Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

good morning everyone it is may 12th 2026 at 11 40 we're running just a few minutes behind this is a work session of the lake county board of county commissioners we have three items on the agenda we will start with number one overview and discussion regarding vocc strategy priorities this will be led by candace bryans our county manager

All right, so just for a little bit of context, the BOCC met with Randy Steen from DOLA and did some work to come up with some strategic priorities, a couple of deliverables underneath, and the document that we are about to review was provided to us by DOLA.

Um, so we want to present it to you guys, get some feedback.

I think it's important to note that some of the things we've discussed over the last. Several months as we've lost, um, you know, quite a bit of funding and we recognize we can't be everything for everyone is that we need to start exploring and having conversations about city services, county services, where can we work together and not be duplicative. Um, if there is any option of exploring districts in the, in the future, you know, not necessarily this year, maybe five years down the road, but we do have to ask ourselves, you know, what are we statutorily required to provide? Um, what, what is not statutory? And I think it's important to note that if, if any departments were listed under that districting item that, that Rady put in this document. It does not mean that department is being specifically looked at for districting. It's pretty clear that Randy just listed any item that is not statutorily required. Or just had a list in there. So we are not specifically looking at anything listed there currently. But the thought of districting things like fire, we've discussed. a couple of times looking at duplicative city and county services. Can we work together on law enforcement items? Those are the things that we will be exploring. So I just want to note that before we get started. So I am going to share my screen and then pull up our documents. If I can find it. There we go.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So really, I've had this in your packet. Want to just get a little bit of feedback from you guys. We know, you know, we sat with Randy. She gave us kind of these top line items. I think questions I have, is there anything in here or any of the items really that she's listed under, you know, these five priorities? So we didn't change any of the language for the priority, why it matters, the key goals. As staff, all we did was add timelines that we felt like were realistic for these line items that Randy gave us, and then assigned a lead. Doesn't mean the other departments aren't involved. Other departments will be involved, and a lot of these are pretty big, like huge tasks. A five-year financial forecast, that's a huge task. It involves multiple departments, but these are people who will be leading that work and assigning work to other departments as we need input. So I think what we really wanted to talk about is make sure these top five priorities feel, you know, these came from Randy, feel okay. There's not anything that needs to be changed in the top line priorities. And then really to talk about these tasks underneath. And this isn't saying it's the only thing we'll ever do. Each of these tasks have a lot of items baked into them, but is there anything in this document that did not feel like what you intended in your work or something that felt missed knowing every year we're going to look at these and say, what did we get done? What do we need to focus on next?

I guess the number, I see how the tasks and smaller goals under four and five make them different categories. But when we were talking about it, they did not feel like separate categories in my mind, where the service alignment was, in my mind, very aligned with public safety. I'm going to go up to the top and look at four and five. Great. Capital assets and infrastructure would have also been teased out from number five.

I would think that Randy broke those out because public safety is such a big requirement for us and we are currently trying to figure out, you know, and part of our discussion today is the next topic. I'm like, what the heck are we gonna do? And even if the answer is like, we need more information before we figure out, I think she put it as a top level priority because we have to figure it out. Yeah. With our task from the state. Yeah. Just felt a little weird. We can ask for her to rework that piece.

I think that, I guess in my mind, and I know we talked a little bit about this, but these are all really important strategic plans for the county as a whole. And then you have a BOCC who comes in with like political strategic visions and priorities. And there is a, there's, and this third one is absolutely what we're tasked with by this or the fifth one. And it makes sense. I'm just saying it feels like there's a little bit of tension there when it comes to that being the only thing that feels a little bit like, oh, maybe that's a VOCC priority as opposed to like, there's nothing in here about housing. There's nothing. There is, but not in the top five.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

There's no rec, which is like one of our political priorities. But then there is public safety and stewardship.

Do you all understand what I'm saying? Or am I not articulating it right?

Well, there is, say it again. Unless Andy interpreted it. I understand what you're saying.

No, I don't understand what you're saying. This is really important as an organization, but our passions aren't exactly clearly reflected in this. Some of the things that we know may have to take a back seat while we work on this stuff isn't even on the radar anymore.

Is that kind of what... A little bit. Whereas the... Yes, it is important that we have... that we support the sheriff's office with facilities. Yes, it is important that we're like aligning our law enforcement with the city and the county. I guess all those things could go underneath the fifth bucket. But also these things could have been spread throughout the other four, I guess is what I'm saying. And when we call it out as a standalone, it feels political versus structural and organizational. That's what I'm saying. Public safety stewardship.

And I don't know that she just means, I was going to look at the tasks under there.

There's no tasks. We talked about all of these and I want all of them.

One, if we don't want to call it public safety, but I don't know what else to call it. I think one of the things she mentions in here, like the domestic violence, the work with DHS, like public health, like looking at having a co-responder. So I think they all fall under public safety. And I think when we are thinking public safety, we think sheriff, right? But I don't think that's what she intended. And so I think she kind of lumped And I guess they could be spread through other things, but I do see why she called it out kind of separately, but we can certainly work on changing it.

Me too. I understand all of it. This is not a, like, I don't understand why they're here. It's more of like, if the public were to see this and say, oh, this is what the VOCC cares about, these are their priorities, that they are... establishing this leadership with their leadership staff and saying, this is what we work on. If they were to see that, other VOCCs have said housing is a priority. And now that's not up there, but I could see it looking like public safety. We understand what that is, stewardship, when it comes to our jobs and the tasks that have been put under here. But it could be seen by the public as law enforcement. And that's where I think we would just kind of lose them.

There could be some wordsmithing or some extra things added to the how will we get there list, like the task lists that would emphasize some more of the... Do you think that would be... Yeah, I was going to say, or do you think it's maybe... Public.

services and safety or something like that because we're talking about more than just like totally law enforcement we're talking about all of the things that we do to provide safety and security for so what would we want what are some ideas yeah a little bit of guidance would be helpful so i'm not just guessing yeah i think we could call it public

health and safety stewardship oh yeah okay thoughts everybody else instead of public safety I think people aren't going to drill down into what we mean by public safety stewardship and they're just going to read the bucket yeah and make assumptions whereas I think that all these things are are important and we're trying to actually It's an interpretation.

Yeah, because they're not thinking like, food security is public safety. No, they're not. Like, protection from domestic violence and resources is public safety. Exactly. Exactly.

I'm on public health, safety, and stewardship.

Yeah, okay.

Public stewardship, health and safety.

Put all those words in there. Just put all those words in there.

I'll come up with three options, so then when we come to approve it, we'll just pick the...

Thank you. And number four, service and departmental alignment. And it has the picture of the house next to it, which feels a little...

I think that is a standard template from DOLA. It looks like this on everyone's, no matter what they list.

Community services and departmental alignment. I like the shovel.

But it is important when we're trying to tell the community what we're trying to work on. Get rid of the badge.

Yeah, get rid of that. I mean, we could almost interchange the house with the badge.

Yeah. Okay. Do we love that house? If I'm re-changing them, I might just get creative.

You could find a cooler house.

Turn it purple.

Make sure you're right. Make sure you want to buy the historic overland Easter. It's got to be the right color. There's only so much. Historic colors, I don't know.

Chair, could I have a moment of divergence? 45 seconds? Sure. Thank you. So you know the historic colors that are required or highly considered? Dick Smith, who was the last Smith owner of Smith Lumber, I interviewed him to just find out about the family's history, et cetera. And he said, oh, you know, and my parents were like, oh, we're going to use the historic colors to make sure that it's all historically aligned. And he was like, oh, my dad, the Historic Preservation Commission came to my dad when it was first established. and asked if he knew any of the historic colors that had been used because they had been the hardware store for generations and his dad went into the back and just looked at how many like what colors of paint hadn't been sold and so he just made up names to those colors and said, yeah, these are historic, so that he could move inventory.

This is not the first time I've heard this.

I think I've heard it before.

No, I've heard it out and about in the wild.

Regardless, the point is that now the Historic Preservation Commission is locked into these colors, but it was a complete malarkey how they were created. So I'm publicly not in favor of the historic colors.

Wow, that's very interesting.

Anyway, make the house whatever color you want, Candace. Great. It might be a cooler-looking house, too. That's great. Make it Victorian.

Well, and people don't think about being housed. Also, it's public safety. So I do think we can do some wordsmithing for the title, but also I think I might do some work here. That would be great. OK. And I'll just have a couple of options. that when we come back, we can say, yeah, this feels good or make this change before we actually adopt it. This is what we'll do. Yeah. Um, also one of the things that's in here and you'll notice it says TBD is, um, the culture, the mission, vision values, and we are going to be doing like with directors. And then we have asked, are going to be asking directors to in their staff meetings and discuss what mission, vision, and core values we come out of that work with leaders on to actually get feedback and input from their staff. So we end up with a mission, vision, and core values that are really, we hope they're not changing every time one of you changes. People have to come here and work. And core values should be things like serving people and serving them well. because for your public service, you know, that doesn't change every time someone changes, like that should be something as a government we care about and do, right? So we wanna try to get a mission, vision and core values that kind of stay the same for staff and the priorities, hopefully we're gonna get some of these things accomplished and then we'll move on to new priorities because we'll have, you know, gotten our audits done and we know what assets we have we have a plan for the next five years of how to manage a new roof versus the foundation's crap somewhere. That hopefully, every time new people come on, we're able to think about, cool, we did all these things. We're able to focus on this next round of priorities. But you'll notice that is TBD because we haven't done this yet. And so we are hoping to have staff engaged in that work to create. Why do we show up here every day, even when sometimes People can be, you know, the direct recipients of some pretty harsh frustration. You know, it's a pretty challenging political climate right now. Money is tight for us, for everybody, you know, from a federal and state level. But why do people show up even when we have all these tough things facing us? So that is TBD and it is one of the things that is a task item is to do that work, to come back to

Okay, cool.

