Town Council - Regular Meeting

I'm going to call this meeting to order. Chipsum Town Council, Tuesday, August 25, 2026. Welcome, everybody. If you didn't get a chance to sign in at the back, please do. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. First item of business is the consent agenda.

I make a motion we approve the consent agenda.

We have a motion to approve the consent agenda. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Citizens before council, 4-H add-on program recipients. Got any 4-H kiddos here? Okay Eric Medina Gypsum Creek Golf Course. Welcome.

All right. Hello everyone. I hope you had a chance to review the materials that I had sent in. Okay as long as along with your legal department. I kind of thought that you know golf course concerns was a little vague for the agenda. Because it's a little bit more than that. But I come in front of you asking to consider the safety of people around town and at the golf course.

And the first thing I wanted to show you

On my property on Black Bear, this is the amount of golf balls that I picked up off the upper part of my property within about the last six weeks. I was out of town last weekend for the Broncos game. Somebody hit my truck in the front of my property with a golf ball. That went over my house to the front of my property. I consistently pick up balls all the way across Black Bear, up and down the street. So it's not just the back of my house. My solar panels have been damaged. The paint on my house has been damaged. Basically, when I moved in, I completely renovated my entire house inside and out. And now the paint job's flaking, solar panel damage, other damage, multiple broken windows. So just getting into that real quick. You know, not just me, but I've talked to other community members that have the same issues, multiple broken windows around the course. And let's remember, this course was designed private. It is a public course now, OK? And I hate to say it, but the level of player kind of goes down when you go to a public course. It really does. And along with the damage and whatnot, there are no posted signs. There is nothing in the pamphlet that talks about even yelling for if you have an errant shot. I think it's a liability for the town, not only for the people on the course. But now that I'm here speaking about it and letting you guys know that if a little child dies or somebody gets hit on a bicycle on the street on Black Bear or any of the other streets in that neighborhood, it is an issue. I would start with policies, signs, signage, then maybe review the boxes, the tee boxes, the direction of the tee boxes, the angles of those boxes. And lastly, no one wants to spend money, but nets could be possible. But let's start with liabilities. Last year there was a tournament that happened at the end of the year that was in very adverse weather. I had a window broken during that tournament. It was raining. It was like a hurricane. I talked to the course manager, who told me that the course loses money every year. They had no choice but to put on the golf tournament. He could not cancel it. He could not lose the revenue. OK, so I asked about what's going to happen with my window then, because people shouldn't be playing then, right? And I was never responded to. And I ended up having to pay for that. So we're talking $1,000 there, more money on my panels. And yeah, there's an inherent risk of owning a house on a golf course. But when you talk to any realtor, they're not telling you the truth about how many balls really hit the house or how dangerous it is when you have a four-year-old daughter that lives in the house. You know private course design again public now, you know, I'm looking out for the community this but also the safety of The golf course in the town. Okay secondarily I'd like to talk about electric golf carts. Okay in a town where we allow OHV Vehicles all over the place, right? Why don't we allow electric golf carts? I have talked to every single retired person, I'll call him, or older citizen I've seen on the street I've stopped and talked to recently about this issue. And there are a lot of people that are handicapped that would make it much easier for them to get around and not drive their rascals around to have a golf cart to get around town. That's one issue. But I'd like to talk about the actual golf course. Anybody who plays golf knows that when you take your clubs out of the car and you put them onto the golf cart, that takes time. OK? Then you go ahead, and if you're older, you have to do that same thing. A lot of older citizens play golf. So I think it would be at the benefit to consider electric golf carts in the town. And it's 2026. Electric bikes, it's not a big deal, I don't think. And I think it would really help people out in getting around with parking, especially. We have parking issues in this town. At the golf course, it's an issue. When you're building houses, it's As you know, there is a parking restriction in that area. You're not supposed to park in the street. I just had three houses built next to mine. Every day, there was cars parked on the street, five to 10 cars on both sides of the street, so bad that the fire department came by and warned everybody multiple times about this issue, because they could not get a fire truck through. Now, why are the cars there? Well, they're supposed to park at the golf course, but there's no spots at the golf course to park. So let's consider that that parking lot was built for a private course. It's a little small for the amount of people that are there. Private golf courts would knock down on that issue. That would help out, especially with a larger pickleball court, larger swimming facility. That could also help out. When people come into the rec center, it could help out as well. I sent information in about liabilities with the town. There's case law that goes behind this that gives the town basically, there is no liability to the town for private or public golf carts. There are other cities that have private golf carts that are allowed on their courses. Loveland is one great example. And going back to the golf cart course damage issue, there are other municipalities that also have rules in place to limit their liabilities around damage. And let's start with at least reminding people to call 4. Let's start with possibly logging damage. And the last thing I will say is that most of the balls I pick up hitting my house are hit by children playing the course. And it might be an accident, but I ask every one of them. I said, do you know you're liable for hitting our houses? Oh, we have no idea. They don't care. And that's the problem. And so I'd really appreciate if the council would consider both of these issues and possibly draft something to take care of it. Thank you for your time.

Thanks. Next item of business is ordinance number 11, series 2026, an ordinance of the town of Gypsum, Colorado, repealing and reenacting chapter 3.02 of Title III and bring the town sales tax regulations into compliance with state statutes and allow the state of Colorado, allow state collection of taxes. Jennifer?

Yes. Good evening. So as I mentioned at the first reading, there's three main objectives of this ordinance. The first one is just the town confirming that they would elect to go state collected for sales tax. The second is bringing the town sales tax regulations into compliance with the state statutes. They were fairly outdated. And the last objective is eliminating the vendor service fee to align with that of the

Any questions? This is a second reading. I'll close it to the council and open to the public. Anybody have any questions or comments? I'll close it to the public and reopen it to the council.

Make a motion to approve ordinance number 11, series 2026.

We have a motion to approve ordinance number 11, series 2026. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Resolution number 22, I am going to recuse myself as I have conflict of interest. Chris?

I'll take over here. Resolution number 22, series 2026, a resolution of the town of Gypsum approving the town or center filing number two final plat subdivision improvement agreements. This will be open to the public. Do I have any comments or any? Scott's cruising himself, James.

All righty, so tonight we have Scott Hunn, Mark, Anthony, Daniel, and Daniel online to go over Tower Center phase two. So for those of you that were here, Tower Center phase one was approved last year. That is what is going on down by the airport. And so this is phase two. They are adding in one of the mixed use areas, the town homes, the public park, and completing Winterset, the public infrastructure there. So with that, I'll let Scott take it away. Last two details. Sorry. In the resolution, you will notice that there are two subdivision improvement agreements. That is because one of the entities out there that is working on Tower Center is going to be taking on the townhomes, the park, and Winterset, while the other will be completing the mixed use area. So that is why there is a separation of those subdivision improvement agreements. Not typical, but that's what's going on here. All right. Sorry about that. Scott?

