City Council - Regular Meeting

with our work session for Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026. The first item on our agenda is the auditor presentation of the 2025 financial audit. Turn it over to staff.

Yes, Mayor and Council, thank you and welcome this evening to the work session. We have Jim Hinkle joining us tonight to present his methodology, to discuss his methodology as he has recently completed the audit for the year 2025. So with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Jim. This is his first year, as I mentioned, so Jim, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much. My name is Jim Hinkle with Hinkle & Company CPAs, and we did perform the annual audit of the financial statements as of December 31, 2025. We start off our audit by gaining an understanding of the city's internal accounting controls. We look at the cash receipts, the cash disbursements, and the payroll cycles independently of each other. We are looking for primarily what we call control features of the internal controls, and those are things such as approval of invoices prior to payment, approval of account coding prior to posting, things of not so much as a process, but the approval of those processes. We're also looking at what we call a segregation of duties. An accounting transaction typically takes three steps, the initiation, the approval, and the recording of those transactions, and we do not want one person to do all three of those steps. That's the segregation of duties. Then we randomly select transactions from throughout the year and we test those control features to ensure that the internal controls are operating as intended and that they can be relied upon. We do this for a couple of reasons. The first is we are looking for what we call significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in the internal control structure. A significant deficiency is defined as a design flaw in the system of internal accounting controls that would allow an error to go undetected in the ordinary course of business. And a material weakness would be a significant deficiency that might result in a material misstatement of the financial statements. And based upon our analysis, our documentation of internal controls, and all of our testing throughout the audit, We did not find any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in the internal control structure. So it is a good structure. It is operating as intended, and we can rely upon that throughout our audit process. That's the answer that you're wanting to hear. We then turn our attention to the audit of the financial statements. We technically use what we call substantive tests, which are test of details and analytic review. Test the details is pretty much what it sounds like. We drill down into account balances, we look at the underlining transactions, and we compare those to source documents such as invoices, cash receipts, contracts, agreements to ensure that the accounting is in accordance with general accepted accounting principles. We then also use analytic review procedures where we compare the current year to the prior year, the current year to budget, various relationships between the balance sheets and the income statements. And we're looking for relationships that we either don't expect or can't explain, and if we have any of those, we do more test of details with the related accounts. The end result of that is the audit opinion, and yours is what's technically referred to as an unmodified opinion, and in regular terms, it's a clean opinion. It states that the financial statements have been prepared in accordance with general accepted accounting principles and applied on a consistent basis with the prior year. So that's also the answer that you're looking for. The financial statements are materially accurate. In addition to the financial statement audit, you all expended approximately $800 and some thousand dollars in federal award expenditures. In that case, a single audit is required. And so we issued two audit opinions with respect to the single audit testing. A single audit refers to the fact that the external auditor, you have one audit by the external auditor, one that both does the audit of the financial statements and audits compliance with federal programs so that the federal government doesn't have to send in their auditors for each program. The first opinion is what we refer to is in accordance with government auditing standards. And it looks to the city to determine Do they have the internal controls and processes in place to determine what federal programs it receives monies from and what the compliance requirements are for those in general? And while that sounds pretty simple, a lot of times federal dollars are passed through the state and other entities, and it's kind of difficult sometimes to determine what the federal dollars are versus the state dollars, and so it makes it a little bit more difficult. Our audit opinion on that is also an unmodified or clean opinion that the town or the city does have the internal controls in place to determine what federal programs it participates in and the monies it receives and what the general compliance requirements are on those programs. In addition, if we find any noncompliance issues on any federal program throughout our audit, we had disclosed it in that report and we had no instances of non-compliance that we noted anywhere in the course of our audit. The second opinion in the single audit is in reference to uniform guidance, and that is where we follow the federal regulations to select specific programs and we test those in detail. And in your case, we selected the Revitalizing Main Street program. We looked at all of the disbursements made under that federal program And we verify that each of those disbursements were in compliance with all of the federal compliance requirements that is under that program. And we did not have any findings or question costs or any violations of compliance requirements in that program. So that opinion also is an unmodified, clean opinion that you do have the internal controls on that program and that we had no findings at all. So three audit reports, three clean opinions. Internal controls are intact. Once we issue the final audit report, we will also issue what we call a required communication letter. You all will be provided to that. We are required to communicate in writing if certain events occur in the course of the audit. And we have nothing negative to report in that letter. We did not have any difficulties in the course of the audit. We did not have any disagreements with management, and we did not find any errors in the books and records that required audit adjustments, either audit adjustments that would have been made or immaterial small adjustments that we passed on called past audit adjustments. So all in all, that will be a clean letter as well and went smooth. Probably the most important Item that I like to communicate to those charged with governance is throughout the course of the audit, we as the auditors felt like we had open transparency. Everything that we asked for was provided in a timely fashion, and we were not denied any access to any supporting documentation or other items that we requested. So we felt like we could request and receive whatever we felt necessary to perform an external audit according to our standards. So I would thank Jackie, but she's no longer here, so I'm going to thank ELSA for all their help. We are in addition to their daily jobs, and we ask for a lot of information and a lot of documentation. and everything that we asked for was provided very quickly and timely, and that helped the audit move smoothly throughout the entire process. So thank you to you and your fellow staff members. Any questions regarding how the audit is conducted and what our findings are?

If any, Council Member, has any questions or comments, please use your request to speak button there. I popped up there. Did you? Was that? Okay, thank you. No, I don't have any questions, just comments. Elsa, thank you to you and your team and everything for having another great year of a clean audit. I think ever since I've been on council, they've been clean and they've been 100% accurate. So I really like it. I really appreciate how well you and the team really put forth that effort, make sure that we are complying with everything and always have a clean audit. So thank you. I appreciate that. That's all I have.

Yes, the only thing I would add is we audit well over 25 municipalities from large cities to small towns. And I was asked at one meeting, are all audits this smooth? And unfortunately, the answer is no. But you all have a very good accounting staff in place that know their jobs and do a very good job. And it makes the audit process very clean and smooth as a result of that. So you guys got a good group there.

I just, it doesn't show up. Oh, you can see it? Okay. I just want to echo what the mayor mentioned. It's great to know that we had open transparency. Granted, I know that we do that, but it's always good to hear it from someone else. And it's great that our finance department was able to work with you well. As you mentioned, three audit reports, three clean opinions, which is amazing. It's been like that in the past, and it's going to continue that way. And thank you, Elsa. for taking also the torch and also for the team as well for taking this on. So thank you.

A fantastic job as well. I really appreciate it. So look forward to hearing another one in another year.

All right, well, thank you very much. I know you have other items on your work study session agenda, so I will let you guys get to it.

All right, well, thank you.

Appreciate it.

All right, next on our agenda is the code amendment discussion, wildfire resiliency code. We'll hear from staff.

Thank you so much.

Let's see here. Purpose of this work session item is to discuss the city's consideration and adoption of the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code, which was adopted by the state of Colorado on July 1st, 2025. The CWRC was created through Senate Bill 23, Later amended by the Senate Bill 25-142 and establishes statewide wildfire resiliency standards for designated wildland urban interface areas. The City of Evans contains a limited designated WUI area and is therefore subject to CWRC. WUI area identified within the City of Evans is relatively small and primarily associated with areas containing open space, natural vegetation, drainage corridors, undeveloped land interfaces where urban development transitions into areas with elevated wildfire risk potential. The mapped WUI area does not impact the majority of existing residential neighborhoods or broader developed portions of the city. Instead, the code would generally apply only to specific properties or future development areas identified within the state wildfire hazard mapping system. Rather than creating a separate local wildfire hazard map, which would be costly and technically complex, staff are recommending that city utilize state designated wildfire hazard map for consistency with Weld County, Evans Fire Protection District, and surrounding jurisdictions. The state map provides the baseline for where the code applies and may continue to be updated by the state over time. The proposed approach, also emphasizes coordinated with Evans Fire Protection District through a future intergovernmental agreement that will clearly define the responsibilities between the city and the fire district. Under the proposed framework, the city would primarily administer the structural and building related components of the code through existing permit and inspection process. Structural and building components include, Ignition-resistant roofing and siding materials, ember-resistant vents and openings, window and exterior door standards, deck and attachment construction requirements, building materials compliance reviews, and structural plan review and inspections during construction. This is known as hardening in the code when a structure doesn't meet the current requirements. These responsibilities align closely with the city's existing building division functions and would largely be integrated into the current permitting and inspection procedures. The Evans Fire Protection District would primarily focus on wildfire mitigation and defensible space components of the code consistent with state law and the fire district's recently adopted resolution. Fire district responsibilities, which Joe is here to support me with, vegetation and fuels management, requirements, defensible space standards, excess and emergency response considerations, site level wildfire mitigation coordination, inspection coordination, administration of portions of the code through cooperative agreements or other enforcement mechanisms authorized under the state statute. Fire District has recently adopted a resolution establishing a framework for a regional consistency and coordination with Lowell County and local municipalities that's attached to this packet. Staff believe this coordinated approach provides several benefits, consistency across jurisdictions, reduced duplication of inspections and administration, lower implementation costs, and clear responsibility between agencies. Implementation of the CWRC is anticipated to create some additional plan review and inspection workload for city staff. However, staff believe the majority of the responsibilities can be incorporated within existing permitting inspection and fee structures with minimal operational impact. There may be limited future administrative costs associated with the development of the intergovernmental agreement and coordination efforts with the Evans Fire Protection District and Weld County. Additionally, development projects located within designated WUI areas may experience increased construction costs associated with wildfire building materials and mitigation requirements established by the code. At this time, staff do not participate or anticipate a significant direct financial impact to the city's general fund. Staff are requesting City Council direction regarding adoption of the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code, continued coordination with Evans Fire Protection District in Weld County, and preparation of the future intergovernmental agreement outlining enforcement and administrative responsibilities between the city and the fire district. Any questions?