Is there anything else that you guys want us to focus on, or maybe? Better pictures? Better pictures, better titles.

Picture number five. Picture number five all around. Okay. No, I think it's great. I think it's, captures a lot of what we talked about in our strategic plan. And I like that it's a more stable group of priorities that can have different political priorities come in, and yet the entity can maintain these priorities as important. It can outlet administrations as value, as priorities.

um under number one i feel like i and this is probably me personally i feel like this number five of key goals are just i how we word that i feel like we should take a little more responsibility about not pushing this

incorrect narrative that the mine is closing got it so i so i had some thoughts about this actually the prepare for post mine economic conditions when you actually go look at the task as assigned what it says on the desk is there's one that actually talks about it it says that we as a county and it's talking about like our county budget that we will have a thought about if our budget gets cut this much what is our backup plan to not just fall off a cliff when that finally does happen yeah this isn't like hey it's definitive i mean it will someday close it doesn't mean it's tomorrow but it just means that as a county we thought of a good plan currently what we put in my enclosure every year is enough to do nothing for us right and so this is more like hey as a county we'll have a good backup plan whether that's diversification of revenues maybe we have um well an airport that's like brought a different business model or you know that that's really what this document says more so than you'll plan for every known issue related to a mine closing

I interpret it that way. I think all of us in the room do. But if this is something that we can also use to enhance our community outreach and be more transparent with the public, what I'm trying to do is put myself in the position of someone outside these walls who doesn't get much time in this room or hear many of our conversations. can be misinterpreted or what can be taken in a way that's not that can be alarming or you know and maybe less accurate but so you know if there was a way we could explain that it's like we're trying to insulate ourselves from changes with the mind or you know yeah yeah yeah you're trying you just want to be word number five yeah it's you're

Insulate's a good word. You like prepare for or like make county government more resilient to changes in an extraction economy. Yeah. Ish. That was off the top of my nuggets. Yeah. Make it better.

I don't know. I guess I don't see anything wrong with what it says, prepare for post-mortem economic conditions.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it either, but I hear what Andy's saying.

Blunt and to the point, and there's no reason to sugarcoat it, in my opinion.

Because it could happen tomorrow. It could happen. That's what happened in the 80s, that Molly can go out from under it at any time.

We know it's, what was it, $12 a pound is the magic number. $5.17. It's something, you know, there's a, but that's...

I mean, I know most of these key goals are short, but maybe that we keep that, but we just add a qualifying statement after it that explains, you know, preparing to be fiscally resilient to mind changes.

Changes in molybdenum value or something.

I'll come up with something creative.

Do you feel... Promote resiliency plans that can ever...

Although the world economic conditions are going to favor mining in this part of the atmosphere, once we're in true World War III conditions, we're not getting anything from China.

Right now it's $39 a pound. Yeah.

And they still have both of those aces up their sleeve with multiple avenues to continue forward for 60 years or more ago.

And they're also working on extracting another element up there. I was talking to one of the guys in Moab. And it's, I forget what it is, but he said if they could figure out how to, it's, there's not a whole lot of it, but it's worth a lot. Gosh, I wish I could remember what he said, but. Hmm. There's another rare earth. Yeah. That they used to.

Unobtainia?

What?

Unobtainia?

No, they used to extract it and then extract it economically enough. And now that that price has gone up, I wish I could remember what it was. Yeah, mediums have been in a lot of conversations lately.

I thought copper was their main actual byproduct. I'm sure it's not what you're talking about, but that's really interesting.

So they're exploring ways to extract and process that. And just the cost to shut it down is going to be just this outrageous cost.

Well, fingers crossed. I think the point of having an economy and a government that heavily relies on extraction is that no matter what, it's not fully reliable. It's not predictable. So the point is, how do we have more stability with an unpredictable income, revenue, right? And that's what we want to be able to do no matter what happens with Climax.

Right. And it's smart. We all know that's a smart path for the future. I would love to see us continue down that path with that task. But I want to do it in a way that's not alarming or like, disingenuous to what is actually happening up there. It's also fair to our partners up the road. I don't think it's a good way to talk about climax. They're going to close, they're going to close. That's definitely not the case that we are aware of. Maybe there's people who are considering moving here from somewhere else to work at that mine. people who they need. It's hard to find good help here. And then someone gets word of some meeting where that gets talked about or sees some document where it gives the impression that, oh man, that might not be a true thing. And I don't think that's the case. I want to be real careful about how we talk about that. It's not inevitable.

There's some options.

Yeah. Even in this community with people who know as much as I do about the mine, there's still this

undercurrent of people who think that that's happening, it's coming, then it is inevitable. I feel if we've given the impression of that, I want to take ownership of that and try and correct it.

Yeah.

The difference between the shutdown costs and going underground isn't that much.

Except one keeps making revenue for free work. One shuts it down for everyone.

Look at that. It's over 10 years. So just think if we are knowing, regardless of mine, whatever it's going to do, we, A, have no control over that. But I think the bigger people are to diversify and strengthen our revenues. regardless, right? That we know that the state is passing less money to us, the fed's passing less money to the state. We have roads we can't even fix right now. Just mine aside, I think the overall goal of this main thing is to really just think about how could we rely less on increasing taxes for people And how can we be a little more, you know, savvy and using every dollar wisely and exploring other revenue sources that we haven't thought about yet. So I think that is more like figure out what does it really take us to run? And how do we start to plan for a lot of things that are aside from running deferred maintenance, all of those sorts of things would require us to figure out some different ways to bring in revenue. That's not just a, mill increase. And so we can work on wordsmithing number five for sure. But I think the whole overarching is we, mine aside, figuring out other ways to have revenue is what we should be figuring out.

Yeah, that's number three, so it's right there.

Is it Mona's life?

I've heard of that, but

I love it, Candice, so thank you for doing that.

All right, I will work on the items that you guys gave feedback on. I'm gonna stop the sharing. Is there anything else we have till 1230?

No, I'm grateful that we got that back.

When I wanted to make sure we got in here and got in front of you guys before we continue to work on that mission, vision, and values, because there's really some of those goals or priorities that you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not it. We wouldn't want to continue that work. And the staff start to build budgets. They have to think about, does this thing I want really align with where we're driving ahead? And we do ask them to keep that in mind as they're building budgets. Sure. there are things on our budgets that are part of things we have to do, we're required to do, but also trying to make sure we're supporting the priorities and where we're trying to head is also important. We do have Lauren online and Todd, who are on our next item. Lauren and Todd, do you know if Colleen is going to try to join because we could pause for a few minutes or we can continue on.

I can text her, but I know that she was in best grant interviews this morning and she may have been held up in that a little bit. I've just come through a mountain range. I missed most of the first part of this meeting. Let me text her and see what her status is.

Okay.

Thank you.

You guys aren't on until 1230, so we're a little ahead of schedule. So if we need to wait, we certainly can.

okay let me let me reach out look you know okay wow monocyte is really interesting monocyte monocyte it's the most valuable

currently the most valuable mineral you can be extracting.

I have not found that yet, but I do know that it's radioactive. It has thorium and uranium, typically. It's really difficult to process, but there are new

There's safer ways to extract it. What's up, Adam?

Adam, we hear you got another award. Your trophy case is just runneth over.

You wanna tell us about it?

I think the Colorado Attorney's Office put my name in through the Colorado Business Network. And so I'm on the, they call it the Power 500 list. Wow. list of leaders in various industries. So this was in the tourism and hospitality industry.

We're in the top 500 most powerful leaders. Powerful leaders, yeah.

Wow. Wow. That's awesome. Bulging of a seat. Yes. And they literally have like a little arm that's like, all right, we can come down on that. Oh, yeah. It's great. And there's, you know, Black, and then they're going to have a webinar where we can kind of connect with each other, which is kind of

cool networking yeah it's not what you know exactly so yeah thank you i am is anyone else dropping uh wi-fi i am yeah okay well it's not just me i'm taking all of it monazite and molybdenum are typically found together yeah in colorado monazite oh Is that a T or a D? Monazite?

Monazite. We are finding out so much information.

What was it used for? You talked about its value and its difficulty in extraction. We don't know what its robot elbow joints. Drone propellers.

It's a rare earth element. It's a source of rare earth elements. So high strength magnets, electric vehicles, nuclear fuel, and electronic and defense.

