City Council - Regular Meeting

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Clerk Beck, can we please get a roll call?

Mayor Tapia Vega?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes? Good evening. Councillor Bollier? Councillor Friedland.

Good evening.

Councillor Gallegos. Good evening. Councillor Giannola.

Here.

And Councillor Jensen.

Here.

Mayor, we have a quorum.

Thank you so much. And Councilor Bollier is just a few minutes late, but he will be joining us soon. We usually start immediately with public input, but we just have one thing to do tonight. It is a special date for us. Just the first thing I want to do is turn it over to our Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor. This is the third anniversary of the passing of Councilor Tonya Briggs. Tomorrow will be. I just wanted to say that on December 3, 2019, I was sworn in with she and Councilor Brian Wong. And it was the most diverse city council in Colorado at the moment. And that's not just by optics. That was by background and lived experience. And I was proud and still am proud to serve on that council. And it's hard every day. And I just wanted to say that I miss her input, Councillor Briggs' input. And the unexpected loss was a loss for the entire city. Tanya came with a huge contingent of Lafayette that trusted her, and for good reason. I've never seen anybody with so much compassion. And she struggled for words sometimes, which was hard, because she had done a lot of research. But she worked incredibly hard. And there's a patch of flowers for her at community gardens, which is what you see next to that photo. So if you'd like to remember her, you can make your way there. And those flowers are for her. And then I'll throw it to Councilor Gallegos.

So if it wasn't for Tonya, I wouldn't be here today. So Tonya was a mom that I knew from the neighborhood. Our girls actually danced together, which is where we first met. And she was the person who really planted the seed in my head that I should run for city council. And I remember the day the packet was due, I stopped by her house. And she was my 25th signature to get on the ballot. And that's something. I'm forever grateful for. It's been a sad three years knowing that I'm not able to serve with her, but I do see memories of her around this building. Anytime I walk by the lavender bush on the corner and I see bees flying by, that reminds me of Tanya and how much she loved this city and loved animals. So I had chatted with Tanya a couple of days before she passed. And like many moms, she would always put her kids before herself. And I remember she had texted me that she wasn't feeling well. And if anything, we could use her passing as a reminder to sometimes it is okay to take care of ourselves too. So I miss her every day. And in the past three years, I'm glad I have had the opportunity to see her girls grow into young women. And I'm just grateful for everything she did for this city.

And with that, we'll begin a moment of silence for the former counselor, Tonya Briggs. Thank you all so much. Now we'll move on to public input. As usual, for those who have been here before, but for those who haven't, if you wish to speak to council tonight, just fill out one of these public input forms. They're in the back through the glass door and hand it to our city clerk. I will call your name as I receive them in the order that I receive them. When you do come up, just state your name and address for the record. And then you get five minutes to speak. There is a tiny little clock right in front of you, if you look down and to your left, at the podium. And that'll tell you exactly how much time you have left. At the five minute mark, I will tell you your time is up. And I will only do that to make sure that we are running an equitable system here. Everybody gets the exact same five minutes, regardless of who you are. If you are not here present today but still wish to address council, you can do that. You can call in, and that phone number is posted on our website. And with that, we'll begin tonight with Frank Archuleta.

Thank you, Kim and Crystal, for that. That was great about Tonya. Tonya was a good friend of mine also here. She was a true champion. I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to share history with you all for so many years here. As we right the wrongs, Mr. Mayor, city council member, and staff, there is only one name on the online survey for the new pocket park at 701 Public Road that meets. all and every qualification that is consistent with the city policies on naming facilities. Names shall reflect diversity, equity, and inclusion of Lafayette community. Names should reflect geographical historical culture. It advances fostering a sense of community and hometown character. It heightens the awareness of the city's history. It calls attention to the points of pride in our community, including people events that have shaped the city and special tributes to memorials. The name Rosabella is simply a beautiful name, especially fitting for the name for a pocket park. It's also a memorial. Council, are you truly willing to put the power of education, inclusion, diversity, equity into action? This is very essential if you truly want to build a healthy community. It is important that everyone is able to feel they have a sense of belonging in our community. Council, As we continue working to educate, to commemorate, and to heal, memorials are shaped by politics. Contemporary concerns inflict how history is recalled. Public commemoration is a way to conjure unity from division. As we engage in the process of memorialization, we must not forget our past history. We must restore justice, and acknowledge the wrongs that Rosabella went through and should take action to heal the pain of the past. Council, please name the pocket park at 701 South Public Road, Rosabella Park. It includes a historical plaque telling the tragic, unfortunate, shameful story. As we Latinos and Latinas strive to reach parity, equality, and equivalence and respect, Council, it is time that we must strive to take action to make a positive effort to heal and to promote the truth. With political correctness, with conviction for justice and social change, the Latino history in Lafayette possesses a particular characteristics and should be appreciated and valued. It should also be interpreted as a part of larger history in Lafayette. in the real struggle that the Latinos go through in the city of Lafayette. Endurance. As we Latinos endeavor to try to attempt with perseverance and persistence, undertaking in spite of all our difficulties, council please champion for the park to be named after Roosevelt and LeWaris. This is very important, folks. Not only to the Latinos, but it should be very important to the city of Lafayette. The mistakes in the past that were made from the racist fire department did not include the Latinos to be able to swim in the Lafayette Swim Pool. And for them to actually put up a sign, white trade only, was totally wrong. And the old town board that was here was in a conspiracy with the Lafayette Fire Department. It was a total racist city at that time. I'm going to let you know straight out from my heart, our family's been here for 100 years. Our families couldn't get in that swimming pool after our families helped build that pool. My grandfather was a world-renowned veteran. My dad fought with MacArthur. He couldn't get in that pool. He was in the Korean War. My uncle Arthur couldn't get in that pool, and he gets killed in Aachen, Germany. There was a lot to this, folks. There was an awful lot as far as why The Latinos couldn't swim in the swimming pool, after they contributed. But the Luara family donated 10 sacks of cement, more than anybody else in the community here. Rosebella was only 13 years old, could not get in that swimming pool after her family did so much. Then what happens, the Ku Klux Klan runs Rose and Rosebella off to Santa Monica, California. In 1935, she gets run over just 23 days before the court. They went to the Boulder District Court and to the Supreme Court. It was the only case in the United States that a swimming pool went to the Supreme Court, and there was no decision made. I hope you understand a decision to name the park after Rosabella is very, very important. Thank you very much, and I appreciate it all. Thank you so much. Next, we'll hear from Roy Johnson.

As always, Frank's very hard to follow, but I'll give it a shot. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council. I'm Roy Johnson, 2547 Sweetwater Circle. I'm a member of the IDEA Advisory Board, but I'm speaking as an individual representing only my personal views here. First, when the pocket park naming comes before your decision in the next couple of weeks, I ask you to come to your decision while carefully considering the city naming facilities policy, a copy of which I distributed at the last meeting. I think Roseville Park is the only option presented which meets the written criteria there. Moving along, the second or another subject As I understand, the city budgeted $5.2 million for a street-side curb repair for this year, double the amount of $2.6 million budgeted for this last year. This was following one of the mildest winters we had on record here. This information was presented to council in March of this year. Perhaps someone on council could have said, let's take a minute. Maybe some of that additional $2.6 million can be used towards the pool at the Great Outdoors Water Park. But I don't blame city council, as city management did not bring or present that great outdoors park issue to council until several months after that. I ask council members to take a look at baseline between Highway 287 and 95th real soon, today or tomorrow. They are working on repaving the eastbound lanes now, so they're tearing it up. So I ask you to please take a look at the condition of the westbound lanes now. The pavement is in fine condition, yet a lot of money is being expended to repave the road. It seems to be a clear illustration that the city can do a much better job at budgeting in regards to prioritization, timing, efficiency, and use of taxpayer money. That extra $2.6 million for street repair, that's $5.2 million this year compared to $2.6 million last year, could have been used for things such as the water park in Lamont Doe, could have been spent towards the safety of our youth, could have been spent towards affordable housing, could have been spent for parks, maybe even child care assistance as examples. This is very timely for a couple of reasons. First, please take a look at baseline soon so you can see the before picture before you see the after picture. And second, the 2027 city budget will be before you before too long. I suggest great scrutiny in stressing the importance of efficient, prioritized, and wise use of taxpayer money. I also suggest to you it is at that time that you clarify with management if any other tax issues would be brought before you at a time you consider the budget as opposed to months later for the election of 2027. That's almost it. I hope Councillor Bollier will comment on the road of remembrance dedication later today. And as always, thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Karen Norbach.

Purple for Tonya.

Karen Norbach, 800 East Geneseo. Good evening. I have a couple of connected topics to talk about tonight. First, the comp plan. As you know, I was a member of the advisory committees for the 2003 and 2021 comp plan updates. In 2018, I was here when council discussed what they wanted for the comp plan, when three consultant firms were interviewed, and then when the final vote to approve was cast in 2021. In between, I was determined to ensure our residents' voices were heard. I attended all the public meetings and pored over surveys, written comments, and draft documents. I reached out on social media using Nextdoor to provide residents with another avenue to comment and communicate. When the community assessment document was released, I started clipping out various charts and sharing them. People stepped up and not only read the charts, but pointed out errors or asked for more clarity. This led to a more accurate and reader-friendly document. I posted so many updates to Nextdoor that the planning department director joked about sending me a check. It was my idea to reach out to the community and ask for photographs of their Lafayette to include in the plan and to add a section about Rose Lueris. Staff asked me to write a letter about the plan to include with their submittal for a planning award. I lived and breathed. breathed that plan for years. I tell all this to you tonight because I was so distressed as I watched the joint workshop with the planning commission and the discussion regarding the comp plan's designation that buildings be two stories on public road. When one counselor indicated they were unaware that the comp plan included that information and was directed to the correct table and then proceeded to surmise on the fly that the tables were only examples, my heart sank. These are not example tables. These are roadmaps for writing the land use code. There are 10 tables, and while the text of the comp blend can sometimes be broad and visiony, the tables are full of specifics for each of the new land use categories, such as adaptable commercial, neighborhood mixed use, and old town mixed use. While the height in the old town category was set at two stories, the tables for neighborhood mixed use and adaptable commercial say generally building heights will be limited to three stories with transitions to surrounding contexts. Additional discussion around the strategic use of height in exchange for public amenities or affordable housing may be accommodated, but further discussion with the community will occur during the update of the city's development code. We saw a rather poorly written survey about that, but nevertheless it bore out what we saw from the comp plan survey I'll tell you about. You opted to have your own discussion at a later date, but the table says discussion with the community, not that council will decide. Did the community discussion really happen? As part of the comp plan update, a qualified company was hired to conduct a weighted survey about the city with an invite group and an open group. One of the questions asked about housing options and required ranking five options from high priority to not a priority. 56% said developing higher density by building up to three stories was not a priority. When asked to rank one type of housing to better meet their household needs, 40% said single family lower density homes on large lots. 4% said apartments. Regarding demographics of the survey takers, those in the 24 to 34 age group were at the top with 28%. When asked how long in Lafayette, zero to five years was the highest at 38%. This information was factored into the comp plan. So here's my suggestion. It's past time for a professional community survey. We had one in 2012. The next one wasn't until 2021. At that time, former city administrator Fritz Sprague said best practice is to conduct one every two years. We had one in 2023, but none since. These types of surveys ask standard questions about quality of life, city services, and the direction the city is going, and provide a benchmark going forward. But they also provide an opportunity to ask the community about specific subjects. If we had one now, professionally written questions related to that comp plan directive to discuss height with the community could be included, and other issues too, like what about flock cameras, for instance. I know we have been engrossed in the code update for years, but we are getting close to the end, and perhaps it's time to make that two-year community survey an ongoing event. If you think this is a good idea, I suggest asking that plenty of questions that allow for elaboration be included. In the past, some of the data left Council wondering why people answered that way. Adding a comment box to a question and asking why can give that survey or taker a place to share their detailed opinion and give us better insight. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Tony Munoz.

Hello, Council. Thank you for your time. I am here today to encourage us to name the park Rosabella Park. This will help make a tragic situation not so tragic. This individual was able to adapt and adjust. She's a pillar of resilience. She became a productive citizen, a mother, a grandmother, and she demonstrates strength and love. We are proud that she is Lafayette. History is what we have in her and in naming this park. Diversity. We say we're diverse. Butterfly, monarch. Oh, please don't do monarch. Flower. Doesn't show a sense of diversity. We are all part of this community, and it is part of our history. Yes, it heightens awareness. It teaches us, and it helps us to continue to learn. Let's not repeat our past. In naming this park, it encourages pride and how strong and loving we are as a community. Life happens, but let's move forward. Let's grow a better tomorrow and teach our children and ourselves. I'd like to go on to another topic, and that is the rezoning for churches. I'd really like for us to hold off on that. If a church needs rezoning, I think they should do a variance, request a variance. I don't think every single church should be held changing their zoning because of one church. And I don't think the churches are aware of what's going on. I know they're not. And so I think we need to hold off and not just have council learn some more, but also have city input. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Chao Chen.

Hi. I'm Chao. I live on Bridger Point. And today I'd like to talk about the city's flock cameras and contract. I understand in October there will be a budget note for 2027 budget. And I think that's a good opportunity for council to decide to whether renew or terminate funding for the flock camera system. And I'd like to provide some additional input to that. So I didn't know about flat cameras until about a couple of months ago. I was driving around with my daughter and her friend. And they were like, hey, did you see these new cameras that they put in our neighborhood? I was like, no, show me. And these things, when you don't know they're there, you don't see them. But when somebody points it out, it's obvious. So I was like, oh, I see one. Is that it? They were like, don't point, you idiot. Your face is now in the database. So anyway, they're all up in arms about them. And they were like, yeah, let's put on ski masks. We'll cut them down. I was like, don't do that. And realistically, these girls can hardly operate a screwdriver. So I wasn't super concerned. But I did follow up and found out that we had Flock cameras since 2022. We have 30 cameras. And they just kind of appeared. I didn't really hear anything about any discussions. But lately, I have seen more Flock news. There have been many cases of documented abuse. And a few hundred cities have already canceled their contract. I wanted to learn a little bit more about our own FLAC system, so I requested internal audits and search logs. I received a one-page audit, which every month the police department does an internal audit. And they pass every audit except for one month where there were some 170 ICE-related searches. I also received search logs for the first quarter of 2026, but unfortunately in every record, the reason for search, the search parameters, the case number filter, text prompt were all blacked out, so you can't tell very much. But one thing you can tell is the sheer number of searches that were done, 140,000 in Q1. So annualized, that's over half a million searches per year. So clearly Lafayette police isn't doing half a million searches, right? So most of these searches are coming from outside departments, from as far as Durango, which is seven hours away. So what is this all for? Car theft has often been cited as a justification. So I looked at some numbers. In 2025 in Lafayette, there were 36 vehicle thefts. So it doesn't sound like a lot. But maybe Flock has something to do with that. Maybe without Flock, there would have been hundreds. So I looked up some academic studies. And the one statistical analysis I could find was one published in August by University of South Carolina. And it found an 11% decrease in vehicle theft in places with flock versus without. And they compare hundreds of locations. So translated to the 36 vehicle thefts in Lafayette, that means flock cameras prevented four vehicle thefts in 2025. In that same time, in the same city, 5 million plates were read. Half a million searches were performed and prevented for vehicle thefts. So I'm here today because the city has a rule that any contract over $250,000 needs approval from the council. Well, I think any surveillance system that indiscriminately hoovers up everyone's location also requires a vote. So I would like to propose three concrete things. One, for the 2027 budget, I would like to ask the city council to vote on the $77,000 annual cost of flock. And number two, I would like to designate any mass surveillance system as a category that needs a vote, regardless of cost. And number three, there is a October 27 presentation on FLOC. And I think it would be nice to move that ahead of the budget process and also allow public input based on that presentation. Thank you. That's all I have. And since I have 13 seconds, I want to pay my respects to Tanya. She and her husband Doug went to my gym, and I couldn't believe when she passed away. And I recently saw Doug at the gym, and he looked great. So I'm glad he's doing well.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Kelsey Ross. Kelsey, if you just give me one second before you do. Sure, sure. Take it away. If we could please just not clap. So I know this sounds silly. However, I have been in rooms here and at the state capitol where people are testifying before committee or people are testifying before council. And it is incredibly intimidating if you are of the opposite opinion of someone who just spoke and gets a clap. So it's very, very difficult for people to come up and then say the opposite of what was just said if they feel like the whole room is against them. I know it seems in practices like silly rule, but it's really, really helpful just to make sure everybody has their voice heard. Thank you. And Kelsey, you can start.

Thank you so much. Kelsey Ross. My address is 2851 Clear Creek Lane in Lafayette. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Thank you so much for having us. Again, my name is Kelsey Ross. And I'm here tonight because Lafayette has largely been left out of the decision that is directly affecting more than 130 of our kids who live in our community, as well as teachers and paraprofessionals who live here in Lafayette. BVSD has proposed closing Douglas Elementary and redistributing its attendance area while moving high peaks into the Douglas building. Here's what's missing from the conversation. Douglas is not simply a Boulder school. It is a school serving a significant number of Lafayette kids. 48% of Douglas's elementary kids are from Lafayette. More than 130 Douglas students have Lafayette addresses. Some of them live in the Douglas attendance boundary. Others are open enrolled, about 39 of those. That number matters even more when we look forward to Lafayette's future. As our city continues to grow, new housing is built, new families are moving here, and those kids are going to need schools. Yet when BVSD evaluated Douglas and its future enrollment, Lafayette was treated as a peripheral to the conversation rather than a community with a real stake in its outcome. That's why we're asking you to intervene on behalf of Lafayette families. We're not asking the city council to make the decision for them. We're asking for you to use your voice for Lafayette for our kids. We want you to formally ask BVSD to pause the closure of Douglas until current Lafayette students' open enrollment patterns and projected residential growths have been fully considered. Ask BVSD why a school serving more than 100 Lafayette kids can be evaluated without Lafayette being meaningfully included in the process at all. And we want them to know that closing this option, what it means for Lafayette and for our schools They plan to vote on September 22nd. And once Douglas closes, we cannot easily undo that. Lafayette deserves a seat at the table. And these are Lafayette kids. We're Lafayette families. And we're asking for you to stand up for them. Thank you. That's all.

Next, we'll hear from Brad Edwards.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members, and city staff, my name is Brad Edwards, and I'm the senior pastor of the Table Presbyterian Church, which meets at 700 West South Boulder Road. And I'm speaking on two items tonight. Number one, the August 18th minutes scheduled to be approved on tonight's agenda, and two, the second reading of the land use code. Four weeks ago, city council voted to implement my request that the two church-owned parcels at 287 South Bolivar Road be rezoned in C. First of all, thank you very much for that. I was watching from home on the live stream, and it is deeply, deeply appreciated. Tonight, I'm asking merely that you make both the minutes and the rezoning map fully reflect that decision. On August 18, after public input was given on the draft map and the land use code, Councillor Beaulieu said he didn't think council could, quote, justify zoning two different church parcels differently on the same transit corridor. By the way, all of these quotes I share tonight are verbatim quotes from the transcript. Councillor Jensen said, I like the NC designation, end quote. Councillor Giannola said, quote, they should be zoned the same, end quote. Mayor Tapia Vega then polled council members asking, quote, is there anyone that objects to this, end quote. No one did. When staff later read back your direction, they summarized it as, quote, look at ways to make sure we're being consistent, end quote. Councillor Beaulieu then corrected it on the spot, quote, do the NC for the churches, keep it simple, end quote. And Mayor Tapia Vega added, quote, that's what I had. Staff agreed with you that night. Your planning staff told you that the comp plan translates to zoning, quote, through a table at the beginning of the quote, of the code, and that this, quote, might be one of those situations where council can make that call, end quote. They said NC was, quote, something that without the comp plan would be able to rezone. We would be able to rezone, end quote. The director said neighborhood center commercial, quote, would probably be our recommendation, end quote. And the mayor said, quote, I love the idea of it coming back at second reading with the recommendation, end quote. Every one of these, again, are in my written comment I submitted earlier this morning. All that said, the minutes in front of you don't reflect any of this. The minutes state that the staff was directed merely to evaluate, which was staff's readback before council corrected it. The staff report demotes that decision to a question for study with three potential options, none of which were what the council actually said and directed. Even more confusing, in an email I received yesterday evening, staff wrote that a change to NC requires a comp plan amendment and that Immaculate Conception's NC designation was actually a mistake. Two quick things about that. First, the map you vote on tonight still has Immaculate Conception coded NC. If the COMP plan really prohibits that, then you're being asked to adopt a map that violates it without amendment. And if you can adopt that map, then the COMP plan doesn't bind it for Immaculate Conception, nor is it binding for the churches on our corner. Secondly, tonight's agenda includes amending exhibit B for the 700 and 800 blocks of public road. So the vehicle exists, and it's on the agenda to do what I'm asking. And I, as well as the owners of our building that we meet in, have asked for a similar amendment to rezone our two church-owned parcels as NC. All this said, I have two very simple requests. Number one, pull the August 18 myths from consent and amend direction number two to more fully reflect the council's express will in this matter that the church parcels be designated NC consistent with Immaculate Conception. And number two, amend exhibit B tonight to map the two church parcels NC in the same action you're taking for public road. If staff or council tells you tonight you can't, I'd ask you that you would ask them for the specific provision preventing it, because on August 18, the staff told you that that was actually OK. Lastly, and I just want to note this, that in the written comment I submitted this morning, I outlined both the federal statute, RELUPA, and the 2010 Tenth Circuit Appellate case, Rocky Mountain Christian Church v. Boulder County Board of Commissioners, which gives clear legal guidance for addressing the exact disparity I am asking to resolve. My written comment explains those in details, and I bring it up now only to point out that the request for an NC designation resolves all related objections in one fell swoop and conforms to federal regulations. In fact, according to the transcript, if not the minutes, I'm asking for something that city council has already approved on August 18 without a single objection. So for the sake of the 400 people across four congregations and 50 years of well-established religious use history, I ask that council would simply reaffirm that direction to staff and make it six so that we can all put this to rest and so that you don't have to hear any more bad pastor jokes.

