Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome. Good evening and welcome to the Laram City Council work session, Tuesday, April 14, 2026. And we will begin this work session with uh uh any public comment on non-aggenda items. And I think uh Sarah Goran uh you signed up to speak. Good evening, Sarah. Good evening, mayor and council. I'm Sarah Goran.

Good evening, mayor and counsel. I'm Sarah Goran representing Alb County Clean Water Advocates and I just wanted to take this opportunity to present to you a brochure that we've recently completed. Um, you are all familiar, of course, with the Casper Aquifer Protection Plan, but maybe you didn't delve into all the appendices and everything. And appendix G is called something like best practices for homeowners. And um, while people who are interested may have looked at that, we thought it would be useful to directly convey that information to people who live in the aquifer protection overlay zone. And so we applied and got a small grant um that was uh fostered by the Wyman Community Foundation and uh raised some additional funds to print this brochure that I'll give you copies of and we're uh in the next month or so going to be mailing these to everybody who lives in the aquifer protection area. Um, people in the city boundary of the APOZ will receive this brochure and people outside the city limits will receive this brochure and also a piece on maintaining your well and your septic system. And so it's it's turned out to be a big deal. There's like 600 residents in aquafer protection area, so it's not a little thing. Um, but we appreciate the city's support of aquafer protection and just wanted you to be aware of this project.

Thank you. Thank you. And the city clerk will take those and distribute them. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Any other public comment on non-aggenda items? Uh, yes. Thank you, Dr. Reverend Palmer. At your service. Good evening, Sally. No. And I keep meaning to go by your house and say St. Matthews prays for you every Sunday for four months. Why it's just for you and not the rest? I don't know. I think some of us know.

So I will be brief and I'm in support of whatever Sarah works for because I'm a member of the Aqua. But uh Brad, Jim, Micah, Sharon, Erin, Joe, you hang in there with us. You know, it's like water is life. That's all I want to say. Except that I brought a thank you. And I know I shouldn't pass out pink words, but is thank you for the flowers because when I see the daffodils, I think, you know, it's not just the whole scheme of things, which we need and clean water cuz my dad lived in Chicago with really bad water for years. But you are guardians. Guardians of the life of water. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, Sally.

I'll keep praying for you as Episcopalian. I don't know. Anyway, and the flowers say thanks. Thank you, Sally. Any other public comment on non-aggenda items? Okay, seeing none, we will move on to our first work session. uh Aquafer well Monitoring Network final report uh and Ben Leven.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. Thanks for having me tonight. Um topic of the evening is uh our worldass aquifer that we have. Um just as a reminder on backstory in 2023 we uh jointly with the county adopted the updated Casper aquifer protection plan. Um one of the the major recommendations in that plan uh was to implement a well network monitoring program. So back in 2024 um it went out for proposal and Trihydro was awarded uh this program to um really to design a a monitoring program for the aquifer. Um like I said this is a worldass aquifer that we have produces abundant water for us. The quality is as good as anywhere. Um the real purpose of it is to continue the protection of it and to track uh water quality and water level data. Uh historically there's been some some smaller uh monitoring programs in place, but they were more um specific to spec specific contaminant sources. Um not what we're doing here. This is more aquaferwide um with with many monitoring wells uh to track those water levels and and water quality. So, um it's couple years in the making. Um and we're we're excited for it going forward. Um the hope is uh to take this final report from Tri Hydro and um then send it out to uh consultants to propose on implementing the program um later this year and and probably kick off the program, we're hoping in in 2027,

when in 2027. So, um, with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Ryan Ay with Try Hydro. Thank you. Good evening, Ryan.

Good evening, Mayor and and council members. Um, my name is Ryan Athy with Tri Hydro Corporation. I'm senior geologist, uh, the pri the project manager for this for, uh, Trihydro. Uh, as Ben alluded to, um, we all know the Casper aquifer is, uh, utterly, uh, is the utmost importance to this the health of our community. Um, residents of the county and the city rely uh, in some cases solely on on it for their water. And for the city residents, uh, over 50% of the water comes from from Casper aquifer uh, for their domestic needs. Uh as Ben mentioned, uh there's been some kind of peace meal studies and and data gathering efforts across the aquifer. Uh but we're looking uh as part of the recommendations from the most recent aquifer protection plan. Um we're looking at at kind of a wholesale uh monitoring plan across the entire aquifer protection area. Uh so the objectives of that monitoring plan would be to establish baseline water level and water quality data. Um we know that water levels uh despite what's happening outside right now uh we know water levels are a bit of a concern with this recent uh lack of precipitation for the past few months. Oh, thank you. uh and also across uh water quality, you know, is always a concern. We've identified in the past several potential and existing contaminant sources. So, we'll we'll look at those here in a second. Um and then with the the the data gathering effort, we'll also be able to compare uh to those baseline data and and and monitor trends and changes within the within that quality and and water level. Um kind of an

ancillary benefit of some of the monitoring well would be to uh identify wells that could be sentinel or or wells that are upgrading of our production production wells so that if if there was uh something detected in those wells, we'd be able to shut down production wells before before they became a problem within within the drinking water supply. Um so we we can dive into that here in a little bit. And then um kind of a third benefit of the program would be that we just gain a better understanding of the aquifer as a whole. How potentially how water moves through. It's a it's a complicated fractured system. So, uh this, you know, monitoring water levels and and water quality will better understand how how things move and and uh where our our real uh critical areas might be. Thank you. Um, so this first just so we're all kind of talking on the same uh from the same book here, uh, we'll go through some of the terms and geography, geology of the Casper aquifer. Uh, this is a cross-section um, kind of looking north basically right through the middle of the Casper aquifer protection area. Um, west is on the left, east is on the right. So, like Pilot Hill would be on the far right. Uh, and then you can see where it says the hospital water tanks to kind of orient you where where we're at. Um, the city springs there kind of in the middle would be like right up by Snowy Range um academy. So, sort of in that area just to orient you. So, the Casper aquifer is made up of five members. Uh, starting from the bottom to the top is the alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and epsilon members. These are generally made up of of sets of

sandstones and limestones. Uh with the exception of the epsilon, it's it's just kind of a sandstone all by itself. Um but these these are interconnected but also um kind of act independently at times. So they're they've just been identified uh based on their lithology for the most part. But uh as a whole they they act as one big aquifer um on a regional scale. But uh locally they can be they can be kind of isolated depending on what's going on there. So uh overlaying the Casper is the Satanka shale. That's the big red member on our uh on our cross-section. Um this is a tighter uh a more uh water doesn't flow through this formation quite as much through the shale in most cases where it's not fractured or or something else. um in the generally in the upper portions it's not as fractured. So it um but in the lower portion it it can be kind of fractured and and may act uh kind of in connection with with the uppermost parts of the Casper formation in some places. Um where there's sufficient thickness of the satanka uh it does provide some protection from from infiltration to the Casper. Um but um and then you'll notice that the Casper basically above the city springs is is pretty much an outcrop. So you'll see it's at the surface. Um in some places it's covered by a thin layer of of uh sediments that are uh you know maybe 10 to 15 ft thick in some places. But for the most part, there are places where you can see cast rock for exposed right at the surface. Uh like up by Imperial Heights Park is one place where it's it's readily exposed and easy easy to see. Um,

councelor O'Dy, the sediments that you just described, is that that um the grainy when the test that was going um the um anyway, is it is it like the sandy kind of sandy? Yeah, it's not it's not organic. Right. Right. There. Yeah, there's very little organic material in any of that. Yeah, you might be referring to the when they were doing the septic tests. Is that okay? Yes. And councelor Shamay.

Thank you, mayor. I uh I've heard a couple of things. One thing you said that the Casper aquifer is one big aquifer, but you also said if there's contamination is shut down zones. I know you talked about sanka and all these different levels, epsilon, alpha, beta, things like that. Do they eventually communicate or would shutting down a zone prevent contamination in one zone to eventually migrate to a different to to the entire Casper aquifer.

If if given enough time, it could eventually get everywhere. I mean it it is one regional aquifer and it's it's connected through a series and that's kind of the next slide is it's through a series like through the the faults that we see mapped on if I push to the right

there it goes. So looking at this slide um you'll see a number of black lines on there kind of running east and west. So, so this is looking in map view again. Um, and you can see a series of lines. Those are are all faults for the most part that that represent vertical mostly vertical fracturing. Um, and so some of these fractures can can uh protrude through multiple layers. So then those layers would be in connection at at that location. Um but on a sometimes on a local scale where there's not as much fracturing the the layers could be isolated from each other. But um so depending on where a contaminant enters the recharge zone um Oops. There we go. Um does this have a pointer? If I push

the pointer doesn't work. The pointer doesn't work. the TV it doesn't show. That's okay. Um if you look up in the yellow zone um where it says recharge zone, you can see how some of the different members uh intersect the ground surface there. So depending on where a contaminant were to enter, that's most likely the member that it would that it would be in. Not to say that it couldn't migrate to other members. Um, as I said, there is some uh connection between the the layers depending on how much they're fractured and if they're intersected by different faults. Vice Mayor,

sorry. Thank you. So, just for clarification, because the vertical fractures, when I'm imagining this, that they sort of act as barriers between these between each of these layers or No, no, they actually kind of act conduits. Yes. Okay. Thank you. In in in most cases, because the fractures are going this way and the layers are this way. Makes sense. Sorry. Thank you. Um, does that answer your question, Mr. Chley? Thank you.