Any questions, comments?

I didn't get my slides passed very well here. Thanks for the presentation. I want to move this closer so you can hear me. I just wanted to say I really appreciate this. I think it's something that we do need. And I think it's a great way for the city and the fire district to become closer together and work better together. And anything like this that we can do that just strengthens the bonds because the fire district is an important partner. I'm really glad that we're moving forward with things like this, working in conjunction with them. So thank you, Chief. Thank you, sir. That's all.

Council Member Neill.

I just have a curiosity question for the Chief. Does the district currently have an intergovernmental agreement with the state? wildlife stationed out by Hill and Park to assist or?

Yeah, we do. So we, through a, sorry, thanks, through mutual aid agreements, so the state wildland engine that's out there is part of Front Range Fire Rescue, which we do have a existing mutual and automatic aid with them. And so they just incorporate that crew with our crews as well. and so they get dispatched automatically when they're in service. And right now, I'm not sure what the summer season looks like for them, but typically it's like eight to 10 hours a day, Monday through Friday, I believe, and they're looking at going seven days a week. So it's not overnights, it's just during the days right now. But we do have intergovernmental agreement with them and with all the surrounding agencies. Okay, thank you, Chief. Yes, sir?

Councilmember Johnson.

I also echo what was mentioned. No, this is great. I think any kind of mitigation when it comes to wildfire is important, especially in the areas like where 49th is and where our hunting grounds are as well. It is important. And then it states, so I also agree the collaboration between the fire department and the city is important. Outside of what has been mentioned, is there any also ways where the community can ensure or even acquire kind of like smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors through the fire department? I know Well County does certain things to help, but do you all do any of that?

We do, and we also do stuff, we're pretty active with the American Red Cross, and so we can either get those devices from them or send those people to the American Red Cross, and they will actually go out to those houses and install them.

Oh, perfect. Okay, that's good. That's great. It's just some of the questions that have been brought up, some residents have mentioned if there's any kind of, program that we have, so I can definitely, is it okay to send them to you? Absolutely. Or to the website? Is there like a resource link of any sort?

Yeah, send them to the website and feel free to give them my email address and they will, my email address is all over the website as well, so just have them get a hold of me through that and then I can further direct them and get them the stuff they need.

And in the past, has there been any kind of outreach to ensure that everyone has smoke detectors? you know, available in their homes, especially in the areas that have been highlighted as critical.

That is one of the things that I wish we could do better at, and I think that's one of our goals for the rest of the year and, you know, the future is to be better at outreach for the smoke detectors and CO detectors, but also through the wildland urban interface stuff I think we'll work on getting the state's got materials to send out to everybody that we can put on our social media that I will share with the city as well that you guys can share. And then look for any opportunities, National Night Out, different neighborhood HOA meetings. I'd be more than happy to attend those. So if any of the HOA members would like, I would be more than happy to come and provide information. So I will look at, But the state said they're going to have stuff to send out about that, and I'll see if I can get that from them.

Oh, that's perfect. Because I know in the past, this was a while, gosh, maybe 10 years ago or more, United Way used to have something where volunteers would go out and do that for, like, the community. But since then, I haven't heard of anything like that. So I was wondering if it went, like, to the specific jurisdictions to do it instead.

Yeah, United Way, those – Those organizations, they've kind of pulled back a little bit, so I think they've kind of kicked it to Red Cross.

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

All right. I don't see any other additional questions or comments from council, so, yeah, let's move forward with the ordinances we were going to propose in the code. Perfect. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Dave.

David. Spontane.

Spontane, yeah.

All right, next on our agenda is a code amendment discussion of our favorite topic, accessory dwelling units. We'll hear from staff.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Michael Hall, City Planner with the City of Evans. This evening we'll be discussing the renewed pursuit of code amendments related to accessory dwelling units, or ADUs. City staff does seek to provide an advisory update to City Council tonight that the code amendments regarding ADUs will be presented to City Council at forthcoming hearing dates via an ordinance. Previously, the City Council and City of Staff discussed code amendments related to accessory dwellings on December 17, 2024 work session. Staff at that time was directed to proceed with drafting the code amendments that would improve clarity and application of ADUs to advance the needs of the city and the residents. Throughout 2025, staff drafted a previous version of the ADU ordinance, which was presented to Planning Commission in September 2025, which passed. And then Evan Staff then presented the first reading of the ordinance of the draft ADU code changes to city council for approval on November 18th, 2025. And at this time, city council denied the ordinance and the pending ADU process effectively ceased at that time. Following additional clarification and education between the city and the state, the benefits of adopting local controlling code are better understood. And currently, the city does not have any updated language on ADUs. We have some brief old language that's been hold over, but it's none of the updated language that's been circulating. By adopting the new code, the city will have the express authority now to regulate ADUs in a manner that is consistent with the interests of the city, and it gives actually better control over ADUs versus if we did not do an ordinance. As a result, the city staff has been directed by the city manager to revisit the subject ADU code amendments, which again are principally intended to improve the local the local land use regulation aspect. Important to note, however, though, by adopting this proposed code amendments, the city will also be compliant with one of the many strategic growth laws that have come out of the state of Colorado, in particular, that House Bill 2024-1152. This will benefit the city as noncompliance with the state does negatively affect grant funding to the city and reduces the competitive standing of the city relative to other municipalities. We've had several conversations with DOLA staff and have a better understanding of how that works. Essentially it's a priority tier and there's seven or so ever increasing strategic growth laws and each municipality is graded if you are in compliance or not in compliance with one of those. So given the relatively low impact to the city as a whole and this gives us more control versus what we currently have, it's almost a low hanging fruit to knock this one out fight other battles another day. As previously discussed with council, it's anticipated the overall impact of proposed code amendments will be low. The demand for ADUs in the city remains minimal and the financial barrier to entry related to new utility service infrastructure and permits combined with the limited stock of eligible parcels will likely not result in a significant influx of ADUs. And to illustrate this point, this is just a simple image of a portion of the Willowbrook subdivision. There are no lots right now that could really accommodate a detached ADU. So a perception or fear or just a reservation that this would really change the character of the neighborhood. Yes, while they may be allowed on the zoning aspect through all residential zone districts, they are restricted in many other facets, whether that's lot coverage, setbacks, the utility provisions, then you get into the building permit world, we would be treating these just like a single family residence. And that's one of the things that the state regulations basically force us to do, but we can use that and basically it allows us to really capitalize if someone wants to do one of these out here, it's just like building a single family residence. So the actual number of parcels and the likelihood that this would be realized is low. really the takeaway of this, this is just one of the options. This is a modest contributor to a housing solution. If it is the right property, the property owner wants to pursue it, follows the regulations of the code, then they can do so. But again, it's not a broad sweeping solution. As stated, the chief intention of the proposed code amendments would protect and advance the interests of the city while providing those housing or a housing opportunity. And there is mixed feedback. I'm sure you've heard that. But it's supposed to gear towards attainable or affordable housing, multi-generational, and just an alternative housing option for folks. Hard to see how that would play out relative to the demand in the City of Evans. But one of the benefits, if it does take on in whatever capacity that is, It allows densification infill and can increase other city council goals, whether that's economic resiliency. or whatnot by not having to extend other infrastructure to raw greenfield lands and you get that same impact of potential additional residents, so it does have a benefit on that side. This slide actually illustrates what we're referring to Okay, this is several things about an ad you. The ADU is a subordinate second residence on the same principal lot. So it's a single residence, does not get conveyed separately. It contains all the standard features of a regular residence, such as a separate entrance, full kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. I mentioned this, but it cannot be sold separately without doing any type of replat option. And looking at any of those properties in Willowbrook, they're not eligible. They don't meet whether it's the frontage, the minimum lot size. So you're not going to be really seeing a lot of those negative effects that would come out of doing two ADUs and now the rampant replatting. It's not feasible for other controlling aspects of the code. And then it can take many forms, you can see them out here, but it could be attached above a garage it could be garage it could be a converted garage basement attic it could be an addition to a existing residence or it could be a separate detached structure. Regarding financials, there really is no direct financial impact to the city as far as the code amendments. It's all been drafted on the staff time. The administration of ADUs is where that aspect would come in, and really it's just any type of standard building and plan review and impact fees. So we would be assessing all those fees as it would be a standard residence. Regarding the work session today, no formal city council action is requested at this time. Again, this was advisory to let you know we are bringing these code changes forward. The proposed ADU code amendments ordinance will be formally presented to city council with first reading on June 16th and the second reading on July 7th. And then for reference, planning commission, although they originally heard this in September of 2025, given there was a few updated aspects to the ordinance, we did re-bring this back to planning commission and at their meeting last week on May 26th, they did review this ordinance and unanimously recommended it for approval to city council. So happy to answer any questions, and thank you for your time.

