City Council - Regular Meeting

It is 5.30. All right. We're going to go ahead and get started, everybody. All right. All right. First item on our work session agenda is the budget session number three, which is the presentation of the compensation study report and related payroll budget. We'll turn it over to staff.

Yes. Good evening, Mayor and Council. This is, what is this now, our third, I think this is our third budget work session agenda. for the 2027 budget. Tonight's discussion is going to be about compensation, as the mayor indicated. And so this is oftentimes one of our bigger ones that we have to talk about. What is the market doing? What is that doing for our employees? How do we relate to other communities in the region? And how does that translate into a successful and efficient workforce? So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to staff. I'm going to turn it over to Julie Timkiewicz. She is going to introduce our consultant who evaluated our pay structure. And then following that conversation, then we'll jump into some other financial discussions about compensation. So Julie, I'll turn it over to you.

Thanks, Cody. I'm just pleased to introduce Lori Grace from Grace Consulting. And the city partnered with her to perform this compensation and work compensation study and benchmark. because of their really extensive background in compensation, but in public sector and municipalities in Colorado. So, you know, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to turn it over to Lori, and she will, you know, maybe give you a little bit more background about herself and her team, and then she'll dive into the results of the study, and then at the end we can, of course, open it up for questions.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that introduction. Hopefully you were able to hear me. Okay. I can't see you. So I just, I'm going to assume that you can see the presentation and hear me unless I hear otherwise. So thank you for carving out time from your work session this evening, and also for allowing us the opportunity to work with the city. As Julie mentioned, this is work that we specialize in. We do a lot of public sector compensation work for municipalities and public sector organizations across the state of Colorado. And we appreciate having the opportunity to work with the city of Evans so i'm going to go through a fairly short presentation this evening i'm going to start with just an introduction of who we are very briefly. grapes consulting is a human resource consulting firm that, as we mentioned specializes in working with the public sector. Probably 85% of our book of business are public sector organizations and the vast majority of those in Colorado cities, towns, counties, special districts. So this is work that we understand and we understand some of the unique challenges that come along with recruiting and retaining employees into the public sector. And we also understand kind of the details of some of the technical jobs that exist. So I have a brief overview of our team. We are what I like to say, small, but mighty. We tend to stick to what we know and public sector compensation is really at the top of that list. So I was the primary consultant on the project that we're going to be talking about this evening, though I did have some behind the scenes work from Wendy Eklund and from Tom Graves. Because again, these are things, pay is something that is too important to miss something or to get it wrong. So we like to make sure that all of our work is double and triple checked and peer reviewed. So with that, I'm gonna start with kind of a high level overview of the project, right? The things I wanna cover briefly with you this evening, the intent and the scope of a benchmarking study, and specifically how a benchmarking study differs from a full comp study. We'll talk about that. We'll share our deliverables for this project, an overview of our process, Because we think it's important that you understand not just what our recommendations are, but how we got there, where we got the data, how we analyzed it, right, how we know that it's accurate. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk specifically about the other public sector comparator organizations that were included in the analysis, again, to make sure that it's really reflective of the labor market that you're competing in. We'll then go into our recommendations, our pay structure recommendations in 2026 looking into next year in 2027 and then some implementation and next steps. So from an intent, obviously it's probably not a surprise to any of you that it's critically important that the city be able to continue to recruit and retain the talent that you need to provide all of the services that your residents expect. And there's really no way more important for any organization to do that than to make sure that what you're paying people is aligned to the external labor market, right? And I think each of you are aware that that's been quite the moving target over these last five to six years. We've seen a lot more change in the labor market than really in the 30 plus years that I've been working in compensation. So it's a good time to be really paying attention to this. Now I mentioned this before and I have it shared at this screen as well, a benchmarking study, which is what we did. differs really from a full classification and compensation study because what it does is it includes benchmark positions identified across the city meaning we chose i believe it was about 40 45 positions anchor positions from every department across the city and we pulled data on those to simply see the difference between where you have them placed on your structure and where market would value them just to give us a view of overall, how much does the city's pay structure need to be adjusted by or increased to make sure that the structure itself is keeping pace with the labor market, right? Many times we have organizations that will do these benchmarking studies on the off years when they're not doing a full classification and compensation study. And that can be helpful and cost effective, right, to make sure that you're staying aligned to the market without spending the money for a full study every year. What it doesn't identify are positions that might not be included in the study. that maybe need to be upgraded because they've moved faster than the others. So really what we're talking about this evening are just looking at the averages of the jobs that you have and adjusting your pay structure forward based on that data. So we want to make sure that we are picking jobs when we choose benchmark jobs that are common, positions that most of the organizations that we're going to be pulling data from can match that job. Because again, we want the data we're using to base our recommendations to be statistically valid. So we're not trying to use the different or interesting or unique positions that might be tougher to benchmark. We really want to make sure we're looking solidly at positions we can get good data on. And then again, we want to make sure we're pulling that from sources that are accurate, current, relevant, and reflective of your labor market. And then we use that data to make our recommendations on revisions to the structure. So really our deliverables are to begin by understanding current state, right? Looking at your current wage structure, your classification system, reading job descriptions, looking at org charts, really making sure we understand the city and the scope of the jobs that we're looking at. Because we've worked with a lot of public sector organizations, but we know that many jobs with the exact same title can look very different in different places. So we need to make sure we're anchored in what things look like there. We then established a group of other public sector comparator organizations that we wanted to make sure we included in the study and we'll share that specific list. We are using two separate data sources and we'll talk about those. One of them allows us