No worries. Thank you, James. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members. My name is Scott Hunn from Hunn Planning and Policy. And I am, I guess, the lone man here representing our group. First off, I just wanted to thank the town. It's been a pleasure working with James and Lena. And I know other members of our team have been working with other members of your team. It's been pretty smooth. So we're happy to be here tonight. I know this is important to the town. So I'm going to try to be brief tonight. This is filing number two of the Tower Center PUD. And James did a great job in his staff report laying out the recent history of the Tower Center as Tony Lamonia and Eagle County Land Company has brought forth that new PUD in the last few years. Just real briefly, the preliminary plan for this part of the PUD that we're looking at was approved in October of 2024. Filing number one, the first plat that laid out several tracts of land was approved in December 2025. Right now, we're talking about filing number two. And as I will show you, that really is focused on tract F, the previous filing number one. This is just the overall concept development plan for the PUD. This is a copy of Tower Center filing number one that shows different tracks, including Chara Drive, different tracks of commercial, mixed use, and residential to be further subdivided. That was approved just over a year ago. And again, what we're focusing on for filing number two is tract F. Filing number two really is the purpose of that is to create five parcels a lot one Which is the townhome parcel right in the middle and that's 80 townhomes a lot to which is the multi mixed-use parcel? Tract a is the new park a track B will be future development for single-family homes And track C is just right-of-way for the last portion of Winterset Avenue This is, again, Track F, and just relating it back to the more detailed kind of concept development plan that was approved during the preliminary PUD plan. It's a blow-up of that that shows lot one, where the townhomes will go, lot two, where the mixed use will happen. Track B features single-family development that would get subdivided at a subsequent time. Track A, the park, and then again, finally, Track C, Winterset Avenue. Once again, just to break it down a different way, this is the more detailed site plan showing the actual design of the townhome portion of the project, the design of the mixed-use portion up at the upper northwest corner of the tract. B, again, is future subdivision for single-family, 47 single-family homes. Tract A is the park, and track C is Winterset. Again, James did a really nice job laying out the criteria for approval of a final plat for town council. Some of the considerations are conformance with the preliminary plan that was approved for this PUD. I believe your staff has found that it is 100% in conformance with that preliminary plan. Conformance with the town specifications subdivision regulations subdivision design standards again I think this has been reviewed over four or five months by your staff, and I think we're in the right place We're looking at roads and streetscape design utility provision raw water irrigation parkland dedication and improvements easements and right-of-ways And then finally, as James mentioned, the improvements agreement and financial guarantees that have been reviewed by your town attorney and working real closely with Tony and Mark. That's the section under which we're operating for review criteria. And just as a reminder, the Planning Commission considered this final plat on July 15th and forwarded a recommendation of approval with no conditions. That is all I have. I'm happy to take any questions. And again, thank you for your time. Sorry?

Open it up to the council. I have a question. So the mixed use looks smaller than what I remember. I thought the mixed use was going to be a little bit more predominant. And can you just talk to me about that? What the specs are on that and what we're looking at going in there?

Councilman Brenzac. Scott. Yeah, I might have Tony Lamonia address that, if you don't mind. Tony, do you want to? Sure.

Good evening. So just for the record, we are only – In this filing, platting the southern two buildings, there will be two more to the north of Kiara Drive, so that will create a little downtown area with sort of four very similar buildings on both sides of the road. So we're just doing it in two pieces, and that's why it looks smaller than it was. Does that make sense?

It does. Thank you. That helps.

So we'll be back in there doing the other side of the road soon enough, but we wanted to get that going, and obviously with Hill Point coming in to plat the rest of it, it sort of makes it de facto plat of that area anyways, so that's what we did. Thanks.

Thank you. Any other questions from the council? Tom looks like he's still thinking. OK. I'll open it up to the public. Any public input? Would you step on up, ma'am?

I had heard a rumor that there was going to be a new post office over there. Is that true or not? I don't see it.

I can speak to that. That was going to be true. The Postal Service sent a lease to Tony and his group in September of 2025 and they signed it and then the Postal Service went dark and never responded even though they specced out the post office. They were the ones that designed what they wanted. They then had a change of heart or budgetary complications or whatever. and decided that they aren't doing a new post office. I've been working with the congressional delegation to try to change that, but so far they have notified us that they're going to be doing a modular expansion on the existing site, which we believe will not, well, I know that that will not serve the need of the community. And so I actually sent a letter to the Postal Service and our congressional delegation and the council and the county commissioners the Vail Daily and some other people just yesterday trying to reengage them. So no, that is not happening for now, but we're still hoping. So send a letter to your congressman.

OK. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

And just to clarify that a little more, the site is actually there. The site has already been dedicated to that, right?

Yeah. OK. Any other public input? OK. I'll return it to the council. Do we have a motion or any other questions?

I'll make a motion to approve resolution number 22, series 2026.

We have a motion to approve resolution number 22, 2026. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. I will turn it back over to our mayor.

Thank you, Chris. Next item of business is.

Thanks, Scott.

Yeah, thank you, Scott.

Thanks, Scott and everyone.

Tony, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Resolution number 23, series 2026, a resolution calling a special coordinated election to be held on Tuesday, the third day of November 2026, and submitting to the eligible electors a ballot issue concerning the imposition of a lodging tax. Jeremy? And Catherine's on as well.

Sorry, I just had too many things open on this end here All right, so you'll see resolution number 23 in your packets Including exhibit a that's the actual ballot language itself But it essentially is a ballot issue asking voters to approve a 4% municipal lodging tax that would replace only replace the existing 4% Eagle County lodging tax collected on hotel rooms and other overnight accommodations within the town of Gypsum. So the background here is that in 2021, I believe, the state legislature changed state law to allow counties to collect lodging taxes. Previously it was just municipalities that could collect lodging taxes. When that was approved at the state level, a year later, Eagle County ran a ballot issue seeking a 2% lodging tax in unincorporated Eagle County and any municipality that didn't already have a lodging tax. Eagle County that's only gypsum didn't have a previous lodging tax because we didn't have any lodging then in 2025 they asked voters again for another 2% which was also approved by the voters so the countywide unincorporated and town of gypsum specific lodging tax assessed by Eagle County is 4% and this question would simply Replace that the same way that we did back in 2020 the county had a Tobacco tax that was assessed and went to the county and We put on our ballot in that year a similar question and the monies that would have flowed to the county Just changed direction. The total amount assessed was the same and flowed to the town of gypsum So if you haven't need any more background, let me know

I was just gonna ask Catherine if she had anything she wanted to add or just waiting for questions I just have a question.

So Jeremy The tax is based on our new hotel, correct?

Well, it would apply to any overnight accommodation in the town of gypsum under 29 days Okay

Okay so it's any rentals, any lodging accommodations that we have here?

Under 29 days of rental. If it's like a long-term stay like at that Echo Hotel if there was some that was 30 days plus it wouldn't apply.

So just in my mind help me figure it out. We can't collect tax obviously until that hotel is functioning correct?

Yeah, they're going well. We would collect the tax on any overnight accommodation That's occurring in the town and the hotel is expected to open December of 26 this year.

Okay. Okay. I didn't know it.

Mm-hmm But this tax wouldn't apply until January 1st of 2027 in any case if the voters were to support it One question I had Jeremy was you mentioned the ballot language was included in exhibit a and I guess I didn't I

Was it the end? OK. Yeah, if you scroll all the way to the bottom. OK, got it. Thanks.

And that's the unfortunate thing with ballot language. We're kind of corralled in by state law and TABOR on what it can actually say. It's very confusing saying that it's a 4% increase in tax when it's actually the replacement of a 4% increase. that will go to the county instead of the benefit of the citizens, the gypsum. So it's very important on the public side that everybody talk to their neighbors. It only makes sense. We can have it go to the county for their, they do have it earmarked for different things. Silly that it goes there and and not to the town because that would be a benefit. We've got another hotel coming on Probably next summer and I would expect that not the last one talking to developers. So I Think it's important.

We get this one this one passed You know one other comment I would make just for what it's worth is I've spoken with Ian McClure, the developer of the Echo Hotel, and as well as Chris Manley, the developer of the Hilton Home 2 Suites, and they support this because they both have said, in particular Ian, that they've had a very good development experience in Gypsum and they want their properties and both the impacts and the benefits that will accrue associated with that property to go to the benefit of the town. Like one example will be you know, once you get a hotel at the corner of McGregor and Cooley Mesa We'll need a signal on a crosswalk there to get guests and patrons across the street there go to the Vail Brewing those sorts of businesses and if you've got pedestrian traffic that requires some capital investment on the town side to to invest in those things that just one example and

So are we going to address the letter that we received on asking about whether we should have that on the ballot this time or not?

