City Council - Regular Meeting

We're going to start with the 2027 budget session one preliminary 2027 revenue projections.

Yes, good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. Tonight begins the first of several meetings that we'll have over the next couple of months to talk about 2027 budget, what city council's priorities are going to be for the upcoming year as we work to continue the evolution of Evans into the community of choice. Since Curtis, our new finance director, Curtis Adams, is joining us tonight, since he has been with us since the end of May, He has worked diligently to get himself up to speed on the budget and everything that we need to be taking into consideration to have these discussions tonight. I'm very pleased with the progress that Curtis has made to get to this point. He has put a ton of time in forecasting revenues, where are we going, what is that going to look like, and how do we then translate that into spending priorities for the city council? So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Curtis, and he will guide the discussion from here.

Thank you, Cody. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and council members, Curtis Adams, finance director. I realize that this being my first communication and presentation that we're getting to know each other. I'm very excited to develop those relationships and partnership. So as Cody mentioned, we are going to kick off the budget cycle with preliminary revenue projections for 2027. And I am going to stand because as you all are aware, the categories tend to be pretty numerically heavy. And I have a laser pointer to kind of track a lot of the content. So our primary updates this evening are going to consist of sales tax, our other major general fund revenues, general fund fund balance and revenue summaries, and an overview of our enterprise funds. Our first major revenue category for the general fund is sales tax. the projections that have been established are consistent with prior years, and that we have forecasted preliminary revenues in all of the tax categories based upon actuals incurred through the month of April. And so, so far through 2026, there has been a 6.3% increase in all of those tax bases through the same period from April of 2025. This does withhold the industrial sector, which is currently trending at 36% above budget. And we historically have not included that at full capacity in prior budgets because that particular category is so uncertain. And even in talking with Desire today, there have been some fluctuations in that category thus far into the year. Most of the categories are currently projecting increases between 1% and 6% through April. There has been a 17% increase for online sales and a 12% decrease in base. So as a result of those first four months, we have an initial 2027 conservative increase of 2.8% budgeted for 2027 above 2026. So we're looking at roughly a $343,000 budgeted increase for 2027. And as you can see, the trajectory over the last six years, we have 2022 coming in at a total of 10.6 million. The current year budgeted at 12.6. And with that $343,000 increase, we're sitting at just shy of 13 million for the general fund. And obviously we will true that number up as we progress with more data throughout the year. So this is very content heavy, but I'm going to streamline it for you. So the first column are the sales tax categories. We have a 2026 general fund budget total of just shy of 12 million citywide. It's 18.4. However, what's projected to come in with four months of data is 12,600,000, which is a 6.3% increase. And the citywide total projection is just shy of 20 million or an 8% increase for current year. And then the final column is our confirmation of what we just discussed, the initial budget coming in at 12.9 million with a 2.8% increase. conservative increase and a citywide total of twenty million six hundred thousand or three and a half percent increase and desire Does a fantastic job at updating those reports and carefully monitoring those tax Categories throughout the year. We will true that up as time progresses Our next major revenue source is property tax at three and a half mils and I simply put together a 10-year bar chart indicating what those totals have come in according to the net assessed property valuation as released by Weld County every year. And so the main takeaway for this slide is that the 10-year property tax average for the city is right at $862,000. And the preliminary information that has come in from Weld County is that we can anticipate roughly a 2% decrease in the total net assessed valuation for the city moving into 2027. So that 2% decrease at our mill rate equates to roughly a $19,000 decrease moving into 2027. So the takeaway is current year budget is $950,000 and that will move, we're anticipating down to $931,000 in 2027. And those preliminary values are typically released by Weld County in August. And so we'll be able to confirm that that is indeed the case. Our next major revenue category is development revenue. This consists of use tax and building permit revenue. We are anticipating a total of 130 planned units for 2027. That includes 52 single family, 36 duplexes, and 42 townhomes. Historically, our base revenue for development is assembled on a conservative annual average five-year trajectory of historical data. And so that estimation and working with our building division, I'm anticipating that to come in at 1,138,000 total for 2027. That is a slight reduction, and again, that's contingent upon the total of planned dwellings for the upcoming year. The current year budget is set at 1.3, so I'm anticipating that to have a slight decrease to 1.1. The next major revenue category is oil and gas revenue and industrial sales tax. So the oil and gas revenue is expected to decrease this year, the current year, 33% and an additional 2% in 2027. And so what I'm anticipating is that with 709,000 estimated as the projection for the current year, that that's to stay relatively flat for 2027 at 698,000. So what these bar charts are indicating is that from the orange to the light blue, those three categories consist of severance tax, federal mineral lease, and oil and gas royalties. And those three categories combined account for the total oil and gas revenue in our GL classification in the general ledger. So you're looking at those three combined are my estimation of 698,000 for 2027. And then as we discussed the industrial sales tax, which is the dark blue, you can see the fluctuation. So I'm showing, based upon the initial sales tax graph that was slide two, of the 2.6 million, 1.7 million of that is the projected industrial sales tax moving into 2027. And the difference is the 698 for the oil and gas. The final component to note in my conversations with Cody is that our intention with the oil and gas revenue is to set it aside, 100% of it to the general fund reserve for 2027. We have just a handful of other major revenue classifications or categories for the general fund. The first is the facility rental and recreation. Recreation facilities revenues, we're anticipating those to increase 13% in the current year, and an additional 11% in 2027. And the reason is because we reincorporated facilities and rental costs in the current year for weddings and large events. So the recreation rental and facility, income accounts for or part of the larger revenue classification or category charges for services. So those are part of that grouping. And combined, I'm expecting those to generate $417,000 in the general fund for 27 compared to the $376,000 in the current year. And then the