Um, so, so yeah, as I mentioned, faults, uh, folds, which are often associated with the faults, that's basically just the bending of the rock. It's it believe it or not it is does act a little bit plastic and and can be folded without actually fracturing but most of the time there's there's some fracturing associated with with the the folds. Uh and then and then there's also bedding plane fractures which actually they're parallel to those those bedding planes that we showed on that previous slide. those create fractures within the aquifer. And so in most cases the fracturing its benefit and can be kind of a a disadvantage in that uh the benefit of the fracturing um is that it it creates secondary enhanced permeability. So that makes so that the water can move through the rock much easier and and um so like that's why all of our production wells that are associated with the city or that the city has are associated with some sort of fracture or fold. Um you'll know like the up at the spur anacline there's a there's a couple we have multiple production wells up there. Uh that's at the very north end. That's a large fold and fracture system that that creates enhanced permeability up there. Um, and then the Turner well, we've we've got a large uh fault system that that emanates right there. Uh, and so that's why the the springs were originally there and then we developed them as our production wells. So, um, it's good in that sense. Um, but it can also, as mentioned, it can also be a pathway for for contaminant infiltration. So, uh, that's why we have to that's why we're looking at having monitoring wells that could serve as, uh, sentinel wells upstream of the production wells because that's

basically where, um, you know, give us a chance to see it before it gets into the wells. So, um, so as I've alluded to, we've got potential and existing, uh, contaminant sources that have been identified, uh, within the most recent, uh, Casprock for update, uh, or protection plan update. Uh, so on this slide, you'll see all the little purple dots. Those are septic systems within the aquifer protection overlay. the so the the green is the is the zone three of the aquifer protection and the yellow is the is zone two of the aquifer protection area. Um and then zone one is is the small area right around uh the production wells. It doesn't it's only 100 foot radius. So it doesn't really show up on this but just to orient you what the the different colors are there. And then so the purple dots are septic systems and then the the green dots are uh other potential contaminant sources. Uh so the the septic systems actually represent existing uh contaminant sources. Uh since we've there's been some studies some some well sampling studies that have shown that we we do see uh nitrates which are uh likely sourced from the septic systems. um concentrations of those nitrates in the in some of the wells uh in excess of the the 10 milligrams per liter MCL which is the EPA uh maximum contaminant uh concentration. So um so that would represent an existing contaminant source and then these others are potential they places where contaminant uh chemicals are used or stored and and have the potential to be released to to the aquifer. So those are identified things like uh fueling

stations uh I80 and the Union Pacific Railroad, you know, they're transporting chemicals and and other things across there all the time. Um and then uh things like urban runoff are another potential contaminant source. Um you know parking lots and things of that nature are are where contaminants can can accumulate and then be washed into uh into the subsurface. So uh those are all of our contaminant sources that we've identified. And then oops went the wrong way. So, we'll go back to this one again, and we've we've covered this a little bit, but it's probably worth reiterating. So, depending on where those contaminant sources lie can depend can uh determine where where they may end up in the aquifer. So, on this one, we show that the the Sherman Hills subdivision, for instance, uh kind of lies across the entire recharge or a lot of the recharge zone. So it it potentially could get into the epsilon and the delta members. Whereas on this example, you know, the Imperial Heights subdivision is it's kind of only across that epsilon uh member. And so you would only expect to really see uh contaminants from that in that epsilon. Um, and so if you were putting in a monitoring well, for example, like on this one, we show the Turner number two well, which is production well, but if if that was a monitoring well and it was cited down in the bottom of the gamma, you probably wouldn't see any uh you wouldn't see any of the contaminants from that epsilon member if it was only if it was only screened in that lower gamma. So that's an important uh factor as we were going through this this project to make sure that the wells were suitable for what we were looking to monitor.

So in terms of project um we looked at a number of different wells um within the the update of the Casper protection plan. there was uh some uh some recommendations on wells that could be used. Uh there's 10 wells that the city has currently um monitored in the past. Um not necessarily on a on a regimented schedule um and not necessarily all at the same times, but uh we do have data from those wells. So we looked at uh those 10 wells and uh show so this this map here is the northern half of the of the offer protection zone. And so those there's uh there's seven wells on that map that uh were part of that original 10 monitoring wells. um the spur number six um which is which was associated with the spur production wells um and then there's a couple of older uh production wells that have been converted to monitoring wells um there's a monitoring well at the LC um and then three monitoring wells that were drilled as part of another study that uh Wyoming Groundwater and and Burn Hinckley um completed uh near the Imperial Heights park. So, those would be um those were evaluated to be included in the project. Uh and then the three in the southern portion. Uh there's the EQ number one is a monitoring well that's within the rightway of I80 um kind of just east of the Grand Avenue exit. The is a soldier uh MW5 well which is right next to the soldier production well. And then there's a monitoring well out at the

Soldier Springs at the far south end of the of the aquifer protection area. Um so we'll get into all of those were uh with the exception of the 41 T3 wells uh were were recommended for being included in the in the uh monitoring well network. So, in addition to these 10 that we that we looked at, we also there was some recommended other wells that were existing and that um that could be potentially used as monitoring wells. Uh so, again, this is that northern half. So, we looked at a couple other monitoring wells uh assoc associated with the spur wellfield. Uh these would be more uh in the neighborhood of that subdivision that's up there on the spur. um might be a little further away and better candidates for for giving us some some distance from the production wells so that we could uh we would see something in there a little better and have a little more time to react I guess. Um the Peter number two well is a um a rehabbed stock well that the uh Wyoming Game of Fish rehabbed that would be a potential be an easy candidate to sample. Um it's easily accessible. So we we included that as as a background well. It's not necessarily in um in the area of any sources, but it would provide background data on just the overall aquifer for for something to compare to. Uh other wells uh in the southern half, the Hunton number one and number two wells are in the neighborhood or in the the Sherman Hills and Imperial Heights areas. Uh those are were existing uh domestic wells that were converted to uh

monitoring wells uh or at least are no longer in use and could be converted to monitoring wells easily. Uh the MCMW well is near the down near the the quaries uh the mountain cement quaries uh as well as the weight well and the king number one well. Those are all in that area. Um, and then again there's another well, the number two dummy well was another uh rehab or refurbished um stock well that could be that could be looked at uh as part of the monitoring program. Uh in addition to the wells that we evaluate that are existing, we looked at where we have data gaps, where we have gaps in the program that um you know, contaminate sources that maybe don't have a well in the right place or maybe they're not in the right uh member of the aquifer. So we we proposed uh some some wells to be drilled that could be added to the to the program in the future. Um the Turner MW6 well is a well that would be downgradient of the Tumbleeed uh Express gas station um as a monitoring well specifically for that source. Um the TCMW2 well would could potentially be a a Sentinel well for the Pope well field. uh it's a little up gradient of of that area and would also be in the area of of um high concentration of falting. So it could give us some of that background information on kind of flow characteristics of the of the aquafer. Um and then the I80 monitoring well is would be further up the canyon. Um that was uh a recommendation of another study when we looked at the potential

vulnerabilities of if there was a release within telephone canyon on I80. So that would be another well that could potentially be completed in the future. So our our recommended um proposed well field kind of looks like this. We've got uh couple wells up by the spur. Uh that Peter number two well and the 41 actually the 41 T3 should be removed. I missed that one. Apologize. That one will come off in the final report. Um but uh so those those would be in the northern half. We there's not as many uh contaminant potential or existing contaminant sources uh in that northern half. So, not as much uh monitoring up there. So, a lot of it would be concentrated kind of from the Turner Wells south where we've got, you know, Imperial Heights, Sherman Hills, got I80 coming through there. We've got the the railroad. Um plenty of septic systems to to monitor. So, most of the wells that I mentioned uh would be included on on the final uh monitoring well network. This table shows a summary of uh of the final proposed well network um and kind of what their contaminant sources that they would be specifically targeting um the member that they are completed in and then um their sampling frequency and their priority. So, kind of looking over at the priority, we um there's kind of a standard priority and then the lower priority wells that could be added um or would be would be uh

sampled at a lesser frequency. Um and so what we've proposed in terms of sampling frequency is our first two years um would be a higher frequency such that we could gather that baseline data. We'd get we'd do mostly quarterly data for the for the source area wells. And this would that quarterly data um gives us we can see trends in uh if there's seasonality, if there's you know things showing up in the winter that don't show up in the summer, things like that would give us an idea. We get two full years of of data from that. Some of those background wells um we could sample semianually just as a um you know a little bit of a cost savings. They're not quite as critical as as uh the source area wells. And then after that first two years, um we would basically cut the frequency in half so that those those source area wells would then be sampled semianually and um the other wells could be sampled just annually or as needed if we determine that um you know they're they're not as critical. Um and it you know it's recommended that after that first round the first two years of data is collected that we would we would review that data and see if if anything needed to be changed. If uh you know maybe maybe a well doesn't show any any uh hits uh detections of of of any critical contaminants and and could be lessened on the on the frequency. Those kinds of things. or maybe we need to maybe we need to increase the frequency for certain certain wells. So certainly a kind of a living document in that in that regard that we would want to make sure that that's not just a static kind of thing.

Uh so this table shows our analyte list. Um so those uh the upper analytes would be would be our core list of analytes that would that the source area wells and the background wells would all be sampled for those major cations ions and ions those are the calciums and magnesiums and things like that. um metals both dissolved and uh total metals um TDS total dissolved solids. So that gives you an idea of kind of the overall saltiness of the water for a lack of uh better term and and obviously we would do nitrate since that's a large concern with the septics. Um and then just some other kind of uh parameters that pH and electrical conductivity dissolved oxygen that are that are useful in when uh evaluating just the overall health of the of the aquifer. So those would be those would be uh analyzed in each well during each event. Um and then some of the others that we would look at just on a per well kind of basis would be things like TPH which is total petroleum hydrocarbons. Um so in the areas where we think that those are potential contaminants you know maybe downstream of the fuel station or I80 or the UP railroad things like that those wells that target those kind of contaminants we would analyze those on an annual basis. They're a little bit more expensive to analyze for. So doing that across the entire aquifer doesn't make sense when you don't have those those contaminants really present or potential to be in certain areas. So uh and then pesticides and herbicides are kind of in that same boat as well. Uh those are you know can be applied in the the residential areas. Uh and so we probably

we would analyze for those on an annual basis again and if if you know just in certain wells downgrading of those of those areas. Um and if we were to get detections of those we would we could uh reample or or you know up the frequency of sampling for those for those constituents. So that brings us to our final costs. Um so estimated cost for the first two years on an annual basis is about 85,000 uh to do all 15 of those wells or no excuse me 13 wells uh would be our source area wells and those would be the quarterly done four times per year. And then um we would do a semiannual event which includes the those wells plus the the low priority wells which is another five wells and then another annual event that includes those those three extra constituents the the petroleum products and the herbicides and pesticides. So that's that's what the breakdown of those three uh different categories there. And then uh after 2 years of sampling uh you can see the cost would drop to about 44,000 um once we once we knock down the the sampling frequency. So um and yeah that's that's basically the same number of wells that does not include any of the wells that are not yet drilled. So um if those were to to come online then um we could we would the cost would obviously go up a little bit. So, uh, so with that, I would entertain any more questions.

Thank you. Counselor's questions andor comments. Uh, councelor Oorty, the actual taking the water from the well, is that an inexpensive process? I was thinking when I taught aquatic ecology, we would test for all those things and it would be a cool for for a class to do some of the inetweens uh unless the extracting the water part requires a lot of energy.

