Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Good morning everyone. It's uh March 10th at 11:01 a.m. and this begins the work session of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. Three items on the agenda. The first is overview and discussion regarding the US bure bureau of reclamation's forecast and operational plans for turquoise and twin lakes for the spring summer of 2026 led by Michael Holberg facility manager PBLO Dam field office and USB welcome I think Michael's online Michael

yeah Morning everybody. Uh, can you hear me? Okay. Sure can. Thank you.

Okay. Um, so I've got a a kind of a brief presentation here. It looks like 10 slides. I'll give a little bit of background on what um what the frying pan Arkansas project is, how it relates to Lake County, and then just kind of give you an overview of what we expect for the year. So, we have a uh good neighbor agreement with Lake County, mainly regarding flows on Lake Fort Creek, where we will do our best to try to keep flows below 400 cfs on the release out of uh Turquoise Lake down Lake Fork Creek. Um, and then part of that agreement is to uh have like a pre-runoff meeting with uh Lake County and make sure that that we're all on the same page and everybody's communicating. Um, with me here I've got Anna Perea. She is our public relations specialist. Um, so if you guys ever have any questions, u, need information, please don't hesitate to reach out to either one of us and, uh, we can we can answer your questions to the best we can. So, I will share my screen here. Oh, host has disabled screen sharing. Is there a way to get

that ability? If not, I can I can talk without it. Um, and I can just put some pictures in the chat here. One second. We'll get you set up here.

Well, can I do it just from his buttons? Let's see. Confirm. All right. Now, you should be able to share. Okay. Let's see. There we go. All right. Are you seeing a PowerPoint now? Sure are. Okay.

All right. So, um, like I said, my name is Mike Holberg. I'm the facility manager here at PBLO Dam and Field Office. So, our office, uh, we manage the Frying Pan Arkansas project. So, it's a a multi-use project where we have about 16 diversion points on the frying pan and roaring fork rivers over above basalt and aspen. Um, we divert water throughout the spring runoff. We take that water into the boost tunnel which discharges it directly into uh turquoise. From there, we could move water to Twin Lakes via the Mount Elbert conduit, use um the Mount Elbert Power Plant to generate power, and then we release it out of Twin Lakes and store that water down in PBLO. Um so, briefly, I'll go over some of the just some of the infrastructure we have there, just you can kind of get an idea of of what the interest is with the Bureau of Reclamation and how we intersect with Lake County. So, first we have the the Charles H. Booststead tunnel. Um it's it's a fivemile long tunnel constructed beginning in 1966. That's where we bring our water under the Continental Divide. We can bring in 945 CFS if it's at full capacity. And like I said, that outflow is directly into Turquoise Lake. We have Turquoise Lake and Sugarloaf Damp. Um the Bureau of Reclamation purchased uh turquoise from CFNI Steel Corporation and enlarged it between 1965 and 1968. We can have we have an active storage of about 129,000 acre feet. Um water is stored for municipal industrial irrigation, recreation, fish and wildlife. The the main people that can store water in there is of course a Bureau of Reclamation. We store our project water. Whenever I talk about the water that we bring from the west slope, we refer to that as project water. Um we store that there. Colorado Springs, uh, the city of Aurora, and PBLO Board of

Waterworks all have fixed storage space in Turquoise Lake. So, we're all kind of competing for, not really competing, but we all have space in the same reservoir. Moving on down to Twin Lakes, uh, the bureau purchased Twin Lakes from the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company and started enlarging that reservoir in 1978. We have 140,000 acre feet of active storage. Again, multi-use reservoir can be stored for a variety of reasons. Um, the two entities that store water in Twin Lakes is Bure of Reclamation and then the Twin Lakes Canal Company. And that's made up of a lot of different entities, both agricultural, municipal. Um, I'm not sure who all stores water in their accounts, but it's it's pretty varied. There at Twin Lakes, we have the Mount Elbert Power Plant. Um, it that's an important feature not only for power generation, but it's also serves as as kind of a bottleneck for how we move water. So, like a couple of years ago when we had those higher flows on Lake Fork Creek, the Mount Albert power plant was down, both of its units were unavailable, which means we have to use the natural channel of Lake Fork Creek out of Turquoise to release water. Under normal normal circumstances, we can take the majority of that water through a conduit directly from turquoise through the power plant to twin and and thus avoiding any kind of high flows on there. Um I'll talk about Mount Albert a little bit more and their current status uh here in a little bit. So we have multiple trans mountain diversions that all are part of the Arkansas River Basin. Uh these are the largest ones. We of course have the Fry Arc project where we bring water in through the Boosted Tunnel. On average, it's about 56,000 acre feet and I'll have some some more numbers here in a minute. Uh the Homestake Tunnel, which is owned by Colorado Springs and Aurora, is is another large one on average about

24,000 acre feet. The Busk Ivanho tunnel um takes water from Ivanho Lake up above the town of Basalt. Um that's jointly owned by PBLO Board of Waterworks and Aurora Water. They bring in about 5,700 acre feet. Um the Coline Euing and Wartz ditches not real large. Um but they do come they do combine to bring in about four to 5,000 acre feet into uh turquoise as well. And that's these ones highlighted in yellow. All store in turquoise. Then the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company owns the Twin Lakes tunnel and they bring in a lot of water every year which is stored in Twin Lakes um and then released to their entities downstream from there. And then Colorado Springs Utilities has their Blue River project. That one brings water into the Arkansas Basin, but it doesn't directly bring it into Lake County. They uh bring that into Montgomery Reservoir up near, I believe, near Alma. And then the lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District has a small ditch that also brings water over about 200 acre feet a year. Um, so that's that's kind of uh just to show you that a lot of the water that you see in the Arkansas River um doesn't necessarily start in the Arkansas River basin. A lot of that water is imported and brought in from the western slope. So our project water since the year 2000, these are the acref foot amounts that we have imported through the continental divide through that boost tunnel over the last 25 years. You can see 50,000 acre feet in 20201 down to 15,000 in the dry year of 2002 uh 2012 13,000. You know, we get those really dry years like we're looking at this year. Um but we can get upwards of, you know, 2008 at 90,000. Um we're we're able to bring over a lot of water in those wet years. Um 95,000 in 2019. So,

just kind of a a brief look at at the vast range of of imports that we can have into our system. So, that was a little bit about the history. Um, I'll launch into a quick talk about our spring and summer operations. So, I don't think it's any surprise to anybody living in Colorado right now. We are facing the lowest snow pack on record. The Arkansas River Basin is looking at roughly 50% of average um snow water equivalent in the snow pack right now. Uh the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts that about 61% of average flow is expected past the Arkansas River at Granite Gauge right there in the heart of Lake County. Um we do expect to operate the Mount Elbert Power Plant normally. Unit one right now is available. Unit 2 is expected hopefully late 2026, early 2027 if all goes well. Um, so barring any unforeseen outages or problems with the power plant, this is going to mean we're we're expecting normal flows on Lake Fork Creek, which is between 3 and 15 CFS depending on the inflow conditions to turquoise and depending on the time of year. Um, we also have a diversion on Half Moon Creek and we expect to operate that diversion normally. Last year we had some leaks in our diversion tunnel so we weren't able to operate that diversion. We we did some work on that tunnel. We expect it to be operational this year. Um, we expect that Turquoise Lake elevation is going to mostly remain above the minimum boat ramp elevation. Our predictions are that it might go slightly down a little bit below there during the spring, but during the heart of, you know, summer and recreation season, we expect it to be up above that that boat ramp. Um, I do have to say that water and power operations for the

Fry Arc project uh take precedence over recreation. So, um, if Twin Lakes gets below the minimum elevation to be able to use the pumpback feature of Mount Elbert, we do have to bring water down. um as per our our operating principles from Turquoise to fill up Twin Lakes and sometimes that can lead to the the boat ramp on Turquoise being left out of water. Um we avoid that if we can, but in a dry year like this, I just want to let everybody be aware that it we don't expect it, but it is a possibility. We also are facilitators. We don't we're not signatory, but we facilitate the voluntary flow management program. Um, I don't want to get too far into the weeds on that, but if you're not familiar with that, it's a a multi-use recreational program. It's sponsored by the I'm sorry, it's signed by the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, Chaffi County, Trout Unlimited, um, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Um the the goal of the program is to regulate recreational flows on the Arkansas River, keeping flows low during the the important periods for fish like spawning, um fry emergence, that sort of thing. And then if it's available, we can release up to 10,000 acre feet of water stored in Twin Lakes in support of recreational boating um to try to keep those flows up. And that runs from July 1st to August 15th. Normally we try to keep a target flow of about 700 cfs at the Arkansas River at Wellsville Gates just downstream of Salida. Um this year we don't know how much if any of that 10,000 acre feet will be available. We don't know how far it's going to go. A lot of it's just going to depend on what mother nature has in store for us. Um as we get into the to those really drier periods of summer in July and August, we'll have to get some help from the

monsoon season to to kind of keep those flows higher. Uh we meet with this voluntary flow management group. Um we just had a meeting this morning. Normally during the the heart of runoff and into the more recreational season of summer, we usually meet every couple of weeks and make sure that everybody's on the same page and it's it's a great cooperative agreement. Um just a a quick look. So what I talked about the boat ramp. Um, so the important lines, there's a lot going on on this graph, but if you look at this red line, that is the turquoise content. That's our prediction for what the water surface elevation or I'm sorry, the project storage is expected to be. Um, this green line right here is that boat ramp elevation. So, as you can see, we're above it right now. I think I looked yesterday and we're about 5t above this elevation where that green line crosses um our our expected storage. We're about 5t above it right now. Um we expect to be using some water before the runoff really gets going. So um it could dip below there a little bit and then start recovering as a spring runoff uh as a spring runoff or lack thereof this year comes. But our expectation is to keep that within water. But again, just to keep everybody aware, it is a possibility that um it might dip below that elevation this summer if things continue to stay as dry as they are. Uh I believe this is my last slide, just some some takeaways. Um so in a dry year like this, it means recreational boating may be limited um both on the reservoir if we do have to get below that elevation and definitely on the river. Um we're not going to have a large runoff this year. there's just not going to be that much water available in the river as I don't think is any surprise to anybody. Um we've had a few pretty good storage years over the last several. So right now our reservoir

storage in Twin Lakes, Turquoise Lake, and in PBlo Reservoir are all pretty much right at average for the life of the project. So we're sitting pretty good. Even though it's a dry year, we've got a lot of storage. So if next year's snow pack looks as poor as this year's, then that might change. That's when a lot of those municipalities are going to have to start using their water. Um, and we'll start really seeing the effects of a couple of dry years in a row. Um, as I said earlier, Mount Elbert Power Plant and their related operations, they're expected to be mostly normal this year. So, we don't expect to have those high flows on Lake Fork Creek. Um, we don't expect anything other than our normal flows on on Lake Fork this year. So, that was very quick and dirty. Um, if anybody has questions, uh, please let me know. And now I got to figure out how to stop sto sharing. I'm not as familiar with Zoom. Okay, looks like I'm out of there. All right, so I'm available for any questions. Um, Mike, does the BO take any stock in long range weather forecasts or predictions for precipitation levels for spring and summer 26. So, we we do look at that. Um, our all of our predictions that we make are based on the snow pack in the snowtail gauges above our collection system. and those we feed into a statistical model and that's kind of what we have to base all of our operations on. As far as as monitoring flows in the Arkansas basin, um historically only about 11% of the water that that goes past any one point in the upper part of the basin is

directly controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation. The rest of it is all native flow. So, anything that's that's generated on the Arkansas River side, that all is administered by the state of Colorado as part of the water rights priority system. And then also um what we call account contract water, water that's owned in storage by Colorado Springs, Aurora, PBLO Water, um a entities in eastern Colorado, etc. that make those river releases. So we look at them just to kind of see what we can expect, but ultimately we we we play a large part in facilitating but uh a relatively small role in what can actually be done with the water if that makes sense.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. So you guys don't own the power plant. who you you or you do uh own and run the power plant as a bure. Yes, we we own and operate the power plant and um I'm I'm not as familiar with the power side of operations, but we own and operate it and then um WAPA, the Western Area, Western Area Power Administration, I believe they're the ones that um purchase and regulate that power. Okay. And Anna, if if I'm way off there, correct me if I'm wrong.