We can certainly discuss it. I would actually be embarrassed if I was on the other side of this letter myself.

I'm just saying. I mean, it was a citizen request.

Yeah, it's a citizen request. The Eagle County School District wants to put another vote out for a mill levy increase. for teachers. It seems like that's an every other year deal. Some may not know this, but I was a school board president for some time. And it's not an easy place to be, but you've got to watch your dollars. And Tabor, Gallagher, some of the amendments have made it harder on education. But they've got to get their house in order, in my mind. And we've already spent money. getting this ballot initiative in place, and I think it's the year to do it. So I'm just one guy, but my position is we move forward. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that we addressed it so that we... And I guess I didn't say they're asking us not to run this ballot this year because they're afraid it will affect their chances.

Yeah.

I just wanted to say I think I think you've sort of made it clear but I want to make it perfectly clear that this tax is going to be charged it's just a matter of where it goes to and we would prefer that it goes to the town rather than to the county I sure wish the language was more specific on that well I think like Jeremy had stated with this going you know town Egyptian taxes

be increased well I think it's our due diligence and telling our family neighbors friends that we aren't raising taxes we're just putting it back into the community's pocket into gypsum so that money that the counties gain it actually helps our taxpayers because it's going back to them and I think that's the biggest thing last time we had it up my in-laws voted no and they didn't even call me I'm like why didn't you call me on this because they didn't know so I just think The more that the community advocates for it and that what it will benefit will help us because it's not raising taxes by any means.

And I appreciate the clarity, Scott, that you've put out there and J.U. as well on social media. I think that that's a good way to get that information out.

And Catherine Wynn, for clarification, once this is accepted moving forward, at what level can the town or council members advocate for this? I know there's laws around campaigning for one way or the other. Can you explain that?

Yeah, so that's a really good question. So now that the council has seen the question and considered it, the town can't do any campaigning going forward, you know, to tell somebody to vote yes or I guess vote no, but... So all the public information the town has is kind of already gone out. I think there's information up on your website and that is okay to stay up there. It's already been created. But the town spending of campaign money would need to stop. You as individual board members, individual employees, you know, you've got a right to campaign as individuals to, you know, spend your own money campaigning and your own time campaigning. And so that is perfectly allowed. You are all allowed to talk about it. You're all allowed to tell people what you're doing. individual request is on voting and and so that's fine if you'd like to you know go out in the community and go to like um hoa meetings and talk about it you can do that if you want to submit something to the veil daily like a letter to the editor you're absolutely allowed to do that thanks for that clarification

Mr. Mayor one other thing I might mention just so that it's abundantly clear is this is a lodging tax and so it's paid by the guests that buys a room at a hotel so it's a tax that in large part would not be assessed on town of gypsum residents it would be assessed on those who are visiting the community

I have a question. Does this include accommodations such as Airbnbs? And are those currently collecting taxes that are going to the county instead of to us? And would that be included and end up going to us?

Yes, the structure of this would be identical to the way that it's assessed by the county. It's just the flow of monies, where they go to which entity. I believe the county does collect on Airbnbs in town. The town would as well, although I think the county likely has a much more sophisticated mechanism for which to do that. Yeah.

Thank you.

I make a motion that we approve resolution number 23 series 2026.

We have a motion to approve resolution number 23 series 2026.

Any discussion?

All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. All right, now to the fun stuff. Eagle County Conservation District. Laura and Ryan, welcome.

Okay, red means on. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Town Council. Thank you so much for having us. Should I turn the presentation on? There we go. My name is Laura Bohannon. I am the executive director for the Eagle County Conservation District. This is Ryan Vlar. He is our new horticulture specialist. We are here tonight to talk about the Beyond Lawn program, but I did want to give you guys some quick updates on the conservation districts and all the happenings that are occurring. As a reminder, we are a Title 35 special district, so we represent our landowners, ag producers, and water rights holders for their natural resource management and conservation practices, and we offer those services through what you see on the screen in front of you, so we offer For technical assistance, we can consult with landowners, perform site visits, and help them come up with conservation plans or land management plans to address natural resource concerns that they're facing. We also engage in a lot of education and outreach, and we often do that through opportunities like events and workshops. We also continue to offer financial assistance to our landowners and our constituents. So we are continuing a noxious weed cost share program. Right now it is currently a 75-25 cost share where ECCD, we come and assess a property, we identify noxious weeds, help create integrated treatment plans, and then ECCD will cover 75% of the cost to eradicate identified noxious weeds on the property. We are continuing to engage in our virtual fencing projects. So that is the collar that you see on the cow in the top left photo. And that is really helping adaptive grazing management strategies for our ag producers on working landscapes. We now have a new 50-50 conservation grant available to our constituents and landowners. This 50-50 conservation grant is a maximum amount of $15,000. So if a landowner would like to perform a conservation project and that project aligns with our mission, vision, and our strategic operating plan, we will cover up to 50% of the costs and contribute a maximum of $15,000 for that project. Applications will be opening up again this fall, and so please follow all of our newsletters to kind of keep track of that, and we'll also have information on our website. We have our Beyond Lawn program, and we are continuing that, which I'll turn it over to Ryan here in a minute to discuss. But before I do so, we continue to offer our grass and wildflower seed mixes. Those are either native or water-wise and hand-curated by the Conservation District and our local experts. that are really designed and curated for our local region and climate. You can also find all those mixes on our website. Finally, we conduct in research. We often, so we'll monitor and track natural resource concerns in our grant projects, but also we often partner with municipalities, towns, and the county, and often how we do that is noxious weed mapping. Helping create those integrated plans and working with the towns to help eradicate noxious weeds And then lastly we can advocate for our local stewards So we often engage in policy and legislation and really that's just to represent the voice of the landowners when it comes to a natural resource issue