final grouping is our court and police fees. And obviously, with all of the amazing work that Chief and the PD have been doing, those fines, surcharges, and police fees are expected to increase 95% in the current year, with an additional 46% expected in 27. Those are part of the overall revenue category of fines and forfeitures. And combined, I'm expecting those to generate $902,000 for next year compared to $651,026 for the current year. This is largely attributed to the 45% increase in citation issuance and the subsequent court document processing. And preliminary figures from CHIEF are that the Avis traffic camera fines or to generate an additional $400,000 for 27 as a new revenue source. And that is a very conservative projection. We're anticipating it to be more than that, but the intent and the assembly of all this is to be as conservative as possible. So this is a quick bar chart of the last eight years. I'm sorry, the last two years and future five years of the general fund total revenues. And so you can see with the second version of the budget for 2026, we're anticipating revenues to come in at 19 and a half million for the current year. And then we have conservatively estimated that increase at about 2% per year, all the way through 2031. This is simply a general fund five-year baseline summary that you're used to seeing for the general fund. And so it essentially outlines a simplified income statement, if you will, for the general fund. So now what we're including is beginning fund balance, estimated revenues and expenditures, what the net result of that is, and anticipated ending fund balance through 2031. So the general fund has a very healthy, what I am anticipating, beginning fund balance for 27 at 20,400,000. I'm anticipating revenues to be 23,600,000, expenditures at 24,000, so slightly above, and I'm expecting a net loss of 866,000 going into 2027. Now the takeaway for that, why is it a net loss? So of all of the asset management program additions that have been submitted for the future year, it's $1.2 million. That is separate from our capital improvement program. That's going to be instances of vehicles, heavy equipment, one-time purchases. And those are typically treated as a one-time utilization of fund balance. So all of those submissions have been summarized and they will go before the city manager's office for prioritization evaluation and they will deem what's necessary to move forward based upon the needs of the city. So this is worst case scenario, if you will. If we were to back out the full 1.2 million of assets that have been submitted, we would be sitting on roughly a $600,000 net gain, which is very good. So that essentially tells us that the general fund moving into 2027 should be self-sustaining. So the other thing to note that's very important is that This is consistent with the last slide that all of the revenue projections have been built in at a 2% increase, but the expenditures we have built in a 5% personnel increase and a 2% increase to supplies and services. So you have a 5% discrepancy. And so what this means is the net loss is going to steadily increase INCREASE SHOULD REVENUES NOT KEEP PACE WITH THE ROUGHLY 7% IN PERSONNEL AND SUPPLIES AND SERVICES. SO I THINK THAT'S CONSISTENT WITH THE CURRENT YEAR AS WELL. SO WE JUST NEED TO CAREFULLY MONITOR REVENUES TO SEE IF THEY'RE TRENDING OBVIOUSLY IF THEY'RE TRENDING ABOVE THAT 2% THAT'S GREAT. OTHERWISE WE NEED TO SCALE BACK OUR OPERATING AND MAINTENANCE SUPPLIES AND SERVICES AND SO FORTH. Now we'll move to our enterprise funds. We have nine slides remaining. So the water fund has four primary revenue sources that you're all aware of. We have user base rates. So historically, those have been increased for the last couple of years at 6%, which equates to 2.8 million is my projection moving into 2027. Our non-potable sales, if we were to seat that at a 3% increase, is sitting at just shy of a million. And our variable rate sales, which is essentially the consumption tiers or the tiered usage above the base rate, that accounts for roughly $5 million I'm anticipating. And then the final revenue source is system development fees. And again, this is contingent upon dwelling units there that are anticipated to receive an impact fee through the building permit issuance. So anticipating that with the figures that I've been provided at a 24% increase or just over a million, and that's at 130 estimated dwellings for 2027. So our total revenue projection for the water fund, I'm anticipating right now, roughly about a 9% increase or 9.7 million for current year into 2027 at 10 and a half million. And then I think it's important to just look at a quick five-year trend of the fund balance. So unrestricted fund balance of the water fund, you can see the steady increase through 25, And then this typically either increases or decreases based upon the need for capital improvement or infrastructure enhancements or improvements, water acquisition, water rights, things of that nature. So we will get into the capital later on in August, but I'm anticipating that to decrease by about 3 million with the capital needs that have been submitted. And then it will be the council's discretion on what moves forward from a capital infrastructure standpoint. So we're going to look quickly at a history of the rate increases in the water fund. This is an eight-year trajectory of both the potable base rate as well as the consumption rate. So you can see the base rate in 2020 was at $20.25. And that has slowly escalated up to the current rate is $26.12. And that is the base rate percentage change has equated from anywhere from 4%. The last two years, it's been a 6% change. And that's typically in line with consumer price index inflation or what's recommended in the water rate study. And then the second bar chart is essentially the consumption rate. And this is tier one reminder that there are four tiers. And so you can see in 2020, it was at $5 and 4 cents for that first tier beyond base. And then it's currently sitting at $6 and 12 cents. And that consumption rate changed all the way back from 2021 has shifted from 6% all the way up to, it looks like 26 is 4%. So I simply proposed another 4% increase. The last slide for the water fund is just identifying at a high level what some of the future needs and anticipated changes are for the fund. And so the first is the diversification of future water resources with the discontinuance of NISP, the Northern Integrated Supply Project. And so in partnering with Tai and Shantanu, what we've determined is that the NISP obligation had been $1.2 million annually. And what we're anticipating to do with those funds is to earmark $500,000 of that for water resource acquisition. in 2027, and the remainder would be dedicated to supplies and services, the reserve, and the Greeley rate cap increase needs. What is first on the horizon from an engineering standpoint is the water master plan. That will be launching late 2026 for operational and capital improvement planning, both for potable and our non-potable systems. And then I thought I would highlight just a few of the key capital improvement projects that have been suggested to either start or carry forward from the current year. And we'll go into more depth and detail as to some of those capital needs in the next presentation. But for right now, just to start thinking about, we have essentially two carryover capital improvement projects. The first is the Highway 85 water line replacement from 37th to 39th Street, totaling $1.6 million. and the Ridge Pond Pump Station construction for a million. 