No, you're good. WAPA um directs us when to generate and um they also the manage the power distribution and sales. So, I speak water, not power, but okay. Sometimes I try to dabble. That is a super cool building. I don't think you were here for the the tour of that, but we should do another one because the power plant is

Yeah, I missed the tour. We were all so new here and busy, but uh love to get a peek at it sometime if you guys feel like uh giving us a tour. So, uh you said both of the um the power generating turbines were out for a time, but now one is back and the other one's being fixed. Yep. So, um, in 2024, we had both units down for some maintenance. Um, one of them came back online and then suffered a major failure. Um, there was a a seal ring that had had uh gotten oblong and and failed in that that uh circular shaft. And it's been a major overhaul to fix that one. So, they they stopped work on that that failed unit and put all their focus back on putting the unit one back together. It was it was taken down for some major maintenance. It was put back together, put back into service as quickly as possible. And now they're focusing on fixing that unit, too, and getting it back up and running. And we are we're hopeful that it'll be ready by the end of this year, first part of next year, something like that.

Okay, cool. Good luck with that. We appreciate it. Cool. I have no further questions. Yeah, I don't have any other questions either. Uh, thank you for the update and we'll pray for a monsoon season. Yep. I think that's all we can do at this point. All right. Well, thank you all for having me. Um, like I say, if you ever have any questions, um, please reach out myself, reach out to Anna, and uh, we'll we'll get your questions answered. But thanks for having me. Thank you for coming. We appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Anna. you. I guess real quick just on this um

in in the context of all this, we also learned last week at the Losei meeting that Clear Creek Reservoir is going to be drawn down to do work on the dam. So they're anticipating a big surge of recreational boating at Twin while that's happening and that's starting like June 13th. Um, so just kind of keep keep in mind in terms of visitation that's that's something that we may be facing sort of increase at Twin Lakes because the other other leg is

and they had the you have the meteorologist report there that does get into the predictions. So you might be able to grab that if you weren't on that call. I just keep hearing grumblings of a of a shift away from the leninia patterns, Pacific Ocean surface temps of uncertainty pointing towards a potentially wetter uh late spring, early summer. So, I think it is summer, isn't it? Sure. So, Josh, let me understand. They're going to draw down. They're going to Can you just say that again?

Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah, there is. So, there's been a lot of seepage through the dam at Clear Creek Pres. And so, at Lose, there's a representative from PBLO who indicated that starting the project starting June 15th of this year that they're going to draw the level of of Clear Creek all the way down so that they can they can work on the um the dam. As a result, the campground there is going to be closed during that time. Um I think some of the access points, they're they're going to drop below their boat level, boat rentals. Um, so that's why you're thinking there'd be an increase in boat activity at 10 lakes and just recreation in general. There's some really popular little beachy spots on Clare Creek that are super fun. And

so won't that help the boers downstream boers? You didn't mention that. Oh, in terms of the river itself. Yeah, potentially in terms of when they might decide to draw water, but I think I think it's going to happen relatively steadily like to get them to the point of being able to start work. Well, there'll be some really good fishing in whatever water's left in clear. There's typus. Yeah. Jurassic fish. All right. Shall we move on?

Yes, sir. Item number two, overview and updates regarding the Lifetime Race Series suite of events, including a recap of 2025 and focus of changes for 2026, led by Tam Tamara Jen. I'll be Tamara today. Tamara Jen Link. Jen Link, Commissioner. Am I guess I've never said your last name before. Jen Link. You probably haven't. Sure. Well, thank you for coming. Welcome.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. Um, we've been trying to have this for a while and just it speaks to the capacity. Like I think we started in late August trying to set this up. It was a little bit challenging. So, what I'd like to do is keep it succinct, but also questions along the way if that's good with you guys. If you have something that you're like, "Hey, I want to know more about that." But in response to kind of a joint work session last year, the idea being that we would have to tell them how to drive. Oh, dump something in my wrist here. You just keep scrolling. Oh, scrolling. Just going right here.

Um, so in response to that, one of the requests you all had was to come back and tell us how it went. Like we did a lot of things. So that's what part of today is about and then to try to highlight what you can expect to see. There's a couple of things that we're proposing and have worked with um sheriff's office and a few other folks to kind of think about again continuing to sustainability, safety, just all those pieces. So we'll jump into the recap and just any questions that come up, let me know. So overall numbers from last year, this just gives you a quick review. You guys have this I think now in your packet.

Yes. Yeah. Um but this gives you a quick look at what we saw actual on the line. So mountain bike camp 112 run camp 129. Um marathon heavy half 757 816. Nothing kind of out of the norm. What you will see this year um we'll probably see a reduction on the 100 mountain bike and then everything else I would expect to see pretty similar. We'll see probably I would guess the mountain bike will follow somewhere between 1650 and 1700 and you'll see that as we move along. How come there's reduction harvestable? Like it's just that's not the right number. Yeah. From our side like the quality of the product. Make make sure it's good for everybody from the community to the human to the athlete to the crew.

Well, it was last year was the first time I think I hadn't been able to hear people cross like the announcers at my house. So like the some of the volume stuff that from my just one personal single personal observation was that it was uh the first year I could remember that I I was not not listening to it. Yeah. Good. Good. I've got that in here so we can take a look at it. But that's good to hear.

I wanted to give you a snapshot. This is Place AI stuff that we pulled um pretty close to, you know, sometime after the event, but pulled it for the first recap. We did one with the city a while back. But so overall, this is just a snapshot of the 100 mountain bike as an example that we saw. 16,000 is the gas. And and just so you guys have this, I think you probably know at this point like the thing about placement that's really critical is that you really have to take it inside the borders of the building or inside the part of the corridor that you want. So this is the whole corridor of Harrison Avenue and not just a singular location. And what we saw is what we expect. you know, at 16,000 over the four days. The peak day was Saturday. Um, and we see next that some of those peak hours are here. So, you guys can look at this closer because I personally can't see it from here, but you can see that Thursday's 3K, Friday 4K. One of the questions that we were entertaining is, you know, is this only happening right at the start of the finish? And so, what we could tell from this is that the numbers are actually relatively high throughout the day and really in the middle of the day. So that's not necessarily start or finish. That's later in the day. So just good information for us to know about where we're putting traffic. And as we look at this year, we know our businesses are down significantly. We're kind of in a perilous place. So just good information to understand what the what the footsteps are doing. This is again back to, you know, an ask around financial transparency. So here's your local and again this is only like things that I or my team approved around the event. This is not athlete inclusive. This is nothing around the athletes. So that'll be more than $20 million something like that. But what we spent dollars on locally food and catering 212 law around 32k medical 74 that medical one is huge in the sense that you know we've been able to keep that local instead of out on the front range which has been a really important move over the last few

years. uh recycling with sustainability that's C4 local rentals rentals local shuttles that's school system that's different avenues from CMC school district different folks like that charitable contributions I think is a really important one this is separate from foundation contribution or any other contribution this is just something where we get to say hey right now I think we have all but two a stations being hosted and captain by a local group which means whether it is the high school mountain bike team or it is the arts team or it is whoever they're getting that little bit of chunk of dollars to help their budget for the season and it is I'll show you kind of a snapshot here in a second of who all those folks are. So that's what those dollars are and again you'll see that doesn't include a 60k contribution to C4 and a 13,000 to bright start as sort of the above and beyond from the foundation. Those are just directly out of the race series. So race series and foundation dollars are different just to have that clarity. Um I have a budget that we can kind of allocate certain things and make sure that our services are being used as locally as possible. Then the foundation is separate. Uh yeah, I mean most of that I think is pretty any questions there before I move.

Where's the the the legacy? Legacy is separate. Completely separate. Completely separate.

Completely separate. And in a previous like last year we kind of I shared that I tried to separate it out purposely because it gets confusing for folks. So Legacy Foundation is the original foundation um and a really critical component in ARM but very separate and their focus is scholarships and small donation like 5K is usually the the number that they'll two to 5K somewhere in that neighborhood. The F lifetime foundation has a tendency to focus on they want one or two larger things and then the charitable contributions is where we get to do kind of our 2K to 5K version. So that number of charitable contributions has hit a lot of different groups. This is kind of a snapshot of those folks, right? Is all the different groups that we have served in 2025 just to give you an idea and that again is there for you guys to kind of reflect back on. But it's a number of different things from you know and some of this we do space and equipment. This is really a snapshot. It's not the full picture. So questions there. Okay. So sound was one of our topics for last year. And one of the things that we promised to do is to take a picture, you know, kind of get the decibb. You know, we've all agreed that decibb are a hard way to manage, but it's a starting point. It gives us a, hey, we can compare that with actual experience, right? So here's what it was. This one is taken from the um and it's actually taken if you think about where the stage is at the football field, it's taken just to the left. It's not even taken all the way on the other side. So, it was at 61.8 dB. What we tried to do, and I shared this, I think with all of you afterwards, is did some research on what the state and some of our local communities are doing around sound and then just modeled that.

So, this really stuck with, you know, during actual hours below 65 and then in the middle of the night below 55, I think it is. We'll see later. I've got the numbers there for you. But I think this is where we compare what was real life experience to what we saw. You're not the first person to say it seemed like it was notably less loud. So, we've had good feedback on that. Any questions there? We did decrease the wattage of the shell. I just got to say Kenneth was not happy, but we did it. What's What's wattage? It's like how much watt is in the actual shotgun shell. So the more and the tighter the better. Okay. Soundproofing.