to pick specifically the public sector organizations we want to include. The other one is simply just by region, right? So we take that information from those existing sources. We match that to the positions that we've chosen across the city. We look at the shift in market value, and that's how we know how to make the recommendations for adjustments. One of the things that's really important and foundational in a project like this, particularly when we work with a client for the first time, is that we actually understand, as I was mentioning, what those jobs look like there at the city. meaning not what that same title might look like somewhere else. We know that every organization has different ways that they combine skill sets together or different expectations of the work. So we look through, we read all the job descriptions. We had conversations with HR to make sure we were really clear on the span and scope of each of the jobs that we included. Then we use that data to match it to two separate data sources. So the first one we used, I'm certain that you're all familiar with Colorado Municipal League. Right public sector organization membership based organization that almost every municipality across the state as a member of. They do a comprehensive salary survey every year and they produce the data and what we call an identified way, meaning. We can see exactly which organizations reported data on which jobs, and we can choose the ones that are relevant to benchmark for the city. That's what we've done with that data. We blended that, we coupled that with another data source called PayFactors. PayFactors is a large national compensation survey provider. They are also the current partner of Employers Council, so you may or may not have heard of them for that reason. They provide data that includes both public sector and private sector, right? And we know that that's important because we know that the city is not only competing with other public sector organizations for the talent that you need. So blending these two together gives us a good anchoring in public sector labor market, but doesn't ignore the private sector that we know you also need to compete with. We pull all of that data together and we blend it, but what we also do is age that data forward, meaning we know that there has been a gap from the time that data was reported by each of the participants to the time you're actually going to be implementing a pay structure based on it. We age it slightly forward in a fairly conservative manner just to make sure that what you're implementing isn't already a few months behind because the labor market has continued to move since that data was reported. And when we're pulling data from the surveys what we're pulling our actual wages being paid to other employees and other organizations that are doing similar work. Meaning we're not just looking at their pay ranges and comparing them to yours and saying okay they're close enough right, we want to anchor our recommendations in actual pay. Because one of the things that we know, having worked with so many clients in this area. is that not all organizations keep their pay ranges current. They don't update their ranges every year, sometimes not even every couple of years. It might be three or four years. So if we were to look at just ranges, that might underestimate what's happening in the market. We want to look at actuals. And then lastly, we know that we are going to need to scrub, blend, or adjust that data to ensure that what we're pulling is really representative of what the job looks like there in your city, right, with all of those things considered. So we spend a lot of time here making sure we get this piece of it right. We talked about Colorado Municipally being identified data, meaning we can pick and choose. So what you see on here is a list of the broad cut that we did of other cities and towns within Colorado that we wanted to include. We essentially were covering organizations in the Denver Boulder area and the northern Colorado regions. Again, because our goal is to make sure that we have enough data to be statistically valid right not every organization have jobs that match yours. And if we only pick a handful of organizations, six or eight, you would have certain jobs that you might be making decisions based on one or two data points, right? Which means any anomalies that exist in their pay system would come into yours. So we want this broad view of the labor market. We know that many of these organizations don't look just like you. They're different sizes. They have different services, but they all compete in the same labor market. So they're Information is relevant to making sure that we're building something that's keeping you competitive. So from a results standpoint, what we are sharing is there currently the city has two separate plans, you have a city wide pay plan that the majority of the positions across the city sit on. It is what we call an open range pay plan, it has 15 different pay grades. Each grade represents a range. They are all 40% wide. That means the distance from that minimum entry rate to the max out rate is 40%. That's a good number because that gives you enough ability to differentiate people with different levels of experience so that you don't have pay compression. So we're not recommending any structural changes to that, but we are recommending that that pay structure itself be increased by about 3% moving into 2027. which means the minimums, the midpoints, and the maxes of those ranges would all go up by 3%, again, to make sure that the structure that you have is aligned to today and really to 2027 labor rates, right? So that was the adjustment for the city plan. We also looked separately at the police step plan, and we did look at all of the sworn police positions when we pulled data. We didn't pick and choose. We looked at all of them. Within that step plan, what you currently have is a plan that has seven steps for officers and five steps for sergeant. We think that's a really good design. We see that very commonly across municipalities in Colorado. We're not making structural changes, but we do see that officer and sergeant, more heavily on officer, are a little bit further behind market. So we're recommending that each of those steps that exist on the police officer step range go up by 7%. that the sergeant steps above that go up by three. There is enough room between the two that that is still not creating pay compression, meaning the top range of your officers is not overlapping with sergeant, but it's getting the officer pay closer to market than it is currently. So just to give you an overview of what these pay structures look like, right? This is a current, this is a reflection of what the current pay structure looks like for the city, but with that 3% increase. So structurally, it looks the same. You can see there are grades. Each grade represents a range that has a min, a mid, and a max. It's shown on here, annualized and hourly. 40% is the width of each of the range that we talked about, that distance from min to max. And each grade sits 10% apart from the grade in front of it or behind it, right? So that there is equal distance between all the grades. We feel like that's a solid structure. The step plan that exists for sworn non-exempt police. So again, the step plan exists for sworn positions only and non-exempt, meaning once you get into exempt leadership level positions, those positions come back over and sit on the general government plan, the citywide plan for everyone else. But for those sworn non-exempt police positions, they do have a separate step plan, very common in the marketplace. I would say 95% of the organizations we work with have a sworn structure that looks a lot like this. And this is shown with the increases that we talked about included, with that 7% applied to officer, with that 3% applied to sergeant, right? So these will be the projected step plan for 2027. With that, I'm going to turn it back over to your internal finance person to talk about the numbers.