I don't see the bright side. I don't see the bright side. I don't see the bright side. I don't see the bright side. I don't see the bright side.

I don't see the bright side.

Yeah.

Number two.

On to number two of this Lake County Commissioner's work session, overview and discussion regarding the feasibility of the construction of a Sally Port at the Lake Cable Courthouse. This will be led by Dynamic Program Management and Reynolds, Ash and Associates. Hello, everyone.

It can sense that you're eating.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Candice or Josh, did you want to say anything to start this discussion? Or do you want us to jump in?

I think it's fine for you guys to jump in. So essentially, why we're here is to figure out what would it take um to to explore just doing the sally port and so we had a conversation you know with commissioners about if we couldn't do the entire courthouse renovation we do have this 5 3.575 million of congressionally directed spending money uh still and then we have the underfunded courts um funding and so we're just trying to figure out before we make any decisions about what to do with those tranches of funding you know we know whether heath's facility is or i shouldn't say he could maybe it's not heath later who knows um but whether the sheriff's facility ends up in this building or maybe in a different building um we know that the courts are here and we have to get people safely from wherever for more ever into the courts and so we just want that they had some questions wanting to understand a little bit more fully what would the cost of just doing the sally port be what are the options um you know what does that look like because i know when we talked about the courthouse renovation we talked about you know the phasing strategy and so some of the things we had discussed in the first two phases maybe they're part of something that would be related to the Sally Port. And so we just want to fully understand what do we think it would take us and what else would we need to do to understand just doing that piece.

Yep. Yeah, thanks, Candace. I think as we're kind of going through some of this as well today, probably keeping the back of our minds about a potential reapplication to the underfunded courts grant and maybe how that grant could also supplement funding to make the project have more scope in it if we are looking at kind of reducing scope into more bite-sized pieces from a budget standpoint especially as the county is embarking on some you know long-range facility master planning of your existing assets and potentially having a look at you know does it continue to make sense to have law enforcement in the county courthouse building as well so I Lauren is here as also and she has been working away on a few different studies, I think, of how a Sally Port could function. I think also before she gets into sharing her screen and kind of walking us through what she's seeing in our existing building, just important to think about that this aspect of the existing courthouse building is probably something that would never go to waste because either if it were to be utilized currently as you're set up with the sheriff's office in the building or if potentially the sheriff's office were to go off site at some point in time, as Candace mentioned, we would still need to make sure that folks who have to come to the courthouse are being transported securely and that we are trying to also, as we all know, keep the focus of the folks who are working in the court area as safe as possible, as well as juries, etc. So with that kind of high level, I will turn it over to Lauren And if you want to share, Lauren, and talk us through some of the items that you've been looking at. We haven't had a lot of time, just so you all know. We've only had a few days to look at this. So I do not have any kind of like updated budget pricing, but we have sent this over to FCI so that we can compile that and come back to you or provide it to Candice and Josh so that they can get you that price information. But we do not have that currently. Okay.

And Candace, can you authorize me to share, please? I sure can. And good afternoon, everyone. It's good to see everyone again. Same.

Hello, Lauren.

Hi. Can you see the floor plan?

Yes, thank you.

Yep, so we, after talking with Josh and Colleen and Candice last week, I just did an exercise where I pulled in that Sally Port edition. and overlaid it on the existing floor plans. And I think we just wanted to look at, you know, is this feasible? Does it make sense without impacting too much of the existing layout? So what you're looking at, this is the ground level, and this is the 900 square foot footprint of the Sallyport. A couple things to keep in mind. Right now there is an existing exit right here. Prior in the previous design, we had tucked in this addition to essentially be tight to the building here. I think we could still do that. We see a couple options here essentially where it would work. I think we can maintain exiting and essentially we can slide the elevator as needed and we'll work with Heath on where that wants to live. But I think essentially we can keep planning and zoning as is. I don't think we need to disrupt them other than we would take away a couple windows, obviously. But I think this addition works well. We can preserve all of our code required egress. I think it's fairly, I think the impacts would be fairly minor on this lower level. And then I'm talking with SGM. I know there's some infrastructure here in terms of utilities. I think we can see if we can preserve some of that. We do have a louver here where there's some intake coming into the boiler room. I think we still might have to adjust a little bit of that just to make sure they're getting adequate intake and outtake of that boiler room. But this is what it would look like on the lower level. Moving up, again, if the jail remains on this main level, I think we would modify some of the ventilation here on the exterior north wall. But this could essentially be blanked off. So I think you still go forward with a three-stop elevator. So in the future, if you needed to, if things changed and the jail moves out, you still have the option to access the elevator on this level. But in the short term, that could just be sort of a no stop on this level. It continues up. And then previously, if you recall. We had additional offices. We were essentially using a little bit more of this footprint for additional office space in order to keep costs a little bit lower. This could essentially just be a membrane roof. And any HVAC equipment that could be dedicated to this alley port and this elevator, it could live on this roof, and we could screen it with the parapet walls. So I think this is pretty clean. This area that I have highlighted in tan is 175 square feet. So really, it's just the elevator and that vestibule that are continuing up to serve the courtroom. This would be the upper level. So here the elevator and elevator vestibule connect to the courtroom and then we would focus our efforts on renovating the courtroom as originally planned. I am adding in the security vestibule. This is, I think, what Heath had procured some additional grant money for. So essentially, it kind of sets yourself up nicely if you wanted to continue with the third floor renovation and reworking some of the staffing on this level. But the courtroom reno, that's about 1,800 square feet. The security vestibule and then the additional 175 square feet for the elevator. This would be the focus of the third floor changes. So I think it works pretty well. I think it still preserves some of that original intent with the safety and security upgrades. I think it can be pretty minimal in terms of impacts to the rest of the building. Certainly, if there's other critical deferred maintenance items that you wanted to pick up, we could do that. I also ran some quick numbers and based on the Sally port addition I went back and looked at fcs original cost per square foot and they're they're early pricing on it, we are roughly 1250 square feet. Obviously that's the elevator that is the foundations, obviously, this is a new building we're tying into the new one, I think they had this at $1,000 a square foot. So that puts the Sally Port addition alone at about $1.25 million. For the courtroom renovation, that was just under 2,000 square feet. And again, that's still a moderate to heavy renovation. But we aren't really getting into foundations. There's no other huge equipment in there. So I reduced that to 650 to 700 square feet. 650 to 700 square feet. dollars a square foot, that puts it at about 1.25 million. So if you combine those two, I added a 20% contingency, you know, modifier just for the renovation, a little bit of escalation and contingency. If you held approximately 500,000 For that contingency number, you'd be sitting just under $3 million for these two pieces of scope for the courtroom and the sally port. One thing we were looking at, again, and I know the 2024 is coming online. You know, I think it's pretty straightforward from an architectural energy code standpoint. We had already sort of scoped this a few months ago because we knew it could potentially hit the project. So I don't think there's huge structural architectural implications there. In terms of electrical, there are potentially some additional costs, but I think it'll be related to additional outlets and fixtures. And I think SGM can get back to us in terms of any other broader costs. infrastructure that we need to plan for. And I can certainly, I told Colleen, I can send that on to her and Candice to give you a full summary of some of the MEP items. But overall, I think it seems doable. it's certainly biting off a lot less than, you know, you had originally planned and you're avoiding some of the big hits with just chopping up and carving up some of that existing floor, some of the existing walls, et cetera, of the original building. So.

And it kind of goes with that saying, but with new construction, you know, we, we, we had carried quite a bit of money for asbestos abatement as well. So this would be, we're not going to be as invasive with the full remodel. So that portion will come down as.

Colleen and Lauren, if commissioners decide they want to pursue this option, I do have to talk with the USDA who I've let know that we might find ourselves at this juncture. I would need to work with you guys to resubmit some of the items that they require to make sure they're going to let me pivot those funds. They couldn't give me a guarantee without a plan. And quite frankly, they've been more than generous extending and amending this project for us multiple times. So I think that's something we would need So just worst case scenario, we just said it's what 2.75 with that 500,000 like hold out for escalation or for any increase costs that we aren't thinking of. Is there, I guess I'm just trying to think about what if the USDA came back and said no, How much would we be looking at? Because we didn't end up spending any of the... Yeah, we haven't spent any of it. But even if we found out that they wouldn't let us pivot it for some reason, is this something we would want to consider with general fund reserve? The prior commissioners committed 5 million of general fund reserve that we never touched for any of this because we haven't done anything yet. So I'm just curious. I guess I'm curious what would the damage be if we thought we would use our reserve to do this piece because the USDA wouldn't let us visit the funds is where I guess I'm after.

Lauren, were the costs you just gave us, including any sort of grant funding, you were just giving us the base cost, right?

Yeah, what I have highlighted in yellow

that was that was my quick estimate i haven't applied any grants though so yeah great i'll just make sure when i do have a question about the sally port design um at one point we had talked about potentially to save money doing some like fencing instead of walls for a sally port and i it looked like based on your design those were walls Is that still an option? When you do go back to pricing, is that something that could be priced out, that range of walls versus fence?

