Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Good morning everybody. It's March 24th at 11:00 a.m. This is a work session of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. Maybe you'll all join me in wishing Elsa a happy birthday today. Happy birthday. Thank you. Blessings shared with all of you. And uh our first item uh is overview and discussion regarding potential options for the future of the Lake County landfill. This will be led by Michael Irwin, our public works director. Bring it, Michael. Let's hear the news.

Right down there. Do you want to operate it or you

can operate it? I might just get it shared for you really quickly so I can kill you. So, welcome to the White County Land for the plan and update for 2026. This is a quote from the Colorado Integrated Solid Waste Plan GP um having to do with the central mountain district that we're in. It says um these counties including Eagle Summit, Pikkin, Lake, Dennis, Chaffy, and Fremont um based on the feedback that they got from when they were doing this plan that even with the small size of our landfills that regionalization is generally not a good fit for this area because of the difficulty associated with getting to the landfills from other counties. Um so that they emphasized um improving the inadequate landfills which we are one of them and we're almost adequate now um but to meet regulatory standards and and consider it you know transferring to a nearby adequate landfill. So the landfills around us Eagle Summit and Chaffi are adequate landfills. They their design engineering plan meets the state standard and their groundwater monitoring and our groundwater monitoring is now up and we just got approval of our EDP. So we should be adequate once we start once we get the landfill built if that's the direction that we're going. So this is our landfill currently.

Um the outside blue is the total area of the landfill that we can put trash in. Um the inside blue is the current filling area with um the expansion added on there right now. Um this section was a threeear section that we built up in about a year and a half. And this is the section that we're still permitted to put trash on. This is the new extension to the expansion to the landfill that we're working on that we just got approval to begin construction with. So, this is the final um plan when the landfill is completely full. You can see this section is down. The new section's way down here. The top of it will be about 10,500 ft and the bottom of it like 10,800 or 280 ft right now. Um so we still got a long ways to go but we got to build around the existing now

and line it. So, um, once we get the first line cell together, we won't be able to put any more on top of the existing landfill until we get to that height and can line it also. Mhm.

So, it doesn't add to the online landfill right now. Basically, our whole landfill is online right now. Um, so we are currently at about this orange line that goes around. It's 10,000 um 380 ft. Um so we do have this much area of fill still in the landfill. Only problem is is this road gets really steep to come up and fill in there. So we have about 217,000 cubic yards of air space left currently. Um if we go this one number here is a little bit off. and couldn't get the right number in there, but we're looking at about 28,000 cubic feet a year right now. Um, that's about 8,500 tons per year. So, doing the math on that, 28,000 um cubic yards divided into 22 217,000 is about 6.5 years if we used all of that space. Yes.

Wait, what? We have like seven and a half years left on our landfill period. Keep building it up on the exact without without addition without additional and that's still permitted. Um I got those numbers from our engineer. Oh. Um so we we can still build up on it but it gets really touchy with the state. You're saying if we don't expand into what we're already expanding Oh, got it. Okay. Sorry. Increase the amount of stuff that we're taking in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's just a number that, you know, we were at last year that 28,000 cubic yards. Mhm.

Okay. Okay. Well, that's more than I thought we had for whatever reason. Yeah, cuz we were looking at like two to three years. Yeah. Um and that's what we were told. Yeah. Before he started getting into the new plan and deciding where we can still build. Okay. Um but it is still in the permitted landfill so we can still right put trash there. We just stepped up again the other day.

Mhm. Um, so you can't see that number, but the design activities, this is for the new cell right now where we were would be at, it's about $8,8500 for design. Um, earthwork bid is about $22.5 million. The geocynthetics line in that has to be put down is almost a million,989,000. surveying of the landfill $8,000 and CQA, which is quality asurances to the state that we met all of the requirements before we could put any trash in there. That has to be done. That's about $52,000. So, the total is $3.6 million right now to do that new cell. Our revenues and expenses for the last three years, the landfill revenues about $850 to $900,000. We had a really good year in 25. Um we're still looking around that $900,000 mark. Um

um so 24 is a big year because we bought that compactor. Mhm. Um so we were high that year, but normally around the same amount. Um we've got a little bit higher personnel, but generally everything's been a little pretty much the same. About 950 grand. what we're looking at for expenses every year. Now,

so landfield closure costs, that's from the 5-year financial assurance plan that we have to supply into the state every 5 years to make sure that we meet their requirements and we can we have the money to close the landfill if we had to. Um, so this was done in um May of of 2017 and then revised in 2022. Um so our closure costs, these are just breakdown of all the costs. Um 2022 was six $1.6 million and that's just to close the existing landfill and then $500,000 um for postclosure terror. So, we have to whatever we do to close the landfill, we have to maintain that for 30 years. So, that's what that $500,000 is is to make sure that we can do that um

every year, which is No, it's that's for the whole 30 years. So, but that is, you know, the total cost at that time. So, in 2022, we're looking at $21 million that we needed to have in the bank to prove that we can afford it. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but I think it's the right word.

So, that was the update in 22. In 23, um, CDPHE made us do an inflation factor to that. So, we're at $2.7 million for all of that now. And then in 24, um, we're at $2.8 million with their inflation factor. So, right now, we haven't done it yet for 25. Um, we'll be looking at 26 pretty soon, but we're at $2.8 million that we're supposed to have in the bank right now. This is what we have. Um, for the closure, we have $1.4 million and $443 in the landfill funded file.

Okay. So, that does show that we are saving money that we are setting it aside for a bow here. So, we're trying to meet their requirements. Does it have to be in the fund for it to count as loans available? Because they know that the county we have funds in other places. Yeah. Okay. Great. And they also go by whatever our audit says. So, if we're in good standing with our audit, um, and I think we have to give that to them every 5 years also. Mhm. Um, they use that along with the funds that we have. Okay. Is that an interestbearing account? Um, I don't think so

because I don't think it's grown over the last year or so. We take that up with Patrick. Yeah, I don't know if it it can be with the state. I'm not sure how that works with the state. So the next topic is transfer stations. Um that quote I got from CDH also. I love it. Um it's a place where trash goes to rest. So sweet.

Um so transfer stations can look a lot like this. um inside basically to keep the water and stuff out of the trash to keep it from blowing around um to keep it contained. Um vehicles actually pull in. That's kind of why I got these pictures. There's a dump truck over there. Pickup truck backing into it there. Um so building sizes and stuff also vary depends on how much we get in in per day and we have to handle. Um, they do make them with a trench that has the compactor in the trench compacting the trash. They have it so you can just load it in a truck without it being compacted, which

is a waste of air space in the trailer to me. It's not compacted. We're not getting back for a bug. Um, they also said that Lake County doesn't have transfer stations, but we do. Both of our recycle centers have a trash container that trash is resting in. That's a pretty funny joke, Michael. I like that. Um, but yeah, we do have transfer stations in Lake County. Um, they did have to get approved by um, planning and building to be able to be there.

We have to meet certain requirements from the CU to make sure that we can keep them. Um so typical transfer stations um run from anywhere from $100,000 for a small one to $10 million for a large. Um the state considers our landfill to be medium to large landfill because we've gone over the the threshold for a small landfill. What determines a size? um the amount of tons that we take in a day. Um we're over the 20 ton limit for a small landfill.

So we're in the next step up. That's why we have to do a lot of different permitting with our Title 5 air pollution permit and stuff because of the methane that that trash gives off. Doesn't it seem a little like a bit of a flag that we're such a small county with a relatively small population, but we're we have a lot of trash. Yeah. Yes, it does. And that's why we check at the at the gate for out of the county visitors and stuff because I know we've gotten some from here. But I know Bar County. We have gotten trash from Bar County. I know we've gotten some from Summit County. Yeah. Um Park doesn't have a lands.

No, they don't. But they they do ship those to transfer station to Denver. I think I got a map show where they go to cost versus or maybe they're working here. Yeah, they could be working over here someplace or Okay. I know sometimes we get trash from Summit County because they work over there and live over here. Yeah. And it's quite a bit cheaper. Yeah. And it's cheaper over here to dump. You want to dump some trash? Prove they're from out of county though or that the trash came from out of county which is kind of hard to do. Yeah, unless you follow somebody into the county with trash and go follow them to the land of fell.

Can't stop them on the road and search it without a warrant is what I found out. So anyone who's out of county can just say, "Oh, this is trash for the job here though." Yeah, basically because we have no way to prove that it was not from a job in town if they have a county lake county address or prove that they pay taxes in Lake County. H.

So, small facility about 100,000 to $ 1.5 million. Um, the next step up is large to medium, medium to large, 4 million to 10 million. That's 250 tons a day. So, we're we're still way below that. Um, but just for numbers to have something to go with. um cost breakdown to build a recycle center about $800,000 for grading utilities and foundations. About $2.5 million for a steel structure often cited at about $35 a square foot. Um I'm not sure if that where that falls with building in Lake County right now. Um equipment 375 scales. We don't have a scale yet. We're looking at trying to get one. Um orders and compaction gear still have to load to the trucks. Um transfer station I saw in Colorado Springs has the compactor in the trench and they actually push it out and it loads onto the truck that's out at the end of the trench.

They're actually down below. That's cool. But Michael, sorry. What how much how much tonnage do do other county landfills our size manage or do you know um I know that well they you know we've got a really small county Yeah comparatively I know Chaffy County handles a lot of trash but they've got a lot of um a bigger population and more area. Summit County and Eagle County both have bigger populations and they handle a lot of trash. Is there a sense of like what kind of trash we're managing? Is it construction trash?

Um we do have a lot of construction debris that comes in. Um a lot of concrete, basketball, bricks, you know, that we even have to keep in a separate space. Yeah. to other counties just use the driver's license of whoever's dropping the trash or is there a way to be like if your your driver's license and your vehicle has to be Lake County to qualify for the local rate versus cuz I I get the feeling there's there's trash coming in here. Yeah. I mean we we've accepted a lot of trash over the last 10 to 15 years.

So like you'd think that we'd be a way cleaner community. Not that we're trashy, but like I've got tons of stuff in my yard. No. Yeah. And like just drive down mountain. Who doesn't have tons of stuff in your yard? Yeah, me. I do. Like what? Yeah. Is that why I live here? Why what is what is getting thrown away? Um I don't know cuz like Pin County, cuz I visited their landfill several times, they have a place for people to drop things off. I love that about picking. um barbecue grills or things that are reusable like skis and stuff.

So over in Aspen, you could probably get some pretty good skis that they're just studing down there. I've gotten three awesome rugs. But yeah, I'm not sure if Sach County has that, but I do know that they have a pretty good recycling program. Yeah, picking county has the best recycling program, one of the best in the state. Um But they have a lot of money to follow with it, too. Yeah. Um but they, you know, looking at their their sites, they don't do a whole lot different than we do.

Um they do try to get things separated out of the trash more. I mean, even when they're at the landfill, putting it in certain areas. Um, and we're we're trying to do a lot of that too with, you know, steel pile and slash slash piles and stuff like that. So, um, I don't have an answer to how we can check them more at the gate. Do any other like an ordinance? Sorry, Michael. Just to let you guys know that if we see construction debris, we do question, do you have if it's demolition,

do you have a demo permit because one of the things we have to question is asbestous. Right. So, we need the asbesque clearance as well. Yeah. So if they do come in and they're from out of county, I do ask them, "Do you have a permit?" Yeah. When you're doing constructions, we would like to see a copy. How how is that complied with usually? Are people pretty able to provide that documentation to you guys? And is that staffwide, too? Like you're doing that. Is the whole staff trained up on that to do the same thing? Yes.

Yeah. Cuz that's sort of like de construction demo. I feel like would be kind of a big one, right? Like that would be a lowhanging fruit for people doing work in Summit that are Eagle to be like, "Oh yeah, take this up to Leo. We'll save 100 bucks. We'll save 200 bucks, whatever." You know, new construction just a new house produces tons of waste. Yeah. A lot of it's combustible. A lot of it's just blocks and stuff. Be cool if we have an incinerator. Don't we have an air burner, but There's certain things that can't be burned in there. Construction material is one of them, right? PS and treated lumber.

So, if it's untreated lumber, we can't. But if it's treated lumber, we can or if it has paint on it, right? Stuff like that. So, Pin must have a couple guys on the ground just um Yeah, they do. They got I know they got five or six people at the gate every time somebody comes in. Um, but they're they're a pretty busy lunch though, too.

And ongoing operating cost for that same thing about $2 to $5 per ton for larger facilities. um total processing hauling disposal can go from 20 to $50 um in a managed facility about $595 annually for crew and heavy equipment operators. Um I think these are low because it this was done in 2014 information that I got. Um

but like Chaffy County I did check them at like $49 a ton. for disposal. Um, so the trip from there here to I got I'll go further down. The trip from there to here to there is like 49 miles. So that's a 2-hour round trip. Um, but put that back in there just because of regional landfills. So um, Lake County Center of the Mountain District. um Sierra Lantil's red and greeny. Mhm.

And that because it the design and um groundwater monitoring didn't meet spec now. The state put in a new well he wells for us. That's how they found out that we are releasing VOCC's wells of organic compounds from around the landfill into groundwater. Um, that's why they put in two new wells to monitor where that's at because ar the wells that we currently had were not picking up any of that. So, they just shifted them around cuz they found out the water runs a different way across the landfill than they thought it did. Mhm.

So, we did pick up some, but they're not at an action level or anything right now. They just want to keep it that way.

Um, so like Park County, you can see it goes to landfill along the front range. Um even parts of Jefferson County go to El Paso County. Looks like um these counties down here go to one landfill in the other end because they have the same problem with inadequacy. This one kind of surprised me that they have a design problem in San Miguel. Is that shared though between the

Yeah, there's a lot of landfills that go to that one single one,

but Lake County is adequate now designing groundwater. Um, so Lake County is considered a regional landfill. EP have been working with us to become compliant with the design and groundwater requirements. As of February 26th, 2026, um the landfill received approval from CDPH the engineering design operations plan for the Lake County landfill. The next cell would provide approximately 34 years of airspace as discussed here in um all we need to do is construct a new cell now. So that 3 and a2 million price tag would get us projected 30 40

um the letter the letter from CDK approval. So, the options close the current landfill um landfill closure $1.9 million. Um landfill postclosure $837,000 over 30 years. That's what it would take to for the 30 years. Um so to close and maintain $2.9 million and we have 1.4 41 currently. Um to build a transfer station, we're looking at $2 to $5 million. Um going to Jaffy County is one way trip for 49 miles around two plus hours, possibly four trips a day. Eagle County, one way trip is um I don't know why they put the number down, but it's like 53 miles. um or whatever.

Yeah. So, an hour and 11 minutes of round trip. So, two round trips a day or every two hours. Um winter travel over Battle Mountain and then um I would free pass. I said it adds like 2 minutes to the trip probably because of the speed. But um winter travel that way is two passes. Fremont down Fremont pass and pass. Um Summit County oneway trip was 49 minutes. So about 49 miles. Also um not passing I7. So you have a pass to go over that one another time. Um constructing a new line landfill cell. Today price is last year price is 3.6 million. Um we can work on sections while we still have airspace. need to contract the need to contact contract someone to install liners, but we can make that meaning we can remove trees right now. We don't need help doing that. We can sell trees to local people that need firewood. We could sell permits for them to cut the trees that we need cut.

Um so we can do things to get moving in that direction. Yeah. Um once we get the tree tree removal done, um dirt work, a lot of the digging and stuff can be done by landfill and brother and Brandon when we have time. Um that would help a lot with moving dirt. We have a lot of dirt to move because we have to dig down to get the sump the collection all the way, you know, to a place where everything to um that was the biggest component of a new cell bid summary. uh was the Earth Works. Y but um at 2 and a half million just north of that.

But from what you're saying here, it sounds like there could be some in-house. Yeah. While we're while we're still doing using the old landfill or the existing landfill, when we have time, we can do some of that digging ourselves um and get it, you know, close to where we can have a contractor come in and like finish grade it and get it ready for the liner, you know. Can you Sorry. Go ahead, Andy. Oh, that could potentially bring down the costs of outsourcing all the earth works. Yeah, because it wouldn't be contracted out. It would be done in house with Do you have a place for the all that dirt? Yeah, where we've been taking it out of lately. We can bring it back and stack it there.

Um, and yeah, we will not run out of dirt if we keep doing that. Every time we dig a new cell, we take the dirt from it cuz it's having to buy dirt from out on the market can be quite expensive. You know, let's not buy dirt if we can help it. I love that.

Michael, I'm sorry. I just looked up on the EPA website like what kind of waste goes fills most of our landfills and 20 21% of it is food and 23% of it is paper and paper board and 12% of it is plastics

that we tried to get out of there. Yeah, that's a huge amount of our that's over half of our landfill is filled with things that we I I think we want to have diversion programs for, but they're I don't think we've ever really properly invested in that to make it quality like so maybe some of our other companions, companion counties are investing in, but can you am I am I wrong about that or like why is our diversion potentially not doing what other communities are doing. Um because we're doing the best that we can with what we have, right? So, what do we need to do better? I guess

so. Food waste, you need some way to turn it to either power or composting, right? Um and that was one of the things that we were looking for with the grant that we applied for last year. Um cuz that's about a million dollars for itself for the size of landfill that we have. Okay. Um, we didn't get the grant. So, we're kind of that might be something, you know, that Chaffy did get the grant, but I'm not sure what their grant was actually for, what they had in mind of doing, what they were doing with that grant.