Yes. Yes. Some of them less than others. Yes. Okay. Um the helicopter, it stayed at the community fields and then followed from there as we planned. Didn't have any issues. You'll see later. I have the instant command log and I will show you the 12 calls or whatever we had throughout the year, throughout the season. Not just for one event, but for the whole season, we track 12 calls, I think it was, or 14. One of them notably was a human calling to say the helicopter's flying backwards just for our entertainment. But the Did you anybody here hear anything on the helicopter that was adverse? Just want to check that out. Not

seemed like we hit the mark, stayed where it was supposed to stay. Um, big area focus. I almost wore this shirt today. I thought it would be funny. Uh, Leadville local team. So, this group started meeting just after the uh after the town hall kind of in tandem with the joint work session and they're amazing. Like they really were they took it very seriously. They are very engaged. They are um on board to be back in this year. So, we'll talk about that. But essentially this team did a lot of things from the week of well meeting early on and really brainstorming together doing some ground work. We held a lot of different meetings from sixth street residents to just different business groups, different things trying to kind of get the full picture of how we best make this a sustainable set of events. And this group was really critical in that. During a race week for example, they would like if we take the marathon, we even we started with the marathon. We didn't wait for the hundreds. We wanted to kind of check it out and see how it would go. So they were out there with that week. They were out with not sure if this was good or not good, but they were connecting with folks and like making sure that their parking was safe, that they felt like they could get in and out of their locations, what did they need, you know, and talked with all the residents along. So on the marathon, that would have been on East 6th instead of West 6th, right? So really kind of made contact with all those folks and tried to get ideas around what would be helpful for them. And then during an event, we're out there in all kinds of bright yellow things and and being available to interact between the the athletes and the property owners to try to help keep folks off the property. So during the marathon, we did not do double cade. We did introduce double cade into the 100s. We didn't do that. During the marathon though, I am we're planning to do a section of that to protect the Moe's

businesses and a few things there this year and just add that piece in. It worked really well. We liked it, so why not, right? But this group was also out there with the businesses giving them a packet every week. It was updated of what could they expect to happen this week, where are all the key things that they need to know, all that kind of stuff. So, super successful. Any questions on the local team? it primary focus was on sorry if you said it and I missed it but was just outreach to the commercial local commercial

their primary I would say the primary focus of why do we engage that group was really to start to have boots on the ground locals who would understand better the property intersection between kind of those property pieces and the athletes and the crews that's where it started

what it developed into was also making sure that we were getting our businesses up to speed every week in preparation for, you know, where the bathrooms would be that week, where the where the this or the that. If it's the summer rush, everything's away from downtown, but they would be aware of that. But if it's like marathon, everything's happening here. And it's helped us, I think, identify like working with Harvey for Mo, like this year, we will put signs up that say Moe's and other businesses this way, expo this way, right? Like we'll just continue to do things like that. But that team started with I think more of the idea of how do we interface well between the athlete the experience for the community and help the athletes and the crews understand how to be nice humans in our backyard.

Other questions there. Uh double cade. You're saying that that just means when you've got barricades on both sides of the street. So the double barricade and we'll see that with the I have a picture down here somewhere. We'll see that with the hundreds. Um, this is what it looks like. So, in the middle here, like where they're standing is where the race is. This is a spectator line. And on this side is where resident property is sort of protected and a walkway for through so that we're not having folks standing on people's property. Cool. Does that make sense? So, it's level on both sides. Yeah. That's that zone right there is where I feel like the ambassadors would have, you know, a lot of door knocking, a lot of like, hey, here's how we're going to set this up. Y

do you need to walk across the street? Do we need a gap here so you guys can get to, you know, because that's something I feel like I'd heard in the past, not this year specifically, but people like I can't even get to my buddy's house, you know, like cuz the there was no there's no little gap, no walkway gaps to get through.

Yeah. I mean, we can always continue to look at it, refine it. We heard lots of positive things and this was a lot of engagement with Sixth Street residents like a lot of planning from March, May, March, April, May before we even got into the season and then as we got closer rechecking in okay here's what we're planning to do and I think that worked really well. I mean it was a lot of engagement which I think was important you know and like the other side of that engagement is really around this piece like we spent a lot of energy around how to be a good human on our website and our podcast and anything that was going out any kind I just did one last week same thing like really kind of trying to get that message out to remind folks you're coming into a town that's 2700 people this is not a big place you're getting the privilege of start and finish in a private residential area. How do we behave in that space? So, a lot of energy spent around that component and trying to get that message out um and bridge that, you know, start to shift that a little bit, which I think from everything we had, we held a residence, we had a conversation after, we had both a business and a sixth street, those pieces to just kind of check in and like how did this go? Did we hit the mark? And we got a lot of really positive less like what else we should do to change but can we continue to do it was more of the like this is good let's continue.

So a lot of things on website really got deep into it. We also have a like a visit Leadville page or something like that a Leadville page that's very Leadville centric like and we've gotten into we've gotten pretty close on being able to categorize and grab as many businesses as possible to have on there. That was a big outreach that happened. um we probably had 55 60 businesses attend the leveraging events which we'll continue to do this year but how do we leverage events? How do we get footsteps in your doors? and really kind of an awesome uh sharing and creative brainstorming session which I hadn't seen as much of before which was just sort of like hey we're making progress somewhere and I don't even mean race series right I just mean 55 businesses sitting together 40 businesses with 55 people talking about hey I tried this hey I didn't this didn't work but this worked and it was a really productive conversation that will continue and really think about how we're getting that information to these these folks to go and be a part of that and be a part of the businesses and go to those businesses. So, a lot of focus in that area.

Ah, yes. How long do you think we'll spend on restrooms if I start this topic? It's been a hot one lately. It's a hot one anywhere we go, isn't it? So, we added 16 toilets on the boulevard section and now they're kind of got got as many folks from the boulevard who wanted to and we drove the boulevard together and we picked where they would go because they had some definite like we don't want them here. we don't want them there.

And it opened up some things that I think are good for all of us to be aware of is they have concerns about some of the camping that happens down on that section of the county. It's kind of county property, I think, in there behind the rodeo grounds and not wanting to promote that to continue. I don't really know where the county is sitting with that as a okay place to camp or not camp. And I think more of it having to do with folks getting in there and kind of living there for the summer, whether it is race folks or just folks in general. So what they were really keen on was not wanting to have toilets right there that would continue to increase that idea or notion. So we got those spread out where they wanted them. Had a lot of positive response from all the Boulevard folks. That seemed to work well. We will continue to increase where the toilets live. We're going to continue to brainstorm how people do not go to the bathroom in people's yards, right? Like how many toilets do I have to have in how many locations so that we don't do that. Um and we will like one of our issues we have pictures of folks but we don't have bib numbers. So when we can get a bib number where we see it happening, we will make some very strong statements around that. As in you just have managed to get yourself a DNF on a bucket list item. So restrooms I think you know big deal waste our goal was 80% we got to 76% largely this happened because one of the things they got ordered for silver rush nobody realized it was glass mugs and guess what they come in every single mug had styrofoam around it so that has get gotten our marketing team to think a little bit more about what is the thing we're ordering but our diversion you know this is something that's really critical across the nation around events right how do we think about and it's something that we're working on with a larger group in the state of how are we building sustainable events and really thinking about the footprint and making sure that we are promoting sustainability across the board and not just more garbage and more things going into local transfer stations that kind

of thing. So this is higher than where we were last year and it's probably one of the higher diversion rates for events like this in the state in the in the nation I guess actually is what we heard from was at a conference was like race series somehow ended up in the lead on this and that's fantastic news. So questions there start finish line so this was again back to the sixth street conversation. This is this was a big emphasis and I think I kind of laid the the focus here on what we were doing. We did see um a huge change like we got people to stay inside of the cave where we wanted them to stay and that was a large focus of what the ambassadors were doing and will continue to do is help make sure that we have that separation and that the private residents feel like they have their space and are not like finding people camped out using their things sitting on their things. Like we've heard all kinds of stories, right? So that was pretty successful. Sound and noise level was a big focus, right? Everything from music to like what time of day it was okay to have the music on. Again, we went with the decibb that we talked about. Um and we'll continue to do that. Um barricade, we talked about that. We will this year go a little bit further past Pine Street. Talked with um the chief about that. Chief of um Trucka just we learned we got that double barricade. Um we got it to and pastine street but we'll go a little bit further. Just I noticed this past year I still look down and particularly in the bike mountain bike you see people crowding that end and we will stop that from happening. It's just not safe and not cool. So again protect private property local ambassadors keep doing their thing. We delivered signs to Sixth Street residents early in the week cones for parking where needed etc etc. Right. And just present throughout that. Any questions there?

Bored yet? Not bored yet? No. No. I'm waiting to make sure you're not going to cover something I want to other things I want to ask about moving up. So,

okay. Back to be a good human behavior, dedicated website, social media, QR codes included. Some of the other things we did was to put up signage that's like um eat drink local. So, we had a lot of go to town. Here's a QR code that sends you to all the places. So, put up those signs as well. That kind of thing. um parking. We have developed a decent parking system at this point. Decent, I say it's not the answer. It's not the final answer, right? It's working to the best of our ability. We know that we're trying to tackle this through the parking task force and through other arenas, but you know, we have a a pretty clear map that is being put out into the world and embedded everywhere we can get it. We have beefed up the staffing in those areas. the markings, all the different things that we need between. So, we've got right now until Jack Saunders ends up doing something with his property that's behind the rodeo arena. We're able to use all of that into the community fields, high school, middle school, elementary. There are some spots around Washington and third that we use as well. That's another few hundred spots as well. So, we've kind of we've created this space. We've created a parking map. It is everywhere you can possibly get it, including getting to the businesses so the businesses know somebody asks them where they're supposed to be going as well. It is on the website. It's in all the social media. So, the parking piece, I think, will continue to be the one that we focus on and wonder about how to do the best we can do. It's hard to get people to park where you want them to if there's not a repercussion to their behavior. um when we are able to see it, we can have them towed and we will you know and end up even you know when it's especially if we find out it's a local to be quite honest like we did do this once somebody's car was not where it should have been for 3 days and it was in the middle of the start line and we paid the bill. We moved the car but we

paid the bill, right? And we did that with law enforcement. So the street closure for the start of mountain bike and run, you may recall these again are more city ccentric things, but I think they're important for you to know because they're right outside your door, right? And just to have awareness on because it doesn't matter. The humans don't always go to city for city things and county for county things. Sometimes those overlap. So what we agreed on was that the race series would manage the street closure. Harrison is closed. This is the only time it's closed for our events is for 2 hours in one event for the mountain bike from 5 to 7 to just keep it safe, right? And so we managed that between some Ford vehicles, some Ford Broncos that we had, law enforcement vehicles that we had. We worked with law enforcement to make sure that we all agreed that this was a safe plan. We managed the side streets, all those things. And we're pretty successful with this. We had to change with the city on the run because it's only 20 minutes that we're just sort of or 40 minutes I think but we're calling it a delay as opposed to a a closure. So that's kind of the updates there. anything on the road piece that's important to you guys that I'm

I'm just wondering if uh the outreach to participants does it focus or primarily cover like the the time window of the events or is there any component of that that lets people be aware like hey if you have the freedom you know life style that you come up here a month early to start training and you're living in your sprinter van on Harris Avenue. Um, which I see. And, you know, I I don't want to like immediately peg someone as like, oh, they're here for the races. I can tell. But like sometimes you can tell, you know, like the stickers, the bracks, the, you know, um, is there ever anything like, hey, like even if you're here before the races, we still want you to to pay attention and adhere to this.

We can do more, but yes. I mean, we're like right now and we'll get to this in a minute. Like the conversation on be a good human has started. It started now and it started like as I said, I did an interview, two interviews last week and it's a part of those interviews. It's a part of everything we're messaging in every possible way. And we can get more pointed on it. You know, if that's if we're feeling like, hey, we want to see something like this, no problem. But we are really hammering hard on this to the point of um might have wristbands that say be a good human this year that go that they have to wear as a reminder. But yes, and I think we can still think about creative ways to to to tell the message more. To me, this is beyond the race series. This is everything we do about we want tourists here, but how are we having sustainable tourism? We need the footsteps, but how do you behave here?