Great. Thank you, Michael. Great presentation. Questions, comments of staff? Go ahead, Council Member Johnson.

So what about the retroactiveness of this? So let's say someone has an ADU, per se. And this is hypothetical, but just humor me for this example. they have something almost close to an ADU. But now with this new ordinance and the ability to create ADUs, they convert it by adding the additional components to, in essence, make it an ADU. How does that look like? Are they able to utilize that structure that, in essence, was already on its way to becoming an ADU, unbeknownst to the city? How would we go about something like that?

Great question. There's a few aspects there. The first to take away is there probably already and will always be more unpermitted ADUs in the city than permitted ADUs. That's a fact that we're going to have to live with. But one of the benefits of this code is that it can get more people in compliance today. versus not pursuing the code, and those are still going to happen out there. So at least there's now a vehicle to move forward on these and capture some of the design considerations to make it as most compatible as possible with the neighborhood and generally with the city of Evans. On specific properties that are already primed on their way to becoming an ADU, already have it out there, So one of the aspects that comes out of this in the ordinance that you'll see, there's an express ADU permit. At any time, an applicant can apply for this ADU permit. It's administrative only, so there is no elected official review. It's really you demonstrate compliance and we issue the permit. So if there's a will, there's a way in this type of application. Where it gets tricky with folks is What outlay, what level of investment are they willing to do on this? So most of the time, if it's out there, we're not seeking these. If we receive a complaint on them and explore that, identify that there's a violation, we would then enforce that under the municipal code, which would be, what's your path to compliance? How do we remedy this? It's the ADU permit. Where I can see that potentially be a sticking point is again, okay, water dedication. we're not allowing them just to hook up. Because if you had 100 houses in a neighborhood and all of a sudden now there's 200, the infrastructure wasn't set up for that. The city's water yield is not there to support that. So we do have to account for some of those things. So that really would be, is it worth it for them to move forward on that and dedicate an additional water rights to the property? The lines have to be upsized. It's really going to come down to some of those technical factors and is it worth it financially, but that's the right of the private property owner to make that determination for themselves. Otherwise, they'll have to go through a building permit process to update the structure, whatever it happens to be, whether it's a garage, and basically change of occupancy as needed to make sure it's appropriate for residents and for habitation.

But that's great to hear because I think that's now with this, as you mentioned, it will allow the community to be in compliance. So it's not like they can shy away if they're already kind of on their way there and just make it right. So that's a good thing. I was curious about that just because, again, as you know, sometimes things pop up in certain people's houses. But at least they have the ability to make it right. And then if they decide to sell, it is designated as an ADU.

Yep, it stays with the property. If they convert it back, they certainly are able to do that. And another aspect, this ADU is really geared to a fully separate. This ADU could function as its own outside of the scope of the primary residence. Granted, in the code, it still has to be subordinate. So we're not creating two that are totally divergent from one another. There's still a relationship there between the two. but it could be converted back into another structure or it could be integrated. Say there's no door that separates the main living quarters from a guest bedroom that happens to have a kitchenette, a canning kitchen, an entertainment area that people flexibly use for their needs as a family. The city's not in the business of going out and enforcing what a family is, of going into people's homes and seeing how these relationships come out. And I would say the biggest thing out of this is going to be the detached ADUs. A lot of the attached ones, it's going to be very hard to see where that is split. The attached ones are more flagrant, easily identifiable. And for that, you need large land anyway, which is where you're allowed to do them in the current code. So overall impact to City of Evans operations, where we're going, it's fairly low, I would anticipate.

Councilmember new I Think you answered part of my question, but I know several people that have converted Their garage into a living space Is that automatically under this I state legislation considered an auxiliary dwelling unit if they just have other family members or something living in there?

No, most of those, I have folks in my neighborhood that have garage conversions, and the garage door is even removed. That doesn't mean that that's an ADU, as long as it's still fully integrated. ADUs, they have a kitchen, bathroom. It's separate, there's no internal, there could be, I presume, but the main thing, it has a separate entrance, it can function as a complete independent living facility. There would be no reason to go into the remainder of the primary residence. So that's really the category. In addition, an expansion, a conversion, whether that's a basement, whether you rent out a bedroom above a house but still have full use of the facilities downstairs, That wouldn't qualify as an ADU.

In order to be an ADU, it has to be a dwelling unit. And to be a dwelling unit, it has to have sleeping facilities, kitchen facilities, toiletry facilities. So whatever their addition is, unless it has those fundamental basics of a dwelling unit, it wouldn't qualify. Thank you.

Council Member Crabtree.

So as we were having this discussion, first of all, thank you. My concern arose because it sounded like it was more beneficial for the city, being low-hanging fruit, and it became more of a burden for the homeowner, and the above garage ADU came to my front thought of the upsized water tap. If someone, a homeowner, took their oversized garage and translated that into an ADU, truly made it into an ADU, But then you could not upsize that tab because they would have tapped into their current water system and their sewer system because they couldn't upsize that water system. But then you really had changed and said you're really focusing on that detached home from the knowledge you continue. But then that would that detached home that would require that separate water system and that separate water tap. So it's kind of a hybrid model at that point. If you have the economic means to, and the property, to build that detached system, then you can do that capital expansion. But if you are going to do a small ADU above the garage, the barriers to entry aren't as going to be as great, and it won't be as much of a financial burden on the city as if just having an additional family member moving into your home. Am I understanding this correctly?

The specifics of the ADU permit of how we're going to evaluate it have not yet been created. Mm-hmm. So out of this ordinance that would charge the creation of an ADU permit, those are the type of details that would be addressed to see how we're going to handle those nuances. But again, for an above garage conversion or even a garage conversion, that would include, I'll say an above garage conversion, if it meets all of those but one of those, it's not an ADU.

Well, let's say it actually had all of them and it would consider itself an ADU. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't making all the benefit to the city and made it a burden to our residents and made it too capital intensive. If someone wanted to have an ADU and wanted to convert that garage into an ADU, that the city then would have to say, yeah, you have to upsize your water. You have to upsize your sewer. And it doesn't sound like we're going to impose that because physically you couldn't. you could not ask a resident to re-water, re-plumb their entire home just to redo that garage. But if they had a detached system, that is a reasonable ask.

Yeah, I'm not sure how you would address the water demand on the above garage ADU. On the one hand, if the existing, it's usually a three-quarter inch service line, and if that three-quarter inch service line satisfies the anticipated demand of that, because the ADU is typically a smaller unit, usually between 500 and 700 square feet. So, for example, some municipalities, when they are calculating ADUs, and Evans does this as well, if it is a multifamily, they're typically smaller, so you require instead of a full SFE for a single-family resident, you just require 0.6 of an SFE. So I think that, as Michael said, as we work through the application process, we'll have to make sure that that it's not an undue burden if the system can handle it with its existing plumbing. But if you are going to start putting strains on the system and having a lot more water demand than your mains were built for, then I think you are going to have to start looking at, you know, how do we address that? Because you don't have extra water.