Thanks, Lori. Appreciate your time tonight. Good evening, Mayor Clark and council members. It's great to be with you again this evening. Curtis Adams, finance director. I just have a few slides to go over the budgetary impact of everything that she has proposed. But before I do, are there any specific questions for Lori? We'll save questions to the end. Thank you, sir. So the budgetary impacts essentially fall under four primary financial categories if you will The total proposed increase is just shy of 1.2 million if we were to implement the pay plan the standard Merit increases that are eligible based upon performance evaluation and then the step increases that Laurie talked about as well so the first bucket would financially fall under police and So the police department would incur a $160,000 pay plan adjustment with the overall grade shift and a $377,000 that would be applicable towards step increases. Both of these buckets for the PD would be a part of the general fund. City staff, if incorporated, that pay plan adjustment would be $328,000. The enterprise funds, which is an allocated share of wage based upon the effort that takes place in those funds, would incur roughly a $99,000 pay plan adjustment. And then the benefit renewal, which is a tremendous win for the city, in my opinion, the medical would incur only a 4.5% increase, which is very good. And the dental would incur a 3% increase. So that five has been reduced to three. And so you're looking at probably around $6,000 for dental. So the benefits would be 100% absorbed by the city is what's being proposed. So those are the four financial buckets. So the implementation timeline, and again, this is contingent upon city council approval if this is to move forward. Both city staff and sworn police, that new pay plan and step increases would be effective January 1. The step increases and merit increases, again contingent upon performance evaluation, those would be implemented on the January 15th pay date. So in other words, we're looking to incorporate these changes, that $1.2 million would be applicable to the 2027 budget period only. There wouldn't be any accrual or spillover back to 2026. It would be implemented in 2027. And again, the intent is that the city would absorb 100% of those medical and dental premiums, which again are at 4.5% and 3%. So the budgetary impact, and you all have seen this in the last two presentations, I just want to highlight the 2027 column. You can see my estimated total of our beginning fund balance, this is specific to the general fund, is just over 20 million for 2027. With our estimated and conservative revenue increase of roughly 5% between all of the primary buckets is roughly 21 million. Our supplies and services coming in at six and a half. The personnel is the main takeaway here. So that's increasing if you look at the prior column from roughly 15.4 million to just shy of 16.5. And there's your $1.2 million increase. So with the proposed AMP capital improvements of 450,000 that we also walked through, In addition to the transfer activity and total expenditures, I'm showing a net gain of $263,000 for the general fund should we implement all of those pay recommendations. So the takeaway is that the general fund would still be self-sustaining with a minor net gain proposed for next year. And then the final slide is the timeline. So September 1st, I will be providing an overview of our enterprise funds, the proposed utility rate adjustments, and the major revenues and expenditures and the financial outcomes predicted for those three enterprise funds. September 15th would be an overall budget overview. And then we have our first and second reading for approval of the 2027 budget on October 6th and October 20th. And so that concludes, with Lori, our comp and class recommendations for budget year 2027. And we'd be happy to answer any questions.