Yeah. So it can start here because we have an avid audience that we can speak to and who else can we also get this message to? So love to dream and dream and scheme on that and how we continue to do that. Yeah. And I just we just don't have the capacity to have people enforcing every parking infraction that goes on and it's uh I think the best way to approach it would just outreach and let people know like hey this this is kind of not so awesome. So, be a good human and don't, you know, live in your car on the side of the road here for a couple weeks for the raise.

Yes, we have folks that park and they're not all like some of them are obviously have more expendable income than others, if you will, because we definitely have folks behind the race series that are living there sometimes and they are not race folks. And we eventually get to a point where, you know, an even PD and sheriff's office have limitations on what they can do in those situations. Not just because of capacity to do it, but because of what is the infraction and how are we actually handling this infraction? Yeah. What am I actually infracting against? What do the codes even say? Exactly. So, there's a lot of discussion on that

and it just be I prefer to be like as an outreach thing instead of a ticket on a windshield, you know, cuz we want these people here. It's it's our local businesses depend on this stuff. And then that's becoming more and more clear to me every year that you know there are other towns that would kill to have an event like this in their town to bring you know boots on the ground and people indoors.

Well, and right now like you know I just were talking about this thing that Main Street is working on for Harrison, right? And one of the questions is can we get a 5K? you know, because we believe somewhere in this culture, we believe that having something tied to that is what's going to help bring in humans. So, to your point, I think it is a large part of the population, but we also know that within every population, doesn't matter who they are, we're going to see people who are not behaving as we'd like them to behave. So, outreach is works to a point, but I will just I think until we have some kind of a system in place that also forces that, which we're exploring with the city like what that can look like and what can be amendable to everybody. So, we're kind of in the depths of that conversation right now. We had brought in a company to do a proposal that has been operating out of um Bre, Idaho Springs, Crested View, all all the major towns.

The Bre Park folks, the Bre Park folks, you don't like them either. Different conversation. No comment. Different day. Different day. Yes. Okay. One more question on the road part. I know it's totally legal to ride two a breast, but I think I've seen a lot of three a breast and is are you going to address that here or can I just ask you if that's part of your good human campaign? 100%. Just let people pass. It creates animosity. 100%. So, and I been a writer since I was 14 years old and uh it's not something you want to do with I personally stop all the humans I see doing it. Yeah. And I'm like,

"No." You know, but beyond that, it is a part of everything we put out. Do not do this. It's a part of race day meeting. It's a part of what's on the website. It's a part of all those things. And it's like trying to teach people the constant. I think if there's one single thing that is probably the most animosity that is because it's scary, right? It's super scary. I come around the corner and there's three people at breast. It doesn't matter. And every one of those is going to be associated with the race series. And 89% of them will be somehow involved. They're not all, but they will be mostly. And that's all the more vocal opponents see. They don't see the groups of people who are riding single file.

They only see and remember the three of breast folks. And you know, like it's it really parallels a lot of stuff I deal with when when we're on the OP subject is no one notices the people who are following the roles, people who are behaving properly. They only see the bad apples and that's all that sticks in their head and that's what the whole group gets judged by. So it's a really hard challenge to um mitigate that. I want to rewind a couple like one subject real quick. Is there any messaging about singleuse plastic bottled water consumption? I mean like our tap water is cleaner than what they're buying in plastic things and with how much our land

we want but our but our folks want to sell it. Safeway does. I mean they're not it's not just Safeway. I'm just going to tell you straight up gas station. Well, these gas stations is twin legs. It's like what can we do? refillable water bottles and like Well, now you're talking about campaign that is like bigger than Yeah. Okay. Can we get some stations, some water stations? Do we have some funds laying around for There's a lot of faucets around there. I don't disagree with you.

It's watching those those shelves in Safeway get completely emptied out. And I'm like, "Oh man, they're paying more than they pay for gasoline for something that should be 5 cents a gallon off a tap. Not even 2 cents a gallon." and our tap water is better than what they're buying. And it's like just uh I always want to stop people in the grocery store like, "Hey, you know, our tap water is better than that stuff." That's a habit for a lot of people that live in cities and stuff. It's We need ice tax on bottled water. It is. Okay. Should we go home? Yes, ma'am. Sorry. I got I saw a squirrel over there.

You saw a squirrel and then there we were. Um, again, we talked about this. We did a business engagement on June 9th, over 50 businesses, humans in attendance, shared ideas. It was really pretty powerful and it ended in, you know, we've got and we put out a like basically there's a link and they can reach out to us if they're not on there. They can reach out and it says it on the bottom of the website. If you're not on here and you want it to come true, please reach out to us because of course we can't get everybody. We're trying to figure out how to make sure it's available to everybody to be posted here. You know, I think one of the things that we're going to continue, we're really trying to brainstorm, which again is not a county thing, but you know, business in our county is all of our issues, right? And it's like that interface between expo and business and like really trying to make sure that we've got as many spots available for our local businesses to be there. But also, we we struggle with that component of I can't be in two places at once because we're small business owners. And so, just continuing to brainstorm that idea. But a lot of the conversation actually wasn't, you know, we did have an increase. We saw maybe 15% more. Take advantage of that. And we're trying to brainstorm together, you know, and continue to think about with with brands coming in that are locally already in our stores like Let Outdoors, you know, how are we brainstorming with those brands to do things with shops that are here and not cannibalizing sales in those stores? And it's just, you know, we're in this. We need the footsteps. We need the event. We need the thing. And how do we continue to feed our local businesses within that? And as we know, different events feed different businesses. And that will always be true. But we want to continue to brainstorm that. And we will. We did see growth in terms of who came in and took up a space, which we loved. We want to continue to think about how we are brainstorming that concept of and and also the education to the sponsor side. Like that's been a huge push for me is like, hey, you guys want you to think about what you're talking

with your with your sponsors about also that you're in this small town that's really needing to benefit economically. The reason that these events exist is purely around economic development is around the fact that we were really in a big diet for a period of time. And so to move that away on any level doesn't work. So we continue to have those conversations. We're seeing positive things, but it's going to continue to be a work in progress. Um, incident log. This was a fun one. So, this is kind of what the log looks like. Um, this was out in a number of places. We had we have cards. We have all kinds of stuff that's going out to try to make sure anybody who wants to get a hold of that phone number so that they can make a direct call, it's coming to us and hopefully less on city county directly, but it's coming to us first so that we can start to field it. And it seemed like with the city we heard that that was fairly effective. I don't know from the county side what kind of calls you guys saw on your side if anybody has track record of that

including emails. But the idea will be that we'll continue this hard. And so what we saw we circulated that every possible place including on the website. I'm putting the number on the back of the bibs this year like all kinds of places that we can. The bib is not really the answer, right? It's the crew members. It's those folks. It's our residents. It's our humans who need to have that number so they can call. Sorry, there was 15. And that's the breakdown of what the calls were. Two DNFs, two medicals, one unlocatable human which we found. And that happens often. And what's interesting is that who grabbed that? That was a crew member of somebody who grabbed a number like I can't find my human. We get that um you have lag between cell service and update of where somebody is on course. So we get that two were a parking um issue. Someone moved cones or resident to park. So what was cool about this is then we had people right there to go talk to them and have just interaction right away with the humans and find the solution together to what the situation was. one self-resolved. I think that was another person who parked where they shouldn't have parked and got them stuck behind got themselves stuck behind the closed gates out at out at uh Twin Lakes um above the dam and so that was on them and they got that resolved.

When you say we have people out there you mentioning that what does that force what's the size of that group? Depends on the event but it's four to six to eight.

Okay. We're kind of examining that this year to decide will we um will we need more humans? Will we have more for this event? We kind of highlighted that in the abstraction review with that team of like what did you see boots on the ground? Was it too long a shifts? What did our residents see? Did we have enough humans? So, what it means is somebody from Monday of race week is manning the phone. So, for the instant log, we've got somebody manning the phone. We've got anywhere from four to six humans starting Monday going out knocking on doors depending on where we are starting the race from. Like obviously at the rodeo grounds that's different than or at the Dutch Henry that's different but you know I think and then like you've got a whole chunk of time with say 100 run where nobody's in town, right? You've got a 30-hour race where 80% of that is away from that area. So, we don't have those folks right there, but we do have them manning the phones and in some cases out in Twin Lakes instead of here, if that makes sense. Um, the two calls from the same person on the helicopter. The first one was to let us know if there was a helicopter. The second one was to let us know that it was flying backwards. Um, too concerned about their location or ensuring access was possible. Like just asking like being aware of the fact that there was where they were going to camp and was there going to be any issues or was it a problem? One was a caller state patrol trying to get a hold of me. Um, one littering from previous year, not from this year. One incorrect package. So, you can just see it's a it's a it was an interesting and we're just going to continue to hammer this, right? So, we will get the number out early and often, get it around town so everybody has it, and just continue to try to take that out of the capacity burden to the city and the county. You know, it seemed really effective with the city. sounded like that call log came way down and folks like part of what I think happened is people were like I have a mechanism I have a tool.

So we just saw some of that come down but I think also there was humans that they could go talk to on the street. So if there was a direct issue there was somebody in a yellow that they could go on the city side of things where were they traditionally getting all the calls into? Was it like their law enforcement uh numbers or their city? No, I say Andrew would get some. There was a number of different avenues. It it felt like they're they were admin as much as law enforcement. So, it wasn't going dispatch. It was going and city council members. Okay. I didn't get anything in my inbox about the races this week. That's a good thing. Yeah.

Okay. Anything else here? That's our log. We'll continue forward again is the point. Um will you uh partner with that the cell service that partnered with us this last weekend? They had a special log. Is it watch? We have we have a very dedicated system ourselves. So we have probably 15 star links throughout the course. So we don't face that issue and that's been a purposeful integration.

I'll work with Norm to see what he's got going and however we can promote what he's doing if it makes sense for sure. But we also have been um I guess self reliant but also self-directed to take care of that issue in advance because there's a lot of things tied up in the safety of that, right? Like there's timing and there's people being able to track their human but there's also we've got to be able to communicate with law enforcement as well and with medical and all those folks. So we have for the last 5 years I think three years ago we personally invested in eight Starlinks and then we the timing group that we contract with it's a part of their responsibility to have the same amount that's needed for each aid station. So it puts us at a pretty large number and broad scope of internet access.

