Town Council - Regular Meeting

I'm going to call this meeting to order, Gypsum Town Council, September 8, 2026. Welcome, everyone. If you didn't get a chance to sign in, please do. Please rise for the pledge. First item of business is a 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 any opposed motion carries Mr. Mayor I make a motion to adjourn from our regular meeting and go into the liquor license authority

We have a motion to adjourn from our regular meeting and go into the Liquor License Authority. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Polly.

This special event, yep, special event permit for the Gyptober Fall Fest hosted by the Gypsum Chamber of Commerce. It is going to be October 3rd, Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m. right in front of the Lundgren Amphitheater. Snacks and beer will be available for purchase at the Fox Den. There will also be stuff for kids, trunk or treat, pumpkin races, dine holding contests for children and adults.

Costume parades and bounce houses Wow Any questions I Make a motion to approve gypsum chamber of commerce gyptober fall fest special event permit We have a motion to approve the gypsum chamber of commerce gyptober fall fest special event permit any discussion all in favor aye aye Opposed motion carries Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to adjourn from our liquor license authority and go back to our regular meeting We have a motion to adjourn from our liquor license authority and return to our regular meeting all in favor aye any opposed Okay, citizens before council. I'm just gonna make a quick statement because we've got a lot of folks here tonight. It's been policy since I think about 95 with the town of Gypsum. We really welcome input from our community to limit chaos sometimes and have meetings not run till midnight. Typically if somebody has something they want to get on the agenda, If we get a hold of Paulie beforehand, get it on the agenda. And then you've got three minutes. And then we can schedule something down the road for topics for a longer agenda item. So let's hold it to three minutes tonight for the folks that are on. Tim and probably some of your group, I apologize. I know in the past, here and there, Mayor Carver would let you on. But we're really trying to keep things tight. As a new mayor, I've been tested and pressured here and there, so thanks, everybody, for your patience. But we'll start with Eric Medina, Town Staff Concerns. Welcome.

Hey, hello.

All right.

Do I get three minutes? Yes, sir. All right. I brought you a packet here with some information. Thank you. I'm going to run out of time.

Okay, I'll get it simulated to the whole council.

Thank you First thing I'd like to say is that I'm Anti slap statute all statements that I make there's no accusations and I'm asking for an investigation from the town. I First of all, I'd like to ask you to retain an independent outside third party to review my retaliation complaint and the town manager's actions concerning these surveillance issues that we're going to talk about later tonight. That review should include the July 27 email asking law enforcement about investigating the source and funding of public opposition to ALPR cameras. On record, I did a CORA request. And there's an email where the town manager suggests that there should be retaliation against anybody, not in these words, that is in opposition of the cameras. Additionally, I would like to say that I delivered a formal notice of potential legal claims against the town of Gypsum. The notice is under 42 USC 1983. I'm not here to argue litigation. You have a copy of that. But it's for retaliation against myself And also, there are some emails that were sent by the town manager that I'd like the council to look into. One of them comes from a city, Mr. Jay Oliver, sending an email about not knowing about ALPR cameras being in a town of Gypsum. And I did a Quora request to ask approval to find out how those cameras became existent in the town. And I know from the emails that what was said is that they were approved by the town manager. They were not approved by the council. And that actually could violate law. And basically, CRS 2 9 1 2 0 3 1 states that cooperation and contracts must be authorized by each participating government with approval of the legislative body or other authority having the power so to approve Okay, so it depends on the contract. All right, but it's possible that it was actually in a legal action so there's there's There's cameras in the town of Gypsum. There's multiple cameras. I don't know how they got here. I don't know how they're being used. But the current information I sent, I'd like you to look into an ordinance. There should be some oversight into those cameras, the way they're being used, who's using them. And there should be some sort of audit of those usage. And we can't just leave it up to the county just to say, hey, You know, we're doing it the right way. It is up to you to enforce those laws and to make ordinances.

ERIC SCHMIDT- Eric, you've got about 30 seconds.

ERIC SCHMIDT- OK. So yeah, the most important local email was, has law enforcement looked into the source of where all this public outcry is originating and defunding lock-type campaigns? That seems like an investigation angle I'd be wanting to pursue. This was sent by Mr. Raikman. And basically, a police officer replied, I have a problem with that email. We're talking about retaliation claims, a 1983 lawsuit. And he's talking in another email about retaliating against people that have a problem with flock cameras or ALPR cameras. So I'd like an independent investigation. I'd like you to look into the actions of this gentleman, the way he retaliated against me, told me that I wasn't angry. It's time.

We've got all these emails, and we'll follow up with you.

And I'd appreciate it if the town would also respond to court basically requests that I've made for public information. Thank you.

I'll see to it. Thanks. Alexa Martinez, Devil Duels. Welcome.

My name is Alexa Martinez. I am one of the executive production managers for Devil Duels. And over there is the staff of our Devil Duels exec team. And I would like to talk about Devil Duels and what it's all about. Double Duels is a full day assembly built for students to promote teamwork, school spirit, and overall student participation. We have a series of competitions with games, races, and cheers against other grades. Our hope is that we, as a Double Duels staff, is to have an entire school project-based learning opportunity and work together to create a long-lasting high school memory for all involved. Thank you for your past donations to Double Duels, and we would like to ask again for your help to grow our assembly by donating $2,000. With your assistance, we will hopefully be able to increase our student involvement and assembly development this year and in future years.

Thank you. Any questions?

I just want to add a comment. I was invited last year as a community member and alumni, along with Deputy Vasquez, who I see has joined us out here now. Participated in this last year and I'd heard a lot about it, but I didn't really know what to expect and I was Very impressed with the program they put together and the way that they pulled the entire school together I mean, I I just thought it was a you know, kind of a big pep assembly, but it wasn't and And I was impressed with what I saw as I participated in last year. So great job to you guys and what you've done. Thank you. And Dr. Rivera and what you've done with this program. I was impressed. It was a cool thing to see. Thank you very much. Just wanted to add that.

And I think, Jennifer, we've set aside $2,000 in the budget for this. So I think you're set.

Thank you.

Thank You Alexa Lisa Vasquez shop with a cop welcome Thank you.

Thanks for being here So I just wanted to introduce myself to the new council members and I Say thank you for your past support for shop of the cop I'm again asking for you guys to look at your next year's budget and support us again with a donation to that Our event again is going to be Tuesday December 8th, which I believe is a town council meeting date But if you have nothing to do before your town council please feel free to stop by at Walmart anywhere between 3 and 5 o'clock and watch what your funds due for Eagle County elementary school children. Eagle County Sheriff's Office, State Patrol, Eagle PD, Avon PD, Vail PD, and a lot of our other emergency services, fire departments, paramedics, help those kids go shopping and we give them a Christmas experience for that. So I was just gonna thank you for your past donation. We have received your check for this year, asking to be put on the budget for next year and inviting you to come and join us. And see if you guys had any questions as to what it's about.

Thank you for coming in. I think it's a great program for children in our community. And thank you. And to the sheriff's office for setting this up and making it an annual event with law enforcement and first responders. And I really hope. I can ditch council one year and go.

Yeah, we might not have a quorum that night.

Well, I know one year you guys mentioned about moving it the next week, but I totally get that with holidays and everything else. That's why I said if you can come before that, feel free to. The Sheriff's Office sponsors 50 kids, 10 schools. We have no criteria. The school is the one that picks the kids, whether it be the kid who needs that extra support, the kid who needs the reward whatever it is we don't pick the criteria. I'm not sure how the other schools work but that's just for my 10 schools and 50 kids.

And you're talking about the kids, but I will tell you, seeing the sheriff's office and seeing how involved they are with the wrapping, and Heath, I'm sorry, but you probably ought to bring your wife again, because she's the wrapper, you're not the wrapper. But it was so impressive to see them work together, and they were on the floor with the kids. It was awesome.

We picked Tuesday because most of the schools late start Wednesday, so we can sugar them up and send them home and have an extra hour to recover the next day.

Thanks again, Lisa.

Thank you.

Derek Bretta, Wildlife Protection and Trash Containment Concerns. Welcome. Welcome back.

Thank you. Welcome for you, too, and everybody else that's new. Derek Beretta. I'll keep it short and sweet here, but we all know we got a bear issue. Lots of bear calls, 911, worst year ever. It got to my attention, and I tried to be proactive instead of reactive and tried to buy a bear can from the town, and then it got confusing, and I'm working with Jeremy on what the policy is. There's obviously no clear policy at this point, and I think the town should have bear-proof trash cans for everybody. I wanted to just buy my own, even though I keep mine in the garage, but... All the other communities in the valley already have the bear proof cans. They have processes implemented. Costs. looked at what the costs are, and that can be discussed later. But since I only got three minutes, I just hope we're not a day late and a dollar short. The campus here, Jeremy's going to work on getting bear cans to set an example immediately, I hope. And with that, I have Courtney here from CPW. I know if it costs a million bucks, it costs a million bucks. What's the value of somebody's life? Or furthermore, the cost that all the authorities are doing chasing bears around. So I'd say we've got to buck up and spend the money and look at what all the other towns are doing. With that, I'll leave it to Courtney to give us some statistics here.