Thank you. Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Aaron Palmer.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, counselors. Thank you for your presence this evening. My name is Erin Palmer. I live at 2863 Cascade Creek Drive in Lafayette. I'm also a parent of two Douglas Elementary students. And I'm here because I want to bring awareness to BVSD's resilient schools proposal, which the board votes on next Tuesday. I would formally request that this topic get added to the agenda, but we're out of time. So that's not on the table. But what I do want to flag is that Douglas is not a Boulder issue you can leave to Boulder's council. It's a Lafayette issue, and by the district's own numbers. And in fact, our city council might actually be the strongest voice for the Lafayette community here at Douglas, because the rest of the student population resides in unincorporated Boulder County. Half of Douglas' student population lives in Lafayette. 48% of Douglas' resident students and 51% of its open enrolled students call Lafayette home, not Boulder. There's a correlation between Douglas and Lafayette and in the other direction as well. Of the Douglas-owned families who open enroll elsewhere, Lafayette is the single largest destination. And it draws more of them than every other school in the district combined. So it goes both ways. I live in Indian Peak South, and we open and roll our children into Douglas because my husband and I both work in downtown Boulder. A school that half of its families reach by driving through or living in Lafayette is part of the Lafayette picture. Whether the attendance zone map the district drew it into is correct. And yet Lafayette families were largely left out of that process that produced the plan. Only 23 families took part in the district's engagement sessions, compared to 196 from Boulder and 107 from Louisville. And the district's own survey drew just a 6.8 response rate from Lafayette households. Why? In the district's own regional engagement structure slide, which I have here and I'll leave this for you as well, you'll see the three bubbles of engagement. Boulder community, Louisville and Superior community, and Broomfield community. So I'll leave this up because I know it's small. Could you see how we are left out with no representation or chance to engage? A decision this permanent, affecting a population of students this large, was shaped almost entirely without the people who make up nearly half of it." That's not a fact about Douglass. It's a fact about whether Lafayette had a seat at the table, and it didn't. I'm asking the council to take note of the gap and use its voice. Lafayette doesn't sit on the BVSD board. We know you have no decision-making authority here. But the students at Douglas are Lafayette residents, and this council can say so. I'm asking you to encourage the BVSD board to vote no on including Douglas in the September 22nd closure vote and instead study Douglas as part of Lafayette's own planning picture rather than deciding its fate in a process that Lafayette families were fairly a part of. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Florence Bocquet.

I was not going to speak.

Oh, okay.

I did not write that up. Both no or positive vote. Thank you.

Next, we have Mike Page.

Good evening, council. I'm Mike Page. I live at 1506 Euclid Circle. I, Michael D. Page, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Ohio, will administer justice without respect to persons, and will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties of the incumbent upon me as a township trustee, serving the best of my abilities. So that was a replay of the oath I took, oath of office I took 32 years ago. And I would stipulate to all that again, today if I was in the same position to do so without crossing my fingers or just reciting the words of the ceremony required by state law in order to get a seat on that side of the dais instead of back here. Of all the history and civics courses I'd taken in school, that moment crystallized all of the concepts and ideals I had absorbed in all of my previous years. Nothing works like having to put theory into practice. So now in Lafayette, there's an upcoming test of your commitment to your oath, similar to my own, that you took. Support the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. It was drafted by our framers and is composed of seven articles and added 10 amendments to define the civil liberties guaranteed to citizens and residents. Among the amendments in the Bill of Rights is a fourth amendment, which says the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized." To bring all this into focus on the issue at hand, the city's operation of a warrantless surveillance system in the form of the network of flock safety cameras trained to capture information tied to vehicles on our roadways that can be used to personally identify the operator and or the owner of the vehicle is a violation of the right to privacy specified very clearly in the Fourth Amendment. So with the upcoming contract renewal of flock safety to continue to operate this warrantless surveillance network, Your dedication to your oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States is going to be put to the test. Will you uphold one of the bedrock principles of our democracy? Or will you cater to a for-profit private entity whose specialty is providing the means to routinely violate the privacy rights to which we're all entitled? I hope that when you took your oath of office, your fingers were not crossed. and that you took the words more seriously than just a ceremony to get a seat on that side of the A's instead of back here. Please don't review the network surveillance. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we will hear from Preston Patton.

Good evening. My name is Preston Patton. I live at 2389 Indian Peaks Trail in Lafayette. And I'll be mercifully brief. I just want a second. the comments of my friend and neighbor, Chow Chang, and the comments Mike just made. I think these flock cameras are a real problem. I think they're inconsistent with the spirit of the city of Lafayette. There is a case pending in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, Lee Schmidt v. Norfolk. on the issue of whether these cameras constitute a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. And the other thing I want to mention is this is a private company. The data from those cameras doesn't belong to the city of Lafayette. It sits in a vast database, national database, being accumulated by a private company about the movements of American citizens, a database available for that private company to sell or lease to anyone they want. And I don't think we've ever had that before in our country. And I think it's a really bad idea. So please get rid of the flock canvas. Thank you. Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Ryan O'Leary.

Good evening. My name is Ryan O'Leary, and I'm the father of three. I'll try to do it without crying. Fortunately, it's not very long. BVSD students, two of whom are currently at Douglas. We live in the Crossridge neighborhood in our Lafayette residence. Our neighborhood is a Douglas resident school. I'm here to express my family's thanks, especially that of my wife. For those of you who have spoken to her, Myra O'Leary, I should have said her name, emails, and had discussions with her about this resilient school program. proposal rather. I am here also to request that the council support the Lafayette community and amplify our voice by speaking and writing to the Board of Education and engaging with BVST to better understand why Lafayette was not specifically included in the resilient schools discussion and proposal. Lafayette schools are not underutilized, and neither is Douglas. Douglas never met the criteria for participation in LRAC. Many of the other schools had discussions with the school board and BFSD about how to engage and increase their enrollment. Douglas never had any of these discussions. In fact, I'll be honest, it took everybody by surprise. During the engagement sessions, Lafayette families were told that they would go further for the right school. Let me rephrase that. During the engagement sessions, which we heard were underrepresented, the Lafayette families said that they would go further for the right school. And we heard about all the open enrolled students that moved from Lafayette to go to Douglas, but also that focus schools, only 12.3% said focus schools were a must have. Please ask the BVSD and the board what research placed Douglas in the bolder portion of this proposal, excluding the Lafayette community from consideration. Ask for a comprehensive plan that is less disruptive immediately, allowing for schools and boundaries to progress with our children. An irreversible decision about Douglas today impacts the future of Lafayette tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Michael Watson.

Mike Watson, 708 South Carroll Avenue. Hi. I'd like to start by, you know, I've come up here and said a lot, and I think it's the first time that I've actually agreed with what the mayor has said. Scolding people for clapping, yeah, it does sound silly. I'd like to start by once again voicing my support for Rosabella Park. Make it beautiful, make a space of nature and reflection, make it worthy of her name. But don't stop there. The space surrounding that park matters as well. When you step out of Rosabella Park, you step into Lafayette. Make that space a space worthy of the blood, sweat, and tears poured forth by our residents over the years. The main issue on the agenda tonight is the land use code update. This is the thing that will decide what sort of town we live in, what sort of town our children will inherit. In the past several weeks, we've seen multiple rounds of public discussion on this topic. During these meetings, the staff have brought up several concerns, the lack of consensus around how height limits are determined, where to start counting height for properties below grade, and building footprints allowed in OTX3. Here's my problem. All of the concerns expressed by staff seem to focus on developers. In many cases, not just developers, but Steve and Thibault. I walked public road to make sure. The old florist site is the only one that sits significantly below grade. It's also the only one large enough to accommodate several 10,000 square foot buildings. In fact, I would say that OTX3 seems to exist almost entirely for this property. The community spoke loud and clear about what height limits they want to see. Two stories on public road. But if you pass this code as is, and Thibault comes with a development application for putting in apartment buildings in commercial, what height could he ask for? Have you reviewed the code? What's the height limit that he could ask for? Because as of right now, there is no height limit included in the code for this sort of development. Four of the eight buildings, development types allowed in OTX3 do not have a maximum height specified. In this case, the sky is literally the limit. As it stands right now, the FAA has more say in how tall these buildings could be than the new land use code. Let that sink in. After the community voiced their input repeatedly to limit height to two stories, staff left the number completely open for four of the eight building types allowed in the florist parcel. Make no mistake, this was not an oversight nor a typo. It falls squarely in line with everything we've seen surrounding the OTX3 edition, tacked on at the last minute to serve a single developer, sneaky and purposefully deceptive. No, this was no oversight. We have a word for public officials and bureaucrats who serve moneyed interests and their own self-interest instead of serving the public. Corruption. This is not unique to Lafayette. When I look out at our political landscape, I see a system designed to benefit the wealthy while ignoring or actively harming the most vulnerable. It makes me sick to see this in our own town. If there's one place where people should have a say, it's local politics. I mean, everyone spoke about so much tonight. Flock, I think, deserves your time, your public time, not in a closed door. That is mass surveillance of our citizens. That is mass surveillance of American citizens across the country. And for the people who get up on camera and talk about this, Good job. Good job. Thank you, because that's my rights. That's my privacy. That's my children's future that we are talking about. Are we going to live in a country that reflects our values, or are we going to live in one that is controlled by moneyed interests and bureaucrats? And that sort of decision is in front of you today. How you vote on this land use code, how you vote on any of the issues that come up here, whether or not you stick up for your people who are asking Boulder County to not close their school district, it's really hard. to come up here and speak in public. I joke ahead of time. I have my watch going. And I get my exercise minutes just waiting in line to speak. And I come up here. And I'm shaking. My mouth is dry. And I'm sweaty and gross. really hard, and for all of the people who take time out of a Tuesday to do that, because they care about the city, because they care about this country, because they care about the rights of the people, or the dispossessed, or any of the numerous things that people get up here and talk to you about, take that seriously. Because it's hard, and it matters. And you literally are the seven people in town who have a say in this, who can push back against what I see to be this overbearing system that is slowly eroding the things that we hold dear. Stand for your people. Stand and be true, please. Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Robert Seeger.

Hello, thanks. Sorry, I'm losing my voice. Thanks, Mayor Pro Tem and council members. My name is Robert Seeger. I live at 356 Morning Star Lane in Lafayette, and I'm the proud grandparent of a Douglas Elementary School third grader. I just want to add my voice with others to urge you to Re-register the dissatisfaction of Lafayette residents with the BVSD book process and proposal in front of the board. Here's just a couple simple reasons. First, the public process was deeply flawed. I was a public planning professional for over 30 years, and I'm sure you all have been deeply engaged in public process and planning. This proposal was literally dropped on the Douglas school community on August 25th. with one board hearing on September 8 and a vote on September 22. So the leadership of BVSD clearly decided it was in our best interest to have our public input minimized. And that's not OK. The second reason is Douglas Elementary, as you've heard, is essentially a Lafayette school. and the Lafayette schools are being piecemealed. It's not just that we and you weren't consulted, and we realize this is not your purview. It's a district decision and authority. But literally, the rest of the Lafayette schools, all the elementary schools, and the other East County schools were not a part of this analysis. They're saving that for a step two. So our kids could be evicted from Douglas Elementary, choose another or go to their attendance neighborhood school in Lafayette, and then the second half of the process follows up and they get bounced again. So it's really putting a huge amount of anxiety, not just for our kids, but for Lafayette families and what they do next. Do they stay in the district? Do they stay in Lafayette because of these issues? Third, Douglas kids were really disproportionately affected. The district is wrestling with an underenrollment issue countywide, districtwide. So it's understandable that some schools might get closed and consolidated. But Douglas is not getting proposed to be closed. Douglas, they're taking the kids that are currently at Douglas They're evicting them from that school. They're scattering them among three different schools across the district, some of which are as far as gun barrel. And then they're giving that school to other kids, to a choice program that sits in the middle of Boulder right now. So you can see how tough that is for families in Lafayette. Last. Douglas Elementary has a very high, if not the highest, percentage of kids with special needs in the district. And they handle it beautifully. It is a caring and supportive environment for kids. And there's one bullet point in a 75-page report for this closure plan that says, move those kids to Heatherwood, which is in Gunbarrow. That's it. That's the sole consideration of kids with special needs in this whole plan. So that's another deep, deep concern. So I really urge you, if you can find a way to register Lafayette residents and families' dissatisfaction with both the process and the proposal in front of that board right now and urge them to reject it and do a more comprehensive and engagement process with families and Lafayette residents. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Next, we will hear from Michael Dobrinsky.

I'm not planning to speak, but I agree with everything about the Douglas closure.

Thank you so much. We'll hear from Vicki Uland.

Hi, I'm Vicki Ulin, 303 West Simpson Street. And first of all, thank you for the tribute to Tonya. I really appreciate that she still lives on in our hearts. So thank you. More pragmatically, on Sunday I sent you an email about my concerns about the mobile home community zoning in the land use code that you're scheduled to vote on tonight. Since then, I've talked to Anne Marie Jensen about it because she suggested the amendment to the code. And tonight, I want to make the comments I sent to you public and also talk about some options Anne Marie and I discussed. On page 48, the amended code says this about manufactured or mobile home community MHC zoning. The manufactured or mobile home community district is intended to preserve the existing stock of manufactured housing in Lafayette as a source of affordable housing. The city recognizes that these neighborhoods may also evolve and may do so while retaining the city's goal of maintaining and preserving Lafayette's affordable Housing stock as long as mobile and manufactured units are replaced with other affordable unit types such as tiny houses that meet applicable HUD standards while also ensuring the city's affordable housing stock is preserved. My first concern is that there definitely needs to be some commas in there. And my other concern is that mobile home communities are one of the few areas in Lafayette where people can own an affordable single-family detached home, often with a yard where they can have a garden or a dog or a children's play area or other cool stuff. Opportunities for affordable home ownership rather than renting are so important that this is one of the things ELAC lobbied for in Willoughby Corner. And as we know from the last presentation to council about Willoughby Corner, BCHA data shows that the affordable homes people most want to buy are single-family detached. I'm concerned that this change to the LUC means that mobile home communities that contain owner-occupied housing can be replaced with rental units. Is there a way to safeguard against this? Also, what prevents single-family detached mobile home communities from being replaced entirely with multifamily affordable apartment buildings? The amendment mentions tiny homes, but is this just a suggestion rather than a requirement? I'm also concerned that this change has had very little opportunity for public input. The, quote, other affordable unit types such as tiny houses that meet applicable HUD standards language was added after the August 18th council meeting. It was never discussed by the Land Use Code Working Group, Planning Commission, or most importantly, members of the public who are owners or residents of mobile home communities. There was outreach specifically to mobile home communities during the public input part of the Land Use Code development process. But as far as I know, no outreach about this important change to MHC zoning. I'd like to see council discuss this amendment tonight and consider voting against it or postponing it until we have more data. One thing Anne Marie and I discussed was the changing financing of rental versus for sale affordable housing and the need for flexibility. We also talked about putting in the MHC language that if mobile homes are replaced with affordable housing. Home ownership is preferred along with single family units like tiny homes or courtyard developments. But I wonder if this has enough teeth or can it just be ignored by developer staff or city councils because it's a suggestion rather than a requirement. What I'd like to hear is yours and staff's ideas of how our MHC zoning can best preserve the unique aspects of mobile home communities now and in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from John Merck.

Hi, I'm John Merck, EU 1388 Kilkenny Street. I'm actually kind of going to double whammy. I emailed you all last week. I don't know if anybody read it. I know Kyle did. He responded to my email, and I talked to him today. We own a commercial building, my family, off Baseline Road, 1301 West Baseline Road. It's where the steel meat property is. So one of the oldest buildings. kind of developed areas out here before all the commercial around us. So I'm here to speak about that tonight. But as you may have known if you read my email, my child also goes to Douglas. So yeah, it kind of feels like I'm getting this building that we worked so hard to get for my construction company. I'm a general contractor. this building that I had to pull all these strings to get the building to work and to buy this separate lot and research who it was. Neither of the buildings were actively for sale, all this stuff, to find this dream building that was three miles from my house, two miles from my daughter's daycare. to run my contracting business out. And then I find out from TiVo, not from the city, that the building is being rezoned to AMX 2, which is a completely different use. It's 100% commercial or residential, you know. There's nothing industrial about it. We would be completely nonconforming and we get whatever grandfathered in, whatever you want to call it. So I'm not sure where that even gets. documented or how that is safeguarded versus getting a letter two months later and saying, nope, you're nonconforming. We don't want your business to be here anymore. But we, you know, gave you a promise before or something. So I gave you a plot there. It shows our lots. It's complete chaos. It is all easements. It is not developable really from any developer that would want to move in there and use it. Honestly, the steel property that was split into three parcels probably should have never been split up like that. So I just ask you to Look at all these properties individually. I know that's a huge ask. I'm sure you have a million properties in Lafayette. But specifically, properties that are going to be zoned out of their current zoning into something that makes them nonconforming. It's like, what is this doing to small business? Is this land developable? Does it really make sense for this to be AMX II or to be a commercial property? Our building is a steel building. It's a metal industrial steel building. So what is the value of my property once it's no longer conforming? Yes, my business gets to stay quote unquote kind of grandfathered in. What happens if I want to sell my business in 30 years? I can't do that. I can't sell Murky Construction to another company and then take over that building under the same use. What if I want to develop it? What if I want a change of use within what I thought I was buying, an industrial property? What if my mother gets sick and I have to move to Virginia and I have to sell this property? How do I sell a metal industrial building now zoned commercial? That's a very specific buyer. How am I going to get taxed on this? Am I going to get taxed at the value of what it should be when I think the building loses a ton of value because now it's not really Sellable. What if you bought your house? And then we said, we're going to rezone your house to a commercial property. But you can stay there. And you can just be nonconforming, but keep living there. What happens when you go to sell that property? um and so yeah the double whammy is yeah then i find out that my daughter's school is getting closed you know so as i started my letter that i wrote for you first i was kind of angry when i found out that um my building was being rezoned and then after finding that my daughter's gonna lose her school it really just shifted to sadness you know it's like a small business people i started my business from replacing door handles for people handymen you know because Child care costs $20,000 plus in Colorado. And I used to work in the outdoor industry making $35,000 a year. So it was you stay-at-home dad or find a new job. So I started a business, grew it out of nothing, taking leads on Nextdoor, getting my contractor's license. And I really pride myself on being a local contractor. I pretty much only work in Lafayette, Louisville, and South Boulder. close to home. I like to spend time with my family. I can't just sell this building. I don't want to sell this building. I don't want to have an industrial lot out by, where's the cider place out there? You know what I mean? That's a lot. 30 extra minutes practically for me to get there if it's rush hour. And so I just ask you to look at the rezoning. I don't know if that's delaying the vote today or something, but really, how many other people are in the same boat that maybe haven't even been notified that their zoning's changing? So I just ask you to consider these properties individually.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Rob Glenn.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Rob Glenn, 401 West Cana Street, Lafayette, Colorado. I serve on Lafayette's IDEA Board Inclusion Diversity Equity Access Board, but tonight I'm speaking as a resident and not on behalf of the board. First, I want to give a big reminder I heard a lot of engagement tonight and applications for city boards, commissions, and committees close this Friday, September 18th at 5 p.m. So if you've thought about serving, this is the week to apply. As we look ahead to the next city council election cycle, I also hope council continues looking at timing of boards and commissions and recruitment. The current fall cycle has applications closing in September, interviews in October, and appointments in November, in an election year that overlaps almost entirely with a council campaign. You've already looked at this from a planning commission perspective, but I do hope we look at it across all boards and commissions. I ran for council last year and didn't win, but I still wanted to serve. There will likely be other candidates in that same position. I'd like us to have a process that keeps the door open for people who step forward to run and still want to contribute if they aren't elected. Next, the 701 South Public Road Pocket Park Naming Survey closes this Thursday, September 17. My choice is Rosabelle Park. Many people here already know Rose Lueris' story in the pool at the Bob Alberta Recreation Center now carries her name. But Rosabelle's part of that history deserves its own recognition. After Rose died in California while the court case was still pending, Rosabelle returned to Lafayette and at just 13 years old testified in court on behalf of her mother. That is an extraordinary burden for a child and an important part of Lafayette's civil rights history. And that story sits with something much larger. Lafayette has a deep Latino history, and the Lueres family was not the only family that helped shape this community. I had the privilege of attending the Lafayette History Museum's 50th anniversary celebration and new exhibit opening this past Saturday. It was a great reminder of just how many families, voices, and experiences make up Lafayette's history and why it matters that we keep telling those stories. Finally, I want to invite the community to the IDA boards. Our voices, our community, reflections that connect on. This is Saturday, October 10th from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Lafayette Public Library. We'll use selected clips from the librarians to guide structured conversations around censorship, history, participation in democracy, and human dignity. There will also be light refreshments and resource tables with community organizations, city staff, boards, and commissions. So a quick reminder, some dates. In two days, we have the Pack of Parts survey closes, 18th for boards and commissions, and then October 10th for Our Voices, Our Community. One last thing, I did have an opportunity to attend the Coffee with the Chief through the Lafayette Chamber, and we were notified there October 27th there will be a presentation on FLOC. It is a council workshop. So it does suck a little bit that it's not an opportunity for public input, but there will be some great information for anybody looking to see more of what the city's presentation is, please. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Brian Obenshain.