Okay. How'd it go though? How did it work this last weekend? Mhm. I don't know. I wasn't here, but uh we got a special login password as locals to uh to bypass some of the the traffic. I guess it gets so jammed up you can't use your phone. It gets incredibly saturated. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And I think whatever ways we can solve that collectively is awesome. So I think what Norm is doing is really important as well. Yeah. And honestly to have him do that and to continue with what we're doing then just helps unsaturate some of that particularly where it has to do with safety law and medical

that makes it feel special when someone says hey you're local here's a special password you can give it to your friends if you got friends but you know anyway

um continue so 2026 focus and direction here we go we'll continue to focus on sustainable events will collectively assess and address. You know, like I said to you already, we're going to lengthen the barricade on Sixth Street. We will I've already added some toilets in key areas and just continue to add them as we see fit. I'm going to continue and our team will continue to analyze the start finish line and just how we are going to one of the things that we've interfaced with that's really tricky. a new company took over the toilet company that we work with that actually has enough toilets to manage what we do. And so they've been in a learning phase for two years now. and we're trying to figure out how to work with their learning phase to get them to catch up to where we need them to be, which is, you know, things like moving them Friday night onto Harrison for Saturday morning because that is really the critical component is how do we just make this really accessible where people are not doing silly things and and right there with that, we were prepared. If somebody came forward with a bib number this year and you're doing something that we have clearly said and it's within our rules, it's written there, you can get disqualified for this, you know, I'm ready to and we as a team are ready to make a decision around that that just exemplifies this is why it's a priority and bummer. Sorry, bathroom is important, but there's 62 of them right around you. So, changing human behavior, as we've learned, is not easy and it is a process. Patience being a big scaffold to that whole thing. Um, we're working on this concept of offseason marketing with local businesses. I will say this has been we're going to continue to work on this and try to figure out what what can we do. You know, there'll be some things that we do around this May 2nd event that will show up where we try to use that group to get them here. You know, we want people spending dollars in the offse and that's a really solid base of humans that we can draw on when we choose to want them to come. Um, so

we're working on that. That's something we're going to continue to focus on and really work with some of our local businesses on what does that look like? What are we trying to market? What what message are you trying to get out and also build things around that really where it fits with this audience then we can message that group. Um we want to work with the city on welcome signs for town. This has been brought up by a few folks and really trying to figure out how are we welcoming with sustainability as the pl as the as the scaffold, right, as the foundation. But we see in many locations where we have welcome signs into town. And it's not just welcoming races, right? It's welcoming the human with a caveat of how do you behave? Um stories on local heroes, athletes, and business residents. So, we'll continue to do things like that and really think about how are we highlighting. I mean, I will say this about our live streaming this past year. I think if I take off a lifetime hat for a second and an EDC hat for just a second, that's worldwide branding that we can't purchase. So, that live streaming was touching folks outside of this country and we were getting feedback. You know, I think the question is how do we use it in the time that we want to use it? We don't need them to come in July anymore. That's not what we need. But how do we access that level of optics in the seasons that make sense for us? So, it's a continual conversation and thought process. Um,

I enjoyed that. I enjoyed watching it just coming to town and trying to drive around and watch the race. It's pretty cool spectator. We're introducing it for the run this year. Okay, cool. Which I think will be even more spectacular. We'll not have a helicopter involved. So, don't worry. We're not going to come in June and go, "Hey, by the way,

no, no helicopter. That was my hard line." But also like how are we touching and leading on that with running that the ultra running world is a really important um I looked at you for a second because you are an ultra runner. You know, it's a really important audience, but it's also the ethos, right? This is where this started and it started with something very different than mountain biking. It started with the ethos of something that wasn't happening anywhere else. And we want to really I think that is a place we can play with our messaging as Leadville too of what does it mean to be a part of this community and get into that ethos component and really use that. So the live streaming for that I'm pretty excited about. Um it will be drone only and and on foot and ebike and that kind of thing. But it it will be a really cool thing and I think even for me I got to watch after all of it and go I don't like that. I don't like that. It was a really good way to see some of the things that are happening out there that we can assess as well because I certainly can't be everywhere either. So, worldwide branding, but also lots of information. Law enforcement, we like I got to say you guys, since we've had Heath in his role, this has just astronomically been a win. And we have increased year-on-year learning and being able to go, "Oh, we need more law enforcement here. Oh, we need more support here. How do we keep this safe for everybody? How do we assess what's really important here? Um, no, no, no. That's good. So, we'll continue to do that. And we've already been chatting and trying to talk through like the ranger piece, the Colorado Rangers. So, for just for optics, we have Colorado State Patrol, Colorado Rangers, ESOs, police department, we have a wide range. And then we have search and rescue hospital, you know, fly for life as needed, like all these different resources here and organized as a part of this and the

Can I can I ask that we loop in whoever OEM is? I can't wait. Yes, it won't be me, but as soon as that person is on board, I'd really like to do to loop them in. Mhm. And maybe you're going to address this in a minute. So sorry for interrupting. I think questions I have as it was the OEM last year and the Labotifier started that Sunday evening. Yeah. Is knowing, you know, what what what a backup plan would be that had happened while we were all out there. you know, I'm on board with that even though like that's an old

figuring out like what what would that because I thought the Twin Lake shuttle was the best it's ever been and just the changes that were made to getting to Twin Lakes, but then my question is what would the backup plan be if the fire had happened while everybody was out there and so just I think that those are the things that it would be great to have like a if this happened we would have this backup plan and in my and having been that direct experience of ground zero for floods and formal fire on the front range as a firefighter with folks trapped and how we got them out and there was moments where like in in the flood it was a helicopter we had to it was you know it was a lot of big resources coming in to get people out and I think to your point and as you know I've sent emails saying I agree with that like how are we planning and I'm really looking forward to who that person ends up being.

And at least at that level, one of the things I would wonder about is how is that human helping be the gatekeeper of and planning to planning together, but also ultimately not gatekeeper of the whole thing,

but more in line with what criteria has been met here that helps us plan. But I think what we don't have right now is we don't have an evacuation plan. Yeah. for some of these areas and key areas. And some of that's going to have to be like if we got into that situation, that would be an OEM making that call along with the sheriff to pull in National Guard or whoever it is. Like that's where we were with the the flood was it was National Guard, you know, and we're not going to be able what we want is we want to identify to the best of our ability models and tabletop exercises that let us see, hey, we should have this section over here is well mitigated. Is it got an LZ? It's got all these things. So, we want to start to move people and have those identified throughout the course. I have LZ's identified and have had those identified for a while, but that doesn't solve this. So, I look forward to it. I don't have the answer, but I look forward to brainstorming it together as opposed to because I think it's a bigger question for us in general,

particularly the year we're in. Yeah. The drought we're in. fire day really high and thinking about how would we get having a plan to fall back on so we could get people out right that's a tabletop like if that far happened to be the lower part of the pass of hope pass then we've got a significant thing we've got to so I'm with you and I'd love to think about that um well you're just as likely to get a foot of snow

that would be great I would take that yeah I would too I mean I'm nervous about this too I got to be honest with you, this is probably the number one thing I'm most nervous about and I'm looking forward to you guys finding the ideal candidate and being able to work with them and think about it from that. It's been on my mind for 5 years. Like I've been asking this question, but we haven't quite been there to really have the right human to start and have the right capacity to start to strategize. I mean, your other big events are in town, so it's a little easier to figure out what you do, right? But anyway, I'm Yeah. Um, we're going to continue with Let the Locals. We're going to continue with instant contact. We're going to continue with business support, expo business support, sound. Sound will be the same. You'll see that really be a focal point that we will keep it at the same levels, you know, and if if we find that we're getting feedback that we need to shift it again, we'll shift it again. But it seemed like we had a pretty solid win this past year from all information shared. Um, be a good human will be a big focus. We've already talked about this. We'll continue forward with them. Um, again, same thing. Sound here's your your decibb are in here. So, subdeible between 7 and 10 p.m. below 55, 10 to 7 a.m. So, it's clearly laid out. Again, as we know, this is somebody can come back and go, "That was still too loud." And we'll go, "Okay,

we can show the picture that it was, but then let's reduce it or can't hear a thing. We're good."

So, we're just going to continue to monitor that really closely. Again, same thing with toilets. Big human. I think I've touched on this enough at this point. you know, it's a big focus for me. Um, what do we expect? 150 for camps. That will not change. Those are your dates. So, you can refer back to that. The biggest date change, and I think everybody should know this by now because Boom Days is back a weekend. So, that put the mountain bike back a weekend. But everything here, there's no other specific request to county or needed for county in the mountain bike or the run camp. Nothing really changes. Right now, we have requested the police lead out. That's just there for your visibility. Because on Saturday ride, we do have 7:30 a.m. start and Chief is on board. So, it's 150 people. We go the start basically from the race series store through the light. He gets us out of town. He did it this past year. So, nothing big there. Let's focus on Any questions on mountain bike camper run camp for this year. Um, I will say this about that and about fire. So when we did have a fire that we couldn't change anything about two years ago, we just modified in real time. So I changed what courses we did. We changed whatever we needed to change to really be thoughtful. And even last year, we knew that during mountain bike, we had um a potential

um riots, not the right thing. What's the other one? Not riot, but the positive side of riot protest. Like we knew that we had a potential protest the Saturday of mountain bike camp. So with the sheriff, we analyzed it. We said, "Hey, let's split the days." So we're just not in town and we're not a part of the problem. So the one piece I can say is we will address in real time. We changed our courses when the fire was out there all the way through stage race. We just cut that section out, changed it, did whatever we needed to do. And we will continue to do that preemptively stuff. The thing that's hard is the thing that happens in in the moment. Okay. Marathon expected attendance is everything's here. Just a quick snapshot so you can grab it easily. Expected start line 750 per event. Your marathon starts at 6:30, heavy half starts at 9:00. Again, this is all east side. Our biggest concern here that I work closely with the sheriff and search and rescue on is the exposure time that we have and this year will be one that I'm going to I feel like our our level of risk increases a bit, but mosquito pass like a I don't right now it looks like we're not going to have the issues of shoveling snow. That's nice. But the flip side of that is I wonder if we'll be preemptively more at risk of a lightning storm in the afternoon or all day long or something weird weather-wise. And our issue there with mosquitoes is just as a high level awareness, this is what we think about and what we work closely with all of our resources with is what do we do should we have a storm coming in. One of the things we have in place that we work through search and rescue with is we have a a relationship with Noah that we are working early like we'll start having meetings with them May and then we have each week of race week we'll meet with them several times before we get to the race to have hey what are we expecting for weather we'll have real-time updates if we see a storm that's shifted is moving faster we know that like we called the race halted the race paused the race for silver rush last And that was all in conversation with

Noah because we did have lightning that was within 10 miles, within 5 miles, and it was directly where the pocket was important. It was over where the race was. So, we paused the race and then we restarted it. I see it. Open Snow launched a lightning uh I don't know if it was a separate app of theirs or not, but that's a few lightning apps out there. good resource to

Noah's is just fantastic because I get to call them right then and there and they'll call me like here's what's coming your way and we can make some decisions in real time. That one snuck up on us and it was like immediately boom and so we just got out and we paused the race at Black Cloud. We were on the tail end of it. So we paused got those folks to there we got them in a van and shuttled them out so they they didn't get to finish and then there were some folks who did and we just worked through that on our side. So the lightning apps are great. Noah's fantastic. It's been a strong resource and we'll continue to work with them. Um that's my biggest concern that's on everybody's radar is just understanding that that component um mosquito pass is a real thing. So leadouts will be PD uh again will be coordinated with dispatch and there's a lot of coordination in the marathon just on that side of being prepared to jump. This is for your awareness. We asked for it, got granted so that we don't have through traffic across popular. This has become a thing and it's been true for years now, but we just asked for this to be closed. Still can park here. We want to keep the alleyways open so that people can get in and out and around there and they can park here, but they can't cross over um 600. So 6:00 a.m. to we said 10:00. It's not going to be that. It's going to be till like 3:00. As long as Leslie can get the mos, we're good.