600,000 of the Ridge Pond Pump Station, 600,000 of that was budgeted for in version two of 2026 of the current year. That entire amount is slated to be carried over into 2027 with an additional 400,000 added to it. And then the primary new capital improvement project for 27 is the Neville's crossing pump station and pond coming in at a million. We have two left. So the wastewater fund, those major revenue sources are obviously our sewer service with budgeting the same percent of increase that we historically have had the last couple of years at 5% would put that at roughly 4.3 million in revenue. And then our sewer service major maintenance is 2.4 million. So one thing that's interesting about this is how those two revenue sources or classified in the general ledger is it's all sewer service, but what we do is we earmark or a committed fund balance portion of the sewer service sales for plants, structure, maintenance, things of that nature. So it's essentially earmarked or set aside off of the sewer service revenues. And then the final revenue sources, the system development fees. Again, it's contingent upon building permit issuance. I'm anticipating that at a 37% increase or 1.2 million. So that takes our total revenue base with an increase of an initial projection at 9% or going from seven and a half million to 8.3 in 2027. And again, the same as the last fund, a quick look at what the fund balance has done. You can see that it is slowly increased from 13 up to, when I'm anticipating it, 21 million for 26. And what you'll see in the next slide is the reason for this dip is that we have shifted 7 million in plant expansion construction. It was supposed to occur this year. That's getting shifted to 2027. And so that accounts for the dip in fund balance. Here's a quick history of the rate increases. You can see that the base rate was $42 in 2020. It's had some slight fluctuation into 2023, and then a steady increase through 2026 at $46.91. And then as indicated which I budgeted for to remain in line with what the increases have been over the last couple of years I've budgeted five percent. And that's obviously the council's discretion on how we wish to set that increase for twenty seven. And then the second bar chart is essentially the residential use charge and that's for every thousand gallons beyond the base rate. And that is also had an increase of roughly 5% per year. We're sitting at $6.18 for the consumption tier for 2026. And the last slide for wastewater is future needs and anticipated changes. So obviously The major item with this particular fund is the timing and funds availability for plant expansion. And so for the current year, just like I spoke to earlier, we're finalizing the design of the treatment plants with the current budget revision of 2026 at 7.4 million. Of the 7.4 that's been budgeted for the current year, we're anticipating spending 300 of that this year only on engineering, planning, and design. And next year what's been proposed is that seven million of that will carry forward for construction and that will add an additional million for engineering. So some key capital that will carry over for the current year is a closed circuit television van which is essentially sewer line visual assessment for six hundred thousand and the state street sanitary sewer line replacement for two million. Those will both be carry over. The sewer line replacement is currently at 30% design and construction bidding will begin late this year, slated for 2027 start. And then the primary two new capital improvement projects are our annual biosolids removal, that's annual, that's 600,000. And then 37th Street phase three sewer line relocation and upsizing for 250,000. AND OUR FINAL FUND FOR THE EVENING IS OUR STORM WATER FUND. ITS REVENUE SOURCES ARE THE STANDARD STORM DRAINAGE SERVICE WHICH IS FIXED AT THE SAME HISTORICAL TREND OF BUDGETING A 5% INCREASE WOULD SET THAT REVENUE SOURCE AT 1.9 MILLION FOR 27. AND OUR SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT FEES WOULD INCUR A 22% INCREASE AT dwellings for a total of 70,000. And then we have a permit fee at a 43% increase to receive roughly 30,000. I'm anticipating a total revenue increase in the stormwater fund of roughly 5%, which is 1.9 for the current year, anticipating just over 2 million for 2027. And here is a quick trajectory of that fund balance, which is hovering right at a million dollars. And so obviously being a smaller fund, smaller reserve, we have a lot more limited capacity on what type of infrastructure improvements we can do in the stormwater fund. The history of the rate increases briefly. You can see the eight year trajectory bar charts. In 2020, it was $9.43 per residential dwelling unit. Obviously, there's a commercial rate of three different tiers as well based upon parcel size. And then we had a pretty significant writing from 1397 up to 2096. And that was due to us lagging behind in the market as well as the need to keep up with the state revolving loan fund requirements in the fund. And so that was a significant enhancement to the revenue structure in 25. And then anticipating in conjunction with the current trend that 5% would take that per dwelling unit charge up to $23.11 if we were to continue the same trajectory. The future needs and anticipated changes of the stormwater fund and conversation with Sean to new engineering priorities moving into twenty twenty seven or to launch an asset management software for tracking of infrastructure condition planning and financial projections. And a couple of the key capital improvement projects, one of the main carryovers is going to be the 23rd Avenue drainage outfall project with construction rolling over at 3.2 million. And just as a reminder to the council, this was originally funded via, as I mentioned, the state revolving loan fund of 8.6 million that was issued in 2021. And three key new capital improvement projects moving into the next year is our annual curb and gutter inlet and outlet rehabilitation of 150,000. Stormline jetting and pond clean out of 100,000. And our stormwater master plan update of 150,000. That concludes all of the fund financial activities specific from a revenue standpoint. So I just wanted to remind the council of the schedule that we will adhere to throughout the rest of the year before budget adoption. So August 3rd, we will be talking about all of the proposed supplies and services and the remaining capital. August 18th will be a comp and class study, and I will partner with HR in that presentation. September 1st will be an overview of our enterprise funds. September 15th will be an overall budget assembly and summarization. October 6th will be the first reading of the 2027 budget approval and then final adoption will be the second reading on October 20th. That concludes our revenue, and I'd be happy to answer any questions before I cease. A lot of our finance folks are here this morning, and I want to give them great credit. They are an absolute joy and privilege to work with on a daily basis. They're professional, timely, and accurate, and it has been a wonderful time for me in the last seven weeks to partner with them. This, everything that was just discussed, is not me. It's a testament to their hard work, and I want to give them proper credit. And the final thing is that all of the supplies and services that were assembled by all of the internal departments were submitted timely and with accuracy. And so your city departments are operating as efficiently as possible, and I want to give them the same equal credit for all of their efforts. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Council Member Delaney.