Uh so what we've proposed to do u for sampling is uh they're called hydra sleeves. And so they're like a a membrane sleeve that you put down the well and it it needs to it can be in there uh anywhere from like 3 days to I think 6 months is the is the kind of the limit. But they they sit in there and kind of just equilibrate to the contaminants that are coming in. And then you pull that up. It's down there on a stream. You pull that up and then you fill up uh the bottles that that are required for for collecting the samples. So, they're a they're a one-time uh use, but they're also um but they're very labor uh cost effective that way.

Vice Mayor, thank you, Mayor. Um I noticed in the report that it suggested um that we invest in a data management system. Um is that something that what what would be the co do you know the cost of that? Um,

so that would be dependent on kind of what the what's what those can be a range of of costs for sure. Um, so it would it would be somewhere that we it would house all the data and then you could pull it up, you know, you could pull up maps, you could pull up tables that would show trends of what the data looks like potentially. Um, you can have all kinds of data. You can have water quality data, you can have your water level data in there. Um, on order of magnitude, it's probably a 10 to 20,000 dollar a year type of um, expense. Um, just knowing we we have a proprietary data management system that that we operate, but there are other there are others out there. Um, and so ours operates on a depending on how many wells, how many data points you you have in your system. It's on a kind of a sliding scale and then um and then kind of what uh the number of uh subscriptions or number of users you need for it can kind of change those costs. But

follow up follow up to that. Thank you. Thank you for that. And then one other thing when I was reading through that and wondering if that might be an opportunity. I don't know if UDub has anything in their programming that you could utilize students to kind of help manage that data set and if they have any programs there. I have no idea, but I know that the university is hoping to do more outreach in communities and I'm wondering if this would be a potential opportunity for that. Uh I'm not aware of anything from UW, but that doesn't not mean that there's not something out there. That's definitely something that uh the city could could look into. Thanks,

Council Freed. Thank you, mayor, and thank you for the the presentation. Just super interesting stuff, and I think we I'm really happy to to see the presentation because I think we need to do something like this. Um I have a couple questions, mayor, so maybe I'll just ask one or two and if you can come back to me, that's fine, too. Um I guess, you know, I know we talked about the water level. Would this really help us understand our baseline water levels and the recharge capacity, you know, and get a better understanding of that framework?

Yeah, for sure. That's uh that would be one of the the overlying goals of of the program is is to have that uh you know kind of aquaferwide um network so you could see you know where where water levels are are highest and lowest and and if there's trends in certain wells you know based on maybe a fault system that runs through there and is is concentrating flow in an area or something along those lines. Um, we do, you know, we have a pretty good understanding that a lot of the recharge to the to the aquifer comes from those those uh fractured areas, faulted folded zones. So, for sure followup.

Thank you, mayor. Um, and I'll keep it brief with my second question. Uh, I just noticed that Turner number two well, and I don't have the aquifer protection plan in front of me to understand how deep that goes, but is do we have any wells that do or would ever go into the alpha member? Could we ever pull water from there? You know, I see that that only goes to that gamma member. It looks like

um I don't remember if any of our production wells go to the alpha. Um I believe some of the ones to the south may go as deep as the beta member. Um as it tends to be a little shallower a lot of places like the gamma member is is at the surface in those southern areas. So I don't think any of them are open. Um, but thanks. Further questions or comments, councelor Freed, did you have anything else?

Well, you know, I do, mayor, but I think they're about cost of wells and other things that aren't super relevant, so I think I can hold off. All right. Uh, thank you very much. Next, we'll go to public comment. All right. Thank you so much. Oh, no. We won't. We'll go back to Ben. Thank you for your report.

Uh, mayor counselor, just uh remind uh I guess forewarning, we do have uh budget requests coming up. We did include this in our our operating budget going forward. So, to fund this program. Um and uh as far as drilling new wells, we've had uh capital projects in our budget for for years. I think it um that was proposed. I don't even know when. um years ago when uh these programs were first discussed and along with the ID monitoring program too. So um really my goal for this program as it relates to the water quality is when I retire in 20 years to look back and say wow that all that sampling we did for water quality was kind of a waste of money because it didn't change and that that's a good thing. It would it would tell us that we've taken care of our aquifer. We haven't had any major contaminations anything like that. we've we've done our job with the with the protection plan. So, um while I I do think this is a really necessary program, um you know, even just tracking the the water levels, um I don't know if you guys noticed it's fairly dry this year, it's going to be a continued issue for us in Larmy. And um on a year where we may see our surface water dry up, we're going to rely heavily on the aquafer this year. So having a program in place like this to track water levels and quality I think is is only going to get more and more important through the years. So

agree. Uh councelor O'Dhorty. Um, so the sentinel wells, I think we'll always want those. And um, but I for for the sake of the public, um, like if a sentinel well gives us some bad news, do we just go like the plan would be like you would stop drawing from that well and then pump maybe pump it to another. Anyway, if you could just give a very brief summary of how um that is handled so that it's not just we get bad news and now we all go thirsty. Yeah, I think I think the idea is is that we would shut down that particular production well um and then could could draw from another well uh you know in the system that until until it could be uh you know could be cleaned up in that area or or some sort of remediation or some sort of treatment or something from that if we were to use that. Well,

yeah, Mayor, I'll just add the city has a lot of wells that even some that we don't use on normal water years. So, the city has a lot of flexibility, a lot of water. Um, it'd be a better question for Mr. J. Smith, but um, yeah. Thank you again. Thanks.

All right. Now we'll go to public comment on this agenda item. Uh Sarah Goran, I just turned it off. Okay, Sarah Goran again for Albert County Clean Water Advocates. There are several of us here tonight and we want to just thank the city so much for making this investment because it's really important and it's something that uh we think will be very valuable for the population of Albony County going into the future. Most residents of Albony County live in the city of Larmy and the municipal system serves not only the city proper but also the south of Larmy um water and sewer district. So um one question we had was what where the process goes from here. The port report is labeled a draft and we wondered is it going to be made available to the public for comment um for some period of time. It's a it's a big investment. We think it could benefit from the opportunity for wider distribution. Um there are some errors that could be fixed. Um for example, this uh mentioned that Imperial Heights and um Sherman Hill subdivisions are sources of contamination from septic. Imperial Heights is on city water and sewer. Um that's it's not a source of septic contamination. Um and in terms of thinking about sort of monitor wells generally and what you were mentioning councelor Dhia's sentinel wells um I'm going to simplify hugely here but you can can kind of think of the aquifer that diagram that Mr. Aly was showing with the cross-section is kind of a big bucket and the rain and snow in a normal year falls on the front of the Laring range and it soaks down through. So it it even though there's this line here that says, you know, schematic water line where it kind of pops out there at City

Spring, this area is all full of water and there and then you can see then the diagram of the city well going down into it. So it it kind of goes down in and then pops back up at those weak places which are the the springs that go along the front. And so the reason it's important to think about that is any of the city's wellfields draws from a quite a wide area. It's not like it just pulls from the um aquifer that's immediately you know in some direction from it. So when thinking about tumble weed or you know a source of contamination like tumble weed and the Turner wellfield, a lot of thought needs to go into what is the likely flow pattern between that source of contamination and the wellfield. And so it might not be straight down Bluebird lane. It might be kind of wanders off towards the north. And what you want is to know when it's going to hit your well field and the closer it is to the source of contamination um the better that is because it's you're going to catch it the soonest. And so we were a little concerned about how it seemed like that I mean definitely there should be a priority on um intercepting any contamination that might come from there but uh the placement of that well is pretty important. And similarly, construction of monitor wells is important. I think the city staff and all have worked together to do a pretty remarkable job of using what we have. Um, but the best monitor well is a purpose purpose-built monitor well so that it's in the location where it's most likely to catch the contamination and in stratographically where it's most likely to get it.

Thank you, Sarah. Am I done? Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you so much. Is there any other public comment on this agenda item? Mayor, could we have that first question addressed by the city staff as to what next steps might be in terms of public feedback? Yes. Thank you. Um, mayor and council, as this is a work session, uh, Ben and I will meet and discuss how we put it out for public comment and how we bring it back to council for final adoption.

Thank you. Uh, counselors, any final comments? Thank you.

Uh, I just appreciate the work that's been done on this. Uh we're looking at um just a very valuable resource for our community. Uh as has been said, it provides 50 plus% of our water and during drought it could be much more. And so I think steps to monitor are part of our maintenance and the care of this resource. So thank you. I appreciate the work and I appreciate uh Aqua and the work you all do to advocate for our clean water and uh I appreciate your request uh for the reports so that we can get your feedback and that's very important. Thank you. Next, we'll go to uh our second work session, which is the 2026 construction season update. Director Brooks Webb. Oh, Eric.

Yes. Good evening.

Good evening. Make sure. All right. Good evening, council. Uh, tonight I'll be presenting the city's planned construction projects for the summer. And the map we have up here is our public facing construction map. Uh, this is available on the engineering website. If you look on the left side, it's the first one you'll see over there. And anyone can go and view and use this map. and it's a map that we kind of try to keep updated as the construction season goes on. So, this map uh currently shows what's planned for this summer. Um just a few exceptions that I'll point out as we go. So, when you first open this map, it will pull up to a general overview of all the capital projects that we have going on this year. Uh if you click this button over here, you can actually then zoom in and kind of scroll around in the map. Uh also, if you want to just look directly at a project, you can go up to the top here and click on that and that will zoom you directly to the project and give you that project information. Or as we'll kind of do tonight, you can just kind of scroll down on the web page and it will just go project by project. Uh most of the projects you're going to see here tonight are managed by engineering, but there are a few that are being managed by parks and wreck or solid waste. And then we do support those from our office as well. And then in total, we have 26 projects currently planned for this summer. And that doesn't include any other projects that are still in design or the planning phase. And these projects take the work of our entire office uh from project management to inspections to addressing issues in the field. Our staff works together to keep all these moving forward. And we also understand sometimes it can be very unclear on who to contact for questions

or concerns. And for that reason, we usually try to encourage the public or city staff to use our main engineering either email or our main line. Um that email is engineering@city.org or you can reach out on our main line at 721-5250. And this is especially important this summer. uh staff are often in the field or in meetings. So we have staff available at that main office who can work best to get that um question directed to the correct person and that's also the best way to get that answer quickly too so it can get directed correctly. Um, so tonight, as I mentioned, I'll give a brief overview of each project. Um, as we kind of go through, probably easiest if you have a a question on a project, you can just stop me and we can discuss those projects as we're kind of going on rather than trying to back up at the end. Um, and I'll do my best to answer them. I also have my two senior engineers, Mark Hazel and William Winkler. If we get too deep, they can kind of help dig me out a little bit. We also have Brooks Webb, the director, to help as well if we need it. So, uh, with that, we'll kind of begin going through the list. So, as you see, um, as you kind of scroll down, it's going to go from that general overview of the map to the specific areas, and we have the items highlighted of the area. So, this first one we have here is 15th Street Recon, uh, phase 2. Uh, this project will be fully reconstruction of 15th Street from the southside ION to Grand Avenue. Um, and this also will include the right-hand turn lane. Uh, this work will be removing the existing roadway, installing new base. Uh, we do have this con this project planned for a concrete driving surface and then we'll be replacing curbon gutter where needed. Uh, this project has currently been bid and we expected to start shortly after W graduation and completing early this fall.