Well, and we're going to make sure she has a special walkway, so we'll be fine. Okay. Um, silver rust, we can nothing major here, you guys. Like, this has been an ongoing like how do we handle Mcquey and College Drive and we've gotten pretty good at this. We've got the Rangers down there. We've done some good signage. I'll get with Michael and and Mabel, you know, as we get a little closer and we'll talk about We've put signs on either end. I noticed the copper mountain sign was up for it was it was probably for ski training too but it was an event before that and I was like oh that's cool that cop we got lead event this weekend so I want to coordinate that as well that's that's great we had coordination with we had some cool coordination with contractors who had signs out who were just like sure we'll we'll switch them on for you for this weekend out in the Twin Lakes areas that construction was going on out there so a lot of coordination around signage and communication that will continue rangers will be in that Dutch Henry area as they have been the last couple of years. That's been super successful to help manage that safely and help some people not be as stupid on their bikes as they are sometimes. Stage race weekend. Again, the one piece here that we have worked with the sheriff's office on is on Sunday the race goes from Twin Lakes Dam back home and we're going to make a small shift and it's essentially a soft 10-minute closure. So they come out of the dam and instead of that choke point along, there's a single track that comes out of there and takes them over to County Road 10. Instead of that um soft closure, so they're coming out of here and they generally go this way and it's just like 350 people just choked. So we all looked at it last year together like Keith and Benny and I and and they were like, "Hey, I think we can make this happen." So the idea is a soft closure. They come out here, go across and up, and we get them through, and it's over, and we don't have that choke point. It

gets them moving faster, and it gets them out of that section faster. Wait a sec. Uh, can you I'm sorry. So, that whole crew area there, this is stage race only. Oh, this is stage race only. Got it. During the 100 mile, is there a trail there? Are you going to ride run on the road? They'll just hold We'll hold traffic on either side. Okay. They'll hold it, not us. And then we'll get them over and out of there. And it literally like the gun goes off at 9:00. Oh, I see. They'll be through there by 9:10. This is day three. Day three. Very short amount of time. Just safer. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions there?

Sounds doable.

Yeah. So, 100 mountain bike. Um, I think the biggest thing on your radar that we'll want you to think about, and I've talked like Keith and I have talked about this a fair amount, have a picture of this. Yeah. So, this is the Outwardbound Fish Hatchery. This So, now both the 100 run and the 100 mountain bike come through this property, the Outwardbound property. And that's been a great shift. But people are dumb and they still try to drive through here. They drive too fast. They do all kinds of stupid things. And so what we've talked about is a closure here. So this is 5A fish hatchery. So we just closed this section, right? The main traffic is going in here to park. Can you guys see around me? So they're going in here to park, right? We close from here's the fish hatchery. That means you can get around. You can get to everywhere. You get to the fish hatchery. You can detour around here. Alls we've done is take out this section where we then have cars coming through here where they're turning in and out in this left turn. So, a safety management piece to make it safer for everybody involved and to help the people who can't help themselves.

Will you give uh obviously you'll give special consideration to the very few residents that live there. Will they have a special hanger or something for their mirror? You mean right here? Yeah, I think there's there's two there. I think this is the only one, but we can actually go and talk to them to figure out how they want to handle it and make sure like we're looking at something similar that's not on your on your radar for the Coline climb because that has become a little bit crazy too, but that's a Chaffi County thing. Um, and just thinking about those residents and specifically outreach. So in my mind, commissioner, I would just like my thought is to talk to them specifically and like how do you want to handle this so that it's good for you?

Um we don't see like the only traffic and I stood out there the last two years, a couple of hours of both events and just really annoyed but also like an immense amount of resources trying to hold people back from being dumb. And it feels like this is a safer way to approach it and just keep the cars out of there. Like I don't think the thing that none of us want is a car and athlete intersection that we all have to work through. Yeah. So, and this doesn't affect anybody except for maybe like you said one or two. So, that's the idea is to go talk to them directly. But that's just on your radar of this is the ask. Okay.

I'll look it. I'm going be right on time. Um, same thing on that's the only thing different on the 100 run is that same thing to do the exact same thing there. So, nothing really major that you should see coming your way. Everything else should look pretty standard. Um, expected attendance 720 like I said 1650 for the mountain bike. What you will see like we will continue to the shuttle system. We're just going to continue to refine and part of this will allow us to refine that a little bit too because we're not having traffic coming through there. and they're only going to go into outerbound and we are going to bring those buses down 5A. So, we've just been working to refine that, make it smoother so that people use it and so that we really overall the goal is decrease congestion, decrease pullups for everyone, but also that law enforcement, EMS have good access to get in and out. You have now four minutes. Take all the time you want.

I got two questions. An easy one and a hard. You want the easy one first? The easy one might affect me in the future and that is the inexplicable banning of drop bars. I don't know if we have time for that. You don't have to. I think we're going to have to table that one. Commissioner, second question is uh is the permit. We were talking about moving the timeline up so you're not scrambling for permits at the at the last minute. And then we also floated the idea of a multi-year permit. So, to float that idea back at you. Yeah,

I'd love like if we got to a place where we all felt really good. One of the things I would propose I will tell you that the permits have been in for a while. So they were in in December. Okay. And there's like no pointing fingers like nothing. Like we're all just dealing with capacity right now. So our goal that's why we had an email out August 28th saying when do you want to meet?

Because we were trying to get in front of that and I want to get to a place where we can actually actualize that. It might be that we think about this year before we get there, what is our review date and we just set it now. It's kind of where my head has gone because if we can get to a system where we feel really good. So where we are with the forest service for line of sight is I came back with the same thing. We want a 5-year permit with them and I think we're going to be in a place to do that. They wanted two years. They wanted to see this kind of follow through a second year and then be open to a discussion about a fivey year. And I would just float it back to you guys and say, hey, can we get to a place where we feel like a 5year with some kind of ability to go in, hey, we need a modification,

but it takes out some of that doesn't mean you don't get a review. It can mean we set the recap early. We set it now for I would love to do it at the end of August. I would really love for you to get to know as close to when it happened because I think the problem is we have so much time that some of our memory is like, well, was it this or was it that? And we want to make sure that we are capturing what happened that year, but also things that are fresh in our mind. So, we'd love to set that early. And we'd love to think about coming into next year setting a new precedence of is there a potential for a 5-year permitting plan that would help alleviate some resource work?

Well, I think under your leadership, it's certainly possible. So, as long as you stay for the 5year duration, that conversation's going to need to get tabled. I definitely think that's like a larger conversation, but we we did receive these permits early as we requested. So, we appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. But when you're focusing on that and you've also got you're getting so close to the dates and you're still worrying about permits is you could have a better smoother event if the permits were in place and you could set set those aside and focus on the trash and the traffic and all that stuff.

That was definitely that's where we'd like to be. probably be uh easier on our staff's bandwidth as well if we get to a point where multi-year permits feel like they make sense. Well, I think you just I mean I I don't know the answer, right? Like that's really something you guys have to think about. But one of the things I offer is how do we get creative? Like how do we think about where there's structure in there to support something that needs to be changed or addressed but still allows for some Yeah. Because every year our resources are going to be a little different. We have to adjust it. But to have that basic permit in place, I think we all have to get creative about a lot of things, right?

Because depend on staff turnover in your department, also turnover up here in the city. A lot of things could work against you. Well, or does that mean that we do get more creative as a county in terms of is that the thing that you like what is the thing that we need the BOCC really what do you need your attention on when you first come into office, right? Because that's always going to be a January thing. So, just interesting timing considerations across the board if that wasn't the first thing you were tackling it. I don't know. Anyway, one of them. Do we have any other questions? Because you have 36 seconds. No, you have 12. You have seven. So, you're not going to answer me about the drop bars? I got tabled.

Keegan is not going to be happy about that. Who's not? Keegan. Oh, he's fine with it. He is. Yep. Okay. You ran it by. Yep. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I went to the pros, too. I You know, personally, it's about safety. It's really It's about safety in the sense that while there's the handful of humans who can handle it, there's the many that can't. And what we do see with this is it's a bucket list item, which means it's drawing humans who don't all have the same skill set. Exactly. And we've got to then be the parents, right, and make really good decisions. I'm in a conversation right now cuz now somebody's like, "Well, I've got bike packing bars that just have these handles here, right?" And it's like, "We're going to be consistent." Okay, cool. Very good. Thanks for being on time.

Thanks everyone. Thank you. Oh, they're okay. They should be. Do you need me to pull anything up? What time is this? Um, I'm having trouble with this clock. It's 12:30. Do you want to just point of privilege?

Unless What is the topic? What are we on now? Do I need to be here? We're public transit. Cool. Can we take a three minute break? Yes, we're still waiting on some folks to show. I know. We're all here, but we we probably should just say it's going to be a few minutes. Just a couple minutes. We need a bathroom some water and stretch your legs. Yeah. No,

we're back from our short break and we'll now move on to item number three of this work session. overview and discussion for potential change to the Lake County Transit to move from a standard route to an on call service within a fixed area. This will be led by Stuart Clark, our facilities and fleet director. Um, thank you. Um, this is a multimonth project we've been working on and um, we currently have had a a local transit system running since November of 24. And we we we've had kind of a standard route that goes to the hospital, some outlined um housing communities and that kind of thing. And we haven't had um the wrership that we really would would like to have had for the amount of money that's being spent on this. And so our contractor that runs our bus um suggested that we go on more of an on call type of a a route um they've had good success in other areas like Moab and Steamboat Springs perhaps somewhat similar to this community where they have quite a bit more ridership with this um less less of an empty bus going down the road um and they better serve their communities. And so um they're pretty experienced in this and um we originally thought we would kind of open it up to the whole community and with based on their experience they said we could overload what we currently have

for transportation one bus at a time. So, they wanted to kind of open it up at a smaller amount closer to what our fixed route was. Um, anyway, I'm going to have Mike Fischer talk about that a little bit. If we could bring up the map um that goes with that. Um, it should be just if you scroll down to the bottom of their presentation. It's the first on call map JPEG right there.

Yes, right there. Anyway, I let him talk about this a little bit more and then he we've got a couple of slides too that he could a little bit of supporting data that we could talk about. Um I I want to put a plug in for our contractor down downtowner. They've been wonderful to work with. They're responsive. Uh they have good ideas. Um, and when there's any type of problem with the system, um, for people, they they've let us know right away. We've been really impressed with their their service. But, Mr. Fisher, would you like to walk us through this just a little bit?

Yeah, definitely. Um, just quickly, I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to talk today and kind of discuss some of the proposed changes. Um, so yeah, we've been operating the fixed route since about November of 24. And unfortunately, the ridership just isn't, you know, where we would like to be. So, uh, we've kind of proposed this service area, which isn't much different than the route services we provide. However, it all just kind of function a little bit differently. There's currently this this bus route that hits the um Lake Fork and and Mountain View, Mountain Village uh communities and then runs through town. It kind of runs on an hour and a half, hour 45 minute frequency. Um currently how it operates and there's opportunity to call to request deviations. Instead, the the route would function basically is passengers request a pickup in a drop off location. um we would pick them up and drop them off at the locations requested or something close to it depending on the conditions. Can we vehicle in there? And there's a few different reasons why we'd like to do this. Um we think it would increase the accessibility to passengers. You know, one thing we've heard from passengers who don't ride the current fix route very frequently is we just don't go to or get them close enough to the the destinations they want to get to. Um, it also just, you know, sometimes doesn't really fit into their schedule. Whereas, instead of having to, you know, plan around this hour and 45 minute frequency, the on demand nature of the changes we're trying to make would allow passengers to look up a wait time. Um, a vehicle would come directly to them and take them directly to their drop off location. Uh, so we we think it increase efficiency uh because right now we're only doing about 1.6 passengers per hour. And I just think, you know, with the community and the needs we have out there, I think more than that. Um, and then there's kind of like the

environmental and cost piece of going on demand, which, you know, right now that vehicle is running non-stop, um, kind of all day. We do have a lunch break midday, but the vehicle does run empty quite a bit. So, we're talking gas being burnt, uh, wear and tear on parts, um, the environmental piece of it, just the the carbon emissions, things like that. So there's there's quite a few different reasons why we're suggesting to go on demand. And I I think it's it's not a bad thing to pilot or test out because if for some reason we're not happy with the results we see, we are able to just revert back to fix route. But at the end of the day, we do think that the ondemand version of this service would just yield higher ridership and make it easier for passengers.