Hi. Brian Obenshain, 480 Strathmore Lane. I've been a resident of Lafayette for more than eight years, and I consistently vote in city council elections. I'm here to express my concern about the flock automated license plate reader contract. Any ALPR contract approval or renewal, regardless of size, should be subject to public comment and a city council vote. This technology allows anyone with access to this data to determine daily habits, routes, and activities of citizens of Lafayette. Naturally, the police and block safety claim to have strict rules regarding who can access this data and for what reason. But near as I can tell, enforcement of these policies is left entirely to the police themselves. One need only do a cursory search of news articles to find multiple cases of abuse of these systems across the country, including the stalking and harassment of women by police officers or the sharing of database access with federal agencies, as 9 News reported on the Loveland PD doing last year. Lafayette PD shares flock data with Loveland PD, by the way, which means ATF acting on behalf of ICE had access to Lafayette's cameras for at least a month last year. I have no doubt that access to the mass surveillance network assists the police in solving crimes, but I doubt the risk of abuse is worth the benefit. As a fig leaf to our concerns, policies are written, promises are made, but I see no reason why we should trust the police and the corporations to follow these policies and protect our privacy when every day we see examples of police abuse and corporate malfeasance across the country. These tools are privately owned for-profit software, and I see no guarantee that they won't be left unsecured, hacked, or shared with data-scraping tools such as those provided by Palantir. I've spoken with at least a couple dozen of my fellow citizens about this topic, and I have yet to meet a single person who advocates for ALPRs or AI-powered mass surveillance. These tools are antithetical to our community's values. City councils hold a vote on renewal of surveillance contracts so constituents can see where council members stand and vote accordingly in future elections. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Nathan Kornick.

Hi, I'm Nathan Kornick. I live at 235 East South Boulder Road, so literally the same parking lot as here. This is my first city council meeting I've ever attended, and it's because I am here to echo Chow Ching's proposals for the flock surveillance system. I think it's very important that the public is able to be heard about this, not just have a workshop about it after the renewal has already been voted on. And I'm keeping it brief. So thank you very much for your time.

Thank you so much. That is the entirety of our speaker request forms. I will ask, is there anyone who hasn't had the chance to address counsel that would like to speak tonight? Please come on up. Just state your name and address for the record, and then you can begin.

Let me pull it up. I didn't think I'd have a chance to speak. Okay, hi, my name is Six Crotty. I live at 321 Caribou Pass Circle. I'm here today to echo what many people have said before. I would like the Lafayette City Council to cancel its deal with the Flaw Corporation. As a member of Generation Z, I've grown up in the digital era, and I've seen the rise of so-called artificial intelligence from the perspective of a digital native. I've watched my peers in university have been unable to answer simple questions about their opinions on various topics without the help of things like ChatGPT. I've also seen my older family members become confused or angry at AI stories meant to pit people against each other. Artificial intelligence as it exists today has a negative impact on people's brains and moods. Many members of my generation, and as I've now seen tonight, every generation, see the Flock Project and its cameras as a particularly insidious expansion of AI into our daily lives. At its core, the Flock Project is an attempt at mass surveillance and control. But Flock cameras are unique in that they are not overseen by a governmental body or even a large branch of corporate managers. Flock is run on a software that determines whether or not a crime is being committed with an algorithm. This leads to various issues. Take, for example, the Gilliam family in Aurora. Their car was falsely identified as stolen due to a flat camera reading the license plate and connecting the plate number on their SUV to a motorcycle from a different state. Police apprehended the family, mother Brittany Gilliam, and her four children as they were on their way to a nail salon. They were forced out of the vehicle and onto the ground. Brittany's youngest child was only six years old when she was forced onto the hot pavement and held at gunpoint. The city of Aurora eventually agreed to a $1.9 million settlement to right the mistake the flock cameras made, and that's a very hefty price for very little benefit. The flock cameras make these mistakes consistently. Several motorists in Boulder, including a 76-year-old woman, have been wrongly added to police hot lists after their license plates were misidentified by flock cameras. These people were pulled over, scared, and placed into dangerous situations, not for any wrongdoing, but for a mistake made by an oversightless algorithm. The Flock Group Incorporated encourages police departments they work with to prioritize Flock reports, despite the frequent errors in their reporting. They create an environment in which police officers are encouraged to lay down the law without investigation, or even a quick check into the accuracy of the report. This drastic law enforcement action without real cause is a waste of time and resources, and it puts innocent people in terrible situations. In short, flock surveillance promotes an idea of guilty until proven innocent. If that wasn't enough, flock cameras can easily be hacked and accessed by just about anyone in only a few minutes through various techniques, including pointing an antenna at the device, pressing the button on the back of the camera several times and connecting to its signal, or by simply Google searching certain specific phrases to find web pages where the real time locations of police cars spotted by the cameras are shown. Flock has even lied to certain cities about what its cameras capabilities are, such as the city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. And luckily, the Oshkosh City Council immediately voted to rescind their deal with Flock after finding out the truth about that. These devices surveil millions of Americans every day, and some are pointed at public pools or at schools that our children attend. Reports showing just how easy Flock cameras are to hack into are rightfully concerning. Flock safety, ironically, makes Americans less safe. And Lafayette should follow in Oshkosh's good example and the examples of hundreds of other cities around the country. The people of Lafayette do not want a flock network in our city. I think that's been made very clear tonight. We do not want to be worried about being harassed as criminals due to an algorithmic mistake. And we do not want to be concerned about being spied on by anyone who managed to access the unencrypted network flock uses. Flock cameras are unreliable and unnecessary. They do not promote safety. They promote fear and carelessness while racking up city expenses due to maintenance and very hefty lawsuits. I thank the council and the citizens of Lafayette who are here today for their time, and I urge the council to side with the people of Lafayette and get walkout.

Thank you so much. If you wouldn't mind, could you fill out one of the speaker request forms and just hand it to our city clerk? Thank you. Is there anyone else who has not spoken that would like the chance to speak? Please come on up.

Andrew Weekly, 807 North 111th Street, Lafayette. And I want to add my voice to the other parents of Douglas kids and give you some context of our own experience at Douglas and how it's impacted our family and why it's such a quality program that really should be preserved as it is. Specifically, my daughter went to Douglas with an IEP. She had some neurological presentations that we didn't fully understand. And while at Douglas, through the interventions of the staff there and other teachers, she really made significant progress in her ability to be part of a school and a school program. even to the point now she's really established some very strong friendships there. And one thing that's really disturbing about this plan that BVSD is putting forward is they haven't considered the necessary continuity of care that is so important to these children. It's like as if they are completely fungible and that they're going to basically divide them up, scatter them to these other schools regardless of what their needs are or what their, you know, what their inner network is and their support there. So I really would implore you to talk to BVSD and, as other people have stated, really press them with some hard questions about how they have come to this conclusion and how that best serves the Lafayette and Lafayette community. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. I believe I saw one more hand. Just right there. Please come on up.

My name's Andrea. I live at 407 East Simpson Street. And I wanted to talk about the surveillance cameras. I've been a resident of Lafayette for about six years now. And I moved here from about an hour and a half away to get away from the abusive relationship. I was being stalked and harassed. My ex-boyfriend works in law enforcement. And I learned about the flock cameras about a week ago. And I can say honestly that with that technology, the way that it's set up and the way that it's run does not make me feel safe here at all. I would really encourage all of you to look at the contract that you've signed. And if there's any way to get these cameras out of our community sooner than that, please do it because it's not worth saving those four cars. Thank you.

Thank you. I believe there was another hand.

Yes, please come on up. 708 South Carroll Avenue. I just wanted to say, I wanted to come up here to talk because I wanted to complete the age range for the amount of people that have spoken out against Flock. It seems like it could be used in a lot of wrong ways. I actually didn't even know these cameras existed until people started coming up here and speaking about it. So yeah, that does not seem like we should be having that in our community. And then what else I wanted to say was regarding the land use code. And I just feel like that would not fit the... personality of the community. And I think you guys should go back and double check the high limit and everything. And I would also, once again, like to give a shout out to supporting the name Rosabella for the park. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else who has not spoken tonight that would like to speak? Please.

Kelly Frye, 507 East Geneseo Street. I submitted public comment. I wasn't going to speak in here tonight. I'm really terrible at public speaking. But I just had to step up. And this is some of our last opportunity to speak about Douglass and what it means to our community. I'm seventh generation Lafayette. I was raised in unincorporated Boulder County. I live in Old Town Lafayette. We chose to live there partially because of easy access down baseline to get to Douglas. Douglas is Lafayette community. There are so many families. As everybody's mentioned, look at the data. I mean, it's like our community is Lafayette. Downtown, the events, the fundraising all happens in Lafayette. And we are out of time. So, again, the reason I'm standing up here is that this was really thrown at us really quickly. We were not. briefed at all as a community in terms of us being on the chopping block for our school to close. There's been a lot of conversation around other schools in the district. We know that the district has a major problem to solve with under-enrolled schools. But this is not the answer, closing Douglas. It's a thriving neighborhood school. We have some of the highest enrollment for a neighborhood school. We've never been flagged. So for this to come out last month, that this was the decision, essentially, it's been a decision. And I think that that's the message that we just keep getting from the board is that this has already been decided, which is really, really hard to hear because we don't feel that we had a voice at all at the table. And I think us showing up here at the Lafayette City Council meeting is to ask your help. Again, we're out of time. We have a week, basically, until they vote. And we are doing everything we can to get our voice out there. to present the data um there's a lot of data in in the spreadsheet or the documents that that have been given to you already and i just ask that you guys do take that into account review it and advocate on behalf of the lafayette community that is douglas um and any any way shape or form in whatever that looks like so again i just had to come up and say something even though i didn't have anything prepared so thank you so much and thank you for your service to the city

Thank you. Anyone else who has not spoken tonight that would like to speak? Not seeing anyone else, I would turn to our city clerk to see if we have any calls.

We do have two callers online, Mayor. Caller with the phone number ending in 815, talking is available.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, proceed.

All right, excellent. Good evening, council. This is Lucas Ingmeier. I live at 402 East Baseline Road. think we can agree that tonight we've all heard numerous opinions regarding the distaste for flock or frankly any other alpr surveillance in this community and i want to call in today in addition to my public comment i sent in earlier today as well as previous ones to underscore those thoughts but also i hope to implore you to take action this evening to respect those opinions of the community members who've spoken up today As such, I'd like to reference tonight's vote to raise the no vote contract limit to $250,000. I'm asking council to exempt surveillance technology from that threshold and to admit that the flock ALPR contract gets its own standalone recorded vote instead of being approved inside of the upcoming police budget. Regardless of your views on ALPR, this is a process request. And if you support this program, you should want to public vote on it because a permanent system that records where residents drive to get a debate and a vote with your name on it for the public to see lafayette's alpr contract has not had a public debate or standalone vote because it passed on consent agenda and raising the threshold to 250 000 means that future contracts like it and skip that debate as well so this evening i'm asking you to One, exempt surveillance and data collection contracts from the $250,000 threshold regardless of the amount. And also, B, put the flock contract on the agenda as its own item with the public comment and a roll call vote before any renewal. Thank you for your time.

We have one more caller. Caller with the phone number ending in 926. You may now talk. Hello, can you hear me?

Yes. Hi, I'm Cindy Lurie and I live in Coal Creek Village and I want to talk about the land use code update for Old Town. I really appreciate the changes being made to the proposed code, including the reduction in maximum lot size and building footprints and the rezoning of the 700 block of public road. Thank you so much for listening and for acting in the best interest of Lafayette in its future. I do still have concerns about unresolved plans for building height restrictions. My understanding is that this issue is being postponed indefinitely or at least into next year, and I'm dismayed that the group found it necessary to leave open-ended the decision about building height, leaving the current height allowance at 35 feet with no restrictions yet on the number of stories that can be built. I don't really understand why this question is too unclear or complicated to put it to rest now. There's really no question what the comprehensive plan intended as it specifically addresses the future development of Old Town and building height. Page 161 of the plan tells us that the city intends for buildings in Old Town to be two stories. It doesn't seem like a mystery or open question or something left up to the interpretation of someone who might disagree. In the months since the land use code update has been constructed, many members of the community have come forward in a variety of ways to voice their concerns about the code update as it pertains to Old Town. My observation is that the community's most pressing concern about it is building height restrictions. And most have made it clear that what we want for our leaders is to follow the comp plan and restrict both building height to two stories. The community and the city worked long and hard together and extended significant resources on legacy Lafayette. Most of us are aware that the purpose of the land use code update is to put that vision of the outcome into actionable and legally binding terms that we all follow to make that vision a reality. So it's time to stop speculating that there's some ambiguity here about what the plan calls for and get this vision down in writing. The plan doesn't just mention 35 feet. It also specifically calls for that maximum building height of two stories. I did want to address a couple of concerns I had that may be holding up the show on building height that spring from comments made by some city leaders at the most recent work group meetings. First, one leader commented on perhaps some confusion around the definition of a story. And we don't need to speculate on what that might mean as we already have well-defined guidance and precedent. Like most Colorado municipalities, I believe Lafayette adopts the International Building Code and International Residential Code. And under the IBC, the definition of a story is the portion of a building included between the upper surface of a floor and the upper surface of the floor or roof next above it. For a more local definition, I would point you to the city's Old Town Lafayette design criteria. And in the lot coverage incentive section, the city explicitly defined height to story ratios to prevent exactly this kind of confusion. And one story is strictly defined as 16 feet, one and a half stories as 20 feet. And by local precedent, a story in Old Town is roughly 10 to 16 feet. So a three-story building crammed into a 35-story FEET MIGHT TECHNICALLY FIT THE HEIGHT LIMIT IF IT HAS A FLAT ROOF, BUT IT COMPLETELY VIOLATES THE STORY LIMIT MANDATED ON PAGE 161 OF THE COMP PLAN. HOPEFULLY SOME ATTENTION TO THESE DOCUMENTS AND DEFINITIONS WILL PUT A REST TO ANY QUESTION OF WHAT CONSTITUTES A STORY. Finally, I wanted to address the community's intentions in speaking up about Old Town development, particularly in regard to building heights, as we've seen a level of engagement on this issue that we haven't seen on too many issues recently. I think it's a big mistake to suggest, as one of our leaders has, that the reason that so many of us object to building heights outside those that are for called for in the comp plan is because the community was duped and became confused when an online discussion used the term big box to provide some context for the newly proposed building sizes sizes and i i'm personally a little offended by that and i'm concerned that there may be a point of view among some of our leadership that community members are easily misled or manipulated. And I want to make clear that we're not duped or confused. We know the difference between the Target or Home Depot and a three-story building, and we know exactly how we feel about Old Town development. And we also know just what we decided on in the comp plan that city leaders agreed to adopt and implement when they took office. So I hope we don't hear any more discussion in which people that are putting aside time with their families, friends, jobs, speak out and protect Old Town or characterize as being easily misled. So to close up, we don't need to open the door to any more ambiguity by putting off the question of building heights or restrictions for further questions or broader discussion because the comp plan discussions and its extensive process was plenty broad enough. We need to establish now that Old Town development will be restricted to two stories as specified in Legacy Lafayette. And let me be as clear as possible. Thank you so much.

Unfortunately, your five minutes are up. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Do we have any other calls? Clerk Beck?

We do have one more call in there. Caller with the phone number ending in 842. Talking is now available. Caller ending in 842. Star 6 to unmute. Last call. Caller N8842.

OK. With that, we will close public input. Thank you all so much, and move on to tonight's consent agenda. Mr. Mayor. Councilor Boehler.

Before we move into the consent agenda, I wonder if, given all the folks who've come out this evening relating to the Douglas Elementary closure, I wonder if we might request a brief discussion on that topic, just to respond to members of the public?

That topic is certainly not in our agenda, so we couldn't take any formal vote. However, I'll just look to council to see if there's any opposition into discussing that now. Not seeing. Mayor Pro Tem.

I don't see any opposition to having a discussion, but I think we should put some bounds. Councilor Giannullo and I have been talking about just this subject. So I would like for everyone to be very straightforward, but do put some bounds on it time-wise so that we can maintain the business that we're here to do. It's not on our agenda. I have no problem with putting it on the agenda, but I'd like to just put a limit on it. And let's be quick with it. I don't sugarcoat it.

I will ask for some clarification. Mayor Pro Tem, by time, do you mean we just try to limit ourselves in how long we speak? Or are you saying a specific time amount?

A specific time amount. So let's say 15 to 20 minutes.

I agree with that.

Councillor Jensen, I see your hand.

Do I get the apple for bringing it up? Yes. I'm happy to turn to Councilor Jensen. I strongly agree with the Mayor Pro Tem. I would love to keep this super bound, recognizing that our limited authority in this regard. This is entirely BBSD's decision. Just tremendous appreciation for all of the parents and family members who came out this evening to share with us. I'm struck by what seems to me, and sorry to talk louder with the folks outside. I'm agnostic on the substance because I want to learn more about it, but it does seem to me it's very clear there was a process foul here. And so I would love to learn more about the process underway and how BVSD made this decision, how it was communicated, given the significant ramifications for many of our residents. So I would be interested in whether us sending a letter to BVSD is an option. But I don't agree with you. I don't want to take too much time. But I think these folks certainly deserve a response and some action from us. GREG MCKENZIE.

Councillor Jessen.

COUNCILMEMBER JESSEN. So Douglas is the neighborhood school in my neighborhood. My grandchild went there when he lived with me. And I agree with Councillor Bollier that there process issues here. I don't think as council it is our job to second guess decision making on the part of the school board. But from the folks I have talked to, there was a list of criteria and there was a list of schools that met that criteria that were being considered for closure. And there was a process for the school district to meet with those schools and the parents and the families. Because Douglas didn't meet those criteria, they didn't do the kind of outreach that they were doing with other schools or listen to the parents. And I think it is appropriate that they also did not gather data on the impact on Lafayette because they weren't doing Lafayette schools. So they made the assumption that Douglas was really a Boulder school and didn't consider Lafayette impacts. I think there are a lot of procedural problems in how they handled this. And with the help of Councilor Fridland, we have sort come up with some language also based on Brittany Harvey who wrote to us today, some suggestions that she made about what we could say to the school board that focuses on process and not content or decision. I would think one thing we could do is take the comments we've gotten from the public, maybe assign someone to work with staff if the council agrees and draft a letter to the school board on behalf of council that addresses the failures we feel they had in their process and ask them to spend more time with our community before they make this really important decision.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Giannullo.

Yeah, I'd just jump in here. I appreciate everything everyone said. I appreciate the community coming out on this. One thing that I believe I have heard is that the Boulder City Council was briefed on the decision to do this, I forget exactly the name that they had, but these school closures, because the Boulder schools are impacted. Here we are hearing that Lafayette schools were actually impacted. It turns out we weren't briefed as the Lafayette City Council. And so I don't think it would be out of place for us to ask BVSD to slow down or They're giving our residents short shrift. We're not getting the same kind of turn at outreach and input that the other schools that are impacted were given. And to that end, I would support a letter or some kind of outreach that is done on behalf of the council to support our Douglas families.

other thoughts from council councillor friedland thank you very much i'm going to echo what other people say but i'm not going to repeat it um councilor gino i would add that it wasn't just boulder but also superior lewisville and broomfield also were briefed i believe um but we were not so that seems like an error um i guess i'm curious in terms of process um for our city attorney i mean you know what could we do today could we instruct um you know staff to work with one of our counselors to draft the letter would that be an allowable thing for us to do this evening if a majority of you would like to proceed with that yes you could do that okay thank you that would be my suggestion um and i hope that we can proceed that way thank you counselor counselor yes

I work for BVSD, and I had no idea until Friday that Boulder had a small part of Lafayette zoned for it. Or I'm sorry, Douglas had a small part of Lafayette zoned for it. I was under the impression that it was a Boulder school with lower enrollment, and that the Lafayette portion were people who chose to open enroll there largely because of the smaller class sizes. I do think closing. Douglas could potentially in the future also have implication for our Lafayette schools. So Lafayette Elementary, I believe 39 open enrolled out of Lafayette Elementary. If those students were to come back to Lafayette Elementary, it could have a pretty big impact on class sizes. And as someone who's zoned for Lafayette Elementary and chooses to send their children elsewhere, I know they have larger class sizes. I also spend a lot of time in our Lafayette schools. I do think a conversation with the school board would be beneficial, especially with a plan for monitoring our Lafayette schools' class sizes in the future.

