching that so the fire Station could build a new station. That was a big thing. We sat on like $3 million for a long time. People think, well, why just spend that money? But we did it to accommodate the fire station to get a fire station. Okay. And then 9R had Buckley Park and the property here at the end of the street. You know, we also went to depth for that to get it because we had the vision from 1994 to put City Hall down at the end of Second Avenue. You know, it takes long term planning and long term vision to get these projects to the end game. We're at a point now where We're still going to go forward with this project because we've committed to debt to get this done in a certain time frame. We've got some adjustments to do on parking, which I'm sure we'll work through. I mean, it's not like we're just going to ram it through. We're just going to see what can be done to make this work out. So I do feel like, Jessica, that people are blowing this out of control. And I had spoke to somebody earlier, you know, getting this to ballot, going through all the changes with getting to land, finding out what we could do. And my major push was because the police department, they need a new police station. That's it. That place is awful. And if we have to sit here and make decisions that are very hard and take all the grief from a few people in town who just happen to be developers and real estate agents. You know that's their business. But I do thank Kip and Shirley for asking these questions because they weren't involved with all the negotiations. Go through the ballot language to see what our debt level was, what we could do to move this project forward. And I do appreciate all the input from the community members going ahead and asking questions again because long term. Looking at the project from when I first got on Council and how we could go forward, it has been a long game. And I surely intend to see this going forward and completing this project to make it a beautiful civic campus. So thank you.

Councilor Cussell, do you wanna go? I'm good. Okay. I'm going to respectfully disagree on a couple of points here. I think the issues that we're talking about are with the two changed elements. I don't think we're arguing much about the city hall building right now because we just haven't seen the plans on the city hall building very much. So they are on the two elements, the parking garage and the cascading items that come from a change from an underground parking garage to surface parking and spreading some of the parking spots across town. So I think that's a legit issue to be talking about the arts and science building. I didn't know that the Arts and Science Building was non-compulsory. I certainly voted for 2A because I understand that it's not a registered historic building, but I value the way Durango repurposed the Smiley Building and turned it into really a vibrant community asset. And I strongly supported repurposing the old high school as our new city hall. I voted to preserve the building between them because it represented an important connection to our city's past. There are arguments about each of these key elements that are getting changed, and I think those are legit. Voters didn't approve to buy anything new. They approved to get something restored, and I think that's a really important piece as well. So I guess I would also ask two things, actually. Was there any conversation about what is the tipping point that we need to go back to the community and say we've changed two-thirds, we've changed three-fifths, we've changed four-fifths of this project, and we need better agreement from the community that this is where they want the project to go? And I don't know who I'm throwing that question out to, but was there ever that kind of conversation?

I mean, I would look at that. That's a council decision. That's policy.

Okay. Lastly, I think I heard, and I just need a clarification, September 28th, we're going to see plans for the city hall and construction starts in early October.

No. No. Would I go back to that portion of it? Because I never mentioned construction. What we are looking at right now is that we have the plans being finalized and we anticipate them to be complete by the design group on September 28th. we are targeting October or December for submission to the Community Development Commission, we have to get approval for that before we can do groundbreaking to follow. So depending on which meeting that that ends up following onto would determine groundbreaking and then when construction could start.

And the Community Development Commission would just be ruling on if it applies to the Land Use Development Code and adheres to the guidance within the Land Use Development Code, correct? They've got a narrow, Correct narrow, whatever that word is looking for scope.

Yeah, and they should stick to that scope.

I do want to acknowledge I sat in on six of those community meetings with you guys and you did a great job of getting around to the various community organizations and I appreciated the ways that you guys did do that outreach. So thank you.

Council Gonzalez.

I don't know how valid this is because you know it's a different state, but in my experience. When there's a fatal flaw in a bond project like it couldn't be done for. A variety of reasons that the building was contaminated or something like that. That it didn't go back to the public for a vote. It came to the Council and the Council would then decide how to proceed. Given the language that existed, which means you need to build a city hall. with $61 million. I mean, that's how it was done in my experience. So I don't know if that applies in this case as well. If in fact there was a fatal flaw, like then, well, I don't know. There's certain language that would trigger a fatal flaw in the project as it was approved by the voters. So I don't know, Mark, is that just a different state or maybe nobody knows? Maybe this is totally different.

It's a difficult question to answer, and I'm not quite sure I understand the question. So I'm going to answer it by saying that there was a mandate from voters to renovate the historic city hall, build a new police department next to it, and not exceed $61 million of this particular bucket of money, this sales tax, in doing that. that doesn't preclude other buckets of money that can be used. I think that was mentioned in the presentation that parks and rec money can use for certain parts of it. So it's truly that simple. If they determine that there's much more asbestos than they thought there was in the historic high school building, that would change the budget. You might get less fancy furniture or a cheaper elevator or something. I don't know. And I hope I'm answering your question But I see no procedural path at this point for this project to go back to the council or back to the voters. And under Colorado law, that's just not provided for. There's a mandate from 67%. There's 33% who didn't vote for it. And I think they're being very vocal right now. And maybe some people changed their mind. But at this point. From the legal perspective, it's very, very simple. We have a voter mandate to do three specific things. The ballot language has been challenged in court. We'll get an answer from the judge about that and we'll respond accordingly or the city manager will respond accordingly.

So, and I guess, right, I mean, just even to understand, like it wouldn't go back to the voters. It's just, that's just not how it works. We have to work within our budget and then the council would ultimately decide if for some reason there was a fatal flaw and that would be probably determined by some other legal entity. So in my experience in another state.

Just real quick, you know, kind of getting back to the public engagement piece, I think we're kind of missing some of this as part of this narrative. There's been a lot of feedback from people in the community that we haven't had robust public engagement. We haven't had robust public input. And it seems like we've had a lot of robust public engagement, not only in 2026, but in 2025, 2024, all the way back to 1994 is what I'm kind of getting from the presentation. And it seems to me that there's been a lot of different and various forms of forums in which to get public input and opportunities for different types of engagement. It seems, you know, looking at this from this 30,000 foot view, looking at this holistically, Seems to me that there might be some short term memories for some folks in terms of what has actually transpired versus what the actual perception is. And so I really want to get back to, you know, Bob and Aaron, thank you for taking the lead on this. I mean, just your two parts alone, 100, 150 hours. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of hours with just two folks. You have Mark's involvement. You have Jose's involvement. You have other people within the Community Development Commission that are our appointees. You have other people that are in the Community Development Department that are also been whole wholly invested into this. And so I think when people say that we haven't had robust public engagement, I think that does a real disservice to the people that have actually put in the time that put in the legwork that are reaching out to folks and shaking their hands and being like, yeah, this is where we're at. This is where we're going to go. This is what the timeline is for now. Subject to change. We're going to try to do the best that we can. So I just want to say thank you for everybody for your part in trying to do the best that we possibly can. Is there always room for improvement? Absolutely. I think there's always something to take away and see how we can do this better. But I think that doesn't mean that we just say that we haven't done it or we've done it poorly. I think that's, again, does a disservice to the people that have actually put in the time. And I guess I would just retort back that The Smiley Building and the Arts and Sciences Building are two different things, providing two different functions in the community that provide different resources that the community, you know, I guess debatably needs versus not needs. You know, I think they also need a lot of different, you know, I guess resources to them versus what, you know, what we need out of, you know, that to make it a level four, you know, police department versus the Smiley Building, which was done to create more of a community engagement space. So I think making the connection between the two, I guess I don't really necessarily see it, but I see your point that that could potentially be seen as something that was important to the community. But, you know, again, we we are we have we were looking at renovating the historic high school. We've designated that landmark as historic, and that was within the ballot language. So In my mind, we're doing right by the voters, two to one, that we're doing what they've charged us to do. And I think that's what we're going to continue moving forward with. But that being said, any other questions for the city manager? All right, excellent. So we will go ahead and move on to agenda item number three, opening remarks by mayor and council.

Councilor Gonzalez.

Is Bryson Hernandez still in house? No, if he is, can you can you stand? I don't see so well, so I don't know. There you are. Hi Bryson. Bryson Hernandez is a Cub Scout. He is here at City Hall today because he is earning his merit badge in communications and he is 12 years old and homeschooled. So we're just so happy to have Bryson and his dad. in the house as he learns all about civic engagement and how things happen at City Hall. So you've come to a pretty exciting meeting, Bryson, so thanks for being here.

Thanks, Councillor Gonzalez. Any other opening remarks?

Alright, seeing none, we'll go and move on to four, agenda item number four, presentations and proclamations.

And the first, excuse me, presentation under item four is Local First Foundation Healthcare Performance Dashboard for La Plata County, excuse me, presented by Doug McCarthy.

Well, good evening. Thank you very much for the time to present to you, Mayor and Councilors and City Manager. I want to acknowledge that the City of Durango has been an important supporter of Local First's work that we're going to talk about, and that's made a big difference to our ability to continue this work through the years. I want to just give you a backdrop of Local First and our role in healthcare. It may not be the first thing you think about with Local First in terms of a business association and a foundation, but I would compare it to a state extension service. My dad was a farmer. Those individuals that see you here in our community are really helpful to our farmers and ranchers because they can help navigate, help intermediate what the knowledge dissemination is for being in the agricultural industry. And this is a very rough analogy, so apologies to them for that. But Local First plays a kind of similar role in the healthcare space in that we're an intermediary between health plans and providers and our employers, employees, and residents. And you might think of us as a market organizer. So what we realized five years ago is we didn't have enough competition in the healthcare market. We partnered with another nonprofit called Peak Health Alliance and brought another health plan into our community. And that's important because over the past five years, we've been able to save employers and individuals $6 million. That's a direct reduction in the cost of living that makes it expensive to live here. And so if you look at proportionally residents of Durango, that would be about $1 million for the residents of Durango. So that's a huge ROI, return on investment, for the support that we've received from the city. So why am I here talking to you about this dashboard? Part of our mission as Local First is to build an economy that meets the triple bottom line, people, planet, and prosperity. And just as the La Plata Economic Development Alliance is engaged in healthcare and housing as an economic development strategy, healthcare is huge for the cost that we face as a community and for our wellness and our ability to be healthy. We all determine the kind of healthcare system that we have. Not only do we pay taxes for Medicare and Medicaid, but we each pay a premium for our insurance that not just pays for our insurance, but it creates to collectively the system that we have. And so we want to understand, are we getting good value for that investment? And we understand that health is an individual possession, but it also is something that collectively determines our resilience and our well-being and our productivity as a community. So the dashboard is modeled on some state and national scorecards. We looked at access to care, preventive care, the cost and use of care, the outcomes of that care, the workforce that produces and delivers that care, and then the social drivers of health, which are related to healthcare. Because if you don't have a roof over your head, you don't have nutritious food, and you're stressed out about childcare, healthcare is not going to give you the benefit that you need. What's different about this dashboard is that we compare ourselves not only to the state and nation, but we compare ourselves to the best in the state and then our peers, which are rural resort communities, mountain towns on the western slope. So what's actually achievable? What are other communities doing, not just what's ideal? I'm not going to present the scorecard, the dashboard to you. We don't have time tonight, but I'll give you the highlights. Our areas of strength, and I think we can be proud of this, are childhood immunizations. We don't go to the hospital as often as many people do because we tend to be healthier, but we are also mindful about when we really need to go, and that's a testament to our good primary care doctors and preventive care. We do have proportionally more primary care and behavioral health care providers here than the state. We never have enough, but we have a shortage nationally, so we try to do what we can. We don't always have the specialists we need. We have very high-quality providers, Mercy Hospital, Animas Surgical Hospital, and Cottonwood Rehabilitation Center, all are five-star Medicare providers, which is amazing for a community our size. And then we have longer life expectancy, which is two years longer than the state average. So that's exciting. But what areas do we have to improve? We are an expensive place for health care. I think everyone who lives here knows that already. If the trends were commensurate to having less preventable health care, we'd have cheaper health care, right? But we have higher prices because it costs more here. We're not doing as well in dental care for children and cancer screenings for adults as we'd like to do. And we have disparities in care, not only racial and ethnic disparities, but geographic. Some of our census tracts in La Plata County are as good as some of the best places in Colorado and other places really lag behind. So that's something that we feel as a community we want to address holistically because that's the best way to improve everyone's health. And then we have those unmet basic needs. But the good news, if we compare ourselves to those rural resort communities, only 19% improvement would be needed to get us to that benchmark standard of care. And that's achievable and something that we would like to see happen These are the kinds of things that this would mean in terms of people's lives, that thousands of people would receive this care that they're not receiving today if we were able to collaborate as a community and figure out what we need to do to get the kind of care that those communities are delivering. We would also save a lot of money by not wasting it on the care that we don't need. And that would hit our pocketbooks where the average person $378 is very meaningful. in terms of getting us to where other communities in this state are in terms of the cost of care. Not everything is in the dashboard, but luckily the Colorado Health Institute does some surveys of our state that are telling us the same information. So if you think about that higher cost of care, what people are telling us in the survey of the five counties in Southwest Colorado is that they are not going to get care when they need it because that cost of care is too high. And all this comes down to the right-hand side of this chart, people are telling us that the healthcare system is not meeting their needs. Half of people are almost telling us that versus just a quarter before COVID. So that's really a call to action. So for all the individuals in this room, amongst yourselves as well, what can you do? You can shop for care. Obviously not when you're having a heart attack, but 40% of care is considered potentially shoppable. And I've given you an example here of a colonoscopy. And you can see the providers that provide colonoscopy in this community and in the five counties. The difference between the highest cost and the lowest cost is quite substantial. Now, sometimes you can't go to the lower cost provider because your insurance isn't taken there or they have a wait time that you can't wait for. But if you can save that money, you're saving yourself and potentially everyone in the process. What can the city of Durango do? We would love for you to join discussions with us about creating what we're calling a community-owned or community-oriented health plan. Right now, our healthcare is really determined by Blue Cross United, Cigna, and Aetna. We don't have to be at their mercy. We can create our own plan, and other communities have done this. And we would love for the city of Durango to talk with us about how you could be an anchor tenant in that effort. that would trickle down and then benefit all of our businesses to the smallest. And then finally, as a community, we could collaborate. And we have tremendous resources already on the left-hand side of the slide. You know these organizations that are already doing hard work in our community. Local First would be delighted to be a facilitator of bringing the leadership knowledge, tools, and resources together to help us to collaborate, to change the trajectory so that for the city of Durango, you can save money provide better benefits and other employers as well that then you could share that savings with employees you could provide benefits that you don't provide today child care things like that that would make a meaningful difference in the lives of our teachers and workers throughout the county so we'd love to talk to you more about that and we appreciate the time to present this to you today any questions that you have for me i'm happy to answer great thank you um shirley

Oh, I'm sorry. Councilor Gonzalez, I apologize.