Yeah. I guess the only reason why I'm bringing it up is that it's expensive to expand our landfill, right? And regulations are only going to go up, only going to increase. people are going to decrease regulations and the cost of everything is going to go up. So like

when I when I see like a proposal for investing in our landfill in my mind it's like okay well how can we also invest in the whole economic picture of our landfill and to me that a big part of that is diversion if paperboard plastics and food is half of landfills in the US. So that's the only reason why I'm bringing it up. I' It'd be great to see like what that investment looks like. Yeah. Um you know, and we we try to teach people what can be what can be recycled. Sure. A lot of it they contaminate themselves. Totally.

Totally. And I think that it doesn't get done just through like behavior trying to change behavior from the the few people who are just trying to like keep the landfill intact and the few people are trying to do good like that it c you need to invest in order to like change behavior on a big way. So this is not a this is not a critique of your staff. It's more like how can we invest properly to slow down this rate of our landfill filling. Well, I do know a lot of changes are coming through CDPHE again. Mhm. Um, as far as recycling, they want to see more compost and more everything. And they don't want to see the land go up either. I don't either.

No, none of us want that. Um, but we haven't got to, you know, what what actually can Lake County do? Yeah. Because we're unique. Yeah. At 10,000 ft, all of the landfills that do have composting are about 2,000 plus feet lower than us. Yeah. Um they don't have to deal with the cold as much as we do in the winter time. Sure. And being able to keep the heat up built up in the composting. Um um I've heard that not only you know from CDPHE but from other landfills that people that helped them get started that Lville is Lake County is just unique. Sure.

And what we can do and that's kind of what I was thinking you know if we could haul it that stuff away to somebody that can use it that would save us a lot. Yeah. um if it's not going in the landfill, you know, but are we balancing that with what it costs to haul it away, too? I mean, whether we can collect it and hollow it. Well, I think there there are probably lots of different ways to skin this cap, right?

And like I compost my stuff not cuz I can't. I've tried to have like a backyard composter or all sorts of different, you know, worms and blah blah blah. And the only effective way I found is with C4. So, you know, we do have these like quiet ways to do this, but not like a pervasive systemswide way to do it. So, I do I would love to keep talking about that, especially if paper and paperboard are 23%. That's more than food. Yeah, it is. That's huge. If we could keep that out of our landfill. Just I have a few questions.

Got to talk about them. Eventually, we're going to have to cap our landfill because of the emission stand standards. Do we know what the cost to cap it will be? If we expand the landfill, how long will that one last us before we have to expand again? Mhm. Um, so if we expand the landfill and it should give us about 34 years of of trash. Um, landfill is permitted for 264 years worth of trash, which is every section that we open up, we have to get approvals from the state. So any meanwhile they go into that new land with that new cell we have to incorporate into our design plan. Um I missed the other part of your question.

Oh I was just wondering what would it cost to cap it because it does look like that'll be a requirement. The state has already mentioned that they would like parts of the landfill closed and existing landfill closed which entail um two feet two feet of cover with GCL liner on top of bid also an option that um land for closure cost of $2.8 million right now. Yeah. But isn't there an upcoming requirement that the new landfill will also have to be capped just because of the emissions, not the one we're closing. Am I correct?

Yeah, we're monitoring that. I think it's being led by the Grand Junction area. Um, but it it's still it's not official. It's not a law yet, but the number I remember right was for smaller landfills about $10 million. And so that's part of rag 31. It's not in effect yet, but it could affect us probably 10 to 15 years with the amount of trash that we have in the land. Gee,

I think one of the um big reasons I kind of asked for us to take a look at this is we have had um an another county chief reach out and they did get a grant to um expand their landfill and they would consider as they're doing their specking right now, specking it if we wanted to be a part of um that as a transfer station. I think we really need to think about what will we be able to do and how likely do you think it is that we'll have to cap the landfill. What sort of way are options here?

We will have to cap the land if we close it and become a transfer station. I meant the new one. So even if we even if we become a transport station that could cost $10 million to cap the landfill. Why is that not included in like the landfill closure? Well, right now it is, but the new regs 31 rag 31 that we don't meet the standards for that yet, but we could if we continue taking trash. Oh, okay. Okay. Right now, our design is to do it this way and not the requirements of rig 31.

Right. Okay. Feel like I'd like to get some more real numbers for what it will cost to be a transfer station versus to expand if we know that we will be capping the landfill. Cuz that's really the question. And if we miss the opportunity while they're specking it out, then that's kind of off the table for us. And I guess like my concern is just how much would that cost to make

well both like how much would she be charge us is also a number we don't have. Well, we're going to sit down with them and understand that, but I felt that we needed to know what we're currently doing, what the cost of the landfill will be. Got it. I feel like a transfer station's going to cause some serious problems, but that's just a gut feeling about people dumping in the woods. Not really based on any hard data.

Do you Yeah, talk talk more about that.

We've got a lot of common sense and great rules, right? But we really have a hard time getting people to follow adherables. You know, look at our recycling centers and we don't we've had a traditionally under or inadequate enforcement aspect, you know, like when I I don't know when the last time anyone's had to pay a fine for littering or dumping in this community. And we see it every summer, you know, all the stuff that pops up. Oh, there's another big pile of trash in the woods. And you know, it's this this tricky dance of like trying to do what's best for the dump, trying to charge what the dump actually needs to operate versus how many people are just going to drive through the woods and dump a couch back there, dump a mattress, dump construction trash, dump, you know, I've seen it all like firsthand. I imagine a lot of people in this room have too, you know. room.

Yeah. So, where where does the how do we factor in that cost? Yeah. How does a trans I'm I respect your gut, Andy, and if you don't have an answer to this, it's totally fine, but how does a transfer station potentially increase that? Well, so I' I've used them in other areas. Okay. They're really It's a long process. It's a procedure. You drive into a giant warehouse. You got people who are wizards behind the controls of heavy machinery zipping all around you while you're trying to you're waiting in line. It's like a process to go to a transfer station. If you've ever used one,

they're they're pretty intense. Um

so, and it's it like the just the feeling that I have of that versus anyone who's had experience with our art dump feels really easy to use to me. Um, it's also really affordable. The what I've paid out of my own pocket to use transfer stations in other areas is like three times what we would charge here at least, if not way more, you know, but we had big big projects. We needed them to get done. So, we did it. And I feel like, you know, we we shift to a transfer station. It's going to cause roadblocks. It's not the reason I feel like the an easier to use dump local less waiting in line less cost like that encourages people to use the dump probably with pros and cons because you know we're filling up way faster than we should be. But if we start making this process harder and more cost prohibitive, I think naturally just human nature, it's going to steer people to illegally dealing with their trash, which we already have a problem with. But I I could foresee that getting a lot worse, just boiling it down to simple, you know, cost and simplicity and ease of use.

Um, and we don't we just we don't have any way to enforce it and we can't even keep trash out of the recycling bins. So, I don't know how to crack that up.

I do have a comment. Phoenix hauls their trash to Buckeye. It's about an hour north of Phoenix and all the residents $55 a ton, 40 minimum. But contractors are not allowed to use those. That's $300 a ton at private transfer stations like Weineberger and Gilbert. Just a minimum load. They're all landscapers, construction guys. They have to go to a transfer station. Um it's $300 minimum. I was down recently and I was doing some work at my parents house and um the minimum load for junk my dad's kind of order is 300 bucks. So that's how they that's how the Phoenix areas handle this. They they separate commercial landscapers, construction people, industrial from the regular transportations that they use.

Just a thought. Yeah, that's interesting.

I don't know. It seems like it's pretty clear a new minor. I mean, we're going to have to cover it if we close it. If these new regulations come in, we're going to have to cover it anyway. So you set the covering aside, add up closing the landfill, all those costs. The cost to close it, the cost to to buy all that new equipment to build the you build the building, and then the cost to haul it, and the cost to dump it in somebody else's landfill. All that adds up. So my question is, how quickly do we need to come up with the 3.6 million If we've only got three to five years, can we get on a payment plan? We need to come up with it right now. Now, I I do have a question for the attorney. Um, landfill is an enterprise fund, I believe. Um, what's to keep it from getting a loan from the USDA? There is a loan available.

Nothing. I mean, I'm aware of I have to dig into the specifics, but yeah, it was an enterprise fund cuz I looked for grants from the government to build landfills and that's the only thing I came up with is grants and little interest loans, business loans type stuff. Yeah. Nothing aware of.

The second part of my comment is, I hate to say it, we're going to have to raise the prices. your operating and expenses are a little bit higher than your income. if you know if we could just make a couple hundred a year or something like that and then maybe raising prices or I think we would incentivize people to start recycling a little bit and then also maybe and I can't even believe I'm saying this but when I build a new home there's so much garbage and I've gotten a lot better but back in the old days it's like I don't have time really to separate all this so maybe You can tie something to to your permit for your new home. Like you agree to like not a cost necessarily, but somehow you signed this thing. You agreed to separate the amount of cardboard.

Yeah. That that new house produces and remodels too. So um and then the foam polystyrene and the extruded polystyrene. So, they do that at um Summit. Look, they've got sorted construction and demo loads. Oh, I'm sure you know that. Sorry. I've never I dumped it some once and I was so shocked. I was doing a remodel over there. I just started bringing it back here cuz it was I wanted to I want to say 20 years ago. You're the guy we're looking for. It's him. Wow. Well, no.

Wow. That was so unmat of you to like I'm really impressed with your um the realness you just you know brought to the table there about like increasing cost for builders is like something I don't think I've ever heard come out of your mouth. So much respect.

We just pass it on and you know eventually it'll get too expensive to build anything. So, uh, every little thing hurts, but if it's at the cost of our landfill, we can't afford to not start charging a little bit more. And maybe the commercial folks have to pay a little bit more. I mean, it get they get passed on or at least more regulated, which I can't even believe I'm saying that. My thought is to really go after out of area stuff by not only a Lake County driver's license, but the vehicle has to be registered in Lake County as well. I feel like if those two boxes, it's they add a lot of checking for you guys at the gate. And I feel bad. I I don't like that aspect, you know, but

I've seen a lot of lamp posts with like you get a sticker like on your vehicle. You have to go through the whole, you know, proving where you live and so forth and probably paying for it. I don't know because I never actually paid for it, but like where I grew up, you had to have a sticker to go to the And then they knew that you were local. They knew that you were your vehicle was local. Yeah. Yeah. like a one or$2 dollar check fee. If they don't have the sticker, but they're still local, they get there's just an extra minimal. But if they buy the sticker for a few bucks, then it's like they can go in and out, you know?

If we if you got the loan, it'd be nice to find an income to pay for the loan cuz you're already operating a lot. Well, and if it's like an annual figure that you have to reup for Yeah. pay 50 bucks or whatever.

It's not, you know, I'm not dying to pay 50 bucks, but just saying it's a it's a one one way of doing it. Although a lot of those, like if you have a stick or you pay for it, then you don't pay dump. You just don't. So everything I was reading when I um was doing research on a bunch of this stuff was that a lot of governments to just raise fees at landfills because of all the stuff that comes in teaches people and forces people to recycle instead of don't. Mhm.

Um, I think one of the biggest things that we would would be a good investment would be a scale. I've been against it for you because I don't know if that in the winter time that they would be that accurate with ice in it, but just being able to say, "Hey, this is how much trash you brought in. This is what it's going to cost you." Um, maybe they want to divert some of that. Yeah. I said, Yeah, there's a big difference between uncompacted construction debris and yeah, a lot of times it's just paper and a lot of air,

which is the biggest. I mean, I feel like volume is almost more of a problem than the actual weight of the trash. Well, yeah, everybody else does weight, but you could have a huge amount of styrofoam. It's mass, right? Like we're talking about cubic yards. That's what that compactor is for is to make it small. Sure. It compacts it down. So you get like 300 lb per per cubic yard. Yeah. Um compacted where Yeah. non-coactive is a lot of air.

Okay. Michael, I feel like we're we're what I'm hearing a lot of talk about is like um kind of two different things. One is the liner and expanding. Sounds like we don't have enough information about a transfer station and what that would cost and what our options are and we would like to be able to weigh those two eyes wide open, right? because this is such a big investment and if we do expand the landfill that could potentially push us into the reggg 31 and the $10 million cap, right, which will probably become like a $20 million cap by the time we cap it,

right? So really knowing that and being able to make a decision for generations to come is kind of what we need some more information about. And then the other part of it is how if we were to keep a landfill or no matter whether we're going to keep a landfill or not like understanding how we can divert in a significant way more things from the landfill because even if we were to reduce even if we couldn't divert if we could only divert 50% of the 50% that like is divertable plastic compost paper paper board. Even if we could only divert 50 of that, that's 25% reduction in what's going into our landfill. And that's that'll slow us way down. It would be huge for us. So, I personally want to hear more about what are some solutions, what are some what are some things that we could be purchasing or investing in that would actually help us divert to slow down our landfill because this is untenable. Yeah. Can I can I set some big picture context for that? The discussions kind of we're having related to that. So in in addition to the sort of discrete need is like we need to figure out what we're doing with our current landfill.

This is all happening in the context of climate action plan comprehensive plan that has a bunch of environmental and natural resource goals in it that kind of speak to a lot of the stuff that you're talking about. So, um, and in addition to that, we've been looking at a government technical assistance program to help us, um, walk through different programming at the landfill that can help help with that circular economy. So, awesome. We've been talking to C3, and I'm forgetting what the name of No, there's a C3 and a C4. I'm going to draw the distinction real quick. C3 is the state technical assistance from CDP. Oh gosh. Create it's Colorado circular communities. That's what the phrases are.

Okay. So, so we're pursuing that the county level, the uh technical assistance program through C3. And then we have our sustainability contractors partner C4 in the room here who are you know have a lot of great ideas about how we implement you know things associated with the climate action plan and the comp plan related to those environment and natural resource goals. So, okay. So, to your point, I think it's a yes and it's like we need we need to talk about what we're going to do about this landfill that's rapidly coming to capacity if nothing changes about our diversion, right? And then we also need to talk about how do we increase the diversion and composting and recycling and all of these things that will give us more life on the landfill. Yeah.

But also, you know, could help inform, you know, if we do end up partnering somehow with JP on regional operations. um that that's also that's also happened. So, just wanted you all to know that. Okay, awesome. Thank you, Josh. Thank you. We are county commissioners. We're C2.

What? C2 CC county commissioners C3. Oh, save all the C's. C4. Wow, this is a lot of information. Thank you so much, Michael, and your staff for putting all this together.

And this is a quick turnaround time. We don't have much time to spare and sit on this. So, what's your feeling, Mike? What's your preference? Uh, transfer station or an expansion? My pre preference would be with because we own it. It's our project. It's our responsibility. We're not transferring stuff to another company. Yeah. One, two. Let's keep our trash local.

What's our timing on this? Say we were to be like, "Yep, fill bore landfill." What is the what is the actual timing of when you all would need to start moving dirt cutting down cutting down trees I mean okay and since J has just reached out to us because they haven't spec their grant funded facility but could include us I think preferences aside we need to get real numbers right y and actually run both scenarios and ask over say the next 50 years however the 30 years life the landill would be. We need to run numbers for both scenarios,

but I certainly don't want to continue to spend time on that if that's not something we want to explore. Yeah. I think that's really the direction I'm hoping to get today is do we want me to go get that information because I've got to do it pretty quickly. Got it. Okay. Or can you just tell me about Revelation 31? How that comes into play? Um, it all has to do with methane. Methane. uh releasing from the landfill. Um I don't know all the details of it because our engineer has been helping us with that. What's that? Our engineer has been helping us with that. Okay.

But he told us the last time is we won't be there for several probably 10 15 years where we even need to worry about that. But they're not interested in taking today. So, is that a factor in our in our contemplative process here or Yeah, cuz it's a liner. It's a $10 million tent that covers the existing basically just GLC, you know, clays and and stuff that cover the landfill. It's dirt, right? I mean, yes, but that happens regardless of whether we close.

It's just different thicknesses and stuff that will have to happen to it to keep the methane in. Yeah. Where we can be it can be collected and used elsewhere. When you talk about airspace, it'd be like cap then go on top and then cap and then go up like every certain amount of levels, I guess. So, we're at we're right at the threshold of where we need a cap before we can keep going up with existing space. Is that um We're getting close. Yeah. Okay. That's why we're looking at at doing the next expansion outside of the existing landfill.