Great. Thank you. Any other thoughts from council? Okay. I'll say just a few things. First and foremost, I have had conversations with three school board members in this last week because this has just been a, I think that's been going on. First and foremost, just to kind of put this out there, they are also struggling through this decision. This is a difficult decision. We have to look at the comprehensive state of the world. In the last year, we cut $1.5 billion from the state's budget through JBC, the legislature, and then obviously OSPB. And another billion is coming next year. So these issues are going everywhere. And it's a very difficult situation. But I feel like most of council is on board of working with staff to put something together. The only thing I will add to this is, city attorney?

May I just have a suggestion? Because there won't be an opportunity for a letter to come back to council for you all to review and agree to before it's signed, I would suggest that if you do move forward with one of you or designating one of you to prepare a letter on behalf of council, which staff can assist with, I would suggest that you agree on what that message is tonight so that you all know what you're putting your names to.

That was my next point. The city attorney is ahead of me. This is difficult. This is really, really difficult for the school board. It's really difficult, of course, for our residents and, of course, for the kids that will be impacted and the families that will be impacted. I think setting parameters around the time that we're going to speak about this is beautiful. Setting parameters about what we say is just as important. Knowing that the school board is a elected board. They are just like us. They ran for that seat and they hold governance over that school or that district. And there's absolutely nothing that any of us can do to either delay the vote or change the outcome of that vote. All we can do is advocate on behalf of the residents of the city of Lafayette in the position that we're in. However, we have absolutely no authority over the board or over BVST. So I just want to be clear about kind of where we're going. I hear process and procedural problems. And I think that would be the vein that I would like this letter to go in. I don't necessarily want to say this is exactly how you should vote. I don't necessarily want to get into the outcomes, but rather the process. And I'm just hoping other councillors have thoughts on this. And I see Councillor Jensen's hand. You're on mute, Councillor Jensen.

Thank you. Based off of some of the submissions we got today, I've got some draft language. I could read it. I don't know if that's helpful. And it's a process kind of. So if you'd like me to read it, we can see if David really put this together.

Counselor, I appreciate the idea. However, we have gone against wordsmithing on this dais many years, and I think the best path forward is to just choose someone from council that would work with staff. I think just direction on what the message will be is what we should focus on.

Well, and that's that's what I wanted. I don't want you to wordsmith what we're I want you to say if the gist of this is what you think is the direction we should go and then we can talk about, you know, the words. But if you feel this that we wrote up. captures your concern, then we can, I agree, we should not wordsmith at all. But I'd like to suggest that this has already been framed by people who wrote to us and gives us a framework to go forward.

Okay. Please, counselor, go ahead.

Okay. The Lafayette City Council respectfully requests that the board remove Douglas Elementary from the resilient schools proposal before its September 22nd vote, and that the district commit to including Lafayette families and the city in any future process that would relocate Lafayette children. Although the city has no jurisdiction over district decisions, A majority of Douglas's resident students live in Lafayette, where portions of the city fall within that attendance zone, and many additional students open enroll there. Because the district counted these students in assessing Douglas's enrollment, While treating Lafayette as outside the scope of the study, Lafayette families had no structured engagement. Lafayette boundaries were not modeled, and the city was not consulted about planned growth that bears on future enrollment. We believe a boundary analysis that includes Lafayette may offer an alternative to closure, and we ask that Douglas' future be decided only after that analysis is completed and published. We would welcome the opportunity to connect district staff with the city's planning staff.

Thank you, Councillor. Any thoughts from Council? I have a few, but I'd love other Councillors to weigh in. Councilor Gaius.

In the first sentence, Councilor Jensen said, consider removing Douglas. I think that's us telling the school board what to do. I think we need to tighten up that language. So consider the impact to children within its boundaries or something to that effect.

Thank you, council. Any other thoughts? Councillor Boyer.

Thank you, Mayor. You know, I was struck. I learned this evening on the dais from Councillor Fridland just now that Louisville and Superior were briefed on this. And we're the size of the two cities combined. So I would love to see some rather pointed language as to why was Lafayette neglected. That's a pretty severe process for all.

I agree with that. And that offered the same opportunity that their councils received.

Yeah.

Great. Thank you. I will not speak for the BVSC board. However, I did hear from one of the phone calls that I made that the reason that we weren't in that is because technically it doesn't fall within the city limits of Lafayette and the schools that are closing in the other cities do. I don't know that to be true. I just heard that. So that was the feedback that I was given at the time.

That's a choice.

Again, procedural questions, process problems. Councillor Gallegos, I agree with your thoughts there. I think us sending a letter that tells them directly how to vote and what to do is probably not the best path forward. Any thoughts from other councillors? Mayor Pro Tem?

Thank you, Mayor. I agree not to tell them what to do. We can suggest it. That's something, and if the rest of council agrees that we can suggest that they do that. I don't know if that's friendly. I believe process is what we're, we have a problem with the process. And I hear a lot of that in the letter. I just think that we suggest respectfully that they do things instead of demanding that. But I like where the letter goes.

Any other thoughts from council? OK. Is there any council that would like to lead this, that would like to volunteer for this? Councillor Jensen, I see your hand up. Fantastic. Is all of council OK with moving forward with Councillor Jensen? Fantastic. OK. Right at the 15-minute mark, Mayor Pro Tem. Good job. Okay, now we move on to tonight's Consent Agenda. A few items tonight, including the August 18, 2026 City Council Meeting Minutes, September 1, 2026 City Council Meeting Minutes, Item C, August 25, 2026 City Council Workshop Summary, Item D, Second Reading for Ordinance Number 16, Series 2026, Authorizing the Issuance of City of Lafayette Colorado General Obligation Bonds, Series 2026, and finally, Option E, the Second Reading for Ordinance Number 17, Series 2026, amending Article 3, Purchasing Procedures of Chapter 44, Finance, and Article 2, City Administrator of Chapter 5, Administration of the Code Regarding Purchasing Procedures and City Manager Authority to Negotiate and Execute Certain Contracts, and renumbering Chapter 5, Administration of the Code. Are there any items council would like to poll? Councillor Bullard.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to poll, please, item A and item E. Any other items council would like to poll?

Councillor Jensen. Councillor Jensen.

I can't look at y'all and look at the agenda at the same time, so I don't know what those two items were that Councillor Bollier just said. Could you say what those are for me, please?

Item A is August 18th City Council meeting minutes, and item E is the second reading for ordinance number 17 amending the purchasing procedures.

Okay, thank you.

Seeing no other items, I will take a motion for the remaining ballots.

I move to approve the consent agenda balance. Second.

We have a motion. We have a second. I see Councillor Jensen's hand up. I just went down. We will take a roll call vote.

We'll start with Councillor Jensen.

Aye.

Mayor Tabea-Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes?

Yes.

Councillor Bollier? Yes. Councillor Friedland?

Yes.

Councillor Gallegos? Yes. And Councillor Giannullo? Yes. That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. OK. Moving into item A. August 16, 2022, 6, City Council meeting minutes. Councillor Bollier?

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the remarks from Pastor Edward this evening concerning the meeting minutes on August 18. And so I just went through the packet and reread them. And my recollection of what was said by counsel that evening concerning the parcels on 287 aligned with how the pastor described it. And then when I'm looking at the direction provided, It does seem that I see a delta, frankly, between what I recall putting on the table as guidance when I heard from fellow counselors and then how we're then moving forward. And so I kind of want to reconcile that. And I don't know. I've never pulled a meeting minutes, so I defer on process. But I recall that we were rather clear on the NC designation for the church parcels to be consistent. And this is a bit squishier than that.

Understanding this isn't a policy update. It's just for the meeting minutes. Correct.

Because I think the meeting minutes somewhat mischaracterize the conversation, at least in my recollection.

Are you just requesting we update the language? Yes. Fantastic. For process, because we haven't done this in a while, city attorney, what is the best path forward here?

So the process to amend your minutes would be to make a motion to amend the minutes with a specific amendment. And then once you've done that, you would move to approve the minutes as amended. So you first need to address exactly what you would like the minutes to say and where so that we and the clerk can note it for the record.

Councillor Juneau, I saw your hand up.

Just a sort of alternative process question. Could we instead ask staff to try to update the minutes with instructions and bring it back to us at a future meeting?

You could. I think staff would appreciate having specific direction on what you'd like the updates to be, if that's how you would like to proceed.

I think that's the best path forward. Councilor Boehler?

I agree with Councilor Giannola. I think Pastor Edwards did us a favor by verbatim quoting, and then the public input that was provided included time stamps, which again, those aligned with my recollection of what was said, and I do see a bit of a discrepancy. And the reason I think this is pertinent is, what was discussed in August informed the past few weeks. And I'm sorry I hadn't caught this previously. So I think to our city attorney's point, providing some of that guidance in reference to the written comment that we received that is also in the public packet, I think could help the minutes be reconciled.

And then, counselor, just for the record, do you mind stating specifically what you would like amended?

Yes. I am not good at verbiage on the fly. Well, this is direction, so you don't need verbiage.

Just tell us where to go.

So I think what ask I would have is essentially that we would accept the proposed zoning map with direction that the church parcels up and down Highway 287 to include 287 South Boulder Road. be zoned consistently with the Catholic Church's immaculate conception, and that staff bring such a recommendation at second reading. That's what I recall being put on the table on August 18.

Is there any member of council that sees things differently? Is that enough information for our city attorney?

It is. If I can request some clarification from council, in that version proposed by the pastor, It refers to the NC zoning. Did you want that included in the update?

My understanding was that was the recommendation we collectively, I don't want to speak for other counselors, but what I recall we put on the table was NC consistent for the parcel at South Boulder in 287 and Immaculate Conception, that they would both be NC. And I see a little bit of drift from that direction in the minutes.

So council could make that amendment to the minutes tonight without us having to bring it back. Where that would appear would be on page four of the minutes in the second paragraph under council deliberation following parent two and parent. If you're able, let me see where that is in the packet, but you could make that change tonight. That would also Allow you to take a vote on that change so that if that is what council's Decision is for the minutes to read that we have a vote recording that tonight as well. So ma'am Find the page in the packet. I Just realized I'm looking at the pre-updated version, do you know in the PDF which page page for the minutes 176 in the 707 page packet Page 7 of the packet PDF. OK. So on page 7 of the packet PDF, if council is able to go to there on their screens, it says council deliberation at the top. And then the second paragraph starts with council propose the following. One, two. So this appears, this would go in, it would replace the language between two and three. So if you could confirm that's your intent, we can. You could make that amendment tonight.

So moved.

OK. Second. OK. We have a motion. We have a second. So do you understand?

OK.

So we have a motion and a second. OK. And I think both Clerk Beck and I understand specifically how you'd like that to read, which is exactly what Councilor Bollier read a minute or two ago. So. That's where that change would appear.

Thank you. We have a motion, we have a second. Any discussion on this matter? Seeing none, we will do a roll call vote.

Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes?

Yes.

Councilor Bollier?

Yes.

Councilor Friedland?

Yes.

Councilor Gallegos? Yes. Councilor Giannola?

Yes.

And Councilor Jensen?

Yes. That passes unanimously. Okay, so Mayor, you do now need a motion to approve that item, to approve the minutes from August 18th as amended now.

I move to approve the amended minutes.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this matter? Seeing none, we'll do a roll call vote.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes?

Yes.

Councillor Bollier?

Yes.

Councillor Friedland?

Yes.

Gallegos? Yes. Giannola?

Yes.

Jensen? Yes. And Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Moving on to item E, Councillor Bollier.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll try to keep this brief. I was really struck by the robust turnout this evening from a lot of Lafayette residents concerning FLOC. And so my request would be that we would exempt FLOC and ALPR technology contracts from the automatic approval. I love the rest of item E, but I would request that we exempt ALPR contracts from the automatic approval.

Question for Seth. Is that an automatic approval? It feels like that's a policy discussion that would come to council, but I would love to hear staff's thoughts.

If city manager can certainly speak to this as well, however, council, just procedurally, I would not recommended that be made an amendment to the ordinance itself. That's quite specific. But you as council, the city manager, and the city attorney, of course, serve at the pleasure of city council. And you are always able to provide policy direction to your council appointees in line with the law, of course. And that would be an area where you could provide policy direction to the city manager to bring contracts of that nature to council for approval.

Great.

Without having to make any changes to the ordinance.

For our city manager, in something like this, if we were to pass this on second reading tonight and it would become policy, looking at ALPRs, looking at ,, where would be time to renew that contract? Is that something that comes to council? Is that something that will automatically be renewed by this policy?

Yeah, no, it wouldn't automatically be reviewed. So with the law contract in specific, it is a multi-year contract that would exceed this threshold amount. We do get better pricing when we do multi-years. And so it would likely already have come. But I do appreciate the concern and extra eyes on something like that. So just knowing that it's a really sensitive community I would certainly, even if it were to be below 250, my personal judgment would have been to bring it forward anyhow. But getting direction from council, again, you guys get to tell me what you would like to see or not see. So that policy would be written down. So I make sure to do that when it comes back up for renewal in 2029.

Councillor Giannullo. I guess my process question is, how do we formalize that policy? Because I'd like to make that a formal policy if we're thinking that's the path we're going to take, so that there's clear direction, clear formalization of upbringing. And I would extend, beyond ALPR, other surveillance technology, kind of broadly as well.

And by that policy, Counsel General, do you mean ALPRs?

Yeah, yeah, including ALPRs. Sure, sure, OK. Yeah, and so the ask is, how do we formalize this policy if we don't include it in the item before us tonight?

So I have one thing. I have two hands up on the screen. But first, I would say that's a council decision that we should likely put on an agenda and discuss publicly. That's how I would go about that. But I'll go to Counselor Jensen.

I had the same question as Councillor Giannola. Sorry, City Attorney McSulka, you said you didn't think we should do it that way, but you didn't really say why. And so if you have an explanation about why amending this doesn't make sense, I really appreciate you share that.

Mayor, may I? Please. I'd be happy to do that, Councillor Jensen. So the way that the ordinance is written, it provides a monetary limit for the city manager's authority to approve contracts. However, it does not in any way prevent the city manager from, as a policy matter, bringing any contract to you, regardless of it being below the monetary limit in that case. It can be because council has directed the city manager to do so or because the city manager in their professional judgment believes it's a matter that council would want to weigh in or should weigh in on or that additional community transparency or discussion is needed on. So the city manager always has that ability to bring contracts before you regardless of the monetary limits. And again, council can always provide direction on specific types of contracts. I think just as a drafting matter in council, this is just my professional opinion just from a drafting perspective, not as a policy matter. Policy is your field and the ordinance drafting is what I need to approve, just the form. And so as a drafting matter, My recommendation is mainly based on once we get into one specific type of contract, it could kind of snowball from there. Not that there is a problem with that, but it could just complicate the need to continue to draft amendments to address specific types of contracts in the future versus this council can at any time provide that policy direction without needing to put it in an ordinance or in code.

And I'd like to respond to that. I think we heard from our public that these matters of privacy are serious enough to our community that they warrant standing out. by just simply saying this council and this city manager have a sort of agreement that these things will come before the council we're not sort of as counselor giannola has said we're not really formalizing that in any way and i think if we're trying to be responsive to the concerns we heard today. I think formalizing it is what I'm, at least a few of the other councillors that have spoken, I think that what I'm hearing is they do want not a a sort of policy, a loose policy. They want a formal policy to make sure this happens and holds ourselves accountable to it because it's so significant to our community. So I'm not inclined, even though it's difficult and awkward, and I appreciate that for y'all, but I think And it's a relatively easy amendment to say except for surveillance equipment or anything used in surveilling, you know, people in our community would be relatively easy content wise. So I would suggest that At least I feel strongly that, and I don't want to speak for anybody else, that if we are being responsive to the people who have been speaking to us for months now about this, we need to call this out and not just make it an informal process.

Okay. And Mayor, fight me. Please. Councilor Jensen, that is absolutely something council can add to the ordinance. So I just wanted to be clear. I'm not saying it can't be done. It was just a BUT I'M HAPPY TO ASSIST COUNCIL IF THAT'S THE DIRECTION YOU WOULD LIKE TO GO.

COUNCIL FRIEDLAND?

YEAH, I THINK THIS IS AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION. I FEEL LIKE WE HAVE A LOT OF OTHER THINGS TO TALK ABOUT THIS EVENING. SO I WOULD CHANNEL OUR PRO TEM let's make sure that we're you know let's either push this to the future and work on it or let's keep moving um also right the the flock uh contract would exceed this because it's not a single year contract it is above this 250 000 threshold so this contract would have come to us even if this policy was approved and we're having a workshop on this in october where we could give direction to staff and talk more about this so i feel like we have an opportunity to do a lot of these things um and while i appreciate the points um i think we should try to resolve this and move on thank you counselor any other thoughts i'm also happy to give mine

Yeah, just very briefly, Mayor, I really appreciate what Councilors Jensen and Fridland just added. I guess for me, and I'm very eager to move on to get into the other meat of this evening, I'm struggling to understand why a small amendment with like a one line would be a significant lift.

It's a policy decision. It's a small amendment. However, we do have to decide as a council. And my main reason for not doing it is because if we're going to do something like this, it's more of a decision around ALPRs, around FLOC, about what our views are towards this technology as a city. And that's not something that's on the agenda. I understand that people came to speak to us. I understand people are sending emails to us. However, I would want more people to come. I would want that ability for this to be in our agenda for people to know we're going to talk about it and have a comprehensive conversation around this, which is why it is scheduled for the October workshop and why we can possibly move it to another date if that's what we want. However, I would want a full conversation around this, being that it seems like a small amendment, but it really is just asking us, how does the city feel about this? And are we going to make a small amendment based on this one specific policy decision? That's how I view it. Any thoughts? Councillor Jensen?

So if, as Councillor Fridland said, the flock contract doesn't come under this limit anyway, then in some way this conversation is moot. And if that's the case, I don't know how much our contract is with them. But if it is under this limit, then I'm okay with moving on. Or over the limit, sorry.

Mayor Fletcher?

Thank you, Mayor. And I do think it's super important that we, the public, know. I understand all of the issues with the cameras, but I want to make sure that the public has, that we have even more of the public here. And being on council for so long, I can guarantee you we've had these questions over years. And maybe now it's time to bring all of them up again. But I want to make sure that lots of the public is here. And that's why we want it on the agenda. I think we're doing a service to our jobs to make note that, again, that workshop is coming up and this will be revisited, but tonight's not the time to make a decision.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Any other thoughts? And as a reminder, we will have to make a motion if we want to pass this on second reading.

Pass.

Item E, the second reading for the purchasing procedures. We are still within our consent agenda.

I move that we approve item E on the consent agenda.

Second. We have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion on this matter? Seeing none, we will do a roll call vote.

Councillor Bollier?

No.

Councillor Friedland?

Yes.

Councillor Gallegos? Yes. Councilor Giannola?

Yes.

Councilor Jensen?

Yes.

Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes?

Yes.

That motion passes 6-1 with Councilor Boehler opposed.

Thank you. That concludes our consent agenda for tonight. Moving on to proclamations. First one, we will turn to Councilor Gallegos.

Proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15 through October 15, whereas National Hispanic Heritage Month, known as Mes de Herencia, España, is celebrated nationwide from September 15 through October 15 each year. And whereas the observation started in 1968, as Hispanic Heritage Week and was expanded by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to provide more time to properly recognize the significant contributions made in the United States by people of Hispanic heritage. And whereas each year Americans observe Hispanic Heritage Month, from September 15 to October 15 by celebrating the histories, cultures, and contributions of community members whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. And whereas September 15 is significant because it is the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. And Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on September 16 and 18 respectively. And whereas persons of Hispanic heritage amount to nearly 6,000 residents, totaling over 19% of the city of Lafayette population, and have played and continue to play a vital role in our economy and workforce. And whereas local Hispanic-owned businesses include restaurants, grocery stores, , salons, caterers, building contractors, clothing stores, specialty boutique stores, auto repair stores, and community nonprofits, many of which are part of the fabric of our old town area and greater community. And whereas city council adopted resolution number 2016-96, memorializing Lafayette's commitment to building a diverse, inclusive, and just community, ensuring equal protection and services for all residents. And whereas the city of Lafayette is committed to recognizing Hispanic and Latina culture and heritage, as an important part of the city and its community. Now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the city of Lafayette, Colorado do hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15th, 2026 as Hispanic Heritage Month and do encourage residents to explore Hispanic arts, histories, food, and music. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion. We have a second for Hispanic Heritage Month. Any discussion on this proclamation? Seeing none, we'll take a roll call vote.