So as Laura said, my name is Ryan Vlar. I'm a horticulture specialist with Beyond Lawn. And I know you all are familiar with the program, but Beyond Lawn is Eagle River Valley's resource for sustainable, resilient landscape. And these are the main pillars of the program, water-wise landscaping, irrigation efficiency, fire-wise landscaping, biodiversity enhancement, policy guidance, and community education. Our mission and objectives are to empower communities to conserve water and enhance biodiversity through education, collaboration, and guidance towards fostering sustainable landscapes. And we do that through providing landscape and irrigation evaluations, offering financial incentives for upgrades like our rebates, establishing a network of professionals, expanding education, broadening community outreach, guiding policy, and building an HOA grant program. So we support community resiliency through addressing natural resource concerns, water quantity and conservation being the biggest there. About 80% of outdoor water use is lost from the watershed through evaporation, while most of indoor water use makes it back into our streams and rivers. So irrigation reduction and efficiency represent the best opportunity to keep waterways healthy and flowing. And then on top of that, converting landscapes to more waterwise alternatives to reduce the overall water need there. When we are doing our evaluations and any sort of recommendations we make to folks, we're also looking for opportunities for wildfire resilient landscaping and fireware communities. We want to make sure that our recommendations are in tandem with anything that the county fire specialists would also recommend. And with that, also looking at biodiversity enhancement and ecosystem connectivity. So we all love to live here. We came here for a reason. And keeping our natural spaces wild and connected is a big priority. So Beyond Lawn in 2026, I don't have to tell anyone here, but we are facing a historic drought. And that has driven unprecedented program demand. So we have a growing wait list for evaluations. And in order to address this, we have been providing Beyond Lawn office hours. That's an opportunity for anyone in the community to come visit us at a community center and get some one-on-one guidance with whatever questions they may have about their landscape. We're working with contractors to provide partner evaluations going forward. So contractors will be able to go out into the field, fill out a Beyond Lawn form that comes to us, and then we send that to the homeowner as a way to help connect homeowners to contractors and educate them on water-wise practices and irrigation efficiency. We provide workshops and educational opportunities, and we're expanding technical assistance for 2027. We also started an HOA mini-grant program this year. For this year, we only did HOA irrigation efficiency projects and not landscape conversion projects, but we'll do landscape conversion projects as well going forward. So with that, our existing rebate funding is sunsetting, and so we are looking at creating a new rebate structure going forward. So Beyond Lawn and Gypsum, we sent out a community survey earlier this year and had 76 responses from Gypsum. On-site evaluations of the most valued service, followed by educational workshops. Gypsum is about 10% of households on the wait list in the county, and 64% of community survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed that Beyond Lawn is important for achieving local sustainability goals. To date in the town of gypsum. We've approved seven turf replacement rebates totaling 21,000 78 square feet and $27,000 in funds awarded We've had four approved irrigation efficiency rebates totaling about 2,200 in rebates awarded and we still have 23,000 in remaining funds from time of gypsum previously And we expect the expenditure of those with projects that are happening this summer and fall. And with this, we're still compiling water savings data. It's a tricky thing, mostly because these projects require establishment watering. And years like this kind of skew the math there a little bit. It's great that the communities save so much water this year, but it does make that a little challenging. So for 2027 rebates, we're restructuring residential rebates for high impact actions to reach more residents and encourage program participation. It'll be a maximum rebate of $500 per household per year. First come, first served, as the previous rebate was. And there are four rebate categories, and it makes a match of different eligible activities. So irrigation efficiency, turf conversion, revegetation, and stormwater retention. And that's previously most of what we rebated was just for, you know, kind of water-wise landscaping and irrigation efficiency, and this is expanding that scope a little bit. So every $10,000 of rebate funds benefit 20 or more residents. And as before, participants must receive an evaluation to be eligible for rebates. This is just an example of the different kind of rebate categories and qualifying actions. In order to receive those rebates, you, you know, do this action, submit the application, and they're just flat fees for those sorts of actions.

And I just wanted to close it out by saying thank you to Town of Gypsum. You guys have been a great partner ever since the beginning of this program. We've really grown a lot over the years. With our mill levy funds, we've been able to expand our technical assistance and double down on the amount of services that we can provide to our landowners. Without our mill levy funds, we wouldn't be able to have Ryan here. And we are also in a position where we can start to look at how mill levy funds can contribute to the new rebate structure as well. He did mention that there's roughly $23,000 left in the gypsum funds that was provided to ECCD. We do anticipate soaking up those funds this fall. As Ryan kind of mentioned a little earlier, we've really pushed projects back. This summer due to the drought and planting is just not really recommended at this point in time So we're really starting to kind of dive back in with our participants this fall but we will come back to you with final numbers for this year and We're just here to kind of introduce the new rebate structure and and thank you for your contributions and partnership Any questions Thank you for all that you're doing.

We really appreciate it. I

Laura, Ryan, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming in. Nice to meet you. All right. We have another department overview utilities. Mike, you're up. Eagle River Coalition. Oh, I'm sorry. Too many check marks. Sorry, Mike. Thanks, Tom. Eagle River Coalition update. Josh Rumble and Bill Hoblitzel.

Hello. Bill isn't going to make it tonight. He has a new baby in mid-turn, and so I told him to stay home. I just got off the river this morning, and so I wasn't totally sure I was going to make it. I had to put both of us on the agenda. So I made it. I'm here. Uh, so I had a couple of quick things to update you all on and hopefully keep this quick. The town of Gypsum was a major supporter of our Abrams Creek, uh, road crossing project. That project was aiming to, um, harden this river crossing up on Abrams Creek, which, um, is home to a native indigenous, uh, cutthroat trout species that CPW, um, has named a core conservation species. Town of Gypsum gave $50,000 with the kind of caveat, I guess, that any excess funding gets handed back to the town. And so with that, here is our crossing installed. It is finished and done. And the block looks really good. And four water bars were also installed up the road above it. That was leading to some additional erosion problems. And as it says there, part of the council motion, we are cutting a check. And it might be mailed to you already for $3,275.50. So thank you for your support. I really appreciate it. It was an awesome project. And thank you so much. And then I also have a quick program update and wanted to kind of introduce myself to some of the new people on the council and tell you also a little bit about one of the programs that the town of Gypsum supports annually. This is our WQMAP, Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Program. I met with Mike and Jeremy last week and went into some greater detail on this. And so I'm going to keep it real brief for you guys. And they have more information if you need it, or I'm here for questions. So this is our rough budget on the program. You can see, well, I guess to back up a little bit, this is our general water quality monitoring program that is county-wide, watershed-wide. And the town of Gypsum has been Supporting since 2013 is my earliest records. I assume longer. This program has been going on since the early mid-90s as kind of a part of the Eagle Mine cleanup efforts and the Superfund site. This program was built to monitor that cleanup, and it has continued to work with the USGS to fund our water quality gauging or water quality monitoring sites in the watershed. So Town of Gypsum supports at 9,000, or historically it supported at $9,000 a year. That number was stagnant from 2013 up until last year. And we upped all of our asks across the board. And so the Town of Gypsum is funding at $10,000. That was largely due to an increase in cost from the USGS in their water quality monitoring efforts there. This is kind of our general funding map of how this thing works. Town of Gypsum is part of that partner contributions at $205,000 in the teal box there. And then Eagle County gives direct, and we shoot some of that money over to the Colorado River District in a joint funding agreement that goes to the USGS. It's a bit complicated, but about a half of that gets diverted back towards ERC for coordination and management of the program, covering my staff time, essentially. Our bug monitoring program, we go out and collect bugs every year in the river and send them into lab for analysis to check overall watershed health. And some of that money then goes to Lodic Hydrological as well, which is a watershed science group based out of Carbondale. That's who Bill Hoblitzel works for. He lives in Minton, though this is his home watershed, though the company is based in Carbondale. And then any excess funding that we have gets stored into a special projects fund or special studies. And those are historically USGS or other contracted research studies looking at watershed health That could be temperature or salinity, sediment, a number of different things historically. So this is the USGS sites. There's nine sites that are monitored by the USGS. We have additional temperature monitoring on top of the USGS sites. The blue dots are all of the places that we have temperature loggers in the river. Those are not real-time data. We download those at the end of every year and upload that into a portal. But we make that data set available for future research. And if the town needed it to look at permitting issues with outflows from stormwater, things like that, that data set is available. Here are all of our bug monitoring sites where we work with Eagle River Water and Sanitation in the town of Vail and go and collect bugs every year and send them into a lab. And so all of that data gets published in a couple different places. It gets uploaded into the EPA's water quality portal, which is a federal data clearinghouse. And then we also publish our River report card about every two to three years and there's a link to that here It has all kinds of maps and interactive data on the water quality in the watershed And so with that Thank you all it's nice to meet and see in some new faces and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer it and I just wanted to say thank you for all of your support and Really appreciate it

Thank you. Any questions? So with the low flows that we're seeing, say the Eagle River, are we actually seeing a lot more bugs?

It'll be hard to say. We collect our bugs every year in September, so we will be collecting them actually next week. I'm going to be out collecting bugs all year. all week. Our last year's bug data is not back yet. It takes about nine or 12 to 15 months to get data back from the lab. So there's a little bit of a lag on that. We expect that over time those numbers will probably dip. Whether that dip is actually seen this year or next year is a little bit hard to say yet. Thank you.

All right, Mike, you're up this time.