We could look at that. I think certainly we'd want to talk with Sheriff Speckman. But yeah, I think if some of this became more of a screened enclosure, that's doable.

Thank you.

I think it'd just be nice for us to have that full option off the bat instead of being like, oh, can you go back? Oh, can you go back?

Yeah.

So thank you.

Yeah, the sheriff is definitely in favor of having it be in a closed area. Fair enough. But if we end up at a point where the funding that we're looking at will not apply to this or it's got to come out of the general fund for fund reserves that are not We're going to need to trim as much as we can.

And I think the other part, you know, there's a little bit of programming in here that I think can come out. And again, I still think he's probably going to want a holding area. When the vehicle comes in, he wants to be able to bring that person out, secure them, get his people in order before they go up the elevator. But I think some of the storage can go away. And we could probably... we can explore eliminating this too so i i still think that lower level can tighten up more based on his feedback and i and certainly the one thing i'm i'm very interested in you know we have a gas meter right here and i'm trying to save a little bit if we can if we can leave some of that as is still get our ventilation and and keep egress i feel like that's a win you can save some money there too so thank you

Lauren, did you happen to do any elevation drawings for perspective?

No, I think, you know, where we had landed a few months ago, we had studied this at length based on the feedback from the city and the Historic Preservation Board. Obviously, we know they're going to have some expectation of materials. And I think our goal would be to kind of honor those previous discussions. And I think aesthetically, we still have some. I think an elevation that they would approve of. Granted, if the block wall becomes a metal panel screen wall and it becomes a little more fencing, I still think we can work that in. But I think we've tried to maintain where we had left it. We felt like that addressed a lot of their comments.

Well, I'd be all for it if we could reuse that ramp. And I don't know if I could say that about using general fund money for it. I wouldn't be all for it. I'd be... I'd be... I wouldn't be all for it. I wouldn't be against it. I would just... I don't know. That'd be a totally different discussion, I think.

We know we're getting some serious concerns about safety in general from both the sheriff and from the courts to honor that a little bit plus previous boards have kind of earmarked that chunk of general fund reserves for this project even when it was a massive project so yeah i would be inclined to still move forward it would be a huge bummer if we couldn't get that and i can get a rough estimate for what our general fund reserve was

at year end of 25? No, it's not audited, of course. But I do think I can at least get a pretty rough estimate of what is our general fund reserve for the start of 26. I mean, we do that when we do the budgeted estimate, but the auditor does make adjustments at the end of the year, and I just want to make sure I have a little clearer of the picture so I can tell you what is the...

So Andy, you're saying let's move forward regardless of whether we can use the 3.75 or not. You'd like to see this project.

Yeah. I mean, my appetite for moving forward would definitely shift, but I would still be inclined to lean towards moving forward in either scenario.

What about the, um, I know that the jury room was a really big, is a really big issue. and the heating at the court's level. So with this, the court's renovation you've got in beige doesn't include the jury room. Would the renovation include any mechanical?

I was assuming we would have HVAC dedicated to the new addition and the elevator. And then, yes, I would think the courtroom renovation would want to include some HVAC.

Okay. I guess I would want to... This is great, and I don't want to expand the scope, but at the same time, I do want to honor what the courts have been asking for and make sure that we're actually solving some of those things, and some of those things, I think, were also security from the front, like from the east side, and then the... the jury, the jury room in particular, being sub freezing.

So yeah, this was this shows this was the remainder of that renovation.

Yeah. So when we go to courts, I'm just wondering if we're going for extra funds, but we're not touching any of that, there's a certain amount you have to spend to get back. And I'm just wondering how changing the scope of this will affect our ability to get some of those grants. Does anybody know?

I mean, I think we would, A, I'm not holding my breath because I know that they have less funding than they had last year. And I know how much they got asked for last year. And it feels, it's felt like every time we come up with anything that we try to use that grant funding for, we find out that we can't. So I would want to make sure that if we're going back to ask for anything additional, we have to make sure it's going to actually be applicable. Otherwise, we're just going to be funding those changes ourselves. I will say that the current Underground Courts House grant that we have has a $1.5 million match. And we were using that 3.575 as the match. So if we use general fund dollars, they would then be the match for that 500 that we got. So I don't know how much. I'd be really leery to bank on any additional from that. So part of me just wonders what could we do for the 500 we have? And if there's additional available and the courts identified something they would be willing to find, I think that's when we could have that discussion and not count our chickens.

I thought From previous conversations, the Sally Port addressed the main safety concerns for the jury by routing people on trial or anyone convicted or anyone potentially dangerous from being in contact with them. And it addressed the temperature issues with the renovation that we're talking about within the 1,800 square feet of the courtroom itself. I thought the two biggest concerns were the safety and that it was so cold in there that people were so freezing that they were like, whatever, just call me guilty, let's get this over with.

Yeah, but the jury room isn't, and the judges were on level two right now.

No, this is the court right here. That's the third floor.

Oh, it's the, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm sorry, from the east side.

So their safety concerns were that potentially people of concern were coming in through here and then being let up here and brought in this door.

No, it's that people who come through the security, they can just take a left to go to the bathrooms, and the judges' and clerks' offices are right there, are next, right next to the restrooms, and there's nothing keeping people from going into judges'

chambers this whole that hallway was identified pointed out yeah right here as the a security issue um so this this one is aside from anyone who is showing up hard to escort correct yeah okay um i thought that was the biggest concern

That is a concern, but judges' offices have just been walked into, and people have just come to those judges and be like, why did you do this? Because their offices are right there. And that's not safe. No. So anyway, we're not addressing that in this proposed thing, which I think is fine, but I would be curious if we can even use the $500,000 that we do have if we're not addressing any of those other safety concerns. I don't know. I'm just saying that's not in the current scope that's being proposed, which is cool.

Wasn't that, uh, oh, judge's chambers here. Here's the secure security vestibule they're talking about. I wonder if that could just be moved. If the security vestibule could be moved further to the east in the hallway to, uh, cover the judge's chamber and even the office, maybe. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I think that we were flipping where the clerks lived. So, yeah, could we do that in this without creating a whole lot of additional scope? I don't.

Right.

Yeah, we need to investigate that.

Okay. Okay. We're going to lose some parking. We'll lose some parking.

I feel like if you can find parking within two blocks of a space, you're pretty lucky. And you can in Leadville, you can. Thank you, Lauren. I don't have any other questions.

Hey, Lauren, this is Josh. I have a quick question just about the Sally Port scope, just thinking about the fact that we're basically leaving a million dollars in terms of what we have of the CDS funding. Is there a reason that you are kind of making the decision to remove any sort of office space renovation as part of that new construction? I'm sorry, not renovation, any office space construction as part of the new construction. Because if we have the room and the budget and that gets us closer to what USDA is thinking this CDS money will be used for, if we can get to that limit, we might want to try to do so and get some of those additional add-on components if possible.

So you're thinking utilize this area like we were in the previous?

Yeah, I'm just wondering if you even have just a ballpark estimate, like does that get us closer to the full 3.75 and give us some additional office space?

Mm-hmm. Were you taking into account soft cost escalation contingency, owner contingency in your number? Or is that just hard costs?

Are you asking me, Colleen, or Josh?

Yeah, on your Word document. I wasn't sure if that was the new number.

I had this 20%, so I had a buffer of 500,000, basically. Okay.

On top of hard costs. So we still would need additional. I think, Josh, we haven't really, I haven't had a chance to dive into this at all yet, but we could certainly look at that as an alternate for the additional space to get us closer. And you're talking about on the second floor, right, Josh?

Yeah, I just think leaving that vacant space if we're already going to be breaking ground and building something new and there's the option to... I guess I'm also thinking about this pending conversation with USDA and the less that we're adjusting original scope, I think the easier it will be to have the conversation to say that the money we have matches the project that we're trying to complete.

Love that. I think it's doable. We... We couldn't connect back to the jail though, right? We'd have to come back through the clerk space. So it could, I feel like this is kind of sacred with the voter room, but we could attend, that could be storage. This could be additional office space. I'm not sure, but I think we'd be limited in how we exited out of here and how we connected it.

that makes sense well maybe to Josh's point like could could more of the courts be part of the scope so that we're so that we are not changing our USDA plan quite as much

Yeah, I think I feel like the cost per square foot to flip the clerks could be pretty doable. I mean, I don't think that that's just some partitioning and doors. You know, if we keep IT, if we keep everything where it's at, I think that'll help. And then essentially you move the other judge back here. So maybe it's, maybe you're touching this area.

And maybe windows in the juror's room? Because like a bird could fly in there right now. A tiny bird. But there's a lot of space between the windows and the wall. It's so dramatic. And cold. Carry that back. right room. It's wild. Yeah, it's a very good find in my office too, but maybe some windows because I don't think windows are currently part of the scope either. Josh, do you think that's fair? Like just to touch to your point, expanding the scope enough that we could keep from having to return the USDA, but max out that that money to make sure that we can keep it.

It's triggering the threshold that we need to.