yes sorry um so i want can you go back to before we started doing the individual funds for and i have keep going back there was a question i had about one of the graphs that graph right there do we know what caused the massive drop in revenue from 25 to 26

I would need to, I'm happy to send you an email. I don't have that historical knowledge off the cuff. Okay. But my anticipation is that they were excess revenues received over budget for some reason. And so with the conservative estimate in 2026 at 19 million, that's more in line with what I'm seeing as far as incurred trajectory or projections. So what I can do Councilman Delaney, is send you an email and I can give you more detail on what some of that history comprise those increases.

Okay, thank you. And then, typically we don't treat oil revenue until we actually physically have it in our hands because of, are we still doing that?

I'm not sure if I understand the question, sir.

So like we anticipate that we're going to get oil revenue, but we never know how, how much it is. Like it's a wildly, you know, and so I think historically we've basically said it doesn't exist until it actually is in our hands because we don't know how to adequately. anticipate what we're going to actually get.

So are we still doing that? So what I did is I followed my predecessor's planning and I assembled a five-year average to account for not just the current or prior year but to assemble because the fluctuation is so great. And so I am happy to treat it according to your wishes if we would like to decrease it, but I simply applied a five-year average for the trajection.

But we are, and it kind of probably doesn't matter, that is all going to the reserves. That's exactly right.

It's been earmarked to the 35% reserve internal policy that we've created.

Yeah, we certainly do not want to rely on a source with that much volatility when we're making our revenue projections. So that's why I'm looking at sending it all to the general fund reserve at this point.

That makes sense. I feel like it's fair, though, to populate it with a very conservative level instead of zero. But again, it's been earmarked for the reserve, as Cody mentioned. Thanks for the presentation. That's all I have.

Thank you. Council Member Neill had some questions or comments.

Yes, this PowerPoint wasn't included in the packet. I'd like to get a hard copy of it.

Yes, sir. Absolutely.

Council Member Crabtree.

What a great presentation. Thank you so much. And thanks to your team for putting such a wonderful presentation and history together, as well as the other departments for collaborating. Our year-over-year growth is pretty low, which concerns me a lot in your forecast. But I am happy to see that there are some sales taxes that are increasing. What are we doing to capture and to ensure that we're capturing 100% of the online sales? Because I know we've had problems in the past with zip codes and whatnot. Right.

I would like to defer to Desire. Desire manages specifically our sales tax, and she might be able to provide a more detailed response. Perfect. Thank you.

So I recently went to the state and did update our map so that it is current with all of our subdivisions. That was one of the problems that I did find. So what that system does is it allows the vendors to go in and search an address. And when they populate that address, it shows them a list of all the taxing authorities on that property. The other thing is I am working hard with SUTS. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it is the Colorado program that was created for businesses to submit multiple jurisdiction sales tax returns in one submission. So I've been working hard with them to make sure that we're capturing as many businesses as we can through that. The other component of that is there is a lot of heartaches for those businesses. So I try to manage it both through Suts and individually by contacting those businesses. But as you've seen, I don't know if we don't have it up, but our online sales have increased significantly and so those two components have helped increase that. You will see that some of our base has decreased and that is because of the transition between moving some of those businesses to an online seller who were reporting to us directly previously who are now using the SUT system. So it's more of a classification on some of those.

Yeah, I did notice that and thank you for your clarification. I did notice that the online sellers were outpacing our food tax, which was impressive. It still doesn't mean that we shouldn't get more retailers in as we grow our municipality, but it's nice to see that we're capturing all that. That could be lost.

Absolutely.

Which I'm very happy about. Thank you so much. You're welcome. The water side and the... I just left two minutes. So the water fund is interesting to digest, seeing that the non-potable is only 3%, but the base is at 6. And then the variable at 2%, I'm glad that we're capturing the variable now, but I would like to address the non-pot side in the future. I think that there are some modifications that we can do that I'd like to have a further discussion on. As well as parks and rec generating 417,000 versus I hope that in the future that we could budget somehow an expansion to capture more of that revenue, maybe a better gym or something along those lines. But those are a couple of areas that I can see that we could potentially better shore up additional tax revenue without a whole lot of expenditures. So I really enjoyed the presentation. Thank you very much. And again, outstanding job for the finance team and the rest of the crew that assisted your team. these numbers are very important to me, and I take them to heart. Thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation and your time.

Thank you.

Council Member Johnson? Two of my questions were addressed, because one was definitely online sales, because I know year after year, the base has always been, there's always been an increase in those. So it's interesting to see the difference for 2026. But that was answered, so I appreciate that. also the water component that was mentioned. But going, the last thing was the parks and recs also. I know that we're doing system changes, right, for like, because, well, let me just state, I know for parks and recs, when we, if someone were to rent like a gazebo at the park, for example, it was like the charge was $50, but you didn't have a way of including like a time If you were to rent it, it was for the entire day. So, for example, you couldn't add a parameter, say, I want to just rent it from 10 to 12. And it's $50 for those two hours or whatever fee is assessed based off that. But it was the entire day. So if I used it for one hour, it was rented. So others weren't able to utilize it. So that's one of the things I noticed previously that could have changed. But I know it had been mentioned previously that there was some updates that were going to be added. But I'm not sure. if that's still in the works or there's some talks into that because I think that would also help with that as well to maybe generate some revenue, but not only that, allow the community to also rent spaces for different timeframes versus someone renting it for the whole day when it's not really in use. Also, in the past, I know we had discussed parks and recs, and just in considering infrastructure changes, but one of the things that I just wanted to mention based on budget was just to see kind of where, who's utilizing kind of our programs, just to see as far as like a monetary figure, like who's sustaining it, whether it's an advanced community or is it outside jurisdictions that are, And just to have a better plan on how we can then do more outreach to incentivize our community to partake in what we have here, especially because we have a young community, as we know. And so there's a bunch of children that definitely can utilize it and see how we can also open it up for the community within our community to make it more accessible for them. But I do agree that there's more room for our parks and rec for us to grow there. So definitely looking forward to seeing that. But overall, thank you. You all do a great job. Even the way you explained everything was great. Thank you. It was easy to follow for me. I really don't have any questions because the finance department, you do a fantastic job in really thoroughly itemizing everything for us. So thank you. And thank you to everyone who helps. Every other department that helps our finance department get all the information needed. So it's presented to us today. So I appreciate it and good job. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, I just had one, I mean, I was taking notes as you were speaking. So there's a few things I noted for me that were just interesting overall. But one of my questions was, I believe you said for oil and gas, you would like to take 100% of that and put it in the general fund from what we take in. Where are we putting it now? I can't remember. Reserves.