You can't squeeze more water out of a tap. Right.

And you don't have extra water rights. You know, whether that means that if you get to a certain point and you require part of a CBT unit, if you want to add an ADU, I think those are things we're just going to have to work out as we go through the process.

I appreciate that comment.

And just one other comment. I mean, I know that I don't think there's anyone in local government or very few in local government that are not offended by the overreach by the state in imposing this. If you guys wanted to to allow ADUs, that should be your decision. And I think everyone in the local government recognizes that. We thought there might be some challenges to the bill by now, and they haven't occurred. But we still think there are – I spoke with CML's attorney, Robert Sheasley, and he said that there are a couple municipalities that are still preparing to make challenges to the act. So even if you have to sort of hold your nose and swallow this particular overreached by the state government. It might be temporary, might not be, but there is likely to be challenge to the act. I mean, it really is a zoning issue. And historically, the case law says that zoning matters are uniquely local in nature. So that's the nature of the challenge.

Thank you, gentlemen. Good to know. Thank you. Council Member Johnson?

I'm glad you brought that up, because I was kind of in line with what I was going to ask. Because I know that was one of the grievances when this initially came in with that bigger bill, and then they decided to kind of, you know, remove certain parts and pass those through. it was an infrastructure component of it because the whole upsizing, and especially for small municipalities like Evans, we already have a hard time with our infrastructure. And one of the things that I had brought up was are you gonna provide us with monies to be able to upsize our infrastructure because this would create undue harm to a system that's already vulnerable. Now where we are, with the water component of this, there's an attach and detach. So regardless of either, typically a single family home, it's a one acre foot, right? Or is it one EQR?

One EQR. It's about six tenths of an acre foot.

So is there like a formula based off like the square footage or the lot size? Because how would you know like if you would need additional water to the one in order to, if someone decided to do an ADU, for example. As you mentioned, it's like 500 to 700 square feet. The surface line is three quarters of an inch. Typically, how would you, I mean, I guess we're in the premium stages, I guess, to really identify that right now. But I was just curious because water is expensive.

Yeah, and you, Michael probably knows this better than I do, but in general, it's based on tap size. So a single-family resident typically has a three-quarter-inch tap, and you could have a small home with a three-quarter-inch tap or a big home with a three-quarter-inch tap. If you get too big a home, then you can buy a larger tap, a one-inch tap, for example, but it becomes fairly expensive to do that. And at this point, I don't think we really break it down in terms of the square footage of the home is this size. I think we break it down by category of single family resident versus multifamily. And I think you may even break it down further for mobile homes. But to do sort of that more specific demand based on the square footage of the house, you're not to that point yet. I don't know, is that?

That's correct. The city doesn't have that level of detail. It's single family residents, detached. That's your standard home. It's like 0.65 EQR and multifamily 0.35. It's a reduction thereof. There's always new potential housing types that come online, and we can evaluate those. We consider them for a moment, and then the project has moved on. So there really hasn't been any further refining as far as is that the right method to go. Well, over time, it kind of averages out when you look at all the different size of single-family homes, and it's the average result of acquiring water over, you know, 100 years of the city or 50 years of the city as far as the infrastructure goes. So it goes into that extension of here's what you pay for the water service. Oversizing, I'm sure there could be an exceptional case. Maybe the Wells property, you know, when that would come in and see, okay, this is out of the ordinary. How do we scope this out? Is it bedroom, bathroom? It's atypical. It's evaluated at that time, but that's It's not in the current scope or parameters for doing business.

And now the other part of that is the waste component. Would that be measured anywhere close to that? Is there an upsizing of any of that that is needed?

There are impact fees associated with that as far as the building permit. That's really where all of this would come. So how the ADU permit, and I don't want to speak to the ordinance itself since that's not the subject for tonight's evening. or discussion, but we'll certainly get into that. But the ADU permit itself, the idea of it is you do that and preload before building permit. We wanna get folks approved on a relatively simple, I think we had originally thought 250 or $500 application fee for the ADU permit. And that's assuring you're complying with the ADU requirements. And you can't get a building permit. You can't apply for a building permit until you get the ADU permit. We don't want folks going out and doing construction and buying water and doing that until they're actually moving forward with the building permit. And that's what the current building permit process is. You don't, or planning process, you don't buy water when you're doing a site plan. You do it when you're ready to do the building. Because we also don't want to have our water shares tied up for projects that may never actually be built. So it's at the time of building permits. So that's when they would do that in any additional or any standard impact fee such as wastewater stormwater transportation.

Thank you.

So I'm going to be quick but Scott crop reminded me of one of the things I did not like last time. I'm still 100 percent for this. This is not a hill worth dying on. We need the state funding. But I will say, and I want this on the record because I feel like it's almost like we're being forced to overstep our bounds. One of the things that I remember in the bill is that we prohibit HOAs from making language in their bylaws saying that they won't allow HOAs. And so to those HOAs, I'm saying we are doing this because the state is forcing us to. And it's not something I'm willing to lose state funding over. But, you know, if the state's going to kind of overstep their bounds and force us to kind of overstep our bounds, I guess, so be it.

So be it.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Next on our agenda is the Axiom contract. consolidation technology, modernization, and 10-year extension agreement. And we'll hear from staff.

Okay.

Um, good, good evening mayor and council. Um, so the focus of tonight is for me to just bring up for discussion and extension of the axon contract that the police department uses. Um, it's not just really on extension of the contract itself, but it's, it's also an expansion of our technology within the police department. It's bringing our technology significantly forward, um, with regard to what we're doing. Um, So this contract looks at a 10-year technology assurance plan. It consolidates six existing contracts that we have with Axon currently into one unified agreement, secures fixed technology prices for the next 10 years through 2036, and expands operational and investigative technology capabilities for the department. And that's a big deal. We are not a very technologically advanced police department, and this will provide some significant improvements for us over the next 10 years. Modernizes Evans PD technology infrastructure. The current annual cost of our Axon contract is $271,045.84 a year. And that includes the new building with our new rooms and technology that's in the buildings. The proposed annual cost increase would move it to $284,358.59, an annual increase of $13,312. And as I go through this later, I'll tell you that some of that money I can actually absorb in the budget currently because of the technology we're using. So public safety demands, again, they continue to increase. Customer service and service expectations from our community continues to increase. Increased digital evidence with the implementation of body cameras statutorily required by the state in 2020. The digital evidence management requirements are significant. Need for faster investigations and regional coordination, that's a key. Greeley has expended significant amounts of money to upgrade their technology and to run a real-time crime center throughout their community. One of the proposed benefits of this is that we'll see long-term cost stability, we'll see hardware refresh cycles for our equipment, our body cams, our in-car cameras, our tasers, the different equipment that we use, our software programs, integrated public safety ecosystem, regional inoperability enhancements, interoperability enhancements, and that's what goes back to that Greeley piece. They've invested a significant amount of money, and we can use this technology update to move into their infrastructure and actually work with them in a much more meaningful way. And then again, that operational efficiency and improvement. Some of the new technology capabilities. FUSIS real-time crime center. What this will do is it provides 150 core video processing pieces into our system that we currently do not have any of. And it allows the officers to obtain that infrastructure within their squad cars, on their MDTs, on their phones. real-time video prior to the arrival at a scene if video is available from the location. We can incorporate businesses into this, so there'll be an outreach through Axon with our business community to incorporate their video systems into our technology in addition to the 150 video screens that we have capability of adding over time. It includes four outpost ALPR camera systems, and I'll get into that a little bit later in the process so you can understand what that means, and I can answer questions for you. Enhanced live streaming capabilities through our telephones and through our MDTs in the cars. Advanced evidence sharing systems so that we can share our evidence with other jurisdictions and communities when there are cross-jurisdictional issues with crime. Drone integration and infrastructure to include a new drone. Enhanced analytics and investigative tools and retail crime hub integration so that we can work with our other communities that are having retail crime, organized retail crime concerns for large box stores, right? And then this is a focus of transforming our Evans PD into a modern, integrated, intelligence-driven public safety agency. So, I just lost what I just lost there. Hold on. All right, so... This is a quick demonstration of some of the technology that we can improve on within the department. I won't go through this.

Suspected hit and run. Victim is injured but in stable condition.

Hey, my name is Officer Beckwith. I'm here to help, okay? Hold on. I'm gonna translate. Did you see the car that hit you? Yes, it was a red Mustang. It moved and hit a right.