Yeah. cuz that's to build up the whole thing. That's where we need to start the next cell at. Um I believe there's like 19 cells specifically laid out currently. I really think we got to the landfill needs more revenue. You know, like it's got a lot of work that needs to be done. I'm hesitant to to just immediately jack prices up or entertain the idea with, you know, collaborating with you guys and jacking the prices up for locals. I personally feel real strongly about identifying and and jacking the price up on out of area trash. That's it might not it might just be a drop in the bucket, but it sounds like this problem is going to be a really multifaceted need a multiaceted solution. There's no silver bullet that's going to check all the boxes that we need for the landfill. So, it's going to be like diversion, generating more revenue, coming up with a plan, coming getting solid data for different options. I I really like the idea of, you know, the vehicle and the person needs to be from Wake County to qualify for the local rate. I don't know if that's how big of a lift it would be for that for you guys to implement that, but that was some that's something I'd really like to discuss further.

Oh gosh. Well, methane is produced from food and paper again and water.

And water obviously, but it's an outside landfill, so done, right? But the the food and paper is what is I don't know. I just like mathematically that is what it keeps coming back to a little bit for me. Um I agree. I agree with you Andy. I think there I think it's like there's no silver bullet and there are a lot of little incremental things we can do to help bolster the landfill. And Michael, did I just hear you? There like there are 19 cells that we could be expanding into before we have to go up. No, no, that's as we go up.

As we go up ourselves. Okay. Okay. And each Sorry if I missed this. Each each cap would be like a half million dollars then. Is that how you get to the 10 million fun? I think you should also make mattresses way more expensive to dump based on everything you've told us about mattress. Recycle mattresses. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. As long as they're recyclable. Recycle because a mattress can be completely 100% recycled. Wow. Cool.

So, we do um fund a little bit of that to make sure that we can get them into recycling instead of in the forest. Nice. That's awesome. Michael, do we have to or anybody do we approve landfill incre landfill fee increases? We approve all fee increases months or so. That was like a one like a rolling one that we've had in effect for a while. Just a yearly, but I think was minimal, too. We might be due for

I'd say I'm very open to seeing a more comprehensive fee structure for us to approve. Um, and then Candace, to your question, can we get more of a pulse on this group? I hear Matt saying that the landfill going with expanding the landfill is what he's interested in. Not really interested in the transfer station. I'm kind of hearing similar vibes. Yeah, I'm I'm absolutely opposed to the transfer station and nothing personal and anyone who likes that. that just

I just don't want to waste time going that direction. If I can just say to Jafy, hey, I don't think that's an option we want to explore, but thank you for thinking about. Yeah, totally. I guess I personally don't have enough information to be able to make the call even. So my try to get more information. Yeah, my inclination would be to to explore that because I other than gut, I don't have any sort of way to make this decision. Stuart, did you have something you want to add? I did. Maybe it's maybe it's useful. Maybe it's not. $3.6 million that Michael presented. Yeah,

that's if you advertise it over the 34 years, that's 105,000 here, 8,000 a month, 400 bucks a day. Did you do that? So, it's only 400 bucks a day. Yeah, you think about it. So, you bring in and pay for the expansion. Did you just do that in your head?

Okay, that's amazing. I mean, this is where I know I'm sure county manager team is working on it, but like an actual what does it cost for us to maintain our operations with our capital and operations and capital? What does it actually cost us every year to maintain the government that we have would be great to know and I'm glad we're working on that. But that's the kind of numbers, Stuart, that like I would personally want built in to an everyday operational plan.

Yeah. There's other things that Michael hasn't shared like um one of the vendors came and talked to us about a shredder that reduces volume by large amounts, big commercial shredder. And there's a lot of things that Michael talked about in another meeting that were held. Yeah. This kind of thing. Yeah. Okay. All right. And you know, I don't know if it it has any relevance to it, but when we think of transfer station, what's going to happen with the recycling and composting program, right? That still continues. Huh. That still continues.

The more you can even get out of that transfer station. I mean, our recycling program is already a transfer station. Right. Right. But what I'm saying is if we go fully transfer station with Chaffy County, yeah, um what's going to happen to our recycling program all together? Like does it have to be a single point instead of having multiple recycling stations or you know a satellite recycling station like we do currently that is easier to get to for people in town than it would be going to maybe a singular point near or up by the dump or airport or whatever.

Yeah, I guess it'd be good to know if that would actually change. I would assume it would if we go transfer. Why Robin? What do you think? The reason why I say that is because if everyone thinks, "Okay, we're going to go to a transfer station." Uhhuh. One, the battle that we've been having and the challenges that we've been facing as far as having them or encouraging them to recycle, are they going to recycle it or are they going to take it straight to the transfer station? You see what I'm saying? what our recycling program that we have now. Yeah.

If we go to a transfer station, what's going to happen to our recycling program on a hole? Isn't it kind of separate from a landfill right now? It will be separate. But if everyone's going to say, "Hey, it's a transfer station. Why am I even recycling?" Yeah. You see what I'm saying? You know what? People are recycling right now because they're trying to keep things out of the landfill. Yes. Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. So, if Yeah, that might change some people's behavior. I see what you mean. Thank you so much. And then is there going to be more recovery in the forest? Yeah. Then what we faced with now? Yeah, that's a good question.

That's one thing I would like to say is there's a sentiment out there that why should I recycle? I've heard they just I've seen them throwing the recycling in the dump. So, you know, and education or some kind of outreach to the public and and explaining why that happens because it's contaminated, but just saying there's a lot of sentiment out there. Like, I heard they just spent all that time separating it and someone said they saw getting tossed in the dump. So, I I wouldn't go into what we found in those containers. Pretty nasty. Yeah,

that's usually when it goes to the landfill because I wouldn't expect them to touch it or try to salvage anything out of it. Yeah. Okay, Candace, is that enough for you? Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Just wanted to make sure we And then um I think our our next guest is here and we have a couple of other people presenting. Are we okay? Yeah. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Appreciate you guys and all the work you do.

Uh yeah, is this it? Well, hello. Good to see you. So grateful. Um, when did that happen? Email me about it or um try to Yeah, I I don't know.

Any additional information? Okay, that's the chapter. Thank you. Hi. Hi. How are you? Hey guys. How are you? Good. Good to see you again. Yeah, man. Absolutely. I love being up here in Leadville. Do you want to to drive the be great? Agenda item two, overview and

thank you. discussion regarding protocol and expectations for sorry I'm just going to jump in your chair there for a second regarding expectations for potential power outage events. Welcome welcome Blair. Hi. Thank you guys for having me. I feel kind of strange sitting. Would it be really awkward if I stood? Awesome. Um let me see. How can I do this? Stand on the chair.

This be too weird. Sorry. Sorry. All right. Um, yes, we're going to talk about some of the things that we've already talked about wildfire mitigation efforts, what we're doing to prepare communities for wildfire risk, how we're reducing outages, um, and how does that improvement restoration look like post a PSPS, a public safety power shut off. Um, okay. I want to start with this page. So, we're going to go over a lot of things that we've already talked about here together, but I'm going to give you a little bit more context because we've lived through it a little bit more since we have last time we spoke. Um, this is our interactive wildfire risk tier map and I'll send you guys this deck after um today and you can click on this, you can take a look at it. Um, but you can see we're tier one, tier two, tier three. A lot of Lake County is in tier one, which means that we are a little bit less prone and have a little bit less a little bit less opportunity to experience a public safety power shut off event. Okay, that's good news. All right, this is just a little bit of what we've been doing. What was approved in our 25 through 27 wildfire mitigation plan. We were approved by the PUC to spend $ 1.99 billion dollar um in investments that is hardening the system that is improving our feeders. That is we have done an aggressive um pole replacement um projects across the state. Um I think those numbers are on here somewhere. 10,000 pole replacements with a focus on higher risk areas. a lot of vegetation management, operational mitigation, and

then situational awareness, which is like Technosila and some of the software programs that we're using to kind of predict our um wildfire modeling. So, again, a lot of this is stuff that we've talked about, but I don't want to move too fast, so please stop me if you have questions. Um system maintenance and upgrades. This is kind of the things that we're investing in, right? preventative measures, vegetation management, first responder and community outreach. This has been huge for us and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback on that one. Advanced technologies and then safety and preparedness. You've seen this before. This is kind of just what we're doing. You can see the system hardening, enhanced power safety settings, kind of how our modeling works. Again, I don't want to move too fast, but I also want to make sure I get through everything. Okay, so this is kind of some of the work that we've done. This is numbers from 2024 alone, so it does not include 2025 numbers. Um almost 9,000 in distribution um distribution poles replaced. Um a lot of work on our transmission equipment. Yes, we've been busy. This is a big concern for us. Okay, reduce reducing operational risk and getting to a go. So, how are we going from enhanced power safety settings into a PSPS event, a public safety power shut off? We use entirely too many acronyms. So, if I accidentally slip out, slip one out without clarifying, please stop me and make me go back. Um, okay. enhanced power safety settings, EPSS. It's a proven wildfire mitigation tool. Um, this is something um a way

that we operate our lines uh shockingly a lot. Um, it is kind of crazy how often we are operating. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Um, it's kind of shocking to me how often we operate, especially these days, how often we operate our lines in enhanced power safety settings. So, what's happening when we're operating our lines in in enhanced power safety settings? Um, when we're in normal operations, we have what we call automatic reclosures on those lines. So, if a bird, a squirrel, a branch, whatever it might be, hits or trips that line, it's that momentary flicker, right? It's that it automatically recloses, it automatic re-energizes, and you automatically have power back. When we're operating in enhanced power safety settings, those reclosures are turned off. And so, when anything strikes that line, I know I've told you this way too many times, I apologize. Um, when anything strikes this line, um, we're sending crews out to patrol it and to ensure that there is nothing sitting on that line that could reignite and create a point of ignition. How is that different from public safety power shut off? And I think that this is a place where um there's some confusion out there, right? Um public safety power shut off is a tool of last resort. This is we are not in the business of turning people's power off. We are in the business of keeping people's power on. Um however, we feel it is our responsibility to prevent communities from catastrophic wildfire. And again, this is one of the tools in our toolbox. Last tool in our toolbox. So, with public safety power shut off events, we are proactively turning your power off. That is different from an enhanced power safety setting in the sense that something had to trip that line for you

to lose power in the enhanced power safety setting. For the PSPS, you proactively did it. SL

Yeah. Again, EPSS allows power lines to remain in service during periods of high wildfire risk with additional protections protections, right? Public safety power shut off is a risk reduction strategy in which we're we're temporarily turning people's power off. Big differences, right? What we are going to see here in Lake County more often than not is the enhanced power safety settings. So when we lose power like last week and we have those extended outages, it is because we have crews out there patrolling those lines to ensure that we are not going to catch anything on fire. That is what is happening. It is causing extended outages. It is making it longer for us to get the power back on for folks. We are deploying drones. We are at sometimes deploying helicopters to patrol those areas if the winds die down enough for us. Um, but it's a challenge. It is absolutely a challenge and it's a place where we know we need to get better and faster, but we're not there yet. We're working on um you guys feel free to stop me at any point. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about public safety power shut offs. what the event actually looks like, right? Um, so what's happening internally? Sometimes it's more than 72 hours in advance. We know that these things are coming. We can see through the forecast on those downs sloping winds um wind events. It's a little bit harder for us. We're hitting closer to the 50 48 50 hour mark, which we're we're committed to um through the PUC. Um, so more than 72 hours out, it's increased situational awareness. We're starting to meet

internally like five times a day. It's kind of aggressive. Um, the modeling is getting redone about five times a day, if not more. I mean, it it gets really really intense, really really fluid. At that 48 to 72 hours, that's when we're like, "Okay, are we go? What are we doing here? What's happening?" Right? The 48 hours is where we are committed to notifying our customers, right? So, we're going to start sending out press releases. We're going to start sending out notifications to customers. Um, all of that stuff at the 48 hour mark, if not before. If we know before that we're definitely going to cut the power before 48 hours, we will start messaging earlier. Um, but we are committed to that 48 hour mark. For medically vulnerable populations, that is at the 72-hour mark. So, they have a heads up at the 72 hours that this could be coming often at the 72 hours. We're not sure yet if this is going to happen, very fluid. This is kind of our playbook um for communications. So the potential for event that 48 to 72 hours in advance um the pre-event the 48 to 72 hours again the go decision we the event we deenergize right people have lost power it's happening restoration restoration's been a challenge I will always be very clear with you and transparent we feel like we've gotten much much better at the communications leading up to a public safety power shut off. Where we need to get better is on the restoration side and communications

around restoration. It is taking us up to 5 days in some instances to get power restored. And it is because we're having to inspect those lines and ensure that there's nothing sitting on those lines that is going to reignite. That is still happening in a PSPs event. Restoration's a challenge. Why don't you add a couple of things here on top of, you know? Well, let me get into it. Wait, Blair, you can go back for a second. Yeah. Where do you Where's the communication? Where does the communication happen with PSPs? Let me let me get to that slide. Okay. Oh, great question.

Like, what are we actually doing? Yeah. Who are you telling and when within your internal timeline when does the communication go out to your partners? Yep. Let me give you that.

Okay. All right. So, I'm going to give you some real time data from the PSPS events that we executed on December 17th and December 19th of 2026. So, this is what we're looking at, right? These are the polygons for the December 19th event. Um, on the 17th, we proactively deenergized 50,000. On the 19th, we proactively deenergized 60,000. An additional 120 lost power. Right? So, this is the challenge that we have. It's not just the 50 people that have been proactively deenergized, but then there's like across the state, we were in EPSS settings, right? Enhanced power safety settings. So, we lost power through that, too. We're losing power through the wind event, which is pretty natural, right? like you typically expect them.

Sure. Right. And so now our crews are not only having to deal with the PSPS area, but they're also having to deal with the EPSS areas. Right. So we have crews across the state that are out there just patrolling lines, patrolling lines, patrolling lines. They're on 16-hour shifts. That's safety regulations and stuff. Um, and we're doing everything that we can to get those lines inspected, but that is one of the main reasons why restoration is taking us so long right now. Um, from the communications aspect, just one quick clarifying thing.

When you say like 50,000 or 60,000 customers, that's each meter, like each billing address, not like the three to six people who live in each house. Correct. Yes. Okay. That's a great clarification. Thank you.

Yep. Okay. Um, this is kind of what we're looking at for criteria. So, um, this is what we actually saw. Um, the National Weather Service criteria for red red flag warnings is is here. Relative humidity of 15% or less, sustained surface winds uh or frequent gust of 25 miles per hour or greater. I mean, we see that all the time, right? Um, both conditions must occur simultaneously for at least 3 hours. The point in this is ours is much more stringent, right? We're not just issuing a PSPS event because the National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning. We are we are looking at much more detailed data and we are making um our decisions with a lot more informed information, if you will. And is each one of those a trigger or does it need all three of them?

It needs all three. Okay, great question. It needs all three of those. Great question.

Okay, actual communications. So, potential for an event, right? This is that 48 to 72 hours out. We have contacted our OEMs um at 80 hours in advance. The incident command um has been activated. Local and state officials have been notified. The PUC is part of that. Um critical customer list, that's our medically vulnerable population. OEM briefings, we start having those like three times a day. Medical device customers, I mentioned that. Oh, I'm sorry. Critical customers, um this is like water treatment plants, things like that. and we've been working with your OEM department to identify that critical customer list, get it loaded into our system um so that when we pull up those feeders, we know exactly where um that water treatment plant is and if that's the feeder that we need to get online first, we have that ability and we can do that quickly. So, when we're trying to get restoration going, we are trying to prioritize those critical customers as much as possible.

All right. So, pre-event, this is around that 42-hour, I'm sorry, 48 hour mark. Um, mass communications, that's, you know, press releases to 9 News, all of those people. Um, emails to our medical device customers. Again, those OEM briefings are still happening. It's the same kind of stuff. It's just more detailed information. We know that we're at a go, right? um go decision news conference at two hours activated um again three times per day customer comes masscoms local I mean it's kind of obnoxious um again it's a lot of the same stuff this restoration is where our communication needs to get better just again being very transparent with you

it has to be a lot better than it was with just technological advances, drones specifically. I'll tell you what saw this last time and where we failed. Um, our outage map, our outage map needs a lot of improvements and so we felt like it was not operating in real time. One was our problem and it was really challenging because I had no idea how many people were without power. And then I called the dispatch center and I got two pretty wide swaths of numbers. And then I'm was trying to figure out, you know, if we're going to have a place for people to shelter, how many people, right? But we're not talking about a PSPS. So a little bit different.

This is a PSPs were talking to us last week. We do want to go through coms for an EPSS too cuz I think that's where we have had some struggles and it'd be great to hear from you. Map not being accurate did make it. Yeah. And our map is our map is going to continue to be a problem. Like for this event, I mean again just to be very transparent, we didn't contemplate two overlapping PSPS events um where people are aggressively logging in and I mean you crashed your map a few different times, you know. So just things like that. Um, when it comes to EPSS communications, yeah,

that's something where our system is not so sophisticated where we have an outage on our distribution lines. We don't we don't know that until someone calls in. Report outage. Yeah. I mean, we really like we only know about the outages on transmission. And so when it's on that distribution, we are still rely and again this is part of you know upgrading old systems to new systems we do not know that it's happened until we get the call. What is the difference between a transmission line and a distribution?