Great. Thank you, Curtis, for that great presentation and everything. If anybody has any questions, please use your request to speak button there, please.

I do have a couple questions.

Actually, it's for Lori. You said earlier in your presentation that when you receive the information from CML, when the other communities submit their market analysis to you that there's a gap between when we get it and when it was submitted and that you use a conservative number to kind of adjust that. What kind of number are you looking at and how much does that really change? So if they submitted it, say, in May and it's $25 an hour, between May and now, what's that number that you look at to factor that in?

Thank you. That's a great question. So the way that CML provides their data is it's what we call a static survey. They publish it once a year. So all data is gathered in Q1 of each year, reported in the summer, right? So the data that we're using is the most current data. It's from 2026, but it was gathered roughly in February, right, of this year. And we're using this information to project where your labor rates need to be January of next year. So what we do is we look across our Colorado Public Sector Book of Business, and we determine how much from 26 into 27 we're seeing on average across probably 50 different municipal organizations that we work with, how much we're seeing pay change into the coming year. And we use that as our annualized factor. But we only move it forward based on the number of months, right, as you're referencing. So essentially, we used a 3% aging factor annualized, but the data from CML was only going to need to be aged by nine months. So we increased it by 2.25%. Okay, great.

Thank you. And another question I have, and this pertains to you and or staff, compared to other municipalities that use the same pay grade and scales, I know you said for the police department, it's about average. of what the pay and the scale is that we use. What about for regular city employees? Do we have too many grades and too many steps or is that about normal across the board?

So I would say how wide your ranges are that 40% to get from men to max is about what we see as the average. Many of our clients in the way we typically build pay structures, we make the grades slightly narrower at the bottom. So the entry level jobs might only be say 35% wide. and your highest most senior level jobs might be 45% wide. And really this is done because if you think about it, just mathematically, right? If you make a pay range wider, you're widening it around a midpoint. And when you make it wider around a midpoint, you're both lowering the minimum and raising the maximum. So if you have entry level jobs that you put in very wide pay ranges, what you're probably going to find is that those minimums don't have a lot of utility to you, right? They're lower than you can hire people in at. And you might also have maximum rates that are a little bit unrealistic. So 40% is about the sweet spot. We would generally flex it to be between 35% and 45% wide, but I would say that is what we see really across our book of business. We have a couple of clients who like to do what they call broadbanding, and they make their ranges 75% wide, put a lot of jobs into the same pay grades, and I think administratively they tend to struggle with that.

Great.

Thank you. And my last comment and question is, you know, why I'm all in favor of making sure that we are paying our people competitively. We want to retain our talent. And I know anybody that, if we did not, anybody that we would hire on would have to be paid at a market rate anyway. My concern is one thing. One, I'm in favor of this. But my other concern is the number there, about $238,000 is left over in the budget. My concern is that the real number. I think we're probably going to start falling in a budget deficit. And the reason why I say that is I know there's outside entities that we are working with and negotiating that are looking at possibly raising up their cost. And we're going to incur that cost, which is going to shrink that $200,000 and probably make it go negative. So my concern is we're operating at $20 million and doing all these increases on a 3.356 mill in a very heavily subsidized sales tax community, that there's going to be a point in time where that tipping point is no longer sustainable. And how are we going to sustain, pay our employees what they need to be in the market, but also maintain our budget as well? I think if we don't do something soon, I mean, I know we've got extra retail coming in and there's going to be some increase in sales tax, but that's not going to be enough to overcome those deficits later on down the line, so. I'm in favor of this, but I'm also really concerned that we're going to have a major problem on our hand. Council Member Delaney, I saw you next. Yes.

Yes, my question is for Lori. You said, hey, we pull in this many organizations because that way we guarantee that we have enough data points on similar job descriptions because some cities don't have all the job descriptions that others have. My concern is I feel like there is in this list some very concerning comparisons because the cost of living in Greeley is not the cost of living in Denver, in Aurora, in Broomfield. And so I feel like you might be getting absolutely inflated numbers by including information from those sources because that market has a higher cost of living. So the market necessarily pays higher. So.