For the presentation, did you say that Durango residents live an average of two years longer than the state?

La Plata County residents.

La Plata County. That's amazing. Do you know why?

I think it's a host of factors. You know, we are healthy here. That's what draws people to this part of the state. We ski. Our health care is different than other places. We have a lot of orthopedic injuries, and we have great care to help us recover from those.

Well, does that make us a blue zone?

You know, a blue zone, so for those who don't know, are places in the world that are the healthiest. We're not a blue zone yet, but there are places in Colorado that are already. Boulder, I think. And their life expectancy is kind of off the charts. So that's something that we would love to talk about.

Well, I think that's amazing. That's definitely something we should put on something somewhere because I just think that's incredible. And I almost feel like it's a little bit in contradiction of what you're presenting that healthcare is so expensive. I would think that because it was expensive and it's not so accessible and we're a rural community, that we actually, they would see the opposite.

It would be cheaper. And that's what we got our work started. We were just a question mark. Why do we have some of the most expensive premiums in the country and we're among the healthiest in the country? And it's because we pay higher prices. And there are some legitimate reasons why we pay higher prices, but there are some also unknown and questionable reasons that we need to push back on.

Oh, well, I'm just fascinated by that. So thank you. Thank you for the presentation.

Chancellor Cusum.

Thank you. Doug, really appreciate all the decades almost of effort that you've put into this. I think in large part, the $6 million in savings comes from 90% of the work that you've been doing with this. So really appreciate that. A couple of questions for you. Anyone tracking the procedures? that now need to be done outside the city. Anecdotally, what we're hearing an awful lot of is that common spirit, the other providers within the area can no longer handle many of the procedures that they used to. And I just don't see anybody kind of tracking that. Do you know if there's anything like that out there?

Yes, we have looked at that and we'd love to do it again. We did it right after COVID and What we found is that the percentage of inpatient hospital care when you're in the hospital overnight, the minority of that care is in our community. And it's a mixed story because the biggest out-of-area source of care is Children's Hospital. And we're glad children can go to Children's Hospital with the derailers supporting them to get there. But on the other hand, there's probably things that we could do in our community that we I think some of the specialists who are retired now have told us have been done in the past and we'd like to see that kind of capability return.

Okay. And then are there actionable items from the dashboard and the conversations that we have that might be incorporated into the city's comprehensive plan and or even budget negotiations for 2027?

I think 2028 would be a great year to think about if we can pull off this idea of creating a community-owned health plan. We would love to see how that could benefit the city.

Well, I've bookmarked the dashboard. Thank you very much for creating it, and I appreciate the presentation today.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Doug.

And, Mayor, there was an additional item that came in after the agenda was published. It was a proclamation for Constitution Week, and because the timing is appropriate, you're more than welcome to present it.

All right, we have a proclamation for Constitution Week, whereas September 17th, 2026 marks the 239th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention. And whereas it is fitting and proper to officially recognize this magnificent document and the anniversary of its creation. And whereas it is fitting and proper to officially recognize the patriotic celebration, which will commemorate the occasion. And whereas Public Law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America, designated September 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week. Now, therefore, I, Dave Woodruff, Mayor of the City of Durango, do proclaim September 17th through the 23rd, 2026, as Constitution Week. And ask our citizens to reaffirm the ideals that the framers of the Constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this guardian of our liberties, and remembering that lost rights may never be regained. And unfortunately, Mrs. McCoy will not be here to accept the proclamation, but we just want to make sure we did that anyway. So thank you, Ben, for bringing this to our attention. Thank you. And we'll make sure to get it to Ms. McCoy.

Excellent. Thank you. All right.

We will now go on to agenda item number five.

City Manager updates. And the first City Manager update is 5.1, which is the 2027 through 2029 Proposition 123 filing commitment.

Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. I'm going to just give a quick update on the City's Proposition 123 commitment for the upcoming 2027-2029 cycle. My name is Cody Minnick. I'm the Housing Programs and Operations Administrator with the City's Prosperity Office. As you remember, last time I was up here, I announced that we completed our compliance requirements for the current 2023-2026 cycle. Because we fulfilled that commitment, the city was eligible to file a new one for the upcoming three-year cycle. I'm going to quickly walk through what our new commitment looks like, some of the changes to Prop 123 rules, and how our current housing pipeline will help us fulfill that commitment. Filing this commitment addresses the city's strategic plan goal of innovative housing and economic development. The biggest change for this next cycle is how our commitment is actually calculated. For the first cycle and the current cycle rather, the requirement was a 3% annual increase in affordable housing units over the baseline. Going forward, our new commitment is going to be based on the average number of new housing permits issued over the previous three years. So for the city of Durango, we issued an average of 220 residential building permits a year between 2023 and 2025. We multiply that by a factor that's based on the county job growth compared to the statewide average. The La Plata County's job growth is close to the statewide median. So we applied the middle of the road 15% factor. And then of course we multiply that by the number of years in the commitment. So 220 times 15% times three. So our new filing commitment is 99 affordable units over the next three years in order to remain eligible for Prop 123 funding. While that's a significant reduction from our current 184 unit count commitments, There's some changes to what actually counts, so it's actually going to be make it just as challenging to achieve. The biggest change is that all units will need to have a formal affordability restriction in place, so either deed restriction, a land use restriction agreement, or some type of covenant that runs with the unit or the land. In the current cycle, we were able to count naturally occurring affordable housing, so we were able to provide leases that showed affordable rates and programs like Homes funds down payment assistance program will no longer apply because those don't have lasting affordability requirements. For preservation projects, an affordability restriction either needs to be put in place or has to be extended for at least 15 years. And another final change is that qualifying homeownership units can now serve households up to 120% AMI or area median income compared to 100% under the current cycle. So that gives us a little bit of flexibility. There are also going to be some incentives built into the new methodology that can increase the amount that a qualifying unit counts toward that commitment. Every qualifying affordable housing unit starts as one unit toward the commitment. Then if the unit meets certain additional criteria, bonus amounts are added to that unit and those bonuses can stack. So for example, the River Gate Workforce Housing Project, the city's donating the land and the project's deed restricted home ownership units. So all of the units sold at or below 120% AMI will count as 1.3 units. So that'll be going a long way in helping us achieve that goal. When we look at our current development pipeline, we have a number of projects that could and will contribute toward this commitment. The biggest example is the Rivergate Workforce Housing Project, which is currently planned for approximately 50 deed-restricted townhomes. We have the Lightner Creek Commons Public-Private Partnership, which will deliver 29 townhomes under the community land trust model. Vero Ridge Project out in Three Springs, they have a fair share inclusionary zoning agreement and will deliver at least 18 deed-restricted homes. Miramonte Phase 2. That's going to be the second phase of a low income housing tax credit project in Three Springs, which is going to bring approximately 40 low income rentals for seniors. Durango Crossings 169 mixed tenured units, apartment rentals as well as townhome and condo ownership units. And then finally our public private partnership on North Main with the state. I didn't assign a number there because it's pretty early days, so we don't know what the project or unit mix is going to look like quite yet. Ultimately, this commitment is just one tool that helps us advance the city's vision and broader housing goals. Prop 123 provides access to state funding, but it also gives us a framework for continuing to add permanently affordable and income restricted housing in the community. Our goal over the next three years is to provide not just to meet the 99 unit number, but to continue building the pipeline and using state resources available to us to advance our broader housing goals and address the housing needs identified in the La Plata County Housing Needs Assessment. With that, I'll stand for any questions.

Could you go back to the list of projects? Yes, sir. Yep. There you go. So yesterday in the URA meeting, we learned that the Rivergate workforce housing piece was stalled and that the 50 townhomes, we were having a hard time, even though we were giving the land, the owners of the land, we were still having a hard time with that townhome. So do you have any feedback on how much risk these other projects are that we're not even necessarily owning the land below?

I will say the language about it being stalled was a bit of a mischaracterization. Ultimately, the URA and the TIP agreement would just help maximize affordability. It was never stalled. There's always going to be a gap when you have these affordable housing developments, and the TIP would just help make sure that maximizing affordability, but it's still on track and was never stalled.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification. I was very worried about the rest of the project.

Yeah, I was a little shocked myself.

Councilor Yazzie.

Well, thank you. It was a good report. Okay, so just to be clear, the 99 units Prop 3, that's 33 each year.

Yeah, and as you can see, we're well positioned to beat that and go well beyond.

Well, thank you, because it was kind of a worry this past cycle. getting to the number. But you did. I didn't need to worry.

Yeah, of course. Councilor Gonzalez?

So I guess just to clarify, condos count? Condo ownership counts?

Yeah, absolutely.

Because I feel like I've seen places where maybe condos, for all the reasons that condos can be complicated.

Yeah, there's the condo defect law, so you don't see a lot of condos being built, but they do count towards there. filing commitment.

And they are part of this affordable commitment?

Yeah, Durango Crossings is planning on some condo ownership units.

Okay, great. That's good to hear. Thank you.

Just real quick, I just want to say that a lot of times we look at these projects individually and we see them at different parts and different places in their timelines. And so it's good to see all of these kind of on one page that really lists, I mean, if you look at this and if everything goes to to plan. I mean, we have over 300 units just in, in what we have here, not including what we have, you know, upcoming. So it's really cool to see kind of when we've looked at these individually to now see them in, in one kind of complete list. It just, it just, it just makes everything just click in terms of, why we've really put a focus on this and having the right team in place to really execute all these things. So really hopeful and just excited that we've got so many projects in the works to really figure out how to best address this. And Prop 120 definitely falls into this. And it's good to have just a whole mix of different solutions to figure out how to solve this problem. So thank you so much for all your work and the team's work and really providing an opportunity to to really put some. Put something of substance on the board. So thank you.

Yeah, thanks Mary.

Anybody else? Alright, excellent. Thanks Cody.

The next item under city manager updates is the organic waste management study update.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Marty Poole, sustainability manager, Giving you an update here on the remaining steps in the steps organic management study. So this falls under organizational stewardship, specifically environmental sustainability, and this is just laying out the remaining process that you will have before you in the coming month or months. So as a quick reminder, there has already been a study session on this, The STEPS program stands for the Strategic Technical Expertise for the Public Sector, and it is a program under Colorado Circular Communities, C3, which is a statewide program that provides financial and technical assistance to enhance circularity. So circularity is the word that's it's basically reduce, reuse, recycle compost, right? How can we keep material in our economies, in our societies, rather than just consume and dispose. So, following the resolution that was passed last year, the City of Durango staff applied for and were awarded a technical assistance grant for no-cost consultation. Resource Recycling Systems and EcoCycle are our assigned consultants. that it's actually they are technically contracted by circular Colorado circular communities and then assigned to us for this project so just a quick reminder for anyone that is just learning about this process now the city has helped grow the composting through a previous partnership with table to farm compost. Really it was table to farms hard work on that and the city just supported it in the ways that we could. But in previous presentations have seen that really that model both contractually is coming to an end, but also there's some indication that an opt in model like that would be plateauing in terms of engagement and how much organic waste is being managed in our community. So Council last year directed the city manager and staff to research different organic waste management ordinances. So we applied for the STEP program, were awarded, and have been engaged in the community engagement and research process for approximately the last year. So the final steps, we're really at the end of this. So at the October 6th study session, that full report, including the research on the recommended ordinances and how those could potentially look, will be presented at the study session for that discussion. And then at the October 20th regular meeting, a recommendation for how to direct the city manager to proceed will go before you. And so that just to really emphasize that vote is necessary for the city manager and associated staff to really understand what we should be looking at in terms of moving forward. Previous discussions have really asked for some nitty gritty detail. And the answer is we just don't have the resources or capacity to explore all of those complexities. And so we need to understand as staff and as the city manager, in the administration, what direction is council interested in us pursuing based on the findings of this research? So a quick review. These are the policy options. Again, these will be covered in more detail at the study session on October 6th. But there is a requirement for residential organics collection services, a requirement for commercial organics collection services. Those would be akin to our recycling requirement in town, particularly the residential one. Organic diversion requirement, which is agnostic to service type. It's just saying you are not allowed to throw organic stuff in the trash anymore. That would be analogous to the statewide ban on electronics going in the trash. And then there's various operational improvements that could be considered. And of course, the status quo is always an option. And then there are more specific kind of smaller scale, but I call them, you know, maybe easy win options. type operational improvements that could be considered as well at more of an administrative and less of a policy level. So those will be coming before you in the coming weeks. Any questions?