Candace, can you pull up the presentation? Mike, we're going to pull up the slides with the the steamboat case study as well as some of the other data that you had you had presented to us um to give you opportunity to run through that and we can run the slides for you and share screen on our end. Yeah.

Yeah. So, those of us familiar with Steamboat Springs, um Steamboat Springs had a a fixed route service they were providing. Steamboat yellow zone that kind of ran from the Hilltop neighborhood uh through their downtown core and then out to the Colorado the CMC campus as well as the Stockbridgeidge transit center. um for years that the ridership on that fixed route was historically low and uh they hired us I want to say back in 2021 to basically take their fixed route and do what we're proposing that we do in Leadville uh change the service to an on demand service and our our clients out there in Stebo Springs uh Jonathan Flint he's the director of SST he really kind of sings the praises of the change um we've seen higher ridership better usability passengers enjoy the service more as it is kind of a more convenient service. Um there's also, you know, they're not having to maintain vehicles as much because that vehicle isn't constantly, you know, running circles. Basically, the vehicle is more or less only moving if it has something to do. Um which again saves on those fuel costs. Uh are you able to kind of click through some of the sites? I'm just seeing the uh the first page here.

Yeah, I just need you to tell me to

Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much. Um so yeah, this is kind of what we went over. Uh the challenge was the yellow the uh yellow route was underperforming and losing ridership. We changed it to this um on demand. You can kind of see, you know, that lower that lower image is the old yellow route and then the the shaded in map above it is the service area we currently operate. And and ridership's grown about 26% um in the first two years. So I I think that's you know a promising number. I would like to see more than 26% over what we're doing in Leadville, but it it's a pretty similar comparison. If you look at the current route we're running in Leadville, we did something similar where we just kind of spread the zone out to encompass most of the residential and commercial areas that are around that zone. However, instead of having to walk from the um the designated stops, we can get people a little bit closer, which is definitely I mean, not really this winter, but other winters, it's super helpful when you don't have to, you know, go stomping four or five blocks through the snow to get to whatever office you're trying to get to. Um like to go to the next slide. Oh, I'm sorry.

In this uh slide, the upper area is the on call zone and the lower area is this yellow route that was underperforming. Is that am I seeing that correct? That's correct.

Okay. It looks like they expanded it pretty significantly the amount of area that you could get a bus uh that you could get public transportation in as on call compared to what their route was. Is do you have any sense on how much of the increase was due to expanding the area versus the change in the service model? So, it's it's more or less the same footprint. We're we're not going any further out the highway or any deeper into the neighborhood. That overlay um is it's more or less almost the same exact area. Now, the the the amount of places we will or will not go is increased because obviously you can pick any point inside that zone, but it's not like it's a bigger square mileage footpoint. It's a really good question though, Commissioner Randy, because that's what that's what it looks like.

I think it's it's the zoom and the the ratio on the actual itself. It just looks like

definitely and and and that's why we try to kind of start as close as possible. We don't want to overwhelm the system right off the bat, which is why we're kind of the the current deviated route zone we're providing. It goes about 3/4 miles off of the fixed route. And we're not really going much further than that with the on demand map that we've proposed. It really just kind of instead of stopping about halfway through or 3/4 of the way through some of the neighborhoods, it really just encompasses the whole neighborhood. Um, I don't know if this is a a question to ask yet because it might be something you'd cover, but if we were to shift to an on call system, what does that look like for minors who are like, you know, the the kids under 18 who are, you know, like teenagers who want to get up into town and and hit the candy store or whatever, you know, like say there's a 14-year-old who's like, "Hey, come pick me How does that even work legally? And

yeah, they would just request the ride as as anyone else would request the ride. It's it's public transit, so we really don't, you know, set up any barriers unless certain clients ask for that. We do have some operations that request that, you know, we do a little bit of age verification. No one under the age of 12 is allowed to ride unsupervised. So, we're happy to have that conversation. Um, but they're really we don't really set any sort of barriers as far as, you know, how old passengers must be to use the service. We found it to be very helpful. So, just to kind of bounce back over to Steamboat, um, a majority of our ridership or sorry, a majority of the ridership on the old yellow line was the local high school students. Uh, they have an open campus and they're allowed to leave for lunch. So, uh, the the passengers that were riding the old yellow line, they were usually using it to get to school, um, to lunch during their lunch hour and then home from school in the afternoons or most importantly to after school activities. Um, and since we've transitioned to the yellow zone on demand model, we're still seeing that. Uh quite a bit of our ridership over there is the local high school. Um it's been really helpful for students that need to make it to AP courses where the previous fixed route didn't really fit into the schedule as far as them getting out of one class and then having to get across town to their AP classes. They can just request a ride and get over to their AP classes, no problem. So we personally as a service provider, we don't really set major benchmarks outside of certain things around, you know, we can't have unaccompanied toddlers in the vehicle. You know, if if the children are under the age of, you know, call it 10 years old, we do want a parent to be with them. However, it has been extremely helpful for parents who, let's say, are stuck at work and they've got some kids that need to get to soccer practice. We're happy to help out there. All All of our drivers are um, you know, they go

through background check processes. We have a powered dash cameras in all the vehicles so the vehicle doesn't move um unless the cameras are recording. Uh it was just brought to my attention that for we were recently acquired by a company called Via Transit and Via Transit does prefer passengers to be at least 13 years old to use the service. However, I'm sure that's something we could discuss and if that's an issue, um, we could talk about it and if if we like that kind of benchmark for the age of youth, we could enforce that. Cool. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mike. Um, a couple of more items here. One, we our funding source is through C do DOT. They administer our grants to pay for this and we we've included them in all of our transition meetings. We had another one this morning. So, they're well aware and they our funding would not change. Does the cost change?

No, the co cost would remain the same. We also downtowner actually has a a supervisor that works through the routes and with the drivers and um his name is Eric Kaiser. I've met with him a few times. He's he's really good at the training piece and staying on top of any little issues that we potentially could have. that I've ridden this bus because it's part of my responsibility and the times that I have ridden that it it it's been empty except for me. So, we're hoping that um and and there's peak hours that that are better right now and I'm usually bright early in the morning, but we're hoping to fix some of that. Now, the reason why this is an informative piece for the board of county commissioners, and I I wish uh Commissioner Elsa was here, too, um is because we we want to make this change, we can always go back, but you know, in case there is some kind of we want to blindside the commissioners with, you know, anything like a question that you might have if we make the change or that kind of thing. So, we want you to be well aware of what we're planning on doing and certainly your input is um we encourage your input so we can make changes if we need to. My uh I just have the same issue that I've had since the beginning was the cut off on Leadville North. And there's entire neighborhoods down there that are full of kids, full of high school age, you know, that just aren't being served by this at all. And it stops pretty much right at, you know, Eagle's Nest essentially. And you know, you got Loadstone, you got Four Seasons, Spring

Circle, you've got Silver Hills, and there's a there's a good chunk of houses down there. I mean, there's a lot of people living down there, and they just they this does absolutely nothing for them. So, that's just one of my And there's there's not a great way to walk from those lower neighborhoods up to where you can get to the bus because there's no sidewalk.

There's no It's dangerous lying down there. It's it's, you know, so like those kids are stuck in those neighborhoods. They can't really unless they're going to start trespassing through the woods and stuff to go up into town, they're they're locked out there. Yeah, I do think we had conversation about broadening the route um in in the early discussions about making this transition and sort of looking at the costs in terms of expanding and how much it would cost to expand versus it's it's a new model that we don't necessarily know has been ground truth in our community yet that we you know we kind of fell back to the idea of we can always change back if we keep it along that fixed route. But it's also easy to expand our on call service if we find, hey, this is actually really working well for the community.

Yeah. We can broaden it if different parts of the neighbor those neighborhoods if there's wear and tear on the vehicles that's being reduced less engine time and we're saving money on fuel costs and other avenues you know tires whatever maintenance then maybe that would you know give an easier green light to getting out down Mountain View or even County Road 4 a little bit to some of those neighborhoods like it just uh yeah there's just not no no no access So, will the I'm sorry. Go ahead, Commissioner. Will the vehicles stay the same or will you try and find some smaller vehicles since you're we're serving so few people? Those are grant funed.

Those are the vehicles come with currently we run we we have through grant funding, capital funding grant, a federal grant, we we bought two Ford and F550 transit vans. Yeah. Um, and we just have one that's a backup. Um, and the other one is always running. And if we didn't have that backup, we'd be in trouble already. We've had to take one of our buses to the dealership in Colorado Springs, that kind of thing.

Um, we've had broken out window sitting, so we needed that backup van. But um was an evangelism incident. We did have Yeah. And we don't know. We looked on the cameras. We didn't know who it was. Um we I don't know how to prevent it. We don't we don't have a fenced in area to keep them, but it just it happened one time, but I just wanted to bring that up. And it happened to be the one window that was different than the rest. Bruce, um it was the one with the head sign on it, but

originally that was my thoughts. Commissioner Andy that um we would serve the entire community and it was downtowner that brought it to our attention that if we move too fast we could overload it and then actually disserve our community by making everything much slower. So they said to just take small increments at a time. So your observation is perfect. We may actually even get there with what we have, but we just need to take it slow to to find that information. Now, is there a somebody in town that has a cab service and is this going to be stepping on that person's toes?

Is there cash cab? I don't think so anymore. There's not a cab, but there is it's either Uber or what's the other one? Lift. It's one of the two, but it's parttime here. Okay. It's not all one driver. There's one we've looked into, we've looked for that in the past for relatives visiting things. Um, this essentially kind of serves that need. And you want to pass it back to Mike just to kind of explain their their app just a little bit. Um, and it can kind of talk through like how how someone would order a ride both through the app and then as well as a phone number recognizing that not everyone may have the same smartphone capability. zone. Um, Mike, can we pass it back to you at this point?