Yeah, that's kind of where I was going with it. I mean, I, I, you know, knowing that Colleen needs to still kind of look at some of those costs, I think we want to leave a little bit of space between what we're considering, but with the Sally port being the priority and I'm just kind of trying to think through how we would maximize those dollars. Yeah. and make that conversation with USDA a little bit easier to say, hey, we're not changing things all that much. We're just going to use the funding we have from CDS to complete part of our initial scope and then start thinking through longer term what we're going to do with the rest of our facility.

Yeah. And then still get that $500,000 from the courts. Yes. Because I'm sure the 500,000 will cover some of this, right? It has to.

I definitely recall the commissioner when he was talking about the elevator. I know that they had come around to yes, saying that this was definitely in the right direction and it could be applied to the elevator.

Well, if we're going to address the HVAC and the heating, we should include the windows in that. That's part of the envelope that it's the problem, one of the problems why it's so cold.

I don't think they're, I think we just need to maybe come back with some real estimates that we think are going to get us pretty close so we can go to USDA, make sure they're going to let us pivot it. I'd like to say if we're going to pivot it, they've really only granted me a one-year extension to start using this money. We need to get If we're going to do this, we need to get to them, get them to agree, and get on it. And I think that's kind of also the underfunded courts. We've been holding this money for quite some time. And I think that's the sense I've gotten from all of our partners is it's go time, get it together, or it's not going to be there. And the USDA is going to be, I need to get something in front of them pretty quick. So it sounds like we need to do some work. get a plan together, maybe Colleen, Lauren, Josh, we all get something together so I can go back to them and try that.

I had a question about the per square foot numbers. And you had about $1,000 a square foot for the new construction. And then you were at $650 a square foot for the remodel of the courthouse, the courtrooms themselves. And I would imagine that $650 per square foot isn't you know it's close enough to that cost of all new construction that's going to get a pretty significant remodel of the courtroom that's going to get the windows that's going to get the you know fancy carpets or floors on it's i can't imagine at that number we're not going to get every check every box we need in the courtroom itself well for you to say

It is. That's why I'm kind of looking at you.

Please keep in mind, we have not run this through FCI constructors yet, and we're going to also need to look at some form of escalation. We're now, unfortunately, with petroleum rising, we're starting to see suppliers send us cost increase notices. So I just want to make sure when we come back to you that we have a lot more further information on that budget. And it sounds like... that maybe what we need to do is try to maximize the amount of money that we have and then come back to you with what that scope looks like. But if we are able to get direction from you that you're comfortable with that approach, then I think we can work really closely with Candace and Josh to get really dial in what that scope of work is. But I think we were just trying to make sure you were okay with where this is headed.

yeah i feel good about it i do as well speaking for myself i'm a green light i'm moving forward we do okay please with at least that portion of it that portion yeah i would like to accomplish that but using our own general funds another decision a different discussion entirely

How much would this change the scope of what the USDA approved? This feels like it isn't. It's just smaller.

It is smaller. And part of me, you know, Josh, you talked with them last. Did you, and you might not have thought to ask, did you get a sense for if from Allison, if we weren't contributing any of our own funds, they would have any concern with still letting us just use the full amount?

I did not get that sense or have that conversation directly. The one piece I do know is that when I gave her the overview of sort of the direction we were headed is that we will need to submit an amended proposal. And so we had initially submit the architectural drawings. We were kind of at the point where that information needed to get rolled into the contract for the CDS money and the contract with, I think they mentioned specifically with RANA. So that's something we'll have to clarify with her. But I do know that there will be the additional step of wherever we land scope-wise, we're going to have to put that together in a formal proposal for USDA to review, noting it as a change.

Okay.

Go forth. Warren, just so you know, they did, when we spoke with Allison, she did mention that we would need to amend the contract with you guys. I think we included the requirements that they had as an addendum instead of actually working it into the contract. And they asked us to actually work that language into the end of the contract. So I do want to plug that that is something they asked us for. And then they had a few comments that they got back to us on the PAR, on the Promoting Architectural Report. So I just want to make sure we get that information to you. So if we're going to come back with a different plan that we can incorporate a few things there too.

Certainly. Yeah, we're good with that. Okay.

Well, thanks for hanging in there with us.

Yeah, it has been a linear path.

No, we understand. And certainly we're excited, though, if we can address some of the issues here and find a path forward.

Yeah, me too.

Thank you, Lauren. Appreciate it so much. Thank you, Lauren.

Thank you, Colleen.

Absolutely. So I'll keep in touch with Colleen and Candice, and we'll refine this and get you what you need to get some more answers.

Thank you.

Bye, you guys.

Have a great rest of the day. Thank you.

Thank you. Wow.

How are we going to contract with governments? I can't imagine.

We suck.

We suck. Just as a client, not in general.

We're conscious and careful with what we're spending on.

It's complicated, though, from their own business standpoint of like, oh, I have this contract.

Harking back to me being a little bit just thinking about doing all these things.

So maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think a lot of governments have canceled projects outright. Oh, yes. Because. Don't worry. I've watched governments take decades to accomplish something.

And I'm just feeling empathy. Yeah. I'm feeling a lot of empathy. That's all.

It's really hard to wrap your head around how that works.

It is.

On the other side of that wall versus sitting in here.

I ask a clarifying question. This is just direction from you guys. Should I start exploring what to do with the COP?

Yeah.

I think we already discussed that, didn't we? We wanted to have this conversation before I fully went down that rabbit hole of I'm hoping to just pay it back, not return it, because then there's no penalty to pay back, versus a return looks a little different, so I'm gonna get the fourth on it.

I say the fourth. What do you all feel?

Yeah, we should. We have, we take a penalty if we don't touch it in two years, so I do want to, like, get it on. When's that hard, hard line? December.

It has to be June? December?

Yeah, they took it in December.

424. Anything we can do to not be paying interest on something or incurring penalties would be my preferred option as far as being responsible with taxpayer dollars.

Same.

And we get that $500 carried back.

I guess surety or... Yeah, that next payment, well, it's split into two. That next payment is in November. Yes, please.

Yeah, please.

It also returns $539,000 we had to put in return of the life holding account when we get back.

That's what he was just trying to do. Yeah.

I have an overactive flyer.

That's because we've been drinking coffee all day.

Just pull up my agenda here. Moving on to item number three, if we're ready. Overview and discussion regarding the airport industrial park feasibility study and potential next steps. This will be led by Adam Ducharme, Tourism and Economic Development Director. Award winning. Award winning. A total award winning.

And we also have Melissa Kendrick from Community Planning and Development because her and I have been working very closely since the beginning of this project.

Okay. Welcome, Melissa. I'm not an award winner. All right, so I think even before we get in the purpose I think it's probably important to set the stage and maybe Melissa you can help me with this when we From the standpoint of yeah going back maybe 60

and then heading into the feasibility study if you and maybe you want to just set that stage a little bit okay yeah so we thought well what we want to do is build an airport industrial park and so you know how do we go about doing that and um so we put together kind of a scope of work thinking we needed an RFP and um And in talking to some engineering colleagues, the direction that we got was, well, we need more information from you about what you want, and then we can give you a better proposal. So that kind of slowed us down a little bit, and we thought, well, we need to know more about what we want. And I mean, we were just sort of hoping to sort of get there, you know? But it was like, no, we better think about, you know, we've done a market study before. probably need another market study. And so that's the next step that we took. And then that was recommended that we go a step further with Johnson Economics to really look at that in a little more detail. So all of that has given us some great information. So we even went back to that same engineer and said, look, we did our homework. What do you think? But that kind of set some of the stage out.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I will say that, you know, I think kind of the decision point to be reached was we were, the scope of this project is, you know, $40 to $60 million, and we were trying to maybe get it to a place where it was like, okay, the site is, quote, maybe, quote, shovel ready, or we really have an understanding of what it's going to take to get our infrastructure there. And, you know, we kind of talked as a group, and it was like, okay, well, we're talking about 40 or $60 million, then having the appropriate information to be able to go out to the market and understand what's possible is not a waste of money. And we worked with Mead and Hunt who helped on the, they helped with the airport master plan. So they understand kind of that area really well. And they commissioned Mead and Hunt who does a lot of this work on sort of understanding market research and feasibility. So that has brought us to The document that we have now the feasibility study document that is in your packets and. I would say that you know, there is some things that could be added to that, but we did not want to, for instance, go back to Johnson economics and being time and Commission network and Commission that sort of extension of the proposal. Before meeting with you all, because it doesn't at this moment there's a chance that we might not have to spend that money before we can go actually out to the market and get some really valuable information. And then better understand how much more we need to do how much more resources, we need to dedicate I think total we spent around 35 or $40,000 turn so it's been very fair in terms of. sort of the amount that we've been given and part of that is just because Melissa and I have gone out to our colleagues in economic development and engineering and planning and asked for a lot of feedback and sort of been able to integrate that information and that's what brings us to this discussion and conversation today. So again, the purpose of this was to evaluate the feasibility, trying to understand sort of know there are communities in colorado and surrounding um states that that have dedicated funds or have started work on industrial parks and some of them are further along than others i think is maybe the easiest way to put it there are definitely some examples of successes but there are also examples of they've started the work and they're a decade in and it's not happening and when we when actually when we first met with me and Hunt and they were like hey here's some examples of communities that we want to look at and I believe in particular but Anna Melissa and I looked at a few of those like did our research on them and it was like whoa that one's been sitting around for seven years like that's what's going on so we want to understand that how do we not do that yeah right exactly I mean we have we've been talking about this for like 15 years oh yeah and we really felt like look if you tell us this is the wrong

project in the wrong time, we would rather not do anything and recommend to you not to do anything than to start something and have it a decade in.