Am I allowed to speak? Okay. So this has been my first year here, so I haven't really experienced a lot of the town of Gibson. But at least in this past year, since January, we've had about 10,000 people reports of conflict throughout the state and CPW has put down or euthanized around 300 bears just this year since January and I can say wholeheartedly that that's the last thing that we ever want to do is euthanize a bear for being a bear but I've noticed a lot of issues within the town of Gypsum and I think that moving forward some More management around trash cans would be a lot more helpful in preventing Additional issues because this isn't going to be the last bad bear year that we're gonna have Thank you Jeremy can I ask the question there?

I thought and this goes back to Jeff's three, but I thought we had a number of additional Bear cans available. Are they just are we out of stock?

I

No, we have cans available. You can either get regular can service or a bear-resistant canister. The bear-resistant canister has a higher cost monthly pickup fee because it pays for the can across time. Like a normal 95-gallon can, Mel, you can help me out on this, I think it's about $90. A bear resistant can is about 550 so it's quite a lot more costly And but we do have them available there in our yard people can ask for that service at any time and we can provide it currently What's the additional cost per month if you have a bear can or a regular can I

It's about $39 a month for the beer can and about $25 for the regular can.

See, that's where I've been getting different numbers because it was $13 the other day. A month delivery or you could buy the can and it was 850 so I went and looked at the price of cans if you bought a thousand of them and it would be fought about 550 with a $5 delivery charge if you're gonna but we'll take a look at it take a look at an issue but I would be nice to pay to buy the can and Not pay the extra charge because the equipment as soon as these cans dump upside down they automatically open So there's no extra cost to the drivers Thank you guys

Thank you.

If anybody has any additional questions on bear issues and stuff, I'm available afterwards, too.

And if I could point out one point, the question was earlier by Jeremy on a call, and then Courtney clarified it, as it would be nice if you could It would be a good idea, if it would work, to say, hey, until a bear trashes somebody's garbage can, we won't force them to have a bear-proof can. That doesn't work with bears, because once the bear is there, it's coming back.

Once a bear learns how to get food, then it's going to continue.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you for coming in. all right our next item of business is resolution number 24 series 2026 a resolution confirming town manager administrative order 2026-4 repealing stage 2 fire restrictions and imposing stage 1 firing restrictions jeremy

Yeah, so this is pretty straightforward. We've been in stage two fire restrictions most of the summer. It's still relatively high fire danger, but it's come down a little bit. So the other districts have recommended that we go down to stage one, and this is our mechanism for doing so.

Thanks, Jeremy. Any questions?

I'd like to make a motion that we approve resolution number 24, series 2026.

We have a motion to approve resolution number 24, series 2026.

All in favor? Aye. All opposed?

Motion carries. I'm going to recuse myself for resolution number 25, series 2026. Tom?

All right, the next item on the agenda is resolution number 25 series 2026 resolution of the town of gypsum approving assignment and assumption of subdivision improvement agreement for the tower center filing number two final plot and subdivision improvement agreements James Atlanta.

Yes, I'm taking this over for James. James has been working on this pretty closely with Doug Stallworthy out of Catherine's office. But since James got married on Saturday, we went ahead and gave him a couple of days off. So we would have had this on the agenda at your last council meeting, but we didn't quite get the language solidified and agreed to by all parties in order to make that timeline for the packet deadline. But this basically assigns any of the obligations. Now I'm sure you're very familiar with Tonal Ammonia being the commercial side of the Tower Center project and Mark Foster and his team with Hill Point being the residential component because Hill Point will now be taking over and finishing up some of the projects. Streets and improvements in Winterset and some future streets. It's basically assigning those same Responsibilities and obligations to the town for their portion. So it's pretty much simply just an assignment Partial assignment to mark so we would recommend your approval of this resolution. I

I was gonna make a motion unless someone has any discussion or questions okay I make a motion to approve resolution number five series 2026 we have a motion to approve resolution number 25 series number 2026 any further discussion by the council all those in favor aye all those opposed motion carries and I turn the meeting back over to Scott

Okay, other items, treetop child advocacy center update. Wendy, welcome.

I'm not able to, but we have a new executive director, and I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce her, Wendy Petro. She has taken Treetop above and beyond, and I hope to give your attention as she shares tonight our renewed vision and our renewed services to help our families in the town of Chisholm. Thank you. Look forward to seeing everyone soon.

Thank you, Thomas. OK, so the Treetop Child Advocacy Center, located in Breckenridge. And we serve children in Clear Creek, Eagle, Lake, and Summit counties. We are working this year. I think you all got a pack in your packet. You got our strategic goals for this coming year. And, um, we're working very hard to improve our services and to improve our sustainability financially speaking. And, um, you can see our, our, our mission and our vision there in your packet. Um, we do forensic interviewing as well as victim advocacy at our, for that, for the fifth judicial district at our center. This slide just gives you a little bit of background on the CAC model, the Child Advocacy Center model. Basically, it was founded in 1985. The first one was in Huntsville, Alabama. The Treetop Child Advocacy Center was established in 2018, and it's an organization that enables children that have experienced abuse or witnessed a crime to come and tell their story one time. And we work with with law enforcement as well as DHS and other advocates to help children be able to tell their story to help whatever process is necessary for that particular case. Our multidisciplinary team includes law enforcement, DHS, SANE, advocates, district attorney, and mental health. And we do the multidisciplinary teams as the collaboration of professionals to help these kids and these families deal with these types of situations. Here's just some statistics on the number of children and direct victims that we've helped over the last several years in regards to forensic interviewing. And this gives a little snapshot of the county, Summit County. We have the most presence in Summit County. Our office is in Breckenridge. And we also service Lake County, Eagle County. And we want to increase our presence in Eagle County, be able to help more families. We just received a $15,000 grant from Avail Valley Cares to help with wraparound services and decrease the barriers to families being able to get to Breckenridge to our facility where we have our child advocacy center that has the capabilities to conduct these types of interviews The cost of care for per child is about $3,850, $3,850, which includes all of these items here that are listed here, the forensic interviewing, the advocacy, and crisis support for the family, trauma-informed mental health care. We have lots of... Relationships with these types of organizations within the region Coordination of law enforcement and child welfare and we have we just recently hired a bilingual forensic interviewer full-time at our organization and long-term follow-up for continued support for these families and You'll notice in your packet you have a pro forma which extends our financial plan out several years. But I wanted to just simplify it with these pie graphs. But you'll notice on that document it does, you know, as we all know, grant funding is decreasing, whether it's federal grants and state grants. And there's some statistics on the handout that you received that has the entire pro forma. But because of that, our capital structure is shifting in 2027. And it includes more of a government pledged income type of component. And that's why we are here today, to ask you to include some funding for Treetop in your 2027 budget. I wanted to be able to share our community contributors over the past, well, 2025 and 2026. You'll notice the town of Gypsum was very generous in 2025 with a $20,000 pledge. We did not receive a pledge from Gypsum in 2026. We are asking for a 5% increase because we are having to lean more on our government pledge income to continue to do this good work for our families. And so we are requesting a $21,000 pledge from the town of Gypsum for 2027. So thank you for the time and the opportunity to talk to you about this. Also, you can see on the strategic plan summary that was in your packet, if you had a chance to look at that, one of our main goals is to achieve full National Children's Alliance accreditation. We will be submitting our application to the NCA. In the next couple of weeks we are expanding community awareness and referral partnerships Which is one of the reasons that we're here tonight to make sure that you are aware of the work that we're doing for the families In your community as well as the larger community of Eagle County Strengthened family advocacy and forensic interviewing services and increase our financial sustainability and development capacity, as I mentioned previously. So I have joined TreeTop as their executive director. I do have background in nonprofit work with CU, with the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado. And I'm working hard to expand the awareness in the communities for this type of work and to, have a more robust development program for this organization as well as other CACs in the state and working in conjunction with them and other MDT partners. Do we have anything else? These are some of our other donors that help our organization. And this is just, once again, the $3,850 carries one child and their family from crisis to healing. So does anybody have any questions, anything I can clarify for you to consider this request?

I do. So will you just tell me what the referral process is? I'm wondering if you'll just tell me what the referral process is for a family, for a child.