Yes, yes, a red Mustang was in this. Moved and made a right.

Suspected hit-and-run driver heading southbound on Bear Parkway in a red Ford Mustang.

Plane number 285, Victor Hotel, Echo Uniform, last seen traveling westbound on Spring Street. Captain, suspect has a parole violation. 109 is nearby.

Okay, let him know.

Yes, sir.

Car 109 to dispatch.

I have that red hit-and-run Mustang headed west on Spring Street. How you doing, sir? I need to see your driver's license, please.

Anything I can help you with, sir?

What we got?

Sir, need to put that back.

911, this is Michael Harris with Secure Solutions Global Security Operations Center. We are currently witnessing a crime in progress at our store location at 1201 North Wilmington. The crime appears to be a robbery in progress. This is a stolen vehicle. Let's get a drone out there.

Suspect car located heading north on Columbus.

So I'll stop it there and I'll just jump ahead. All of the technology you just saw in that aspect is actual real technology being used currently today by real-time crime centers and through FUSIS. So the language line kind of attached to the body cams, right? We did a 60-day trial of that recently. We just concluded that 60-day trial about two weeks ago. That's kind of what sparked me pushing this reimplementation of this contract, renegotiation of the contract. The cost of that system alone is $14,000. The cost of upgrading our systems to a 10-year contract, moving everything under one, is $13,000. We're going to get a lot more technology and advancements over that 10-year process than simply buying that next tool, which allows us to translate through our body cameras. And the purpose of that just kind of provides that opportunity for us to move through the next stage of technology within our police department. If I can get out of this, I'll get to the rest of them. All right. ENHANCING THE PUBLIC SAFETY THROUGH OUR DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH IS WHAT I'M LOOKING TO BRING FORWARD WITH THIS UPDATE, RIGHT? IT RAPIDLY IDENTIFIES STOLEN VEHICLES, REAL-TIME ALERTS FOR FELONY VEHICLE BOLOS, AMBER ALERTS AND MISSING PERSONS. AND THIS IS THE ALPR PIECE TO THIS, AND I'LL GET A LITTLE FURTHER INTO THAT AS WE PROCEED. Increase the ability to investigate violent crime, organized retail crime, vehicle-related offenses. Improve officer situational awareness because we will have information on vehicles as they proceed through our community. Enhance regional information sharing with our neighboring law enforcement agency. I want to try to capitalize on Greeley's technology so that we can work more in a regional way, right? Their crime's our crime and our crime is their crime. capitalizing on that technology so that we can share some of that intelligence back and forth in real time really provides a significant force multiplier for us within our police department. The operational benefits, again, it functions as a force multiplier during staffing shortages, provides continuous monitoring in high risk and corridors and problem areas, reduces investigative time through searchable databases and vehicle intelligence, supports evidence-based deployment and proactive policing strategies, And some of the values is it just creates that infrastructure for that real-time crime center. While we will probably not get to the point where I need to run a 24-hour real-time crime center the way Greeley is currently, us capitalizing on their investment and being able to coordinate with them through our technology and shared intelligence through our systems, that is a force multiplier for both Greeley and for Evans Police Department. And I've had communications with Chief Turk on just that kind of regional capacity for what we're looking to do. And then it integrates with public safety technologies and investigative systems throughout the state and positions the city for future technology opportunities. When we look at the technology as a staff multiplier, it really enhances officer safety through policy. Pre-arrival intelligence utilizing cameras anywhere we have them in the city. Currently, we have about nine cameras throughout the city that we utilize. But those feeds are simply in our police department live. There is no access to those feeds by officers in the field. They can't get them on their phones. They can't get them in the squad cars. It's a tool that we can use for investigation backwards, but we can't use it in live real time. This operation systems will allow that to be live real time, viewable in the squad cars, viewable in the in the phones on the officers, right? As that technology expands to businesses and other community members that may want to share community cameras with us, that opportunity just is a force multiplier throughout. It expands live stream and body-worn camera integration. You saw in the video where they were able to view live in real-time cameras for an officer in the field. I can currently do that, but I need to be at a desktop computer right now. This will move to the MDTs in the cars. So our supervisors can do it in the field. Our officers can do it in the field. So if we have an officer in a circumstance, gives us real GPS information for the location, and we can watch live what is happening both on their fleet camera and on their body-worn camera. Improved situational awareness for all the officers responding to scenes. If we have any type of camera facilities within the area, faster access to evidence and intelligence, AI assistant language translation support, which you saw earlier in the video, and that is what we've tested. There's still some languages that we specifically need, and Axon is working on pulling those languages into our system. Burmese and Haitian Creole are two languages that are not currently in the system that are scheduled to come into the system. Those are two languages that we use quite often. It's worked very well for us in Spanish, But those two languages, they're currently working on adding to the system for us at this time. Unlimited transcription services, which we have currently, and reduced administrative workload, increased proactive patrol availability through this technology. Some of the case management pieces, there's evidence sharing systems that we can utilize with not just Greeley, but with any police department that's using AXA, which is an overwhelming majority of police departments. So we get enhanced sharing capabilities with the new technology, plus updates through the software. Improved digital evidence workflows, which helps our digital technician with the ability to redact and make available when required by law to the public and or to prosecutors when they're prosecuting cases. Analytical search capabilities, faster case review and preparation, just improved evidence accessibility through the system. It improves our public records processing system through our digital technician, enhanced redaction capabilities that allows that redaction to be done quicker and more conveniently through the AI systems. and improved evidence release management with stronger accountability, auditing, tracking, and all of that. When we look at the four fixed ALPR systems, because this is the most controversial piece of this increase, right? So this would put four fixed ALPR systems. I don't know if you are aware, but we currently have ALPR in the city right now. All of our squad cars have ALPRs in them. So our fleet three system is ALPR. In order for those ALPRs to read in a car in the public way, we have to pass that car and it has to be visible plate, right? So we have to be moving past that vehicle. The vehicle could be parked, it could be moving, it could be in a multitude of ways, but we have that technology currently. These fixed ALPR systems would be identified for locations throughout the city, main corridors focusing on high volume traffic areas, areas around retail establishments where we see increased theft, increased organized crime, and or areas where we see significant traffic flow so that we can have a maximization of that technology. Regional vehicle alert integration. So it allows us to work with the real-time crime center in Greeley. They would get our reads and they'd be able to read those alerts and know whether or not we have any type of stolen vehicle in the area, active warrants in the area, AMBER alerts, missing persons, those type of alerts would be live and automatic to our officers in the squad cars on their phones and to the Real-Time Crime Center in Greeley. Support for criminal introduction operations. That's kind of the stuff we do with our battle operations when we're working with our Motor Vehicle Theft Task Force throughout the state. That's a northern region task force that we work with on a monthly basis. We do monthly missions with them. Improved stolen vehicle and wanted vehicle detection and recovery. Cities that have ALPR technology have an increased recovery of stolen property. For people who have stolen motor vehicles, we're able to identify those vehicles more often, quicker, and recover that property for the victims. Supports violent crime investigations. When we have violent crime, which, knock on wood, we've been doing really well this year, but when we do have violent crime, and it's inevitable, every community has it, it is an investigative tool for our detectives and our officers to go back and be able to see transparency in and out of our community is key with regard to investigations in developing weeds. It assists us in suspect vehicle tracking, enhances regional intelligence sharing, and improves real-time capabilities for our officers in the field. So when we look at the financial summary of this, our current cost, $271,045. Proposed consolidated agreement moves us to $284,358 on an annual basis, and that's a $13,000 increase. I think $4,000 to $8,000 of my current budget can be pulled out of the budget and used in this manner. Right now, I'm using about $10,000 annually. Last year, I used 13, but my budget line item is 10 for language line. I think that I will not be able to get rid of language line completely. There'll always be a need for it, but it's a per-use, non-contractual agreement. It's just when I use it, I gotta pay for it, right? This $4,000 to $8,000 can be pulled from our budget to use in that $13,000 differential, one, and then we'll need a small increase to backfill whatever that gap is, maximum, obviously, of the $13,000 that it shows, right? This gives us a lot of long-term fixed pricing through 2036, so it really does provide stability for the police department in some cost areas over the next 10 years and gives us updated equipment over that time frame as well. four body camera refresh cycles during that 10 years, one taser refresh cycle, and three drone refresh cycles. There is a drone add to this process, so we won't have drones on a roof of a building that'll fly, but we'll have a patrol drone, and that patrol drone is not like the drones we have right now. The patrol drones we have right now, an officer can send it up, and they have to control it the entire time. This patrol drone will be able to be launched by an officer in the field, but taken over by Greeley's Real-Time Crime Center and flown for us in collaboration with us while our officers go back to work in the field and do what they need to do. Because anytime I have an officer flying that drone, I take that individual out of the mix into whatever we're doing. So really can fly that drone and land that drone for us if necessary while we handle other processes in the emergency. So the long-term strategic benefit of this modernization is it gives us some predictable technology costs, reduces our future capital exposure just because we have those replacement built into the contract, scalable infrastructure supporting kind of working as an infrastructure with the Greeley Police Department, enhancing regional inoperability through that real-time crime center, modernizing investigative and operational capabilities. That is an ALPR piece where we have additional resources out there that Provide investigative leads for our officers and detectives to work off of. Improves our officer safety without question because it gives us real-time intelligence prior to arrival at the scene. And it's a fully integrated, modernized technology ecosystem capable of supporting Evans PD operation through the next decade for sure. Are there more technology advances? Of course. That's the one thing about technology. It never stands still, right? It's always growing, always changing. Thank you. So my request for council really is just to review this. I've given you guys a pretty extensive contract piece to it, breaks it all down. I've given you a pretty good memorandum at length on all of the different pieces. Look at that, we'll come back at the next council meeting basically to provide you with an opportunity to authorize us to move forward in this or reject it. But that's the ask of this process for us. And again, some of the big keys, it's the long-term cost stability, the technology modernization. This moves us significantly forward. There's one more piece that I have that I'd like to look forward to in the near future, and that's a data integration system so that we can have access to a lot of our data a lot simpler. Our data is not very easily accessible. The interface is not intuitive. It is not easy for the officers to use. There's some software that we've investigated and kind of worked through that would provide that integration, and those two pieces together are significant improvements in our tech. This is really all technological. That's data-driven on the back end. That's an integration system. expanding our operational capabilities, enhancing our officer safety, and really focusing on that regional interoperability improvements that we just don't have at this time. With that, I will happily answer any questions you got. Great. Thank you, Chief. Mayor Pro Tem.