Councilor Friedland? We'll skip him for now.

Okay.

Councilor Gallegos? Yes. Councilor Giannola? Yes. Councilor Jensen? Yes. Mayor Tapia Vega? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Barnes? Yes. And Councilor Bollier? Yes. That motion passes unanimously.

Amazing. Thank you. On to our final proclamation for tonight. Councillor Giannullo.

Thank you, Mayor. Tonight I have a proclamation for Human Resources Professionals Day, September 26. Whereas human resources professionals play a vital role in the success of public organizations by cultivating a skilled, engaged, and resilient workforce, and whereas the city of Lafayette recognizes its human resources team for providing trusted guidance, expertise, and resources to employees throughout every stage of their careers with the city, and whereas through recruitment, hiring, onboarding, benefits administration, professional development, employee relations, retention, and workplace well-being, human resources professionals help attract and develop the talented individuals who serve the Lafayette community each day. And whereas human resources professionals promote fair and consistent employment practices, foster positive workplace relationships, navigate complex and evolving workforce needs, and help create an environment where employees feel valued and respected, and whereas the professionalism, integrity, and compassion demonstrated by the City of Lafayette human resources team contribute to an effective organization and help equip city employees to provide exceptional service to the community, And whereas, Human Resources Professionals Day provides an opportunity to recognize the important work often performed behind the scenes and to celebrate the people whose dedication makes a meaningful difference throughout the organization. Now therefore, the mayor and the city council of the city of Lafayette, Colorado to hereby proclaim September 26 as Human Resources Professionals Day and encourages the city employees and members of the Lafayette community to join in recognizing and thanking the City of Lafayette Human Resources team for their leadership, expertise, service, and dedication to the people who serve our community. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion and a second for Human Resources Professionals Day. Any discussion on this proclamation? Councillor Giannullo.

Thank you, Mayor. I recently have had to assume some human resources activities in my day job. And it's not easy. So I really commend our city of Lafayette human resources team for the work they do. only been in what I can imagine is just the tip of what your shoe extends to. So thank you and thank you to all human resources professionals out there.

And we of course have an amazing human resources staff here including our director that's in the room with us. Thank you for all your work. Any further discussion on this proclamation? Okay. Seeing none, we'll do a roll call vote.

Councilor Gallegos? Yes. Giannola?

Yes.

Jensen?

Yes.

Mayor Tapia Vega? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Barnes?

Yes.

Councillor Bollier?

Yes.

Anne Friedland?

Yes.

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. That concludes our proclamations for tonight. Before getting into regular business, we will take a short break. So councils and recess.

Good evening, mayor, members of council. Phil Kleisler with the city's planning and building department. Thank you very much for your time this evening. Steph is pleased to be presenting this item. The purpose of this agenda item is to consider an ordinance on second reading, repealing and replacing chapter 26 of the code of ordinances with the Lafayette land use code. in repealing and replacing the associated zoning map. So council may recall that on August 18th, we gave quite a lengthy presentation to council. And so the intent of that presentation was to include all the pertinent information for the public record. We'd like to take a different approach with this particular meeting and just really focus on the narrowly remaining items that is being discussed. So we'd like to go over those particular items, open it up for council questions, and then lastly, a deliberation and vote And so specifically, I would like to dive into the specific direction that was provided by council on August 18. On August 18, you did direct staff to make a number of different changes. We'd like to just walk through those. And as we're having this conversation, all council's aware, but just for the folks watching, As we talk about ordinance number one and ordinance number two, ordinance number one is what's being considered tonight. That ordinance would adopt the code. It would adopt the zoning map. However, it would not become effective until February 1st, 2027. The intent of that timeframe is to allow the city to hold additional working group meeting to work on additional direction from council that could not be worked into this particular ordinance, and to then bring that through another ordinance to wrap up those final edits prior to that time frame. And so the first ordinance that we're considering tonight would become effective in February. The second ordinance would essentially supersede this one with all of the corrections to any of the tables and the direction that we receive from council. One of the first item that council directed staff to do on August 18th related to public land dedication. And so subdivisions within Lafayette are required to do a public land dedication. And so that's dedicating a portion of land, setting that aside for parks, and now in the draft code also open space. There was some concerns through the public process. This was also raised with Planning Commission, and Council discussed it, that projects shouldn't have the opportunity to have a discount on that credit, a reduction of it, in exchange for providing private facilities that are not open to the public. Based on that, Council opted to remove that from the code, and so that was an easy edit, and that's shown here, just redlined out of the code. The ordinance also legislatively rezones properties in the city. On August 18, council had a pretty robust conversation on rezoning overall. We looked at a number of different areas, particularly ones that were receiving substantially different zoning. So going from, for example, an industrial to a commercial zoning district. You discussed the nuts and bolts of that, as well as the implications. Some of the things discussed at that time was what happens to those properties that become nonconforming. And so they are illegal today, but they become nonconforming with this new code because the use allowances change. And whether or not there should be allowances in place, additional timelines, and so forth, where they can still improve their property in that non-conforming status. That's something that we just wanted to note because that's something that we can certainly continue to explore. Council's open to that as part of that ordinance too. I also wanted to note that during that, and I'll take complete ownership if I didn't get the notes from August 18th spot on, and so appreciate you bringing that up. The way we walked away from that meeting with an understanding that we should evaluate the churches, there's generally four along that 287 corridor that were being discussed, and the need to have a consistent set of zoning along those particular properties. It was also noted at that time there was some concern about the AMX 2 zoning, particularly one at the southwest corner of South Boulder Road and 287, and what that would do for requiring a special use review to improve those properties. Council also noted that the Immaculate Conception Church, this is on the northern part of 287, appeared to be zoned neighborhood center mixed use, or NC, on the draft map. And that was also what was requested here. So there was a conversation about, why can't we have those two zone districts aligned? In talking through this, why that happened, we believe the Immaculate Conception zoning district is actually an error on the draft map. So what happened, broadly speaking, is that the city staff, with help of the consultants, did a one-to-one conversion. And so any residential went to a different neighborhood district. And then once we had that one-to-one conversion worked out, We then looked at splitting up the industrial districts, the parks and open space districts, and all of those fine tuning. And then we went through the city and tried to look at the comp plan and see which ones didn't necessarily match up. And so I think that one was probably just missed in that last round of edits. And so we wanted to note that both of those properties, the one on South Boulder Road as well as the Immaculate Conception, are both designated as adaptable commercial in the comprehensive plan. And the adaptable commercial was really the two districts that we drafted in the draft code to implement that was this AMX zoning. And that's why the AMX was applied here. It should have been applied to that immaculate conception, but it was not through that process. Now, between first and second reading, we did not change the map. Instead, in the memo, we had recommended that we look at this during ordinance two specifically so that we could sit down with all of the property owners and the congregations to ensure that everyone was on the same page about what was being asked and figure out what the solution is more more broadly and we couldn't do that in the time period between first and second reading and so based on that and additionally we were able to actually have the discussions with the city attorney's office and planning about what are the legal processes and whatnot for zoning when it may or may not conflict with the comprehensive plan and so on And so we weren't able to, we didn't have the time to be able to do that between first and second reading. And so we at least wanted to provide some initial ideas for things we would like to explore. One would be if neighborhood center, that NC district, is really the right choice here, we could go through that process of just updating the comprehensive plan alongside with the zoning ordinance number two. And we would still probably want to explore with these property owners and overall whether or not a special use review is appropriate when the building reaches a certain size because of the impacts associated with larger buildings and the additional parking, traffic, and so on. Another option was to keep that AMX 2 zoning, particularly on these sites, but changing the special use review requirements and tailoring those a little bit more. or considering just a city-wide approach to church properties overall? And do we want to do just one blanket zoning district for all of them? And so if council tonight, considering that immaculate conception was done in error, that change could be made with a simple amendment to ordinance number one. because it's clearly an error. And in consulting with the city attorney's office, and it clearly aligns with the comp plan, that could be changed. Alternatively, we could do this as an ordinance to process, like we were suggesting, to allow more time to engage with the property owners. We can get into this more in just a minute. The third direction from council was to hold a land use working group meeting. That group had a great discussion on September 2nd prior to the joint meeting. And then that helped really, I think, help with the discussion last week during your joint meeting with the planning commission. We're also anticipating looking at November 18th as a possible date for that working group meeting as well prior to the second ordinance being brought forward. There was also interest in visual flow chart diagrams of the code. So how do the processes work? Can you combine any of those? And seeing a more visual format. We've started this work. But again, I think we need a little bit more time. And we would suggest doing this as part of the Planning Commission's recommendation to consider whether our recommended development review processes creates an excessive burden on applicants. So in looking at this, those two things seem to complement each other well. With child care facilities, there was interest from council on taking another look at child care facilities and making sure it's an approved use in as many zone districts as possible and ensuring that the review processes are as simple as possible. And so the consultants provided some language to this. They looked at some expanded allowances. So this would be expanding the number of districts where daycares are permitted. And within that expanded list of districts only requiring a special use review in the M2 light industrial district, tailoring the limits based on location. And so tailoring it smaller buildings in the residential areas with larger buildings in the mixed use and non-residential districts. co-locating facilities, as well as expanding the accessory use of the family home child care. And so this is using a portion of your home for child care as well. And so that was also expanded. We also want to note that we'd like to, this is a quick turnaround between the two ordinances. And so we would like to, as part of ordinance two, take a look at all the different child care facilities in the city and make sure that we're not causing any headaches for them and that future child care sites that we could be potentially could envision that this would also work for them. And so it's something that we'd like to continue to fine tune, but we thought it was a good start that the consultants provided just based on their knowledge of best practices. With sustainability features, there was a good discussion last week at the joint meeting with the Planning Commission. And both of those items, we left that meeting with the understanding that they would be considered on the 2027 work plan. We'll also be coordinating that with SRAB. And I think they've already started the discussion. And I heard there was a lot of excitement already. And so that was... Pretty great to hear. And so we look forward to doing that in probably the first quarter of next year, once we get this wrapped up. The manufactured housing community district. So there was a direction, finally, to add affordable housing language to that purpose statement. So these are the specific edits that are included in the draft code. And a couple of notes is that the purpose statement for this zone district doesn't change what can actually be done in the zoning district itself. So we didn't amend the use table and any of the standards as a result of this direction. We just did this. So as it's drafted today, there would be two residential uses that would be allowed. That would be manufactured housing and tiny homes. And those would remain the same in those two uses as well as This purpose statement, especially talking about tiny homes, because that's mentioned in the comprehensive plan in that land use designation, seemed to align with that. But if council wants to amend this or any of these, the way that we've approached any of these, you can certainly do so this evening. So the joint meeting, council agreed to a number of different items that were kind of separated into two buckets, ordinance number one and ordinance number two. With number one, we've addressed those. There are pretty easy tweaks to the code, and those were addressed via red lines in the ordinance that you're considering this evening. In terms of our staff recommendation, we recommend approval of ordinance number 15, series 2026, adopting the new land use code and zoning map. The proposed ordinance does incorporate the direction both from the August 18 council meeting, and so those are number six through eight in blue, as well as the items agreed to at the joint workshop with the Planning Commission last week. And so following the workshop, we worked on Thursday to get those amendments into the code. And so that's what is the full package that you have before you this evening. In terms of next steps, this is our preliminary path forward. So tonight at second reading, if the ordinance is passed, this would be the end of the story of ordinance number one would end tonight. And then we would pick up work on those remaining items and be looking to hold a working group meeting mid-November. Then in December, hold a public hearing with the Planning Commission on December 9. And then the council first and second reading in January. That effective date would then be 10 days or so past that on February 1. That would supersede this ordinance we're considering tonight. And that would include, again, all the cleanup things that we need to do, as well as the direction we've heard from you tonight, from you throughout this process. Ordinance number two, those are a dozen or so things that are still that we need to be working on that came out of various meetings with council. And then with the 2027 work plan that came out of this project included a half dozen items, including the sustainability measures, questions around the old town height, potentially looking at neighborhood serving commercial uses, Citywide building height exemptions, potentially. And then, as you'll hear later, the potential data center and advanced air mobility regulations, which would be developed during the moratorium period that passed. And so with that, we will turn it over for council questions. And we really appreciate not only your time this evening, but your time throughout this whole many, many years. Thank you.

Questions from council? Councillor Giannullo.

Thank you, Mayor. A couple of questions to start. I want to talk about the rezoning from the industrial zone to AMX 2. That's Aspen Ridge Drive, I think, area. Is that the right transition I'm thinking about here? I want to ask a little bit more just about the grandfathered uses. How does that work? What applies? We've heard some public comment tonight. I want to understand just a little bit more. And in particular, I want to ask about sale of a property. When a property is for sale and sold,

will change that grandfathered use yep and so um if if past the new zoning map would zone that amx to it would have a different suite of uses and so there will be some uses in that area that don't comply with the new zoning code so they can exist in perpetuity they can continue using their site but there are limits to how they can expand the site, particularly expand the building footprint, expand the physical footprint of the building. Additionally, we don't have, you know, we've tried to kind of catalog through this process what's likely out there, but one of the benefits we saw this second ordinance before it went live was to send letters to all of them and have one-on-one conversations to actually learn what the uses are because in some cases I know our Director Williams had some discussions and where they wanted to expand was actually an allowed use and so while their primary use right now is not informing what they wanted to do in the future was allowed and so there's probably a lot of nuances that would come from that and if they sold the property and that wouldn't affect their status. If they cease use for a certain amount of time, then it could affect their status, though.

What is that amount of time? Is it one year? One or two years. We'd have to look in the code.

That's what I was just looking up. So at least 12 months, but I think it might be longer.

Yeah. So the idea is if the property is sold and the uses continue, that you still, I won't say grandfathered. I don't say it's allowed use. It's a continuing non-conforming use. Yes.

We're not usually informed if there's just a change in ownership.

OK. That's helpful. Thank you. One other question from me just relates to that zoning map that we talked about. A little bit at public comment and we did see a change on the zoning map for the OTX3 district. Can you just talk a little bit about what the change there was?

So council opted to change the 700-800 block of that OTX district that was designated as or zoned as OTX 3 to OTX 1 based on the physical characteristics of the area. That was direction we got last week. I apologize, I don't have a map of that, but I'm here with me this evening. But that has changed.

So that change is included on the map that's in our packet? It is. Okay, thank you. That's all I have for right now.

Any other questions from members of council? Councillor Jensen.

I wanted to follow up. We heard in public testimony that the sky was the limit on height in Old Town, given that we decided not to address the 35 foot versus two stories limit. And that is not my understanding. So could you clarify for the record what the current height limits are and whether or not the sky is actually the limit when it comes to height in Old Town?

Yeah, so what that was referring to, in the form-based code districts, we have building types. And so the height allowances are based on the building type. And so a townhome would have a different height than a commercial building and so on. We actually noticed an error during this adoption process where a few of those building heights said OTX 1-2, and it should have said OTS 1-3. So that's something that we recognized and we had on our list to just correct. And we didn't include it because we had so many changes with the Planning Commission and other things that when we started to ask should we include those edits, there was a lot of other ones we wanted to include. And then we were nervous that it was going to confuse the whole process more so. And so we opted just to only address through this adoption process what the Planning Commission and Council told us to do. knowing that we have a pretty long list of these little inconsistencies that we need to clean up with the second ordinance. And so the intent of that would be to, it would be matched with those at 35 feet in that district.

So could you say that clearly that there is a 35 foot limit right now in that district? Is that, I just want to that I'm record clearly.

Yeah, there's a clerical error in code drafting from the code we received from our consultant team. And it doesn't include the OTX3 area when it should. And so it would be lumped in with those other OTX1 and 2 at a 35-foot height limit. And so it was more of a clerical error than anything else.

But there is a 35-foot limit.

Okay.

Thank you. And then I have one other question related to the feedback we got about the mobile home communities and the transfer of them to other kinds of affordable housing. What I see on the paper and what you just explained don't seem like they are the same thing, so I want to make sure I'm clear. The way I see the language that you wrote is if a mobile home community which has mobile home community zoning should transition in some way, it would be allowed to transition to something so long as it was affordable. That's what I saw there, and I wanted to make sure that's – and it's not just tiny homes. It's anything that's affordable. Is that correct?

I don't think so. So when we amended this statement, we didn't amend the allowed uses. And so the allowed uses are still manufactured housing and tiny homes. And so if there were building types outside of those, such as a single unit detached or a duplex or a multifamily, that would need to be added to the use table in order to be able to be built, regardless if it was affordable.

Okay, and so since we discussed this three times, and I brought it up, and I brought up the example of the model at Ponderosa, which is converting mobile home lots into stick-built homes on site, and I wanted to make sure that if we ever wanted to do something like that, we were able to, and that this zoning didn't restrict that, why does it Why didn't it accomplish that, I guess? I feel like what we talked about has not happened.

So we would defer to the definition of manufactured housing. And in the case of the Ponderosa, that is, I mean, I believe it would probably fall under the definition of manufactured housing, but. Because they're modular. Yeah, yes.

Okay, so that has not been discussed before, and so that is an interesting twist on this. So you could do it... if you bought the modules in a factory, but you couldn't do it if you stick built them on site. Again, that also doesn't seem like it makes much sense to me. You'd have the same product, one manufactured on site, one manufactured in a factory, accomplishing the same thing zoning-wise. Why would you have that distinction?

I think that's probably a policy question we'd ask council for. The manufactured housing definition, as it is today, just discusses manufactured homes and maintained for dwelling purposes on a permanent basis on individual lots, pads, or spaces. And so I think it would cover things that are done. That's why we have the reference to HUD in the purpose statement, because we were thinking it would link back to the manufactured housing definition.

Well, and I never said that when I brought this up three times. And I was not concerned that it be manufactured, but that it be allowed to be converted to some form of affordable housing. And I agree with the witness who spoke to preference being for sale housing, because I think that's better for our community. And I, you know, I wouldn't mind changing, you know, adding a preference in there for sale housing. But I do know that for sale housing is much harder to finance and to get built. And if somebody came along with a proposal to redevelop an older mobile home community into or a manufactured home community into affordable housing, I would like to be able to allow that. And if the reason we have this mobile home zoning is to protect affordable housing, I think we should be able to protect it in any form. And mobile homes specifically, they're energy inefficient. There are a lot of reasons why they are useful, but there are some reasons why they're not. And I guess... I'd like the flexibility to be able to do whatever we wanted to and not to be bound to it being manufactured. And that's what I thought I have been saying all along. And it feels like what I have been saying as the person who's recommended this has not been captured in this document.

So I think from a staff standpoint, one of the main pivots in the manufactured home zone district is currently that's residential zoning. So it's a totally open-ended, non-protected use right now. Somebody could come in and replace a mobile home with any form of housing because it's residential zoning. So the biggest change in terms of our code update to protect manufactured and mobile home parks is to actually give it a mobile home district. And so it seems like what we have is a desire to allow for additional housing, but we're also somewhat unwinding without clear protective measures to ensure that they remain affordable. And so what we heard and what we were following and it's clear direction and the comp plan only only mentions tiny homes and so that's how that language got drafted and we misunderstood you in terms of how broad you intended this to be because if we end up introducing single-family homes duplexes i think that's a conversation of you know manufactured and mobile home parks are x level of affordability if you put a single family home and you deed restricted at 80 percent that checks a box but does not preserve the same degree of affordability so my suggestion would be we park this in in like further refinement if that's the direction of council in ordinance 2 or in 227 work plan change in order to continue to refine this in order to get to the objective that you're wanting to achieve, if that's all of council's direction. But that's why we're at where we're at. And it's also something that if we understood you at the time, how broad you were hoping the residential allowance would be, we would have parked it earlier in terms of needing more time in order to address that differently. Because I don't think anybody on council, as I understand it, wants to necessarily go from you know probably a 30 or 40 percent level ami affordability for naturally occurring affordable housing to something that's deed restricted but 80 or based off all of the inclusionary housing discussions and nuance that we've had so far on that like we're trying to read the room but if we read it incorrectly then definitely let us know

Well, I absolutely agree with you about the level of affordability, keeping it, and that may be a way to word this so that we say a comparable AMI when we're transferring it to a different kind of affordable housing so that we have the flexibility to do whatever we want to do. And if somebody comes in and proposes to redo BANX, for example, and they want to do it at a level of AMI that's comparable to what's there right now, I would think we should be open to all options that are affordable at a comparable AMI. So I don't think, I probably didn't make myself clear in explaining what I was trying to get at with this, but I'd love to hear what other

fellow Council people think about this so I'm going to stop talking for a minute thank you counselor Council Fridland I've seen your hand up oh thank you um I want to start off by saying good job the last month um I feel like there was a lot to do and I think you did a lot of work And I'm definitely feeling more positive about this than I was. Probably the difference between a five-week-old and a nine-week-old at home. But I do have a couple questions for you. So the first one I think is sort of like pretty high level around Ordinance 2. There's a lot of stuff in Ordinance 2. You also laid out the timeline. Seems hard with the holidays in the way, working group, planning commission, city council, twice, right, two readings. It seems hard and it seems really tight in January to get to that February 1. So talk me through your thinking there. Do you have the bandwidth to do that? Are there too many items on that list that we need to prioritize for you? Planning commission maybe needs to weigh in on what's the top priorities there. Talk me through that.