All right. So I'm here to do a kind of a brief overview of our utilities department, refresher for our returning council members, and obviously for our new council members, kind of what we do of a higher overview. Brief introduction to who we are. Obviously, I'm the utilities director in administration. We also have Esther Paragon, who is our administrative specialist. That title is interesting. She does so much for us. She not only works for utilities, she does public works. So she handles all of our customer calls, utility billing, customer inquiries. I mean, just a wide variety of things. So just an integral part of our team. move on to water treatment. We have such a great team just throughout the department. I'm so happy to be part of this team. I can't say enough about these people, and I hope I do. So Scott Morrow, who is our ORC, which is operator responsible charge, he is the person on the paperwork for the state as long as me. He oversees both of our water plants, has tremendous amounts of experience. We have Fred Pena, who's been with the town for a lot of years. That's over a decade. And we also have another great operator, Drake Boike. Just a tremendous team. We'll get into kind of the plants in a little bit. Wastewater. Tim Wright's been with the town for 20-plus years. Once again, the ORFC out there. And we have Brianna Acola. Which is another one of our operators great team out there? Making sure everything's running great We run into our field operations We got Tom even our ORC and our supervisor out there, so the field operations are out there Maintaining everything outside of the plants everything we don't see and kind of see everything underground pump stations fire hydrants Everything. The water leaves the plant. They're taking care of it. And then the wastewater is coming to the plant. They're taking care of all that infrastructure. So what is utilities? What is kind of our main goals as utilities? We have a lot of them. And I kind of highlighted three of the most important ones that we do. And they're very important to our mission. The first one, public and environmental health. That is our main goal. I misspelled environment. No, I didn't. I thought I did. Sorry. So that is our main goal. We bring in raw water. We treat it. And we take in sewage, and we treat it. So that's public health in so many aspects, bringing in the water, treating it, making it clean, making it potable for our consumers, and then taking that wastewater, delivering it to the wastewater plant, not spilling sewer, bring it into the wastewater plant, treating that, and then releasing it back into the environment. I mean, these are our main goals as a utility is to keep everybody safe and healthy. And we do a tremendous job on that. I mean, our numbers are phenomenal with that. I'm very proud to be here and what we do here. Next one, regulatory compliance. That is huge for us. We have all the alphabets that want to tell us and do tell us what to do. The EPA, Colorado Department of Health Environment, regulatory compliance. does not get easier for us. It only gets stricter and very, very tough for us. I mean, obviously, you all know we're building a massive wastewater plant to meet these regulatory compliance. So it doesn't change. And it's not just for the plants themselves. This applies department wide. Everything we have to do, it's unbelievable. the amount that our team accomplishes to stay in regulatory compliance. It changes just all the time. In fact, I was out at the water plant today talking with Scott and the operators. Just something else that came down the pipeline last month is just a tremendous stride that we're going to have to make. It doesn't change. It only gets stricter. And the team, they do a tremendous job in making sure Once again, we're meeting that public and environmental health and this regulatory compliance. They go hand in hand. And the next one that I think is very critical, especially this year, but it's all the time, is fire protection. The majority of our system is designed around fire protection. As we go through the slides, I'll show you some of the storage requirements we have out there. But making sure that all these fire hydrants we're maintaining, the water plants can produce this water if a structure fire breaks out. I mean, no system is designed for a wildland fire. I mean, that's on a different scale. But for fires within the town, I mean, that is a huge deal just department wide. So as we go into water treatment, the first slide you'll see is this is Mosier water plant. This is our primary water plant. This thing runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year minus whatever time we're down for maintenance. our primary source of water is Mosier Spring, which is a great source of water. We don't have to do much to treat this, which is awesome because it's gravity-fed, minimal requirements to treat this thing, chemicals and all that, and then it's gravity-fed down into the town. Such a tremendous source. And up there also, we have the the option to treat Gypsum Creek water as well to supplement if we need to as the spring fluctuates. And in this year, it is fluctuating a little bit. But springs are a whole different animal to kind of analyze over surface water. The plant is rated for 3 million gallons a day. Typically, we run about 1.4 to 1.6 million gallons a day. That is down this year. We're running just under 1 million gallons a day just based on the spring flow. One of the other things I noted is it's a direct filtration plant. That doesn't mean much to you, but it's just a highlight over it. And you can see our pink flamingo here also in the slide that spins around when we're doing backwashing. It's kind of a part of the family. The next water plant we have is Norgard. Very, very, very different from the Mosier. Its primary source is Gypsum Creek water. And currently, as you all know, we're working on the other source of water, which is Eagle River. We're currently working on the pump back station that is going to bring water from the Eagle River up to Norgard. There's two distinct plants up there. It's rated for 2.8 million gallons a day. One's a conventional direct filtration kind of like Mosier. That site has not been operated in numerous years. I'm actually working on design for that to bring it online as not only an emergency backup for Mosier, but just as we grow as a town, we're going to need this source not as just... a seasonal treatment plant. It's going to become year-round. So we're working on that right now. And the picture you see, I think, is interesting. While it doesn't look great, it's called a dissolved air flotation or a DAF system. which is different for water treatment. Normally in water, we're settling everything out to the bottom, taking it out on the bottom. This one's doing the opposite. We take micro air bubbles and we float up everything we don't want in the water and then skim it off. The funny thing is we're producing phenomenal water, which is on par for almost Mosier itself. So just a great system. We're working on projects in 2027 to upgrade numerous things there to help make resilience within the town and the water system itself. Wastewater treatment. I think we're all familiar with what's going on out there. We have a huge project. Currently, we're rated at just under 1 million gallons a day. We discharge treated effluent into the Eagle River. Once again, back onto our environmental health and responsibilities we need to do. We're currently under expansion. You can kind of see it in the background there to come up to 1.7 million gallons a day. Yeah, so huge project, moving along great. We need that thing soon because, yeah, they're out there every day. The plant needs this upgrade. It's really at its limits right now. Okay, so field operations. So I called field operations. It's basically all of our outside of the plant crews, so distribution and collections. So distribution is water, collections is wastewater. A couple of interesting facts is we maintain and repair 72 miles of water lines, 639 fire hydrants, and just under 3,500 valves. So what that means is anything and everything. These things need maintenance. There's been deferred maintenance over the years on all this. So we're really playing catch up on this. This is a lot of work for six people within the department. This is anything and everything from routine maintenance, which is making sure our fire hydrants are in working order, making sure our valves are working, repairing main breaks, which we assist contractors with that. But it's time consuming. There's a lot of work on that. And on top of that, on the bottom line item is we have 3,065 service lines within town. So we have a lot of meters to maintain, a lot of customer support to maintain. And that's the other thing that I left out on the previous slide is customer service is one of our main priorities here. If the customer calls, has an inquiry, we need to answer this. Another great fact that goes back to the fire protection aspect is we have 7.2 million gallons of available water storage in six tanks out there. We did a water study last year, and that shows that, hey, we have adequate water storage. We don't need to look at building new water tanks. But having 7.2 million gallons out there in water storage is a lot. It's a lot on the water operators to maintain these tank levels, not only for water quality, but for this fire protection. So just a couple pictures. One of our pump stations out there, this water main break happened on Cooley Mesa last year. This thing was over 13 feet deep. is a very old water line in poor condition. Engineering and utilities department has a plan in place to upgrade this water line next year. We had it this year, but due to some kind of budgetary constraints, we decided to defer this. But you'll see this in next year's budget to upgrade this. And then, once again, fire hydrants The only thing you really see in a water system is a fire hydrant, right? Unless your faucet doesn't turn on, you don't really see anything. So we're out there maintaining these things. Fire protection is number one, making sure these things work. We want the fire department to be able to show up, and it works. So the next aspect of field operations is collections. So there's a little bit of disparity in this number. And I've asked one of our consultants to look into this. But still, considerable amount of miles of pipeline, 37 miles of sewer lines, and over 1,200 manholes that we have to maintain. What that involves is cleaning these pipelines, inspection, cameraing the lines, making sure that we don't see deformities in these pipelines. We also do an acoustic inspection, which you will see in past budgets and in the future budget, that helps us maintain these pipelines. We have seven lift stations. Lift stations is essentially a pump station. We're taking it, pumping it somewhere else. And then the other big thing we have is what's called a fats, oils, and grease. So this is almost like a pre-treatment inspection. We don't want this stuff down at the plant. We want our restaurants, service bays that do car stuff, taking the stuff out of our system based on what the building department says and us inspecting it and making sure that they're doing that. So this was a project at one of our lift stations recently. We had a break on one of our pump station lines. The guys had to get down in there, fix this thing, get it back online. This one's on Laura Court in Cotton Ranch. So I wanted to highlight a couple of capital projects that we're working on this year. We work on our capital projects with engineering. Great team. Very good collaboration. Glad to work with that engineering team. These are a couple of things I don't think that Jacob highlighted. This one that we came to you a couple months ago was this phase two of Saddle Ridge tanker repairs. We had did this work earlier this year, and while we were in there, we found out that there was very more extensive damage to the tank. So we'll be coming back to you again with a final number of, hey, this is what we need to do in 2026. These are critical repairs. The Saddle Ridge tank serves the Buckhorn neighborhood. There is no other way to serve this neighborhood without this tank. So we anticipate starting that in September, mobilizing in with the contractors. We have two. Well, we have a great contractor and a great subcontractor. Very confident in how this project's going to move forward. We plan on starting it in October. It should progress throughout the winter. From initial conversations last week, I think this is going to go a lot quicker. But this will also extend into the spring of 27 because we're also going to repaint the outside of the tank. Can't do that in winter. We need better conditions. It's like painting your house, right? Eagle River Pumpback Station. So I'm sure most of you have seen kind of what's going on down by the Rittenhouse. We have big bags out in the river. There's been some construction equipment. We hit a couple delays here recently just due to supply issues. I mean, it's 2026. Everything's a supply issue. But this is a critical source of water that I kind of highlighted earlier in Norgard. If Gypsum Creek has some type of severe problem with it, we'll be able to pump water up there. Or even a year like now, which, thank God, our customers are conserving water. We could bring up to 2,000 gallons a minute of water back up to the NorGard plant to help supplement this. It's estimated to be done in September. Jacob and I are still hoping for that to be done. But once again, we've hit some timeline constructions. I think over the next week or two, you might actually notice there's going to be a crane down there. In the river bottom itself where we've diverted the water, we're going to be setting some big concrete structures that'll be like the meat and potatoes of everything so we can get all of the pumps, electrical equipment, and everything in there. If you see that, that's us down there. So some other smaller projects. We call it the Dog House. So the Dog House is up just south of Mosier Spring. This is where we're able to bring in either Mosier water or gypsum water, which I kind of highlighted earlier. We identified some things over the last couple of years that could help operators do this more remotely, easier, more automated. So we want to do that. You don't want to be out there in the middle of the night. opening valves, closing valves, guessing where you're at on certain things. So this was another project we came to you a couple months ago. It was slightly over budget because we wanted to add on a couple things. This is anticipated to start in the fall. It should have been done over the summer, but because of the drought, I didn't want to touch anything up there because I didn't want to limit us if we needed this Gypsum Creek water immediately. So that should start probably in October. NorGard improvements. NorGard is an older facility for us. It is in desperate need of electrical and control upgrades. Once again, this was also budgeted for this year. We deferred that project to 27. We have finished design. We are doing early procurement on long lead time parts, like 34 weeks out plus. And we plan to do this over the winter. It will be in the budget this year if Council approves it. It was already approved for 26, but because of these emergency repairs at Saddle Ridge Tank, all of that, we deferred this out a little bit. The second thing you'll see is design for clear well upgrades. That is currently under design. I don't know if it will be constructed in 27 or 28, but this is needed to bring that other chain online that I kind of referenced that hasn't run for a long time. If we want to meet state compliance, we need these clear well upgrades. If Mosher goes down and we don't have these clear well upgrades, We can't run both trains, and we'll be issuing emergency notices, possibly, possibly, depending on the time of the year, that, hey, we need to limit water. So if we get these done with the electrical and control upgrades, we have that resiliency and that backup over the next five, 10 years as we continue to grow. Another smaller one is Cooley Mesa Pump Station. Well, it's not small. It's critical. That one's going to happen this year. This pump station is our lifeline to the east side of town. This pump station pumps all water from the public works facility to the east side of town. Airport, Buckhorn, Airport Gateway, all of that out there. So there's 3 million gallons of storage out there. And this is the pump station that provides that water. So if we have that prolonged power outage, which we missed over the summer when Up Valley was out for most of the night. This station would have been down without this generator. And we would have been scrambling a little bit. And the last one is lead reservoir. So we're working on a liner design. There's some leakage issues out there, seepage issues on the west side of the bank. A blessing of the drought is we've learned a little more about the reservoir and kind of where these leakage issues are at. So this scope is going to come down much more. We had originally envisioned a full liner of the reservoir or half liner of the reservoir. But now we've seen even more. And I think this scope is going to come down more. And that big number we saw this year is going to be diminished even more. So you'll see that in the 27 budget as well. And just to open it up for questions, I just wanted to lead off is we have a great team. We're growing rapidly here in town. Staff is great. And we're going to need more staff in the future to keep up with all of these demands that we have here. But I wanted to open this up for questions with you.