If there is a, you know what, something that, you know, a case that ends up or a complaint that ends up with a law enforcement agency, the law enforcement agency will contact the child advocacy center and request a forensic interview. So that's how the forensic interviews are referred to our center. And then we will do the forensic interview for that law enforcement agency. And then we'll invite DHS, and the MDT is the multidisciplinary team that witnesses the interview in a separate room while the child is being interviewed. If there's a disclosure made of abuse, then obviously that's something that could potentially be, you know, charges could be brought against the perpetrator. Um, and that's how the referral process works for the forensic interviewing. We also provide advocacy services that we don't need a referral to do that because we have lots of connections in the community with these types of resources for families, even if there isn't a forensic interview per se. Great.

And it seems to me thinking about Eagle County, um, and, and just having a little pulse on what you do that we wouldn't I mean when I look at the numbers we're significantly lower than summit and Breckenridge but I know that's not true as far as the need so how are we missing a step with referrals or I don't think so I mean we get referrals from the Eagle County Sheriff's Office and we're working with the you know the DA's office and making sure that that everybody's aware that we're

available we also There is a CAC because of the way the edges of Eagle County. There's a CAC in Glenwood Springs and sometimes we always want to send the We always want to send the families to the closest, you know It's the most convenient for them and I think there's been because we've been so focused in Summit County We haven't been around very long and there's been some challenges for treetop and And I think that the community awareness has been lower. And that's why we're trying to increase that, to make sure that everybody understands that we're there. We're also getting the grants that will lower the barriers for families to travel to Breckenridge. We do have a mobile unit. We don't, you know, that's not optimal, but we're working with the sheriff's office because they do have an advocacy space and a forensic interview space there. The Eagle County. Eagle County, yes. Okay. So we've been working with them as well, which I think is what, you know, Thomas was trying to convey. Yeah. So so we're working to just have a bigger presence within the county since it is part of our judicial district Does that answer your question? Yep Any other questions?

No, just thank you.

I mean, it's yeah a huge look what you guys do and so important It's a difficult situation, but we It's good work that we do. So we would appreciate any support from from the town.

So thank you so much Yeah, we will have it in our budget discussion. So, thank you. Thank you Next item is the town security camera discussion Jeremy. I'll let you take this one.

Yeah, so Let me just point out here initially so there's gonna be two distinct discussions tonight one is just town traditional security cameras That surveil our public assets and Jesse will walk through, you know, generally how that all works what they do what they don't do and The reason we're bringing this discussion before the council and before the public is we're not living in a closet. We've been seeing the public discourse and people's interest in these topics and want to make sure that we have a really good, robust public discussion where everybody has the same information and facts from which to make decisions. So this first discussion tonight, this agenda item is only focused on traditional security infrastructure that we've got around town. And then we've got an upcoming agenda item here later in the agenda that's focused on license plate readers. This first came to my attention, I think I started reading some news about conflicts and public outcry and concern over in Paonia regarding some of the camera installations in their community. And so, and again, in an effort to be transparent, I think we want to just talk about what we have as far as this infrastructure, what it does, what it doesn't do, and just get the information out there. So with that, Jesse, if you can lead us away, that'd be great.

How's it going? It's a lot different being on this side than I said back there. So like Jeremy said, we're trying to bring attention to all the cameras we're using, what kind of technology we are using. So the cameras we use use AI technology, but it's not in the, you know, like, flock style where it's connected to a centralized database. All the information is just stored here locally, just like an old-style CCTV system. The AI that's being used is basically for just the user to be able to find stuff like shows movements, if a vehicle goes by, or if it's an animal or stuff like that, just identifying things. All the data is just stored locally here. We don't have any access to outside data sources, so we couldn't take a picture of Scott Green and say, oh, that's Scott Green from the video. It wouldn't be able to do that. It could identify stuff like anyone that's wearing a red shirt. It could pick up that kind of stuff, but it wouldn't be able to say who that person is or anything like that. The camera placements, we just haven't. You know, the town-owned areas like the water tanks, the parks, roundabouts around the town buildings like the offices here, more for security than for surveillance or anything like that. We use three main camera companies, and that's Montevue, UniFi, and Verkada. All of them, Montevue is still just a basic CCTV system, doesn't have any AI capabilities. UniFi has some AI capabilities, like face recognition and human recognition, but most of the guardrails are turned on, so it can't do too much identification. It's mainly for movement or recognizing that there's a pattern. For Vercada, we use those in areas that have no network connection. So we have to use a cellular data chip connect with them. So that was the main reason we went with Vercada. That has most of us, all of us like guardrails up to like no data sharing with a Vercada company or anything like that. It does store some analytic data for metadata, like heat maps or motion indexing, but it's not providing facial structure or patterns of walking or anything like that to Verkata. And we opted out of all of their sharing of data to help better their cameras or whatever they like to say it is. We've been saying within all legal compliance within the state of Colorado, Of some other things we've turned off is audio recording we turn and we don't have any audio recording on anything we only retain information for 60 days unless of course there's like You know the police need the information or something like that we have only specific people can access the data and And then we have a record of who accesses the data and what time and how long. So we can provide that if there's any reason for people to think that it's not being handled correctly. But yeah, this main goal was to not take people's data, because I'm not a big fan of taking people's data anyways. And I have to go to all these sites too. So I'd rather not have my information on there. But if you have any questions, I can help out with that.

I know, and thank you for that update, when I first got on council, the bathrooms up here, for example, were getting wrecked, it seemed like, once a week. I believe there's a camera up there at the top of the hill on that bathroom. Correct, yeah. Has that helped cure that? I haven't had any updates on graffiti and something recent.

It's helped, although we did have one recent kind of vandalism thing, again, that happened during a baseball tournament. So you couldn't tell exactly which person went in and did it, because there were so many people in and out. But yeah, it's reduced the problem.

And then the other big one was the skate park. That was a multi-million dollar investment by us and various groups. And I believe there's one there that came up late after the fact on a grant, if I remember correctly. But I know the skate park down here had quite a bit of Vandalism here and there so is I hope that that's helping Yep, and you know, I think that was the purpose on most season and some of them are life safety issues on Our actual security cameras. I mean we need our first job is to provide, you know safe utilities to our residents and I think cameras in those locations in my opinion are important and Anybody have questions? I have one more. And I think it's probably a deeper dive, just making sure that all of our policies are written clear in terms of how long it's kept, who has access, this, that, and the other. And I'm fairly aware that they are, but it doesn't hurt to look at them a second time and make sure we're square there.

Yeah, and actually that was the other thing I was going to direct you guys to. You should have seen in your packet a draft, a camera usage, I forget the exact title, policy, and put that in just for your edification so you can look through it, see if you have guidance or input on how we might modify it or improve it. I don't think we're asking for a decision on anything tonight but I think we would like I think it would provide us with clarity given the public interest in the subject we want to make sure that we are handling everything appropriately and so we might bring back a policy for your adoption and acceptance and I guess if you can give us any feedback on the one that you see in your packet whether there's any areas you'd like to see adjusted Katherine has reviewed that version but didn't want to bring it to you for any decision tonight that seemed a little too quick But just to clarify, the point of these is cameras are limited to town property. The audio is off. The vendor data sharing is opted out. And the footage is generally retained no more than 60 days. And it really is for the basic stuff that you would expect CCTV surveillance cameras to do, reduce vandalism, show you something that happened in a town park or town facility that was violent, and be able to bring people to justice. So fairly straightforward.

I guess I wasn't aware of exactly what we were doing here tonight. And I suggested to somebody in the audience that there might be some public input. But I guess I'm wondering, maybe it's a little premature for that, but is there any way that the public could see what we're proposing, or the public could make some comments as to what they feel should be proposed before we go ahead and just do this as you know, council, it seems like there should be some public input on this. And I'm sure there's both sides of the issue.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's public business. We'd be happy to do that. And I think I would look to maybe Catherine's guidance. She's worked with other communities on similar issues and can help us find an efficient process for that. But, yeah, tonight it was really just about education. And then, yeah, we can have future meetings where people come back and have discussion. I don't know. Happy to do that.

I'm kind of assuming that most of the public input is probably going to come on the next agenda item but I agree on this particular topic that I think it's a good idea that there is a formal policy and I mean I think what you've put together so far is basic but straightforward and covers most of it and I think that I don't maybe the rest of the council awesome input on this draft But it does come back for us to formally adopt at some point in the near future

I just have one technical question on this. So do you, like, is it constantly monitored that, because you know how some AIs will just click themselves on, like, so that data collection will be stored. If you're not just constantly monitoring that, hey, no, it's the off button. We're not collecting it, da-da-da-da-da. Do you have to constantly monitor that?

No, it all lives here. And so we can turn on and off.