Councelor Vh Hill, a question. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, just a quick question. Um, it's my understanding White Hall will still be occupied in the fall and so will this construction work impact like move in for the new freshmen who come in in the fall

in the fall. Um, mayor through you. So, the hope is to actually probably have the project plan uh before move in. Uh we are in discussions uh with the University of Wyoming for both this project and uh another one you'll see is Ivansson. Uh some of those schedules are a little bit to be determined, but we are working with their staff um very closely as we work through this.

All right. Uh the next project that we have is the 41T3 well uh piping and treatment. So, this project will design and construct a wellhouse at 45th Street. This will connect to the existing the existing city well that's out here to our water distribution system. It'll include new piping and connections that will connect to the east side transmission line to improve water capacity and flow for existing customers in future development. As part of this project, uh we are going to have to remove the median you see in this project area. That's to allow um construction of that wellhouse and access in there. Uh we're finalizing design on this project currently and hope to have it um finished this late fall. Okay. Moving on for our next project will be uh four street reconstruction uh Grand to Iansson. Uh this project will fully reconstruct Fourth Street from Grand to Ison Avenue. The existing roadway will be removed and replaced with new base. Uh we also have this uh project planned for a concrete driving surface. We'll also do curb and gutter, sidewalk, and ADA improvements uh where needed. Uh bidding will be coming in the following months for this project and we plan to award it in July and finish it late fall.

Councilor Dhy. Um, so when this street and curb and gutter are done, is there any way to get rid of the puddle that forms right at the uh corner of fourth and ivansson that freezes in the winter like right there? Um, will there be any storm drainage to to alleviate that issue? Mayor, so we don't have um storm drains directly planned for this project, but we will try to improve the grading as we go around those areas the best we can. Vice Mayor,

thank you, mayor. I I am assuming this is planned in a way that um only part of the road will be closed at a time due to the fire station. How I mean how I think about how they back out and they cross the full Yeah. Mayor, um, we're currently working also with fire to figure out how that coordination will work and, uh, not impact the fire station the best we can. Okay, great. Thanks.

All right, so this next project, uh, this is a pretty big project that we have going on, as many of you are aware. Uh this is the 2026 street rehab and it's improving several heavily used streets across the community uh through road resurfacing replacement of selection selected curb gutter sidewalk and 88 ramps. Uh this project focuses on streets that carry a lot of traffic and that need improvement um while also just kind of doing that mill and overlay so not a full reconstruction in these areas. Uh this will create a safer, smoother and longer lasting u streets for the public. As we go through this, I'll actually get the mouse over here. It's a little bit slow on here. Um, we'll zoom in here and we'll kind of go project by project to kind of give you a better overview of what's going on. Um, so the first one we have is the General Breeze Roadway. Uh, this will be from Snowy Range Road uh to the airport and we have been in coordination with the airport as we have been working on this project. Next one. Sorry, mouse is a little difficult. Next one will be Colorado Avenue. This will be from Venture Drive to Almost Riverside. We then over here will be Adams Street and this will be from Snowy Range Road to just past Commerce Drive.

Oh, sorry. busy looking at the map. Uh, councelor Newman, uh, that one scares me. Um, will that be a total shutdown or will that be like a oneway one way cuz I can see the emails coming now of a thousand cars going to Colorado now when school wets out. Are you talking Adams? Yeah. Yeah, Adams here. Uh we will have to probably it will be impacted with the roadway. Um I don't think we have an exact do we have an exact determination of how that's going to be closed. Do you know

mayor through you? Uh we are working with the contractor currently to get a finalized traffic control plan for the uh mill and overlay portion of the job. There's there's areas where we will be able to allow traffic in one direction at least, but with the operation, the the width of the roads, there's going to be times where we do utilize uh Colorado Avenue to to detour. And yes, I understand there's a lot of flow that will come from Wildtech. Uh it'll actually probably work better if they go through the signal at Colorado. I I do know that a lot of flow goes through Adam Street uh currently and they take a ride at Adam Street and that's that's a heavily used mo movement, but with the proximity to the interstate that really gets kind of congested heavily there. So moving them over to Colorado while it still will be backed up on Colorado, it will probably operate a little bit better than Adams. So, we we're going to accommodate as best we can to open, keep traffic flowing with through the project, but in areas we will have to shut down. It'll be short periods of time. We're talking a week of paving in this area.

Yep.

Councelor Oorty, will the crew be work working with Wiiotech to maybe make the timing? I don't know. Do you ever have a week off or something like that? Yeah, we're mayor through you. We're still working a little bit with the exact schedules on that. If there was a week off, we could talk with the contractor if we could get that information and talk with them and see if that's a possibility. Send it to you tomorrow.

That sounds good. All right. Uh, next street we have is Mchugh. This will be from Curtis Street uh to south of Baker Street. And then we are also continuing, we had talked about Fourth Street earlier, we'll be continuing on uh with Fourth Street where we're ending at Ivansson and that'll be continuing up to Flint Street. And then we'll also be doing Ivansson from Third to Sixth Street uh where we had ended the project last year with that ION reconstruction. Next, we'll be moving over to Skyline Drive. Uh, this will be from the north corner all the way to 15th Street. We'll then be doing Reynolds Street from uh this is 9inth to 15th Street. We also will be doing sorry uh Sheridan and this will be from 15th to 22nd Street. We will have 22nd Street from Grand to Spring Creek and then right over here we'll be doing Spring Creek from 22nd to 26th Street. Uh this project has already started. Uh if you if you come in by the city hall tonight, you've seen we've been doing quite a bit of concrete work. Uh that's been kind of going on all over town. We've been doing demo installing new concrete. All these um roads will get, as I mentioned, all new ADA ramps as well as part of that work. And then in the next week or two, we'll be starting actually on the street work. And so we'll be starting to tear up the streets. And this has a plan completion uh later this fall. Uh as we are also doing this project, we are

looking to do improvements in striping. So we are looking at all the uh streets and trying to improve striping as we're able to. Vice Mayor, thank you. Mayor, um you guys do a pretty good job of um sending out those city flashes that say when streets are going to be closed, that sort of thing. do you have or will there be a schedule of of kind of overlap of when these are happening um that we can be share that we can share out so you know if if they're all happening at the same time we can let's just let people know like get ready um or if there's a way to say this one's happening now you know just to prep people mentally for all of it

mayor through you uh so we've been advertising that on our social media and news flashash platforms and that's probably the best way to get that information. Uh we just released some today. Uh they probably won't all be going on at the exact same time, but they will be very closely top of each other with that

followup. I I guess the other thing would be um you know, if people are seeing this tonight and say we're seeing all of these happen, when will the uh Fourth Street Flintston project take place? If you guys have a schedule of that that we could refer to kind of in real time before the the news the city flash stuff goes out, I think that would be really helpful on our end. Okay, Councelor Frerieded.

Thank you, Mayor. Sorry, Director The longer we sit here, the more questions I come up with. Um, I guess my only question is there a different requirement from the city to to provide notice? You know, like if we're shutting down a whole road or utilities are going to be impacted, I imagine there's like door hangers and things for some of these projects where one lane will still be open and traffic could continue. You know, that's where you're saying utilize the news flash or social media. Um, in any of these projects, you know, where the full road might be closed. Is there a different notice that goes out to people affected in that area?

Yeah. Um, mayor through you. So, the contractor is notifying the neighborhood as they're going in and their door knocking and sitting and notifying the residents uh prior to the work actually taking place of these areas. Uh, because of the, you know, normally if we were doing a project, we would be notifying the area, sending out a lot more mailers and stuff. Because of the large scope of this project, it was difficult to get out that kind of that same type of notification. So, the decision was made to go more the other route that we have been moving forward with. Thank you, Councelor Dhy.

Um, maybe before we leave this session, it would be nice to demonstrate how people can sign up to get that news flash specifically about the roads because that's really helpful. And and people complain about not being able to, you know, they don't get the paper anymore because it doesn't come out often enough or this or that. But but the city can send email if you sign up for the news flashash and I think it would be really helpful for us to see the process of how you do it. So thanks.

Okay, we'll continue on to our next project here. Um it's an airport airport tank coating uh project. This project will clean and recode the airport uh tank to maintain and protect this facility. Uh this project will be completed over the summer. Next one is the Corell Sewer Connection. Uh most of this project actually occurred uh last year. We installed a new sanitary sewer line along Corell Road from Whitman to Spring Creek Drive to connect to the future Bill Knight sewer line that connected to our existing B2 sewer line. Uh this was about 2,800 feet of new sewer line with manholes and service connections. The remaining work for this project is to do uh asphalt surface restoration. There is some damage and stuff to the the surface on Corell. So they'll be coming in this summer to kind of get that cleaned up. So that's why we have this still as an active project on here. Next one is our Bill Nye and Third Street traffic signal. Uh this project will construct design and construct a traffic signal at the intersection of Third and Bill Knight Avenue. Uh we're doing final design review right now and have this planned to bid in the coming months with construction starting after that. Next one's priority uh sewer rehab. This is on Kuster Street. We'll be replacing and upsizing an existing sewer line with two man holes in Kuster. So, beginning at 13th and extending a half a block west. Uh we plan to bid this project soon with a ward in July and finishing up later in the summer. Next one is our landfill front entrance evaluation design. Uh this will be to evaluate and design improvements to reduce traffic backups and improve