I had a couple questions, Mike. First of all, thanks for everything that you and your team do. That's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of technical stuff. And I know, especially with the heavy presence of all the regulatory pieces and changes, that's a lot. So thanks. I had a couple questions specifically about the Norgard plant. You mentioned in your slide that you operate it during the summer due to increased demand. So do you completely take that plant offline in the winter months? Is that how it happens?

Yeah, that's correct. Right now, it's essentially that irrigation demand, that hot time of the year. We're blessed here in town to have a great raw water delivery system for metro districts and all of that. I mean, our demand would be exponential in the summertime. It would be insane. So, yes, currently it's seasonal, and as we grow with all these new projects in town, we foresee that plant coming online year-round.

Okay, and then you mentioned with the upcoming improvements there, electrical and control upgrades specifically, so will you keep the same type of filtration that you have in there now? That'll all remain, but it'll just be upgrades to the other pieces of it?

Yes, exactly. The electrical upgrades are just old equipment that no longer meets code requirements and will no longer meet when we bring both trains online. And the controls are just that automation to help operators. As we run 24 hours a day and more into that 365 days a year, we need this stuff. We can't have operators there 24-7.

Question on that, Mike. Is that second train in the NorGard running now?

No, that's part of this electrical control upgrade and then that disinfection upgrade as well to where we can run both if needed.

I actually don't have a question, but I was going to, for the new council members, have you add in there on the Mosier spring line, we do have that hydroelectric system. And some of them probably don't know that we have that. So if you could add a little in for that.

Yeah, that's a great point. And I'm sorry for missing that. So on the Mosier line, we actually have a hydroelectric plant on that. As I mentioned, the whole Mosier system is gravity fed. So just a mile or so up above the water plant, we have all of this water coming down from several miles upstream. And the town made a great investment installing this hydro plant. So the gravity water is spinning a generator in there and putting power back onto the grid. It essentially offsets all of our operations at the Mosier plant up there. It's a great investment.

Thank you again for your presentation. On a map, will you show us where Mosier Springs is to the doghouse? Just because I know where Norgard is, but in the time I've worked here, I know about a general area up Gypsum Creek, but where? No one's identified it on a map, and I've never gone on a field trip to explore.

It's top secret.