It's naturally classified in the general fund as far as fund placement. But instead of earmarking it to be utilized against expenditures, the entire amount or 100% is to be placed in reserve and not used.

So like savings?

Got it.

exactly yeah over the last couple of years we've used uh we've used some of those uh oil and gas revenues to make one-time purchases to help replace our update our fleet uh heavy equipment purchases stuff of that nature so i think the city council has done a great job over the past couple of years in helping modernize that fleet and now that we're to this point um i think it's wise that we take that money move it over to the general fund reserve and we can You know, we can put it in a couple of different areas, whether it be economic downturn or, conversely, economic development investment opportunity. If an opportunity comes along that is wise for the city to invest in, then I want to make sure that we have ample funding available to be able to move on those opportunities. Very smart.

Thank you for that clarification. I appreciate it. And thank you for the presentation. Thank you to everyone for your hard work. Cody, it sounds like the team is all working together to get the information that they need so they can work to get us a budget. And so thank you to you as well.

Yeah, absolutely. We will continue over the next couple months bringing you guys back different segments of the budget for For further consideration, Curtis and his team are doing a fantastic job. I'm deeply excited and deeply appreciative of the entire team. I think we have a lot of great things going on in the City of Evans. The team is working hard. Are we perfect? No, but we're working every day to make Evans better.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you.

Thank you. And next, we have the Police Department one-year update.

Yes, Mayor Pro Tem and Council, I asked the Chief to prepare a presentation. We actually just crossed the one-year line with Chief Darlan, serving as our Chief of Police. When I hired Chief Darlan, I made the comment to the City Council and to the Chief that I wanted this to be a very transformational change. We had a lot of things that I wanted to see improved in the Police Department as we worked to put a quality force out there for the betterment of the community and the betterment of public safety. I think Chief Darling has done a fantastic job stepping up and taking on that challenge. As you'll see in the coming slides, I am very excited with his performance with the state of our police department and also the meaningful changes that he has made to really help continue the evolution of Evans and keep moving our community forward. So with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to the chief. Once he gets his presentation up, he'll take it from there.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. Randy Darling, Chief of Police. Get this thing up and running here.

Sorry about that.

So building on the foundation, one-year progress of the police department through our partnerships and our professionalism. As I came into the role, I committed from day one kind of to try to work and build an environment where employees felt that they could succeed and that they were part of a team. Lead with transparency, communicate well, not only with my team, but with the public and with council and with the remaining Evans staff. And I think we've done a pretty good job in that area. Um, working to strengthen relationships throughout through trust. Um, I can tell you coming into the organization, uh, we have great community relationships. Um, Teresa McClatchy, who's been, you know, working with, with the organization for 22 years and we're about to lose her when she retires next month. Um, but she has done an absolutely phenomenal job. Um, you know, building the relationships with the community, building the relationships with our individuals and residents in need, building the community relationships with our seniors and our businesses. She's done a phenomenal job. And the biggest thing I could do from day one walking in the door was stay out of her way, right? So I worked to stay out of her way and worked to stay out of the way of the things that were working and foster that professional accountability and kind of really position the department for the future. My philosophy, strong organizations are built by investing in people, right? So we have a very dedicated staff within this organization. The police department, when I came in, was not broken, okay? We had some concerns. We had some areas where we needed to sure up policy and stuff like, you know, areas in that regard. But this department had a great culture. Our personnel, our, dedicated professionals who care about our residents and care about our community. And when I worked through that, you know, I focused on just trying to understand what our mission was, understand our employees, and really empower them to do the work that they've been hired to do within our community. BEFORE I MADE CHANGES, I NEEDED TO LEARN. SO I STARTED FOCUSING ON JUST LISTENING. I MET WITH THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF OUR EMPLOYEES AT EVERY POSITION, EVERY RANK, EVERY SWORN POSITION AND EVERY CIVILIAN POSITION. MET THE INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYEES, LEARNED OUR CULTURE, LEARNED OUR HISTORY, BUILT RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR CITY LEADERSHIP TEAM. which has been an ongoing process. We've had our team turn over a little bit here and there, and everyone coming in has been collaborative, cooperative. We have a really good leadership team. It's been a pleasure to work with this team. I met with our community stakeholders. assessed our organizational strengths and opportunities and really I started to focus on listening before leading, right? So I think that was well received by our department. Our department had, our members had, you know, concerns. They had areas where they wanted to see improvement. They had areas where they thought things were working really well and they wanted to see continued growth in those areas. So the focus was listening. Once that communication became, you know, that focus and that priority, I started, again, internal employees, our supervisors, our executive team. From the external aspects, I worked with our city manager, our department directors, our community partners, and our regional agencies. And that was, you know, that meant meeting with the chief in Milliken, meeting with the sheriff, meeting with the chief in Greeley, all of those different pieces, you know, trying to make sure that we were cooperating and coordinating across the board on all those regional assets. Every time I do it, it knocks me out. It doesn't say skip. That's another reason. So I just hit it.