Thank you, Marty. I've got some questions just on what the content and things that might be addressed within the next presentation on October 6th.

Sure.

fire a couple of things at you and you can just tell me if that's planned to be included or not.

Lightning around, yes, no? I'll try.

Yeah, sure. Let's go for it. The potential for organic composting to decrease food attraction issues for bears?

That is touched on lightly in the investigation or in the research, although it's not a CPW research to that degree. Okay.

Strengthening the city's existing sustainability goals and greenhouse gas emission goals in accordance with the 2021 resolution?

There would not be a full GHG accounting, although there is definitely a review on what the most impactful organic waste policy options would be, and then you could extrapolate what would be the most impact on organics management, but there's not going to be a greenhouse gas inventory associated with this research.

OK, so we'd still be able to draw our conclusion on what's what's going to be the biggest impact on those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could come to that conclusion. Yeah, OK. Wildfire mitigation disposal helps with our national natural systems and ecology goals.

Um, wildfire. I mean that you're starting to get into sort of the operational level, I would say. that something like that is probably not within the scope of this because, well, if a resident is doing their own landscape management, as part of wildfire mitigation, wants to dispose of that through a potential new program, potentially, yeah, but I would say that that is not particularly addressed in the upcoming report.

So mitigation crews that are pulling trees and brush out and how that combines with organic waste to, to provide the carbon, all of that will not necessarily be discussed.

Not necessarily. I would put that under, if you look under these additional, say, policy options, because really these are administrative directives almost, that could be something that's considered, you know, directing, say, our parks and arborists and lands crew to dispose of organics in a certain way rather than a, you know, citywide ordinance that any, you know, fire mitigation efforts have to be disposed of in a certain way or that there is a particular service to provide that. That's not really a cost.

OK, thank you. Last one, creating a healthy soil amendment. So we've got improved water holding in the soil.

Again, I mean, there's not that is a well-known benefit of using compost, both in an agricultural and landscaping setting. There's no analysis on in terms of the, you know, water retention impact of a potential Organic compost use.

Yeah, OK, and I've got one last one. It may not be specific to you. The agreement that we had with table to farm contract expired in August. If I believe that's correct. And can you tell me the just the 30,000 foot view? What was that contract doing?

Sure, so 30,000 foot view that contract. That contract was I don't know why this is so low. It's bothering me.

I apologize.

That contract was allowing So prior to that agreement, Table to Farm existed. They were a much smaller organization than they are now. And if someone came to the City of Durango staff or our trash and recycle staff and said, hey, where can I take compost? You know, we can mention a few places, but there can't be a true like promotion of one particular company, right? We can't have that favoritism. in order to have a partnership where the city is directing citizens and businesses to a particular service as a primary option, we have to put that out to RFP to see what options exist in the community and what their business model is, what their pricing model is, and why we would direct people to one service over another. Table to Farm was awarded that RFP or that contract through that RFP process. And that's what we've been engaged with over the past five years is really helping promote their services and study what it takes and the evolution of organics management services in our community thus far.

If Council wanted to, could we extend that contract on a month-to-month basis until we come up with whatever next steps that we want to do? Or does that need to go back out to an RFP and it's the whole kit and caboodle again?

I have to apologize. I wasn't paying 100% attention.

No, that's fine.

Generally, Council doesn't have the authority to extend contracts as an administrative function. So you could direct the city manager to put a contract in place. Does that answer your question?

It sort of does. Do you feel like we could go to a month-to-month?

I think that would be kind of with Mark and just a little bit of a reminder. I just need a clarification because it was table-to-farm and there wasn't an extension portion specifically listed on that contract. So I don't know if we could just pick one vendor and go with that or if we decided to go down that road, would we have to take it out to bid and see if there'd be anybody interested in it?

I would suggest that if the intent is to keep a composting service in place that you pass a resolution establishing a direction to the city manager to provide composting services in the city and then he will step into the administrative role and do an RFP or he may extend.

If I may, Councillor, one of the reasons among the top reason being there's just really no explicit language in the contract that allows for an extension. But it was also my opinion that there will be so many decisions before you in the coming months that to have an existing contract in place actually could muddy the waters. Because if you started to direct us down a path that was in conflict with that existing contract, then we would have to maybe go on the terms to rescind the contract or something like that. I don't know if I'm using the terminology correct. Given the fact that Table to Farm is already a well-established service in our community, there was no financial support that that contract that we are now no longer providing. We're never providing any financial support. We're providing some promotional support, but I would imagine composting is getting about as much awareness through this process as anything recently. So yeah, I do recognize that expiring is... Now we're in a place where we're now past where we've been for the past five years, but really the direction from council in the next two to three months will be much more informative about what the future state of that contract or any contract could be or any policy. So I would just fair point. Thank you. Appreciate it.

I just I was typing and I missed something and so I wanted to clarify. We've been in a contract that with them for five years.

Yes, since August of 2021.

No financial support.

The only no direct financial support There has been promotion that we have paid for so for instance if there's a utility bill insert There's been times that I've paid for that paid for some mailers to encourage people to take part in a study There's been support with grant applications So significant amount of staff time the other there has been a financial awards to Table to Farm that I can understand could be confusing from an outside perspective, but they've all been involved in just through other processes. So Table to Farm through a separate RFP was awarded the leaf collection contract. Table to Farm in partnership with other organizations has also applied for the Durango Impact and Resiliency Grant, which they are allowed to do. And those applications are always outside the scope of their current contract with the city. I'm trying to think if there's any others. So there have been financial transactions. Oh, the city hired Table to Farm on a one-off basis to provide composting to our city employee event. Yeah, because we want to be supportive. So there's things like that. But in terms of the scope of this contract, there were no financial obligations under the scope of that partnership.

When we get these recommendations, will we see financial costs with them?

That's really hard. I can give some 30,000-foot view costs. We'll give some estimates in terms of relative scale of costs, but we couldn't perform a full financial analysis on the dozen policies that are being presented before you. That just wouldn't be a reasonable use of time because some of them are mutually exclusive. So we can't go down a certain path of that level of detail of analysis until we know that council wants us to go down that path. If that makes sense.

Yeah. But when it comes back two weeks later, you'll have whatever we're leaning towards and you're going to recommend, you'll have a financial analysis of?

It would take longer than two weeks.

That's what I was like.

Right, and I know exactly if I I would say at this point we're getting into the level of discussion that we really should be having at the 45 minutes of study session that we will be having.

No, that's great and I was more for me just to be ready because it is hard for as a counselor to make a decision without knowing costs.

Yeah, so kind of what we're looking to do because it's so big and there's so many different options. When we're looking at direction on which one do you want to proceed, it might be even more appropriate which ones don't you want us to look at.

Okay.

Just so that we're not wasting staff time on policies that you're like, we don't want option six, seven, or eight. We're actually interested in one, two, and three. That direction then staff will go follow those one, two, three, get them the financial impacts and then be able to come back. So it's really just being efficient with our time to ensure that what we're working on is what the council has an interest in.

But also some numbers on how much did those mailers cost? I'm nervous about the cost, obviously. That's where my nervousness comes in. And so if there's ways, like if council's not leaning towards supporting something, if there's ways we can support it. Does that make sense what I'm trying to say? Not really. I'm rambling. Sorry.

Yeah. I guess what I'm hearing is cost... an important factor in this decision we can certainly before any type of action comes before you there will there will be estimates on cost now would it be you know someone's bill will it be exactly you know X dollars and X cents no we can't be down to that level of granularity but based on looking at other communities based on you know our own services the history of table of the farms costs we can make some reasonable ballpark estimates we can also do some analysis on the tipping fees uh offset for instance using some back of the napkin calculations so there won't be no financials there just won't be like every single resident will have this cost or something so thank you yes just real quick marty um we didn't get this um short little presentation in our agenda packet would you mind to us would that be okay

That this did just these slides didn't make it. Oh, I apologize. Yeah, sustainability. So I'd like to be able to like reference this and. Oh sure, I are and how they can continue to advocate. You know that sort of thing.

Yeah, I I apologize. That must have been no worries.

I would just like to make sure that I just given them accurate information, whatever, whatever we said to put out.

Yeah, yeah, and you will receive that full report as part of the study session packet, so I believe that would be the 24th and then the. Session is on the 6th.

Perfect.

Thanks so much, Marty. Thank you all. Appreciate it.

All right. Moving on to agenda item number six, committee board and liaison reports. Councilor Coso.

Yeah, council had a very good meeting with the fire and police pensioners to try and figure out a mutually beneficial method to do annual COLA increases. And I'll be bringing that up under new business later on today. An excellent Economic Alliance Summit. I can't remember who did or didn't go to that, but fantastic at the SkyU Casino, looking at the broad economic trends. I did want to wish happy birthdays to Steamworks and Ska at 30 and 31 years old. I thought that was pretty neat, as well as the First Friday Downtown Art Walk. If you have not participated in that, please do. It's a great way to see a lot of art with a lot of people downtown. Thank you.

Councilor.

It was my birthday too. I'm 45 30. Is anyone cared? Just kidding. I had the alliance board meeting. The biggest thing is we were presented the animus Air Park La Posta strategic plan, which is super interesting. They're thinking that the activation of that whole area is going to be about 28 and a half million dollars. but it should generate around 97 million in 30 years. The county and the tribe are the lion's share of the vacant land, and so that's those are where the sticking points are going to be at the moment. Trying to get past that so. We also the Alliance received a $500,000 grant from the Colorado Health Foundation, and so we're going to continue project run, which is a great workforce development tool that we have for local workforce. And then we talked about getting ready for the summit, which was a success. So there you go.

Councilor Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor. So I just wanted to thank everybody who came to my office hours at the library last week. I always enjoy seeing you all. And so I'll see you all next time around. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor Yazzie.

Thank you, Mayor. OK, so last Thursday I went to. Fort Lewis College for the springboard mentors meeting, so I'm going to be a mentor to some one particular student up there, along with about maybe 20 other mentors, making sure that we give leadership training and introduce. The. college students to life after college. So I think it's really critically important that the city is involved with that. And I felt really good because of course I'm alumni from Fort Lewis College also, along with Jessica. So I look forward to that. It's going to be a good learning experience because I'll bring the mentees over here to visit City Hall and explain to them about how our civic process works. So that was very thrilling for me. Thank you.

Just really quickly, I had a wildfire watershed protection fund meeting. We spoke a lot about advocacy and outreach as we're getting past this proof of concept stage with the organization, looking at how do we reach more people, let them know about what all we're doing and how to access resources. We're going to potentially design a landing page for the agency that highlights our mission and vision, grant opportunities and where we have been doing work, where we will be currently doing work, and then where we plan on doing work. So It's it's hopefully going to be able to be able to reach a lot of people to talk about again what we're doing with wildfire mitigation and and how we're addressing. These things as we move forward. That's all I really had. Cancel already have another one.

Yeah, I have office hours tomorrow at noon at the library. So if you want to come and chat noon tomorrow at the library.

Great, thanks so much. Now we will move on to Janetta number seven public comment on items under consideration of adoption.

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.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and begin public comment. The first item signed up for was 8.2.2, which is Ordinance 2026-42, authorizing the City of Durango to execute a lease with Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center, Inc., DBA Access Health System. And the individual signed up for that one is Dick White.

My name is.

My name is Dick White. I reside at 575 East 8th Street. I served on the City Council from 2011 to 2019, including two terms as mayor. As the clerk reported, I'm speaking on item 78.2.2. I'm one of the 15 former mayors who published an op-ed in the Durango Herald supporting Proposition 2A, the referendum to renew the 2005 half-cent sales tax, and authorized the bond issue to fund the City Hall Police Department project. Our support rested on acknowledgement that the proposed capital project would solve two long-standing major facility needs without raising taxes. I've never opposed this project. However, major changes proposed from the plan publicized in 2025 has raised serious questions about the project, even stimulating a lawsuit that sought to pause demolition of the Big Picture High School building. Its dismissal at the initial court hearing rested on the grounds of timing, not a legal question of interpretation of language of Proposition 2A. That remains unresolved. Item 8.2.2 would finalize an ordinance authorizing the city manager to secure a lease to house the Community Development Department on the assumption demolition of the big picture high school building will proceed as the city currently projects. This commitment would occur even before the current master site plan for the project has been received approval by the Community Development Commission. Let me note that item 8.5, which relates to a different issue, suggests a dedicated public meeting to air community concerns about it. That proposal suggests that the Council likewise schedule an analogous meeting to listen to public input before committing to a new and controversial plan for the biggest capital project in Durango's nearly 150-year history. I stress that such a meeting must allow ample time for residents to express their concerns, not the mere 10-minute opportunity that was provided at the inadequate public engagement that previously initially presented the project revisions. I urge the council and staff to take a time out and listen further to citizens' concerns and even to consider alternative approaches, especially needed to stay within budget constraints. Failure to do so might further re-road public trust in the city government, although tonight's discussion has been a big step forward. I trust that you, our representatives, owe it to us. I believe that you owe it to us, your constituents, to pause and listen mindfully to deep community concerns. I acknowledge that time is money, but you must take time to do it right because you won't have time to do it over. I ask you to table item 2.2, 8.2.2 until the other issues are resolved.