Great question. Um okay I like to describe your transmission lines as like your I70s and your I25. Yeah. And then your feeder lines are like your state highways if you will. And then your distribution lines are like your driveways and your parking lots. So when any outage occurs on the feeder or the distribution lines, we don't know about it until we get the call from the customer, which usually doesn't take very long. So wait, let me let me talk us through then. So say somebody and I don't know how many feeder like how many transmission lines come to Lake County?

I don't know the a lot. I don't know the answer. I mean, you you've got a substation right here, right? So that's a transmission like starting point essentially. So you have a lot would come off of that. Yes. So So what happened last week was a feeder or a distribution Yes. outage. Yes. Even though it it affected a significant amount of people that was small in your It it was um

Okay. So then when you hear so when Excel hears that somebody's power is out, how many people's power like how many notifications need to be gotten by Excel to know that it's like oh this is a bigger issue? One. Once we have one we can start exploring the system. That's when we can start like we don't need five to to deploy a team. Yeah. We need one to deploy a team. Right. So, what happened last? Can you go through what this is all interesting, but can you go through what happened last week instead?

Yeah, and I apologize. I don't have all of those details off the top of my head. The way that I recall, Candace, you might have to help me talk through this. Um, I didn't know that there was an outage until Candace called me about 12 hours later, right? And u which I was kind of surprised, but nobody else called me because I I know enough people enough people in this community have my cell phone number that I usually get calls, you know. Um, but I didn't hear about it until about 12 hours later. And then as soon as I heard about it, we were able to get some information and and start making some plans.

Um, but I guess I'm kind of looking for you guys to communicate to me and I can I can track down whatever information you need. Um, like if I had gotten that call first thing in the morning, I can call the ops team and say, "Hey, we're looking at about a 12-h hour outage. It might not be until tomorrow. So, but we don't know what the problem is. Yeah. Like, unless we're proactively turning off your power and we've called you to tell you that we're proactively turning off your power, we don't we have no idea what the problem is. Unless it's a unless it's a transmission line. Even then, we probably don't know what the problem is. We know that it's out.

So, okay. So, I'm just trying to talk through how we can make this better in the future. Would the solution then be to like make sure that people are informed that when their power is out, Excel has to be their first point of contact? Yes. And that's on it should be on most people's bill. Like we we we put that out there like Yeah. Yeah. But you can write something and it doesn't matter. So just like for us to be like, "Hey, this will help us prepare for your power outages in the future." Yes. In order for us to have a warming station or a shelter, like you have to tell Excel when your power is out, we need that information in order to figure out what the problem is,

right? To then determine how many people like we're not the ones determining how many people are out of power, right? So, so there's no point in being a middle manager, a middleman in that information. No, we don't want them to call us directly, right? Yeah. Okay. We should help get the message out. People need to make that call if their power's out. Exactly. Yeah. Even if their neighbors probably made the call, they should still The more calls we get, we love it. But again, we'll deploy at once. Yeah. I just assume you guys knew when my power was out. Wait, that we knew. Yeah, we do not. Um, again, we do get notifications on transmission outages.

Um, and now that Yeah. Anyway, um, Okay. Do you mind if I ask a question? Sure. Um, I thought I thought part of the we we all received smart meters or most of the community received smart meters about 9 months ago. I guess I thought that they would report outages. It is my understanding they do not. Okay. They're not that smart. They're not They're not that smart. Um, interesting. That's my understanding. I could be incorrect, but that's my understanding that we still need people to report. How is it that you can turn off a meter through a smart meter, but you can't tell how much power is being how you can't tell the power's off?

Because we don't have if we had to staff that rates would be through the roof, right? Like just a program that's telling you, hey, you're see we're seeing a lot of outages. I don't know the answer. I don't I don't know the internal workings to necessarily answer that question, but what I can say is that we do have that on the transmission. We do not have that on feeder or distribution lines. Okay. Smart meters can't tell when the power is out. They're not sending notifications to us. They might be able to tell. Again, I'm not an engineer. Do people with power poles on their property own those power poles?

No. You own them. We have an ement. So, what if someone had a power pole that was about to fall over? We'd come and fix it. We want them to put in a work order for us and we come and fix it. What if that person has tried that route like four times and they should call me and I'll get someone else. I'll give you my card that you can pass along. I apologize that that's happened. I can help with that though. That's why you have community relations. That's those are the questions I can answer. Okay. Thank you. All right. Everybody good here? Yeah. No, you're fine. I don't want to move along too fast.

What are your most effective community outreach avenues? Like what is the best way that you have found historically to get these messages out? Because I'm I I see also queuing up notes. I'm already it's already in my head like we need to say something at the next uh regular meeting when we get a chance to just press release. We need to do some comms around this. Yes, that's what I'm asking. If we were to kind of ramp up our messaging to the community, what are your guys' best avenues that you think would

we I've got a slide on it. We we want everybody to get their information updated, their account information updated because you're right, we're sending text and voicemails and like we do have everyone's contact information, right? Um so we do feel like that's one of the best ways. I again up here in the mountains, we're a little bit different, right? And I truly believe the relationship with the office of emergency management is absolutely critical. And that is where I feel like we're seeing the most success is when we have strong relationships with the office of emergency management. We are able to communicate not only to that office but also to the community community effectively. You guys are the trusted people, right? People don't trust Excel. Um, and so the message coming from your office of emergency management, I feel like, and this is Blair's opinion, I feel like is more meaningful than almost anything else. I think that coming from your social networks and things like that, I think is very very powerful. And so ensuring that that relationship is very strong um is very very important. Candace has been great here in county.

Many I know that she'll be happy when that happens. All right. Don't want to move along too fast. This is a great conversation. Good. Feel like I need to follow up on the smart meter question. All right. Restoration. These are just some pictures of the damage that we see, right? I mean, this is just four pictures. It was like this across the state,

right? In Summit County, we had um I think it was like six poles snapped in half. Um we had to deploy, and this is the thing that we need to think about here in Lake County, we had to deploy people um in snowcats. We had to partner with the county to get plows out to help us get people up there. Um without the C Summit County's partnership and helping us plow, we would not have gotten restoration done as quickly as we did. and it still took over 24 hours. But again, I want to make it perfectly clear to everyone that Summit County was not under a PSPS when this happened, but they still there were still parts of Summit County that were out without power for well over 24 hours.

Why? Because we had outages across the state and some of those people had been without power for 48 plus hours. So why did that affect people in Summit County? because Summit County was in enhanced power safety settings, not PSPS. So, they lost power through the weather event, right? So, not proactively. And so, we're not just dealing with Summit County. Yeah. We're dealing with the entire state. And while Summit County was like, "Ah, we don't have power." I'm like, "I I totally hear you. I am pushing this as hard as I can." But the reality is there's some people in Boulder that have been without power for at least two days and it might be longer for them.

So, you know, we're all in it together a little bit is the point. And and again, just because they weren't in PSPS does not mean that they didn't lose power, right? It is a very very very very high likelihood that if we are executing a PSPS event elsewhere in the state, you're going to lose power because you're in EPSS and it could be extended. Again, I just want to set very real expectations because you only have so many crews to work with and they're already need to go in and inspect all the lines that were under PSPS, you know, and it's whoever's been out the longest gets first.

It's not even whoever has been out the longest necessarily. I mean, that does play a little bit of a role into it, but it's also looking at feeders that carry those critical customers. So, like if we're looking at a feeder down in Boulder that's got their jail, a water treatment plant, and whatever, and we've got 200 people in Lake County that are just homes that are out, the priority is going to be down in Boulder, you know what I mean? And and so it's not again necessarily the amount of time, um, but just the fluidity of the event and what's actually happen happening, right? Are there any movable crews that like say like you know like how wildfires work there's people like do you guys ever bring in

Yes. And we absolutely do and that's where we're lucky right if we really got into a jam where we're starting to push three 5day outages or something like that we're going to start we serve eight different states right we're going to start bringing in crews from New Mexico from other areas. The problem with especially a couple of these events is that um while we were executing a PSPs event in Colorado, we were also executing one in the Texas panhandle and we were also executing one in New Mexico because we're all in that same weather pattern, right? Yeah.

So, it's it's a challenge. It's a real challenge and I I don't want to underdel the the seriousness and the amount of time that it is taking us for restoration on these events. I want to set very clear expectations. Um I want to let Richie ask a question. Yeah. Do you tell the public or the OEM departments in the counties when that area enters EPSS?

No. And we would be sending emails like 90 bajillion times a day because we are that fluid. We're not like the bear where you're like, "Hey, today we're low and today we're high." Like ours is really, really fluid, like changing every single hour. And so we don't have the manpower. your rates would be through the roof if that's what we needed to do because we are operating in enhanced power safety settings particularly these days more than we're not do you have any well

or I mean do you have any like could you site data how like many times a month or a year our county uss I could maybe pull it for the county um it's over 50 I mean it's over 50 per per% % I mean okay it's over 50% of the year you're probably in EPSS would be my guess like I I think think hot dry sure

low relative humidity um high winds I think that's the environment that we're living in these days right now and that's when we're putting things in EPSS and so I think that we'd rather have people start thinking like that like hey it's hot and dry today. Hey, it hasn't snowed in months. Hey, I'm probably not going to burn today. Hey, I'm probably in EPSS settings today. This is so helpful, Blair. Um, I really appreciate it and you know, it was so helpful this summer when we reached out to you and you gave us some material to give out to our mobile home communities who are getting shut off because of

EPSS. EPSS. Um, and I'm curious if you all have any data on when lines are going down and when people are calling in because we will definitely encourage people to do that now alongside the county. Um, but I'm really curious because I know some of our mobile home parks were disconnected for like 12 hours at a time this summer. I also think they're not often home during the day and they're very unlikely to call you all and I'm just curious how we could try to shorten those cut offs whenever or those shut offs whenever possible if there is a connection between hey we just didn't know till it was shut off for 6 hours. I think that's a great point particularly with some of these mobile homes and stuff and I don't know if you got my email that I sent you yesterday.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. But I uh so Emily I sent Emily an email yesterday. Gosh, what was it about? The home sound the alarm. Yeah.

Home inspection um fire. And Dan's next on my list to talk to about this. Chief Dailyaly, excuse me. um is next on my list to talk to about this, but you know, we do work with the Red Cross to try to target lowincome communities and neighborhoods and go into those homes and install fire alarms, things like that. And so I threw it out there to Emily that there might be a couple of neighborhoods up here that would be a good fit for this year that we can get into and stuff. So, um but hey, I love that idea. Let's let I bet I can look into some of that data and if I can't I'll find out that I can't. But let's let's look at that offline. I think it's a great idea because I think that you guys do I I tell everybody at Excel I'm like you know C4 is a very interesting organization because they are so focused on sustainability yet they do such strong work and and spend a lot of their time just keeping people's lights on. So thank you for that. Really appreciate it. All right, everybody's questions answered. Lessons learned.

All right, what went well? Communications to stakeholders we felt like went well um on the leadup to the event. Um 2500 critical customer premises in total were contacted. I mean, that's huge for us. um daily outreach to key accounts. Key accounts um think like Climax, like it's those large businesses, organizations that have their own account holder, if you will. Um we do have a partnership with the American Red Cross to help us um engage shelters, warming huts, things like that. Um we found during these events that they were really charging stations more than anything else. And even during the Marshall fire, um I think we had like six people in a shelter just nature of the event, right?

Um we handed out dry ice. Dry ice was a it was an ask and we were able to rally that and got dry ice out into the community. Um our online outage map sucked. Um how do we provide accurate restoration updates accounting for unknown damage? I mean that is our big question. That's it. Like if we can answer that, we'll get a lot better at things. Um not notification to tenants and non-account holders. So exactly what you were saying, you know, like if you're renting and your landlord has the bill, how do we get in touch with you? Right.

Um and then overall awareness. This is it, right? Like I can't tell you how many people from Summit County called me and said, "What? This is a PSPs event, right?" I'm like, "No, no, no, no. This is not a PSPs event. I promise we would have let you know well in advance."

However, when we have high wind events, you're going to lose power, right? Like, we can't prevent that. We do what we damn good. um preparing for outages, right? This is a little bit of what Emily and I are talking about, want to connect with Chief Daily on, but you know, building a home emergency kit, medical and food considerations, and then we want everybody to update their contact information so that we can get a hold of you. Go on to a more fun topic after this one. That's my presentation for you guys on wildfire. Thank you.

Any other questions that I can answer? I have a couple. Um cuz Excel would do a better job about cutting the entire tree rather than just living it because during a wind event, we still had the issue of the tree being above those power lines. that have now it's even more weak and it could still run the power lines.

Yes. Yes, we are doing a better job with our vegetation management. However, because Lake County is considered most of Lake County is considered in that tier one. Um I just I'm going to speak transparently. You're not on the radar right now for any vegetation work this summer to my knowledge. Okay. I know that's not what you want to hear. No. But I mean, are they going to do is it is it in talks with, you know, everybody on the ground, the boots on the ground, mitigation efforts to cut the entire tree rather than it? Yes, that has been a change to our vegetation management efforts since we were in here in 2023. That's good news.

Yes, because I did tour around with Commissioner Mudge at the time. Um, and what a lot, not all, but a lot of the lines that we did look at are communication lines, not our lines, which is a common, it's common confusion, but communication lines all hang off of our lines. And they're those lower ones. So, any line that's closer to the ground and thicker, that's going to be your communications line. So, you know, I think of the one coming into my house, I could probably jump up and grab that communications line where I can't necessarily on the electric line. I can't.

Then one more question. Uh, we had we had seven calls in one day for wind events. Um, I think two of them were power lines. One was a power pole, the other one's a line, and the other ones were a tree on a house and you know, stuff like that. Is there anything that you need from us that can make your response more uh you know rapid for those types of things? Is there any information you can get from us from dispatch? Yeah. That will help you get out here faster in the event?

Probably. Um, what I'd like to do is set up let's set up a meeting with the ops team um to get a better idea from them what information they're looking for when we get these kind of calls chief because I think that they'll be able to give you a much more knowledgeable answer than what I'm thinking off the top of my head. But I think that that would be a worthy um exercise. Thank you. Anyone else? Again, don't want to move too fast. I'm ahead of time though. Go for it. Awesome. Um, rates are going up. We have an electric and gas rate case in front of the PUC right now.

I know again this is not what anybody wants to hear, but I will always come in and speak nothing but transparently. Um, key themes and customer value. I mean, the way I describe this to folks, we haven't seen a boom like we're seeing in our industry since the air conditioning units came online. And before that, it was the light bulb, right? We're bringing in everything's electric now. I mean, people don't even have to walk anywhere. They're just

I mean, it it's kind of crazy. And, you know, um I lost my thought a little bit, but yeah. Um here it was. Um, you know, traditionally we get to the end of a line, we lose capacity on even the electric grid, you know, and we put that that upgrade onto the developer, right? They see the ROI on that. Um, we don't feel we we traditionally have not felt like it's right to put that back to the rate payer, right?

Um, that's changed. We've got EVs on the system. We've got appliance electrification. We've got large users, i.e. data centers. Um I mean it's exactly what you just said, you know, it's here. Um so how do we manage it? Um we I guess it was two legislative sessions ago, we got the distribution system planning bill approved which allows us to look at our grid and plan for 5 to 10 years out. We've never been able to do that before. Traditionally, we've only been able to plan maybe three years in advance and it's because we want to keep rates slick for our customers, right? Um but but the model's changing, right? And we need to change with it. And um so that's what you're seeing. You're seeing, you know, we're building large solar and wind gardens on the eastern plains. Um, we are being mandated by the state to hit 80% carbon neutral um, I'm sorry, carbon reductions from 2005 levels um, by 2030. We believe we'll hit it closer to 88% by 2030 because of those solar and wind gardens. But we need to build the infrastructure to get the energy that's being produced out there to to where people actually live. Right? That's what we are. We're an infrastructure company that builds infrastructure that sends the molecules through, right? That's where we make our money, too. I want to be very clear about that. Um, when natural I always joke, I wish we were that powerful. Pun intended. Um, where we could set worldwide commodity rates, right? Like for natural gas. But when things get really cold, we don't set those, right? We're paying $7. You're paying $7. We're nothing but a pass through there.

Um, where we make our money is on the infrastructure that we put on the in the ground. This is a map of just all of the rate cases that are happening across the country right now. It's not just us. Um, like I said, you have not seen booms in the industry. You've seen two of them, right, in 100 years, 100 plus years. So, it's happening across the country right now. Excel Energy is very committed to keeping ours as low as possible. I don't What is the white connotate? Why are we white? I don't see white on the

This was of 2025. So we have not pitched ours yet. So there was about 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight states. Nine 10 10 that don't have a rate case in front of them right now. This was last year. Yes, sir. Sorry about that.

Didn't get very good context there. All right. Our residential electric bill compared to So, all right. Um, residential bills have been about 37% below the national average over the past decade. Um, customer usage in PiSco, public service company of Colorado, like operating underneath Excel, that's our business. Um, versus other Colorado utilities is about 15% lower. um one due to DSM programs, but it also let's be clear, we're regulated by the PUC, Black Hills, Holy Cross, CORE, they can set their rates wherever they want them with the vote of a board, right? We have to go and defend our rate case increases to the public utility commission.