No.

Actually, that is a security thing that we don't really divulge that to the public because it is source water for the drinking water for the town.

So when we're not on public record, will you show me some time where it's not?

I'm happy to take anybody on a tour of any of our facilities on the council. Okay.

Mike, I really appreciate the time you put into this and helping us understand it all. And I really appreciate the acknowledgment you give your staff. I hope they're listening and that they feel these kudos. Several months ago, I got a call from one of your staff members, and she said, Esther, She said, hey, you might have a leak in your house. I'm like, what? And she walked me through the different parts of the house to look for a leak. And she stayed on the phone and walked me. And we found the leak. And I had no idea. And she was so patient and kind. And I really appreciated that. So thank you.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear that. I mean, she's a great team member. Definitely. It's all the time with her. Yeah.

So, thank you.

Thank you.

Mike, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. All right. Presentation of change order number two to the contract of A1 Chipsill for the 2025-2026 Gypsum Street renovations. Hi, Jacob.

How are you, Mr. Mayor, council members? We wrapped up the chip seal slurry seal project earlier this year again. That was some chip sealing on Redhill We did some work in Chatfield and also finished out gypsum Creek Road I finally got the last billing back. They did go over a little bit, primarily a couple of sections in Chatfield Lane. They did go further than they were supposed to. It's OK. Well, we were going to do that in the near future anyway. And they got a little bit more on Autumn Glen. I think there was a street that was miscalculated in the spreadsheet. It did come to a total of about just over $14,000 in additional cost on the just short of $700,000 contract originally. There was a section of striping on Gypsum Creek Road that was pretty poor, and we did look at grinding that out. Unfortunately, that would also have taken off the slurry seal. And so what we did instead was just opt for, they credit us back the cost of that striping, so we got it for free. And we'll address that in a future striping effort with our public works folks. So with that, yeah, this is change order two. The first change order was to add in the 26 work to the 25 project because they were coming back anyway. So looking for a change order on A1 chip seal and about $14,000, but happy to answer any questions you have.

I only have one question. What do you guys anticipate the life cycle of a slurry seal versus a seal coat is, just for everybody's benefit?

Yeah, the slurry seals are a little bit new to us in town. We did our first one last year in Buckhorn. They are expected to last three to five years. We'll see extending the life three to five years of asphalt, which is generally in the 10 to 15 range. And the more that we do these preventative maintenance, generally they say the longer you can extend the life of the asphalt just saves us money to defer the mill and overlay for as long as we can.

So will you explain the difference between what a slurry sill is compared to a chip sill, please?

Yes. So there's several, I call them microsurfacing, The slurry seal is, for lack of a better term, is like a sand. It's a finer material. It looks like a slurry. And they put it out of the back of a truck. I can show you a video if you're interested. Much finer material, generally better for biking on. Chip seals are a larger material, usually put down like a tack and then spread the gravel over it. And then we come back and do a fog coat on top. We're putting another layer of essentially a tack material on top. Then we also do seal coats, which More or less, you're putting an oil back on top of it. It's almost like you're just painting it black again, but you're doing it with an oil to put the oil back into the material. It can last a little longer.

Thank you.

We also did a cape seal, which is a chip seal and then a slurry seal, too.

Any other questions? We have a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve change order number two to the contract for A1 chip seal company in the amount of $14,570.63.

We have a motion to approve change order number two to the contract with A1 chip seal company in the amount of $14,570.63. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Thank you, Jacob. Thanks, Mayor. Presentation of change orders to to the contract with Schofield excavation for the Cooley made Mesa widening project hi Jerry Hey, mr. Mayor and council.

I figured out why I was so tired. I was sitting there and Next week this project will be six months old and if things had gone better they would have got it done in three months, but I A lot of these change orders are the delays that slowed them down quite a bit. I'll just go over them real quick, if you'd like. Number four was they ran into some bedrock. So that cost us $11,000. Ground engineering had a lot more testing on number five. They ran into the gas line, 960 feet worth on number six. Had to lower that. Several improvements to Siena Lake, their detention pond had to be moved and some extra concrete was added to the design, B-pan fillets, all that. Striping, we added a lot more crosswalk stripes and a lot of these, the fingers are pointing at me because we should have added some of this stuff in like crosswalk stripes and the big one, Hydro I'll just go down the list but Hydra seed We upgraded that to a flex Terra. They've got they delivered three pallets today. They'll be doing that in two days the water depth rather than the county needing to Move it and lower it later when they decide where their access goes because they're not sure where they wanted the access we lowered it now And use some of their contingency money to do that. That was 42,000 Number 11, that was, I'm taking that out of the engineer's pay that they want, but we definitely had a couple days of delay there and the concrete contractor deserves to get paid the standby and Schofield made some with the changes. Number 12 was probably my biggest mistake. We were hoping that it would be 1,000 square yards or less. It was almost four times that. It was 3.7 times, 109,000. But two years ago, Jacob had over $1 million where they thought they'd have some soft ground repair, and all that money went back into the budget. So I helped make up for his mistake of returning too much money to the budget. 13 was we put in some curb cuts and a lot of extra kicking the water out to the side, and that needed some more erosion control. 14, the boulder wall up at the bus stop, the core bus stop. We just ended up needing more than we had anticipated. 15, we moved the switch gear twice as far because we found out that, hey, if we don't move it, Right now, we're going to have to move it again when the interchange comes through. So we spent some money, but we saved some money in the long run. Then number 16, I should have put that in the change order way back when you guys approved the bike path, because it turns out we needed the culvert underneath the bike path from Navajo on down to the parkway. And then 17 is a bunch of items that we didn't need, returning $36,000. And you see the summary on the back. And another thing that hit me was that even with all these change orders, the number two bidder would have been more than what all this was. So a genuine thank you to Schofield Excavation for doing the entire scope for what they did it for. I'm sure they would have liked to been on some other jobs quicker. Any questions?

Questions? I'm looking at this summary for just a second. It doesn't surprise me with the soft soils. Was that still super wet right at Navajo down?

From Navajo down?

Yeah, Navajo.

It was more just above the parkway and then on down for about a, I don't know, it went all the way to Costco, but it was more spotty down by Costco. Yeah, that's the reason why the asphalt was failing. And the county had done a two-inch overlay back in, I don't know what it was, 2015 or so, because it was falling apart so bad. So anyway, my bad. Should have added more for soft ground repair.

Any other questions? Can I have a motion please?

I make a motion to approve the change order for 330 well change orders 4 through 17 to the contract of Schofield Excavation Inc. for the amount of $330 to $378.13.

We have a motion to approve change orders 4 through 17 to the contract with Schofield Excavation Inc. for the Cooley Mesa road lighting project in the amount of $332,378.13. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Thanks, Chair.

Thank you. And just a trivia note, when Marissa goes up to the Mosier Spring, the bridge that you go across, it used to be a rickety old wooden one. So 26 years ago, my first year with the town, put in that bridge that'll handle a nine yard concrete truck. So it just went out of warranty last year though Mike.

The only other one thing I want to say about Cooley Mason when you see Jeff's role thinking you know the county made promises to fund that there were agreements in place 20 plus years ago which they never fulfilled and Jeff worked with Jeremy and Jim and Got it funded at the county level or we'd have been funding that ourselves.