So I think that's a fair point, and I think it's a great thing to be looking at in question. What I would say is you're right. There are various cost of livings among those organizations. However, there is a difference between cost of labor and cost of living. And we work with a large number of the organizations that are on that list. Not all of them, but a large number of them. And what we're tracking for them and the information we're providing them to build pay structures, the same as we do you, is based on labor rates. Labor rates don't match, unfortunately, cost of living rates, right? They can't. We've seen this historically over the last 40 years, right? If cost of labor had really been tracking with cost of living, we'd all still be able to be, you know, one income families putting our kids through college and buying houses. And that's not really where we're at anymore. So what the constant among those groups are that the cost of labor does not tend to be that different. And I think there might be some of these that you would be surprised some of those larger higher cost of living places. their wage base sometimes can be quite low. So what we did, because we created a larger list of organizations than you had compared with in the past, We ran the analysis both ways. We looked at it with just the orgs you have before, and we look at the expanded list, and it made statistically almost zero difference. This just gave us data, more data on more jobs to make it more valid. So it's a fair point that those cities are different as far as cost of living, but the labor market they're competing in and their cost of labor is not that different, is my view. Okay, thank you.

All right, I don't see any more questions and or comments, so I appreciate your time and everything like that.

All right, go ahead. I was on the same path as Councilmember Delaney, but I do like how you mentioned all compete in the same labor market, so ultimately, yes, I agree with that. I feel that what has been presented is fair. I think that It's important for us to ensure that our staff is paid, as mentioned, competitively. Because, again, they're doing the work. They're helping our community and our city move forward. And without them, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing. So it's important. I do like also the fact that there's no pay compression for the police department, how you have it at a 10%, which is good, because I think that will help. Those steps so there's you know, you never have to like what is it? Catch up I guess you know just make those changes But outside of everything I mean it's great presentation. Thank you very informative.

Thank you as well All right, I don't see any more questions or comments so Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate your time Thank you, Lori, for your time. Appreciate you being here this evening. So thank you.

Thank you so much. Have a good evening.

Thanks, staff, for putting this together. Appreciate it. So look forward to seeing more of it as we continue along the budget process. Thank you. All right. Next item is the 2026 Park Signage Project.

Yes, Mayor and Council, as Ty's coming up here to get prepared for the presentation, this project is one that we're working on right now to go through and refresh signage throughout our entire park system. One of the things that we have found over the last couple of years is some of the rules written on our park sign aren't necessarily aligned with city code. And so that is a big push with this to make sure that whatever we are enforcing in the park system has gone through the scrutiny of the democratic process. And so Ty has reached out. to a graphic artist to get some ideas of what new park signage could look like. And then with that has presented these ideas to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board to get their input that then feeds into a recommendation for the City Council. Ty will be able to go over what those recommendations are and then hopefully at the end of this get direction from the City Council so we can begin progressing in this task of replacing our park signage. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Ty as soon as his presentation pops up.