Right. Well, I mean, when we approach this from like a phased perspective, it's like the dominoes are going to have to fall in a certain order. So it's like, you know, three phase power and sanitation would, if What's the price tag on those? Would that open the door up for the next steps? Maybe I would love for it to not take 10 years, but would that be better than nothing at all? And being 10 years down the road and still being in square one as opposed to, oh, we're halfway there. What can we afford? It will influence how fast it happens.

I don't want to jump ahead of. But I think it's also where do we have partners who are interested in investing in those pieces. And I think that's, you know, not saying that we fund all of it.

Is that the main reason why some of it stalled out?

There's a variety of reasons. Part of it is land ownership. Part of it is priorities. All of a sudden we're focusing resources on affordable housing or other priorities. There's a variety of reasons.

These things change. The other thing that gives me pause is that we were looking at some components of this from the perspective of, hey, if Aspen shuts down to rebuild, We're going to get a lot of traffic here. We're going to need space. That said, I've been in rooms with dozens of other commissioners, and it really sounds like there's a lot of counties in Colorado trying to build out their airports right now and do the same thing. And I'm like, does that change that landscape market dynamic? Sure.

And so i'll just work through this because part of what you'll like what you'll hear from this presentation to is that we're it's an off airport industrial park so it's not actually what's called through the fence so that's part of part of what we'll discuss so again. Obviously, the purpose of this is around employment long term economic future and also just having an understanding of the current market and also the incur the current industrial market so like what's the market saturation when it comes to the industrial market and these types of facilities, so why now again, you know we understand. 70% of our workforce commutes out of county. We don't have a ton of, we do not have a lot of industrial space, and the space that we do have is, what's his name? I'm forgetting his name now. I want to say Logan. Logan Breen is over there. But anyways, the ore cart, the small industrial space that's coming up, he has found success in terms of being able to rent those. Coal. Coal, thank you. So that was kind of interesting timing with that. Because part of what we were looking at a year ago was, okay, there is no industrial space. And he started moving forward and it met some of the immediate need of the solopreneur entrepreneur that wanted small space. And I think that this 88 acres, which is roughly what we're talking about, that's the whole site. Again, not to suggest that's what we're recommending, but that's the whole site. It kind of has this bigger picture view rather than somebody who wants to work on motorcycles or potentially have a yoga space. So we looked at demand, workforce trends, the site and infrastructure costs, and how that could be phased. That's a big piece of what we talked about. Then also target industries. And a lot of the industry conversation actually did focus on future industries, which was kind of, I think, surprising to us in terms of understanding some of the future demand that we can expect. around anything in aviation space, unmanned vehicles, as well as the Lockheed Martins, those types that are actually defense contractors, et cetera, who are already actually coming to our airport. But when they come in, they parachute in, they bring everything with them and kind of come and do some testing and then they leave, right? And same thing with Caterpillar. I mean, right now there's, I think, eight Caterpillar employees who are all staying at the Timberline, actually, Timberline Motel, and then, because they do a lot of combustion engine testing, high-altitude combustion engine, and they currently pay, like, they pay Public Works, like, county government $1,000 a month to just have, like, basically just land where they can do their testing, where they can kind of... Their sandbox. Exactly, their sandbox. So... And... There is measured demand for industrial space. One of the things that we'd like to have clarified in this study is they accounted for an absorption rate of around 35 acres. So if we had it today, 35 acres would get absorbed. But they didn't attribute it directly to this specific site. And that's just a language issue that would like to go back to johnson economics and say hey like we want the language in it to say that today we could absorb 35 acres in industrial space and um but there is little to no local inventory and that's also regional inventory um that's a big thing is they're just you know it is a this conversation is a little bit of a field of dreams there are there is a lot of activity on airports and what we call through the fence but there isn't as much industrial space that's outside of the fence. So basically if it's not on your FAA, if it's not within your master development plan for your airport, then you can have a more interesting business model, which is actually what we talked with them about. And they kind of brought up this idea of a concept that we previously thought was impossible, which is basically you can have industrial space that's on FAA land but is not part of your master development plan for your airport. And so in our case, we would actually put potentially what we call phase five of this industrial park on FAA land. So it would need to be leased. That couldn't be owned. Those properties couldn't be owned, the buildings. But basically they have secure gate access at our airport. So they could walk with a badge, key card, et cetera, proper clearance, they could get through the fence and be able to do applications, for instance, testing, low altitude testing for drones. And I'll get into why that's a business case we were looking at, but they could actually go through the fence, but they're not taxiing a major aircraft, for instance, within our airport jurisdiction. And it's all you need to do, we've learned, through this process is you basically just, with your MDP, with your master development plan for your airport, you basically just make a pen and ink drawing that shows we're gonna have this infrastructure here, but it's not part of our, we're never gonna, that will not impede with FAA operations, and yet, so it's kind of through the fence but not, is the point, because they're actually right outside of the fence, but they can actually access the airfield itself.

key card and camera gate, or is this a man gate? Key card and camera gate in front, I understand.

Yeah, and our representative from Johnson, Kevin, actually managed an airport, one of the airports. So he really has a lot of expertise in this whole area, which was helpful. Because you could make this change to a master plan pretty easily, where we had thought it was impossible to do. Yeah, that is cool. I know the

non-airport component of this is also some just the space itself is really in need here and could open the door for a lot of other yeah yeah business and industry yeah so again the workforce reality right i mean you know if you think about you know if we just imagine a world where the above ground operations of climax have about a decade um and there is kind of an opportunity in terms of re-skilling or transferring workforce folks from mining jobs to industrial and construction jobs. So that's just one of the considerations. But also, that's like an afterthought when you compare it to the fact that 70% of our workforce is commuting out of county anyways. But yeah, there just is a major mismatch between the jobs that are available in Lake County jobs in the workforce and so this high altitude and aerospace niche potential and the airport adjacent advantage we just hit on that a little bit but something that is interesting to think about that was brought to our attention is for an example in the Olympics in LA they plan on piloting a program to have unmanned Taxis bring people to and from the venues so there'll be human beings sitting in drones going to and from the venues and. Currently, that there are companies that have licenses to do this type of. Business to do this type of work, but the ceiling for for their work through the FAA is 10,000 feet. So 10,000 feet is literally the ceiling for any type of commercial taxiing through these unmanned aircraft. So the next frontier is in the airspace that we call 10,000 feet to 1999. So basically, there are a lot of opportunities and a lot of companies that are now exploring and testing in that space between 10,000 feet and 20,000 feet, just call it. there is business potential right now. It's today for companies that want to test in these environments. And I'm sure you can understand where I'm going with that. We're already there. So in terms of thinking about the overall project as it stands, the high upfront infrastructure costs, that's kind of the tip of the spear. That's the crux of this whole conversation. I think the market, would have solutions, ready-made solutions, for a lot of the other things other than this infrastructure cost. I mean, the reason why this conversation has been going on since the 70s, because there actually are examples, example documents. The mayor found a document from the 70s that talked about an industrial park. So the reason why it's been talked about is the fact that there's no infrastructure in that area. And so that's one of the things that we are trying to think through the most critically and trying to explore how can we create strong partnerships with anchor tenants or others who would truly benefit from having the infrastructure there. And some of that is county priorities. Some of that is private industry or regional or state or federal. But we'll get into that a little bit. And then obviously you know the market positioning I think it's critical right when you have partners like cat you know caterpillar they that's that's an interesting concept for a potential anchor. We did in the course of this study, we did engage with climax and try and have a conversation with them of like hey. we're working through an industrial park concept, would you all be interested in just answering some questions about it, you know, in terms of any needs, you might have. And they were not interested in that conversation. So just something to think about. They said what? They just said they didn't have any need for additional space.

It's interesting to me that Caterpillar would do so much elevation engines testing up here, but no other heavy equipment manufacturers are present currently. Is that correct?

Yeah, there's a ton. There's a ton in the aviation space. Josh has a list of about 30 different ones that are aviation, helicopters, defense contractors, those types. But I don't know about specific heavy machinery, the other main brands, heavy equipment operators. But again, I think that from my perspective, Caterpillar having their presence in Summit County probably makes it, it's kind of like a Oh yeah, they're just right up there kind of thing so. But again, for me, I haven't even approached caterpillar and I talked with Michael about like I don't want to approach them until we have our ducks way more in a row. So here what you're looking at right here is kind of the beginning site design and So we asked them to kind of come up with some concepts of breaking out the acreage into parcels. So these are 2.5 acre parcels, these are three acre parcels, five acre parcels, six acre parcels. It's a little bit arbitrary because at the end of the day, whoever is going to purchase or lease, et cetera, they're gonna have an understanding of what they're looking for. But what you're looking at here is kind of a retention pond, right? Because you do have to kind of think about drainage. And so looped water and then electric gas. We did actually have direct conversations with Excel, with Vero, with Parkville, and with Leadville Sanitation to kind of get an understanding of costs.