traffic flow at the landfill entrance. Uh this one is currently under design with planned construction this summer. So this is uh one that's been kind of in the the works for some time. Uh this is our Ison Avenue from 9th to 15th. Work for this in also includes some of our side streets uh between Ison and Grand Avenue as well as some adjacent alleys. Uh this project will include water, sewer and storm sewer infrastructure improvements along with concrete and 80 upgrades where needed. Uh this project was recently bid and we hope to take the uh contract to council here soon with construction starting this summer and it is expected this uh project may extend into next season as well. So be a two-year project. Uh and then this project I do want to note will finish our sewer outfall improvements coming down this area. We've been working on that as council's aware for the last several years, kind of working our way upstream and this will be that final uh on that project. So, as I said, this one's kind of been a long time coming, but is a big project and we are uh coordinating with University Wyoming as we kind of move forward. We don't have a finalized schedule since we don't have the contractor on the books yet, but as soon as we have that, we'll have more discussions with them on that to discuss buses and impacts to their system as well. Uh we did partner with the university on this I should note to do some improvements on some of their areas where they connect in to this area that they worked with us to. Uh next one is our municipal operations waterfill station. Uh this project will design and construct a new waterfill station at the municipal operations center. Uh we plan on bidding this uh kind of early next year, but I wanted to um we put it on the website now just to kind of get the word out that the city's

fill station will be moving um from Fourth Street out to the MOC out at this location. Next one is our northside outfall line. Uh this project will install a new sanitary sewer main from the intersection of 30th and asphalt lane to the existing main lift station located off PF Road. Uh we have this project mostly designed, but it's been delayed as we've been working uh through easements with the land owners in this area. And once those easements are finalized, we'll uh finalize the design and get it ready for bid. Our north side tank and transmission line is the next one. Uh this included the construction of a new uh water storage tank and all the associated pipeline improvements for the northern portion of the community. Uh this project is mostly constructed, but we also use this map to help with some of our closeout paperwork to get that notification. So that's why that project is still on here and we have another one coming up later. Next is our optimized drainage ponds. This project uh includes maximizing the storage capacity on some of our existing regional ponds located along 22nd Street. Uh we do this by modifying the outlet structures of these ponds as well as some minor grading and this will increase the storage capacity and also allows for the installation of some water quality enhancements as part of that work. Uh the night pond has been constructed and we plan to start the other ponds, the one at Reynold Street and then Scout Park. Uh later this summer we have PRV replacement at Pier Street. This project will remove and replace the existing pressure reducing valve on Pier Street. Work will include constructing a new building, installing new valve

components, and roadway repairs where needed. We hope to plan uh bid this project soon with construction this summer. We're just kind of finalizing DEQ approval at this point in time. Another uh big project that we have coming up is the Snowy Range waterline replacement. This project will replace the aging water line and Snowy Range Road between Adam Street and uh Shrader Avenue in preparation for WOT's planned road reconstruction project. The existing 6-in cast iron pipe will be replaced with a new PVC pipe to improve reliability and supports uh future service needs. Uh, this project was designed in-house and we're finalizing the design with plans to bid in the next couple months. And this project also will likely go over two years as we construct it. Thornberg alleys is the next one. Uh, this project replaces aging sewer lines, manholes, and water manes in the alleys adjacent to Thornberg and in the two alleys extending north to Sheridan. These alleys will also be resurfaced as part of the project. This project is currently under construction and plans to be completed this fall. There was some questions that came up uh from council last week on this project uh regarding the fences and removal. Uh the contractor did confirm that they did provide notification to residents on the fence removal. The contractor is also going doortodoor to talk to residents in person as the fence removal is being completed. uh temporary construction fencing is being installed immediately following the fence um removal and uh if they have an issue like um on a case- by case basis, they're installing a temporary chain link fence. So like say if someone does have a dog, they're just kind of working with those individuals on a case-byase basis trying to work with otherwise you're probably getting like that orange kind of snow fence is a temporary fence being installed but uh they are working with the homeowners

with that. uh they anticipate getting the fence removal done here in the near future and then a permanent fence reinstallation is tenatively scheduled for in September once the actual project is complete. So hopefully that answers all your question. Thank you for your research on that question that we had. I appreciate that.

Yeah. Next project uh this is a pretty big project as well is our West Larmy main lift station. This will design and construct a new West Larmy main lift station to to replace the existing aging facility. The new list station will improve reliability and provide additional capacity to support future development. Uh this project is technically under construction, but getting material has delayed the project, so you're not going to see any actual work going on on that site right now. Next, we have our uh scump pump and mixer. This project will replace the scump pumps in the Raz building and install new mixers in the skunk basins. Uh these improvements will help improve operations, increase staff efficiency, and reduce maintenance needs. Another big project we have is uh the zone one tank. This project will design and construct a replacement for the existing 8 million gallon tank at city springs. The new tank will help support future north south transmission improvements and provide greater flexibility for timing and phasing of future projects and developments. This is a critical project for the city and we are looking at some creative options for design and trying to fit it in there with that existing tank. Uh this project is currently under design. The plan to bid and start construction this fall. These next couple uh we don't have exact details on them yet, but the first one is our chip seal. Uh this is something that we do every year for ongoing roadway maintenance and this helps extend the our streets and to that lead to further deterioration to more that leads to more extensive and costly repairs. Uh this will be done on multiple roadways uh throughout Laramie and we're working on those exact roadways as we move forward and we'll post that as it becomes more we get that more dialed in. Same with our um cured in place lining

project. Uh we work with our utility and street division to install cured and place lining along our sanitary and storm sewer lines. And these these will be identified at a later time. We have our Don headgate structure. Uh this project removed and replaced the existing con concrete structure at the Don headgate. Uh this is also shared with the inlet of the bath ranch. And this project is mostly complete and it's currently out here for helping with that closeout paperwork. So, as we kind of go on, we'll talk a little bit about some of the parks projects going on, some of their bigger ones that we're um that they're running that we're assisting with. The first one is the Levante Park pathway and fitness station improvements. So, this includes replacement of the existing pathway and an improved fitness stations. Uh they'll be putting in new pathway, some curb and gutter repairs around the parks, irrigation and sod repairs all around Leonte Park. Uh, this is under construction. I believe will be completed this year.

Oh, mayor. Oh, vice mayor. Thank you. I um work near here and so I go around that path and near the skate park. There's kind of a flat portion that comes out as a is that going to be like a picnic area? It's like a rectangular spot. What's happening there on that? City manager ask answer that. Perfect. Honorable Mayor Thud to Councelor Richardson or Vice Mayor Richardson, are you talking about the area right behind the ball fields? Yeah. Yes. So, but between the skate park and the pond, um, so it's west of the skate park, east of the pond. There's like a a square. We can talk about it later. I just thought if you

talking right by the old ice hut is assuming. Yeah. So, so that's actually just access for storage to the ice hut. Okay. So that will be um what used to be there was the stairs down to the old ice skating area and those had become unusable and had a rail. So those were removed but we still needed access to the storage for the warming hut. But there is uh that's what that reach is for right what you see right there. Thanks. Thank you. Oh oh oh I even have a better one. you're talking about the trapezoidal area right on the side and that's where the new fitness stations are going to land

and so all the fitness stations are going to land um they're ADA accessible accessible on the concrete trail and they will be accessible in that area so very good

next project is our spring our spring creek trail phase two this project will extend the trail from where we ended uh last year at lapr park all the way down to 9inth Street on the north side of Spring Creek. Uh this project just kicked off with an expected construction this year um this year. So this is a real exciting project to and a big extension of the our trail system. Also we have the West Laramine westside shared use path. Uh this will construct a shared use path from Pierce to Snowy Range as shown here. Uh this project is also getting underway with planned construction this year. So this is also an exciting project to help that connectivity. And then the final uh non we have a non city managed project uh one we wanted to post here is uh white dot will be doing Grand Avenue and this will be from 30th Street out to the Grand Avenue interchange. So they have that uh planned this summer to go in and and do that work. So uh that is the projects that we have planned for this year. So it'll be a busy construction season. We'll have a a lot of uh activity going on, a lot of detours, a lot of impacts to the public, but hopefully we get a much improved public infrastructure from that. So if anyone has any other questions, I can answer them at this time.

Thank you. Councilors, any further questions or comments? Uh, vice mayor. Right. Just one comment. This is such a nice interface and like being able to look through this. I so appreciate it. And I love that you have where it's at, the contact number, who is in charge of it, so anyone can come and look and figure out like who to contact if they have questions. Um, this is kind of going back to my first thing. we talk about when the scheduled completion date is. If there's any possibility of adding scheduled start date, that would be awesome to this page. Councelor Freed.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. And um thank you, Director Yeah, also just want to shout out to the community that if they're using this app and you click on the actual road segment, it details where the funding comes from, proposed. It does have some proposed start dates, but they're generally in a year. but a lot of information that I feel like we we get questions about that you've put on this platform and so yeah I think we'll just keep trying to do our part to steer people this way especially if this is updated very often. So, thanks,

Councelor Vill. Thank you, mayor, and thank you, Director That was quite comprehensive. Um, I just want to note that there's uh a lot of um projects over in West Larmy, and I just really appreciate that. I think West Larmy needs some love and I I see that reflected and so yeah, thank you. Further questions or comments? Uh, councelor Freed, I see. Yeah, I thought of another one. I just wanted to say that uh at least for the parks parks and recck stuff, director Bourke this past uh last Wednesday at our parks, trees and recck board did a presentation that you can go find on the city's YouTube uh if you want more detailed explanations. He did a pretty good job explaining the capital projects managed by the parks, trees, and recck department. Awesome.

Thank you, councelor. Mayor, before I turn over to Director Brooks, one thing I know that was asked was how to sign up for the um the form. I believe that's right on the bottom of our city website. They if you just go to the main city website and scroll down, you'll see that directly at that location. So you would just do city of laram.org and when that page comes up, scroll down toward the bottom and that's where you can sign up. Yeah, I think our city clerk will help me out here. So there's so that's the main page.

There's a couple different mayor. There's a couple different ways to find it. Okay. If they go to how do I um sorry our little block keeps getting in the way here. If you click on receive email notifications, it brings you right to notify me. Um so that's one way to do it. If you're in chambers, you can scan this little um sheet that looks like a rainbow. Um it's got a QR code on the top. Um or you can add your name and Owen will contact individuals to see what they want to be signed up for. Um because there are different options um in there. And um the one at the bottom are I know it's been a little

Yeah, we're going to have to check with it and see if that we can figure out why it's doing that. But um those I would use those two that we um just talked about. You can also ch uh type in the search engine notify me and it'll give you a link to it as well. But it's easiest if you go to how do I how do I and receive email notifications. Very good. Thank you, city clerk. I appreciate you're going through that. Director Web.