Perfect. Thank you. So Ty Borowski, Assistant City Manager here with Curt Baudet, Operations Director. And we're going to just go through kind of the same slideshow we provided to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board as we started having some early conversations on what re-envisioning our park signage could look like. And so you're all familiar with the state of our parks. We have rural signs looking very much like this old sign at Ridge Park where a lot of the policies listed are inconsistent with Evans Municipal Code. At times we have put tape over rules that no longer apply. In some cases they've been painted over. They're really reaching end of life, and this seemed like a really great opportunity to consider how we could brand our parks more cohesively and take advantage of the sign shop and the capacity that we've built since we installed a lot of the signage originally. And so we have a, with our sign technician, I worked to kind of draft some early concepts of what these could look like, looking at some of the newer parks in our system, Hunter's Reserve, Da Vinci Park. From there, I just wanted to professionalize the concepts a bit more so we could bring something to the Parks and Rec Board that they could provide really thoughtful feedback on, push us in a certain design direction, and then bring something that had been vetted by that group here. So I won't go through all of the designs. They're in your packet. We can maybe chat about them after if we want to go one by one on the original designs. I'll kind of focus on, I think, what the board recommended for city council's consideration. So all of these designs were rendered generically on 48 by 36 sign blanks, but we tried to create designs that could fit on different sizes and orientations of signs. I can work with the graphic designer or with some of the existing styles to fit into what we need to do for some of the existing mounting structures that exist in some of our parks. And then the other question that popped up was, well, how do we look at rules signage integration? So we have a municipal code requirement to show parks rules at the entrance of every sign. There's kind of two ways to look at it. We can do what we have done, which is integrate them into the placemaking signage, like you can see here at the dog park. Or you could do them independently. I live in Englewood, went to one of the parks and found that they do it separately. There's pros and cons to both. I think the integrated option is a little more streamlined. It's one sign, one post. Independent is a lot nicer from an operation standpoint because we can have a bunch of them ready as they're damaged, as graffiti happens, as they're shot at. We can quickly replace them. We can put new ones up. We can have them in trucks. And really, we only have three different iterations of parks, rural signs that exist. We have the dog park. We have Riverside that has some specific language. And then we have the rest of our park system. So we could really have three sets of signs that are ready to go, really make sure that that you know, the parks are looking their best, and signage is part of that. This is just the kind of pro-con of integrated versus independent sign rules. And so we brought this in front of the Parks and Rec Advisory Board in June, and looking at that original design, they supported moving forward with Design 1 or Design 7. They couldn't pick between them, so they wanted council to have their thoughts between them. And they wanted some changes to the accessibility of being able to read the signage with some spacing modifications. So we were able to get some updated rendering with this feedback. And we also included Design 4 because that was their third place runner up. And they also formally recommended moving forward with independent rural signage versus the integrated signage. They just like the flexibility that provides. And so I kind of have the updated renderings. And as I reached back out to the graphic designer to clean these up, he provided design one, seven, and four in the color as presented in an alternate as well. So you could see design one and seven here on the Charles H. Welch mounting, which they were big fans of and wanted to continue with where possible. In the alternative color with more of a taupe and navy versus the lighter blue and darker blue. So that's design one and seven again. And then I have the third place option here, which was design number four. So very similar to design one, slight difference in kind of where the city statement is. And they were also kind of going back at these. They really liked the kind of prairie grass icon for our parks and open spaces to tie those together. So you can see that was a theme between all three of these. And I'm far from artistic, so I'm doing my best to communicate the artistic vision. But I have very much a science and engineering mindset. So yeah, if there's artistic questions, I won't be able to help fill in too many of the blanks there. So then we looked forward at rule sign renderings. And so we really wanted to put something that fit into the same theme, use a similar icon. So we had the designer put together our first list. I wanted to have a rendering just ready to go for this presentation. Before our council deadline, we met with the police department to get their feedback. And so based on the rules that they wanted included with ties back to the municipal code, we have an updated rendering here. And these would be the vetted rules that are included. We also included some language on the bottom for the full list of rules and rental information. So if we do have THINGS THAT WE WANT TO ADD THAT WE CAN FIT ONTO A SIGN OR DON'T WANT TO BECAUSE THERE'S JUST TOO MUCH ON A SIGN THAT HAS 12 OR 15 DIFFERENT REGULATIONS. YOU KNOW, WE CAN REDIRECT ELSEWHERE, ESPECIALLY FOR THE RENTAL INFORMATION. AND SO AT THE FOREFRONT, WE NEEDED, MUNICIPAL CODE REQUIRES parks hours, so right up in the forefront, and then kind of working our way top to bottom on rules. Obviously, the dog park will have different dog off-leash rules. Riverside will have different rules related to alcohol and smoking, which are not allowed in the parking structure adjacent to the ball fields or the ball fields. So I'll open it up to questions, and I can pull up the individual renderings if council's interested. We can focus on the revised designs. I'll really... Let you all drive the conversation. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Ty. If anybody has any questions or comments, please use your request to speak. Can you go back to the first rendering, design seven with the blue, I think it was? Yeah, the one before that? Yeah. I actually like that design number seven in the blue. But my question for you, though, is on the park rules at the bottom. Instead of giving a website, can you make that a QR code?

Yeah, that was one of our early conversations. I haven't had the same conversation with Tim. But when I talked to Chris, there were concerns about people putting stickers over the QR codes that are different than the QR code we post. And it's really hard to tell. So if we do the specific URL, yes, it's a little more work to type it in. But at least we know it's redirecting to a splash page. I think that's a conversation we can have. We can look more into QR codes. But that was the concern at the time why we went with the URL. And the goal was just do a really quick redirect that's just parks rules. Okay, perfect.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not artistic by any means, but I mean, that's just my personal opinion. I mean, they all look good. So I would be happy with however way council decides to go, but thank you. All right.

I also like the blue. I think it just goes more with our colors. I like the other one, don't get me wrong, but I think just aesthetics and part of the branding, the blue goes better. In the individual signs, I think the grass below looks better just because it draws your eyes down versus having two icons in the top. It just looks too much. And so there you see it just brings your eyes to read down. So I like that one. I do also like what you mentioned initially. I was like, yeah, one. But then when you mentioned if you have it on independent signs, it's easier to replace. So I think that's probably the best bet. And as things change, it's easier to also replace things in the event some rule of some sort does change in the future, then you can go ahead and update those versus the other. But yeah, great job. I also agree with the Parks and Rec Commission with the designs. I think they're all great. but the blue for sure for me. And I do like the fact that they have a color palette and I won't ask you design questions.