So when you see him tell him thank you All right, Sweetwater Lake recreation management development project Jeremy Yeah, so the USDA Forest Service White River National Forest they're seeking public comment on their draft environmental impact statement for the Sweetwater Lake recreation management development project that's their official name for the project and that draft EIS summarizes the proposed project purpose and the need and alternatives for different types of ways to approach management in that area to analyze the environmental consequences of each way of doing things and public entities like the town of just some have the opportunity to provide public comments just as if you were an individual and so we on staff are kind of seeking the council's direction on if and how the town should provide comments on this on the draft eis and the proposed alternatives i included in your packet the full eis a short fact sheet summary some brief summaries of each of the four proposed alternatives and you know the town has been engaged in this process from the very beginning i think the Town Council donated $20,000 to the Save the Lake campaign back in 2019, then went out to the voters in 2020 asking for an advisory, put an advisory question on the ballot asking the citizens, basically in poll format, would you like to contribute more? And the town contributed an additional $80,000 for a total of $100,000 in contribution towards that effort and again for the public this is at the time a certain portion of Sweetwater Lake in the surrounding area was private land subject to private development and this was an effort to bring it into the public land inventory under the Forest Service and we have provided official there's been a couple of comment periods so far we provided comments on those we participated in the cooperating agency partner process which allowed us the opportunity to kind of engage with them on their evaluation of different ways of proposing management of this area and so what I'm looking for tonight is provided it in your packets are the comments that have been made so far something that you still support do they need modified do we want to add things to them I'm just looking for input on what we may need to supply as far as public comment prior to the September 23rd deadline which is the deadline for comments

I think through the past three, four years that I've been involved, the message from the town's been very consistent, you know, keeping it rusty, keeping it small. And I, you know, right now, We have that opportunity, and I think we stay with consistency, which kind of, if you look at everything we've talked about in the cooperating agency meetings, et cetera, alternative three falls into that. And I don't know if we can weave that into our comments or whether they'll even listen to it. But I certainly don't think it hurts to, if enough people are saying that, maybe it'll hit home. Because it does fall into everything we've talked about that's important to the town and the community, I feel. Your message has been very consistent all along.

And I guess I would say, if we can't be that specific, I think that from everything we did on the cooperating committee and everything I think the town has said is that we're really looking for minimal impact up there. And what we're really trying to do is preserve the wildlife and preserve the environment that's there now and not create some new... I don't want to go as far as say Disneyland, but we're not looking for something that's really a huge development up there for recreational purposes. I think our goal is to preserve as much as we can of the lake and the wildlife and the habitat up there.

Just in reviewing everything, you know not being a part of this process with it with the town previously looking back through all the documents the letters the previous comments and You know putting that side by side with with the with the draft EIS now it seems the town's Message has been consistent and I also agree with that position and Echoing what? The mayor said, I think that alternative three seems to make the most sense and be the most consistent with what the town's position has been throughout this process. Alternative one doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me where there would be absolutely no management of that public land. But three seems to be... in line with what the town's position has been previously and what I'm hearing from most of the council now. I mean, not heard from everybody, but from what's been said so far.

So I went to both of the meetings and both were well attended and I think that the consensus was between actually two and three but just recently I was up at Hanging Lake and looking at how the management has And I would never have been a proponent of that. But I have to tell you, because of the number of people now going up to Hanging Lake, they had to do something. And I think what they've done is probably least restrictive and has kept the lake clean and pristine and has limited the number of people that go up there. And so transferring that thought to Sweetwater, if we're going to do something, I think it's between two and three.

Well, if you look at alternative two, for example, a letter from Mayor Carver, February 27th, 2022, it really kind of falls back to, you know, and some key points that stood out to me are, you know, keeping the historic pastures. They're going to put an RV park. Basically, they're camping etc an alternative to You know protecting the water rights when they get rid of those pastures the water rights are basically going somewhere They're not saying where but you can't dry that up and keep the water rights both and I think the importance of management managing it and keeping it small is where alternative one is just do nothing. It'll be a free for all. It'll be exactly what you're talking about, but worse because people can drive to it. They don't have to hike in. You have vagrants. You have kids up there partying. It highly increases the wildfire risk. So there does need to be a segment of management. But where is it going if it becomes state brand? And the Sweetwater community, the people that live it every day, they see that. And this whole state park thing, we've seen and talked to all of them. And I certainly get that. I think there's got to be compromise, and that's what's wrong with this nation right now there's no compromise plain and simple doesn't matter what the topic is you can't have your cake and eat it too if you're gonna save it and use public money it's got to have a public use and we have to figure out the best way to preserve that area because it is super special but manage it at the same time because people abuse it otherwise

I just went through 24 pages today of this summary comparison of direct and indirect environmental consequences. I don't know. I suppose I have a bias as to what I'm looking at here a little bit, but I tried to rank them as to And I didn't look at alternative one and four because I thought alternative one was doing nothing and that's really not going to work. And alternative four is more impactful than any other. So I kind of threw that out. And I just looked at two and three. And as far as I could see, the environmental consequences of two are more impactful than the environmental consequences of three. And that's even from their own summaries. So I guess I would really lean towards, again, as I say, if we can say alternative three, I'd be happy to say that. But if we can't, I'm happy to say, you know, we should do the least amount we can do up there and still maintain some semblance of order.

And just so we're clear on this it's the town's public comment to make so we can say whatever we wish whether they Hear us is a different matter.

But yeah, we can certainly talk about alternative three If you guys haven't looked at the comment process at this level you got to be specific to the comment and the page and you've had to have a comment before and Read a lot of it, but it's 1600 pages or more So you're trying to refer to basically a page chapter comment. They make it hard to comment.

They really did. And they do. And I made a comment about that because you actually have to have the book there to go back through the comments to meet their guidelines to add a comment. It's so prohibited to just getting general consensus from the community.

Jeremy, do you have what you need? I do. Thank you all very much.

Excellent. Jennifer, do you have anything?

I do. I wanted to let you guys know that we're working on the 2027 budget planning dates and I will follow up with an email with these so you don't need to jot them all down. Staff is currently working on their department budgets and those are due by the end of the week. We're hoping to present the capital improvement plan on September 8th, and we'd like to set the first council budget retreat sometime between September 21st and October 9th, and the second retreat between October 26th and November 6th. And we'd like to have the first reading with public hearing for the budget on November 10th, and the second reading for the final budget approval on December 8th. Give you a heads up of what's coming.

Budget season. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Mike? No, sir. James?

No, sir. Lana?

I don't think so. No, thanks.

Taylor? Nothing. Polly?

Yeah, so Sophie and Eileen have decided to do a walk-in day for passports next month Friday September 11th, you can come in between 8 and noon as long as you have your Form filled out and all your documents they will help you when you walk in Thank you Jim no, sir Jesse you wake over there.

You have anything I Jeremy.

Yeah, I did have one update just on behalf of just to save you time in the agenda tonight. Vail Valley Mountain Trail Alliance, they have their Nuestro Espacio Nuestra Salud Community Design Trails effort, which kicked off with community engagement activities at Gypsum Days. And so they've been doing wide distribution of their survey. And they have an upcoming community forum on August 27th at 6 PM at the Rec Center. And so you can learn more about the project at their website, vvmta.org. And I think they may have followed up with the council with an email to this effect, or were going to. But I just wanted to make reference to that so we can turn out enough people to give them good input on community trails planning.

Great. Thanks. Marissa? Adam?

No, sir.

I really don't have anything, but I wanted to thank Jennifer for your financial report is fantastic. I love it.

Thank you.

Kathleen?

I have a funny one. So walking my dog, I get chased by this woman for the last like three weeks because people are smoking cigarettes on the golf course and she's furious. And so she's chasing me down. Well, the other day she came and she was chasing me down again. And I just can't walk fast enough with my little dog, right? Well, anyway, she nabs me and she says, the signs are up, the no smoking signs. And I guess Blake got after it and got on it. And now I am no longer going to be chased when I walk my dog. So I am so grateful. I am so grateful. So yeah. So kudos to Blake and no smoking signs.

Thanks, Blake. Jay? No, sir. Tom?

No, sir.

motion to adjourn we have a motion to adjourn any discussion