Yeah, mayor council. Good evening. I wasn't planning on talking tonight, but I couldn't be here and not say anything, so here I am. Um, first of all, I just want to thank our engineering group. They've obviously worked their tails off to get these projects out on the street this summer for the community. And, uh, I think the map looks fantastic. I think, um, it's timely. I wanted to tell you that some of these projects um optimized drainage ponds, the fourth street reconstruction grand Ison um all the optimized drainage pond projects, 15 street recon phase 2 and and Ison project all have 2018 special purpose excise tax money that is paying for at least portions of those projects. Um so I think that's important for our community to know. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask a city engineer to to that map if we can add on their funding source for each project. I think that would be good for the community to see. So, with that, we appreciate your time tonight. Um, have a good rest of the evening.

Thank you, director. All right. Is there any public comment on this agenda item? Peggy McCracken. Yes.

Yes. Uh, thank you for allowing me to make some comment. Um, I'm Peggy McCracken and my comments are concerning the street rehab and the possibility of striping to widen and make improvements to the bike lane as part of the project. So, I'm going to read this because 3 minutes is not enough time. So, I come to you today as an avid cyclist who has experience navigating Laramie streets and bike lanes on a bicycle that requires a wider footprint than the average bicycle. I'm a volunteer cyclist for the Larmy Tri Shop program, but I'm not representing that program tonight nor speaking for it. I'm simply speaking as someone who has experience riding on a wide bicycle. So there are many other examples of wide bicycles like uh adult tricycles, recumbent bicycles, bicycles pulling trailers and any cyclist who has difficulty maintaining a straight trajectory. For example, children, right? All that wobbling and weaving. I have grandchildren. I know. So, I gave you a handout that I'm highlighting just a couple of examples in just a couple of areas where navigating the bike lanes can be challenging because most of our bike lanes are not dedicated bike lanes. They are instead multi-purpose areas where bikes can get out of the traffic lane, but they also serve as areas for parking, bin pickup, loading, turning, and sloped street drainage. So, there's a lot of stuff going on in a sometimes too narrow bike lane next to a sometimes too busy street. So, I'm going to highlight two areas that are on the the street rehab list and that I frequent with a wide bike. The first one, my highest priority is on Sheridan Street between 15th and 22nd. This street is in

really bad shape, so I'm glad it's on that list. But look, it's a busy street and there are a lot of cars parked on the bike lane. And I get it because people live there and you got to park your car somewhere. But when you are in that bike lane and there are wide vehicles parked in the bike lane, it necessitates you have to as a cyclist, you have to move over into the lane of traffic, right? And sometimes that works out and sometimes that doesn't. Um, and I can go into more of that, but you see the pictures that I handed out and you can see I'm on the tiss and I'm getting like shoved into the traffic lane. Okay, so that's Sheridan Street. The next is 22nd Street. The problem uh area, most of it's pretty good. Uh, but on that block between Grand and Garfield. So, you have bike lanes leading up to there. And then at that block, the bike lane just disappears. It just goes away. So, you have a really narrow street. You have no bike lane. You got all kinds of traffic. You got people turning all kinds of directions. And I'm telling you from experience, and this is unfortunate, the safest place to be is to take the whole lane as a cyclist. There's really no other safe way to navigate that area. So, that one needs some attention. Now, I really wish I had enough time to go through that whole rehab list, but I didn't. But I'm just going to say there are lots of other areas where striping uh could enhance the bike lane and could even widen the bike lane. I especially hope that this happens on the extension of Ivans between Fifth, Sixth, and Third and also on Fourth Street.

Thank you, Peggy. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. And Peggy, I really appreciate uh you're taking the time to put together a handout so that we can look at that and then refer back to it as we talk with staff and stuff. Good job. You're welcome. Thank you, ma'am.

Good evening, Nancy Sandelar. Mayor and counsel. Um, I'm looking at these imp all these wonderful improvements we're getting around town. A lot of work's gone into this. This is going to be really great. Um, I asked the uh clerk to have some pictures if she can pull them up. Um, we emailed it to them. Oh, you emailed it to them. Fine. That's great. Um, they're in the agenda, aren't they? Yes. Yeah.

Thank you. Um, the ones I I I wasn't gonna I was going to talk about 22nd Street, but it's already been done. So, I'm going to look at the worst of it is uh Skyline. Those are not bike lanes. Those are Let me take off your mirror with my face lanes. Can What I would like to see happen Yeah, there you go. is that we don't need that continuous left turn lane. there's nobody on that road and there's no place to left turn into except the veterinary and the police department. Um, and make it so that the uh cement plant loop is once again a loop that we can ride on our bikes. But I would like to see council make get this as close as possible that the best I can do looking at the guidelines. I have to uh use Google's uh AI program to get it to work. um is 10 to 11 feet is in the guidelines is for a a collector under 30 miles an hour and that would leave at 5T in some places to add more bike lanes and make this standard. We've got we're going to have milan overlay all over the place and we're going to have chip ceiling and those are good excuse. There's no more paint. So now we got to do paint. And it doesn't cost a penny more to put the paint the proper distance from the center line than it does to put it in the door zone. So um yeah, got that. Um yeah, I'm hoping this infrastructure will go as good as possible and I'm hope I'm glad that we're doing all this good stuff and all the work that's going into it. And thank you.

Thank you, Nancy. Did I make it? I think you did. It got hidden. Yeah, you did with some time left over. Okay, I'll with that. Is there any other public comment on this agenda item?

All righty. Thank you both. We will next move on to our third work session and that is the downtown development plan and this will be held joint with the planning commission. So, I invite uh commissioners to join us uh up here and um we will take a few minutes to reposition. And this is open. So, you can either come

All right.

All right. The commissioners have the commissioners have joined us and so we will begin our work session downtown development plan. Mayor, council planning commission. Isn't this a good time? Look at all of you up there. Um, no. I we we really wanted to take an opportunity to bring both the city council and planning commission members together. one to just present one time to both of you as a group. But I think sometimes on these topics, we think it's really valuable for both the council to hear planning commission's comments and questions as well as the planning commission to hear council's comments and questions on the same subject that will come before you eventually later down the road when we think about considering plan adoption. And so, um, what I'd like to do is just, you know, tonight we're really going to be focused on the discussion and the discussion related to the Laramie downtown development plan. And if you didn't know, um, the DDA, the city of Laramie, and Larie Main Street are working on this plan jointly um because really the last plan was completed in 2011 and it's time for an update. And with that process, um, we've hired consultants to work on the plan for us. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to be really looking at in this presentation tonight kind of what have we done so far with the plan. Um, what has our first set of public engagement looked like? What kind of funding opportunities does a plan like this allow a DDA specifically to potentially use? as well as kind of what is going to be our next steps in the process as we move forward into plan development and and writing things. And so um tonight we have uh Melissa Ruth.

Uh she is with Logan Simpson. Her face may look a little bit familiar. She worked on the Larmy growth plan for the city of Larmy, her and her firm. So uh familiar face there. And then we have online Amanda Canard. She is with uh Progressive Urban Management Associates. We never say that. we just call them Puma. So, um, they both have been really heading this project. They were here during our public engagement sessions that we had a couple weeks ago. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn it over to Melissa who's here in house. Amanda is online as you can see her little picture in the corner. And so, I'm going to turn it over to them to present and I will let them kind of handle it from here. I'll be available. They'll be available. and uh really an opportunity to ask questions, hear where we're at, and kind of let lay out some next steps on this process. So, looking forward to it. Thanks.

Good evening, Melissa. Good evening, Mayor, Council, Planning Commission. Good to be back in Laram. Um we have Amanda and I have a short presentation, shortish. Um, we'll try to keep it um to um just short of 45 minutes. Um, I kind of lined this out so you get an idea, but I don't think we need full 10 minutes since Dererick kind of gave a really good overview of the project itself. Um, if anyone has questions as we move through specifically the public outreach uh piece, feel free to stop me. I'm happy to answer additional questions. Um, and we did do kind of a full questionnaire that we are working on some more summary materials that that we'll have technology. Great. Um, so as Dererick mentioned, we have two firms kind of working on this project. Um that's my little picture up there, but I've also got a full team behind me on the Logan Simpson side and then Amanda has a full team on her side. So it's not just the two of us working on the project. Um bringing expertise from working on the Cheyenne downtown plan um recently and then Amanda and the Puma team work all over the nation on um specifically financing districts and special things for um DDAS. I'm going to skip this since Dererick kind of went through it. Um this is our schedule. So we're we're about halfway through the process. We started um with foundation um earlier this year and then jumped right into visioning and choices where we were out here for about a week um working with business and property owners doing a sharet week um and then also doing some visioning exercises with both business and property owners and the public. We also had an online survey that was out um which I'll talk a little bit more about and we are transitioning into actually taking the information that we heard um and the vision that we heard and turning that into the plan.

We'll be working on that over the next couple months. Um targeting a full draft plan release um right around summer um and then going through the adoption process in the fall. When we were out here, we did a visioning exercise with the DDA. And I wanted to highlight this um to show some of the similarities between what we heard with the D the Downtown Development Authority or DDA board um and then with the public. So, we asked the DDA what their if they could use three words to describe their vision for the future of downtown um what they would use. And the top three were vibrant, growth, and bustling. um with the greatest strengths for the DDA being kind of walkability, the historic character, and a pretty diverse mix of land uses, but some opportunities for growth for um some expanded business hours, rehabbing some of the buildings that are in need of repair. Um focusing on on some sort of visitor lodging, what that kind of looked like was um a little up in the air. and then creating a really cohesive and unified vision across all of the downtown partners including Wiiotech, Udub, um, and then the visitors of Laramie. We also asked what success looks like for this plan. Um, it's a question we like to start with to understand um, or sorry, priorities, what the priorities were. I'll start with that one. Um, we gave six options looking for folks to kind of give us an idea for what they wanted us to focus on both in the plan um as well as what the focus was for the DDA board um moving forward and local businesses topped that that priority list closely followed by historic character um and then arts and music scene and the conversations around those three were really focusing on um that a lot of things kind of touch all three of them but the priority was really to continue to provide resources is for supporting local businesses,

understanding what those needs and opportunities are, um, and what enhancements the DDA can continue to provide for success measures. Um, big focus on a clear and actionable vision for the downtown future. So, not just creating a vision for the future, but Oh, thank you. one that is, um, actionable and meaningful. Um, and that the plan itself will spark some form of economic growth and reinvestment in downtown. Those could be small um reinvestments, but kind of again committing to not just planning for planning sake, but planning for um future action. And that includes um a clear path forward for funding plan initiatives, which is what Amanda will talk about in a minute here. So, what did we hear while we were out here a couple weeks ago? Um when to get the word out um we sent out mailers to the physical address and registered property owners um within the downtown district. Um staff also sent emails to all businesses and property owners um within the downtown district. We also had about 150 table toppers that we put in um restaurant locations or locations that had seating. Um and then posters in most local businesses as well that had some form of a bulletin board. Um we were also in the Forge Larmy downtown space in the LMSA office um with downtown focused events um and outreach from March 12th through the 31st. And then there is a dedicated project website on the um Laram website that's linked directly through planning and that is still up. So all of this information will kind of go up there as well as we kind of summarize um the outreach in a in a slightly more formal manner. We did nine community interviews um which doesn't sound like a lot but they were 45 minutes each. So, we had really in-depth conversations with some business and property owners, some local residents, understanding what the