All right, so

I started to build a shared vision within our organization, within our leadership team. The objective wasn't simply to make changes. It's to see what the issues are, identify where we need to move, and focus on that movement. The objective was to build a department that communicates well, collaborates well, learns, and serves together. I think we've done a pretty good job during that first year. It's a lot of growing pains, a lot of getting to know each other, a lot of learning each other. But as a whole, I think we've done a pretty good job there. The old structure, I did take some organizational transformation pieces. I looked at the organizational structure when I walked in, and you can see the old structure on the left and the newest structure on the right. We had the chief police, the one commander, a lieutenant who oversaw kind of the patrol side of things, and then our investigations records section, all working and repeating under that division commander. Under the new reorganization, I had the operations commander, the administrative commander, and each one has their section of the department reporting directly to them and then directly up to me. This is actually the organizational structure that was already in place by policy. It just wasn't necessarily in place by practice. As I reviewed our policies and I saw this organizational structure made sense to me, it gave our internal operations an opportunity to grow opportunity for internal growth within the organization, which I felt was very important, and I moved back towards this in practice as well as policy. Building that leadership team, the leadership development became a priority with the retirement of Chief Brandt and the moving on of our command staff at the same time. I felt it was really necessary to build that leadership within the organization. I focused on trying to stay inside the organization to give opportunity to the team that has been here for a long period of time, had a lot of institutional knowledge. So we reorganized into those two divisions. I identified two commanders through a competitive process. We had four applicants for those two command positions. I promoted one sergeant who was actually already on a list when I walked to the door. I reviewed that list. I reviewed the process that they went through to create that list and the promotional process. It was well-founded, and I left that list up so that he could be promoted when needed. You know, the command staff was identified. We've identified one detective, which we did internally within the organization, one new school resource officer, and one community relations officer who was a civilian position that will now be back into a sworn position upon Teresa's retirement. So Officer Ramirez will be moving from the school resource officer into Teresa's role. And we have identified a new school resource officer who is off at NASRO training this week to become certified as a school resource officer. So a lot of movement within the organization and all of it internal. We stayed inside the organization. We didn't go outside and hire anybody from the outside to give as much opportunity internally to the organization as we could. Building teams. This is really what I focused on creating a specialized teams improve operational effectiveness. Team building is the focus of my leadership. It's about trying to build one collaborative one cohesive organization. Even though we have individual responsibilities we're working as one team. These are some areas where I thought we could see some growth and it really presented itself honestly through different investigations that popped up with us. We had a couple of missing persons. We had a couple of larger scale investigations and watching our team work together and seeing people that were willing to come in and cooperate and collaborate led to that investigative support team being identified as a need and as a want. So it gave our patrol officers an opportunity to work in an investigative capacity, work alongside our detectives, work on longer-term pieces, and that was identified through process, actually through need. We just had an investigation where we needed that personnel. The tactical response team was an in-progress work of Sergeant Reimer, who had looked at this in the past and took the opportunity with me to kind of present it through the command staff to say, hey, here's another opportunity where we can have some growth inside the organization and give an opportunity for officers to work outside of their normal role as a unit, right? The wellness team, which was in place, we just made sure that it had the support that was necessary, and the peer support team, which was also in place, but making sure that they had the necessary resources and just strengthening the pieces that are necessary for them to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities within the organization. These initiatives strengthen the collaboration while they improve service to our community, so Across the board, these were some things that kind of were identified relatively quickly from the command staff and from the team members, and they were pretty easy to put in place. We just needed the framework. Lost it there. All right, so investing in our people. Currently, we went on a hiring... spree, so to speak, right? So we had a couple of hiring sessions. You can see what we've done in the last calendar year. 38 sworn officers is our staffing level. We have three overhires. We have hired one sworn overhire. We are completely staffed as far as our 38 sworn police officers, and we have one sworn overhire, 10 professional staff, one civilian vacancy, which we're actually interviewing for So during the year, we've hired six sworn hires and one civilian hire during that timeframe. You can kind of see our kind of a, just a flow chart of what our process looks like. They apply, we go through a review. There are oral boards. We create an eligibility list off of those oral boards. We start to begin background authorization forms for them to fill out so we can start the background investigation. We conduct a video test, a polygraph, a background investigation, a psychological evaluation, a command staff interview, graded ride-alongs, ergomed, and then we hire. It's a long process. Our average time frame is about 180 days from application to hire. It's not short. It takes a lot of time. It's a thorough process where we try to get the best candidates we can, and we... Wash probably 90%. So about 10% of our applicants get through the process. So it's arduous, but it's worth it. It's a critical position and we make sure we do the best we can in our hiring process. Professional development, we put a lot into training this year. Training became one of our defining priorities. We have 80 outside training courses so far this year, monthly department training days, eight instructor certification courses throughout the year, two executive leadership programs that our command staff went through after they were identified, and one supervisor leadership program that one sergeant has been promoted is in the process of going through its three separate sessions over this summer. So he's been to one of the three sessions. He has two remaining through, I want to say, September. So we've put a lot of effort into our training and working to train our staff and our leadership team. Building and learning on our philosophy, every employee should leave this department better trained than when they came in, right? They need their focus areas. So, you know, we need to train our detectives specifically for detective. Our SWAT officers train routinely. They train with outside agencies. They train regularly. Leadership. Leadership needs training. It is not... You learn to lead, okay? So it is not just simply you understand what you're supposed to do. The coursework helps. Leadership training guides. It gives professional development for that leadership. Communication, decision-making, the legal updates that we go through. These are critical for our staff. They're critical for our officers, especially when we're young, and we are young. Patrol, couple years on in patrol, and you're a hardened veteran. All right, so... critical. Our officer