So we have cost infrastructure for rough orders of magnitude cost infrastructure.

But there's some, I think that when we get down the road, for instance, we would want finer engineered drawings because, for example, the water's coming here, but the reality of the situation is, I've talked to Parkville and Craig, and the water coming from CMC, there's a trunk there that would actually probably make more sense. But otherwise, I think that there's also they were making an attempt to try and see what's mutually beneficial from the standpoint of being able to feed the airport as well as the industrial park because three-phase power, gas, sewer, water, broadband, Vero does plan to to run this year, at least when we spoke about this in the fall or in the winter, their plan is to bring their fiber through Springtown and have it kind of here in preparation for future development. You know, whether it's sandpit and public works or kind of other things, but they want to be ready. So, but what is not featured on this drawing, this is kind of what we refer to as phase one through four, But what's not pictured here, and I didn't include the picture, probably shouldn't have, but is that phase five, which is basically part of the industrial park being on this side eventually. And the actual fence for the airport itself is right here. So you'd actually have industrial buildings right here, and that's where you'd have that sort of like through the fence potential. But it's technically outside the fence.

Can you follow the colors? Yeah.

We'll lose two loops on our archery range up there, I think.

I mean, to be honest with you, we actually did it pretty intentionally to try and make it so that we weren't moving amenities. So I think that once we actually got into the meat of it the intention is to try and not disturb too much, you know, because we, you know, this area is kind of complex in terms of some of the zoning and some of the amenities that are there with the gun ranges and things like that. And then, you know, obviously the reason why they co-locate industrial parks near airports is because of the sound. But like the Cloud City wheelers trails and things like that, um it wouldn't the point is to not interfere with those so yeah literal belts right there what's the what's the cost okay so um yeah so but yeah we we basically are looking at starting with you know, this would need to be phased, I think, no matter what. Like, there's not a, there's, call me realistic, but there isn't a way that we could fund this project, for instance, as the county. So we're talking about starting with small frontage lots first, and kind of like you were saying, Andy, it's sort of like the dominoes. And then scale infrastructure over time, design it for a full build out, right, and then reduce risk through a phased investment.

So go back one slide. Yeah. This is probably obvious, but we're thinking about these lots here, right, because you get the road built. You want to kind of capture as much as you can because this is the really big lift. And then it was pointed out, well, even if you went back to here, what's 300 more feet? and you open up all of this. So, I mean, that was some of our conversations is if we were to phase it, what we would be looking at.

Yeah, the big lift is the getting it out there, though. It is. So, once you've got it out there, yeah.

Yeah, because those frontage lines will be the lowest ROI versus the back lots once we get all the heavy lifting done.

Yeah, exactly. So this is kind of the phased approach. These three to five initial lots, frontage road access, the stubbing the water in the sewer, build out the roads, and then having a sort of temporary solution for stormwater, which could evolve over time. And then extend the road network, additional small, medium lots, expand utilities, shared stormwater, scale with demand, and then full build out. Um, and so again, to be honest with you, Andy, this could take a decade, um, you know, in terms of the whole, the whole thing, but, um, yeah, yeah. Yep. And so again, with our stakeholder feedback, um, there was a strong interest in the concept. You know, I had a interesting conversation with a few folks that work in the sort of drone, um, and the unmanned, um, vehicle industry. And there's so much to that. It's not. Like, they're using it for wildfire. They're using it for first responders, so search and rescue. You know, like, the amount of interest and the growth in that industry is massive, not to mention jet propulsion.

And parallel industries that run along with it, too. Absolutely. Just branch out on things we can't even, you know, prototyping parts with 3D printers and blah, blah, blah, like warehouses full of these things. It's just testing.

Yeah, and one thing that was brought to our attention, too, is right now, currently, there is a big push to have things made in America. You know, with the sort of like a lot of the tariff situation, there are companies that used to be buying X, Y, and Z from this Chinese supplier, and now they're really trying to source things to your point where it's like, hey, can we get these semiconductors? domestically. And then not to mention, you know, we have the largest concentration of aerospace businesses in the country in Colorado still. So and but yeah, again, you know, there was just a lot of conversation about early industry outreach. Is there anything else you want to say from your perspective on the feedback we received from folks? In terms of the fees of the market? Yeah, market and feasibility in the phasing? Yeah. I don't think so. I think we're covering it. I feel like you've got a lot of it. Okay, so here's where we are. So our options for what we could do next. I'm happy to also give you the overall price tags, but I mean, it's, what was it, $14 million?

You said $40 to $60 million.

$40 to $60 million, and then that infrastructure that we have is $14 million. Yeah. so what is the difference between uh what do you mean the infrastructure hey to bring that all that infrastructure up there yeah that alone is 14 million yeah what is the 30 and six 40 60 million would be for the park itself like us building the buildings and leasing them out and then versus like we're just going to put the infrastructure in sell the space at least the spaces and say you build what you want yeah that's totally different pricing then okay cool

Cool, thank you.

Does the $14 million include the road as part of the infrastructure, like that phase one? Yeah, and it's a rough order of magnitude. Again, the engineers we had look at this, they were like, it's a rough order of magnitude.

Would we pay for the road?

Yes. I mean, the base is there. It's pretty good up to the moto track.

Yeah, and I don't know if you have that spreadsheet or...

I don't have it in this deck, but it's in their packet.

It's pretty detailed. A piece of what we're conscious of is that this has a shelf life. Some of this has a shelf life. The market study probably doesn't as much, but the design and the infrastructure does.

So these options that I have here, this is based on the feedback we've received. And so option one is basically request for information. So this is basically testing the market demand. So we can pull together with all the information we now have, we could go out and put out a pretty detailed RFI to the market and kind of share this with all of our networks. So this is to kind of see, market demand, like are there developers, are there companies, is there interest in this concept? And obviously this is little to no cost to us other than staff time for us to go out and put this together and market the heck out of it to see based on how much of it, who's interested based on how much of an educated guess. Like we're not going, here's the land, what do you want to do with it? We're going like, here's what we want, here's the industries we're interested in, here's our concept, you know, you, they can, you can get pretty nitty gritty. So that would be option one. Option two is we could go back to need and hunt and get detailed planning for that phase five. So that, that would include the 56 K take a total of eight weeks. And it would be kind of like detailing out what that through the fence opportunity would look like, and then get a little bit more granular with all of the data and information. Um, and again, I, personally feel like that is a, if we get nothing from the RFI, we go back to meet and hunt and we go, okay, we might need a little bit more. To get the interest in the thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then option three is we pause. Um, and if we pause as, as mentioned, um, you know, we would lose this momentum and then their shelf life to the data we have, um, and which is what we did last time. And what's different from last time is that I have been working on a really, really detailed memo. of every single decision we've made and why we've made it so far so that no matter what we decide to do no matter who's sitting in this seat or that seat or that seat or that seat that people have an understanding of why we came to the decisions we came to that's great because that's a massive thing i feel like we're missing we have traditionally been missing that so thank you for what staff time would be involved in an rfi who all would it involve and how much time would it take i would imagine melissa and i and

20 to 40 hours. Can we simultaneously do option one and two?

Why would we do two, though, if we don't?

Because I feel like we've already tested the waters a little bit and done a little bit of option one to know that, you know, you should pretty much have an, not immediate, but like 35 acres worth of industrial site would probably get eaten up pretty quick.

Yeah, but again, I understand. on the infrastructure being there. So I think a big reason why we're going out for the RFI is to understand, are there people who might be willing to put the infrastructure in?

Yeah, or help us. Okay. This is like getting some skin in the game.

We want them to want. I'm testing these ideas, right? These are good ideas, and they work in a study, but do they work in the real world where somebody's going to say, yes, we're interested in partnering with you?

And here, I'll give you some examples. And again, I'm just spitballing, this is just my brain, no one else's brain, but let's just say the airport needs some of this infrastructure. Let's just say there's a world where Public Works would like to move their locations at some point. Let's just say there's a world where Xcel Energy needs a lay-down yard or some sort of space. And let's just say Caterpillar also need some space so now you have and then maybe maybe there's like a state or federal agency that needs some sort of like wildfire hub you know where they can have equipment staged for any sort of fire response in this area okay that's that's uh that one's out there but again if all of those partners contributed to the infrastructure now we have the ability to to make a $14 million capital stack.

Sorry, this might be a little bit elementary, but what would their contributing look like? Would it be in the form of something, do you guys think it would be like, hey, help pitch in on the infrastructure component, and then we're going to give you a break on, we're going to return that to you in lease fees or something like that?