Yes. I'm sorry. One of the things you mentioned was sharing with local businesses, so I would like to use the one I work at as an example. So, Even though the reserve at Crescent Cove, the camera systems are not, from what I understand, Axon, we would still be able to share that information with you if we so chose or

Correct.

Okay.

So the way the system works is there are cores, right? So with the police department's process, we automatically earn 150 cores as part of our process, right? These cores are what is connected. It takes the network cameras you have at a business or any business or any private residence, and it feeds them to the cloud and then makes them accessible to us. So that core takes any camera system. It doesn't have to be the best of the best camera systems. It doesn't have to be a specific camera system. It'll take that system, as long as it is a wireless system, something that can be accessed either to a DVR or to a wireless cloud. They can capture that, put it into a cloud, and encrypt it and make it available to us, whether they make it available to us live or only in playback or whatever specific system parameters they want to put on it, the owner of that video controls it completely. So they have all the authorization. They can give it to us fully, or they can say you can have it live, or you can have it as a playback method. So you can't see it live, but you can automatically access anything that's in the cloud already. So it really works with pretty much any system.

And then would businesses have to, I don't know how to say this, I guess request it, request send you guys a request saying, hey, we want you to access this, would you send out that information to us and let us make that choice? How would that work?

It can be done either way. So it can be free. You can control those accesses live at any time, or you can provide that access up front. So the business has the total control of what we're allowed to see and when. And there is a cost to the business. It's pretty nominal. The Axon company will help us push the... information out to the public, what the costs are, share that with them. It is very reasonable from the perspective of a business. The cores, I want to say, are $200 to $300 as a one-time cost, and then there's a subscription of very low cost in less than $200 a year, I want to say it is, for the business to run that system and let us have access to their cameras and live feeds. But again, they still control. A good example is the schools. We can work with the schools, and the schools may want us to have access during an emergency, but they don't want us to have access during regular day-to-day operations, right? So in an emergency situation, a 911 call that was generated from there, the CAD would automatically give us access to the cameras at the school, right? So they have that level of control depending on the circumstances for the camera owners. Thank you for that.

Chief, I 100% support this for you and your officers. I think it's a great collaboration, not only upgrade in addition for us, but that mutual collaboration between our communities as well. I know a lot of people don't even area of work really ends and where Evans begins. And we both share a lot of mutual infrastructure and everything, mutual crime. So this is a great tool to collaborate and work together and build that network up. So I fully support this.

Yeah, Chief, just a couple questions. Kind of already over this AI bubble. How are we going to use a AI-assisted report writing system and ensure that it's not hallucinating? How are we going to ensure that an AI-supported language translation hasn't decided that Rojo which we saw in the video is red, isn't actually blue. I mean, I get very concerned when we are using AI technology to do things that standard technology has been able to do for years.

So interestingly, we already use the AI draft system. That's already in our system currently. That's not an add-on to this. It's currently in the system. And what it does is it takes the body camera, and it just takes everything that's in the body camera, all the communication between the officer and the individual and multiple individuals, and it – just creates a rough draft of the report. And in that report, it automatically adds multiple lines to it. Mickey Mouse is wearing a red dress today. The sky is orange and on fire. And it forces the officers to go back in and take these things out and reread their report and make sure that it's organized the way it's supposed to be organized so that it will not allow them to proceed through the process unless you go through and you make the changes that are mandated in the system, one. That's one of the checks and balances. The second checks and balances is that there's a full transcript of that process in our system as well, also already included in our system. So that the officers can see the translation live. So they can see the translation in the body cam as they're reviewing their body cam, they can see the translation in the process. And the officers have to review those reports, the supervisors have to review those reports, and they do have some fail safes in the system so they can't just push a report through and let the body cam do all the work. It just doesn't work like that. With regard to the language line, you saw an example of it there. Is it as perfect as that? Not perfect, but it is exceptionally good. And what I can tell you is that the language line is much worse. Language line, I have no idea what's being said on that language line. These two people are talking in a language I have no idea what it's saying is being said, and I can tell you time after time after time with my officers as well, we'll be sitting there and we'll have a one-minute conversation between these two individuals, and the language line will come back on the line and they'll say, he said no, the car was green. You just had a one-minute conversation. The conversation was not no, the car is green. There was a lot more to that. But that's the kind of translation we get. Here, we get a full body-worn camera process. We have everything that was said and a full transcript in the body cam for the officers to read and see. Can we certify, can an officer that's not speaking that language certify that that's what it is? No, but we have evidence of what was said. We have evidence of exactly what was produced. And then we have that translation of that and it can be compared against each other and used in a way that is far more meaningful because we can't record what's on the other side of that language line. And that's one of the weaknesses of that system. It's a great system in the sense that when you have no ability to communicate, that language line's critical. It's not a criticism of it. It's just the way it works. And I've watched it many, many times. I've operated it many, many times where, you know, I just had a one minute conversation with this individual and you've communicated back and forth and you gave me a one sentence answer. A lot more was said there than one sentence. So that's one of the pieces that this will provide a stronger review because we're not reaching outside. We're going to record it all. It's on the cameras. It's not perfect. It's not easy to use sometimes. Sometimes you've got to get a little bit of distance. You've got to get them to stop talking. You've got to translate. You've got to give them directions. But our officers are learning how to use it as they move through. Our 60-day demo of it is done, so we're kind of off of that system right now. The review from the officers was fantastic. They loved it. You know, there's noise when you're in a loud, crowded area. It's not great when you're in. Traffic, heavy traffic, you can have some things missed, but in general, again, it's recording that and giving us a live transcription of it at the time. So the AI features, one of the things I gave you in the packet was that there was a full AI bundle that had a lot of different AI tools and continuous upgrades to those AI tools. I didn't choose that selection simply because, one, it wasn't as cost-effective as I'd like it to be. This is pretty cost-effective where we're at right now. But second of all, the... The AI systems, while they have meaning, aren't all useful just yet. And in the systems that were functioning, some of those AI systems just weren't as useful for us as some of the other stuff is. So the stuff we have currently, I'm happy with its use. I like the safeguards that are in place. The added piece of this language piece is significant. I think it's valuable to us. But the remaining pieces weren't as valuable. So I didn't say, hey, let's chase all of this technology and up our costs $30,000 a year.

Thank you, Chief.

Council Member Johnson.