Okay, so you you just it's just like if you had just a regular camera running under you know Just a video camera running we can Any other questions Thanks for the update just thank you next items lice plate license plate readers discussion Yeah, Jeremy, I'll get you going and introduce

officer Jordan Harrison yeah so I'll just lead off and then deputy Jordan Harrison can he's got a presentation here so again this item is one we just wanted to bring to the public so we're talking openly and transparently about this issue and can have all the same facts that we're working with Let's see. Where this issue started, actually, I think it was a call from Heath Mosnes, who's one of our deputies, longtime deputies here in town. He called me, I believe, somewhere around December of 23 and said, hey, the Eagle County Sheriff's Office has recently gotten a grant from the state of Colorado that's focused on vehicle theft issues, which were a really big problem at the time. I think we were nearly leading the nation in vehicle theft. and said, hey, we got this grant, and we've got four automated license plate readers that we would like to put up at two intersections in town to help reduce theft of automobiles from the airport. And at the time, they're our police department, and they're the ones running the show. And I said, yeah, sure. If you guys think that that makes sense, go for it. And so to the comment that was made earlier, yes, I was the individual that approved that. And it's not because I have any particular love any opinion on these cameras. It's that, you know, I'm speaking with, you know, a trusted resource in Heath Mosness is one of our longtime deputies saying that he's got funding for this and that would help reduce crime in our community. And I said, sure, go for it. So those have been in place for two years and seven months since January 11th of 2024. Um, one other comment I would make just to put it out there, um, is that I'm an extremely curious person. That's probably why I'm involved in a job that has such a diversity of different topics and things to think about and problems to solve. And one of the things that I find interesting about social movements and public input is like, hey, where do these things originate from? Are they always natural or where do they come from? And in this particular case, There is a direct source of where all the DFLoC stuff came from. It was from a software engineer down in the southeast by the name of Will Freeman. He had done a cross-country drive across the country and had just started noticing, man, there's a lot of these all over the country. And as a side project, he started just mapping them and looking into them and creating an open source resource for tracking these around the country. One of the things that these are particularly good for is drug interdiction. Again, the comment that was made earlier, I had, and I'm happy to say this publicly, had sent an email to Jordan Harrison on July 27th that I said, hey Jordan, has law enforcement looked into the source of where all this public outcry is originating in funding deflock-type campaigns? It crosses my mind that organized crime, particularly drug cartels, might be wise to be funding such grassroots efforts because these cameras are starting to make it harder to move product. And that seems like an investigation angle I would want to pursue, just a thought. And so, again, that's just human curiosity. It's like, I'm a freedom-loving person. I would want, I think... If it were up to me, I have a particular opinion on this subject, but it's the council's decision to decide what they're going to do in their community. And to me, I just found that to be a very curious thing, because you want to know, like, hey, is it all Will Freeman, or can we all be manipulated through other forces that are beyond our control? So with that, I'll leave it to Jordan Harrison to present what's going on in the community, and we can go from there.

Thank you, council. We appreciate your time. So yeah, like Jeremy explained, we were awarded a grant through the state of Colorado to purchase some license plate readers to help combat auto theft. When I was going through the grant and after we were awarded it, I started to do research on what cameras would be best for our community. I reached out to different law enforcement agencies across the country to hear what they were using, what successes they've had. what cons they've had. And the most common answer that I got was flock cameras were cheap. You can get a lot of them. They'll cover a big area. Or Motorola Vigilant Solutions, which are the ones we currently have. They're a little bit more expensive, but they've been around for a lot longer. They are from a trusted public safety-focused parent company. that is strict with their CJIS compliance, their rules, their security, stuff like that. So with that information, we decided we were going to go with Motorola since they had those strict rules and stuff where you're not worried about information getting out or people being able to hack them and using whatever information that camera might have for nefarious means. So after we got the cameras, like I said, with them being geared towards auto theft, I started doing research into where in our county have we had an influx of stolen vehicles. The most frequent area was the airport. As I'm sure we all know, people go to the airport, leave their cars unlocked, leave their keys in there. Rental cars are also a hot commodity to be stolen. And I'm like, my thinking was, We can have these tools out here near the airport exits to where, when people steal a vehicle from there, we know their last known time the vehicle was seen, last known direction of travel. And it gives us a direct point of where we can start to focus on the direction of travel of that vehicle and getting it recovered. I'm sure we've all seen DIA as a hot spot for getting your car broken into or missing when you come back from vacation. On a much smaller scale, our airport has some of those same issues. So a couple of things that our cameras can do. They have an automatic alert system. So when a vehicle that has an associated arrest warrant, stolen vehicle hit, Amber Alert hit, drives through our cameras, an alert pops out to our deputies and lets them know, hey, this wanted vehicle just drove through our cameras. Our deputies are required to visually confirm the license plate to ensure that the license plate that was photographed is the correct one. They have to run a check of that plate through our dispatch system to ensure that that alert is still active and valid. And then after that, they can begin to investigate and take enforcement action, whether that be getting a person in custody, recovering the stolen vehicle, recovering a kidnapped child. It does not have any facial recognition. It does not have speed tracking. It doesn't issue any type of citations, anything like that, the camera does not do any enforcement. It just gives our deputies factual information saying, hey, this vehicle went through these cameras, and this is the associated want that it has. The second capability is something we call a hot list. So when an arrest warrant is issued for someone from the sheriff's office, it is not automatically associated to that individual's license plate. Typically, the courts do that during failure to appear, failure to comply on vehicle-related crimes. So if we have a suspect that we're looking for for a burglary or domestic violence or something like that, that arrest warrant's not automatically going to go in and be attached to his license plate. So what we can do is we can go in and take that license plate and hot list it. And it's the same thing once it's hot listed in our system. If that vehicle drives through one of the cameras, it alerts our deputies, and we're able to go and arrest that suspect, whether it be the burglary suspect, the domestic violence suspect, something to that degree. And again, it's that same procedure that our deputies have to do with checking the license plate, confirming that it is the correct read, and that that active want is still valid. Right now for our agency, the only people who can put a hot list on a plate are detectives, our drug task force, the sergeants, and myself as the agency administrator on it. Single deputies just working the road do not have that function or that availability to go out and put that alert on. It also creates checks and balances so that when that person is placed into custody, the sergeant, the detective, the drug task force member, or myself know, hey, we need to go get that removed from the system since it's no longer valid. So that's something we all take care of on our end. And then the third function is the historical search. So currently, the sheriff's office retains data for 60 days. We actually just recently changed it. We felt that 60 days is a lot less than the state mandated retention, automatic deletion period. We felt that 60 days was enough to where we could get valuable information for our investigations, but still respect privacy concerns that come with the stored license plate information. So after 60 days, the photos that it takes automatically delete and cannot be accessed. Those photos are actually secured on the Eagle County Sheriff's Office server that is hosted through Motorola. And we are in total control of who gets access to those photos and who doesn't get access to them and what they're done with. This historical search has been extremely useful, again, in tracking fresh stolen vehicles that haven't entered the system yet so we can know which way they're going. It's been helpful in tracking people who are going through crisis with suicidal ideations. We have been able to use this to find a direction to travel and try and get to them and offer them help and resources. And again, this search function is not open to the whole agency. It's only sergeants, detectives, drug task force, and myself. And again, we like to have that within our policy because it's a strict checks and balances to where our sergeants, our detectives, we are ensuring that they're being done only for criminal justice purposes. So with our shares we do share them locally with we are not currently sharing with any federal agencies We do share them locally with our regional partners like Jeremy was saying it has been huge and our drug interdiction efforts on the interstate these camera systems have resulted in the seizure of well over a thousand pounds of illegal narcotics being smuggled through Eagle County and That would not be possible without the regional network sharing that we have with entities like the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office, a lot of those bigger agencies that are along the major interstate systems who do the same. And it's the same with them. I've been able to help them with their cases. They've been able to help us with our cases. The information sharing has been vital in fighting that criminal element that is smuggling money and guns down south of the border and smuggling drugs back north of the border into our community. Again, like I said, with our photos being deleted after 60 days, those agencies are unable to see anything that is before that. So they can only see what photos we allow them to. Our systems do maintain records that allow its use to be audited. So I can go in, I can see the reason why someone might have done a historical search, why someone has created a hot list, It even goes so far as to if any one of our sergeants, if any one of our detectives, drug task force members create a hot list for a plate for an active warrant they might be trying to look for, me, Deputy Jaramillo, and Detective Sergeant Walts all get notified so that we can also keep tabs on it and make sure that once that person is in custody, it's deleted. So there is a pretty good checks and balances system already in place that we follow pretty strictly. Again, like I said, they don't use facial recognition. They're not an enforcement arm that we're using. It just purely is giving us factual information on how we can use it. And especially with them being geared towards auto theft and coming out of the airport, it's been extremely successful in that. I want to give you guys a few case highlights. First case is here at the airport itself. About two years ago, we had a stolen vehicle. Individual came out to his car after returning home from a trip, found it missing. Did not know when it was taken, just knows that he left it here prior to his trip, and now it's gone. For this incident, I was actually working over in El Jebel, so I heard this. And once we got the plate, I started doing a check of the vehicle to see which way it went. And I was able to see that it went through our camera at Highway 6 and Valley Road headed towards the interstate. So a reasonable person would assume they were probably going westbound. What I also found on there was that five minutes before my search, the stolen vehicle had actually driven through a camera in Mesa County and left the state of Colorado into Utah. I was able to reach out to the Grand County Sheriff's Office in Utah. And within an hour of that call for service, we had that individual's vehicle recovered. there was zero damage to his car and a person in custody. Without that camera, it probably would have taken a substantially longer amount of time to get that vehicle back, and who knows what kind of condition it would have gone into. Second example is, again, here in Gypsum. About two years ago, there was an individual who blew up a house in Palisade. During that incident, it resulted in the death of a person. So this individual was wanted for homicide, but because of the... recentness of the crime, it was still in the process. Warrants weren't in the system. We were notified that his cell phone had pinged and showed him driving around gypsum and eagle. So because it didn't have that automatic alert to let our deputies know from the court system that he was driving around, I went in. I was able to hot list his plate. It would ensure that if he hit one of our cameras in the town of Gypsum, that our deputies would know about his movements. We'd be able to go and get him into custody, especially with him being such a public safety threat that he was. The really interesting thing I find with this one is I wasn't even in the state of Colorado at the time. I was in Tahoe for my buddy's bachelor party. But because of how big of a public safety concern this was, I was able to go in and hot list while our guys were out searching for this dangerous suspect. And it's just to ensure that our deputies are safe, the general public is safe, and that we can get this individual in custody and off the streets before someone else gets hurt. And then this final example is pretty different. It's not something you hear commonly with arguments for the use of LPRs. This is a historical search I helped our detective unit out with. So they were investigating a major burglary that occurred somewhere in unincorporated Eagle County. During that investigation, the victims identified a potential suspect in the vehicle that they were driving. thinking that this individual might have been responsible for breaking into their house and stealing a large amount of money or guns or whatever it was. At the request of the detective unit, I conducted some research on this individual. And I found that during the day of the burglary, he was nowhere near Eagle County. He was in Durango. which exonerated him from any suspicion. So not only are these cameras being used to help bring people to justice, but it's also helping avoid false arrest. It's also helping exonerate people and clear leads to where people who are truly innocent, we are able to verify and say, yes, we can come back and say, this was easy enough. This guy is not on our radar. We don't need to bring him in for questioning. It avoids any potential mishap or wrongful criminal charges being filed against someone. Again, like I said, the purpose of our LPRs, our license plate readers, is not to surveil people. It's just to have that factual information that can help dictate which way our investigation might go. It's a very objective piece of information where we can use an exact photo saying, we know this vehicle was here at this exact date at this exact time. And it can help prove a case. It can help prove someone's innocence. And I think they've been an extremely valuable tool within the state of Colorado. Like Jeremy said, at the time, we were top five in the nation for auto thefts. That's gone down considerably. I know it's a hot. know hot topic and i agree i think it's something that we all need to stay on top on something that we at the sheriff's office need to make sure that we are doing our checks and balances and that we are meeting the people's trust you know and that when they ask for examples when they ask for that auditing when they do those quora requests that we can readily give them that information available so they have it and that you know that they trust that we're using the technology in good faith and that you know it's in the best interest of the community