Yeah, so that really depends on how we structure the deal. So what I have in my mind is maybe Lake County, because some private businesses, they're going to want to own the land. They're going to want to be able to have that. But then other organizations might actually want to lease. They don't want to own the land. I was suggesting something like if we could find a 70-30 split where Lake County retains ownership and ground leases 30%, But we can find either a master developer or some version of that that buys 70%. They're obviously gonna get a higher ROI on the 70% they own, right? But we're not giving away the farm. We're retaining some of that ownership as our priorities change. Because currently, that 88 acres is all owned by Lake County government. But then in terms of other incentives, There is an opportunity with this, as an example, you could turn this into a URA, an Urban Renewal Authority, and then you have tax benefit structures. So let's just say that there's five to six partners that want to be in on the ground floor of this. We can set up a URA, an Urban Renewal Authority, and that could be your planter area. And then for 20 years, they would receive tax benefits for that in terms of, you know. recouping their costs because the industrial would still be considered commercial so it'd still be that land would be assessed and the tax rate residential tax rates 4% commercial industrial tax rate is 26% so there's going to be they have the potential to $4 million over 20 years and then they've built that tech and then we build that tax base and then we get after 20 years right exactly yeah.

And it's worth nothing right now. There's no tax being collected from that.

And that's why an urban renewal authority exists, is to take what we call blighted areas, and you're recognizing the potential. And so for 20 years, rather than collecting property tax on it, you're not anyways.

You're incentivizing the idea that it will be generating more revenue for the county at some point, just to get it off the ground and do the heavy lifting.

And again, that's where, to me, As an example, our only current understanding of what a URA is is the rail yard. And unfortunately, why that has left such a bad taste in our communities now is because only residential has been built there thus far. And so I would offer that if that deal was structured differently, you would have made the developer build commercial first and residential second. But of course, any developer that's going to advocate for themselves is going to want market rate residential first and commercial second. to be able to recoup their costs and be able to pay back the bankers, but... Yeah, yeah, but it's the responsibility of the URA to advocate to say, no, no, no, you're facing this wrong. But in this space, we're not talking residential, so we would not have that albatross hanging over us.

We always talk about what are some unintended consequences, but I think there's even unintended land within the city or the county that is currently being used for things that are industrial in nature. That would probably, like, if Excel looked at this and they were like, well, our property down here by Taco Bell is worth way more than... Oh, man, I was going to use that as an example, because that's where we started this.

That just popped into my head. It was like, man... We did. We wanted them to move, but we didn't have a place for them to go.

which is exactly what you said. And unfortunately they're now, you know, like in that exact example, they're now nine and a half years into the planning of remodeling that building they have. So when we went to them a year ago and we said, Hey, we really would love for you to be an anchor tenant in this concept we're working on. And they were like, well, they, yeah, they were like, well, see how fast you can move. Exactly. And again, they were like, if you can have something shovel ready in the next 16 months where

open to that but now we're already a year that was a year ago yeah so all right let's put that in right now do we have an issue with going forward with the arc i don't know an issue as long as you two really have the time and i'm probably more worried about you yeah i think we can get it done i do i think it's a priority and so that does the heavy lifting yeah yeah I would want to hold on phase five work until we get that back to see if we need it, you know, or if we find someone in the RFI who wants to be a part of helping with that infrastructure. And yeah, and I think that would change that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I did write, I wrote a like, um, a draft RFI and I sent it to a friend of mine, uh, in economic development and he validated that, you know, This looks good. There's a few pieces you should add and things like that. So there won't be that much extra work for that, which is good.

I think just on the previous slide, I do have one disagreement about option three is that no cost. There is a cost to making momentum.

Absolutely. Well, we just pointed out one of them.

Yeah.

That's a loss.

Yeah. Absolutely. We missed the boat with those guys.

Yeah.

yeah all right so there's my staff recommendation start with the rfi use the results to inform phase five um and then we just keep you know again it's so the other piece of the city we didn't even really talk about um hayden is a really good example so the city of hayden they leveraged right time right place they started this work in 2018 and they they basically commissioned someone like me in 2018 to start this work code that happens And then all of a sudden there is ARPA money galore for that person to be able to leverage for infrastructure loans and infrastructure grants. And so they were able to get all the infrastructure in place. I think it was like 65 or 70% of it was grant funded to be able to get, and they don't, they didn't have the same accessibility. Like they were coming off of main trunks and also Hayden has municipal water and sewer. So they were able to. give themselves breaks and make that happen. We have districts, so it's a little different for us.

And if they ask airport. Yeah, yeah.

And we can't extend ours without. But the point is, they're a really good example of as soon as they build something, it sells. As soon as they build something, it sells. But it's all off airport. They have an Indian airport, but what we're talking about is they're off airport. So anyways, the point is there isn't a lot of I'm not hanging my hat on grant funding for us to be able to get this infrastructure in place. I think this is a private industry play. I mean, I'm still going to look into it and talk congressionally-directed spending, et cetera, et cetera, but I'm not hanging my hat on it.

I think it would really behoove us to figure out how to use the congressionally-directed spending we've had before. to finish a project so that we will be considered for it in the future. Yeah, absolutely. We already agreed with a dollar. And then watching us not do it.

I think we just had a meeting about that.

Luckily, we've been very on board with the path of staff today. OK. Nice.

Well, thank you. Good job. That sewer line was really helpful. Yeah, absolutely. That's right. Which, by the way, you know, nothing's happened on the hangar.

Yep.

He says, is that because there's no sewer, or is it because of the contract situation? I think it's the contract situation.

Well, the RFP is closed. It's been closed for a while.

I don't know if it got anybody to respond to it. Well, from my understanding, there was no response because it was like, This should be a seven-page thing, and instead we got this 30-something page contract, and it felt like it was... We did it.

Yeah, we did it. I think there are a couple of things that we need to rework.

I mean, that can stay open for... I don't even know why we put a date on it. I think it's just, you know, open RRB for anybody who wants to handle hangers up there. It doesn't seem like it's something that needs to close, because... Yeah. I agree.

So it'd be great. It'd be great if it were reopened.

Well, I think the new engineers have some, maybe some ideas. That is one thing I just want to point out in this is I'm pretty quick to talk about it as the off-airport industrial park. Because I think we're talking about an industrial park. And I don't, you know, like I said, in Hayden, they have an off-airport industrial park and then they have an on-airport industrial park. And the on-airport industrial park is controlled by the airport. And the off-airport industrial park is controlled by the economic development folks. And it's like, you know, I don't want to confuse anyone when we're talking about, like, jet traffic in the future of our airport and the need for industrial space. Do you know what I'm saying? I'm trying to be diplomatic, but say makes sense to this conversation. Yeah it's kind of been branded so long. Yeah and that's it the last version that was done in 2017 was on airport through the fence and I think part of why it got put down is that I think there might have been a little bit of a misunderstanding about FAA regulation but also that's a huge lift. That would require a airport and this work to be kind of the same, one and the same. So. All right, sounds good.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you. You have all the flying people around, you don't know. What is that? Drums.

Drums, yeah.

Touching bombs to drones. Yeah, and that's it. I mean, I think it's really, I think it's really important to Because that was a lot of conversations we had with Kevin is like we would not be the place where they're like you know where we have spacex rockets shooting off it's way more about. Smaller testing of things right it's like we currently have folks from many of our private Defense contractors that are doing things inside of our airport but. there's no footprint and we don't necessarily know about it so the point is is it wouldn't i don't want us to think that we're now going to have 15 person unmanned vehicles that are just floating around leadville that's not that's not what this is about do we have any old county commissioners in the room that would like to i did not know this was going to be the top topic i stopped by was to thank the commissioners and everyone involved for supporting the amendments to the fire ban

But this topic, I got a heart to this topic because having spent multiple hours and meetings with the Colorado Division of Aeronautics, they were adamant that they would not fund utilities.

Except in about 2009, we were able to convince them to fund eight-inch water main to the airport, which was a key element for any potential growth. And so we got that in.

The next idea of the concept of being discussed by multiple boards since I was there is the next one was the sewer. But at least we got something. Yeah. Good job, Ken. That was an early domino. you brought up caterpillar multiple times and I'm not sure you're aware of the years probably at least six years that they did caterpillar engine testing in Lake County and they leased ground in Lake County for that testing what they were doing. Yeah.

That's interesting. Where was the ground?

The ground was down by the smelter, and they did lease there for years, so they had a prior experience in Lake County. The other is some of the earliest on, I believe, well, military drones that were tested were up here. Some were secretive enough They were courting off the area, what they were doing very early on, drone testing by the military at the airport. So you're in, again, industrial park. I think that your movement forward on this has some real validity to it.

If we can get more infrastructure there, at least

The water had to come uphill, but at least the sewer could flow downhill. That's right. And the tough part was the water and doing the environmental and looking for arrowheads and all sorts of environmental requirements there.

So I wish you very good luck on your endeavors.

And it's something that I think could be viable even

We appreciate you coming in. I appreciate your perspective. You have a lot of experience in the county and running this place. Come in as often as you can.

Yeah, we love having you.

Good luck. Thank you. Thanks, Karen. Appreciate it. All right, shall we? That's a wrap. I have no further questions.

Thank you, Chair.

It is 2.05. We will now conclude this Lake County Commissioner Work Session. Thanks all for coming and presenting.

Thank you, Commissioners. Thank you, staff.

You guys rock.