Yeah, Councillor Friedland, I really appreciate that question. It is a lot of things to do, and I'm glad we were able to move some of those to the 2027 work plan. I think starting next week, our teams will be, the project team will be getting together to really start digging into all of these. We're going to start with what we perceive as the most important ones first. And if there are issues that might need a little bit more time, we'll be keeping council and planning commission in the loop. There's also nothing stopping us from having another touch point with planning commission if we needed to along the way prior to the working group. We found that having that working group meeting was really beneficial in helping the joint meeting with you and so That you know, we're kind of keeping those things in mind At this point a lot of these are probably pretty quick conversations with different agencies and we're able to hand something off to the consultant team but some of these things like the rezoning and the and some of the other items might need a little bit more, you know, work. And so we'll just have to see what will keep council and planning commission informed.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, there's certainly some hairy items in there, right? The housing mix points, neighborhood center. So I wish you the best of luck and I appreciate your ambition. Let me just clarify briefly. your the clarification that you made for counselor Jensen around height in otx3 my reading of it is and I recognize this was a clerical error right you didn't there's just a there was just a miss in there um that certain building types do not as for ordinance one what we would be approving tonight do not have a limit and it will be cleaned up in ordinance two

right just am I reading that correctly yep yes the consultant team recognized it we recognized it but then I we didn't want to confuse things and so it was we put it in the bucket of this is a technical correction and so the the ordinance two item uh confirmed maximum building height in otx3 is different than the 2027 work plan Old Town height Yeah.

Yes. Tell me about the difference.

So when council talked about the height limit in Old Town, there was a lot of discussion about how, especially like with, we have several architects on our working group as well as on our planning commission. And so there was discussion around the nuts and bolts of defining the stories and making sure that we're accounting for certain things. And so we were looking at that plus in feet, what does it mean if we have a two-story building? Is it at 35 feet? Is it something else? And so those questions came out of it. And then the ordinance two, I'm having to look through. It's a fairly long list. Building height definition, number six, that's what you're looking at. I think I was looking at number three, actually. Confirm maximum building height in OTX3. Okay, yeah, in feet. And so that would be whether or not the 35-foot height limit still, yes, makes sense in that OTX3 area. Sorry. Okay. If it should be reduced.

And as compared to the 2027 work plan, which is old town height number three as well, that's more of like an open conversation that we need to have of like,

what does make sense there and do we define it as feet stories Etc in my understanding yes there was a request to like we want massing studies if we'd like right how this looks on a on a property so that we can see if there's going to be any unintended interesting architectural outcomes from that yeah yeah I guess and this is a little sneak peek to my one of my discussion items is

i guess if it's an error and we're all i think in agreement that we need to have this conversation more broad later down the line to really decide the final answer but we could just eliminate that loophole just in case we don't get ordinance 2 done by february 1. um i guess yeah i don't know it seems like an easy change for us tonight just to say 35 across the board 35 feet consistent and we're going to change it later we're not making a statement about higher lower stories blah blah we're just making it consistent so that we can move on and not worry people about buildings up into the sky um i'm also curious um so you said there was some outreach for the areas that went from industrial to amx one That was a letter that was sent to the property owners. Was there outreach follow-up? I mean, it certainly was impactful to me hearing a local business owner who's worried about his property value, right? He's worried about increasing his building for the current use. So help me understand that. What was the outreach? I think we're planning more outreach now. When is it appropriate for us to be talking to that gentleman and other people like him? I feel like we've already done some, but why did we miss it?

There's been informal conversations, but we've been sitting on the letters to mail to them until we know for sure what their zoning is going to be. And so the letters essentially say the city has adopted this zoning. Your property is going from A to B, and this is what it means. We welcome a conversation about your interest and future interest in the property. So here's how you contact us. And so those letters would be going out probably the next week, but we wanted to wait until the ordinance was we didn't want to sound an alarm that didn't need it in case it changed. Yeah. Yeah.

And I can follow your logic there. I think I kind of disagree with that approach. I would think, you know, sending somebody a letter saying, Hey, this has been done. What do you think is a lot different than, Hey, this is what we're considering. How would this impact you? What do you think? And you have a chance to be heard in this process. Um, I don't know. It just, it seems, it seems like a process, uh, miss to me, but I, I, I understand your logic. Like we don't want to worry people at We're not going to actually change it, but I don't know. It seems it doesn't seem like best practice to me. So, OK, well, thank you so much again. I just want to echo the amount of work that you and the team have put into this is incredible. It really is. And I appreciate especially all the work the last month, and I appreciate the work that you're planning on doing the next few months. So thank you again.

Thank you, Council President. I also want to echo the work that this guy's done over the last several months. It's been amazing in coordinating all this, but I also just want to quickly respond to The comp plan is what designated that area from changing from. So it's been known and kind of out there for a while in terms of the zoning change. What we've been waiting to actually let them know is we didn't get to module three, the specific uses. So land uses is a big conversation that I think we're going to continue to have with council, with the working group, and with planning commission for a lot of these new zone districts, right? But there hasn't been no communication with these residents. It just hasn't been like, this is the nuance, and then when you become a non-conforming use, this is what this means, and this is what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you have to pack up and leave. It means that here are your certain confinements. And so I understand the feedback, and I understand that there's a lot to kind of coordinate. I don't know that there was a perfect process in terms of how we could have done this, and we certainly didn't mean for them to be hearing about it from another property owner out there. So apologies for that. But it's not net new to them either at the same time. So just wanted to clarify.

Thank you for that clarification. Makes a lot of sense.

Mayor, if I can also jump in on this as a legal matter. So the city does have obligations to provide public notice and has done that throughout this process. Now, to the extent we've provided something to individual property owners, that's not usually how this process works where you're doing a complete legislative overhaul of a code and a complete legislative rezoning of the entire city. However, there is a great deal public process and public notice that has occurred, which is highlighted in the engagement report that staff has included in all of the packets associated with the land use code adoption. And so again, I want to raise that as a legal matter, because due process is just as important when you're taking legislative action as it is with quasi-judicial matters. And with this very significant legislative action, there has been a great deal of public notice and public involvement and many public meetings. The city has complied with its public notice and publication requirements in our code for making these specific changes. And so it's not to minimize the concerns of the property owners who are perhaps engaging at this point. And as staff said, they are planning on providing even more specific notice And I've had conversations with staff about that as well. But just in terms of the legislative process, the legally required notice has been provided. And there has been a great deal of other engagement to supplement that. Again, I understand the feedback. I think we all understand council's concerns. But I just wanted to point out that the legally required notice has occurred. as well as a great deal more. Could we do more at the direction of council? Of course. I wanted to point that out. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem, I saw your hand up a while ago. Yeah, just be quiet.

No, please. So I wanted to address Councillor Jensen's comments about affordability in the mobile home parks. And just to go back to former councils, it was the people that were the question. As far as people who are living, residents who are living in mobile home communities, how vulnerable are they, our residents, to someone coming and scraping the whole thing and building something? So that's where the initial was like, we've got to have a manufactured home district. And I believe it was Councilor Walton at the time said, well, what if people live there and they want to improve upon what they have? So that was kind of the initial piece of this. And for this council to say, well, you know, an affordable housing developer wants to buy the entire thing and scrape it off and put affordable housing in, that wasn't the intention of the original council. It was to maintain or for the safety and security of the people who lived here. So I'm just throwing that out. This is what the ideas were for previous council. So as we massage this and move forward, ensuring that we I would also like to say I'd like to ensure that we give people access. If they live there, they should have controlling interest on what it looks like for them moving forward so that they don't lose the capacity to decide their destiny.

Councilor Beaulieu. Thank you, Mayor. I could not agree more strongly with Mayor Pro Tem's remarks just now, so I won't say anything other than yes, absolutely. I want to add my kudos to the team. I know this is a tremendous lift, and it's been a particularly grueling few months. Also would just share tremendous appreciation for the Joint Planning Commission Council meeting that we had last week. I thought that was a blast. I would love for us to do that on a regular basis, and that's a policy. that we can discuss later, but really appreciate the work done to tee that up. And I know we want to get back to sort of the meat of the matter, but I do have maybe a question and a comment. And I take our city attorney's point that we have satisfied the letter of the law. I stipulate that. We're good at that. You're excellent at that. But it is not reasonable that we expect Lafayette residents or business owners to consume this. And it's really consumable relative to the land use code. Like, it's a beautiful document. But I do want us to be very clear, even though this is coming up on a five-year-old document, we just cannot expect people to have familiarized themselves with this. So you're right. It's been out there. And I think it's really important that we recognize the concerns that residents and business owners, et cetera, raised. Like, I'm just learning about this now. whether it's in English or another language. So I think that's an important point, particularly considering, as Councilor Friedland noted, the very aggressive timeline that we're looking at in the next several months. And we are all very good at adding barnacles to our ship. And so I really feel for the team to try to get this over the finish line. But to that point, and again, echoing Councilor Friedland's point on the approach maybe being outreach first, and then things are passed, rather than the reverse. Are we in touch with, at this point in time, are we in touch with the most affected businesses and residents particular areas in Old Town that are under very constant public consideration, or are we waiting to get further in the process to do outreach with them? We were batching that with all of the other letters that we were going to send out. OK. And recognizing not everyone is digital natives, as a young person noted earlier this evening, do we also do this engagement electronically to residents, business owners, et cetera?

We have a project page set up now. And so it has some tools.

It's a great project page. But I mean, for people who aren't already affirmatively signed up.

Yeah. We can point people to that for different surveys and stuff like that. But I mean, really, we're hoping for just a lot of one-on-one conversations. about do we have just office hours every week where they could either stop by or call us or jump into a Zoom meeting. We'd also have offered to come to different property owners. We always offer to buy them a cup of coffee or to meet at their property. And so we'd like to provide different ways. Sometimes it's a little challenging if we send letters without knocking on doors. Sometimes people don't appreciate that.

No, totally. And I'm sorry to jump in. I think you and the team have done exceptional work making yourselves available, getting out there, burning the candle at both ends to meet people and convey. I think a thing I've heard from a number of folks in the community that relates to the many items here that we're looking at sorting out by the time we get to ordinance two, is where those conversations go and what lever needs to be pulled either by staff or by council to conclude a question. And so I'm going to stop there, Mayor, because I have more things later, but I want to yield. Something I'm grappling with is there's a lot of confusion to include as Councilor Jensen just put on the table with the mobile home community. And I'm eager for us to get to clarity. And some of that might be passing second reading tonight. And some of that might be holding fire on some items that it does seem like there's a lot of gray area on at this point in time. Thank you, Mayor.

Fantastic. Any final questions before we get into that discussion? Okay, let's get right into things. And as a reminder, there are two motions tonight. One is to amend with the recommendations that were brought forward, the amendments that were brought forward, and then if we were to pass those amendments into the land use code, we would then vote to actually pass the land use code. But with that, who wants to start us off tonight with our discussion? Councilor Ginola.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of proposed amendments to the code that I'd like to discuss beyond what has been presented in the packet. I appreciate all the work that the staff has done to get the packet together and amended. And I pretty much approve personally of everything that's included in the packet. To some of the points raised earlier about the OTX discussion on height where we are not clear on the OTX3 height. I have some specific language that I'm happy to put forward to fix that oversight for not including OTX3 in some of the tables for the different, building types, I think it were. And so I'm happy to present that as an amendment. Sort of I guess I'll stop there as item one and say look for support if that's of interest to the council to correct what staff has basically said is a typo. And I think it's an easy fix. And so I think we can do that tonight. The other item I'd like to propose as an amendment beyond what's in the packet tonight is an amendment to the zoning map. We've heard that staff made an amendment to the zoning map between ordinance 1 and ordinance 2 at our direction to change the OTX 3 on 700 block to OTX 1. And we have before us this issue with the inconsistent zoning for the church properties on 287. hearing from staff that there's a couple different ways we can do this. It seems to me that there's an error in the zoning for the parcel on North 287. that maybe it was unintended to be that way. I think that was a neighborhood center zoning. And it was intended in the transition from the comp plan map over the current zoning to the new zoning to be the same zone. It was intended to be the same zoning between the two church parcels. So we have, I think, the opportunity to put that to correct that error. I don't think that addresses the concerns that have been raised by the community on the zoning of what that replacement zoning essentially it's we're going to fix the error on the northern parcel but the southern parcel it stays the same and it's not what the community has been asking for. And so I'm sort of not sure on which way council wants to go and there's reasons why we would go and just fix the error. And that's to be consistent with the comp plan, comply with the legal requirements that we have to do, potentially engage further in discussion of what is the appropriate way to allow the uses that have been asked of us for basically both of these parcels now. And I think there's different ways that could be done. Staff has presented three. There could even be other ways that we might approach that, changing the use table or from special use review to not special use review to allowed by rights. So there's a couple different ways that that could be done. And so I am prepared to make amendments to both of those things if we can come up with agreement on that.

OK, thank you, councilor. I promise we will get back to these. I now have three. Is there any other councilors that want to kind of jump in now, or should we just start going through these? All right. Let's start with the one I heard from two members of council. I believe they're similar, or maybe the exact same thing. Councilor Ferdinand and Councilor Giannola, which is just a quick 35 feet to OTX. Is that what I heard?

That's what I am raising. I'd like to do it in the correct way, which is to amend the tables on page 95, 96, 98, to replace, there's language that says OTX 1-2 and change that to OTX 1-3. And I think that fixes the issues that were raised during public comment and that Council Friedland raised. I think those are the three places that I saw. I can double check while we're having further discussion.

Okay. Councilor Bullard.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm broadly supportive of this. I am eager to have the height conversation in great detail down the line. But to address this loophole, let's just do this and knock it out.

Thank you, Councillor. I am also supportive. Any other councillors? Mayor Pro Tem.

Just a point of clarification. Does this actually fix this? That's what I'd like to hear if that is the case before we do it.

Another option could be to just give the staff direction to make sure we fix all of them. And whether all the building, any instance where height is not specified for that OTX3 district, that that get fixed.

I think we could run with that direction. For clarity there, by giving direction, are we asking for it to come back on second ordinance? I believe the idea is to amend tonight.

You could make that amendment tonight. So I would recommend when you're ready to start making motions on amendments that there be a motion to amend the land use code to, I guess, how would we do it, staff? Because I know it's specific to tables that

just needed the otx3 designation to be added um the more specific we can be the better i think staff clearly understands the direction but i'm wondering um i would keep it as specific as we could i mean i think uh councillor giannola has caught all of them but we could add a catch-all that just kind of suggests that we also review all the building technologies to ensure that uh and not also limit it to OTX3 because we wouldn't want to have something out there that somehow affected OTX1 or whatever. I don't think there is, but I'd rather have that latitude in case we find it later.

Mayor, can you help me understand, and maybe this is a question for you and the city attorney, but since the loophole that we're attempting to fix right now was a clerical error, are you saying, city attorney, that this would require going to the second ordinance even if it's a clerical error? Did I mishear you?

If council would like that addressed, I do agree with staff that this is a clerical error. and could even be fixed without any specific amendment tonight because there is a section in the ordinance, it's Section 6, that does allow staff to make technical corrections. And this definitely falls under the technical corrections category in my legal opinion and based on what staff has said tonight. That said, what staff had recommended earlier to put these in the second ordinance, The purpose of that recommendation was to make sure that everybody knows exactly what those changes are and sees that through the public process. But if council would like us to go ahead and make those changes, you can do that either through specifically making it an amendment to the land use code tonight or directing staff if you agree that those are clerical changes we can make. And we do have a comprehensive list of them, thanks to Councilor Giannola, that we could just go ahead and make those after tonight if the ordinance passes. So whatever council wishes.

That works for me. And the other thing I will say, we are going to look at this in ordinance too. So ideally, once it's effective, the effective date, we would have looked at this a little more than just what we're talking about tonight. So just thoughts from council, but that second option, that final option sounds like. Councilor Chennault.

Yeah, I'm of the opinion that we do it tonight. We make it clear. We make the direction. We give the catch-all option to clarify this, knowing that staff still has this option. There is a perception out there in the public that is Ordinance 2 coming? Is this real? You say that Ordinance 2 is coming, and it might not be. I've just heard the public is nervous. Why don't we fix it correctly when we have the opportunity to do it? And I think it's an easy amendment that we can do through a quick motion tonight. Not that I don't think Ordinance 2 is coming. I do think it's coming.

I think it's coming too, Council. The second one that I heard was a zoning map change.

Yes.

I'd love to get specific on this.

Yeah, I mean, the way I look at it, I am of the mind to fix the error as sort of the first order of business and to tackle the updating, whether we want to rezone all the churches, whether we want to... Is neighborhood center the right zone? Is changing the use table the way to do it? I think we tackle that as part of ordinance 2. So I think my preference is to fix the error in labeling the northern parcel as neighborhood center, instead making that AMX 2.

Councillor Poehler.

At what point will we be contacting Immaculate Conception and advising them of this pretty significant change to their property?

That's a fantastic question. I think after the ordinance passes and with everyone else who gets any sort of zoning change.

And so just coming back to our earlier conversation on clerical errors and how to fix, if I were someone at Immaculate Conception and learned of this this evening, I would be perturbed. So I do want us to consider that element. I'm with Counselor Giannola in terms of fixing the error, but I'm maybe more interested in sort of solving the larger puzzle. And I think with our conversation earlier this evening around the minutes, I feel like there's been a bit of confusion around this particular element. I prefer settling things this evening, if at all possible, with alignment with the rules. But I guess I would be curious. Once, in your view, Counselor Giannullo, once the error that has existed for many months on immaculate conception, once that's solved, then what? Aside from the communications plan to that parcel. What happens next?

GENERAL VERRILLI- I guess plan as part of ordinance two, this outreach happens, this additional discussion happens with us, with planning commission, with the working group on how to address this, you know, issue that the community has identified. Does it need the comp plan update to do what is in front of us as sort of the second option tonight? And I understand that That might be a requirement if we're going to do neighborhood center. Otherwise, it might get into the specific spot zoning that we want to avoid that is inconsistent with a comprehensive plan. So that's my feeling, is we make a hard direction to staff to say, for ordinance two, we come back and we really address this. We do the community outreach with the working group, with the property owners, with the planning commission. I don't know if there's going to be another workshop for us in planning commission as part of ordinance two or not. But I think that we have that path set forward and just make it, this is a line item on every single one of those steps.

I understand where you're going. I think, for me, I've been persuaded by what we've heard pretty resoundingly from the community. I don't anticipate hearing something differently. And other than the fact that the comp plan initially said that the parcel in question was zoned a certain way, I haven't necessarily heard a compelling argument for why that should fly in the face of established members of the community. I have similar concerns with the property we heard on from Mr. Murky earlier this evening. But I'm happy to continue the conversation.

So just to get clarity from Council Bullard, your recommendation is to hold off on the immediate changes for the Immaculate Conception?

I guess, Mayor, my recommendation would be NC for both. I talked to a congregant at Immaculate Conception this morning. floated to her the fact that it could be AMX 2 this evening and what she and the Monsignor would think about that. And she was not pleased. So I think there's a predictable outcome from this designation. I think they will likely, I don't know for certain, but I think they will likely be bothered. Then I think there's weeks and months of dialogue with both Immaculate Conception and then members of the parcel here. And I don't know what outcome we are intending to achieve that would be different a few months than what we probably already know to be true today.

OK. Any other councilors want to weigh in on this one? Mayor Brottel.

I think we should go with Council Bolliers making a compelling argument, not just for for listening to our constituents, but also for clarifying this process. And I think we should, well, I don't know what to say, muddying the water. But I think it's clear that we, it seems to me that we're going to end up in this place anyway. I'm OK with designate, make a change in that designation, both aligning them as NC.

Councilor General?

Yeah, and I guess to echo Council Bullier, what does that mean then for the future if we're designate? I believe we should designate these both the same, whether they're AMX 2 or whether they're neighborhood center. I think they should both be the same. If they're both put in as NC, then what is the process that you anticipate happening going forward? Because I do think there's a legal process that probably needs to occur, and I don't know that we understand that well.

I'm eager to learn more about that. Part of my concern here is that because we in the community, and we've all been operating for some months under the assumption, pun intended, that Immaculate Conception was, thank you, thank you. All right, I seem like that was. We've been operating under the assumption that Immaculate Conception was NC. I think that colored a little bit of how we saw things. And so now that, surprise, that was an error, I feel a little bit flummoxed. But then, again, I trust the community. The community's been pretty clear on this. And to the Mayor Pro Tem's point, if they were saying, we want to be AMX 2, I would be persuaded by that. And they haven't been saying that. So I take your point, but I kind of feel like we could resolve this and then move forward with a huge other list of items that Phil and Steven put on the table earlier.