Appreciate that. So just a quick question for clarification. Are you talking about the plant thing on the bottom of the, the grass on the bottom of this main signage or are the parts?

Or it's that, but not that one, the other one, exactly like that.

Okay.

Because I think that top is just too much. It just competes too much with our logo. It should just be at the bottom. Got it. Cool. That's my opinion.

Good.

but also draws your eyes to look, you know, to read down.

Mayor Pro Tem?

Okay, I guess I'm the devil's advocate right now. I like the tan and blue. I think the blue on blue is too monochromatic, too boring per se, but you guys know me. I'm all about color. So if you go back to the renderings, not the first one... The second or third one. So I like design one on that one. I'm okay with design seven on that one. I like that one. Yeah, no. Yeah, I like design one or seven on that one because the blue on blue for me is just, I can't get on board with that. It's gonna be very boring for me and it's gonna make me think of water. And we're not technically, I know we have a river, but we are a lot of prairie land. And if we're gonna have that prairie grass, I like the blue and the tan because to me it pops more. But that's just my opinion. Thank you for bringing them to us. And I like what Council Member Johnson said about the grass on the rules. I like the city up here and the grass down there. I do like that. But in the tan and blue. That's me, sorry.

Thank you. Councilmember Delaney.

Okay. So hobby horse time. I'm big into branding. And what is at the bottom of every single one of your slides? Red and blue. I don't understand why we didn't present to the planning committee at least one option

that was using the city's already branded colors all of them and we can if that's the recommendation to come back with some of this with a different colorway we can go back to them we're going to bring the actually the rules signage back to them on thursday so that is that could be our opportunity if that's your preference i just i i think it's important to i mean

There's a reason why you can go to McDonald's in China and know that you're going into McDonald's, and it's the Golden Arches. And we need to start focusing, in my opinion, on that as a city. We know what Edge is, because that brand has been emblazoned into our minds. And so I would just say, I don't want anything absolutely crazy, but if we can somehow

get it to where we are incorporating that red the white and the blue that is kind of the city of evans colors um i would appreciate that and maybe i can go back to i have kind of one slide here that's that's included in your packet on the let's say the initial arcs design signage and so you know this this could have been me providing um info that was in maybe a little misaligned. So we looked at some of the signage throughout the city, specifically the roundabout, the new entry sign going into the junction. We looked at what's out there on Charles H. Welch. And so I kind of said, let's run with that. We could definitely do, we had a couple that had some of the red and blues. I think the Parks and Rec Advisory Board didn't like the two different colors, but we can bring back, if you have a preference of design that you'd like to see a different color palette added to it, I'm happy to get that for you.

I don't know. I'll leave.

I'm fine with that. I'm fine.

I would, I just, because like, yes, there is the design five that is kind of our branding. However, it's really the only one that encompasses all three And I don't think it was great. And maybe you can't make it great. Maybe that's why Tammy's looking at me like, you're crazy. But, like, I don't know. Even if it were just incorporating a red border, you know, it doesn't have to be the writing that's red. I think that's what really clashes on that is you've got the dark blue Prairie View Park and then all of a sudden red address. I get it. So I don't know. I just – I do like the idea of trying to incorporate that red, white, and blue into the park signage because that is Evans' colors.

That's all I have. All right. Council Member Neal. Well, I'd like to note that the National Park Service has independent language for their rules, and I think separating it is important. for the parks Because it's too as you noted it's it's too hard to change it out when it's vandalized or it's out of date You can just and I prefer a Nice sign with the name of the park and I love having the address added to these signs Because a lot of times if you're looking for a park and When you're traveling They don't come up very well sometimes in a GPS System so Appreciate that I did show this to several different people businesses and the only 100% consensus was that they hated the green and the yellow. But most of them either did pick option number one or design number seven, and I think number seven won out over number one. And that would be my preferred choice too in the blue.

Just to clarify, so design number seven in the blue color or what color? In the blue color. Okay, just wanted to clarify. Councilmember Crabtree.