I have a couple questions. Obviously the term flock cameras has started to be used really generically and I understand that this is part of a different network and still I think a lot of the public concerns surround the access to the data, how the data is stored, who it's shared with. The question I would have for you is, one of our residents that was here at the meeting tonight that's committed no crime, done nothing wrong. They're driving home tonight past one of the LPRs that the Sheriff's Office has here in town. And they're picked up on that camera. The question I would have is, who can see that data? How long can they see it for? What prevents somebody from searching that resident's data, their information, their movements, without there being a legitimate law enforcement reason for something like that to search that person's movements? You can kind of answer those questions.

Yeah. So yeah, so first thing, for example, say you leave here and you drive through the intersection of Valley Road and Highway 6, a photograph is going to be taken of your license plate. And that photograph is going to remain in our system for 60 days, and then it's automatically going to be deleted. In order for it to be searched, like I said, it has to be done by our major crimes unit, our drug task force, or the sergeants. Our major crimes unit is particularly pretty busy, so they're not going to be just searching any random everyday person's vehicle. Same with our drug task force. Our sergeants are basically our buffer between patrol having unlimited access to that search function and having access to it through a very moderated means. So in order for a patrol deputy to look up your license plate, they have to go through a sergeant, they have to provide a case number, and they have to provide an authorized criminal justice purpose. It's not just a deputy can't just go in and say, hey, that car looks interesting. I want to search it for no reason. It's got to go for those two reasons, and it has to basically be approved by a sergeant or someone within the command staff. So we have that internal auditing already to make sure that it's not being used for nefarious means. And then, I'm sorry, what was the third part?

Third part of my question was just what prevents somebody, and it sounds like within the sheriff's office you have some pretty tight controls on all of that, but I guess where more of my question would be is you mentioned the data is shared with regional partners. What would prevent somebody from outside the sheriff's office who has access to that information from using it? Or third part of my question was, you know, what prevents somebody from, from searching that resident's, that person's movements through that network without a legitimate law enforcement reason to do so.

So I mean, typically how it would work is you'd have to have that license plate, right? So they'd have to have some license plate. There's no telling what someone might search it for for another agency, what criminal investigated. Or there is a reason, because they also have to put in their case number and stuff. But it's something where I can also audit the outside agency reads. So I do regularly check those and ensure that they're in compliance with our state laws and what is authorized by the sheriff's office. If I see, and I haven't seen anything yet, but if I were to see something where it's like a local guy doing immigration enforcement, abortion rights, something like that, I would go in and remove that agency entirely from receiving any of our data. So like I said, it's something within our policy at the sheriff's office. I run internal audits quarterly. So I check agency audits and then external agency audits. And I stay pretty on top of it, and I've had nothing of concern where I've had to remove an agency for using them nefariously.

So you said it earlier, but just to clarify, this Motorola system, it doesn't have a back door where, say, Motorola can come in and check your photos system, that kind of thing?

Correct. Yeah, and that is a big part of the reason why we went with Motorola is they have been around for so long. They have so many government contracts between the local, states, and federal that they take their security extremely seriously. They know that if they lose their CJIS compliance through the federal agencies, that that's going to kill their business. And we haven't seen anything on those default websites where you can go in and check your plate to see if it's been searched. There's nothing similar for Motorola. It's an extremely secure platform. It's not something that you're going to be able to stand underneath and hack. And that was a big part of the reason why we went with them.

These partnering agencies that you work with, do they have to go through a process to get access to that information through you or your department before they can have access to that? Or do they just always have access to that?

No. So the way Vigilant does it is, and it differs between Flock and Vigilant. So with Vigilant, our cameras, the agency is the owner of all photographs or all captures that that camera takes, whereas Flock the photographs end up belonging to the parent company. So we are able to strictly control who gets access to it. So for another agency to see our stuff, they have to request shares. Typically, if they give us shares, we reciprocate, especially with our regional partners here on the western coast for the drug interdiction. But yeah, it's something that they just don't have access to. They have to get permission. They have to sign an MOU with us. Our MOUs are tailored to Colorado specifications, such as no immigration enforcement, no abortion rights, stuff like that that we can't enforce. Our MOUs are designed and give them the same information. another question how many cameras uh does the sheriff's office own and operate in addition to the ones that are in gypsum we own a total of six cameras in the in the county so we have they're both in our contract cities they're four here in the town of gypsum two in the town of minturn um we have tried to get some up on the interstate, because obviously we know that there's a ton of stolen vehicles that are hitting I-70. A lot of our riffraff rolls in off of I-70 and causes tons of issues. Unfortunately, the state does not play very nice with putting stuff up in there right away. So when it came to the municipalities, you know, you guys maintain the right of way here on Highway 6, you know, on the exits towards from the airport. It's made it super easy for us to get the cameras up without, you know, the state of Colorado said no way, you know, yes, we gave you this money, but no, we're not going to give you a place to put the cameras. You know, whereas, and I appreciate the town of Gypsum, you know, assisting us in putting them in a place that made logical sense and has been useful in our investigations.

Kind of an off-the-wall question, but it keeps coming up in my research. And I've had a couple of different people bring it up as well. Common guy, if you wanted to know where I'm at or what I'm doing as a local law enforcement agency, can you figure that out from my cell phone?