City attorney, did you want to weigh in?

Yes, Mayor and Council, if I can chime in on process. So the zoning or the future land use designation for both of the church properties on the 287 corridor is adaptable commercial in the comprehensive plan, which is why that neighborhood, the NC Zone District for Immaculate Conception, is a mapping error to change Property at South Boulder Road and 287 to NC tonight is not, in my opinion, is not procedurally possible because it would require you to amend the comp plan, which has its own process that needs to go through planning commission and council and requires an ordinance. to be able to affect that change. So the purpose of the land use code in this new zoning map is to implement the comprehensive plan. And the way that the adaptable commercial future land use designation is being implemented is primarily through AMX 1 and AMX 2, those new zoning districts. And so to put a different kind of zoning, such as neighborhood, commercial, or NC, on those properties, it should also be consistent with the comp plan. So you would need that comprehensive plan amendment to make that change. That's why I don't think it is procedurally possible tonight. Now, could it happen in the ordinance two process or even by a separate process initiated either by the city or by the property owners? Yes, that can happen for sure.

I have two questions on that. One is, since as we discussed earlier in the minutes, the guidance from council on August 18th was towards NC. And I don't recall us raising at the time if towards NC on August 18, then we need to update the comp plan. So that's one question. And the second question is, as we all know, OTX 3 was not in the comp plan. So can you help me understand why OTX 3 is permissible

Why the change from first to second reading? I'm happy to explain that. So for that area of Old Town in the future land use designation or framework map in the comprehensive plan, it is all designated as Old Town mixed use. So it's one, that entire area that is proposed to be OTX 1 through 3 is all Old Town mixed use. And so those Old Town, OTX one through three zone districts are all implementing that Old Town Mixed Use, but the three different designations have come up through the process as refinements of just the Old Town Mixed Use. It's still the same goals that are being accomplished, but staff through the drafting process has has looked at lot sizes. We've had a lot of discussion on why there's one through three. But they're all doing the same thing, and they're all implementing the same land use designation on the comprehensive plan map. So there's no change to the map required to make that change from OTX1 to OTX3.

I believe you completely. Is a solution for this to designate the church parcels AMX, invent a number, and then calibrate it differently? I'm only being slightly cheeky. It feels like we're trying to have it a little bit both ways.

If council wanted to create a new zoning district at this point, I would recommend you do that through a separate public process that goes through the same process that this version of the zoning code and the land use code and the zoning map have gone through so far to create a whole new zone district.

I feel like there's a very clear outcome that at least some element of council is on board with. I'm unclear what the best path forward is to get there. And I love an Occam's razor. And I also don't want to eat up too much of the evening beating a dead horse. So I welcome guidance on how to get to an outcome that makes sense for this element of the community. And again, I encourage folks to call Immaculate Conception tomorrow and run this by them, that we're putting Amex 2 on the mat of the blue. I think that would be a good thing to do.

CHRISTOPHER COLEMAN- Councilor Giannullo?

CHRISTOPHER GIANNULLO- Well, I disagree that this is put onto the mat of the blue, because it's the same with the change from industrial zone to mixed-use commercial for the the parcel that we were talking about earlier. That was in the comprehensive plan for the past five years, that their area is actually mixed use commercial. And so there is an error. I think it's a little bit surprising that they didn't say, hey, why did we get this special zoning, which we found out is an error. It just happened to benefit them, so they didn't raise it as an issue. Now we're finding another church says, hey, they got a benefit that we didn't get. We want that same benefit. Or you could think of it as another way is they're saying, we don't like this, and so fix it in this land use code update. But now we're hearing from the city attorney that we procedurally are not supposed to do it that way.

Council Friedland.

Can you hear me? I had to change my microphone. We're at second reading, right? I feel like this is something we need to push to the future. I don't think it's our job to get this deep on it. I think we provide the direction. Staff brings something back that meets the direction, fits within the comp plan, and is legal. So my suggestion would be Let's try to better understand this, and let's make sure we're making the right decision with all of these things in mind.

I don't know if we're going to solve it. I agree with Councilor Fridland, but I thought we gave that direction on August 18th. That's kind of the bee in my body, is I thought we were very clear on August 18th, and then there was misunderstanding, and now we're still talking about it. But I take your point, Councilor Fridland. I don't want to spend the whole evening on this.

I'll take some ownership for August 18th. So August 18th, that was my suggestion, is where we may end up with this. It wasn't intended to clarify that we thought we could do this between August 18th and September 15th or whatever day we're on now. So I think most of you will remember that I said I don't normally do this. And then I gave a suggestion as to if I was reading the room correctly that, and if we're hearing from all of these property owners, but we haven't heard from all the property owners, to tell you, to be completely honest. And we haven't done outreach. I don't know, we don't know ownership versus who's leasing. We don't know whether or not the certain property owner agrees with the rezoning. I mean, we've heard from some people that actually use those properties. But sometimes there's a discrepancy between who owns the property and who's leasing the property. i always intended to park this in ordinance two um in order for us to have that time similar to what we're doing with um uh black diamond uh that that rezoning just to daylight what our options are but i was hearing and i and i the purpose of that kind of discussion was to give some of these folks some reassurance that all of council seems to be supportive of something different here than amx zoning if amx zoning ended up in a different place. And this is also kind of why the pieces of the puzzle haven't come together until we knew we got AMX-1, we got AMX-2. AMX-2 has this use allowances and these objectives if we're going to apply it to this certain section of the majority of AMX-2's northern portion of 287 right here. We talked about they don't have access. There's access through the residential. So there might be very good reasons, but that was all off the cuff. So I didn't mean to confuse the conversation, give false hope that it could happen immediately. I did say that it required a comp plan amendment, but I didn't go far enough to clarify what that meant in terms of procedural, and we didn't really get into those things. But this is another thing where staff understood this was ordinance to not an ordinance one kind of conversation. I thought that the direction you guys gave was, yes, let's look into that further and do that in ordinance two, not this quickly. So I apologize that we didn't understand you correctly. But I do think, hopefully, and that's what I was trying to talk to the pastor about before the meeting, that if I'm hearing everybody correctly, that you guys are going to be supportive of looking into this. And it's a down zoning, too, in intensity. But that's also something that property owners may want to understand. Like Immaculate Church, if they own their property, understand that your use allowances for AMX2 are x, y, and z, but they're only smaller and not as intense if we go to neighborhood mixed-use center, that's all that we want to make sure we are going through the same process for. So hopefully that helps, but I do apologize.

I'm in agreement with Council Ferdinand that we should push this. However, it sounds like we're pretty much all in agreement. I think there's just some legal stuff that we have to run through, especially if we want to go the NC route, which it sounds like we may, for our city attorney. Do you want direction specifically what we want to zone to tonight? Or would it be easier if this comes back in ordinance too with the direction that we've been so far?

I'm not sure how to answer that. I will say that... If you provide direction to rezone that southern parcel to NC, I would still tell you that you need a comp plan amendment before you can do that. If you provide direction consistent with the comprehensive plan, that can happen through an amendment tonight. Does that answer your question?

I think for council, the idea is that we want it to be NC, unless I'm reading the room incorrectly. And we understand there is a comp plan amendment that has to be done. We just want to know, is that enough direction here to tell you move forward with this? This is what council wants. Understanding we cannot amend tonight. Procedurally, we just can't.

Yes, and just for councils and the public's benefit, what a comprehensive plan amendment involves even for specific areas is a public process that would ultimately require finding by planning commission and the council that conditions have changed or the community's desire for how those parcels develop has changed from what was approved in the 2021 comprehensive plan. why we wouldn't make that change on the fly contrary to the comprehensive plan tonight. So there would be a process to allow the community to weigh in on that again to see if ultimately to lead to council and planning commission concluding that it's appropriate to change the comprehensive plan approved in 2021 to do that. So anyway, I just wanted to put that out there because there is a process we have to follow and that's essentially where you're heading. no reason we can't take direction for staff, because staff can propose a comprehensive plan amendment for staff to initiate that process.

Now for council, am I getting any of this wrong? Councilor Juneau?

I'm still hung up on two things. One is if we move forward with the second reading tonight without an amendment, we're zoning these two parcels in this first ordinance, we're calling it, differently. And my goal is to not make those the same one way or the other. the Comment from the director was interesting that the AMX-2 zone district is a more powerful, we'll call it, zone than NC. So it's potentially of a benefit for Immaculate Conception to get that AMX-2 zone district, despite the fact that if their current use is a conforming use, but if they were going to ask for it, they would need only special use review. They don't need to ask for special use review because they're already using it. So there's other options, I think, on the table besides a comp plan amendment. which are to change the AMX 2 zone district to allow that use without a special use review. That's another way that this could be done that would not require a comp plan amendment. It, to me, seems more in line with the process that we've done about what do we want AMX 2 to look like. We run it through the working group, we run it through the consultants, we run it through the planning commission, then we bring it to council. That's sort of how this has been done. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the properties on 287 probably should have high intensity commercial uses and not necessarily allowing for expansions of uses that are not commercial. And so I'm torn because I do feel that the community has reached out to us and said, hey, we want to expand. But that is not what the comp plan says. So if we're going to go that direction, I do think we need to get direction from the community if we're going to allow it not by special use review. So I guess I talked myself into a circle to say, it sounds like a comp plan amendment is probably going to be required. But I still think we should zone these the same.

So long-term, potential comp plan amendment. But tonight, you would like to see them zone the same?

Yeah.

Am I understanding correctly that we can only zone them the same AMX 2?

I guess we could do AMX 1.

But I just feel like this is a conversation that shouldn't happen on the dais. It should happen between staff and the property owners and hash it out. Again, we haven't dialogued with immaculate conception. I stipulate the points about what the comp plan says. The comp plan also has a lot to say about a diversified industrial base, and we've heard from business owners about that. The comp plan also has a lot to say about technological innovation. We're discussing a moratorium on data centers later. So the comp plan is a guide, but I don't feel maybe it's shackled by it in some ways on this, because I think we can be creative. But I take Counselor Friedland's point

If I could, I am fine with moving forward with the map as it is. I am fine with that if that's the way that we decide to go, recognizing that there's an error, but that doesn't address the inconsistent zoning. And so we got brought up potential legal implications to that. They're not ripe. They may be moot by the time they're ripe. So I think it's, you know, if we want to just table this, move forward with the map as it is, including an error, I'm willing to go that direction.

Councillor Fridlund.

Yeah, I'll just echo my point that we shouldn't be doing this when we're trying to decide the second reading of land use. Like, there should be a structured conversation that flows through Planning Commission, and we get the recommendation with outreach to affected people. And, you know, I appreciate, clearly, Councilor Giannullo and Councilor Follier have really dived into this. I will admit, I have not. There's a lot of stuff for us to do with these things. So I don't feel super confident that we should make a decision one way or the other right now. I feel like we need to have staff think about it, talk about it, talk to planning commission and bring us, here's the options that we could consider. And then we go from there. I think we need, we need to have this conversation. I just don't feel like we've been fully prepared on what all the implications are, what are errors, what are not. I mean, it's just, it's, it's tough to follow. I'll be really honest. Yeah.

Do you want anything to add there, Councillor Chino?

I mean, it's unfortunate that errors weren't pointed out to us sooner, I guess, is the difficulty that we're all struggling with. And so I'm going to table my proposed amendment for the land use map at this time, unless somebody else wants to raise it.

Great. And the last one that I have, of course, there could be more. These are just the ones that I've written down so far, is the MHC, the Manufactured Home. And I'm hearing from Councillor Jensen, I think you're still there, is flexibility to be more broad and to allow for anything affordable rather than the way it's written. Am I getting that correctly? OK. Thoughts from other councillors on this one?

I'm strongly opposed to this change without vetting thoroughly from the community. I believe the comprehensive plan is very clear that the goal of the mobile home designation is to protect mobile home communities as they currently stand. I mean, I guess there's the potential allowance of tiny homes, but there's nothing in the comp plan that says we should make this now affordable housing. I'm worried about a scrape of a mobile home community with an affordable, high density apartment complex. That is not what the comprehensive plan intends. I believe the amendment that's put into the land use code in the section that was shown on the screen is minor. It says affordable housing is a goal, but it doesn't actually change the meaning or the intention of the original language for the amendment in any meaningful way.

So you wouldn't move forward as written?

i would move forward either as i could accept the amendment or reject the amendment but i'm not willing to go further without a more robust public discussion and potentially comp plan update to change mobile home designation counselor fredland i see your hand up yeah i mean i think adam nailed it um i i'm i'm in agreement there i think these communities will evolve they we need to give them the flexibility to do so

But, you know, we don't want 80% AMI apartment building being built there that is allowable because we put it in the language. So I think we're all generally in agreement. I see Councilor Jensen nodding. I mean, I don't think that's what we're intending. But certainly, I mean... these are in some cases older units right and so like i think um giving them some flexibility as the technology is changing with modular houses does make some sense to me um but we do i i am totally in agreement and i appreciate what um the mayor pro tem uh shared earlier that the intention of this was to protect these communities that are really special for lafayette and a really great naturally occurring occurring source of affordable housing counselor jensen

So I was part of the advocacy group that held a meeting with the Lafayette City Council at a church, I can't remember what church, and asked Lafayette City Council to commit to mobile home zoning. So I'm definitely in favor of trying to protect that mobile home quality and character. It is only from seeing what's going on in Boulder that I didn't want to foreclose us being able to do options like that with this zoning. And I also think the project in Boulder is relatively unique and not likely to be replicated. And it has a huge amount of investment that I think is going to be hard to come by in the future. like boulder bought the land you know for the whole project and and so i i don't need to um i i suspect and i'd love staff's opinion on this um i i absolutely agree that we want to keep you know 30 to 40 percent ami level housing i don't want to do you know 80 apartments or anything like that but i do think mobile homes may not be the only thing that makes sense in the future for some of these properties and i wanted through my pushing on this to to keep it flexible enough that other things could be done but at least in the near future, I don't think it's likely that any of that is going to happen. And so I suspect that if we find something that doesn't fit in this code, that there will be other ways, either changing the code or doing a PUD or other options that might make sense. So I don't need to stand on this, to be honest. I think the more important thing is protecting the mobile home zoning, but I was trying to do that and also create flexibility for the future with some language. So I have ambivalence about it. I'd be happy to back down on the language change that I asked for. But I think the one that staff has provided is a little more flexible. and does allow us, I mean, if we did a manufactured, like a modular project like the one at Ponderosa, if that would be included in that language, that's at least some additional flexibility. And so I think I would prefer that to the existing code. And I don't think we need to fix it any further.

Okay. I'm hearing moving forward with the way it's written is kind of the way we're leaning. Bless you, Councilor. Thank you. Is there anything else that we need to hit in terms of the amendments brought forth or anything else you would like to touch on? The only one I'm hearing is the cash haul for the 35 feet in OTX. And I will lean on our city attorney and Councilor Giannola on that. But seeing that there's two motions.

I think the city attorney might help us walk through the motions a little.

Yeah, that would be great.

So where are we starting, Mayor?

So with the first motion, with the amendments, and then what we're adding is council is on board with a catch-all, which is how it was explained to us earlier for the 35 feet in OTX.

That would be in this ordinance. We should do, I think we should do an amendment just for that one.

Okay.

Okay.

So three motions. An amendment.

So, okay, so I want to make sure I'm tracking. I've been taking notes. So we can do that one. What's the other one, Mayor? What are the other two? Is it the? That's the only one. That's the only one so far.

So we have two that you provided. Okay. Oh, gosh.

I didn't see the screen was up. Okay. Now I've got you. You can make this motion, and then you would need a separate motion. This would capture and amend the ordinance and the land use code and the zoning map to capture everything that was presented in your packet tonight and that you discussed this evening, as long as you don't have any changes to those items. And then if additional items, like the 35-foot height amendment a restriction for OTX3 that would require a separate motion.

Could I motion to amend Exhibit A as set forth in tonight's meeting packet?

By itself?

Just as a, and then we just say the- Yes.

So to just deal with the land use code?

Yeah.

You absolutely could, yes.

So I would like to motion to amend ordinance number 15 series 2026. And exhibit A and B, I move that we amend exhibit A as set forth in tonight's meeting packet to include changes to table 26238, table 26239, table 26240, to replace OTX 1-2 with OTX 1-3, and any other items to address the height limit in OTX 3 to reflect 35 feet as discussed? In tonight's meeting. In tonight's meeting.

OK. We have a motion. Second. We have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion on this motion? Seeing none, we'll do a roll call vote.

Councilor Giannola?

Yes.

Jensen? Yes. Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes?

Yes.

Councilor Bollier?

Yes.

Friedland?

Yes.

And Gallegos? Yes. That motion passes unanimously.

okay i love robert's rules we have amended exhibit a now we can move on to this motion uh no go back i want to stay here and i'm going to say i move to amend ordinance number 15 series 2026 and exhibits a and b to incorporate all proposed amendments as presented to city council tonight on second reading specifically the amendments to the text of ordinance number 15 to change the effective date to february 1st 2027 as otherwise shown in red font and the amendments to the proposed land use code as shown in track changes in amended exhibit a and the amendments to the zoning map as shown in exhibit B All is set forth in tonight's meeting packet and as amended second a motion to amend and a second any discussion on this signals Council for Lent Yeah, thank you

I think I'm supportive of this. I guess I just want to say that it's hard for me to get there because there's just like still errors and things, which is not a problem, right? We fix those. But it seems odd to me that we're still having errors at second reading. And I recognize we're hitting a clock and we're trying to get this done. I understand. But I still I just feel like to me, this process is really hard. And we, you know, at first reading instructed to go do a bunch of work. We did. And then we come back to second reading. I just think we kind of did this in a weird way. And so it's while I I'm supportive because let's keep going. It's just I got it. I just got to say for the record.

um let's let's learn from this let's think about what went well and what maybe was a challenge and let's really try to do better next time because this was this was painful thank you counselor bullion thank you mayor um i will i will second what counselor fiddlin put on the table um i really appreciated the the conversation all the tremendous work um value differences of opinion but i think for me recognizing that we're not yet at the finish line I would have hoped for a bit more buttoned up at this point. And the fact that we have this level of confusion, the fact that many members of the community, whether watching, reading, or leaving here this evening, will have a lot of questions about what does the next three months look like? What does this mean for me, for my community, my business, et cetera? And so I am concerned about the signals we are sending to the community in terms of very consistent feedback from them, like, hey, I have a beef with this. I don't know that you, sir, got an answer to your question about if you sell your property, how the potential changes will have nuked your property value. If I'm in your shoes, I have serious concerns about what that's doing to my livelihood. I know we're in the train. We're going to move this forward. But I do think we need to think about the coming time frame in the next several months to make sure we calibrate appropriately, whether that's moving the land use code working group meeting sooner than November 18, whether that's another joint meeting with planning commission. For our next bite at this apple, I hope that it's a bit more buttoned up and there's a bit less gray area, and that we don't have to get into a level of weeds that we probably shouldn't as counselors, to Councilor Fridland's point earlier. Thank you, Mayor.

Any further discussion? Councilor Giannola? Hear, hear. We'll do a roll call vote.

Councilor Jensen?

I.

Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes? Yes. Councillor Bollier?

Yes.

Councillor Friedland?

Yes.

Councillor Gallegos? Yes. And Councillor Giannola? Yes. That motion passes unanimously.

And then we have one final motion.

Oh, we have to do this one too? Yes. I move to approve on second reading ordinance number 15 series 2026 repealing and replacing chapter 26 of the code of ordinances with the new chapter 26 titled land use code repealing the existing zoning map and replacing with the new zoning map and rezoning properties within the city thereby and setting an effective date as amended on second reading. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this motion?

All the stuff I've already said, Mayor.

Okay, we'll do a roll call vote.

Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes? Yes. Councilor Bollier? Yes. Freedland?

Yes.