Thank you. There's a big group of people who have signed up for item 8.5.1, which is the request for a public hearing to request a dedicated citywide public meeting for all Durango residents regarding 2019 East 3rd Avenue prior to council directing staff to prepare a request for qualifications. The first person in person here is Acadia LaQuire.

All right.

We can move on to the next person here in person for this same item, which is going to be Bill Lemaire.

Yeah, Bill DeBeere, a resident of Durango on East 2nd Avenue. I'm here to talk about agenda item 8.5. And I want to thank you. I want to endorse the call for a public hearing dedicated to the future of what we call Tract F, a city-owned parcel in Durango. And the site, for those who do not know what Tract F is, that's the site of the former Head Start school. Many of us who are urging this are hoping that this topic will begin to build more of a community consensus around this track about what will happen to it, how it will be utilized. We think it'll bring in more input and thus build more agreement. And we think that when we're dealing with such an important city-owned property, it's really important that the city have broad consensus across the community. I just think it makes the project much more successful when we have that. One thing I'm hoping that will come out of this public hearing if it goes forward is that we would elicit a greater range of ideas on what to do with that property because I was involved to some degree in the RFQ proposal for track C, which is where the new Head Start school is. And if I'm not mistaken, there are only two significant proposals for that property. And again, this is right in the center of Durango and worth millions of dollars. It just seems like there wasn't enough dissemination of information out in the public about what could be done there that it was in place, so to speak. So I think it would be helpful. This public hearing would bring in new ideas that we haven't even thought about. that we can begin to consider to use that property and make it more broadly useful for the city. So yeah, I think that we can do a public hearing that is collegial, collaborative, and really produce a great positive outcome for that property, and one that would have really strong community support. So I urge you to consider that, and if it comes up for a vote, to vote for that dedicated public hearing. Thank you.

Thank you. And the next person I have to ask, Emmy Finley, were you wanting to speak on 8.5.1 or 11.1? Okay.

You're more than welcome to come up. Thank you.

And I guess I'll say you have three minutes to speak on however many items you would like.

I can just go crazy, huh? Okay.

As long as they're on the agenda to vote.

I wanted to talk about that. All right. Well, good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Mary Ellen Finley. Most people know me as Emmy, and I am a resident of Durango, and I am here, as we know, to speak about, among other things, the 8.51. Before I do anything else, I did want to say many, many thanks to Mike French, Brian Devine, and Cody Minich, that they had a wonderful neighborhood meeting on the proposals and the feasibility studies for this tract of land back in May. I think they did an excellent job of listening and encapsulating the neighborhood concerns. But I do tonight want to emphasize the critical need for a true structured public, greater public engagement process. A checkbox is not a process. A tally of generalized emails is not a process. A genuine public hearing where site-specific context is evaluated is a process. General comments about citywide needs are valuable and important, but broad input collected without spatial or planning context cannot replace a focused dialogue on what belongs on this specific parcel. Tract F is not a standard interchangeable lot. It is a uniquely situated civic asset embedded directly within an established civic, educational, and childcare ribbon alongside our public library, the jewel of our town, recreation trails, and public gardens. Sound municipal planning requires us to match a land's unique setting with the community's full spectrum of needs. Childcare is priority. Housing is priority. Eldercare is priority. Preserving open space is a priority. Match the land to the need. Good governance also relies on long-term institutional memory and honoring past commitments. Since the 1990s, this site has served our community as a childcare facility. That history is foundational to how the neighborhood developed alongside civic growth. Re-evaluating public land use requires respecting 30 years of established community use, not dismissing it as a secondary concern. Public input should never feel performative. When residents take the time to engage, show up, and study the details, it is with the expectation that their input will meaningfully shape the vision for public land. A general email saying we need X, Y, or Z ignores traffic, it ignores access, it ignores environmental impact, it ignores history, it ignores the unique setting of the land. I urge the council tonight to commit to a transparent, comprehensive, fully public process, one that honors past commitments, recognizes the unique civic setting of track death, and balances all of Durango's long-term needs. Thank you so much, council, for your time and your leadership and for listening to me. And I'm only going to speak about one thing tonight. Take care.

And the next individual signed up for 8.5.1 is Jim, excuse me, Jim Hington.

Jim, maybe not here. All right. Next individual is Karen Bukoli-Anissi.

It's Berkeley, here in Brooklyn, DC.

I don't live in that neighborhood, but I do live in a neighborhood that has had a lot of infill development and adaptive reuse and land developments. And I'm going to tell you a story. It was an ugly process, but it had a great outcome. So if you can bear with me, because it ended up pretty well. There was a project that was proposed in my neighborhood and was... a project that strongly reflected the city's strategic plan and vision of the developer. And this was a couple decades ago, and it was hastily advanced because everybody thought it was absolutely the vision of the entire community, would benefit everyone. And it was heralded as being in the perfect location, convenient in the center of the city, and easily accessible. But my neighbors, my neighborhood opposed it. And they opposed it because there were a lot of wrinkles in it and there were a lot of pounding of square pegs and round holes. And there were a lot of questions about traffic flow and parking adequate space and. You know there was this big outcry, but an amazing thing happened in the 11th hour because someone on the City Council. Had the foresight to say that the neighborhood has a different vision for this parcel. And maybe their vision is worth considering. And maybe these NIMBY neighbors most directly impacted really have something worthwhile because they were going to be living with the consequences of a project on this parcel. And it was at that 11th hour and that city council, they took into consideration that maybe there was a better place for the crown jewel of Durango. And that crown jewel, of course, is the public library. and it was being proposed to be placed on the Mason property. And because somebody said there might be some merit to actually talking to the stakeholders most immediately impacted, that they went and they had a long vision. So in the process, we saved two parcels. We saved Mason Park, and it's been wonderful. And we now have a great public library that is, it really, It speaks to what happens when you have collaboration between the people impacted and the project. So I am strongly in favor. And I would ask that rather than excluding residents or neutralizing them eventually, or eventually forcing them into accepting something that is not their vision, you'll be the council that brings them in early in the process. Early in the process, not to react, but to say what works for you, because what works for them, they will work with you. They will collaborate with you. And before you put out an RFQ, it's the time to do the smart thing and the right thing. Thank you.

And the next individual signed up to speak for 8.5.1 is Martha Evers.

I want to say thank you to the city counselors and thank you to their city manager Madrigal. I had a whole speech planned and then before when our neighborhood was outside, Cody came and told me that that you were going to be having a public wide meeting. And I just want to say thank you if that's true. We really appreciate that. We were told in advance and we feel it's necessary and we would appreciate it being in writing on Engage Durango or tomorrow. And I just want to say we really appreciate it. And hopefully that is true. And I'm hoping that it wasn't like some, because all our neighbors kind of left at that point, not all, but a lot of them left at that point because we felt like we had a win. And, you know, I'm dropping the speech that I had made because we felt like we had a win. We hope that we aren't being neutralized with some city employee telling us that. So, OK, looks like we're not. And thank you. I appreciate that really deeply. And the other thing that I want to say is just that we do expect transparency. And the first round with our neighborhood was anything but. And so we have now gotten very savvy, our neighborhood and other neighborhoods, basically because our voice was kind of taken away with reducing or getting rid of most of the boards and commissions. And so we're coming back in a different way, but appreciate to, Shirley Gonzalez that came to our meeting, and we appreciate Kip Koso that supports neighbors. And Yazzie, we really, Gilda, we felt your support initially, and we hope we continue to have it. And thank you very much.

The next individual to sign up to speak for 8.5.1 is Mary Kay Stewart.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Mary Kay Stewart. I am a fourth generation resident of this community and of the neighborhood. In many ways, I am one of the de facto neighborhood historians. I'm here tonight to speak about ProcDef. This gem is more than a piece of land. It is part of our community. and it is very historical in the neighborhood, and it represents an opportunity to make a thoughtful decision about our future. As someone whose family has deep roots here, I understand the importance of preserving the stories, places, and public assets that have shaped this neighborhood. The future of Tract F deserves careful consideration and meaningful public discussion. I respectfully ask the Council to consider not only the property's financial value, its location, but also what its value is to the community as a whole. We should ask what use will best serve residents, families, children, and the long-term needs of the area. Track depth has been vacant for only one month. This is not a long period of time and it does not require us to rush into a decision. We have an important example in track C, the new new head start track. That track was vacant for 20 years. We have some time. That history reminds us that we have time to carefully the possibilities of TRACF and determine the use that will best serve our community and neighborhood. Before any final decision is made, the public deserves clear information about the property's condition, ownership, intended use costs, and potential impact on the surrounding neighborhood. I am not asking the council to reject progress. I am asking you to make sure that progress is defined by public benefit, transparency and responsible planning. The decision before you will shape how the community views its public assets and how future generations understand the history of this neighborhood. Thank you for your time and especially for your service to our community.

And the next individual signed up for 8.5.1 is Robert Dawes.

In person, is Robert Dawes here?

All right. We can move on to Seth Fertney for 8.5.1. Hello, Council.

I'm a strong advocate for public land and basically strongly believe that keeping public lands public is fundamental and essential to the quality of life that we've all come to know and appreciate. I've been a little anxious that in the comp plan that is being updated right now for the Archuleta County, it's planning for a 3% growth year over year for the next 25 years, doubling the population of this town and doubling the population of this county by 2050. And I think. That fact doubling population is something people don't see when you read 3% over a year over a year that feels painless, but by 1000 cuts doubling is a whole different scenario, and that's comfortably in our in our lifetimes. What I would argue or what I would ask is that Council measures our quality of life as attentively as it does our projections of growth. Love our parks, open space and trails. Are we going to double our parks, double our open space, double our trails, double our other amenities to keep up with the population growth? No, we can't. Those resources are constrained, so be careful for just growing to the point where it's a death by 1000 cuts that we no longer have the place we've come to know and enjoy and appreciate and love. I really believe that what gets measured does get done, so I would ask you to those quality of life aspects that many of us intuitively appreciate, but we may not realize. Are we going to maintain the number of acres of open space per resident or 1,000 residents, the parks per resident, the trails miles per resident, something that says this is what we love. So let's protect that. Let's not overrun it to the point where it gets uncomfortable and overrun to the point where it's no longer that which we moved here for. I just counsel you not to allow us to die by 1,000 cuts without being aware that the 1,000 cuts adds up. Thank you very much, counsel.

And the last individual signed up to speak for 8.5.1, who's online, is Bethiah Crane.

That's how you should be able to unmute at this time.

If you need to control shift M or command shift M will help unmute your mic.

That work we can hear you perfect.

Thank you. My name is so I'm getting an echo here. Not sure why, but I'll keep talking. My name is Bethiah Crane. I have been a resident of the area for 46 years and have been a business owner. In the city of Durango for that time period. I've lived in the city for the last several years. I appreciate. Being given the opportunity to speak here. I am addressing my comments to track F the 2019 East 3rd Ave. I believe there not only should be a public meeting, but the public meeting should be as robust at least as those that were held concerning the Niner facility. I've been fascinated by listening to the discussion about the nine-hour experience with the old high school. I believe our public meetings concerning this tract should be extremely well-advertised. Individual invitations sent to persons involved in various facilities and endeavors in our city, such as open space, parks and gardens, childcare facilities, senior housing, use by nonprofit as a nonprofit organization center, educational entities, and true workforce housing. I believe the meetings need to have more depth than what we've seen in the past, which have been often limited to please fill out some stickies and stick the notes up. And in our past, our meetings have been engineered so that we have not been given the opportunity for all participants to hear everything presented. We were required to break into small groups and we missed everything that was said in the other groups. We should have more than one meeting We should have multiple meetings to allow time for true discussion and thoughtfulness and considerations and substance. I appreciate what I believe is your vote to hold public meeting, and I hope you will make it plural. and make an effort to really engage the community by invitation and listening and inviting subjects to be discussed.

Thank you, sorry for the time.

And moving on to public comment items for 8.6.2.

which is an ordinate enacting a pertinent part, the Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 2, Administration, Article 8, Mass Surveillance Technology Regulation. We have a group of people signed up for that one as well. And the first individual in person is Ben Peters.

Hi, thank you.

Good evening City Council Mayor Woodruff and Ben Peters. I was one of the local residents who participated in the ordinance development process with City Attorney Morgan and the Police Department. I think cutting to the chase. I think that we can amend the language to address concerns. I think that we can go back and figure out an approach that distinguishes between a single point in time. observation versus location reconstruction. I think it's also, I also want to acknowledge that it's really challenging to write an encompassing ordinance that covers every possible surveillance technology. And I think that that's made, that's, you know, I think while a noble goal has been, has added some difficulty to the process. And I wanted to remind that we initially just sought an ALPR focused ordinance. We didn't, it wasn't, we didn't bring forward a proposal to try the broad one, even though we were supportive of the effort. Also saying that I also want to clarify that the public view plain view language was in the other drafts of the ordinance. It wasn't like added language late. We the public who participated in the process objected to that language multiple times, but it wasn't made clear until our very last meeting that that plain view public view language did in fact exempt alprs from the warrant requirements and the ordinance um and as it also stands the ordinance and i've talked to some of you about this the ordinance also does classify the drone program in the same manner as the body cameras as that it's an incident-based trigger So there isn't a provision of the ordinance that applies to the drone program because it's exempt under the same provision. And the other piece of this is that with the transition to Axon next year announced by the police department, the ALPR technology, the drone camera footage, and the body camera footage can be all integrated together on a single platform, a virtual fusion center. And right now there's major exemptions to all of those sources in our current ordinance framework. And there is the capability with this fuse us system, the Axon system, to pull all these sources together to create mosaics of people's lives. And so I think that if we do continue the broad framework, that this should be evaluated as well. Thank you for your time.