Yeah. We do have to have an exigent circumstance to do that. So most commonly, if that person is an imminent harm's way, either from themselves or others. So we do it a lot with people who are lost out hiking and aren't going to survive the night. We can ping their cell phones. We do it a lot with people going through mental health crises who are making threats of ending their lives. And it's extremely hard out here in Colorado because our cell towers are so spread out. When we do that, typically we'll get 2,000 meter ranges. which 2,000 meters can encompass the whole town of Gypsum in a lot of cases. So yes, it is very possible. If you go to the city, just using your cell phone, law enforcement can probably get you down to the exact city block you're on.

Is there now or has there ever been a thought or discussion within the Sheriff's Department to utilize these for any other purpose than they are currently being used for, such as immigration or any other thing like that?

No, it's strictly against the law for us to cooperate with the feds. An individual law enforcement officer can be held civilly liable up to $50,000. So a lot of guys know that the state will and should go after you in those instances for breaking the law. And like I said, there hasn't been any immigration stuff like that discussion. It's all purely been focused on automobile theft what the purposes of the camera were for.

Great. Any other questions? I think going back to your point, Jeremy, the bigger discussion when we get the policy around our cameras, get some public input, and kind of decide where we're going to be in the long range. I do know after working from the council perspective on our agreement and our contract and our relationship with you guys as our town officers that Every bit of help we can get, municipality, even the county, we're shorthanded all the time with you guys. And we take it for granted, I think, as residents, because you feel safe. You are safe. But we all know there's a lot of bad, rip-off, probably driving by right now off that interstate. So I think we'd need to look at every tool objectively and make sure it's right for the community. But all those tools are keeping us safe at night. So we've got to see what we're giving up to get them. Thank you. TODD BANDUCCI.

Thank you, Town Council. CHRISTIE WOOD. I will add one thing. And it does come down to the people who are operating it. And I think sitting before us are two stellar sheriff's officers, and I just want to thank you for the work that you do and how hard you work to keep us safe. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you guys, mr. Mayor. Can I can I ask one other question kind of I don't know kind of directed to you guys But just the council as well. Obviously, there's some further discussion that needs to happen See how we're gonna move forward on this but the question I have is if the town if we say we decide to keep the cameras and have a specific policy about how they're used we're kind of in a unique relationship where The town does not own or operate these cameras. They're operated by the sheriff's office But if we were to develop a policy and how they're used obviously it would have to be within what the capabilities of their system are I don't know how much flexibility there is and it's kind of a weird question but how much flexibility there is with how that system works in terms of how it's doing the captures how the data is stored and For example, does it have the capability of saying, obviously reading these as cars are going past the camera, does it have the capability of only if that license plate was on, for example, was on the hot list, as you mentioned, or there was a warrant associated with that license plate, or some type of criminal activity related to that license plate, and somehow then it captured it, and otherwise it doesn't even take an image of the plate. I mean, is that possible? Does that level of flexibility even exist? I don't know.

And, Jay, just on something like that, so the unfortunate thing is if we do have a vehicle that's stolen, it's reported after the fact, and we don't have it on the hot list, or we don't know that that person is actually the suspect, and that's where that comes into play. And I do think that the town of Gypsum is in a very unique place because of our contract between the town of Gypsum as well as the sheriff's office, and I'm sure we can come to some solid middle ground on that.

Yeah, and that was a comment I was going to make is that it is our contract for law enforcement services with the sheriff's office that governs the relationship between the town and the county. And I don't know of any other instance where there's additional operating agreements that layer on top for any other purpose. I think it's pretty much we contract for the service, the sheriff's office, then police's to the best of their ability. Communicates with the town offers guidance and support Asked questions. Hey, can we install these those sorts of things? So I think I would also again look to I'll probably have a conversation with our town attorney to ask. Okay. Do we need anything? extra or is this just part of The policing services offered through this agency and they'll police the way that they want to police in their their posture for policing. So I don't know the answer to that right now. But we thought it would just be useful to bring the discussion to the public and to the council, since it's a topic of interest. We want to be very transparent about what they do, what they don't do, how they're managed. And so I hope it's been helpful to everybody.

I just have one more question I'm sure that the public would like to have asked as well. Is there plan, thought, or discussion about having any more placed within the town of Gypsum for any other reason or anywhere else in Gypsum?

No, there hasn't been any further discussion. I think we're all firm believers at the Sheriff's Office in putting our resources in a place for a specific reason. Like with these cameras, they were specifically geared towards auto theft. If we were going to get more cameras, our biggest concern probably would be Interstate 70 would be the next one. I think currently right now they have been pretty successful in serving their point in combating auto theft coming out of the airport and out of the greater Gypsum area in general. You know, like I said, I think we're very specific focus point driven in where we'd want stuff to go. And right now, outside of Interstate 70, there isn't a whole lot.

And I think you made this clear through your comments, but just so you can clarify it for us all, what access does any town staff have to this system?

Currently, because it is CJIS compliant information, the town staff does not have access to it. It is only law enforcement personnel who meet CJIS standards. Yeah, thank you.

And if I can add just something, just back on previous stuff. So my current assignment is as an administrative sergeant. But before that, I was managing a team. I was out on the road. I used the system one time to search a license plate. And that was on a stolen vehicle. And it was very, very solid in finding out when that vehicle left the county. But it was only one search during that whole two years.

Thanks guys. Thank you for everything.

Mr. Mayor, can I just ask a question before we move on? I heard some chatter among certain council members about a policy, developing a policy. But I think if that is something that the council would want, you'll need to give us a little bit of direction on that. Or if it's a conversation that you want to bring back at another date will need some direction on that We're talking about policy on our cameras.

I think specifically and then there was questions around potential policy overlaying our agreement our enforcement agreement, I think we need to bring the whole thing back maybe as a discussion when we you know get some public input from community and You know we need to nail down our policy and I think that's the biggest piece and Then I mean it's simple with the sheriff's agreement if we want them we want them if we don't don't take them down Got to figure out if that's a benefit to community or not And we're more than happy to come up during follow-up town council meetings and answer any additional questions that might come up Thank you guys.

Thank you guys

Next item of business is Presentation of Proposals and Selection of Consultant for the Town Municipal Financial Advisor Contract.

Hi, Matt. MR. Evening, Mr. Mayor, council members. So back in July, if you remember, staff came and presented a proposal to hire a municipal financial advisor. As you heard at the work session earlier this evening, we've got a pretty significant capital improvement program that we're looking at with some significant projects. some even larger ones for water that are further out and so we came with the idea to hire some specialized Consultant staffs that can basically Help guide us and what are some creative ways to help finance some of these big projects? And so we got the go-ahead to advertise that and so we solicited are issued in RFQ received five different proposals from five different corporations that I think we're all very capable of doing this type of work from that group we shortlisted three firms and Did interviews with our selection committee for those three firms? several members Of town staff and Chris Huffman was part of that selection committee Went through that and scored The selection committee it was it was a hard choice. There were some very good firms very good personnel We were actually very pleased with the type of responses and the interest that we had in the solicitation And ultimately our selection committee would like to recommend moving forward with UMB financial services very well experienced team They provide municipal advisor services to several other municipalities across Colorado. Both their proposal and interview, they had very creative financing ideas beyond just issuing debt. And I think that was one of the things that stuck out to us is it was not a debt first type approach. It was let's get creative and let's talk about partner Agencies look look at private contributions for some of these. Let's look at grants. Let's look at different opportunities special districts that we can Have and and get really creative to deliver a program of our magnitude And so the selection committee thought very highly of the personnel that were proposed We did reference checks called a couple different towns who work with this group and receive very glowing reviews about them and so From a financial standpoint, we didn't necessarily budget that in our original 2026 budget when we presented this idea to you. We had some flexibility in our capital public improvement fund. That flexibility is still there. And so we would look at contracting just services for this calendar year in a not to exceed amount. And then if council is happy with kind of the first couple months of getting them on board and their discovery and initial findings phase, we can include more work in the 2027 budget in a dedicated amount. So in your packet, you saw all the proposals, so hopefully it didn't get too into the weeds, but there was a lot of information that came through that our selection committee went through. But happy to answer any questions about the Proposals or the request that we have to make a motion to approve contracting with UMB How quick can they get up to speed Their proposal had kind of a rapid 100 days, so just over three months of pretty intensive data dump and modeling. And so hopefully within a couple of months that they're really fully running. So our goal would be, let's say, contract sometime end of September. You're looking just after the first of the year they would be really running. But we'd take those three months, the end of quarter four, to start sharing data with them and get them running. But they were ready to jump on it as soon as they could. yes we we developed that rubric and so we had different different components for different categories that we scored them in and that was part of the RFQ that was issued and so they knew that coming in for the different weights that were they were scored against they were significantly higher

I make a motion that we approve contracting you and the financial services for the township some municipal financial adviser in the amount not to exceed $50,000.