opportunities were for um their in their opinion moving forward. We also had over 30 business and property owner part um property owners at our two work sessions. We held an evening one and a morning one to capture some different business types. Um we also had an additional 20 plus folks at two different visioning uh workshops which were a little different focusing a little bit more on kind of the vision for the future of downtown and and working on some maps whereas the business and property owner sessions were a little more targeted on um kind of plan initiatives and how to how to fund those. Um we had over 40 folks come through the interactive museum at the forge exchange um and that's that picture that's up there. So, we had some interactive exhibits um for people to provide input on and then we had just shy of 250 questionnaire participants um that provided input in that that month-long time frame on that. Whoa, too far. So, what to do here was going well um overall throughout all of that outreach. again, variety of businesses was listed as as a plus um in the downtown. And I think just about every different opportunity we had for outreach, people mentioned how much they love the murals and the public art. Um I don't think a single person didn't mention it. Um we did hear that there was not also a lot of storefront vacancies, so most of the ground floor us uh um storefronts were being utilized. Um and that there are certain events that bring in a lot more business. um specifically for um downtown businesses. And again, historic character and buildings were listed as one of folks kind of things that they really enjoyed about downtown Laramie. Okay, so throughout I wanted to make sure I

wasn't missing a slide. throughout the outreach um that we did in person, we heard kind of a few uh key themes. Um the first one is parking. Um but I will say that the conversation around parking, you laugh. Um the conversation around parking was very nuanced. Um we weren't able to really identify from all the conversations one specific issue with parking. It was kind of a full gamut of parking not being quite in the right places, not having quite the right type of parking, um comments about parking enforcement, um and then parking options overall. So, it's kind of the full options of everything about parking, which is a good thing because it means that your downtown's being utilized. Um people want to come downtown, but maybe some some enhancements could be made for how you manage parking in downtown. um supporting beautifification specifically around some of the maintenance um and cleanup especially following some of the Friday night activities um and then some comments for a desire for some more public restrooms which was something that surprised us um a little bit um but that need um in the downtown area enhancing the downtown feel so focusing on again enhancing public art greenery um pocket parks increasing some of the street furniture and sitting options especially outside businesses. Um, and then embracing heritage. And this was another conversation that really spanned a lot of different thoughts. So, went from everything from enhancing wayfinding um, and using placards to capitalize on some of the history of buildings. Um, there were a couple different options for what that looks like, but a lot of ideas on how to continue to support the historic uh, character of downtown and educate visitors on on what um, has happened in Laramie.

supporting pedestrian enhancements and walkability was another key topic. Um, a lot of this conversation focused around activating alleyways, um, increasing lighting for safety and then, um, adding some some bike lanes. Sorry, it's okay.

It's a Tuesday. Um, also coordination of events. So there were some comments that there could be um some better conversations about how events are marketed and making sure that all business owners are kind of aware of upcoming opportunities to support um connection between businesses and events. Um traffic calming and solution kind of tied in with parking and pedestrian a little bit but stood out as a lack of or a need for some better signage um dedicated loading and unloading zones um and then slowing traffic and traffic enforcement. So again, a little tie-in but slightly different. And last but not least, addressing vacant and underutilized buildings. So this was both residential and commercial. Um but the conversation kind of focusing on how can we support some additional um upper story housing? Um what does that look like? How do we enhance existing commercial buildings so that um maybe it's easier to get tenants and what does that kind of look like as far as street frontage and um redevelopment opportunities? Jumping to the questionnaire, you'll see some of the same responses, but we asked, we dove a little deeper with the questionnaire. Um, again, we got 20, this should say 249 responses. Um, with 187 of those going all the way through. So, we had an optional demographics section at the end. Um, where we like to ask questions about kind of who we're hearing from and understand who we're not hearing from as well. Um, we had quite a few folks that did drop off before that section. Um, but they made it all the way through the rest of the pieces. So I just wanted to note that um again top opportunities that we heard enhancing streetcapes attracting more different restaurants and bars and then preserving historic character. So some of the same kind of themes that we heard from the inerson outreach which is really um unique and also interesting to see that we're hearing the same things across all of our different engagement opportunities. So showing some really strong priorities and preferences.

top challenges that we heard rising rents and businesses. Um 42% of respondents said that this was a challenge. Um the variety of shops and products. Um so that there's a good mix of them, but they aren't quite open at the right hours or that um businesses maybe aren't um quite in the right locations for some of the things that folks are looking for. and parking. When we looked specifically and asked more questions about streetscapes, a lot of the comments focused on enhancing landscapes and greenery. So, getting more at that pocket park and green space downtown. Um, but also a lot of comments on outdoor seating options. So providing more opportunities for folks to kind of hang out downtown outside um in some of the in the times where we have some nice weather outside public spaces, public art and gathering places. Again, a lot of a lot of desire to focus um and enhance the alleyways um and make those nice kind of active places for folks. And pocket parks were listed heavily as well as as a desire and a focus. Um, looking specifically at the ideal mix of use. Yes.

Uh, I have a question from councelor Odori. Oh, just a to refresh the questionnaire is anybody that this isn't just the businesses and the property owners. This is anybody using downtown, right? That's who this is trying to capture. Mayor 3. Yes, we had it open to all um anyone who wanted to provide input. But I do have a slide at the end of kind of who we heard from um and how that that feedback uh plays in. Thank you. Yes.

We're going to get it figured out by the end of this. Every time I'm the dialogue box, it makes me reclick on it. So I apologize for that.

This is good information for future. Um the last slide on the questionnaire um is we also asked folks on what three words they would use to describe the vision for the future and vibrant was by far the biggest used or biggest word used. Um we also heard welcoming, diverse, friendly, accessible, parking, community, clean. Um so a lot of the same themes across a lot of the options or a lot of the different um outreach opportunities. So, I know I went through those um fairly quick, but any questions on kind of what we heard and some of those common themes across the different outreach opportunities?

Counselors, commissioners, questions andor comments. Uh Commissioner Moody, um you mentioned upfront um university connection. Are you going to talk about that a little bit later or I mean could you elaborate on what that means?

Mayor Thyu. Yes. So that conversation was um with the DDA board and one of the opportunities that was highlighted was kind of working with the university as as a big part of the um city and a big kind of user of downtown. what those opportunities are to either enhance connections to the university, whether that's um like pedestrian and and walking enhancements um and what sort of um additional partnerships there are between the city, the DDA, the main street, and the university to enhance kind of use of downtown. Um, it sounded like there was a little bit of conversation of how that relationship has evolved over time and what um with the university potentially holding more um events at the university rather than downtown and and what that looks like in the future. So, kind of a nebulous conversation, but something we're we're kind of keeping in mind moving forward. Yeah, that that that's great because I think there's an opportunity with a new president and a new um city manager um to improve the the the connection, however you want to define that, between UW and and downtown. And you know, whether whether there's a a small office space in downtown that could be a UW informational thing. So when people come to visit in the summer, there'd be something UW saying, "Hey, we got a campus over here and we got we here's our programs." And if you're from New Jersey and you got a kid in 11th grade and you're and you're a tourist, you see, oh, you know, maybe we should visit the campus. And that that that there there is a UW thing in the downtown that says that the community and UW are talking to one another and are trying to, you know, play off each other.

Yeah, absolutely. And that idea did come up. Um, so I'm glad you you mentioned it and highlighted it. Commissioner Matimore. Uh, we talked about this at the, uh, depot. Uh, mentioned it. Has anybody talked to the DDA about communicating with UW for routing a regular bus schedule from the campus to downtown? just a short turnaround as part of their regular uh regular route that they run.

Yeah, it was identified as a potential action, but we're still kind of in the the early phases of prioritizing all of the things that we heard and what um the DDA board kind of wants to move forward with as priority action items. Um but that that one did get brought up and it is has been noted. Thank you, Councelor Frerieded.

Thank you, Mayor. and thank you for the presentation. My my question might stem similar to um Commissioner Madamor's um did you hear much about public transit? You know, I parking doesn't surprise me. I think it's been a beast since automobiles were created in our community and we'll always be trying to fix it. But did you notice um is that reflected anywhere in here the need or advocation for kind of public transit or was it phrased in that way for folks? We heard a little bit about it um specifically with some of with more tied to that university connection, but we also heard about just general connections to downtown. And I think the conversation expanded beyond public transit to looking at kind of that those last mile solutions, parking or not parking, um walking and biking and what that looks like for folks as well, too. So, we didn't have specific conversations on transit. Um, but I do believe we asked a question in the questionnaire about it, so I can go back and and take a look at that, too.

City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. It's looking on Commissioner Matimore's request. The Larmy link, which basically runs from the Spanish Walk Apartments through the university to downtown, which is on uh First Street, First Street. It runs every 20 minutes Monday through Friday 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 pm. So, thank you, Commissioner Metammore. The only uh suggestion I had is should be extended well into the evenings and to get the university students down there for later night activities. Also, it'll alleviate drunk driving

on the weekends. Yeah. uh director mayor to council member Frerieded's question too I just you know we had definitely heard a lot about the reconnecting uh communities uh project that we just recently completed and and I think I would say that there was a lot of tiein to that people just reiterating yes the reconnecting kind of answered a lot of my connections to downtown especially from more west direction so I think that was another like kind piece of that puzzle that we heard even though it wasn't directly related to public transit always. It was related to that plan though for sure. So,

thank you. Yeah, great clarification D. Okay, Melissa.