Definitely. And I just wanted to quickly, um, touch on the commissioner's question about, you know, the availability in those other neighborhoods. Uh, I just want to point out that the ondemand model, it's much easier for us to be more flexible as far as where we do and don't serve. I'm not talking about completely rearranging routes or sorry, rearranging routes and stop times. It's more so just adjusting maps and where we do and don't go. So, uh, I think as we gather data, it'll be really easy to possibly include some of those neighborhoods you mentioned. And then outside of that, um, there's a few different ways passengers can request rides. So, primarily passengers request using a smart u an app on their smartphone. It's really easy to use. It's just uh where are you, where are you going, how many passengers do you have, and do you need like a wheelchair accessible vehicle? Um, so all of the ADAs are considering both of the vehicles have uh wheelchair lifts in them, it's really not that much of an issue, but you can request using an app on a smartphone. Uh, it gives you an estimated time of arrival uh before you request a ride, so you know about how long to expect to wait. Once a driver accepts your ride, you are able to track them on that app as far as where they are and the progress they're making. Uh, the platform does come in both English and Spanish. And then for those of us that do not have a smartphone uh and would prefer to just call in a ride, you can call from any phone number, uh we usually set up a call center that will dispatch rides for us. You give them a call and it kind of works the same way. Where are you? Where are you heading? How many passengers do you have? Um and then they'll give the passenger a wait time. Uh those passengers can call back to check in on the status of the ride if we're taking a little longer than expected. But and then the the call center does provide services in both English and Spanish as well. Are you going to have posted hours? Uh, Michael,

we we can advertise our hours on both. Uh, I'm sorry. Michael, me or Michael Irwin? Oh, Mike Fisher. Mike. Mike Fisher. Yeah, no problem. How late are you going to go, I guess, is the question. We would more or less operate the same hours is my understanding. Uh, I believe we've got a break right in the middle of the day, so we would keep that lunch break for the drivers. It just kind of makes it easier for them to not have to mitigate rides and take their lunch. Um, but we would run more or less the same hours and that would all be advertised on the smartphone app and then the call center employees have that information as well.

Yeah. So, we're unaware of an actual taxi cab company. There's one part-time either lift or Uber, but yeah, that we've tried to think this through. at a number of meetings to make sure that you're not making a mistake. Yeah. Well, if that opens the door for an easier transition to some minor expansions, um that's something I would be uh really interested in getting on the table.

Yeah, I think that's that's definitely on the radar. We wanted to work within the context of the current budget. um and recognizing we don't have a lot of data on how this model would work within the community. And so part of it is we need to pilot it to ensure that it's going to going to work the way it did in Steamboat to see that increase. But if we're still seeing like you know we're only seeing one to two riders on that route you know each hour 45 um then we might have to have different conversations about the route itself. Yeah,

but realistically this would help us create some data, determine whether we are in fact increasing ridership, getting people closer to the where they need to go, getting more people downtown at good times for them to shop and do all the things we need to down here. Do we have a number on cost per rider? I mean, I know this is grant dollars we're working with, so it's not like, you know, for now at least, it's not coming directly out of out of our community's tax paying pockets. mostly mostly. It would be really nice to know if we could get a cost per rider number and then that could be like what we try to break down basically by increasing ridership. And

that's a great question, Commissioner Andy. And uh they send us reports of the total wrership every month and then you know it's a continual spreadsheet for the entire year. So we certainly could get that to you if you would like. Um We we actually we've looked at that in the past. We have I just don't have it in front of me. I apologize. Okay. No worries, Mike. Thanks.

Yeah. And as a baseline, looking at cost per rider as well as I think looking at just overall writership is kind of how we've been viewing it. It's you we're paying for the service for the community is one of the reasons people are not using it because it's not convenient at the times that need to get where they need to go. And so the hope is that this, you know, having seen some of the data from other communities that we may have the opportunity to serve more people the longer. And

I think just because it is grant funded and we know that there are less and less grants available and a lot more competition for them, it's going to be really hard to prove we have a real need for additional grant funding if no one is writing it. So at this at this rate, we have got to try some different things to get ridership up or there won't be a real reason to fund it anymore. You got to put in seats on bus. Bring it out to Leadville North. Bring a bunch of kids who want to go to the library all the time. I would ride it if it was convenient.

Right. There's not a lot of people in this room and there's two people here who love to see that bus come. I would just just an observation but like what the current there's we did set up the deviated route where you can call and have them come up to half a mile off of that but uh Stuart was saying like people don't do that very much and I think if it was that was the whole setup like I personally would feel a little weird about being like hey bring the bus to me specially but if that's just how it works then that's a whole different thing and I bet a lot more people would use it and it would be a lot more Yeah, cuz like there is a lot of people within the current like deviated route

and if people are just uncomfortable with that um then like I would be more comfortable with this just because that's how everybody's doing it as opposed to like you know like drop everything and come pick me up at my house, you know.

First of all, Mike on online did he still have more? No, the only other thing I want maybe you could speak to Mike um because we talked about this in some early earlier conversations and I had initial concerns about how we get the word out to the community in terms of okay this change is coming. It's coming at this you know we're going to target this because we really like to try try to get this in place before we get busy um for the summer and so that the you know people visiting can use this as well. Um and so we talked a little bit about signage on buses getting messaging out there. So, Mike, if you have any any overall background on how you made that transition in other communities and recommended u communication strategies as well, commissioners, if you have any suggestions for where you'd want to see this messaging as we're making this transition,

maybe the summit stage. I mean, I imagine a lot of people are taking the summit stage and getting here and having to walk or wait for another bus. Yeah, I think a good place to focus. Commissioner B. That's that's actually a great question. Our service times don't match very well with some of the stage except for the middle of the day stuff, but most their passengers the morning and the evening and we're not we haven't started yet. We're done. I I wish we had a longer service here, but this requires some more fun to make that work. These have bike racks on them, right? These buses don't.

No. was wondering about, you know, as far as boosting ridership, if there was a recreational component to it that could get people to certain points on the mineral belt that are way high up on the east side, you know, maybe like a Saturday thing or something. Hey, we'll drop you off way up Towny Road 2. Then you got 6 and 12 miles you can ride downhill back to String Town on the Mineral Belt. It would be like a I mean I would probably be doing on a skateboard because it's super fun, but um that would be a fun uh you know just a cool perk, you know, like the the mineral belt lab or whatever.

Yeah, those are great. Um I came from a company where we had bike racks and ski racks on the buses and um they're pretty expensive. I think a two two bike rack is um in the $3,000 range and a three bike rack is a $4,000. Maybe that would be more of a gold bus. Yeah, like a wreck department. I don't know who remembers Blaze the belt, the old longboard races on the Mineral Belt, but we used to like shuttle cars like all day long up and down County Road 2 to uh String Town. Good times. Just a thought.

Good questions though. Commissioners, I think as far as promotion like that there, I think it would be huge if you talk to like the race series and and other like big events because what I see all the time on and this is just anecdotal, but like visitors like on Facebook or whatever, people come to town and they're like, "I need an Uber. Like, I can't how do you get to wherever?" and we're just like, well, you can stand there for an hour and a half away from the bus. It's free or um walk. Yeah.

You know, like that. But there's and it's, you know, it's not residents so much, but there's, you know, obviously we have a lot of people coming in at certain times and they they'd be an easy target for just saying, "Hey, you can call the bus and get around town." And that would be, you know, go up to the the train depot or whatever you're planning to do. Yeah. Yeah. Mike, can can I pass it back to you just um how do we how do we ensure basically the question is how do we ensure people aren't standing out at a bus stop at the pole waiting for a ride when we make this transition?

Yeah. So, there's a few different avenues we can go. Um, you know, I always like to start with the the most low cost, which we we already mentioned is just kind of putting up signage inside the vehicle. That would allow our current ridership to know exactly what's going on. Um, next step that I think would also be low cost would be putting up some sort of signage at our current stops. Now, we we don't necessarily have permanent fixed stops. Um, I have kind of been running around town putting up flyers on the sides of uh utility boxes or some of the information boards, things like that. Um, I'm not sure if the county or the city has any partnerships, and I'm blanking on the name, but the newspaper in Leadville, we usually kind of do like a quarter page or half page, you know, once a week as far as, hey, these are some changing, these are some changes we're proposing. And then another thing as well, um, we've done direct mailers in the past and we found that those are the most successful. However, those are the most expensive. That being said, the population density in Leadville isn't as high as some of the other areas that we've done those direct mailers. So, I think the cost could be something palatable to get, you know, information directly into every person's mailbox inside that shaded in zone. And then depending on who is doing utilities, for instance, we did this in Jackson, Wyoming, which is a much different use case than you guys, which is why we didn't bring it up. Um, just more dense, bigger area. That being said, their local utility department allowed us to just place flyers in every single person's electric bill. Um, so as far as like marketing and and you know, this isn't something we do overnight. Obviously, there's a lot that goes into it. building out the tech, um getting the message out most importantly to the community and then training the drivers and switching the system over. Uh we kind of loosely discussed maybe making some changes in May so that we can catch

the um summer tourism rush. Uh but yeah, there's there's plenty of avenues we can go and I think if this is the route we we want to go, um I think it's worth just, you know, setting aside some time to figure out, hey, how much do we want to spend? Do we want to keep it, you know, under $500 as far as printing flyers and getting them out everywhere we can, or do we want to do something a little bit more targeted and direct like those uh those direct mailers we were discussing or possibly some stuff in the newspaper?

How how big of a lift is this transition? I mean, I know the outreach there's all these different components, but the actual switch over, you know, what's it going to take to see this as a a decision item on a regular meeting agenda? That's a really good question, Commissioner Andy. Uh, we were hoping that we could make a operational decision and just give you the information that's informative in case there's a problem that you need to be aware of. Okay. Yeah. It doesn't cost um not um just handle some of the operational things and not have to bother you with them. But

people to reach out to you and be upset. we've made an operational change. You had no idea. So really, this is more like get, you know, a hunch about how you guys feel, but also to let you know, hey, this is where we're going to move so we can try to get writer step up knowing that, you know, if it's not working, we will be addressing that as we kind of pilot it. Yeah. Otherwise, I'm afraid I can't keep the transit going if we can't continue to show need to fund it. No one's going to give us a grant for 1.6 riders per hour. Um, as an operational shift, it sounds like a no-brainer to

Yeah. So, we didn't want to do it. We wanted to definitely let you know.

We did check. We have an operational grant that pays for the operation and the pays for downtowner and repairs on the buses and we asked if we could use some of that for advertising. And that's that's explicitly a no the type of grant that we have just so you're aware of that piece. Um anyway it does look like a win-win. Um we are when I've written on the bus this is just for hearing information. Um, and I visited with the drivers. They're doing everything they can as a driver. One of the drivers even once a week goes and help an elderly person put his shoes on so we can get on the bus. I mean, but that's not really the purpose for Yeah. Right. Me, too. Yeah. Exactly. The same way. I feel that way. But, um, to to better serve our community, we need to move more people.

Yeah. butts and seats. Sounds good, you guys. Good job. Have anybody online that needed to add any more? No. In in that case, um Mike, I think just based on their conversation here today um and and James, then Stuart and I can follow up with you um and meet sort of about next steps in terms of moving this forward and and then put a date, you know, on the calendar when we think we can go live and start working towards those those communications pieces. Appreciate you guys joining us today. Thank you guys. Thank you everyone for your time. I really appreciate you taking time to chat. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you guys. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Likewise. Keep up the good work. I uh I shot you an email with a question about Well, let's close this out. Okay. Do you have to be here though for something or No. Okay. I'll catch up with you later. Thanks. Thank you all. That concludes our work session uh on 1:12 p.m. All right. Thank you, chair. Thank you, staff. Thank you, staff. Thanks, Pete. Thanks for coming, Pete. Sure.