safety protocols and our officer training, that's what keeps our officers safe on the street, right? And professionalism. It's always a concern with police departments across the country. How do we treat our community? How do we treat our residents, right? We have body-worn camera audits. We can work through our process with our officers to make sure that they're treating the community well. When we have use of force, we do an audit of use of force and we can see how the officers are utilizing force, whether it's within our parameters or not, and we have opportunity to train, mentor, and coach when we see things that aren't going the way we want them to go. Building that culture, right, that communication, that respect, trust, the professional expectations, accountability, teamwork, and our shared ownership in what we're doing. And I think that this has been honestly one of the easier parts of the process in here. We had a good culture within the organization. We haven't had to shift the culture. All we've had to do is expand that opportunity for them to really feel like they're part of a team and part of an organization that cares about them and that cares about their professional development. And that's really where we focused our efforts. Communication matters. We're doing biweekly, bimonthly actually, bimonthly leadership team. I've expanded our leadership team not to just include our executive team, our command staff, but also all of our supervisors. So our supervisors, we're meeting on a bimonthly basis, making sure that we discuss the issues that are in the department, discuss policy, our training mechanisms, all of those factors, so that we're one leadership team and not a fragmented leadership team. That communication, that employee feedback, that cross-division coordination, all critical in us kind of working as one unit rather than working as siloed pieces within our own organization. Working as one with the city, that collaboration and support across our major city initiatives, just working with our city leadership team, the engineers, our public works department, community development, our contractors, the legal, finance, all of it. It's been... A great team to work with. The leadership team here is all on the same page, and it's been refreshing from a law enforcement perspective to have a leadership team that is all on the same page, and we're all working together, kind of the same goals for the organization. It's not always the case in city government. Supporting Evans Future, the three major infrastructure products. I think the police department's tried to, of course, we've been involved in the police department. That one's easy, right? But, you know, the other functions, Evans Junction, 37th Street Reconstruction, you know, those programs and those projects, while the police don't have a direct involvement, but supporting every way we can, making sure we're out there with the public safety aspect of those pieces are critical. And, you know, being supportive to the team where the needs are has been a piece of what we've been doing. And you can see the collaboration and the project terminations being successful, again, due to the leadership team within the organization. This has been a big piece of what we've been doing over the last six months or so is modernizing our public safety strategies, the technology investments. You see Avis coming on board. You'll see an Avis ordinance tonight. FUSIS, the contract with Axon that you guys approved just a few weeks ago. Those modernization of those contracts, kind of the pulling together of one contract instead of six. That crime analytic piece that FUSIS provides for us. These investments improve officer safety, efficiency, and transparency. And there's more pieces to this puzzle as we can progress through our process. This has been kind of a big project and it will be a big project as we progress. Avis is just getting off the ground. Axon was just signed. We are gonna start implementing these technologies. So we have quite a ways to go. They're not short term. They'll probably take another six months to eight months to get everything implemented and active and actually functioning. Our community engagement, we did a lot of community engagement. As you know, our community outreach is stellar and the people we have working with it. But what you see with our community outreach is that our officers come in and they're part of this program, right? So our teen academy, Multiple officers come in and work that teen Academy. We had two teen academies over the summer You can see our polar plunge events, right? We've got officers. We've got city staff It's it's it goes far beyond the police department National night out will be coming up here in just a couple of weeks and we'll have some major events You know nationwide all police departments to step out, you know community relations on that particular night Heritage Day our senior events Halloween Santa cops and Coffee with a cop. The coffee with a cop events have been really well attended on the weekends at Starbucks. So those have been great events for the community to come out and collaborate with the police department. Accountability through professionalism. That modernization, leadership accountability, our training consistency. That was one of the things I heard from our staff when I first came in was that training consistency. They wanted to make sure that we were training on a regular basis and we were getting the training necessary for the staff. And that transparency and just working towards continuously improving. Baby steps turn into big steps, you know, over time. And police departments don't like change, right? Two things cops don't like, change or whatever they're doing right now. So we want to keep them moving. We want to keep them changing. We want to keep them seeing the technology advancements. Some of the challenges we've faced, have we gotten every objective done? Nope, we have not for sure. We've focused on our primary challenges, reliable data analytics. Our RMS system is just, it's a good system, it's just very difficult to get data out of. It collects data great, but it does not release that data very easily. It is also a shared system managed by Weld County IT, and they really control the data for the most part, so it's very difficult to get some of that data out to really use it in a meaningful, objective way on our day-to-day resources. One of our next steps for modernization is to get a system that kind of works within that system to pull that data out and analyze it and usable for the officers in the field. So that's one of the next technology pieces that at some juncture I'll be you know, bringing forward for consideration. And then delayed implementation of a comprehensive CompStat process because in order to do CompStat, you've got to have data. So, I mean, it's something that I'm a data nerd a little bit, so I like data. But until we can actually access it and use it in a meaningful way, a CompStat process just isn't functional right now. Your two priorities, complete that technology integration, implement CompStat, open the new police facility, which as you saw today, we're super close, a couple of weeks away from moving in. Fantastic infrastructure, fantastic building for the team, tremendous opportunity for growth in the future, and it'll help us recruit, it'll help us retain, it'll do a lot for the organization. Continue our leadership development. Each of the commanders has been to one course. There are several courses that are kind of nationally renowned and we'll work to getting those that executive leadership through those courses and then the sergeants through the courses that lead up to those executive leadership courses. And then expand our community partnerships, which is, that's a big task because some of the work that's been done has been so incredible and we have great community partnerships, but there's always an opportunity to improve in everything we do. So that'll be on our next community relations officer, Deidre Ramirez, and we'll work to build those partnerships and continue. But again, it'll be a focus on teamwork across the board in everything we do. And with that, I'll happily answer any questions you might have.