The next individual signed up for 8.6.2 is Brian Showalter.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Brian Showalter. I'm a defense attorney here in Durango. I'm not a resident of the city, but I have had a business here for 27 years. And I'd just like to talk a little about Plainview, reiterate some of what Ben said, and just maybe try to educate a little on the Plainview exception. There's a lot of flux going on with it with these emerging technologies. So I'm here to ask you guys to say no to a surveillance state. I mean, this is technology that people are able to create a mosaic of people's movements, of people's lives, what their political views are, by where they go, where they eat, who they visit. This is all stuff that can be accomplished with this technology, this flock technology. And this plain view exception is not, I think, what it seems to be at first. It sounds pretty straightforward. If it's plain view, you can see it, then you don't need a warrant. It's not that simple. And I just want to talk a little about some of the Supreme Court cases about that to try to educate a little. One of the big ones was United States v. Jones. This is a United States Supreme Court case where trackers were put on people's vehicles. And law enforcement said, you know, they're out in public. They're driving around in the public. you know, you can see where people are going. Why would that be wrong? And the Supreme Court said, no, you can't do that. You're tracking people's movement. When you start tracking people in their daily lives, that becomes a problem. And so I'm asking you guys, I mean, I'm telling you a little about where Supreme Court law is, but I'm also asking you guys, you know, you don't have to be the bare minimum. You don't have to be the floor. You don't have to say like, oh, well, the Supreme Court says this is okay. So we're going to, You know, acquiesce to this. You can go above that. And Colorado does that, interestingly enough. Colorado protects Fourth Amendment rights higher than the federal constitution in certain areas. One of those most recent areas involves this sort of stuff. It's the third party doctrine, which says, you know, if you give your information to a third party, a Internet provider, you must be okaying the dissemination of it. And the Colorado Supreme Court has said no to that. Last two cases I want to mention real quick, just kind of reiterating this. Carpenter v. United States. This is one I think a couple years ago and one that just came out in April. Chattery, I think I'm saying that right, versus United States. And they reiterate this idea that it's not just about whether you can see it in public, whether it's in plain view, but if you're tracking people. Those cases involve cell phones, cell phone warrants, history, cell phone history. That's another situation where the Colorado Supreme Court has gone beyond the federal court and said, you're not allowed to have people's cell phone history without a warrant. So the Supreme Court is getting there. They are evolving. Real quick, one quick quote. This is from the Colorado Supreme Court case. If dystopian problems emerge, as some fear the courts stand ready to hear argument regarding how we should rein in law enforcement's use of rapidly advancing technology. I'm asking you guys just to beat the courts to the punch on that. You have the power. Thank you.

The next person signed up for 8.6.2 in person is Lisa Farrell.

Good evening. My name is Lisa Farrell.

I do live just outside the city limits, but as many of you know, I have been working with you all of the city to work on this ordinance for ALPRs. I would like to briefly discuss two things. One, why a warrant requirement to access ALPR data in an ordinance is constitutionally feasible. And two, I would like to give a quick response to the argument that a warrant requirement is too burdensome and or will paralyze the police's ability to thwart crime. It has been suggested that requiring the police to obtain a warrant to search ALPR databases expands privacy rights beyond established constitutional law. Yet the Supreme Court keenly disagrees. In Cooper versus California, the court noted that their ruling, quote, does not affect the state's power to impose higher standards on searches and seizures than required by the federal constitution. And in Oregon versus Haas, the court wrote that, quote, a state is free as a matter of its own law to impose greater restrictions on police activity than those this court holds to be necessary. What my con law professor taught was the U.S. Constitution is a floor, not a ceiling. Why do the police fight the warrant requirement? Maybe because it will add one more step, but definitely not because states cannot expand constitutional protections. Since our constitutional founding, police have argued that extra requirements placed on them will paralyze their ability to fight crimes. Yet this is not the case. In the 1920s, the telephone was only a few decades old, and with its invention came not only a new source of communication, but also an innovative technology for police to catch criminals by placing wiretaps in the phone lines. In 1927, the Supreme Court ruled that police did not need to obtain a warrant for such spying. Throughout the ensuing decades, law enforcement continued to argue that imposing a warrant requirement for wiretapping was too burdensome and would cripple their ability to fight crime. It was not until 1967 that the court ruled that the police must obtain a warrant. Today, local police don't question the warrant requirement for wiretapping phone lines. I believe we all have heard of the Miranda warning. You have the right to remain silent. It was not until 1966 that the court ruled that statements made by defendant in custody are only admissible if he was notified that he did not have to speak prior to any admission. In the cases leading up to this holding, police argued that their ability to solve crimes would be forfeited if they were required to give such notice. Yet today, the Miranda warning is part of our popular culture. Today, our nation's jurisprudence is just beginning to address the need for warrants when the government accesses this vast network of historical location data. It is therefore up to our citizens and local government to put into place such privacy protections. Thank you very much.

The next person signed up in person for 8.6.2 is Lori Bryan.

Lori here.

All right. We can move on to the folks who are online for 8.6.2. The first person I see is Drew Grimillion.

Drew, you should be able to unmute at this time. Control-Shift-M or Command-Shift-M should help unmute your mic. Drew, can you unmute your mic? Mayor, I haven't seen this person attempt to unmute.

So we go ahead and move on and we can come back to him if we need to. Yes.

Yeah, thank you. The next person for 8.6.2 online is Janice Moulton.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can.

Hi, I'm Janice Moulton. I live in Durango, Colorado, and I just wanted to say that I would like to ask the Council to oppose passing a surveillance ordinance without a warrant requirement for automated license plate readers. The fact is, an ALPR is not a police officer, and it is not a human being, and the technology it uses goes far beyond what an officer can do on their own, observing people in public with their own eyes. Language on the city website describes Flock as a police officer that never sleeps, and that is not as comforting of an idea as the police department might think. The truth is, if I saw a police officer standing at the same corner 24 hours a day, every day, taking photos of people's license plates over and over, with the speed that an ALPR has, with the ability to know a vehicle's movement from the past week, I would not feel safe at all. The fact that this is new technology and not a police officer only makes this more disturbing. This is not a flock-only issue, as I am aware that the city will be switching to Axon next year. All ALPRs violate our personal privacy. We deserve to have our privacy respected in Durango. Please do not pass this ordinance without a warrant requirement for ALPRs. Thank you very much for your time.

The next individual online for 8.6.2 is Karen Pontius.

Karen, you should be able to unmute at this time. Control Shift M or Command Shift M can help unmute your mic. Again, Karen, you should be able to unmute your mic at this time.

Again, Mayor, I haven't seen an attempt to unmute at this time. Move on and come back.

Yeah, thank you. The next person online for 8.6.2 is Kirby McLaurin.

Kirby, you should be able to unmute right now. Again, if you need to control shift M or command shift M can help unmute your mic. Kirby, again, if you can unmute at this time. Again, we have not seen an attempt to unmute.

Thank you.

I can move forward. The last person signed up for 8.6.2 and online is Peter Tregillis.

Peter, you should be able to unmute now. Control Shift M or Command Shift M can help unmute your mic. Again, Peter, if you can unmute, please.

We haven't seen an attempt to unmute. If you'd like to go back to the top of the ones that we had to skip, we can try again.

And Mary, do you want me to go through the 8.6.2 again or maybe move on to 11 and circle back? I could take any direction from you.

I mean, yeah, let's do 11 and come back.

Thank you. So the next individual signed up is for a resolution, item 11.1, which is a resolution directing the city manager to pursue an amendment to the land use and development code related to remote parking. And Holly Jobson signed up and is in person.

Greetings, y'all. I'm Holly Jobson. I live in the next. Thanks for being here. Our city government is important. I actually thought the amendment was or the announcement was going to be made for what you were being asked to do in association with this because I was not totally aware and I thought that would be a good thing to stay and listen to. But from what I understand, they're asking you to make changes to the rules that we've always had for what parking requirements were for a new establishment. And the very idea that they would ask you to go ahead and change the rules for this project sends out all kinds of red flags for Is this really where we want to be going? Is this not a significant indicator that maybe we're not going in the right direction with trying to put the police department on that property? It seems like there have been many red flags along the way to indicate that that's not the right property for the police department. I too voted for that ballot issue, you know, because back when that was passed, back when you guys presented it, when the city presented it to us, it looked really good. And as has already been mentioned tonight, many things have changed about that. And it really isn't the project that we voted for. It really isn't a project that the city wants anymore. You guys have spoken of, you know, it was a resounding vote for it, but it wasn't a vote for it in its current state. You know, the rug kind of got pulled out from under the proposition that I voted for, that many people voted for. So I ask you to look at this, you know, oh, let's change the law and just say, we don't really need that many parking places as just another red flag that, you know, it's in the wrong place. We don't need to put the police department there.

Thanks.

And mayor, that was the end of a public comment for agenda related items. Um, but I could take any direction on some of the folks that we missed online.

Let's kick it back one through one more time through, um, Give them an opportunity and then we'll move on.

Sure. Thank you. For 8.6.2 online, we had Drew Grimillion.

Drew, you should be able to unmute at this time.

Again, Drew, you should be able to unmute at this time. If you need to, you can use control shift M if you're having trouble selecting the microphone button in the top right corner.

A way we can unmute them.

We cannot force them to unmute now.

Yeah. For any of our online participants, if you are using it on the web or in the app, you may have also received a pop up that you need to close that indicates that this session is being recorded. If you've not accepted that, it may prevent you from enabling your microphone. So do make sure that you've closed that pop up. It'd be in the center of your screen. Again, Drew, this is kind of our last call for you at the moment. Hi, I'm here. Sorry. Okay.

Yay.

Please proceed.

Thank you. Uhm, yeah, my name is Drew Gremillion and I am a business owner with two leases in Durango City limits. While I'm not a resident, I spend most of my working hours in city limits passing multiple ALPR cameras on my way to work. A free country doesn't surveil its citizens. Constitutional rights are taken away. little by little until there are none left. In the era of AI surveillance, I believe that a warrant requirement for ALPR cameras is the best way to have legitimate checks and balances for searches on Durango's system. Right now there is no way of knowing if the hundreds of organizations with access to Durango's system are searching in a way that is not violating our collective Fourth Amendment rights. For the last nine months I've been working with my community members to ask for bare minimum regulations on mass surveillance technology. Today I urge you to please listen to the will of your constituents. Please table the mass surveillance ordinance until there is a warrant requirement for ALPR cameras. I personally never thought that I would see the day that mass surveillance technology is a normalized agenda item at City Hall. Now this technology is talked about like it's here to stay no matter what. The city just has to choose what brand of surveillance. Do you want Coke or Pepsi? Changing vendors doesn't solve the problem most community members have with surveillance tech. Innocent people are being tracked by a private company every day. I used to live my life knowing that I was innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. With warrantless surveillance tech spread around our city, it is more likely that the average American is guilty until proven innocent. The Durango ALPR system has over 8.6 million searches by hundreds of organizations since January 2025. That is an insane number considering Durango has a population of under 20,000 people. 8.6 million searches in less than two years. If around 1.5 million people visit Durango per year, that's just under three searches per visitor per year. The majority of these million people were never suspected of or committed any crime. To conclude, The only way to weed out bad faith searches and abuse and abuse on Durango's ALPR surveillance system is to require warrants for all access to ALPR data. Thank you for your time.

And the next individual online was Karen Pontius.

Karen, you should be able to unmute at this time. Not working.

OK, we can hear you.

You can hear me now?

Yes.

I have no idea what I did different. This sucks. Anyway, my name is Karen Pontius. I live in Durango. Number one, I want the warrant requirement written back into the ordinance, so please amend it. Like Drew said, table it until then. Number two, The Durango Police Department is canceling the Flock contract and going with Axon. It's a program branded as Community Partnership. Under that branding is Axon Fusus, which is spelled F-U-S-U-S, a camera integration platform that offers two levels, and the second is the one that matters. Level one is registration. A business or resident puts a camera on a map only the DPD can see. They know it's there and they can ask the owner for footage after an incident. No live access, but it builds a department of private map of all the participating cameras across the city that no member of the public is allowed to see. Level two is integration. This is the one that changes everything. The business owner or resident plugs a small axon fuses core device into their camera system and grants the DPD direct access to the live feed. A single core pro device can carry up to 50 cameras and store up to 30 days of video. This creates a live, always available window into private property across the city run from a DPD officer's phone or console. Axon Fusis utilizes artificial intelligence to rapidly search video to recognize weapons, vehicles of interest, etc. The integration hardware markets AI core elite devices that put a brain inside your camera network preloaded with dozens of search and analysis variables and automatic alerts the moment a match appears on any camera in the designated area of interest. Here's the honest boundary and it matters. The DPD's platform will then do all of this. What the public will not be told is which of these capabilities the DPD has actually switched on, how many of the feeds it can open, how often it does, which AI functions are enabled, or whether weapon and person detection alerts are running today. The opt-in framing hides who actually consents. When a business signs up to share its feed, the business has consented. The people walking and driving past that camera never did. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has warned that FUSIS-style systems let police turn privately owned cameras into nodes of a centralized real-time law enforcement surveillance network. Without the public conversation, a government camera rollout would normally require. In Colorado, at least 56 municipalities have deactivated, canceled, or rejected contracts with FLOC this year. We will do the same with Axon FUSIS.

Thank you.

And the next individual signed up should be Kirby McLaurin online.