Gallegos? Yes. Giannola? Yes. Jensen? Yes. That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. Thank you to everyone involved. Thank you to staff. I know that's a lot. This is a big lift there. I appreciate it. A lot. Thank you. And I think you're sticking with us for the next thing. We're getting into presentations, and we'll start. We'll give you a minute to kind of get yourself situated, and then we'll jump into short-term rental festival license.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. This is a fairly short presentation. It's really just to share information with Council about short-term rentals and specifically regional efforts to create a short-term rental festival license. So we'd like to just provide a snapshot of short-term rentals in Lafayette. What are the current regulations? What's the festival license? And then Council may opt to have questions or discussion about the topic or potential next steps. And so in Lafayette, we have three lodging uses in the city. Hotel, motel, resort, and bed and breakfast. These are principal uses on the site. So this is the primary way the property is used. Whereas short-term rentals are a smaller scale accessory use. And those are secondary or subordinate to a residential use within Lafayette. Those oftentimes look very similar to any other home on the block. And with the exception of, I found a UFO one missile silo that you can rent on your B&B. And so they do get unique. But these were things that we allowed in the city several years ago. Those are not in Lafayette. The short-term rentals, we went through an engagement process. We coupled short-term rentals and ADUs, and that ultimately took effect in January of 2024. Those were allowed. It was our first short-term rental ordinance. Those were allowed anywhere where you have residential uses, and that's shown on the map here. And then we have an ordinance that is pretty extensive today. And so those include accessory use. So it's only allowed as an accessory use, not the primary use of the property. There is a license that's required. So we do a business license. So they do pay taxes to the city, a lodging tax as well. And we do also require short-term rental license through the city's planning department, planning division. It also must be the applicant's or operator's primary residence. So it can't be their second home. It has to be their usual place of return. And so that came out of the engagement process, where there was a recognition that having an ADU, and you could short-term rent it sometimes, That was a benefit and provided supplemental income, but there was a push and pull where other folks were really concerned about organizations and people buying up lots of homes and then just converting them into short-term rentals. And so that was the common ground that allowed that supplemental income to occur, but it hedged against allowing for those multiple properties to be bought up by investors that you see in some of the mountain communities in particular. You can rent your primary unit and the ADU, but you can't just rent them at the same time. And within each dwelling unit, you can only have one rental contract. And so some beach houses that you might go to would have a large house, and it would be sliced up into nine mini apartments. And that's not something that you the code here would allow. There's some small signage that's allowed. The city building inspectors do do a quick safety inspection as part of the licensing process. And so we amended our building code to require things like a fire extinguisher. carbon monoxide detectors, and so on. Those are pretty straightforward inspections. And we limit the maximum number of guests in a party to two people per bedroom plus two. And lastly, we require a local responsible party. So this is somebody who lives within 30 miles of the rental that can respond 24-7 to any neighborhood issues that happen. So the topic of festival license, that was brought up with the announcement of Sundance coming to Boulder in January. As part of that negotiation, there was a desire and a recognition to increase the available Hotel accommodations not only in Boulder but in the region and so area cities have been asked and have been talked about and have done a festival license that would either in some cities establish their short-term rental regulations for the first time or Relax the standards to make it easier for people and organizations to rent homes as part of that festival And so, so far in this area, Boulder, Longmont, Louisville Superior, and Lyons have adopted regulations. Longmont adopted a festival license as a pilot program. So there's a little sunset. I believe it's in May of next year. All of these do not require a life safety inspection like we currently do on our typical short-term rentals, but some of them do keep that discretion per the city manager or planning director. And then the license duration varies. So our license is good for two years. For these festival licenses, some cities have done just per festival, so like a 10-day period, plus or minus some days. up to four years in Boulder. And then those occupancy rules, the number of guests in a party also varied by community. Assuming that council wanted this item, this presentation, is that there might be interest in pursuing a short-term rental festival license of our own. What you might see in something like that in Lafayette would be instead of it needing to be a primary residence, so your primary home or a renter with the owner's permission, it could be any organization or person could come in and they could request and apply for a number of different properties within the city for this festival license. Instead of renting the home or the ADU, it could be both at the same time. We wouldn't do a safety inspection, but we would require a self-certification affidavit for them to sign. We could talk about how long those licenses are good for. And this would only apply during city-recognized events, such as Sundance. And so this wasn't in the memo, but in thinking about this, just to get a conversation going, if council wanted to look at something like this, one potential option, and just speaking with our project team and city attorney's office, is that if council wanted to do something and see how it worked for Sundance, you could choose to enact a pilot program via a council resolution at one of your upcoming meetings. And what that would do, it would relax a number of these standards that we talked about tonight, specifically for the Sundance time period. You could have it sunset. And then if it worked well, we could come back with some permanent regulations, kind of similar to the approach Longman is taking. And that is kind of where we're at. We currently do licensing for these. So even absent of this, a person can come in if it's their primary residence and get a short-term rental license any day now, even if we didn't go through this process. And so that is a quick snapshot of short-term rentals. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Mayor. Just a point of clarification for everyone on council. I was just at a DDA meeting, Downtown Development Authority. And the DDA is looking, walking into preparations for Sundance. And this is one of the items that they will be looking to as short-term rentals are here. How do we ensure that the people who are getting involved with that are included in a planning that the DDA has in mind? So it's on the DDA's mind. as well. So what we do will be wrapped into the preparations from the DDA.

Any other questions? Councillor Giannola.

I have some questions about if you could go back to the table that you showed and the kind of guidance that you're giving. When you say any person or organization here, how is that different from what's in the existing regulations?

So right now, it would be the homeowner or the renter. And that's their primary residence. So if it was not, that's who the application needs to come from. And so when they submit that, they have forms of proof showing that that is indeed their address, billing statement, things like that. Under the festival license, that could be rental company XYZ could come in and say, we're going to rent these five houses out under a festival license. And we don't even own them. Or it could be someone who has a second home here that wants to rent it out. And so it opens it up for pretty much anyone to rent a home. Obviously, if it's an application, we would need the owner to sign it. That would be an issue.

So this still does include a renter, for example, as an option here. OK. And then the license term of one year Does that mean that this person can rent the property any time during that year period or only during the event window?

Only during the event window. If they meet all the criteria that we have in place now, they can just do the normal license. And then they can rent the home out. If it is their second home or something, then it would only be during the event window through this festival license. So a Sundance or anything else that council would classify as declare as an event.

Yeah. And I guess I'm confused about why is there a one-year license term versus a window license term?

Yeah. And that's the thing that we want to flesh out a little bit more. A lot of the cities didn't have as long of a duration on the festival license. But if we went through a pilot program, that would probably sunset. And we could adjust it either by festival or just make it a blanket several years so the person doesn't have to keep coming back to us.

I see. Thank you.

Councilor Jensen.

Is there a penalty? for somebody who did, let's say, a Sundance rental, short-term rental, but didn't go through the licensing.

Yeah, short-term metals are tricky for enforcement. And so if they had a typical license, the city, they might be able to go through revulking the license that they have. And then we would have to confer with our prosecuting attorney whether or not there was sufficient evidence to actually go to municipal court. With these, it gets a little tricky, because once the violation occurs and it stops, then it's almost been remedied, right?

Yeah, in terms of catching a violation like that, it would most likely come through a complaint from a neighbor, and then the city would look into it. But in terms of a penalty, I'd have to look at what our regulations are, the regulations we developed for this, and bring back to you whether there is a penalty such as a summons or citation to municipal court. But I don't think we've looked at that yet.

Well, I think it seems to me if we don't have some teeth in this ordinance, why would anyone want to go to the trouble of getting this license if we don't have any way to enforce it?

Mayor Pretem, did you want to take that?

Yes. So that's why I mentioned the DDAs involved, because then there would be added perks for people who identified that they were doing this in conjunction with Sundance. So I agree there might not be any teeth in the ordinance, but this is the carrot, not the stick. I don't know if I used that metaphor. That's right. You got it. Did I get it? You got it. All right. I still got it.

Councilor Hayes.

Do units need to have their own restrooms and kitchen facilities, or are shared facilities permissible?

imagine it would just be a typical dwelling unit with its own facilities I don't know how many like around colleges you have the congregate kind of living it's a good question

So I couldn't rent my kids' bedrooms out while they were away at college.

Oh, you can rent a portion of your house out right now. So you could rent a bedroom out or a basement. That's acceptable, yeah.

Councilor Burleigh.

I love this. I'm super excited about this. Thanks for the work on this.

Amazing. I just have a few questions. And the first one is, can you walk me through the difference between a pilot program and then just going through the entire process of actually getting this

that the pilot program council could do pretty quickly through a resolution that would likely make it possible to meet if there was interest in this January's Sundance. If we did the full code amendment, since there's zoning provisions in there, it would need to go to Planning Commission for public hearing and Council for public hearing as well if it was a permanent change. And so we probably wouldn't meet that deadline. That's why we said if Council wanted to experiment with this a little bit, then we could do that if that's your desire.

So what I'm hearing is, A, if we go with a pilot program, we have the ability to come back and say, this worked, this didn't work, let's roll it out or don't roll it out in the future future years and the other thing is if we don't do a pilot program it might take too long for sundance which is just around the corner we probably wouldn't make it yeah okay those are my only two questions is anyone on council that disagrees with moving forward and then moving forward with a pilot program no but i also wonder if this kind of tees us up for a future conversation on

directing staff for pursuing another hotel in town. Because this is a huge step in the right direction, but I feel like it opens the door a little bit. Should I make a motion to that effect?

I don't think we're going to make any motions. Okay.

Good. I think we're excited to move forward. We're hearing interest in a pilot program for this. So making sure I got the direction. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to our second presentation of the night, which is two potential moratoriums. And our city attorney's office will be running this one.

Good evening, Mayor and members of council. Erin Poe, deputy city attorney. Who may need some help getting this open? Thank you. Okay. Our objective tonight is to receive council direction on two potential moratoriums. One is data center developments, and the second is advanced air mobility land uses. For an agenda, I'll pause for questions after data centers, and again, after the advanced air mobility. And then we can always take questions again at the end. All right, so a moratorium is a pause button. It gives municipalities breathing room to develop a game plan when faced with new or unique uses of land. It's not a stop button, but it does pause governmental functions such as development review, permitting, and or licensing. It is a special tool that must be used carefully, and you can end up with a constitutional taking if a moratorium is more than a temporary time out. and interferes with reasonable investment-backed expectations of property owners. The duration of a moratorium is based on how long is needed to study, develop, and implement regulations necessary to address the new or emerging land use. All right, and first up are data centers. As an overview for the public, a data center is a physical facility used to house servers, storage systems, and networking equipment. There are community impacts associated with them, such as demands on the electric grid capacity, water demand, and cooling systems. There are also environmental considerations such as noise, vibration, heat output, and air emissions. Currently, Colorado has approximately 60 data centers. In 2026, in the legislative session, the General Assembly considered two bills to regulate them statewide. Both bills failed. However, there is a good likelihood that some sort of legislation will be considered again in 2027. In Colorado, there have been a range of responses to moratoriums by different agencies. For example, Broomfield has enacted an 18-month moratorium on medium and large data centers. Longmont has gone right to adopting regulations, and they prohibit hyperscale data centers. Aurora is dealing more with the impacts of data centers and is in the process of updating regulations to ban evaporative cooling, enact residential setbacks, and buffer zones. Some of the benefits of a moratorium is that it would give us time to review the land use code definitions of data center and consider any other necessary code language. Since this is an emerging technology, the language and lingo is also developing, and so we could look at what else is needed, such as a hyperscale data center definition, which is not currently proposed. It would also give us time to evaluate water, electric, and other resource demands. We could study potential impacts such as noise, vibration, heat, traffic, and design. It also gives us time to consider and align the city's comprehensive plan, climate action plan, and sustainability goals. And the ultimate goal would be to avoid processing applications under insufficient standards. A planning commission has made a recommendation which aligns with the staff recommendation, which is to recommend that city council direct staff to draft a moratorium, pausing acceptance and processing of applications related to development of new data centers. The city attorney's office recommends 18 months for the moratorium as a realistic timeframe given staff resources and to allow the city to monitor the 2027 state legislation. And I'll pause there for any questions on data centers.

Questions on data centers? Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor. Has ASRAP been brought in on any of these two moratoriums?

My understanding is that they have, from Director Bacong. Thank you.

And can we, is 18 months, is it, if we were to push it more than 18 months, what is the, what would be the maximum acceptable if we went past 18, in your opinion?

It all depends. There is a case that says five years was too long for a moratorium in Fort Collins. But a lot of it, I think, depends on the subject matter and just what is reasonable. So we could start at one time frame, and they can always be extended. So we're getting up to that point, and it looks like we need more time. we can probably add it on. But I would be hesitant to go too far too fast. Let's see where we can go.

And I would just add, we would need to justify it. It couldn't be a delay for the sake of delay. So there would need to be some real articulable reason why we needed to continue the moratorium because of the need to continue to draft regulations. So if we came to that point, city attorney's office would of course advise council on whether we think an extension could be legally justified. But right now, we really do think that 18 months is maybe not even just a starting point, but is adequate. But we'll see. If we need more time, then we'll justify it if that's the case.

Any other questions on data centers? Council Bullard.

I have a policy question and then a legal question. Have we been approached by any company that does data centers with expressing interest here?

Not that I know of, no.

Do you know if our immediate neighbors have been approached?

Broomfield has.

Broomfield has? At least that I'm aware of, yeah.

OK. Because I know there's a lot of chatter out there, and I can't necessarily discern which is actually happening, which is not. And on the legal element, I know that I fully trust we would be able to prescribe a clear delineation between what's a data center and what's not. But as you've been looking around at what other communities are doing, are you seeing any sort of squishy area where they're trying to constrain a data center and it winds up affecting some of their other technology firms? Or have any of those firms said, hey, this gets into our business, our legitimate business?

Not that I'm aware of, but really this is our starting point. We've done some preliminary research to see, and there was the list there, I can go back to it if you want, but other communities that are pursuing moratoriums. But some are supportive of it and want to attract that business. And so the goals are not always the same across those. Like Longmont is prohibiting kind of a small, medium, large, and they were just worried about prohibiting hyper. So based on energy usage and demand. So I think it all is pretty new. It'll be interesting to see as some of these moratoriums end and regulations are passed in other communities where they end up.

Thank you. I have some comments, but I'll wait till we get through questions.

One more question. Do we have any structures or businesses that qualify as a data center right now within Loftia?

It would depend on how we define it. And so some of them have used the 10, I hope I don't get it wrong, megahertz, megawattage as the cutoff. So if you're below that, And something like the hospital or Medtronic might have servers that are below that that would not be necessarily impacted if we went with the 10 usage and above as a definition. So it would depend on how we craft it. It could be for new applications, new data centers, so that someplace like the hospital or Medtronic could replace what they have. And that's kind of what we would take that 18 months to really figure out what we want it to look like here. Thank you.

Councilor Gino?

I guess I also have concerns about that definition. What if we have a company that says, I want to install server room? And this is now included as a data center. So are there differences between primary uses and accessory uses that accessory use might be allowed to have that server room? Or is there a power cutoff or these types of things? So really curious what that definition looks like. to start, you know, it's hard because you need to do the research. The moratorium is still allowed to do the research, but you need to do a little bit before you can write the moratorium, right?

It feels like if we're more concerned with new data centers that are of size that would significantly impact neighbors and community, that that 10 megawattage definition might be good, and that it would be new applications, not necessarily replacing what you already have.

Yeah, but I'm also thinking about what if somebody wants to add a server room that they didn't have before. I don't know what Medtronic's server room looks like. Let's pretend they didn't have one. And they wanted to install one. Or let's say the Boulder County building that's down the street. Or let's say one of the hospitals or clinics in town. There's a lot of places where I could see adding a server room. I don't know what 10 megawatts means.

If it's OK, I'll jump in. Director Williams might have thoughts on this. So what this would put a pause on are land use applications, so development applications. So if there was an addition involving servers, adding a server isn't going to trigger this. Somebody can do that without coming to the city for any kind of review. It would be if something required a site plan amendment to enlarge a building or to construct a new building or along those lines. So not only the future data center regulations that we will continue to work on, but also this moratorium ordinance if council chooses to proceed, the intent is to capture new land uses or modifications of existing land uses that will expand use In fact, counsel, I would even, and Deputy City Attorney Poe and I have talked about this, we definitely will be, we would recommend that data center-like uses that are accessory to an existing primary use even under a certain size, would be exempt from the moratorium so that we wouldn't interfere with the hospital, for example, doing work inside of its existing structures. I mean, we wouldn't even want to pick that up. So we'll make sure that things like that are exempt from the ordinance. And yeah, so that's the route we're planning on going right now, if council wants to proceed, is not affect somebody's ability to update their equipment.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Any other questions on drones or not drones yet? Data centers? All right. Now we can move on to drones.

Thanks. All right. Moving on to advanced air mobility. So advanced air mobility, or AAM, most commonly is thought of as a delivery system for retail goods, otherwise known as or referred to as delivery drones. The system includes land-based facilities that a retailer can launch and land drones from. There has been a recent request for a pre-application meeting in Lafayette about potential drone launch landing sites on a retail property. AAM can eventually encompass more than delivery drones, and the FAA is actively targeting an operational AAM system at select US sites by 2028, which ultimately could be a future air taxi system. So this is a very emerging technology. what we will probably talk more to in the future. So moratorium considerations for AAM is that the FAA regulates airspace, but the city can exercise its authority about land use elements. Our focus would be on local land use issues such as siting, design, operations, compatibility with homes, schools, parks, trails, businesses, and sensitive areas such as open space. Right now neither Lafayette's current code nor their proposed land use code address AAM-related land uses. And so our goal would be to evaluate community impacts and review processes before an application is submitted. We are not the only community looking at this right now. Castle Rock and Parker have both recently adopted moratoriums on commercial drone delivery facilities. The Planning Commission and staff also have a recommendation for council that council direct staff to bring back a draft moratorium pausing acceptance and processing of applications related to AAM. This is because the current code and proposed land use code standards and processes were not drafted with AAM related uses in mind. We would like to be able to further study to understand the impacts and appropriate review mechanisms for this sort of land use. The city attorney's office recommends, again, an 18-month moratorium as being realistic for staff resources and to allow the city to study industry trends and impacts because this is so new and unique. I will pause again for questions.

Questions on this one. Mayor Pro Temo.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to direct my first question to the city attorney. And that question is, Just to be clear, we don't have a great relationship with the FAA. In the case of this, I mean, I know it says that we get to decide land use, but the FAA controls the national airspace. So even if we have an open space that we don't want these flying over, we don't have any control over that. Is that clear?

That is correct. We cannot stop aircraft, whether unmanned or manned, from flying over our open space. However, the city does have authority, even as a property owner, to prohibit takeoff and landing on our open space.

Okay. And when we say FAA, is that generically the FAA?

Sorry, let me add, we cannot regulate them in FAA-regulated airspace. Okay.

And when we say FAA, is this the generic FAA?

The FAA. But we still have control over our setbacks and things like that where we may be able to impact how a facility is set up on a property with height or distance from property lines. So even though the FAA regulates the airspace, there's still opportunity on the ground to have an impact or lessen impacts, I suppose.

Okay. That's the first question I have. Let me marinate on that for a second.

I saw Councilor Jensen's hand up.

Sorry. I guess not having been through something like this before, I have questions about staff and who does the research on this to prepare us for decision making in the future on that. Sounds like with the data centers, SRAB will be involved, and I'm not exactly sure how that will work with the, and you are raising, Councilor Barnes, some of the complexity on the other one, and that's expertise we don't really have on staff. Is this something we need to budget for in some way to account for the expertise and time and effort to do the homework on these things? Or are we just going to give additional responsibilities to other folk? How does that work?

For the initial drafting of a moratorium, that would be done by staff. Mostly city attorney's office and planning staff and public works, especially on the data centers due to the resource demands. And then once we're in that time period, that's where if we do need specialized land use assistance with drafting regulations, I suppose Clarion could be an option if it goes beyond staff expertise.

Well, it seems to me in both of these cases, we don't have staff expertise right now in any of these or in either data centers, the water, the noise, the decibels, energy, and the same with the air things. So I guess my question is procedurally, do we need to sort of ask SRAB to engage on at least one of these? Is that something we would direct them or staff, city manager's office can just ask them and we don't have to get involved? Correct.

Staff could do it. Council could do it. At some point during that 18 months, if we do enter into the moratorium, I think there would be probably multiple checkbacks with council to start vetting the regulations because they both are complicated. And what type of data center do you want to allow? What type do you want to regulate and how you want to regulate them? It will be complicated.

Right. And so my question is, Can we do this in our existing workload or do we need to budget something for either consulting or internal staff to help us with these two?

I think the answer is we don't know yet, which is why it's the moratorium. You're kind of making the case for the moratoriums is because there is so much to learn from it. And so I think what we're trying to identify is let's get those in place and then try to best understand what resources we need. If you recall through the budget presentation in August, the city attorney's office is asking for one-time additional dollars next year for legal services. This may fit within there, or we may need to come back to council at a later date when we have more information to do a supplemental. But I just don't know that I could commit yet to it. And a lot of it is also we don't necessarily need to be experts in these. All of these communities are going through it. The state legislation is looking at different things. And so I don't think we're going to be making our own regulations in a box and having to become subject matter experts.

All right. Thank you very much. Councillor Gianella.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to understand a little bit about, or at least I want to discuss a little bit about, what would a moratorium on advanced air mobility include and what wouldn't it include? And I think we addressed this a little bit. So as an example, I guess I want to understand, I think you showed what maybe a couple of other jurisdictions had moratoriums.

For the AAM, Parker and Castle Rock both do. Theirs are limited pretty narrowly to drone delivery facilities. So I guess how I envision it, it would be the land facilities associated with air mobility, most likely

Where I'm going is none of our neighboring jurisdictions have addressed this yet.