Hi. So for me, I just want to start by saying I do like the fact of taking our police department forward, especially when it comes to technology. My grievance, though, is that it's an ALPR. That is my grievance. In the city of Evans, we have approximately 46.4 to 48.2% of a Latino population. And that's not including other persons of color. That's just a Latino population. The history of these specific companies, Flock and Axon, is what's concerning to me, is the fact that they're known for data sharing to ICE. And unfortunately, the profiling that's happening quite often, regardless of whether they are here legally or illegally, it's happening constantly. It's happening here in our areas every single day, although not shown to the public at large. It is happening. And so that is my grievance. I do like what the capabilities of what we can do for our police department, but I question its integrity. And to me, I know that's one of our core values for the city. And I question the company's integrity. And so if we go with a company or we hire on or we are a part of something that there's a question of integrity, I do also question our city moving forward with any such type of contract. I would like to see something like that. selected with maybe another option. I know that Greeley does have flock cameras everywhere and I've seen them everywhere and that's kind of the system we would be tapping on to regionally just because flock and Axon in essence communicate together. It's the same kind of system. It's an ALPR. And I know right now, what is the system? It's an AL that we have right now?

We have ALPRs in the cars right now.

I'm sorry, for the speeding that we're going to bring online. It's Avis technology. Avis technology.

It's similar with slight variance. It's slightly different, and I can explain that for you.

And so my question for that, I appreciate the explanation, but is there an Avis technology comparable to what we have been presented instead of going with Axon?

No. So let me take this back. All of your concerns, completely reasonable. So let me just start working through them kind of one by one for you. I just threw a punch at you. It's okay. Let me just work through them one by one for you. So Axon and Flock are different companies. They are completely different companies. The ALPR technology works exactly the same regardless of the company. It's just reading the license plate of the car, right? That's all it does. That's what the Avis technology does as well. The difference between the Avis technology and the ALPR technology is the ALPR technology is immediately and live connected to our CCIC and NCIC databases both locally and nationwide. Avis technology is not. Avis technology collects the plate. reads the license plate, reads the speed of the car, and then is stored in a data system for someone to review at a future date only if the vehicle is speeding and or IN THE BACKGROUND, THE DATA IS STILL THERE. IF WE NEEDED IT IN AN INVESTIGATIVE PURPOSE, WE COULD USE IT, BUT IT IS NOT RUNNING ANYTHING LIVE OFF OF A DATABASE LIKE NCIC OR CCIC FOR WARRANTS, WHETHER THE CAR IS STOLEN, WHETHER THERE'S AN INDIVIDUAL OPERATING THAT MOTOR VEHICLE THAT HAS A SAFETY ALERT FOR AN OFFICER. That's the distinction between the two systems. One is live, one is not live. Avis technology just isn't live, right? It's doing exactly the same thing. It is running the plate, it is reading the plate, taking photos of the plate, and then down the line, a person has to go into the system and access registered owner data, and then we can use that registered owner data to issue citations for speeding, or if it were a red light camera, okay? The ALPR technology is active and alive. So when we read it in our cars when we're driving by, active and live. It will give the officers an immediate alert whether or not that car is stolen, whether or not the registered owner of the vehicle has a warrant, whether there's a missing person associated with that vehicle, whether or not there's an AMBER alert associated with that vehicle. Anything that's been put into the backside of NCIC or CCIC is available immediately to the officers. And that is happening whether there's an officer present with a live ALPR or not. So if it's a fixed ALPR location, that's happening in the background. When there is a connection to a warrant, to a stolen vehicle, to an individual, and the individual has to be the registered owner of that car, the vehicle license plate reader cannot see the occupants of the vehicle. It cannot read the driver. It does not know who is driving that vehicle. There is absolutely no, those ALPRs do not see color. They do not see the ethnicity of the driver. They do not see who is operating that vehicle. They see a license plate, and they run that license plate against databases as to whether or not that individual who is registered owner of that vehicle has any warrants, has any active alerts, has any safety alerts for officers, whether the car is stolen, whether there's an AMBER alert associated. or maybe a senior alert, silver alert associated with the vehicle. There's absolutely no information with regard to anyone other than the registered owner of that car, okay? So that's one safeguard that's in place. The second safeguard that's in place with Axon is that we, the city of Evans, completely controls the data sharing of that information. So if we do not choose to share that information with any law enforcement agency, only ourselves, only Greeley, only local agencies, only state agencies, we have total control over that. It is up to us as to how that functions. Axon could be served with a court order. They would still come back to us and say, hey, we've got a court order on this. Would you like to contest that court order? And we can contest that court order through the process. So there are safeguards to really address some of those concerns. Can it be misused? Can I promise you it will never be misused? No. I cannot, and I won't sit here and tell you I can, but what I can promise is that we have the ability to put policy training pieces in place so that there are safeguards, audit trails, those type of things, so that we can make sure that it's being used appropriately, and when it is not used appropriately, we can use our policy procedures to discipline anyone that was misusing that information and that technology in that way. This is a... A piece of equipment. That's all it is, right? And the piece of equipment is colorblind. It is, can data be misused? 100%, but we have tons of data in this city, and any one of those pieces of data can be misused if, in an inappropriate manner, if policies and procedures are broken, right? So can I give you this incredible assurance that I would love to give you and say it can never be misused, it will never be used for an immigration purpose or anything like that? No, but can I tell you that we as a city, we as a police department, you as a council, have control over this data to position ourselves and to make policy decisions on how we want to use it, when we want to use it, who we want to give access to, and what its intended purpose is for. The state tried to really draconianly affect this. ALPR technology in the last legislative session. Thankfully, that did not pass. It will be attacked again. It will be pushed for again. And I'm hoping that cooler heads prevail and we realize that the technology isn't the problem. The misuse of the technology can be a problem. So let's put policies and things in place that protect against that rather than, you know, blast the technology itself because the technology doesn't see who the driver is. It doesn't see race. It doesn't see an ethnicity. It doesn't see an illegal status or illegal status. It sees a license plate on a car and it tells me who registered owner of that car is and whether or not there's any alerts associated with it. So will that alleviate all your concerns? Absolutely not. It doesn't alleviate all my concerns. It's just one of those pieces that where is the benefit to the community? And the benefit to the community is recovering people stolen property quickly. The benefit to the community is recovering Amber Alert kids, Silver Alert seniors, stopping crime before it occurs because when we're reading cars, when stolen cars come through our community, they're up to no good, right? The occupants of that car are up to no good. The occupant of that car is not the registered owner, right? It's somebody that's stolen that car from the registered owner, but it alerts us, gets us in an area where we can say, hey, that car is in this area. We can start saturating and use that to try to stop that vehicle from committing the next crime it was going to commit. So there's a lot of pluses, and there's a few potential negatives, and I think the pluses outweigh the negatives. And we can put some policies in place, I think, to help alleviate some of your concerns. I'll never take it all away, but I won't even try. I'll just tell you that we can put things in place that will alleviate some of them.

I appreciate you. I definitely do. And as you mentioned, it's not the technology, it's the people, right? And we can never guarantee. And that's kind of where I come from. It's the fact that also considering the majority of the community and ensuring that they feel safe as well. And I do appreciate the technology in the sense of helping the community as well and the safety of the safety of the committee as well as the officers because i think it's important either way because they can know what they're getting into prior to going into um a call um but again it's just that it's the data sharing that has happened already with those companies that it concerns me because again it's people it's not the technology the technology is awesome if it was used the way it should have been used but unfortunately people don't use it that way and that's where the integrity component comes in to play. Thank you. I appreciate you though.

Council Member Neill.

Well, Chief, first of all, I appreciate that this is finally being consolidated. I know in the past it's been discussed about trying to consolidate these six or more contracts with Axon and I think this is a good, really a good deal to get done with them, get it consolidated, and I think it's going to cut staff time from having to track all these different contracts, and we're going to have a little savings there maybe too in the budget. I do feel that... Something was brought up that kind of disturbed me a little bit. We've recently listened to officers reciting that they will protect and defend the Constitution. And it's very disturbing to me that the governor of this state feels that he doesn't have to do that, that he doesn't have to provide assistance to the federal government. I am of the opinion that our police department should do that when asked. So I just wanted to bring that out. Thank you, and I appreciate all the hard work staff has done probably to get this contract made because I'm quite sure that all six of those Exxon contracts are all...