What's a DSM? Uh demand side management. So, it's your um time of use stuff, you know. What? What? Um, sorry if you're going to answer this in the next slides. You said rates are going to go up. Here's how much below na are you guys trying to get to national average? How much what are things projected to go up? About $10 a bill per month. Per month. Per month. A lot. I mean, $120 a month adds up for some people, right? That that can be a big hit. We we understand that. Blair, do you have any plans to have demand charges like different rates during the day? Yes, we do have different time of use um rates.

Okay, that's part of smart meters. Yep. Richie can probably speak to that better than I can. Yes. Um this is great national data and statewide data. Are you able to get data on what Lake County residents are paying versus other communities? because I think we've seen data that lake county utility bills are significantly higher than national average and so I think this is great statewide and across Excels territory but I don't know that it necessarily speaks to Lake County residents experience. I don't have that data but I am happy to dive in and see if we can track it down.

Yeah, absolutely. Cuz I think that that speaks to insulation and and things like that, right? Yeah. Exactly. like and and how can we bring some of that NPA that non-pipeline alternative um up here into Lake County to help weatherize some of those homes and hopefully bring those bills down. But you what was that what was that map we were looking at the other day that showed the the like utility burden per household? I got that. That's my next slide. energy burden. This is wallet share where it was like you could see each county's burden not huh

there's a couple different sources that I found that are maps of the energy burden and you know so uh it'll give you data like you know the average salary or the AMI for the county and then the average utility price for the county and it's colorcoded lake is actually, you know, not doing nearly as not nearly as burdened as like Costia County and like uh Alamosa County, I believe, for some of those, but um you know, about twice what we don't serve them electric, right? Right. Their rates are higher. I mean, that that is part of it.

Yeah. And a lot of it is based on you know that what the AMI is also, right? Combination of both. Yep. But yeah, it's it's stark how much more the utility bill how what the energy burden is up here than say in the front range county. I think this is our commitment. This is our commitment is to keeping um the wallet share at at that 1%. Tell us more about what is a wallet share. A wallet share is how much of your dollar are you spending on rates, right?

Versus what? versus everything else that you pay for. Okay? And so we want that to stay around 1%. And what we're going to do in order to make that happen is we're going to expand our affordability programs. We're going to European plugs. We're European plugs. Oh, yeah. I love it. I don't build these. Um No, that'll cost us a ton of money. I know. Um,

I think the big thing that everybody wants me to talk about here is the 10 million that the company and investors are committing to um, these affordability programs, you know, knowing that $120 a year is a lot for some people on their bill and that we need to find a way to help with that. So, we are committed to doing that. Um, but I don't want to walk in here and pretend that rape cases are not on the table because they are right now. I want to be clear. $10 million is not that much for a onetime contribution. Yep. Do you all have you all taken a stance on Senate Bill Two

which would force the fair the fair rate margin cost rate? I have not seen that come across my email so I can't speak on it. Okay. I see a lot of bills come across in my emails that we want to comment on, but that's not one of them. Our big bill right now is the sunset um bill. So, that is the bill that requires um legislation I should say that requires every state department to go under review every I think six or seven years, something like that.

And this year it's the PUC. And so there's some things that are being recommended right now that we're pretty concerned about. Um the big one's securitization. Um we get it that it looks horrible and that people don't love our executives with these huge bonuses and things like that. The reality with securitization is that the best analogy I have for it is that when you go out and try to Let me back up. Securization is very, very tricky and very, very complex. What is it? I don't know what securitization is.

I'm going to do the best that I can to explain it, but it's very complex and I recommend you googling it rather than taking my analogy for it. Um but it's essentially it's a financing mechanism, right? And so

securities and and so it's how we finance and it would be the PUC essentially limiting the amount of return on investment that we could potentially see in in in our investments. What's wrong with that? Right? Why are we concerned about that? Um, a number of reasons. When you're when you go out to get a mortgage, right, you want the best rates out there. The way that you get the best rate, you don't get the best rates if you're like, "Hey, I I had to break even every month. I don't have any extra income, but I swear I can pay this mortgage. It'll be no big deal." You know, um, you're not going to get the best rates there. We have a responsibility to our rate payers to go to Wall Street to get the best rates possible when we are borrowing billions of dollars to invest in our infrastructure. Um if we are at a break even, we're not going to get those best the best rates. We also feel like there's an opportunity that this could slow um the clean transition in Colorado in the sense that if you are Bob Frenzel in Minneapolis thinking about where to invest your money for the next 10 years and you're not sure if you're going to see the ROI in Colorado, you might put it elsewhere. Right? So those are some of the challenges and the concerns that we have around securitization. Uh we're recommending that they go from three commissioners to five commissioners. We are recommending that they hold um the majority of their meetings in person. Currently um they're all most of them are not held in person and we feel that

when billion dollar decisions are being made that people should be face to face. Um, yeah, those are the big ones. Good. Thank you. Yeah. All right, I'm right at time. I did want to say that I got a real simple transfer switch installed and I just have a portable generator. Man, that makes a huge difference when you can especially when you're on a well. Uh, so it's just the the heater, the well, and the fridge basically. It was about 2,000 bucks.

What do you use it for? the power goes out, I have to pull my generator out, plug it into the little plug, start it up, and uh you know, for some of those 12hour, I don't know if there's some way you could encourage people or offer a incentive or just just for people to know that because when they think about a whole house generator, they think about $30,000 to 50 for an automatic cola. Um, back to these programs, Blair, I'm curious,

um, what, if anything, Excel is doing for communities like C Lake County to advocate for raising the point at which households qualify for a lot of the current existence programs in in the state, for example, bill payment assistance, you have to make below 80% AMI. It is virtually impossible to live in Lake County

at that point. So, for example, we've had numerous teachers and seniors in our office in the last month who cannot afford their utility bills and we cannot assist them because they don't qualify for leave for bill payment assistance. And so, I just I would love for some of these things you're talking about here to, you know, be able to increase households, especially in rural communities that would qualify. Love that you bring this up. So, through the Mountain Energy Project, and you guys have probably heard this on a couple of those calls, there is um a pilot rate program that is scheduled to be rolled out.

I don't I don't know that it's rolled out yet. It's not rolled out yet. summer is when they're talking about it.

But I think that there's an opportunity for Lake County under that because I think that that's exactly what that program is looking at saying, look, it's more expensive in the mountains as it is. You're want us all to electrify. How are you going to help us with that? Because right now, if we all electrify, our rates are more expensive, not less expensive. Um, that's something that is very true. like it is more expensive. And I I don't want to pretend that it's not. I I don't know who put that message out there that it's not more expensive. It is more expensive like to pay for electricity than it is natural gas. It just is. Um so yeah, I think that that is where we're going to have some movement and some traction there. And I really encourage you guys to push that in the non energy um program calls.

Yeah. Okay. Started 10 minutes late. So, no, we're not. We're not like tied to the time. Five more minutes. Um Blair, I heard recently that some people have started getting shut offs from Excel for not paying their bills. And my impression was that we don't that Excel hasn't done that until there's um we're done. We're out of That's my impression. Um, but we just had three recent like this week. Yeah.

And we have, and it's going to be freezing this week, so that's odd to me. If you want to pass along their contact information, my contact information, that's I can dig in. Okay. Figure it out. Thank you. Here's some for your sideways pull. Thank you, Blur. I know. Is there like um is that like a statewide thing that people's you start going to those folks who have not been paying their bills and it's like a statewide we're not seeing that temperature. Is that why it's so early, do you think? It's it's a surprise to me. No idea why. Yeah, I have no idea why. It's not something that's been messaged to me. I'm surprised to hear it.

Okay. So, yeah, let me know and I can try to track it down. Well, that's one of the reasons why I brought up the smart meter issue because the smart meters, you can turn them off. Mhm.

Great. efficient, effective, but you don't have to like go to people's homes to actually knock on the door to make sure that they're receiving the notices. Like same with your the ESPs. I'm not same with that where it's like, hey, you might not have the actual contact of the people who live there. And so it's like I can see how it's more efficient for business, but it's also really harmful to the people who are experiencing the outage. So that's where I'm that's why I brought up the smart meter. It seems like effective for business but not great for our community.

I will reach out to you. I think I I get that that's a challenge and that that's not great for the community. I think where the smart meters are great for the community is with time of use or that is I mean pros and cons right butt um yeah you know um let let me dig in a little bit more to smart meters for you yeah I think with what Elsa is speaking to I know the passed a lot of regulations so that there are a lot of guidelines on when you can disconnect a household I think just with the winter we've had we did this winter for the first time this week experience days where it 24 hours where it did not fall below freezing

and so we did have households get disconnected which is I'm shocked by it guys but it is the early usually we don't see it till July again I I was not expecting to get this today obviously I've not seen any messaging around this of that we're going to change those dates or anything so it does come as a surprise to me and if you want to come give these people my card we'll get it figured out for you absolutely Awesome. Thank you, Blair. Yeah. Okay. I don't have any other questions right now. No, no, nor do I. Thank you, Blair. That was very Thanks for entertaining me, guys. I really appreciate it very much and I look forward to next time. Appreciate you coming in.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, something that everyone asked me about, you know, I'm like, I think it was the wind. So, now I I got more information. I think understanding the difference between enhanced power safety settings and PSPS is critical, but then also understanding that the likelihood of losing power through a high wind event, even if we're not in PSPS, is is also very high. Um, you guys have my cell phone number. It's on that card. Um, Candace does a great job communicating. So, thank you. Appreciate it, guys. Take care. Y, too. Okay,

moving on. I'm just going to go grab my water. Sorry, you guys. Nobody wants to listen to y'all talk anymore. A really brief break. Do you need me to pour any presentation? Okay, got one moment, please. Welcome back. Are we recording? We're muted. Sorry. No, we're unmuted. Okay,

welcome back to the work session March 24th. Uh it's now 116 and item number three is overview and discussion regarding proposed fee increases for parks and recreation facilities to assist with rising operational maintenance and utility costs. Led by Mr. Duncan Chisum, parks and rec director Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Uh take you with the mim. So I'll just run through.

You can escape for me so I can screen you online. Yeah. So, I'm here today just to talk about some potential fee increases for our facilities. Uh, I just want to run through some of the reasoning behind that, some rationale uh around where we want to head to and then talk through a couple steps around uh how that could happen and get some feedback on on our thinking. So

you can use this Yeah.

Sorry. I think you can just scroll down instead of clicking. Yeah. Okay.

She gentle. Okay. So, personnel for fee updates. Uh we want to try and address some of the rising costs that that we've been having. Um and budget constraints. You know, we believe we've been underpriced for a number of years. Uh so we want to try and address some of that. Uh then modernizing our fees align us more regionally uh with some of our our neighboring communities uh balancing affordability for community groups. Uh we also want to look at shifting to day pricing for a lot of our facilities. So at the moment we we do it by the hour which can lead to some conflicts. uh could also uh help to clarify some of the rental terms. Sometimes this cross over uh some people go over, some people go under, things like that. Uh and again, yeah, as I said, trying to reduce our scheduling conflicts where we have them. Um, strategically updating our fees helps strengthen our financial sustainability, enhances user experience of of our facilities, and again help support long-term facility investment. Just some background. Uh we've been stagnant for a long time and my staff who have been here the longest can't actually give me a date the last time fees were actually raised and some of them have been here 10 or 12

years. So, uh we all know across the county we've got increased operational costs, paying more for for power, things like that, utility costs. Uh we've got a disparity with our pricing. Uh you know, we should be comparable to our neighboring communities. Although they have a different level of service than we do, we are quite behind in terms of their cost recovery compared to what we could be. Uh and again, continued fee stagnation limits our reinvestment in facilities and it undermines our quality and their safety and our maintenance standards. The more money we can try and recover, the more money we can then reinvest back into So market analys market and cost analysis. We've done some some looking around our neighboring communities. As I said, we're well below market standard uh for both indoor and outdoor facilities. Uh we've got labor intensive areas like B the ball fields and the rodeo grounds are underpriced relative to the maintenance and staffing costs. So it's costing us a lot more to maintain than we're bringing in in revenue. uh key facilities like Sixth Street gym

have strong bookings depending on when what part of the day or time of the year but they're consistent. Uh and again uh updating our prices helps us move more to our cost recovery gaps uh and supports upkeep and customer experience. Um, when you're mentioning relative to maintenance staffing costs, the maintenance staff for things like the ball fields and whatnot, are that housed in your department?

It's a mixed model. So, we've got obviously the facilities, the fleet department. Mhm. who do the majority of of uh field maintenance. But for parks and league, we also bring in a number of mainly younger staff to help line the fields, do umpiring, maintain some real basic stuff, but like repairs obviously like repairs and stuff are going to fall in public works. Yes. Yes. Uh again, it's it's it's pretty mixed, right? So take the sixth street gym. My team organized refinishing of the floor. It wasn't done through facilities.

So your team refinished the floor. We know we didn't do it. We through their budget. Oh, I see. Yeah. So it's it's a bit of a case by case. Sorry. Oops.

I bet that one's expensive. Uh so dug in anyway we'll continue on. We'll let him drive. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

So in the memo presents some options and some suggestions around update rental fee schedules. As I said, we want to look from to move from hourly to daily. Uh we also want to look at increasing nonprofit rates. Uh which again discounted already for consecutive days. So if you hire six people gym for more than one day, the second day is cheaper than the first and so on. Uh we want to look at adding potential new service fees. So at the moment we do not charge for uh let's say somebody hires uh one of the baseball fields we do not charge for staff over and above initial marking if it is if it's a multi-day tournament we just eat that cost of continuing to market. Uh again that helps with trans transparency and ensures you know accurate cost coverage you know charge and what it's actually costing us to maintain it. Uh we also want to look at some sustainability uh functions around looking at an annual CPI increase. As our costs go up so should potentially our fee structure to affect those costs. Uh, as I said, we it's been a long time since we've even attempted to adjust fees, so we're quite behind uh in that that area. So, key category changes, six jump. Uh, we used to have a recreational, we still do, we're proposing not to have a recreational rate. So the current rate is $6 an hour

to hire that space for recreational people. Uh we want to move that to a community rate of $25 an hour. I think that's still fair and reasonable. Uh again, most uh in my experience, most people renting the gym are renting it with a group of people. So at $6, you can doesn't matter if you got one person or 20 people. It's still $6. So, uh, again, increasing nonprofit event rates to $250 a day. Uh, increase the floor covering rate. Uh, I think it's currently$1 $100, $150 putting that up. Uh again for parks, pavilions and fields again if you're using it for private use uh increasing the fields field rate uh for private and nonprofit rates. We don't really get too many commercial users of those those things. Uh again radio grounds I think it's currently like $75 a day, you know. So that's it's quite efficient and economic uh and doesn't necessarily reflect the use and doesn't reflect uh if there's a an event happening there which charges to make money. We're only charging them $75. Yeah. Uh again want to keep the parking lot uh fees the same. So most of the time I pass in lots of inter things like the race series. So can you just go ahead?

Yeah, like a like a real world case example here, right? Like um like a a group is going to set up their curling ice on the baseball field and use it for the winter. What does that look like now? And what does that change to? So curling is is probably not a not a great example cuz we share that surface, right? So that that's a joint program. Okay. So we we're effectively providing the facility at no charge taking all the registrations and then splitting the revenue with them because they run up on.

Got it. Okay. So I guess an example uh let's just say uh over days there was a baseball tournament or softball tournament you know so at the moment they're they're effectively paying uh around about $100 per day uh or like when they have a race and they put 50 or 150 detents on that baseball field. What? Like something like that?

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So again, that it depends, right? Uh so we would say the race is a profit full profit event. You know, at the moment, they would be paying $100 a day or or $20 an hour. Sorry. The race who uses the the field is a is a nonprofit. Is it? Okay. All Yeah. All the tents where they staged races. No, it's a staged race, but it's Ride the Rockies. That's a nonprofit. Okay. Oh, so I thought we were talking about devices here. No, you're talking He's talking about all the tents on

Yeah. I mean, just as an example, like I'm trying to pick out what the the real world example of, okay, these people have been using this yearly. Here's what they have traditionally paid. Here's what they're going to go up to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we will be keeping, you know, the nonprofit rate uh the same to be honest. So, $30 a day. Yeah. Duncan, how did you come up with the um the parking lot rates? Those seem very low and you propose no change.

Yeah. Again, this is based on recommendation from from my staff. So, uh this is what we've traditionally been. Uh again, we don't appear to vent them out that often. Yeah. Um so again rather than price shock across the board, we've chosen which categories we think could move, you know, the easiestly, you know, uh happy to reconsider the parking lot fee if there's the board's desire. Parking lots are expensive.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I'd also love to know like okay so with all of these changes based on the amount of use for any of these spaces what do you anticipate to earn and what would that go towards yeah we we I haven't done the the figures completely on that yet but you know the theory is that we would then reinvest that money um we don't make a lot of money on on these facilities anyway uh so it's also not easy to rent them. Yeah. So, like part of it is making sure that people know what's available, what the fee structure is, right? I think you could be renting all of these things

and there are people who do know how to rent. So, like how much they're not going to go anywhere else. There's no market for them to go anywhere else. So, we could know how much we could raise by the people who know about how to rent. Yes. Yeah. How close do you think you are to knowing how much this would I can certainly come back to the board in a week or two with more accurate figures on what this financial impact would be in terms of amount of revenue we would potentially raise based Yeah. based on you know this let's take a couple of years back how many mentors we've had and we can forecast that out as an average. Yeah, sure.