Kirby, you should be able to unmute at this time. Again Kirby, if you need to. I see you've unmuted. Are you able to speak? Kirby, we cannot hear you at this time. Unfortunately, Mayor, we are able to see that Kirby is unmuted, but we are not able to hear Kirby.

I'd say we go ahead and move on, but maybe there's an opportunity to, you know, write an email to council explaining his position. All right. The next person, please.

Yeah, the last person online is Peter Tregillis.

Peter, you should be able to unmute at this time.

Peter, if you need to, you can use control shift M or command shift M to unmute your mic if you cannot access it through the microphone. Can you hear me now? We can.

OK. Alright, thank you very much, Council. First, I got to commend all the work reflected in the presentations earlier in this evening. And thanks to those who did all that work. And I'm really impressed by the affordable housing in the pipeline. But I'm here to talk about the flock ordinance item 8.6.2. By the way, I am a City of Durango resident. Last time I talked to you guys, I said that I support efforts to slow down the expansion of creeping authoritarianism in these troubled times. I know more than a few immigrants subjected to jackbooted tactics right here in Durango. I can't pretend not to know that evaluating something like flock in Durango is different now than what it would have been in say 1996. But I will keep this short just by saying that I second what Ben Peters and Brian Showalter and other people said earlier. My finding is that the part that discusses the plain view is a bit more than kind of a loophole. And no, I don't really buy the concept that it's like an officer standing by the side of the road. With the amount of imaging that would have to go flowing into the officer's head, I think the baud rate to the brain would just be a bit too high. The situations are not comparable. I did read in the Durango Herald that Chief Curran and City Attorney Mark Major agreed during talks with Ben Peters that yes, plain view means ALPR data would be exempt from the warrant requirements. If that's wrong, I'd really would love to hear somebody speak up and say that it's wrong, but I mean, it certainly seems wrong to me and that's my reading as well. Yeah, to my uneducated legal mind, That means everything the flock camera sees and records. So we've got fabulous language about guardrails and warrant requirements, but we've got this loophole that I have a problem with. So therefore, I would feel much better about this ordinance if the plain view exception were deleted. And Durango joined the over 153 municipalities in 28 states which have canceled FLOC contracts or who have modified their contracts with FLOC or Exxon. Thank you very much.

And Mayor, that's all of the public comment for agenda related items. If it's appropriate, I could move on to the consent agenda.

Yeah, I would like to get a reading of the consent agenda, please.

Thank you. On tonight's consent agenda, we have under 8.1 approval of minutes. We have the August 18th, 2026 city council regular meeting minutes under 8.2 final reading of ordinances. We have 8.2.1, which is ordinance 2026 41 regarding the annexation initial zoning. And lot consolidation of OSS Enterprises Tract 1 RA to the City of Durango and declaring an effective date. Under 8.2.2, we have Ordinance 2026-42 authorizing the City of Durango to execute a lease with the Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center, Inc., doing business as Axis Health Systems. Under 8.3, adoption of resolutions by consent. We have 8.3.1. A resolution approving an award amendment request letter for the Proposition 123 Local Planning and Capacity Program and authorizing the mayor to sign. No other administrative items on the consent agenda. Under 8.5, Request for Public Hearing, we have a request for a public hearing to request a dedicated citywide public meeting for all Durango residents regarding the 2019 East 3rd Avenue prior to council directing staff to prepare a request for qualifications. Under 8.6, Introduction of Ordinances, we have 8.6.1, which is an ordinance amending in pertinent part the Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 23, Taxation, Article 4, Lodger's Tax. And then we also have 8.6.2, which is an ordinance enacting in pertinent part the Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 2, Administration, Article 8, mass surveillance technology regulation, and there are no requests for excused absences, and that's the consent agenda.

Thank you, Ben. Are there any items that any council would like to pull from the consent agenda?

I'd like to pull 8.2.2 as well as 8.6.2. Councillor Gonzales? 8.6.2, great. I'll let go. I'll go ahead and let Councilor Gonzales have pulled 8.6.2. Thanks.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda less 8.2.2 and 8.6.2. Second.

Any discussion? Okay, roll call, please.

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

And so the first item pulled from the consent agenda is 8.2.2, which is the ordinance 2026-42, authorizing the City of Durango to execute a lease with Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center, Inc., doing business as Access Health Systems.

Make a motion to approve ordinance O-2026-0042, authorizing the City of Durango to execute a lease with Southwest Colorado Mental Health Under Incorporated DBA Access Health System.

Second. Discussion. Can we get the other screen, please? There you go. Thank you. Councilor Kozo.

Thank you, Mayor. I have just one core question. I think in the last discussion on this ordinance, we have flexibility on the start of that lease. And so if there are delays associated with it, we don't necessarily start on October 1st.

Do I have that right or wrong?

Do we have flexibility in this beginning of that lease if there are delays to the to the project and we don't need to move out of the the big picture or not? They don't call it big picture. Sorry arts and science.

So regardless of the path forward, the asbestos abatement is already contracted. We're currently it's currently in motion in the City Hall building or the historic high school building. That'll wrap up the first week of October and then they'll immediately switch over to the 215 East 12th Street building, and they'll start that work in that building October 12th. Which requires staff to be vacated from that building.

OK. Thank you. Any other discussion? I could get a roll call, please.

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

Alright 8.6.2.

Thank you. 8.6.2 is the introduction of the ordinance enacting, in pertinent part, the Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 2, Administration, Article 8, Mass Surveillance Technology Regulation.

Well, thank you. I just, I do want to thank Ben Peters.

Just real quick, we need to have a motion on the floor. Mark, what happens if nobody makes the motion and there's not a second? So do we need to be brought forward again at a future time? Sure.

So if there's no motion and no second, it doesn't get introduced.

So it doesn't get introduced, and so therefore we could bring it back whenever we feel that it's an appropriate time. All right, Councillor Kossoff.

Yeah, but that means we don't have any discussion on why we would not. That's correct.

Yeah. As a quick reminder, if you make the motion, you have to vote in favor for it as per Romer's rules, right? That's why I was asking the question, where does this go if we don't bring it forward?

Motion to table item 6.8.6.2, motion to table until the first meeting in May, which would be, I don't have the date in front of me.

First meeting in May?

First meeting in May. Next year?

So 2027?

Well, because we don't start that. Can I explain?

Good, Councillor Gonzalez.

I mean, is there a hesitation to delay till May? I'm giving you the date right now. Sorry, I should have had it. It was the first week in May.

You can just say that.

Okay, the first council meeting in May.

Okay, I can second at this point.

And you don't have to vote.

Wait a second. Yeah, I'll second the motion with discussion to come.

Go ahead, Councilor Gonzalez.

Technically, you're supposed to get it on the floor and then table it.

Right. Yeah, there was a little bit of an impasse to figure out some of the nuance there. So Councilor Gonzales, would you like to?

Yeah, sure. So the request to table until May is that I think we're still under the contract for FLOC until we get, we go through the budget process and get more information about the FLOC system, or rather this new system, Axiom, and then see, give the community time to study, get the data, get some information, and then we can determine from there. It's delayed in large part because we are still going to be on the flock system until January.

My understanding was until the end of the year because Chief Curran, if I remember correctly from this presentation, was that January 1 we would December 31st terminate and then restart with Exxon from my understanding.

Some time to gather sufficient data. and then have a presentation, try and work it out again. I've been very grateful for the process, and I just want to make sure that I thank Beatriz Garcia, Ben Peters, Lisa Farrell, who came to all of our meetings, Mayor Woodruff, who came to all of our meetings, and also we had Maya from our city attorney's office and, of course, our city attorney, Mark Morgan, who came into the meeting. So it was a really robust process. We, I think, went through a number of iterations. We didn't quite get to where we were hoping to, but now we have new information about a new system and we need time to gather data. So that was the request to delay until May. And in the meanwhile, we continue under the existing system.

Councilor Croson.

Yeah, I guess I have Frustration that will be waiting eight months with the current flock system in place and the new system in place, none of which is requiring warrants or any other criteria. So I I appreciate what you're doing counselor, but I'm not sure I want to sit and wait for eight months before we pick this back up again. And I'm open to discussion. I'm hoping we have the discussion, but I'm looking for a better way for us to keep moving forward on what I think is a pretty unique process and requires a lot of thought, a lot of conversation without just kicking the can down the road to eight months and waiting. I don't know if anybody else has got any feedback on that.

I misinterpreted what I thought you guys were doing. We're not following Robert's rules right now. And I want to be consistent. I've told you guys in the past and at recent meetings that once the motion to table comes forward, there's no discussion. Now having a discussion. So you guys should either waive the rules or do an emotion in a second on the motion and then move to table.

Can we amend?

I think it's on the same page. I just want to be consistent in the advice that I give you. And you're not supposed to have broad discussion when there's only a motion to table on the floor.

So I should have said.

Before motion to table comes, you're required to have a motion in a second on the floor. So I apologize. I misread where I thought you guys were going. So you can fix that by just suspending the rules, or you can go back and put a motion on the floor a second, and then you can entertain the motion to table. But the time to properly discuss these things is while the motion's on the floor.

I'll make a motion to suspend the rules so we can have discussion after the table to motion.

Second. Could you get an affirmation vote to suspend the rules?

Yes.

Yes? All right. So Yeah, I guess I would echo some of those same concerns that Councilor Cosa raised just about, you know, right now we have, I'm not going to say that we don't have any guardrails. I mean, I think Chief and the Police Department and the City Attorney's Office has done a really good job with Internally regulating our based upon Q&A feedback and where we've given direction, you know, the flock reporting. I mean, there's a whole litany of things that I think that the PD and the attorney's office has done to really put some good guardrails on this. So I don't want to diminish what they've already done. But yeah, I certainly don't want to kick this cane down the road, especially while we're having these conversations and it's fresh in our mind. Eight months seems like a really long time. There's also going to be an election before then come May for our city council. There's two seats up for grabs. So I guess I would probably prefer to see maybe beginning of the year or maybe even just after the beginning of the year. I think May or eight months seems like too far projected out for my liking personally. Counselor or lawyer?

Yeah, my guess is May. there is a lot of talk about legislative session, having a lot of this potentially on it. I don't know if that's what, yeah, at the state level. Yeah. There's a lot of talk. I don't know if that's where you were going potentially or not, or if it was just like a date, but at first it kind of made sense to me because I was like, okay, if the state legislation is going to come through then, but then there's also part of me, you know, I think part of the beauty of Durango is a lot of our councils in the past have been very like forward thinking and pushing things that reflect our community values while also balancing that with the health and safety and, you know, vision of our community. You know, I go back to like the ADU laws that we, or ordinances that we passed a long time ago that were way ahead of other like-minded communities that really set us apart and made, I think, our housing crisis much less than it could be that other communities are facing in mountain towns. And I love that about Ringo, and that was part of the reason I was like, I want to run. I'm creative. We can get there. And so I struggle saying may, but I also understand why. I don't know. I'm not sold on that. I want to support as well. I think there's going to be some times where we're going to have to say, no, you don't get that, but we'll give you this. And Ben hopefully will still smile and We'll both leave here a little angry we didn't get our way, but it'll be good, right? Anyways, that's kind of my thought process and I just sort of spewed a lot. So there you go.

Dr. Gonzalez.

Thank you. Well, the request was to have sufficient data. So we know we're going to be under flock until January. So by the time we have sufficient data and then we can talk about it, it just felt like it was a time to make sure that we or have enough data to present something. Because I think what, you know, when we started getting the flock data, we had about a year's worth of information to present. A couple of years, actually, two years. So, you know, it was something that we worked out with the community. It was a really fun process in the way that things can be fun. It doesn't always work out, obviously, but we did have lots of back and forth. And, you know, people, especially the community members, they dedicated a lot of their time to this effort. And it was really engaging in a technology that is just kind of new. So anyway, that was a request for a delay, perhaps three months or enough time to have a new system, collect the data that we need, give all of us and the community time to really analyze it and see if we want to continue to support a system like like axiom that's going to be something a little bit new. So that was the reason for at least six months of doubt.

Councilor Cussell.

Thank you. So my biggest goal would be a public hearing on warrants and the application of warrants, as well as the application of this broader surveillance regulation. Because I think this is, from what I can tell, is pretty cutting edge. And I'm still not sure I understand the application of not only the ALP, PR piece, but also the other elements within this. So if there's an ability for us to do a public hearing so that we can get some of the expertise that we've got out in the community to come in and talk about this in the meantime and during that delayed duration, would love to add that in. Not sure if anybody's got feedback on that or not. Kelsey Yazzie.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, so if we table this to a later date that means that we go forward with our current regulation and policy on flock very informal no ordinance no ordinance yeah so we just doing it we're just this is it okay I guess I would just say personally I get

And maybe it's my own. Bias of being in all the meetings and all the discussions like having heard the the different perspectives of people in the community. I mean, I feel like I've already heard them and I've had conversations, you know, whether it is in those meetings that with those surveillance discussions with Councillor Gonzalez or I've had them one on ones. I feel like I've already had some of those conversations to understand the. the nuance of where they're coming from and the why behind it. So I guess for me, I wouldn't necessarily be in in favor of a public hearing. But I would be I would be in favor of maybe a study session going over, like, you know, we've heard all these different court cases that are setting precedents, and some seem to be conflicting. And I think there's also probably, you know, technology will always outstrip legislation. And so I think we're probably seeing, whether it's from the state or from the feds, different guidance with laws and statutes. And so I guess for right now, I don't necessarily have an appetite for a public hearing, but maybe something that goes over all the different mechanisms of what's law. But.