We have a motion to approve UMB financial services for the contract not to exceed $50,000. Any discussion? Kathy did you have a question there?

No.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thanks, Matt. Thank you. I'll stay in the chair. Presentation of change orders one through three for the Gypsum Recycling Center project.

So this project was awarded to RDM Excavation back in May. The new site is up and operational. There's just a few punch list items remaining, but there were a few change orders based on some unexpected site conditions. If you remember, when we awarded this project, the cost of the project is a 50-50 split between the county and the town. And so in in your packet the memo that was provided shows the the split of costs between these three different items and so change order one the county had asked our Contractor to do some additional landscape removals. That was not part of our project and so that is going to be reimbursed 100% through the county cost and not the towns and Change order two covers unsuitable material excavation. As we got into the site, there was a lot of unsuitable ash layer that we had to over excavate and bring in some additional material to replace it for a good pad to put the concrete on. That cost will be split 50-50 and then finally we had some electrical modifications based on the Transformer was not the correct size for what we needed to tap into so we had to provide an additional three-phase transformer specific to our site to step down that voltage as well as well as a few other electrical modifications and that is another cost that will be split 50-50 and So the total cost for those three change orders is $28,000, just under $600. The town's only going to be responsible for about $12,111 of that. And the county will be responsible for the rest. We are asking for a motion to approve the entire change order amount, though, because the contract is with the town. But then we will send the reimbursement request to the county for that amount. So bottom line to the town, it's about $12,000 for these change orders, even though the total change order request is over $28,000. Happy to answer any questions on that that you may have.

Thank you for the update. I make a motion to approve change orders for $28,598.27. And can we clarify that by saying with the townshare of that cost being $12,111.63? Yes, with the townshare being $12,111.63 and Eagle County reimbursing the town of Gypsum in the sum of $16,486.63. $486.43. 63.

We have a motion to approve change orders one two one through three to the contract with RDM excavating for the gypsum recycling center project in the amount of twenty eight thousand five hundred ninety eight dollars and twenty seven cents With the county reimbursing the town of gypsum sixteen thousand four hundred eighty six dollars and sixty three cents any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Just a sidebar. Did Holy Cross install that transformer?

The original transformer is original to the site. And so I'm going to blame the engineer who was in charge of that job. for incorrectly identifying the size of that transformer. So that was an existing one that we tapped into. CHRIS RODGERS- Existing.

Holy cross.

JIM MCAFEE- Correct. Yeah. So we had to do a small pad transformer to step that down just for the compactor and the light that was there. Yeah. CHRIS RODGERS- I'm just curious.

That's a odd situation.

JIM MCAFEE- Mm-hmm. Thank you.

CHRIS RODGERS- All right. I'm sure you're not up for this one. Change order number three to the contract with AJ Construction for the clubhouse restoration project. Jim?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So the project is complete. This would be the, well, next to the final building, there is some more heating and ventilation work. It's warranty work, but they were going to wait till the hot season had passed to do that work, not take the AC down. This is the final payment. I guess the biggest thing to point out, we had a $30,000 change order from the electrical contractor. And that's detailed in there. There was a number of items that weren't strictly related to the fire. that once we got into the electrical systems, they just needed upgraded, a good portion of it related to the makeup air in the kitchen and just other kind of goofy things that were wrong with the building in general. And I do think some of those, though, are related to the fire, and I've notified insurance that I'd be sending that change order on to them. So I think we can get some of that back. The other items I still need to resolve in the final payment. There's some you know odds and ends Bills that you know we had to accommodate because we didn't have the clubhouse kind of things like porta potties and Just you know different workarounds that we were that we were having to do that are reasonably reimbursed. So I got to share that with them. So I'm still not done with the total recovery from the insurance company. But as it stands right now, we're $230,000 in expense beyond what insurance is going to reimburse. And then I will... I'm punch listing this week to make sure everything's ready to go. But other than that, we're done. We talked earlier today. I did include in the budget some funds for furnishings, prep tables in the service area. Probably need some noise dampening German. I talked about that today. Maybe some artwork, you know We'll get that for your consideration in the budget and then we got to come up with a lease fee what Taylor's working on reviewing what's what the competition is charging and But yeah, unless you have any questions, that's I

One question I had Jim was just kind of do you sort of have a timeline in mind when you're planning on trying to have it ready to have available.

Well there is some pent up demand. We've gotten some inquiries but I don't you know I don't really have budget to purchase furniture so it's not I'm not sure. Yeah, I guess you can bring your own tables and chairs, I mean I mean you could You could rent all the stuff. We just haven't approached anybody. I think Mountain rec was interested and then guy goes wanted to have like a board meeting there, but we don't We haven't returned. We haven't I think Scott said I don't he didn't want to fool with it, but Guy goes might do it. I guess if we said hey, you got to get your own furniture, but I But we also got to figure out what to charge them, if anything. A lot.

I guess I have one question. Is this the final bill other than the $10,000 retention that you have for the HVAC? That is what Jimmy has told me.

We won't see another bill on this. There's 10,000 more, no more bills.

OK. And exclusive of furniture, which we might approve later on.

Not part of this, yeah.

So I'll make a motion to approve change order number three of the contract with AJ construction for the clubhouse running renovation project in the amount of 183 thousand eight hundred and eighteen dollars and eighty cents I

We have a motion to approve change order number 3 to the contract with AJ construction for the clubhouse renovation project in the amount of $183,818.80. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you.

Stay after the insurance. Jennifer, do you have anything? No, sir. Thank you for your reports. They're really easy to read and thorough. Thank you.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Melvin?

No, sir.

Elena?

No, sir.

Taylor? Heath? Polly?

You all should have gotten an email from me today with the dates of the budget retreats. So just make sure you keep those in your calendar.

And I've got a conflict on the second one I'm trying to work out.

Hopefully you have enough time. I was trying to get them out.

KATHERINE.

Nothing for me.

Jim. Yes sir.

Jesse you were on the spotlight. No.

Jeremy. I think the only thing is just ask for guidance for future meetings on some of these items that were discussed tonight. Yet you have any input on what you'd like to see from the staff on either. Let's see. There's the just surveillance camera topic, which I think I see those as two separate issues. There's the traditional surveillance camera thing. And we just, I think, want to make sure that we've got a very clear policy that the council signed off on. This is how we use them. This is why we use them. This is what they do, what they don't do. which we've got a draft of and could bring back to you at any time. I think the flock camera issue is a totally separate issue that I'll need guidance from Catherine on whether she thinks there needs to be any other additional layered policy beyond our contract with the Sheriff's Office. certainly the council I think would retain discretion to make any decision at wishes on whether those are installed or not installed. But as far as a layered on policy, I don't personally, I don't think I would recommend that. This is just coming from me because it starts getting into dictating the terms of how the sheriff's office is policing under the contract, and the contract already has those terms. So it just feels like if you layer on something there, what other issue are you going to further layer on could be challenging. So a little guidance on both of those, and how would you like us to bring those back and offer up public comment or anything like that?

Technically that sort of policy Catherine. This is a question to you wouldn't require a second reading with public input Didn't correct, you know We're opening the door to get a bunch of arrows. So which I'm totally fine with taking the arrows You know, the seven of us are gonna have to decide the benefit to our community or the alternative to that. So that is what it is. And that's in both cases. I'm not a big camera guy. You know, I have cameras on my jobs to protect assets, to see who's tearing stuff up, because it's going to happen. We all know that. And the stuff that gets destroyed costs taxpayers dollars. And that's our job to remedy that. We just got to look at the weights of that. If we open it up to the public, The people that don't care aren't going to come talk. The people who feel really passionate about it are going to come talk. And we need to listen, because they're part of our constituents. I have no issue with that.

I mean your normal process for adopting a policy is really board discussion and asking questions of staff. So if you want something different from that for the draft policy that you have I think we would need some direction just so that it gets on the agenda appropriately and people know there's a public comment period.

I think we I mean just one guy speaking but I think we advertise it that it's going to be out. I did if people want to get up and have their three minutes and they can get a hold of Polly and Move forward with normal Business just like we're doing it today.

I Think you're gonna get a lot of flack if you don't put this out to the public and let them say something And I think it's I think it's important to hear what they have to say and I guess you know we had another issue a while back and I happen to be leading that meeting and we had 27 people comment for three minutes apiece and you know we never heard really any more about that issue and I think it's I think it's worth listening to people and letting them know that they're heard. Sure, we're going to offend somebody on one side or the other by whatever way we decide, but we're going to do that anyhow. So I guess I think it would be important to allow the public to speak.