Expiring at different terms all of them expired a different different month in a different year Thank you Thank you All right next up on our agenda is the 2026 municipal court caseload and staffing

Yes, Mayor and Council. Coming to the table here is Liz Grant, our Municipal Court Administrator. She has recently presented a request to the Finance Committee. It would have been on April 23rd where this request was made. providing information on staffing levels in the municipal court, but also on the workload of the municipal court. So Liz has put a great deal of information together as her presentation is pulling up. I'm gonna turn it over to her so she can speak to everything that they've got going on in municipal court, and then this presentation will end in a request for consideration of additional staff members to help

Offset that increased workload that she and Anne have in the in the municipal course I'll go ahead and turn it over to Liz for her presentation Good evening Okay, so we'll get started here pretty quickly so in I believe what was it 2022 we approached council and Thank you for approving additional staff and has been with us with the court and has done a great job. So what you see in front of you are some numbers for monthly new citations over the past five years since kind of the COVID era. It's it's averaged pretty steadily about 2400 cases a year that are new to the court. So an average open case load every year of about 3,300. However, in quarter four of 2025, we started seeing increases, and that amounted to a 72% increase over the rest of the year of 2025. And I believe that was due to some police staffing levels getting to where they needed to be, some initiatives being implemented, things like that. That trend definitely continued in quarter one of this year. We're averaging 397 new citations per month. So with that, we are averaging a new citation load of 4,772 cases this year. So significant increases for what we're gonna see as far as new cases coming into the court. So just to further illustrate that a little bit, we keep track of documents that are processed through the court. So we log what we see in terms of new citations, motions filed, warrants issued by the court, convictions that are reported to the state, all kinds of different actions that take place and that, as clerks, we have our hands on and that we're processing. So that we have seen impacts there as well, mostly to our early stage processes. So new citation processing, conviction reporting, early hearing settings, things like that. A lot of our late stage case actions, so like warrants, bonds after an arrest, things like that have not really been greatly affected, but a lot of our early stage processes are there. and our our hearing dockets um cases that are being set for hearing have seen a 64 increase this year so far so um so what does that say about our staffing how do we how do we apply that um i have taken our numbers that we know from the national center for state courts average times it takes to process types of cases criminal cases traffic cases parking cases and multiply that by the number of available minutes per clerk per year and that that information is based off of you know the number of weekdays in a year if we're able to take training our city approved holidays our leave time so subtracting those approved times the number of working days, number of working minutes in a year. So I multiplied all of that out. It looks like we have been operating in past years at level at about two clerks for the court. However, with what we're projecting for this year and what we're already starting to see, we are needing more clerks for sure. We're going to need a, it shows 4.2 clerks there. for that that caseload and that need keep in mind caseload it does include some aspects of customer service however it does not include court administration so that's simply anything related to the processing of each case file we also are not entirely sure what other initiatives might be coming We have some options and some things that we've heard about even tonight that could affect that I have done a projection, if we were to do an additional full time traffic officer like one that we saw in 2022 we had. A traffic officer from July to October, and so we saw 55% increase in traffic cases at that time so i've run a small projection showing what that could yield if something like that were to be implemented. that could significantly impact the staff need as well. We do have other initiatives that could increase staffing needs, but it is very early days for those things. What we are looking at for an impact to court revenues. We were averaging tickets received, payments received through the court about $30,000 monthly. So about 350,000 annually. But that definitely increased this year starting in quarter one. We averaged $46,616.20 monthly. So projecting that out annually, we're looking at around $550,000 annually, 54% increase. This specifically does not have anything to do with traffic camera revenues. This is just regular enforcement actions by the police department coming into the municipal court as tickets. And this is after hearings. This is after all is said and done through the court process itself as it is today. We did have a request to speak to Avis and traffic camera impacts. It's still very early days for what we're seeing. I've spoken to several court clerks in cities that have implementations, and so much depends on how it is implemented, how the structure is set up. So there will be a lot that's impacted by decisions that are coming to you still. It can be in between 1% and 5% of citations that come through the administrative hearing process, the police review process, and are filed as an appeal with the court. That's a broad number. It doesn't seem like a very broad number, but it can be a broad number. That could mean the difference between 10 citations a month and 50 citations a month. So... That remains to be seen. What also remains to be seen is the customer service impacts of those types of citations. Will we see waves of people really coming through trying to understand how these tickets impact them? Are they going to be served directly by the city? or served more through the contractor that we work with, how do those things play out? These are still questions that we're needing to get farther into as we go through the process. Impacts, again, could vary widely. It could very minimally impact court staffing. So 0.04 FTE, full-time employees, maybe needing another full-time employee. But this is not part of our ask tonight. This is something that we will be considering for the future and monitoring closely. So likewise, revenue projections, it is early days. What I have for you here tonight is based off of police department projections, what they've presented to you in memos and in previous work sessions. So they are projecting revenues of $480,613 annually as an average over those three years. So that's the average of those year one, year two, and year three numbers that you see up there. Again, these will not be revenues that are managed or received through the court. How the contract is set up and how it's currently going to be done is the Avis revenues will be provided directly from the contractor since it's got so to city fines and forfeitures budget. So nothing is paid through through city systems or anything like that. It's all through the contractor and then remitted to the city later. So as to cost for staffing. We are requesting two additional employees as per that study, one for immediate hire and one for hire as we finish some building renovations as things are completed with the police department, but hopefully by 2027 for that second hire. The cost of a court staff full-time employee is approximately $105,000. And that includes benefits, that's the whole package. So for two additional court staff, it would be $210,000 annually. Again, projected court revenues for 2026, $559,394.40 without Avis revenues. So that would certainly cover the staffing increases. All right, and I'll go ahead and open it up for questions.

Great. Thank you, Liz. Appreciate it. Questions, comments, staff? I don't see any, but Liz, I'll just mention that definitely. The need is there, absolutely. I mean, I'm actually surprised by the numbers, how much they've increased, 54% over within the last, you know, year. It's amazing. And that just goes to a credit of how well code enforcement, police officers and everything are out there, you know, out there and placing the community. So that's really greatly appreciated. So the need is there. Staff burnouts, the increased workload and everything like that. So I would be in support of it. Council Member Neill?

Yes, it is my understanding that you recently got an intern to assist you with some of the workload.

We do have a high school intern for the summer. She is able to assist in a very limited capacity with some of our closed case files and also with learning and observing the court, so. She is helping. However, it's not nearly to the level of a full-time employee.

Oh, absolutely. I agree with that. But at least it's some help. Yes, absolutely. And they're learning.

Yes.

And that's important also. If we can provide internships for people, I think it helps after they get through the... kind of a break-in period, I think they can really assist with some of this stuff.

Council Member Crabtree.

You've done a phenomenal job with the understaff you've had. I've seen the data multiple times, and I'm all for this right away. Council Member Johnson.

I'm also for it as well, to add to FTEs. I have a question, though, because I know with Avis, they'll remit to the city later. But what if someone were to dispute it and say, wait, then it comes to the courts. So in essence, you would get that workload. Yes. Right? So that's where that part-time or FTE would come in if needed, right?

So that would be something that we would be monitoring as that program begins to be implemented. And like I said, I have this structure in place so I can plug in projections, I can plug in numbers, and I plan to regularly revisit this and provide reports as needed. And this is a little bit separate from our usual request process for new staff. Hopefully we could do that as part of more of a normal process in the future. But yeah, I'll be monitoring those numbers to see what the impacts are from those court cases. Because there is going to be a process, and I believe that's going to come to you in future work sessions and in council meetings, for people to address grievances or to appeal. And so we're also looking at a strong education process public education for how does this work? What avenues do you have open to you? So that we could have lots of people who want to bring that forward. We could have a very, very small amount of people who bring that forward. We just don't know yet. But as we find out more, we'll plug that into that data. And we'll be able to present some new numbers for you in the future.

I do appreciate the proactiveness in coming in, because typically it's halfway during the year. We don't get, hey, we need FTEs. But I do appreciate the fact that you're seeing the percentage increase and that you're coming to us to say, hey, this is needed, and that proactiveness is definitely appreciated. So thank you.

So just real quickly, do we have an FTE available in the salary, and will this require a budget amendment?

So this would require a budget amendment at the end of the year, so we will. The plan is to hire one immediately, and then after the new police station's finished, the remodel here, city hall's finished, we've got a little bit of breathing room here in the administration side, then go back and hire a second at that time, and then bring that back as budget amendment number two, probably in the December 2026 timeframe for you guys to consider.

Perfect. Awesome. Thank you. All right, seeing no other questions or comments, thank you, I appreciate it. So let's move forward with that. Got about six minutes, so let's take a quick break.