Let me just ask, with that statement that you made, do you also feel like you've had enough input from the community on the broadness of the surveillance technology? ALPRs, I totally understand what you're saying in regards to that. It's been the main thrust of the conversation. But this seems to be very new for a municipality. And so I guess I was just asking, do you feel like you've had enough conversation around that as well?

I mean, am I an expert? No. But have I had conversations with individual members and within those overall meetings hearing different stakeholders give different perspectives? Yes. And so I feel like I do have a decent grasp of where everybody's coming from. It's just how do we find the amalgam of all those different and conflicting, sometimes conflicting opinions to forge some sort of policy. Counselor Lawyer.

Yeah, I guess a couple things. One, If we're kicking this can down the road or just stopping it, I feel like the public needs to know why. Is it because we think that what we're doing with the flock and changing over and the reporting we're getting is helpful and doable? Is it because we're not willing to add in there what they want us to add in there and you don't want to say that? Is it, not you, like us as a whole body, sorry. Is it that we just want to wait for state legislation because it's easier and it's hard? I wasn't in all the meetings, but I can imagine it's hard. Is it because we don't have as much information or knowledge as possible? I mean, Marty's getting ready to come to us with 12 options on composting. So I feel like if he's coming to us with 12 options on composting, then maybe we could like have a cup like instead of being like here's the ordinance and then I'm saying we want warrants and me thinking like I don't think I really want to add that fully in there, but is there other options can I get? Like we can add this in there, but not that I don't like Mr. Attorney says no, we say yes and then does that make sense what I'm trying to say? I've been rambling today a lot.

OK, I mean what I can tell you is there's about 30 things in this ordinance. that the small group worked through and came to an agreement on. There's one that we didn't really agree on. My office was uncomfortable making a recommendation to the council that expanded privacy rights beyond well-established law. But that's it. I mean, you guys are free as a council to do that on your own.

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt.

No, it just, again, I thought it was inappropriate for my office to take a position on a policy decision that expands privacy rights beyond well-established law. If you guys choose to do that, great. My office will then advise the police department and explain to the public how that works and we're happy to do it. So from my perspective, this is much broader than a flock or an axon thing. That was the direction that we were given. And because of the public comments, it seems like things have gotten twisted such that this We're doing the opposite. We're actually doing this to try to protect the public and be the leading edge on it. So I just want to make it clear that my office does not oppose the change that's being recommended. We take no position on it. Quite simply, we just were uncomfortable recommending something that wasn't well-established law because that's a policy decision, not a legal decision.

Do you two sitting in the meetings, Councillor Gonzalez and Councillor Woodruff, feel like this isn't what you wanted and what we intended? And so that's why we're tabling it?

Go ahead, Councillor Gonzalez.

Thank you. So there was some things that we agreed on, others we didn't. The community did request a delay to table the item, and it had a lot to do with this Axiom. There's a new system. It's going to work differently. As I understand it, as it was explained to me, that Axiom will work with body cams, will work with other systems that we already use, including the drone technology. I think somebody mentioned this. It would be the equivalent of, like, you have an Apple Watch, so you have an Apple phone, so you have an Apple computer, that they all talk to each other. And that's just something that we haven't had a chance to study, and we don't have all the data. So there was a couple of things that came up, and the request for a delay to table the item came from the constituents who really worked on this this ordinance along with Mark and Maya in the city attorney's office and, of course, with Council Woodruff. So it was a couple of things that came up. And my sense is that what we have now is not perfect, but there's pros and cons to what currently exists. So I felt like we can table this item until we get enough data to try again.

So a motion to table means the same exact thing is going to come up on the agenda in November or March, May, or whenever we decide that date is. Yes. But it's the same exact thing. No changes to it.

Exactly right.

When we table it.

And that's fine. You're fine with that's fine. I think that's fine. I think we'll have a chance to review it then. Okay. When the time comes, which is, you know, first meeting in May.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, and I guess I would only say that, you know, obviously, Councilor Gonzalez said other conversations out in the community, so her perspective is different than mine. You know, my understanding is that it's the the linchpin in a lot of this is the warrant requirement for, and it's not about, you know, point in time. It's about tracking and, you know, figuring out and establishing a pattern and needing a warrant for that. And that's, to me, that was the biggest hitch. I think there would be broad community support from my understanding, and maybe I could be wrong. It seems to me that there would be broad coalition support for this general surveillance policy if that warrant requirement were baked in. But again, my conversations have been different than Counselor Gonzales, so I don't presume that I'm right or wrong.

Yeah, I guess I just want to reiterate, I've still got a lot of questions on this that have nothing to do with the ALPRs. I don't know what a cellular site simulator is. I don't know what the privacy and civil liberties officer and who oversees them and how that operates. There's a ton of questions on this, and I'm very nervous kicking this six months down and we'll have so much other stuff, I'll forget everything, right? So, I mean, that's my worry. I guess I can still ask questions on this in between in the six months, but that does seem like a long time to wait. And it means we have no warrant application to the data capture that we're doing right now. So.

Yeah, and I just feel like we're having these conversations right now. And so it affords us the You know the opportunity to make some of these decisions walls fresh in our mind, but I worry six months from now, eight months from now that we'd have to kind of rebuild some of this collective information that we're probably going to.

Lose. So Chancellor Gonzalez, are you still may is the is is your. Date for. Tabling.

I hadn't thought about another date. That was what came to mind, you know, just given that, you know, to give us about six months to get information. I hadn't really considered another date. So I don't know. Do I need to withdraw that motion or do we need to? Or I mean, I think, you know, it would stand and, you know, I sort of work.

I feel like the technology with Axon doesn't necessarily, in my mind, change the efficacy of the surveillance policy writ large. I think the surveillance policy is going to be the surveillance policy regardless of what technology there is. It's going to provide the guardrails and the limitations on it. So I don't necessarily, in my opinion, I don't speak for anybody, but in my opinion, the surveillance policy is not predicated upon transition of an ALPR from flock to Exxon. So to me, maybe gathering a few months in the year in me, you know, kind of makes sense to us have more conversations, And maybe see if there's any sort of, you know, other legislation that's coming down the pipe. But again, I just kind of my two cents.

Cancer is guessing.

OK, so what I heard you say Dave is maybe. A little bit more time to gather information is.

Yeah, I'd say a few months, you know, like two, three months, I think is appropriate.

All right. Then we would live with our current state of no guardrails then.

I mean, I would say it's not no guardrails. I think, again, the PD and the attorney's office has done a great job with setting up some internal guardrails, but there's nothing dictated by policy. And so, again, I think this policy just gives... know again some guardrails about what we can and can't do that's written uh in the code but right now i think the pd and cd i'm in pd and city attorney's office has done a great job with putting some of those up but it's not official already okay um so what's on the floor is a motion to table and tell me if i can offer a suggestion sure um i think

my office taking the opportunity to meet with Ben and his group again about the axon versus flock as governed by this ordinance would be a good test to see if the ordinance actually does what we think it's going to do. Because it was designed not for any specific technology. It was designed for the current technology and technology that is to come. I wouldn't mind reconvening a third meeting like we've had so we can do kind of a case study of how what we understand axon does compared to flock works within the guardrails that the ordinance provides. I think that doesn't require six months because it's a hypothetical discussion and a test of the ordinance, so. But that's my comment.

OK, I can accept that so. Could we try? Let me see, where are we, September, October? Could we try October, let me see, perhaps middle of November or something like that, second month in November, if you could check that date.

That will be perfect because I'm going to be in Italy and I can make Maya do it.

So whatever date that second meeting in November is.

Second meeting in November.

And then I hope that gives the community time to also regroup and we can give it another go. so um i guess do i need to yeah what's the formality here if you know we have a motion a second right you can just change your mom include the date you want second meeting in november so the second meeting of november ben if you could tell me what date yeah i believe um that's going to be tuesday the 17th okay so if we could table it till

The other thing I want to confirm is tabling a motion is actually a temporary pause in the same meeting. Postponing is what's required for it to go to a specific meeting at a further date. So this would be postponing an agenda item.

Okay.

Postponing until... Ben, did I second that? I can't remember.

Am I the one that needs to say I'm fine?

You did second... Councillor Gonzalez, Councillor Gonzalez initial motion so agree to the modification.

OK. Any further discussion?

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

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

Real quick, I just want everyone to know that the consent agenda item with the public hearing passed, and so we did all agree. Okay, great. I mean, stay. If I could leave, I would. I just wanted to make sure you all knew that you guys got it. Okay, great.

All right. So, moving on to agenda item number 12, which are our none. Moves us on to agenda item number 13, public comment on city.

Mayor, we have resolutions.

Oh, 11 point. God, why do I always do this? That was like towards the end of the meeting, I always miss something. Son of a nutcracker. All right. Mr. Florian, I'm going to let you take it from here, my man.

Thank you. 11.1 is a resolution directing the city manager to pursue an amendment to the land use and development code related to remote parking.

What's that, Jamie?

It's okay, it's late.

Yeah, she's Louise.

Good evening, Jamie Laco, the city's community development director, presenting a resolution asking for direction to the city manager to pursue a text amendment to our land use and development code related to remote parking. Just a clicker.

There it is.

All right, the resolution supports the city's strategic plan goal of innovative housing and economic development. So this resolution comes as a result of two actions. First, at your August 18th meeting, there was a motion passed to the director of the city manager to pursue a variance to extend the remote parking distance for the City Hall Police Department project, as well as continue to evaluate off-site lease parking options. In addition, the motion asks that staff research a possible amendment to the Land Use and Development Code to extend the remote parking distance for all applicants. Staff did begin researching this after that meeting. The second action came from the Board of Adjustment. So the city did pursue a variance from the Board of Adjustment to extend the remote parking distance at their August 31st meeting, and the Board of Adjustment did vote to deny this variance. As part of that, they were required to cite the criteria that were not met, and they cited criteria three, four, and five. And criteria four specifically calls out that if approving a variance would set a precedent versus what their denial would state, that a text amendment to the code should be proposed instead. And so that's why we have this resolution. I do have a vision advancement on there. While this is kind of more of an operational thing versus a project or a program, it does provide support to local businesses and reduce a barrier to equitable access by providing more clarity and flexibility to our remote parking standards. And then lastly, we have the motion that would approve the resolution directing the city manager to pursue this amendment.

I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2026-0085, directing the city manager to pursue an amendment to the land use and development code related to remote parking.

Okay, I second it, but I'd like to have an amendment to that resolution. Okay. Okay, I move to amend the motion to add and to further direct the city manager and staff to research and bring back options for neighborhood residential parking permit, residential neighborhood parking permit program for downtown and the Boulevard neighborhood area with the objective of enabling enforcement against city employees or non-residents parking in the neighborhood in lieu of using the transit center or other designated Uh, remote parking areas.

OK, I'll accept the amendment.

Alright discussion. Sounds good so.

So discussion we're talking to Jamie right now, not about the amendment. About all of it.

OK, OK. Jamie, thank you. So what were criterion three and five, and how does moving forward on criterion four not mean there's a problem with those criteria still?

Criteria three was that the city could not derive a reasonable use of the property without the variance. And then criteria five was detriment to the adjacent properties and surrounding neighborhood.

And how does passing Criterion 4 eliminate Criterion 3 or 5, or those get solved another way?

We are not passing any of them. The variance was denied based on those three criteria by the Board of Adjustment. Because one of those criteria is that if they felt like we were setting a precedent by passing the variance, then we should look at amending code. So that was a signal to staff and supported by Council's directive to also begin researching this to go ahead and go down the road of starting this process. This is something that's available citywide. It has nothing to do with the City Hall PD. While the variance did prompt that partially, it is something that staff did begin researching and found that it is something that is warranted that we should consider.

three and five would no longer apply if this passes. I'm having a hard time understanding. They rejected us for three reasons.

Yes.

We're going to solve one of the reasons. What happens to the other two reasons? Doesn't matter.

It's done. We will not go back to the variance.

Got it. Got it. So four solves all three of the criterion issues that they had.

Well, it's just a code change. There's no more variance, no more discussion about a variance. So this is just a kind of a change to the code itself.

Okay. 1,859 feet was the number that was used in the board adjustment meeting, while 1,750 is used for this meeting. Why the difference in distances?

It was an error in a GIS system. They used a map where parcel lines were not visible, and so just a slight modification of where you click on the map can be quite a significant error. So when we actually added the parcel lines to it and were able to snap to the edges, it was 100 feet longer.

So it's 1,859 feet. Not 1750 feet. Yes, OK, and that is as the crow flies. We had some discussion on this, so I just want to clarify it. That's as the crow flies. The estimates of the actual walking distance, the actual pedestrian path are still around 2500 feet. Do we agree on that? Is the math correct?

Yes, sir, there, but that's something we're also looking at changing is that as how we measure that OK.

how we measure it as the crow flies versus what people would actually walk?

Yes, sir.