Or even in the last year. I don't I don't need you to go three years back personally. Happy to do that just cuz co we're still in CO going three years back would still put us in CO and I think there was too much change during that time to give us accurate data going forward. Sorry, Candace. I think historically we staff have gotten a lot of push back about any suggestion of increasing rates. So, I'd say we came to you like pretty very conservative. Yes. Yeah. Because we often got

just the other day at um drop in soccer like Eric made this really awesome speech that was like, "Hey, we got to prove that we're willing to pay for these facilities and everybody seems super on board." So, I think that as long as the message is coming from trusted folks, people are going to pay. I think so, too. And again like market. Yeah, I agree. This is this is the cheapest by hundreds of percentage points for what people can

I just I just don't think that there's I think there's a lot of room to raise certain rates in a way that does not price people out of the market for which there is no for these facilities. Yeah. I I agree. You know, uh we we've offered really good value to say that. Yeah.

With things like community field, it feels doesn't present problems to move to a per day pricing when there's so many things scheduled on that field in one day. Is that everybody who is uh not community? We got nonprofit and private both only have options for full day rates. What what am I missing there about like how that I think the reality is there's not too many third party users. Okay. Apart from us in the school district

soccer's community, right? Like that it's okay. I mean soccer they don't there is no charge because it's put on by the rec by the recck department. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, nobody school district doesn't pay for it. No. And they won't. I can't afford it either. So, right. Okay. All right. What I'm worried about is like making sure that we're not putting a serious burden on locals here to make fun things for locals. No. No. Again, if somebody wanted to hire that for, let's say a soccer team was coming into town, right? Yeah.

And they want to run their own practice. Exclude exclude the public from it, right? So they've got exclusive use of the field. Yeah. They should then pay for that like challenenger soccer camp. I don't know. But yeah, and we've sort of partnered with them around promoting it. Uh so you know, I find it's still cheap. Oh yeah. I'm still surprised that we don't get more out of area visitors for these facilities.

Like especially with what we're considering for this summer, like do we have any kind of outreach or marketing to like the Front Range or Western Slope of like, hey, if you need to beat the heat and get your people somewhere where they can practice without dying in like 90 something degree weather, come on up for a weekend or a day or two, you know? Well, that comes back to the marketing, right? It's like nobody knows how to rent these places. You know, Felicia's text, you can text Felicia, which is awesome. She's super responsive, gets you in, but like the person in the front right doesn't know that. I don't think this is easy. And again, I think there's also a discussion here with Adam facilities, right?

You know, is there a market for a better word for that for that inbound team training, right? Yeah. I think there's an opportunity. Yeah. What kind of people and how often use the 66th Street Gym?

So, it's it is a mixture. So, a lot of our programs run out of there. So, we've got uh volleyball some basketball practices and other things. Uh again, a lot of teams in the volleyball league were rented outside of the competition time. for social dropins. Uh it's it's the one facility where we have a lot of birthday party type activities for for young younger kids cuz it's again it's communal space, right?

Uh again, I I still think there's potential where uh that facility could be utilized a lot more. Again, it comes back to commission's point here of people knowing about it. Yeah.

So, we we can do a better job of that, that's for sure. Uh, again, most recreation centers will have a a down time mainly sort of 9:00 a.m. to 300 p.m. and then they will pick up their busy times are usually 3 or 4:00 p.m. till 8:00 or 9:00 at night. It's same anywhere. So there's always demand or more demand than we could probably cater for at that facility. Uh but we can certainly uh look at ways we can deliver for lack of better words cuz it is the one space really that people hire. Yeah. For their kids birthday parties. I don't think they can get into the schools that type of activity, you know. Yeah. How does the uh reporting or the discovery I guess is the word I might be looking for of like determining which users are just your average private recreational users or when like a couple vans pull up to the skate park and there's all kids and obviously coaches and you're like who where did these guys come from? Who are these guys?

Yeah. I would say it's probably a bit of a judgment call sometimes, but because again, we can only go on the information people supply to us when they fill out what they're renting it for and how many people are going to come. So, uh again, I'm I'm sure there's cases where people have misinformed us about the potential use of the facility. Yeah. Where would um would Huck Finn be under parks and pavilions? Yeah.

Okay. And what about um can people rent out the Huck Fin warming hut and ice? I I think you they can. I don't know if they have. Um what would that be under pavilions? Yeah, I I guess you know some of these things are we need to make a judgment call where they sit. Are they a park? Are they actually a facility? Are they a seport facility? Um I haven't come to any determination on that. Uh I I guess in terms of of Huck Fin, the question would be when are they emptying it out?

Because technically during winter it's available for ice skating. We open that facility. hopefully when we have a decent winter uh and and reserve for that. But I I I again I'm going to assume there has been opportunity in cases where people have just utilized the building and not necessarily the ice. I'm only wondering because when I think this I I want to prove this be schedule and I want you all to be able to start collecting more than you have been. But the bigger picture question that I think I'm I'm desirous to look at is what facilities do we have available that are available to rent? How much are we trying to make with those facilities? What is the actual market for those facilities? When would those facilities be available? like the full actual rental

program. This is fees. Great. Let's go. I I'm going to suggest raising a couple of those, but I think that I'd like to see how are we actually leveraging all of our facilities holistically and fees are just a small fraction of that. Do you same page? Yeah, totally totally agree. You know, uh yeah, and it's also about having good data, right? Mineral belt trail. What about Well, like is that a park? We're at the Mineral Belt Trail, but we used to do But we do events on it.

I mean, those you can't close it. You You can run simultaneously with public access and I think you'd need a permit through the county, but I don't think that was like a fee or a usage thing. I'm just going back to BL about which is like 20 years to my understanding when the funds were first raised there was 20 25 year period where it had to be free whether that's still the case. So, it's only a permitted thing. If somebody wants to do an event, like if the Mineral Trail Committee wants to do an event, they submit a permit for the lot. Well, probably a county permit, but I don't know. I almost don't know.

I don't think Yeah. I'm just in my mind that's like another wreck asset that that I don't know where we're at in the 25 years, but like Yeah. But, you know, I want to leverage everything I've got. I want to bring that place up. I do too. And it needs to be available for people to understand how they can use it. Which is part of the actual we can have all these fees, but if nobody knows how to do it, it doesn't matter and we can't increase. I don't think we'd have to start from scratch. You know, I don't think we could run things how we used to run things from a exposure risk standpoint.

Oh, totally. No, don't worry. I'm not saying we should go back to that. I'm saying in the in the holistic approach of parks and wreck of pros. Pros like any of our other facilities like the like the landfill, like the airport, there needs to be a little bit more of like carrying your weight. Not your weight down, you know, like the department's impact on our budget. And so part of that is really leveraging all of these assets that have a market value and kind of running running with that.

On a sort of side note, have you ever seen what was termed the financial sustainability strategy for parks and recreation? Was that in the wreck plan? The pros master plan?

No, I don't think it was. Right. So again, this is a piece of work which which was done in 2022, but to my knowledge was never adopted or approved by by the board. Uh and it was only done for Lake County Recreation Department as it was called at that point. So it didn't include outdoors activities, didn't include any, you know, open spacey type things. So, uh, again, it's a model of where our potential cost recovery could head. Uh, so I've been looking at this and thinking about how I bring this back to you as a board, as a an official adoption piece. So, we actually have a strategy going forward around what our cost recovery targets are and how we move in that direction. You want us to approve this? Uh,

I just taping this today just to show you. All right. Uh, yes. At some point in time, I'll be bringing back a report uh about what this is, why it's important or what it actually means. I mean, I get this, but this is clearly I mean, like we would provide services all across that to have a diversified Yeah. funding stream, right? Yes. Yep. Depends what the activity is and time of year and Yeah. Yeah. on the continuum. Yeah.

What our, you know, cost recovery, you know, target for that particular type of activities. So, at the moment, we haven't, this hasn't been adopted. It was presented to the previous board, but I couldn't tell you what happened after that. I mean, this doesn't seem like a thing I would adopt. I don't This isn't a thing. This is just a model. Yeah. I suppose there's a policy behind it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, just to give you some thought of of where my head's heading and you know how how we improve our financial sustainable over here. Nice questions. I'm going to suggest some increases. Yep. Under parks and pavilions for forprofit and nonprofit.

Those did not receive a suggested increase. I'm going to suggest an increase by $100 for forprofit and $50 for nonprofit. 100 200. Mhm. Okay. You can for rodeo grounds.

Are we no longer doing private non-events? Is that what that suggestion is? So no longer doing private non- events. You're either forprofit or nonprofit. Yeah. So most of the people who are utilizing that, you know, let's think about the events which utilize it. So they schedule an example. Anybody who wants to store their horse there, the rodeo.

Yeah. And and that I mean the nonprofit seems really low to me still. 200 bucks for maintenance to come out and like clean things up, move all of the stands around, bleachers. 200 bucks doesn't cover it. I think I'd rather see it 300 $300 for nonprofit back up to $500 for forprofit. Cuz why would we decrease rates for for profit? Just because nobody's using it doesn't mean that it's because of the price. Yeah.

Well, and I earnestly think that the condition of it could be improved, but it's charging enough to actually take care of it. That's been one of the Are there any examples of nonprofits using the rodeo ground? Yeah. the actual itself. Sorry, 48. All the C's we're like yeah 5013C and ski join is a nonprofit. Oh yeah. Okay. So nonprofit $300, forprofit $500,

and then the parking lots for private and for private. Why would we have a private? I guess you could have a birthday party in a parking room like it's hard to think of example off the top of my head, but uh let's say somebody was renting out or hiring a baseball field, but do they need exclusive access to it or not as well?

Yeah. Okay. So, my I I would say, oh my gosh, private to me would be $100. Forprofit $200. Nonprofit $100. And this is for someone to reserve a parking lot for the whole parking lot for the entire day for 20 bars. Yeah. So 100 200 100 cool cuz at the moment I believe we've got cases where some events hire it out series. Yeah. Other events don't hire it out but still utilize it.

That's a contracting thing you guys need to tighten up too, right? When you rent this, you have to rent this concurrently or not. Or if you don't, it's half the price of the rental anyway. Yeah. I'm an automotive company wanting to film a car commercial. I need this whole parking lot to park my boom trucks and my uh concept cars and everything and this and it's 25 bucks. Are there any instances of private companies charging a fee to park there like a circus? I I I don't know. Yeah. I I personally don't know about that, but maybe in the past it has been my time there.

Wasn't that where the circus was years ago? Yeah. Good memory, Matt. Yes. Yes. Yeah. The question does become what happens when somebody has an event, rents parking lot, and then charges for parking. Right. That's for profit. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Same with any facility. If they're if they're getting charged a certain amount and they're making 5,000 bucks, then it probably wants the exact same thing of each.

Well, that could also be like a subcategory like if you're charging for this for this parking, then you also you pay this base rate and then you pay an additional 50% of profits from that from those rentals. That's okay. And then I'd also like to see so Duncan any of that I also want to see. Cool. Mhm. And then I also want to see all of your I don't know if this is something that we approved but the additional fees for like striping having an renting an umpire you know like that's where I need to sit down with the maintenance team and say okay what are the actual hourly label costs costs? Yeah because

it's not coming from my department. You guys aren't doing this straight. Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't, but uh so Okay. We need to come up with an actual charge for this particular service. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because then you can actually market it. Yeah. And then we actually get money for it. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. It sounds like there's like an allocart list of services that the recck department andor maintenance could be and does perform and let's get those talked about. Let's get those in front of us

cuz I'd love to come back to you once a year with our fee schedule across the board. This is for programs for high pilot facilities once a year. You approve it as part of annual budget cycle. Mhm. And we said we're not quite there yet. There's discussion on this, you know, how do we how do we move to that sort of city? Okay, cool. Appreciate it. any other questions, queries, things which I've, you know, simply don't know about or have overlooked, you know, can you just can you just remind us what's on your list so we can see if there's anything we So

whatever. The only other thing we talked about was that's not listed. So we need to think about how that fits into the into the sketch. Okay. Uh and again it also depends how how deep you want to go right. Uh so this say somebody wants to hire a skate park at the moment. There's no real way to do that. Great. Dining Llama Memorial Skate Park. Yeah. I could see if someone was going to have a competition there for a team to come over from somewhere. have to rent the park. Yeah. I don't know, man. That doesn't feel right.

Yeah. I know people that have had like birthday parties, skate parks and stuff, too. So, that's what I was thinking. I mean, it's kind of like anybody using access to a county asset like our OV for example. if like if a coach is coming over and they're providing private lessons to be making money on on public lands, you're supposed to have a permit or something. That's where I'm at. And so that's the difference for the skate park

like, yeah, if it's like a wreck department, but different from like a private coaching lesson, you know, recck department with wreck and we have an agreement. It's like, "Yeah, you could totally come bring your crew up versus, oh yeah, you want to go teach people how to skateboard, but you want to use our facility without any cost and you don't even live here." Yeah. Oh, you're making money on our facility. We don't do that anywhere else. They're paying, you're probably excluding the general public, too. It comes down to exclusive use.

That's another question for you. No, I mean I've seen definitely like groups at the skate park where you know these are like paid kids with coaches and they just show up. There's no no one's closing anything down. No one's roll two or three identical vans and it's just a gaggle of kids and all the coaches are wearing the same shirt with maybe it would say Woodward Copper on it maybe, you know. So I'm not sure. I know there used to be an agreement between certain groups similar to Woodward or things like that with the county, but I don't know if that's a thing anymore.

Well, college teams come and ski the mineral belt from Wyoming and yeah, I guess you the question becomes, are they wanting just to use it versus actually wanting to keep other people off it while they use it? Well, It's different. A college team different from like an like a guide. Yeah. Like Woodward. Like Woodward, a for profit entity. Yeah. Yeah. I think I want to take this slowly. Yeah. Incremental. All right.

Uh and we're not going to get everything right first time. And I think that's why have a yearly review of this. What's working? What isn't working? What do we need to do? you know, what's the feedback on it? It's always going to be people, you know, again, I'm just, you know, we're concerned about sticker shock sometimes as well. A massive increase in price, right? People panic till they go to the dump. Yeah. And also, I think the different the difference is that like Sixth Street gym is the only one that people are using constantly. Yeah,

where there will be sticker shock, but even there is like this is nuts. I'm paying $6. I know this should not be allowed. Again, I'm just trying to get some figures at the moment around, you know, what the precise utility costs are, right? Is it isn't for example, we charge $6 an hour, but it costs $7 an hour. It's a power, you know, like you need to do that detail. Yeah. So cool. No, I think this is a good start. I appreciate you input and support. Yeah, thanks. Moving things is difficult.

We'll come back soon. And whether we come back for another workshop or whether we come back with an actual resolution, you know, the next question is is when would you want to implement this? I've arbitrarily picked it up 1st of July, you know, which is midway through fiscal year. Sort of a little bit different. I don't care. I don't care when you implement it. I think we should pass it as soon as possible so that you can implement it as is appropriate and my imp my instinct would be as soon as you all are capable. Yeah, totally. Again, I've chosen July to give us some some room to inform our current clients.

And then like from a a business perspective, it's sort of like we look at what the changes, the actual effects were dollars and cents wise, how that gets allocated, whether it makes sense to put some of that into marketing to try and keep the ball rolling and growing bigger. Before race season, well, have their permits already been approved, right? Yes. There will be people who we're going to book today's price and we'll have to on that plan. So yeah, cool. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Escape on that keyboard for me. I know my

Yeah. Thanks everybody. losing my vision. Oh, we still have two more topics. I know. I was looking healthare for a second. Oh, jeez. All right, moving on. It's 2:00. Item number four, legislation. Legislative updates led by Political Advocacy Incorporated. You guys are ready. We are ready when you are. Thanks. See you. Sorry. Let me get on camera there. Hi everyone.

The slides perfect. In case you're you're wanting to know how glamorous this job is, I am coming to you from the tops of trash cans cuz that's how we're able to find spots to talk. Dumpsters in the alley. At least you're in the basement, right? Is it cooler down there? Yes, it is. Yeah, I know. This weather is creepy. Um, much respect. Thank you for accommodating us from the Yeah. of trash cans.

Of course. Um, so we want to give you an overall view of where we're at. Um, a lot of this conversation is going to center around budget. Um, that is what everyone is freaked out about. And so I will let um Alan start that off with some of our budget conversations. Go ahead.