No questions or comments? Council member Crabtree.

Thank you so much. I'm really proud of our police force. I'm really happy with the leadership and the direction you're taking it. So that's all I have to say. It was a great job. Thank you. Great job to your team.

The team is doing a great job. I appreciate their efforts.

I'm really excited to see the future. So thank you so much for being part of our family and our team.

Thanks.

Thank you. Council Member Johnson.

I also echo what was stated. What I appreciate from you, Chief, is that you saw what worked and and you listen. I love the phrase, listening before leading, first and foremost. I love that. And then, so you saw what worked, and you expended upon it, versus trying to reinvent the wheel. Because sometimes when things work, it's like, let it be. And I love the fact that you listen to to everyone and then implemented those changes to ensure, because that's huge for retention. As you know, our department has rarely, I mean, I think there was a moment where it was fully staffed and then it wasn't like the next day. But I mean, that helps with the retention of our officers. But not only that, the training component I think is very important because I believe if an officer feels as though they're an asset, to our community, to our department, to our city. And they want to continue working here. And I think that is very important. But not only just the accolade, but the fact that they have the training and they feel confident in their knowledge and they're able to implement that within what they do. So I think that is fantastic. I don't have any questions. It's just really kind of expanding on everything that you've done within this year. It's great to hear that the culture is already there. and that you just added the things to continue that culture and improving it and really uplifting the leadership within because that's important. It's important because we have great officers and I believe that everyone deserves a chance to do that leadership role. And I think everything that has occurred so far has been because of your leadership and also the leadership within that has helped create a great culture and a great Evans Police Department. And I'm sad that Teresa's leaving. Granted, she deserves to retire. And we've kept her as long as we could. I know there was moments where we ensured that we kept her longer and she did stay. I want to continue that. And I know it will be continued. She is definitely been pivotal to our community and really connecting our department and the community and ensuring that people felt safe and they felt seen and heard. didn't feel fear, and that's important. That's because it's part of our pillars within our city, safety especially, but also community and that engagement. And she's done such a great job, and I hope we give her a good farewell because she deserves it. But kudos. Kudos to everyone. Thank you for your leadership. So far, happy anniversary. It's been great working with you. It's been great seeing all the changes, and I'm excited for all of you to enjoy the facility, 35,000 square feet of it. It's beautiful, and it's well-deserved.

Thank you. Thank you. And I am happy and super excited to report that we're fully staffed. I am not spiking the ball. We will not be fully staffed long. It just doesn't work like that in police departments, right? That's the purpose of the overhires is so that maybe we can, you know, get some of that retention as we move through that process. But we will absolutely miss Teresa, but Deidre is going to come in and she's going to do a great job. She's been working with Teresa for a long time. So I'm confident in that transition, but we will send Teresa off begrudgingly. And she doesn't want any recognition, but we'll do the best we can for her.

Thank you. Council Member Neal.

Yes, Chief. It's always reassuring when someone new comes in to a police department to find out that they feel there's no major problems within that department. And I think that that helps to reassure the citizens also. Since we have several citizens in here tonight, Would you, could you expand a little bit on the Comstat process?

Sure. So Comstat is just really, it's utilizing data, it's operationalizing data, right? So you take your crime data, you take it by location, time, date, day a week, hour a day, and you use that data to reinforce what we're doing with our patrol strategies and with our investigative strategies, right? What do we do? Where do we put our cops, right? One of the strategies is cops on the dots. Where is our crime? Put cops where our crime is, right? We do a lot of that now. Our main areas, our hot spots, our hotel area, right? So when we did the hotel presentation, you saw the overwhelming majority of the calls for service there are actually self-initiated by our officers, right? So... When you operationalize data and you can pull data out of your system in a clean, meaningful way using crime analytics software and or personnel that have that skill set, you can operationalize your data to the point where you can be more efficient with your resources. Put the officers based on time of day, day a week, crime patterns, those type of things to identify suspects and try to stop crime before it occurs because we're in the right areas at the right times, right? We're present, we're visible. uh... right now are r m s system again we collect a lot of data it's very good at collecting is not it does not have a resources within it easily used and have uh... simple interface that can be trained across the board that makes it easy for our officers in for our command staff quite frankly get the data out of it and use it on a day-to-day basis so that we can be quicker to respond, more flexible, able to work within our hotspots within hours and even minutes of calls for service, right? So it really just helps us to identify patterns, identify corridors, and hotspot policing has been around for about a decade or even more, but it's really data-driven. And that CompStep process is that evaluation of that data-driven process. It's the process to review data and then see how it's been operationalized and whether or not it was effective. And if it isn't effective, change it, right? And it's constant. It's done on a weekly basis, monthly basis, depending on the size of the department. In a department this size, it would probably be something we would do biweekly to monthly, where we're looking at the data, making sure that we're not missing crime patterns, we're not missing hotspot changes, and really trying to identify areas where we need to spend more time versus less time. So it is a process that I look to get to, but we're going to need some data analytics software in order to do that. It's on the agenda for... I will go to the... The IACP conference in October, there'll be tons of vendors there. There's a couple that I've already had some work with. I know that some of the local regional departments are using some of the technology, and we'll be looking to kind of piggyback off of that technology and try to use it more in a regional way. We need to be very collaborative with Greeley because their crime's our crime, our crime's their crime. So we need to be very collaborative with that. And they've got some technology there that we just don't have right now, that can help our officers and help their officers because we're working more across a regional crime center rather than just a Greeley crime center.

Chief, you mentioned that you were having some delays in getting some information for Wall County. Does that seem to be a staffing issue or?

It's really a software issue, right? They've built some systems that we can utilize. They're just not interface friendly. I don't have officers that can spend time doing that. So we do it at the command staff level. I primarily do it. And then we have a few people who have some skill set in it. And if I need more in depth, I'll go to those individuals to get that data out of the system. It's really about interface operability. It's not that they're holding the data. It's just that we don't have tools that aggregate the data out of the system easily.

I'm familiar with that from working for CDOT.

Thank you.

Chief.

Thank you. And I don't see anyone else that has any questions or comments. So if there's nothing further.

All right. Thank you. Have a great night.

Thank you. All right, we will start the city council meeting in approximately 10 minutes or promptly.