I agree, but I just want to make sure I'm following and make a distinction between the two topics. So the first topic with just the surveillance cameras, we already have a draft policy. We saw that tonight. I don't know. I mean, I kind of doubt there's going to be much public input on that. I mean, he could open it up. I don't think there's going to be much input on that or concern. It's going to be the second topic, which... So I just want to make sure we're still talking about two separate things, right?

Can it be as simple as the agenda item deciding whether we're going to keep our, I can't remember, their Motorola license plates readers or not?

I mean that's just question well that makes sense it does and I don't really have an answer for you because I think it ties back into what Jeremy was saying about your contract so I want to understand a little bit more about you know this so this approval that Essentially, for me, it boils down to are they on gypsum property and are they using gypsum funds? If not, it is effectively a sheriff law enforcement issue. So I want to understand a little bit more before we bring that back. But I'm hearing that we want some further discussion. We want to have council or community input on that. And we may be able to draft a very simple policy that kind of doesn't interfere with what's going on currently but put some parameters around it and so that there's some guidance as well for the share of how they use it.

But to address Jay's point, I think... Two different ones. Yeah, I think the other item is something that we need is security. I mean, I don't want somebody messing around with water towers. Right.

Right.

I think the other thing, too, just going back to the presentation tonight, I definitely agree that we need security cameras for town assets.

The other part of it was just...

A lot of the comments about flock cameras this and that. Well I think some of the public concern is OK. What we have is one thing but I think a lot of public concern is are we going to follow suits like town availed kind of Avon. and put up flock cameras for speeding. I think that's maybe some reassurance that some members of the public might want to have us discuss that whether we're yay for flock cameras and we want to put them in to put speeding down or no, no way, no how, we're not going to put them in our town. I think hearing some feedback or... different people's opinions on that just because obviously there is that difference but I think maybe some citizens might want that our view on that I understand the sheriff's policy is that you know we have that contract for how those four cameras are being used but I think it's more of that further step of community feedback on I think a piece of that though is

Definitely need community feedback both sides, but we also need the You know facts from the guys in the trenches that are using those tools every day and you know, to do their job, keep us safe, keep the community moving forward. Because if you just have that one side, it's real easy to say, oh, yeah, you don't want them. And the other thing we have to remember, we don't want to paint future councils into a corner, you know, if there's a different – law enforcement contract, a different situation where we have our own force. And I'm not making a statement for either one, but we need to get the technical side on what that tool might be.

And so that's where my second part of the question is, surveillance is one, but when we get to the discussion of what our current system is with the four, I'm talking about that one and how it's being used. So that is separate. But then on a second note is just the community concerns about us following suit, like Town of Avon, Town of Vail, by putting in separate flock cameras to issue tickets or not tickets but fines. So I think that was the second part of my question is I have nothing but the utmost respect for our law enforcement and what they're doing because they are specialized experts in that field and we are not. It is the second part of that community feedback.

I agree with your premise completely, but it might be more appropriate if the SO or our own department someday came forward and said, hey, we want to look at these flock cameras. Then you could look at the whole issue. No, and I totally understand.

And I don't want to open that can of worms, but I think I just wanted to bring that up as part of our discussion so we're not just saying no to flock, no to this. And I understand and have, I respect your vision for the future about limiting the future council. I totally respect that. And we don't know what the future is going to hold with having our own department or whatnot. But I just wanted to put that out there.

Good. Jeremy, I think this is a question for you. Is there a renewal date on that contract with them for the cameras? Or is that a part of our actual whole agreement with them?

No, that's what I was trying to communicate earlier. There is no agreement of any kind. It was that we have our contracted law enforcement services. And then Heath just called me one day end of 2023, said, hey, we got this grant. We're interested in putting these up to try to deter vehicle theft from the airport. Is that OK? And I said, oh, go for it, because it wasn't an issue of concern at the time. And didn't think anything more about it. So no, there's no formal policy of any kind from us.

That's all I was curious. If we did decide that it was something, I don't know if it's something that's going to come up, but if it was something that we decided we didn't want anymore, it wouldn't be a we have to wait for the contractor agreement?

No, I think you just say, oh, can you take them down?

OK, that's all I was curious about. Yeah, pretty straightforward.

I would say by the same token, I guess at some point, I think if we decide that we do want them, the council would be willing to back your action of approving them in the first place.

Oh, sure. I mean, honestly, I think Heath can attest it was a pretty casual phone conversation. The other topic I wanted to just ask about is I do think Derek brought an important topic to us this evening. And, you know, I would be happy to meet with Courtney further and get a little bit of update from CPW about the issue and bring that back to you in a more formalized agenda item if you'd like. You know one of the things I mentioned your packet is I believe Melvin's already budgeted for 2027 to replace all of our public space cans with very resistant canisters, and I think that's a Good effort. I know that Derek on the phone with me today really was advocating Hey, can you do that this year? And I said well I can't because I don't have the budget for it the council could authorize to do that differently But for what it's worth Do think that's probably a topic we need to figure out a way to approach and we may not approach it the same as other communities, but I do think it's Something keeps coming up.

It's been like five years or so of that topic So and I I actually thought we had Canned some cans a handful of cans available. We do. Okay, so it sounds like we need to Get that ironed out at the administrative level just so everybody's got the same number and availability

we got about 24 cans available and we just purchased another 20 takes about 30 for all the parks and parks I put it in the budget to get 30 for next year and I think we should potentially look at I mean we need information from you guys on the budget for residents that I need areas that may or may not need them

Just do we need to put more cans in the budget for residents so we have them on hand?

Yeah. I mean, I think the issue is the reason CPW is promoting these wildlife protection ordinances is that people don't generally choose to pay more. They sometimes need to be encouraged through public policy to do certain things. So I think that's been the rub is that other communities have mandated Hey You either got a you can put it out for 12 hours the day of pickup and then it's either got to go into an enclosed space Or it's got to be a bear resisting can and that's just that's just the way it goes Town of Eagle did that recently but it was I mean it definitely increased trash hauling cost to residents significantly and I think that's been the challenge is how do you allocate the cost to those and It's a community-wide problem, but it's a narrow segment of the community that's costing everyone else. And so I think that's where I'm trying to just get some guidance on, would you like to hear a presentation from CPW again to get in greater detail? I mean, this was a quick public comment item here. Citizens before council, would that be helpful? Or how do you guys want to move on that issue?

At the risk of being anti-bear can, would something like saying you can't put your trash cans out before 5.30 in the morning solve the problem?

There's already on our website that's from 7 to 7. According to our municipal code, the director can change that, which I did. It was a 24-hour to keep your can out before you had to take it in. Now it's from 7 to 7, and it's posted on our website.

Maybe we should be reinforcing this against people who put their cans out before 7 o'clock, because I haven't seen any bear. I mean, I've seen them on our street, but I haven't seen any bears at 7 o'clock.

Tom? Yeah. I'd have to say that I'm one of those people that puts it out before 7. I go to work at 3.30 in the morning. So it's kind of one of those things too.

Yeah, but is there anybody in your house that could put it out instead of you?

When my wife was working, she was going at the same time as me, so it was both of us leaving and no one else was there. I bring that to you as well because not everybody's retired.

Not everybody goes to work at 3 o'clock in the morning either.

And let me just ask you this, too. Feeders. I mean, are you seeing a lot of feeders out there that are attracting bears as well as the trash? And what? So it's a multiple use of things.

Hey, Melvin, do these, I heard him mention something about the cans unlatched when they're turned upside down. Do our cans do that, or is it costing us more because our guys have to get out?

No, they're specific to our truck when it gets to a different angle. You can Google it up, Barracuda. They tested these out in Yellowstone and with a couple grizzly bears before when Shreve and I were looking at it. And they can beat it up, do whatever. They don't open. They open at a certain angle on our truck. So that's the reason. And they're quite pricey, but along with that price comes kind of the rental fee on there. If the wheels break or the latch breaks, we repair it or give them a new can. So it's not just a one price deal. Okay.

I was just curious, because if we were adding more work to our

No, it works specifically to our truck. That's why we don't allow you to buy one that ace hardware or anything like that It actually is specific to that angle of the truck that dumps that can okay. It opens.

Thank you We're not liable for any damages that come from a bear trying to beat that up. Are we? My neighbor their bumper was damaged and the other night the candles on top of their car because the bear couldn't get in it they purchased one of the bear proof cans and I I just wanted to see where we were on that.

No. No, they charged the bear.

Marissa, what do you have? Jeremy, do you need any more from us? No.

It's great to see everyone, and I don't have anything else to add.

Adam? Kathleen?

Jay? No, sir. Tom?

Well I've spoke plenty tonight so I have nothing either.

Motion to adjourn.

We have a motion to adjourn.

All in favor?