Okay. And that puts us around eight football fields away parking-wise, if my math is correct on all this. So I just believe that this solution may work on paper, but it doesn't work for the employees and the residents that are affected. So I decided to make a run on the trolley and start adding up time I won't go into the details, happy to do it at a later time. But if I'm a typical employee, I'm assuming a 15-minute commute might be a decent commute for one of our employees, probably longer if they live out in the county. 20-minute bus ride, when you start adding all these things up, it's about a 45-minute commute. If you take the trolley, it's about a 35-minute commute if you walk. The trolley arrival times are off. They're at the two-minute after the hour 22 minute after the hour and 42 minute after the hour so if i'm trying to arrive by eight o'clock i have to get there by the 45 minute the the 42 minute trolley to make it up the hill and get to my office space so um i i don't think that this is a great solution because i don't think in reality this commute time is something that employees are going to want to do on either side of their day if they're parking there monday through friday so I still have objections to this. I don't think it's the best solution. I would really like to go back to talking about what was discussed at the BOA and the CDC discussion that there are city lots within a quarter mile radius that are within the requirement here with the east lot being 42 spots, lot 359 spots, lot 440 spots that are able to be accessed and used instead of the transit parking. So I'll leave it at that if you've got any follow up on that.

I just want to clarify this resolution is not proposing anything at this point. It's just asking you to give direction to the city manager for staff to bring forward an amendment to bring options to you. It will go to Community Development Commission for their recommendation and come back to you. And then we will present the options of what we found based on our research.

Okay. And one of those options could be using existing lots within the quarter mile radius.

It will not be specific to the City Hall PD project. This will be just remote parking available citywide per our code.

It's fair. Okay. Thank you.

Absolutely, those.

Last I think that clarified my questions as well, but I guess Jamie this is. We're not. Can we have a discussion about? Citywide parking like I'm thinking about. I know a lot of cities have eliminated parking requirements altogether. Is that something that can be investigated at this time?

Not at this time. It's something that we are going to look at as part of the comprehensive plan to make sure we're getting buy-in from the residents that that's a direction they would like us to consider. That's typically how it would go is we would look at the comprehensive plan and then that will inform what amendments we make to our code. And how often do we do that? The comprehensive plan is reviewed about every five years and significant updates every 10 years.

Okay. And where are we in that five years?

We're at 10 years.

We're at 10 years. So this is the plan that y'all presented last week? The comprehensive plan? Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. So then currently we are investigating whether or not we perhaps consider eliminating parking requirements at all. That could be something that I'm not suggesting we do that. I just know that a lot of cities have moved there because cities all over the country are having the same problem we are about how do we really accommodate more vehicles and specifically in urban areas, downtown areas, historic areas. So, okay, I would like to see that included at some time. So, okay, thank you.

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

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

All right, now we can move on to agenda item number 12, consideration of ordinances, which are none. That moves us on to agenda item number 13, public comment on city manners not under consideration.

Public comment is encouraged on city-related matters even if they are not set, for consideration by the Council on tonight's agenda. Please begin your comments by stating your city-related topic, your full name, and if you are a resident of the City of Durango. make your comments directly to the council do not expect a response from the council or staff comments are limited to three minutes per person unless modified by council unused time is not transferable to other speakers comments must be specific to city matters profanity hate speech personally derogatory remarks or other speech that is disruptive to the meeting will be ruled out of order by the chair and any remaining time will be forfeited by the speaker Exceeding the time limit infringes on the rights of others and is out of order. Only a majority vote of the council can modify time limits. Please note, you must sign up prior to the mayor calling the item on the agenda. Signing up after the item is called will result in your name not being called to speak.

And the first individual signed up to speak under Section 13 is Rebecca Cranston in person.

She may have taken off.

The next individual in person is Meg Wilmot. Alrighty, next person in person, next person in person, Alex Widow. I'd like to modify my time to 10, 15 minutes. How much time?

no denied i'm sorry i wanted to make comment um and i'm sorry it's under these circumstances i'll try to be quick uh my name is alex widow i've been a city resident for seven years i'm also a local business owner part of local first uh can completely uh support the community owned health plan uh option as well as the organic waste uh uh program uh i say that we go for the most uh reducing uh greenhouse gas option no matter the cost So just wanted to voice my support to that. The city of Durango claims and aims to be a climate leader. I think we're behind that. The organic waste measure gets us up to that level. So I look forward to the upcoming study session as well as your support of that measure. I'm mainly here today to make comment on mass surveillance technology. My comments today aren't against the council or our police department. I realize you all have really tough jobs on all fronts. Look at us now. It's rather to call out how important and difficult these conversations are, yet how kind of little conversation it seems that the residents are having about it. I think I learned that you all are discussing with Ben Peters, and I'm inspired by that conversation. I just think there could be more done, a la the comprehensive plan, right? I think we do a great job at engaging Durango in a lot of different formats in a lot of different ways. But with like one of the most pressing ethical conversations of all of our lifetimes, we haven't had an engaged Durango forum on it, right? There's nothing online to make comment. It's just there's just a lack of opportunity for citizens to engage. And again, it seems to be one of the hardest conversations we'll have in our entire lives. So I'm asking here today for the city to facilitate more of a structured ongoing public discussion around the role of mass surveillance technology in our community. I think it's not going to go away. So we need ongoing structure to have this conversation too. I also would like to be a part of that third conversation if it happens. And I guess this is part of the point. I'm rather engaged yet I don't know how to be as a resident. in these important conversations. So I'm asking to find humanity in my statement. I'm also asking to garner more public engagement on this topic, which I appreciate y'all doing as witnessed by your conversation tonight. I also look forward to the Engage Durango Forum, some of the best charcuterie spreads known to this town. I look forward to having the hard conversations with you all as we go from here. Thank you for your time.

The next individual signed up and indicated that they are on Brian Rogers.

Brian, you should be able to unmute now. Brian, can you unmute? If you need control shift M or command shift M can help unmute your mic. Again, Brian, this I see that you've unmuted. Can you speak?

Hello? Can you hear me? We can. Oh, perfect. Thank you so much. Hello, my name is Brian Rogers. I'm here tonight to encourage you to make the next steps and move Durango towards citywide curbside collection of food scraps and other organic materials. First, I want to thank you for the work that's already been done on the issue, directing staff to evaluate options, seeking community input, and bringing in RRS and EcoCycle to determine what can actually work in the Durango. I believe the community is ready for the next step. There is a petition or not petition, a letter going around which is approaching 800 signatures from community members supporting expanded organics collections. And I think we need to be clear about why this matters. Organic materials should not be going into our landfill. Food and other organic materials generate methane when they decompose in a landfill. At the same time, we're burying material that could instead become compost and soil amendments that improve soil health and retain water. Durango estimates that as much as 40% of material going into our landfill fill could be composted. We are treating a resource as waste and that needs to change. There is also very immediate local reason to do this. Bears. The city identifies unsecured human food sources, including trash, as the primary cause of human bear conflicts. If residents could separate their food scraps and keep a small compost bucket inside their homes or garages until the morning of collection, we could remove a significant source of food order from outdoor trash containers. I recognize that changing our waste system may feel like a big hurdle, but this is very doable, and I hope that is part of our conversation when City Council reviews RRS and Ecocycle's findings at the October 6th study session. They have already presented a range of options, including residential and commercial organic collection requirements, expanding existing programs, different diversion requirements, and changes within city operations. I ask that you really explore the feasibility of those options and look creatively at how they can work together. For example, if organics are removed from the trash stream, could the city eventually reduce trash pickup to every other week? Could households that need more capacity pay for an additional trash receptacle? Could rate structures reward households that produce less trash? Colorado's extended producer responsibility program begins reimbursing eligible recycling costs. How could those savings be considered in the waste budget? These are solvable questions. Other Colorado communities are already using different versions of the system. Colorado already has local composting infrastructure. So as you head into the October 6th session, I ask that you do not view the challenges of implementation as a reason to maintain the status quo. This shift needs to happen. We have strong community support. We have options in front of us and we have an opportunity to build a way system that makes much better use of these materials. I will follow up with later this week with an email. Thank you for getting to this point and keep moving forward on this work. Thank you.

And the next individual signed up for section 13 is Monique DiGiorgio online.

Monique, you should be able to unmute now.

Yes. Can you hear me? This is Monique DiGiorgio.

We can.

All right, great. Well, thanks for hanging in there tonight. I'm speaking actually not with Table to Farm Compost. I'm speaking tonight as someone who's been a conservation biologist for the last 20 years. And I was very passionate about putting a bear proof electric fence around our compost facility. It's the first of its kind in Colorado. You just heard Brian speak about the bear issue. I am sure you have heard that the 2026 bear season is unprecedented. Bears are entering homes, dying in cars. and people are being assaulted. It's kind of insane, you guys. So I'm just talking tonight about bears and trash and the focus being on bears. As of August 13th, Parks and Wildlife received 6,000 reports of bear sightings. La Plata County is leading the entire state. My message is trash availability, food and trash, yes, that could have been composted, like Brian said, increases risk to public safety. Recently, a Bear Smart volunteer reached out to Table to Farm Compost because they were covering an area from Main to 8th and North to 14th. And this volunteer said two things. that they're finding. Number one is trash availability in cans, and then number two is, and I'll say her words, an ungodly amount of prepared foods in trash. Removing food scraps from trash is a good first step to addressing the bear issue that's happening right now. So tonight, I know you have a lot on your plate, a lot, and one is composting, but I'm hoping that you will consider a session on the bear issue, whether that's with the county or an emergency session or some type of a study session. And of course, I'm very passionate about food waste and removing that food waste from cans will be a huge step in the right direction. On East 3rd, when I did live there last year, everyone that composted didn't have their trash cans kicked over. So it's an important step and a public safety issue at this point. Thank you so much for all of your leadership and everything that you have on your plate. Have a good evening.

Thank you, and that's it for public comment.

Excellent, thank you. And then moves us on to agenda item number 14, other new business. Mayor, I'd like to pull agenda item 14.1.

Yes, sir.

The next item is 14.2, which is discussion regarding possible agenda format change for public comment.

Okay, so this is my suggestion. I think that we need to add more public comment within the council meeting because there's a lot of people who want to participate and waiting until later in the meeting, it just seems like people wander off. So what I'd like to do is I suggest the following agenda change, and this should help with public outreach and comment. Okay, so we're going to have the staff person and we can also, I'm open to change on this also. Staff presentation would be number one. Number two, motion and second for the resolution to reach the floor for consideration. And then number three, council questions, comments, amendments for our five minute rounds. Number four would be public comment on the motion on the floor for a three-minute public discussion. And then five additional council comments for the three-minute round, then roll call. So basically just fitting in public participation after each motion and second. This simple change allows the public to hear the staff presentations and council comments prior to making their public comments.

That's my motion.

I'll second.

Do you have to second? Yeah. It's limited discussion, so it's going to go on to our

Meaning?

So that, as I understand it, would come back as an introduction of an ordinance to amend the council rules on the agenda procedure.

But she's asking for a discussion for it first before we amend the rules. It says discussion. Yes or no? Or you're just asking for the rules to be amended?

It would be nice to have a discussion so everybody can get involved in what I would like.

I support a discussion because I have some thoughts as well. To get to the final change, you have... several paths you can take, but the one I envisioned was because it is codified in an ordinance under council rules, that would be the final change you wanted to make if you want to make that a permanent change. But again, you could try it on a trial basis on the authority of the chair if you chose to, and you can discuss it right now, brief if you want. Just a question of how it comes back at the next meeting.

I would like a discussion because I have some ideas. I was talking to one of the old planning commission chairs and he was giving me some ideas on some things today, so I would. Yes, but can you just be prepared to like say like, can we do this? Can we do that? Sure, if that makes sense.

OK, so the answer is you can do whatever you want. Sure meeting and sure it does, but.

So they said they didn't used to be both.

Did you start canceling those?

There was another item I wanted to add under new business, but I just. I also, I like that idea. I just don't know that it has to be an ordinance. It seems like it could just be administrative, but I definitely welcome that.

The reason I suggest an ordinance is because it is codified sample agenda where public comment is, these were relegated because I'm tired and that's all that came in there, but public comment on agenda items is at section seven, I think. Seven, yep. So it's all lumped in there, and that's in our code. So to change that on a more permanent basis, you'd want to amend it after you discuss it at introduction or you discuss it at consideration. You've got lots of opportunities to modify whatever ends up being introduced. You could also do it by resolution on a temporary basis. Again, these are your meetings, how you run them. You have a lot of discretion to do. My only suggestion is because we did codify it two years ago, A change to the codification would be permanent.

Great. So it's going to move on to.

Do we do we do we need to vote or is it new business?

So you need to vote. OK, if everyone's in favor of. Rationale that she's given for the change. Staff would bring it back as. At this point. I get a roll call, please.

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

And Councilor Gonzalez, do you have something that you'd like to add?

Yeah, I think now's an appropriate time.

Thank you. So my request, I think, is you all know that we've had quite a lot of contentious issues here on the council. And one of them is related to conversations with Joe Lewandowski and Ted Wright regarding letters that were sent from the city attorney regarding holding on to evidence. And I would request that the city attorney send them a letter saying that since Joe wrote an article, and it was published in the paper, that we can put this behind us for the moment. So my request is that the city attorney write a letter on our behalf, letting them know that we don't intend to pursue litigation.

Thank you.

Anything else under other new business?

I've got one item too, Mayor, my apologies, but old hire fire and old hire police and fire pension. I would like to talk about for both the old hire fire and police pensioners, city staff will initiate an annual cost of living adjustment equal to the national annual inflation rate in the previous year. The COLA increase is to be implemented on the first day of January of each year until modified by city council. Basically, we are too often very late with this flat rate adjustment, what is a current flat rate adjustment every two years. And I would hope we can give these past employees and beneficiaries a more consistent program around an annual COLA cost of living increase based on the previous year's inflation rate I'd also like to ensure we preserve their ability to come back to council if ever they needed any supplemental requests.

Great. Any other new business? No?

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

Ben, do I sign and put mayor?

Just sign. Yeah.