All right. Well, next presentation. Right away, my artistic eye picked up number one and seven without a doubt. We'll go to the next slide without the blue. The reason that I'm not a fan of the blue is because, let's just talk about structure. Number seven is my favorite for a couple of reasons. First, we're in the prairie more than the mountains, so the grass is very important. Second, we have the wave. And that's already a brand establishment through our marketing. Second, or third, is if you go with the blue, we're going to have more sun damage and more fading. So to keep these signs for longer longevity, that is the most appropriate color to go with. It also draws the attention to the brand name as forefront. So that is my favorite sign. I agree with Councilmember with the logo in the bottom right corner and also having two independent signs for functionality. One, we need to swap them out quickly if things change. Two, having our primary brand like that up front and center is very balanced. Having red in that sign though, I think that sign number seven is right on the money. And if I was to print that in a mass number of units, I would be more comfortable with that sign. Design 1 is really good. It's a little bit too sterile, and it's moving away from our original designs. If you could go to the rules, the only thing that I don't like about the rules is the one on the right is my favorite. The other one I don't really care for is the very end. No one's ever going to go to the website. No one's ever going to check that out, but we cannot use a QR code. because I can easily stick a new QR code on something and redirect you to whatever I want you to see. So the website's really important, but as long as we make sure that the police department and the rest of the municipality is on board with the top rules, because if I'm in the park and I'm not following those rules and I get a citation for something and the ownership is on me to check out that website, I may argue that in court. So of everything, the tan is great. It's going to avoid sun fading. It keeps with our brand and easily reputable. So we can mass produce these things. So good job.

Councilmember Lopez, you're quiet. I know you didn't request to speak. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on this? We're kind of at a stalemate right now. We've got three for the blue, one for the tan. What do you like out of this?

Well, I originally liked the blue, but with the consideration of the fading and because we are in a prairie kind of location, I understood the reasoning for that. I do understand also, Councilmember Delaney's a comment about getting some of the branding colors in it, and I don't know, without making it gaudy, I just don't know how you could insert that, but there is something to say about branding and knowing that when you see the sign that you know automatically that it's us. So I was liking that concept. I am in agreement with that lower portion there that we don't need that, but then there needs to be something maybe that fills that so it's not so empty then. But I'm in agreement with the comments that were made. The brown, the beige is probably for the fading purposes and some cost savings or time savings looks good.

Okay.

Design seven.

All right, so we have three for the blue, three for the tan color, and then Chris, or Council Member Delaney was talking about incorporating the Evans colors into it. So here's a compromise. Why don't we... bring back one of the design with number seven and try to incorporate, bring back the blue and the tan and blue, the tan one and then bring one back with the design that council member Delaney had incorporating the Evans colors into it and then we'll take those three and then we can do a consensus on those three. Can we do that?

Would it work to give you a rendering of all three side by side for design seven and I'll do the rule sign as well with the same and then we can run it all through Kodi and go that way? Is that right? I think that's a great idea. Perfect. Thank you.

Can you add the little, the red that's on the side of the logo? Or Evan's logo, you know how it has that little red streak to the side?

Yeah. In red?

Yes, like for his rendering. Like if you were to add red for like the third option.

Just there or elsewhere as well?

No, just for that specific one that's gonna have red.

Would it be the blue one with just a red? Sorry, I'm confused on that too. Yeah, I'm confused.

Well, so Council Member Delaney said he wanted to add red. So our logo has the blue and then the side of like the, you know, the path has like a little red on the edge. So just bring the actual logo the way it looks with the red when you add any red to his design is what I mean. So then it's cohesive.

Okay, I get it. Council Member Delaney, go ahead. Yeah, actually, okay. Think that actually work and just have that and just actually make it our actual logo not a close to our logo And then one one thing I wanted to clarify because of councilmember Crabtree's comments When it says for a full list of rules and he was concerned about you know, which rules are we putting it would have the sign would have When it was made the current full list of rules, correct?

We usually put the year on every single sign we print around there. So, yes, we would be able to tell. Yeah.

And so really that full list of rules thing is for we make a change in policy. You haven't gotten around to putting up the signs yet. And so it's kind of a cover our bases kind of thing.

Yes and I think there's a few other things that we could have on that Web site. So generally around bodies of water we have fishing allowed from banks. We have no swimming wading paddle boarding. So that would be a rule that's listed on there but doesn't need to be on every sign. It is listed around you know bodies of water and storm water facilities. So I think that would maybe be the example if we were to have policies related to let's say porta potties that could live on there with the facilities rental. I think it just gives us a little bit of flexibility. And the same would apply if there is a modification, then as we catch up, I'm not sure it would be enforceable if we were to say, someone mentioned that if it's not listed here, would it be? I think that would probably be a challenge.

But 95% of the rule is going to be on the sign itself. Yes, these are the ones. And mostly it's about... The rentals and possibly any, like, minute things about swimming or bathing or whatever.

Ice skating, yes. Ice skating. Things like that.

I can't go ice skating.

Well, technically, it's not included in the municipal code at this time.

You can go ice skating. You just get to talk to Ed on a Thursday morning. Awesome.

All right. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right. Does that give you a good direction? Yep. Awesome. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. All right, well, we don't have anything else on our agenda for the work session, so we'll start promptly at 7. Thank you. Appreciate it.