Thanks. And we can go to the next slide. Um this is just kind of an overview just so you're all aware. Um we're over halfway through the session. Um about 455 bills have been introduced. This is um this is pretty typical for this time of year. That's usually where we're at. Um usually end up somewhere around the 600 bill range. Um most of that legislation is still somewhere in pro in the process. So even though uh we're halfway through um there's still a lot out there and they continue to introduce bills every day. Um a lot of the bills are just waiting in the appropriations committees. Um and they'll sit there until after the budget is passed. Um we're starting to get really long floor fights um particularly in the House. Um and then we we'll probably see a lot of late nights for the rest of session. Uh, next slide, please. So, the state budget continues to deteriorate. Um, we got an updated revenue forecast last week on Thursday. Um, that shows that the JBC still has at least about a billion dollars to cut in order to get to the balanced budget. The JBC did choose the more optimistic of the two forecasts. Shocker there. um their own legislative council staff um though that they had more like $1.5 billion still to cut. They went with the governor's office uh forecast which uh shows that if they just approve all of their proposed cuts uh the budget will be imbalanced. Um this still includes some really controversial items that includes the $400 million sale of Pinnacle. Um, and then, uh, the governor's office shows that they made an overpayment of about $300 million in Taber refunds. So, whether they're able

to claw some of that back, um, is yet to be seen. Uh, the JBC continues to meet. That's where I am over here in the Legislative um, services building. Um, they have the goal of introducing the budget within the first week of April. So, um, a lot of big decisions still to be made um, for that to be able to happen. Uh, next slide, please.

And Alan, I'd just double down a little bit. Um, so far the joint budget committee has been punting a lot of the cuts. Um, as you know, they haven't they haven't determined exactly what's going to h happen with provider rates. Um, there's a lot of, you know, county decisions that are still hanging out there. Um, the reorganization of those different, um, entities that Higpuff had provided. And so, um, at some point they're going to have to start cutting hair soon, um, and actually getting down to the heart of the budget. On top of that, you know, really wanting to emphasize what Allan just laid out, which is they are forecasting on funny money right now. Um, I I think the likelihood of this Pinnacle sale bill going through is really low. Um, it still hasn't been introduced. There still hasn't been a draft out there. Um and Pinnacle has approve an approved ballot initiative to do this process outside of the legislature. Um so counting on that $400 million to come in seems um like poor government frankly um in terms of the budgeting process right now in addition to the $300 million out there that they're trying to claw back. So, um it does feel like they are about to like the rubber is going to hit the road here soon because there is more than $700 million that they are out of whack right now.

Elizabeth, can you can we just pause here for a second? The $300 million Taber refunds, what was the what was the tool they used for those refunds? And was that from just last year or is that from multiple years? I don't know if it's just last year or not. Alan, do you know the answer to that one? It was 20 It's Yeah, it's the 2024 year. Um, and this is when we had really large tabor surpluses. So, this would have gone to things like the homestead exemption, um, some of the veterans programs that they do. Um, and then refunds directly back to taxpayers.

Wouldn't wouldn't those exemptions have already been put on all of all of everyone's books? Yeah, that's the issue here. I don't know what mechanism they are wanting to use to get this money back. Like Elizabeth said, we're we're balancing on funny money. We the accounting that they're doing is is really wacky. And then do you all know how that's going to change the Taber cap? Like if if the $300 million was refunded to the taxpayers through whatever mechanism, are they actually fixing the Taber cap then or because it was paid back, it's done.

Uh there won't be any changes to the Taber cap, but we're also not in Taber refund land anymore. That's how bad the budget's gotten. So, um, we won't be in a Taber refund territory for the next couple of years, probably. Alan, I'm sorry. I'm I'm trying to understand Taber, so give me a second. My understanding was that the next year's Taber cap is calculated based on the previous one. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. So, if they miscalculated that, did they miscalculate the tab cap or did they refund more than they were supposed to?

Yeah, they're saying that they refunded more than they had to. Okay. So, the the Taber cap is still intact. Yes. Great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Um so on this slide um just a couple of the things that we've been watching and keeping staff up to date on. Um there was the proposed cuts to local public health agencies. The CDPHE uh requested a $3 million cut. The JBC only approved a $1.5 million cut. Um so that's maybe a little bit of good news. Um however, they'll probably have to revisit this for balancing purposes. um seeing as they have a lot of cuts that they still need to make. Um we've also been watching the uh proposal for regionalization over um bunch of the county administration processes for SNAP and TANNIF. Um it seems like the new proposal from CDHS seems to be on a better path than it was before. The JBC seems to think that there is a lot of lot more county buyin and that they're collaborating better. We did check with your staff to just make sure they were on that same page and they agree. um cautiously I think. Um so there may be a bill that comes for this this year. Um JBC staff has said that they should just revisit this um during the interim but JBC seems to be optimistic that they can get something done this year. Uh and then there is a bunch of policy changes uh have been proposed for TANIF including the removal of the annual um basic cash assistance adjustments. Um elimination of the requirement that you offer extensions eliminating the reserve minimums for both the state and county and that requirement that the general fund backfill those TANF reserves. Um the JBC just got this proposal in front of them really late in the game. they decided not to take any action. They want to mle it over a little bit uh just because there's a there's a lot to unpack in this proposal. Um but as you can see on these three things that we've been watching, no decisions have really

been finalized. So a lot of work to go um over here at the JBC. Um but happy to field any other questions you guys have on this. What is the 60-month maximum extension for Tanniff?

The 60-month maximum, it's a federal rule. Um, but in Colorado, there are extensions that can be uh approved in um circumstances. The way that I understand it, and I might not understand that completely, right? Candace, do you have someone on staff that can answer that more clearly? And if not, we will dig into that and follow up. Yeah, I can do that. I'll have to follow up though with you guys. That'd be great to understand. Thank you.

All right. And we wanted to visit some of the policy items that we've been discussing with you for legislation. So, we can go to the next slide. Uh so uh you all took a support position. This is the continuation of the child care contribution tax credit. Uh this is coming from leadership in both chambers. So it is it is going through um and it'll extend uh the child care contribution state income tax um for another 10 for 10 years beginning in 2028. Um, and I assume that you all just kind of wanted an update that that was still moving through the process and going well. Great. Uh, next slide, please. Uh, so, House Bill 1037, we have taken amend position as have the other um, uh, county associations. It has gotten stalled. Um, I think that they're having a really hard time with negotiations on this. Uh it is um constantly been laid over. It hasn't it's been heard, but it hasn't even gotten out of house judiciary just yet. Um I people are having a very hard time um with uh a bill that has Representative Degraphth as a sponsor on it, I think. Um and so uh no huge updates for you all. Um we don't have amendments to share just yet. Um but once we do, we'll get those over to staff so that they can vet those. Um but right now um this bill has a pretty tough path in front of it. Next slide please. Um so House Bill 1119 just wanted to revisit authority for different mil levy rates. Um this is a bill that is very concerning to a number of counties, school districts, anyone who relies on

mill levies and of course the assessors and the treasurers. um don't even know how they would implement and do this. Um right now the bill is stalled. It hasn't even had its first hearing in committee. Um and you'll recall that um I don't know I lose time down here, but two years ago we had the property tax task force that put together recommendations that went into a special session when they made changes to property taxes. This idea came up and the entire task force voted it down. So there is also a letter that is circulating from those property tax task force members um opposing this as well. Um uh but wanted to open it up for questions. Um Alan, it had gotten calendared for April, but then it came off the calendar. I don't know if it's back up, but there's um uh it feels like this bill is likely to get um pied in the first committee at this rate. I don't remember discussing this or how it pertained to us.

Sure. I don't think we have yet. So, would love to see if you guys want to take a position on this one. Um, it allows for you to differentiate between property tax rates. Um, so I think it could cause a if a local government did choose to do this, it would cause a lot of confusion internally among your your citizens um because it would make your mill levy rate um information very um not very transparent um and it would really complicate the system. Um, but Candace, I don't know if you have someone there that wants to speak to some of the more details. I know from our understanding, like I said, with assessors and uh treasurers, they don't even know how they would do this,

right? Yeah. I I don't It's me. And I think it would be disaster. I just think that would be a disaster for us to attempt to do. I mean, you can see you can see who's opposing it. That's a pretty wide range of philosophies. Yeah. Yeah. There's a different That's why we wanted to we wanted to point that out. This is not good for governance in any We already can barely do. I know. Let's not complicate what we're doing already. We just messed up our basic mills. Oh my god. So So no, thank you.

Can we register? Yeah. register you all as an oppose on this as well. Yeah, I would oppose it. Great. Me, too. I think Climax would appreciate us opposing this. I think so, too. Yeah. All right, we will get that handled and um added to the opposition group.

Cool. Thank you. And we can go to the next slide. Um, House Bill 1127, we were asked to bring this forward. Um, we have been engaged in talking about this bill behind the scenes for a little bit um, with your internal team. Uh, because there were some rumors floating around that this bill was necessary because of a lack of information coming from Lake County. um we were able to get to the source and say that is not the situation um that Lake County is getting their information out um in a timely manner as and kind of put a kaibos on that rumor that was going around. Um but my understanding is that we that the corner uh does agree with this bill. We just wanted to make sure that the necessity for it wasn't blamed on Lake County. Candace, does that all align with our previous conversations?

Yeah. Thanks for sticking up for us. Yeah, of course. And thank you to your team to get us um that information so quickly so we could tackle that. Um would you all like to take a support position on this or just kind of lay low and continue to keep our heads down?

Yeah, I'm not taking a position. Great. All right. And next slide. Uh extreme temperatures work protections. We um keep this on your list. Uh as you'll recall, this was the bill that came forward last session as well. Um it was pretty aggressive in its mandates last session. Um and there were some workers within uh unions in Lake County that were part of um putting the bill together. Uh it came back this session. Um and it's kind of what you see a lot of times is when a bill isn't successful, they'll come back and say, "Well, let's collect data and have a task force and then they try to build the momentum to have this go forward." Um it is uh a much more narrow bill than it was last time around in ter because it is just collecting that da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d da and putting together potentially a model plan. We think that this still has a tough way to go because right now um anything that has any kind of an appropriation given where the state budget is is going to have a hard time in getting getting the money to to fund it. So, um, our advice is to keep this on your watch list just because it is something that, you know, it's you all can't control the weather up in Lake County, um, and in Leadville. And so, uh, uh, there are a number of, uh, employers that keep an eye on this conversation. As of right now, um, we think it'll probably stall an appropriation. So, I don't know that you guys have to get out in front of it unless you really felt strongly on taking a position. I'm almost I'm a little bit torn on uh whether to just not take a position or oppose this again because this just seems like a a disaster for winter based recreation in general. like how does the ski area

keep their employees from being affected by this when I mean hasn't this been paired down significantly from last year to now just be collecting data as opposed to mandating certain temperature ranges and yes actions that you need to take. So so collecting data and having a plan. Yep. But it's a but there isn't the same temperature range, right, Elizabeth? Like, right, this isn't actually mandating what employers do. This is kind of like the first step to see, well, how many injuries do we have? What kinds of injuries do we have related specifically to temperature?

So, that's why I I personally like this bill such it is as it is now. This is not what it was a year ago, which definitely would impact our agricultural, ranching, ski industry, employers. This is just about making sure that the data is being collected and some work is done responsible for reporting. Who does it? Just sounds like extra layers of cost and burden to businesses. I agree. More regulation, more more paperwork and more cost. Imagine a a small construction company having to suddenly record every temperature

spreadsheets. Spreadsheets if someone's I don't know you say uh Elizabeth that is probably stall out because that CDLE that'll cost them money to collect the data. Anything that difficult. Yeah. And I think a lot of groups are waiting to see if this actually gets out of appropriations or not um before they really make a stance and and take a position. Yeah. And they will probably have to pair this down even more because they'll need to get that fiscal note to zero. You know, right now it still has a little bit of a fiscal note and I don't know how they do that with being the goal of their bill. So

they may try and transfer that burden to the employers, mandatory reporting or something. I mean that's already you legally have to report all injuries on the job already. This just makes sure that you're collecting the temperature aspects of those injuries. Right, Elizabeth or Alan? So it employers would not have to submit this data. This would be like a voluntary link on CDL's website where like the employee could report their injury and say that it was temperature related.

Oh, that introduces different problems. Yeah. I'd like to hear from somebody who's really for this uh whether it's a a union or something. Tell me if it's a a loss in search of a problem. I've never heard of anybody getting hurt by the weather and your body will tell you like get inside or I don't know. It seems seems uh I'm sure there's situations where they're employers telling their staff, "Oh, I don't care how cold it is. you got to get your butt out there and get this job done

or how hot it is and vice versa. Um, but I don't it's a how bad uh Yeah, I I can see both sides of this. I just don't know how just a voluntary reporting addresses the issue when you're only dealing with such a small sample size. It could skew the larger results to a degree that's not even accurate anymore if it's just voluntary reporting.

Well, it it's going to imply it's going to compel somebody to take some training, develop the training standards in a model plan. So, the government's going to do that and I feel like employers are better suited to do that on their own. So, sorry. So let's let's pretend that the issue is that pe that um workers are experiencing extreme temperature in injuries. We we can assume that like frostbite or frostbite heat stroke

or heat stroke sunburn whatever you know but we have people who have been laboring in extreme temperatures for the entire history of this community of this country right let's assume that the reason that this was created is because there are temperature related injuries happening that aren't being dealt with or managed by employers. That's a pretty farfetched assumption. I mowed lawns in Denver in multiple 100 degree days and we just dealt with it. It's, you know, I don't know. I don't know. But I'm just saying let's say that that is true cuz we don't know.

We're going to assume that you go ahead. There's your premise. What solution should the legislature bring forward to solve that issue? If you're being forced to work in 100 degree temperatures without adequate hydration, shade breaks, anything like that, isn't there a regulatory body you can report that to like, hey, I'm being mistreated at my job? Well, I think this is what creates that. But that already exists, doesn't it? Like that's who HIPPA OSHA or you know. Yeah.

I don't know. I guess I don't know. I don't know enough about this to answer y'all's questions, but I'm I am making some assumptions that like yes, there is a labor force out there that is not properly treated and maybe who can't go to some of those regular OSHA don't feel comfortable going to those OSHA compliances or maybe they're just trying to see are there any of these industry injuries? Are there enough of them to even make a plan right to to deal with it? This seems more to be about data collection, right? Like you could sue your employer. This is not what

this is. I know. No, but I'm saying like that what exists right now is if you're being forced to work in conditions that are not safe, not you know, they're basically going to crush you, you know, and you're like, "Hey, I need more breaks. I need to be able to warm up before I get frostbite." and you, you know, suffer because of it in a way that's measurable or approvable. I'm pretty sure you have a decent lawsuit on, you know, the case against,

but that assumes a lot of privileges and resources, the ability to sue. I think what my understanding of this is that they're trying to actually change like a lot of these folks won't ever get that won't ever get that from their employer. And so they're just trying to change the industry so that they can cover everybody as opposed to these one-offs of folks who do have the privilege or the resources to

I don't know. I think it's ownorous. It's another thing that's another layer that, you know, businesses are going to have to comply with. And I I just don't like it. I don't think it's necessary. How about how about if we keep it on the list and keep updating you and revisit um depending on what happens in the appropriations committee on this? That sounds good. Thank you.

Cuz right now it's right now it's you know there's there's a lot of bills that are going to just not move forward because they cost the state money and the state doesn't have any. Um, and so I think it makes sense um to see what amendments they do in order to potentially move this out of appropriations or if it even gets called up again. Um, and then we can revisit with what that bill looks like more thoroughly um when it has a path. Okay. Thank you.

Okay, cool. Uh, next we'll get over to some Senate bills. We wanted to update you on Senate Bill 40 on the next slide. Um this is uh Commissioner Tharp came down and testified on this and she got to see firsthand how um there is no time logic. This is a casino. We don't have clocks. We don't have windows and you never know when something's going to happen. So um it didn't come out at the time we were hoping and she headed home and did it from her car. So um but uh but got good facetime with the the legislators. Unfortunately, the the one no vote on this so far has been um been our state representative, our state senator, um Basisley. Um but everyone else has been voting no as this goes through the or voting yes as this goes through the process. It did get through appropriations and is waiting to be heard on the Senate floor and then we'll do this all over again in the House. Um and would love to have any of you testify on this as it moves through the House. um since we have specific um projects in Lake County that are impacted um by changes in the Prop 123 money. So, wanted to give you guys an update on where that is. And then the last one um we were asked to put on the list is Senate Bill 70 for discussion. So this is um getting a lot of airtime on news and other resources um and is uh referred to as the flock camera bill. Uh so a lot of those flock cameras that are being used by um different local governments are recording data. Um and there's there's um a fine balance. Um there's a bill that's going to go through the system right now too on using cameras near school areas. Uh there's a balance between um wanting to make sure we don't

have too much big government and a lot of this coming from immigration rights advocates um that want to be careful of how people are being tracked, especially around local government buildings, around schools, and others. um but balanced that against wanting to make sure we're keeping the community safe and using resources we have um to be able to track those individuals who are um having criminal intent. And so that's part of the debate that has been going back and forth on this. Um it was a lively committee hearing. Um uh most local governments have f felt that this has errored too far in the wrong direction of um making it so our communities are going to be unsafe um from schools from other local governments. Um and again this is another bill that is stuck in appropriations committee right now. We think it's unlikely that it's going to move forward um given one given the uh appropriation and two given the amount of opposition. um we have that opposed position, but just wanted to kind of update you guys. It doesn't look like it's going to be moving at this point um out of appropriations, but if it does, we will revisit the conversation of how to um how to show up and um strategize with you all on that.

Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth.

Yeah. And that runs us through the list we have and I think we have taken up our a loted time, but happy to answer any other questions you all have. Um, Elizabeth, what about I think it's Senate Bill 002. It's the Oh, just a second. Let me find it. It's the one that compels energy sellers like Excel to participate in the low income like energy. It it flexes the amount of it sets a base rate for the base amount of energy used for lowincome households. So it kind of um institutionaliz institutionalizes these like voluntary programs that they're setting up as oneoffs. I'd love to hear from you all in the future about that.

Great. We will um we will gather up some information and send that out to all of you on that bill. It has had um it has moved a little bit through the process. It's had some amendments. Um it is also waiting in appropriations committee, but the amendments took off the appropriations. So um we will we will do some background and send you a little update on it. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. I think that's the right one.

Hey, Elizabeth, can I ask about um House Bill 26-1063? Um it is looking at the permitting of secure transport coming off of counties plates and going back to the state. Could you and you don't do it right now because I'm putting you on the spot. Could you let me know where that stands and if we think it's likely to move forward or not? Yeah, that I have an update on that. Um, great.

They did add that to the bill. Um, right now the governor still doesn't like that piece. Um, but this was they added that to at least get the conversation started. I think that conversation might move out of this bill. Um, and they'll continue to talk about it over the interim, but um, I'll double check and let you know, Candace. Okay. Thank you. You guys, what are the chances of uh 1036, the local taxes on vacant uh residential property crushed? I got table. It got crushed indefinitely.

Okay. Anything you see that is likely to get through that we should be aware of or is it just too early in the process considering the budget? Yeah, the budget throws a big wrench into things. Um, we have to kind of see where that balancing happens. Um, in past years, usually what they do, we lovingly refer to it in the lobby as sprinkles. Um, where the joint budget committee will set aside some money. They sprinkle some money out that each chamber gets to play with and then prioritize what bills they want to use that money for to get them through appropriations. Um those sprinkles have gotten smaller and smaller over the last couple of years. Um in previous years they were enormous because they would use ARPA dollars. Um but it doesn't feel like there's going to be much spread out for any bills that cost money in appropriations committee right now. So um it's looking unlikely that anything will move forward, but um when the joint budget committee puts a placeholder of what that dollar amount is for each chamber, then we have a better idea of what could possibly happen. Okay,

awesome. Well, thank you guys. We appreciate your time and uh Candace, we will be in touch with some of those follow-up items. Perfect. Um Elizabeth and Allan, I'm so sorry. Did you all get my email about the testimony notes? I know I sent it kind of late for the Prop 123 amendment. Let me pull those back up. Um I might have gotten that lost in my email or potential. Okay. Yeah, it was all the testimony I was going to do, but then learned that's not when you actually give suggestions.

Sounds like a mess. Yes, we will um double check with staff on that and um have those conversations for the floor. Okay, thank you so much. Um awesome. You mentioned to let you know if uh we would be willing to testify again on this if it comes up the the House Bill 23 um Senate Bill 40. Yeah. Um yeah, reach out to us like let us know as much ahead of time as possible because yeah, maybe more than one of us would be willing to go down.

Great. And we'll see um if the sponsors are open to some of those adjustments that you um had emailed about, Commissioner. Thank you. I'm happy to talk more about them. Let's come over. Great. That's all. That's all I have. Yeah. Thank you guys. Good luck down there. Thank you. Thanks, team. Thanks. That's crazy down there. I texted you that you were done a little bit early.

Thank you. Awesome. It's now 3 p.m. and item number five of our Lake County Board of County Commissioners work session is overview and discussion.

Sorry. Hold. I don't know who that is. Sorry. I thought that was us. Get it? Capture it. That's weird. That's weird. I don't know who that is. I don't either. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Oh, everything good. Well, it's weird. We were not muted there, this audio button, but both of these were muted. So, someone is letting us know we're muted. make a profile that just has that picture and that thing on there. So, okay, maybe it's okay. You gonna go there?

Yeah, sure. So, goes for the machine. Well, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon.

Um, so discussion on just general security of the courthouse. Um, as you guys know, we do we're focused on the court room itself security up there. So, uh, we have two, uh, court security deputies. Um, they're both currently postcertified. It is nice to have them postcertified, so if they have to make an arrest, they have those authorities built in. Um, we've explored placing security down here before. If you guys recall, there was a machine placed between the doors. Um, it it didn't go over very well with the fire marshall for egress reasons to occupy one of our egress doors. Um and and some of the other issues that we had with this too is just how big that space is. So if we have any sort of event uh let's say it's a major trial um or uh the elections or we have a very popular topic uh in your uh in your office here um and holding people up through this section here was something that we didn't experience. We didn't have it through full effect quite yet, but it's just something to keep in mind. And so in our winter months, having a line outside the door waiting to come in and go through security presented an issue. So the building wasn't really built for this.

Uh which is really the issue that we have with a lot of things here is this building wasn't designed for some of the security elements, the flow of inmates as we talked before, nothing was really designed. So we're trying to fit a lot of a lot of these different components into a building that wasn't designed for it. So um today I was just really hoping to have a good discussion with you guys. See where you're sitting with what you want. um we can talk about what my comfort levels are today, maybe in the future. Um and just kind of see where what your vision is uh with that talk talk through some options. So um guess I keep that question back to you guys. What is what is the vision of court or courthouse court? Not just court room but county office security. What what do you guys hope to see happen?

I guess a big part of it is just discussion on what options even are, you know, and I think that's kind of why we just deferred to, you know, well, like can we go back to the way it used to be because we know that was something that had already been been there. right

for this is a real roller coaster ride of a subject I think for this room and I have concerns for our staff you know and like how how are they to do their how are they expected to do their jobs if there are people who have openly threat made threats against people in this building walking in and out and there's just no um nothing just open doors So, um, if it if it weren't for, you know, sadly what seems like a just a handful of pretty unhinged people, this wouldn't be such a roller coaster ride. You know, we could establish some baseline stuff, but man, when things really hit the fan, you know, I watch staff get their anxiety levels go pretty high and mine, too. Yeah.

So, is your hope to have um all business hours covered with some sort of security element in place or some sort of security filtration system where it's uh we have people scanned for weapons or just have an officer present. Is that the thought of something just all business hours? Is that the hope? I don't think we've discussed that. That's something that would be good to talk about right now cuz I don't think we've talked about whe whether it makes sense sometimes or all the time or you know and someone posted at the door would be a lot less restrictive and intrusive than the whole gate and you know metal detectors and everything at the door like it used to be.

Um but that's also a burden on your department and you know you guys are stretched in as it is. Um, do you want to talk about your comfort level such as it is right now so we can get a better sense from you? Yeah, the way we sit right now with no changes at all, I wouldn't feel comfortable moving our upstairs security downstairs to have address. Um, I I need to maintain a person up there in the courtroom for the judges at all at all times when they're when they're around.

So, it wouldn't be as simple as just transferring him downstairs. Um but with so so what we would need is a full-time person if that's what we want as a county is somebody down here. So that would be adding an extra time employee for that additional position with that. That is something I feel completely comfortable managing which is what we do. So we'll house and that's what we want that be an additional position that so I wouldn't want to take anybody away from current staff to have to to house that spot. Um that's maybe more of a longer term solution if that's what we want. Um I think in the in the short term uh what we can do is random checks down. So if this is something hey we we want security down here uh for the county departments immediately. We can we can provide that and random periods. I think random periods is the best. Obviously if we're trying to enforce security we don't want to say hey Monday from 8 to 10 every single week we we scan everybody in because everybody's going to show up at 10:01.

Yeah. Um, so we we can probably dedicate I don't have an exact amount of hours, but we can say maybe eight hours a week for doing spot checks. Make sure that people are following the rules that are posted on the door that you're not allowed to bring weapons in here. Uh, we can do some pre-scheduling, too. So, if you guys feel like you have a hot topic on the agenda, um, and you're concerned about the safety for for that, uh, meeting, um, we can prove somebody down here for that given our availability. So, I think I think we can work together and we can be more flexible with that. But, uh, if there's a hot topic meeting, you guys want us to have a couple hours and it's also a day where we have five transportation scheduled that we're using code security staff for that. Might not work out,

but we're, you know, happy to do that. We can't do it. So, I think that's more of the quick solution on what our current capacity is. Uh if that's a system you guys feel comfortable endorsing also for having like those spot check per random checks. Yeah, I'm okay with that cuz then people also don't know when it's going to happen and so they can't like anticipate when they could get through. Correct.

Yeah. So what I can do is continue to have this conversation with microscore security staff and see what what is their time per week. We can talk about that further and say, "Yeah, we let's let's start off with this whatever amount of hours per week, a couple hours at a time, random days throughout the week, and just make sure that we're enforcing the current standards that we have in place." Now, you see a scan at the door, would you just have a wand? You just do one. Yeah. I know we talked about during renovations having a panic button. Panic button. Yeah. Same thing. It' be nice to have one in each elected office cuz there was a situation earlier.

I know you guys are right there. But it takes a minute to like get the phone out, text you, especially with the door closed now. It's like I know it'd be really hard to hardwire that stuff, but is there kind of there's some Bluetooth ones that are pretty affordable. You can even get them on Amazon like just, you know, put a alert going off and in the back because yeah, what about that? In the past, generally we know when something's going on and it's it's almost always during Yeah. regular meetings. Yeah.

So, I mean, to me, that's if you can't do a full security check at the front gate, man, it'd be nice to just have people know that, oh, yeah, I'm going to go in there and the sheriff's probably going to be there and Yeah. I mean, if there's a way to solve this with hardware first before worrying about like staff capacity, I would I'd prefer that. Okay. Like a panic button. Like a panic button for everybody. Okay. Yeah, that' be cool. I'll work on that and uh work together a quote on what that would cost. Sweet.

To talk to dispatch, too. So cuz they would be essentially that would go to dispatch and then they would dispatch somebody to whatever is happening. So um what what is the situation if um someone who has been known to carry weapons in this building is seen in this building? How do we Yeah, I would I would just call that into us immediately. Okay. let us know that. Um, is it up to your your discretion who is allowed to carry weapons in this building?

But yeah, obviously to some level. Um, but yeah, I would call us, let us manage that situation in the moment. Um, if it happens afterwards, I would still call us, let us handle that situation. So, especially if it's somebody known, we can contact that um and handle it. But yeah, we're letting law enforcement carry in here off duty also. So I would like to know who that is. Why do you let off duty carry? Because it's just the duty to to enforce law at all times. Okay.

Um is it the purview I don't know the law. Is it the purview of the sheriff to like be in charge of court security? Yeah, I don't know if it's specified in statute if the sheriff controls that or it's more of a bocc decision on what they allow in the building. Okay. So, isn't there a state law? Not that I'm aware of. For churches and schools. Oh, public buildings. Public buildings.

Yeah. I don't know who that's control. I feel like there's public buildings in other counties where you roll around. Or maybe I'm remembering the 80s. I don't know.

Okay. So, part-time random rolling presence in the front entryway is a option. It's at least that better than you know, it's better than where we're at right now. Yeah. And then specifically around some of our our regular meetings, which is that's the the likelihood goes up and then some of those meetings are really contentious. I mean, it's not really when we've heard the craziest stuff. I feel like the craziest stuff hasn't actually been around our meetings. It's been It's been the assessor's office. The assessor's office and the treasurer's office they've been stolen from. Oh, really? Yeah. So,

it seems like they know I don't know. I disagree. I think they know we're here and so that's when they're coming to make their presence known. Am I wrong? I have not felt except from when we were first seated and that guy came to yell at me. Yeah. I haven't actually felt any sort of aggression or violence in this room. that I that I would be like, "Heath, what's our plan?" Whereas down the hallway, the amount of like screaming and yelling, screaming and yelling and and random walkins

Yeah. specifically with the assessor and treasurer is where I see the biggest deal. That's to me why panic buttons would be more valuable than like scheduling with it with us. And I also wonder if like a panic button or even us collecting some data about like when like if Heath is going to dedicate some employee time to this being out in the front maybe we could actually be collecting data about when we're feel most at risk. That would be a little more targeted as opposed to just like a random, well, I hope this is the time when somebody thought they could.

Especially if there was a a desk there where someone when they got to sit and do some paperwork, be like, oh, you can just hang out in the front and do your paperwork up there. At least there's visibility, which a lot of times just that's enough of a deterrent for a lot of troublemakers. I feel like I'm not I'm not an expert, but um I mean funny when you heard Oh, I mean I was talking about expert on security, you know. That was a lifetime to go. Um yeah, I think we can implement that soon. Maybe next week we can develop a little plan and start start that work on a quote for me. Cool. just some quick solutions we can look for.

Yeah, I've seen them on Amazon for pretty cheap. And I don't know if that's something you'd even be okay with if it's just a little beeper that goes off back there and has two different levels of like, hey, this could be a thing or like, yo, we're freaking out. Yeah. Um, you have to be connected to a dispatch center. Okay. So then it's it can't just be something we were over the not an inhouse offtheshelf solution. I don't I don't know. I don't know what that technology looks like. Is that easy to install nowadays? Maybe. Yeah, I'd have to dig into it. Yeah. But something pretty reliable. There are two different stages to it. So, I'd have to dig into that technology. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Cuz Yeah. I think like the if it if the cheaper option were possible, I feel like we could pull that right out of our I don't know. I'd pay for it right now. Yeah, for sure. Just to help people feel a little bit more secure at their jobs. I mean, they're they're working for the community and they're being paid with tax dollars and there are times where people are too fre, you know, people are shut and locking these doors or their own offices and, you know, it's like you can't have that, man. So, I mean, it's not unheard of. Have to happens in every county in the state probably.

Well, and sometimes it's about like the It's not actually about a weapon coming in. It's about deescalating somebody once they're in here. Yeah. Right. Because the issues have not been armed. No, it's been somebody yelling. That was just one little facet that jumps out to me because there are people out in the community I know who are more than likely at least have some blade in their pocket if not a fire harm. Totally. You see them and you're like, hm, wonder if they left all their stuff in the car or not, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. Totally

love it. I think it might be worth entertaining to uh some sort of crisis intervention training for staff. That's something that we can maybe grab just a one day course on. The law enforcement version is a five five day course. But that's that's pretty helpful. I think if we if we don't know when folks are going to show up and how reaction is going to be to the assessor treasur if we have some staff trained just on basic level how to manage that person right there because they're going to be the first ones to engage with this yeah might be another counter measure to consider is training that's a great idea it' be way better to talk somebody down than

you know say the wrong thing and escalate a situation which is really easy to do you know it's uh especially when emotions are high and you need to defend yourself. It's just it's just stuff we encounter all the time. You mean it's easy to to take it too far unintentionally or say the wrong things? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um that's a great Yeah, I agree. Great. I've had a couple in that they've all been one on the courthouse steps and walking. Same person, right? I I don't know. Yeah. Um I would be deescalation tactic turned out to have the opposite effect.

Well, he just said it's pretty easy. A lot of his training is really good. I mean, if you can get something law enforcement related to all staff, maybe in a shorter condensed version helpful because they usually bring in actors and challenge the students going through the course. That's the full version. Cool. That would be intense. Yeah, we were classes. It was take uh make a joke, you know, like like try to diffuse things by, you know, use humor and it's like that piss people off sometimes.

It says that in 2024, Colorado law prohibit prohibits carrying firearms, both concealed carry and open carry, in state and local government buildings, including legislative buildings, courouses, polling places, and schools. Exemptions exist for parking areas of some facilities and local governments may opt out for those regulations. So, it is a statewide. What's that statute? Um, uh, Senate Bill 24131.

Yeah, it's probably public education push to my people. Just be unaware of that. Totally. Yeah. And miss all the signs. There's a lot of signs courthouse. I know the list. The list is everywhere. We can maybe even reduce the one accidental ones by just public education. So I think hitting it from every angle will have bigger. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Heath. Appreciate you chatting with us about this.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess we can do see how this goes and continue the conversation and if it is something longterm that we want somebody there during all business hours or any time that the courthouse is open. Sometimes you guys have extended meetings going past business hours. Sometimes we have doors for Santa Claus to come sit with the kids and Easter bunny is probably coming up here soon too. Yeah. Um so we identify those periods. Okay. If these doors are open, we have security. Yeah. And uh but I think this is a good first step. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. Thoughts on that one? No, I think I think that's a good point.

It's a great first steps. Cool. Thanks. Well, thanks for coming in. We appreciate your time and flexibility. Should we wrap it up? Yeah. Do it. Do it, man. chair. This concludes our award session. It is uh 3:12 March 24th and that's that. Thank you.