Um, I just wanted to highlight this because I found it really interesting. Um, we do a lot of plans across kind of Wyoming, Colorado, the West. Um, and one thing that I found really interesting was who we heard from, um, and how we heard from folks with this survey. So, social media, um, 70 47% of our responses we got from social media. That shows a really strong kind of active social media presence, and I'm sure that's not a surprise to folks, but that is something that we found um, really interesting. And then the other write in was 18% of that that was direct emails. So, we got a lot of responses from folks who were signed up directly for emails um or saw the city of Laram's social media post, things like that. Um, a lot of it came also from the Main Street Alliance. Um, so I just wanted to point that out. I found it really interesting. Um, and I was also looking back through the questionnaire data and we saw a a significant number of responses compared to what we typically see from younger um under 30 uh residents. So that was also encouraging to see folks kind of investing in the future of of downtown. We don't typically see that. Um and a lot of folks that do come downtown five or more days a week. So these weren't folks that are just kind of casually passing by. These are folks that are active in downtown um multiple days a week. So I just wanted to point that out. Um something just that we found kind of interesting and and fun for Larie. Um, I'm gonna hand it over to Amanda online to talk through the financing um, and what how we get some of the kind of priorities done, what the options are.

Amanda, we can't hear you right now. We still cannot hear you.

Nope. Try again, Amanda. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay, awesome. Thank you for bearing with me. So much technology fun.

Um, okay, great. Well, thank you, Melissa, and thank you, mayor, council, and uh planning commission for for having us this evening. Um, so now that we've covered what we're hearing from the community, I'm going to shift gears a little bit and discuss ways Laram could fund and deliver uh these downtown priorities over time. So um I'll start out with a highle primer on the tools that typically support plan implementation and then we'll talk more in depth about what's most relevant for Laram next. Oh, perfect. Okay. Um nope, sorry there. There we go. Um, so at the larger scale, um, grants, local, state, federal grants, um, can be great one-off or project specific investments, they're often, um, not usually reliable for ongoing capacity year-over-year. So, kind of starting with that scale and then and then starting to move down into more local and and hyper local uh, mechanisms here. Um the city of Laram will have a major role in implementing the downtown plan and um will continue to be a core funding and delivery partner for the initiatives this plan uh will recommend. Um I also want to acknowledge the the Laram Main Street Alliance here um as a key implementation partner that already delivers programs and activities that shape the downtown experience day-to-day. And then where we'll dig a little bit deeper today is the potential role of the Laram DDA. um so what its tools um could mean for creating more dedicated uh downtown specific capacity over time. Um so as I'm sure you all know um there is currently a DDA in Laram um but it's not currently leveraging any dedicated funding. So tonight we'll explore the types of projects and programs a DDA can fund and the types of financing tools a DDA can utilize per Wyoming state

statute. Um, I do want to um just point out we're not making any recommendations at this point in the process. Um, but rather trying to take a temperature check on whether or not there's interest in exploring a DDA funding mechanism um through further outreach and analysis that would happen uh later on in this process. Next slide, please. Um, oh, there we go. Awesome. Thanks. Um, so the LMSA is already delivering a lot of the day-to-day downtown programming. Um, as you can see on this slide here, they um provide programs and services, things like facade grants, um, technical assistance to businesses, marketing support, um, really really a diverse range of of programming. Um, they're also leading or supporting visible downtown activation efforts and events. Um, so things like Brewfest, the farmers market. Um they also um do public art, holiday lighting and other uh investments in the downtown experience. Next slide please. Um so again what we want to dig a little bit deeper into today is the potential role of the Laram DDA in the implementation of this plan. So a DDA is the uh city's downtown focused implementation partner. It's a a quasi public entity enabled by Wyoming statute to strengthen downtown vitality. Um, one important distinction I always like to flag when talking about DDAs, um, is that there are one of two tools that are allowed to use tax increment financing under state statute. The other, uh, being urban renewal, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Um, there are some key distinctions between urban renewal and DDAs. one being that DDAs do not have the power of imminent domain. Um, so they cannot take private property. Um, there are also some differences in how TIFF can be utilized

between these two types of entities as well, which we can get into a little bit deeper later on in the presentation. Um, to the extent you all want to do that. Next slide, please. DAS are governed by a board of 5 to 11 members appointed by city council. Laram currently has a seven member board. Um the intent for the board is to be locally connected to the area they serve. So um people who live in own property uh in or are directly invested in the district um really to ensure that decisions stay grounded in real downtown conditions over time. Next slide. Perfect. Um, and then just a little bit more about the the Laram Main Street Alliance, a nonprofit organization founded in 2005, um, centered on preserving historic downtown while strengthening uh, economic and social vitality. Um, we already talked about some of the programs and services they provide. So, I think we can keep keep moving here. Um, so what does a DDA do? Uh, the DDA's role is to implement the plan of development. Um, so turning priorities into a funded work program and a clear sequence of action. Um, so this process that we're currently working on for downtown Laram is both a vision plan for downtown to guide its future and an update to the DDA's plan of development which serves as a strategic organizational roadmap uh for the DDA organization itself. Um so practically uh DDAs tend to work across a mix of different types of projects and services. So they can get engaged in business support and economic development, public improvements, redevelopment support. Um they're really flexible in nature and um one of the next slides here will provide some examples of the types of programs and

services that DDAS provide in other communities. Um so oh perfect thank you. Um so this slide here I think is really helpful in illustrating the flexibility of DDAS as a tool. So um this slide here is a is a summary of um benchmark DDAS from Colorado. It's a comparison of projects and initiatives funded by nine Colorado DDAs totaling 169 projects or about 18 to 19 projects per DDA. Um, we find that Colorado is a helpful reference point because DDAs are a common downtown revitalization tool statewide. Um, there are more than 20 DDAs across Colorado communities. So, it just gives us a a deeper set of real world examples than we have in Wyoming. Um, so a key takeaway here is that DDAs often put dollars into physical improvements. Um so things like connectivity projects related to bicycle or pedestrian infrastructure, intersection enhancements, um streetscape and beautifification, uh wayfinding, gateways, public art, um a lot of physical improvements uh can be funded by DDAS. Um they also frequently get involved in development, reuse and activation. So this can include initiatives like helping address uh storefront vacancies, supporting redevelopment opportunities and participating in public private partnerships that can help uh move building reinvestment forward. So that can happen both inside the building and in the public realm around it and that's one of the things that makes uh DDAS a really unique tool for downtown revitalization. Um but DDAs also don't just fund capital work. So many DDAs can help fund programs and services that support uh downtown vitality, things like marketing, events, um support for businesses and things of that nature as well. So as you can see here, DDA's fund

many of the initiatives that are emerging as priorities in Laram um including parking management, support for local businesses, beautifification and streetscape enhancements, historic preservation, uh and public art as well. Um, so how are our DDAs funded? They're able to leverage a few different types of uh mechanisms here. So, um, as I mentioned earlier, we're not making a recommendation to pursue any of these options at this point in the process. Um, but rather just trying to educate the community on options and take a temperature on support before conducting further exploration and analysis. Um so one of the one of the key tools uh DDA can can utilize is tax increment financing. Um so in Wyoming uh the tiff approach here is performance-based. It captures growth uh in both property and sales above the base in the city's portion of uh property tax and or uh all or a portion of municipal sales tax within the DDA. and then that money is reinvested back into the uh DDA's boundaries. Um so TIFF is notably not an increase in taxes but rather the capture of increasing property and sales tax over time. Um TIF is activated through the the DDA's plan of development. Um the way it would work is that after the plan of development is approved and if this recommendation is included um the city would continue receiving the base year amount. Um and then uh only the growth above that base year can be directed into a dedicated downtown special fund for up to 25 years. Next slide please. Um so DDAs are also able to uh have a mill levy. So mill levy is a direct and

predictable funding tool. Um, DDAS in Wyoming are able to levy up to 30 mills on non-residential property in the district. Um, so residential only property is excluded um, from a potential assessment. It's usually uh, the best fit for ongoing capacity and visible delivery of programs and services um, things like operations um, enhanced maintenance um, programs and business support. Um, mill levies are actually the most funding uh the most common funding mechanism used by DDAS in Wyoming. So, uh, active DDAs in Casper and Cheyenne both utilize a mill levy to fund downtown initiatives. In Casper, the the DDA is currently levying 16 mills and in Cheyenne their DDA is lev levying 20 mills. So, you don't have to go after the full 30 mil amount. Um, that's just the cap. Um, DDays are also able to bond for larger scale projects and improvements. Next slide, please. So, how do these funding tools get authorized? Um, to pursue a mill levy, the DDA would need to go through two steps. Um, first, city council approval and then a vote of district property owners. Um, so the mill levy would then be build annually and expires after four years unless renewed in the same way. Um, so it's not a perpetual funding mechanism, it does need to be renewed every four years. Um, but it is relatively easy to collect as as that additional property tax. Um, if there is interest in exploring a mill levy further here in Laram, um, there would need to be additional process to clarify what the funds would be used for and what mill levy rate would be palatable for business and property owners without being burdensome. Um we've heard a lot about how um how valuable the the small business community is in Laram. So we would want to make sure that if we were

going to explore the mill levy option um it was it was tolerable for for your downtown business owners. Um the the tiff is activated through the plan of development process which I mentioned earlier. Um, if that moves forward, base taxes continue as usual and then that growth above the base can be directed into a downtown special fund for up to 25 years. Um, next slide, please. And I think this is our last one here. Perfect. Um, so this final slide summarizes the three options that could be pursued through the DDA. So, a mill levy, um, tax income and financing. And then we do want to present the third option here which is to do nothing. And that that is a a perfectly acceptable option uh that could come out of this process. Um there are pros, cons, and trade-offs associated with each option. So the mill levy, it's a it's a direct and predictable funding source. Um tiff is performance-based and depends on growth in property and sales over time. Um so there are both um some advantages to that and then also some potential challenges. Um, and then doing nothing or continuing as is avoids added cost but has the potential to limit dedicated capacity for downtown initiatives beyond what is already being offered. Um, so just just a few trade-offs associated with with each of these uh potential funding mechanisms. The mill levy is a new assessment um and it does occur on a renewal cycle. Um but in exchange you get a stable downtown funding source and hyper local accountability over how those funds are used. Um the trade-offs associated with TIFF are that um it doesn't raise an raise anyone's taxes. It can run for 25 years. So it is a longer term funding mechanisms. Um but the increment depends on growth and it

is constrained. So it's not guaranteed revenue um depending on how conditions evolve in downtown. And then if we choose no change, the risk is that downtown work keeps competing annually for limited city and other resources. Um just making it a little harder to sequence and sustain plan implementation over time. Um something I do want to note on this slide is that we shared this information with downtown business and property owners during the sharet week that Melissa had mentioned. Um there was an openness to exploring these options further. both the mill levy and the tax increment financing. Um but folks want to um get a better understanding for both the capacity of these funding tools in Laram. Um so what things could um the these different mechanisms actually finance um and what the cost would be if we particularly were going to go down the road of exploring a mill levy. So, um, just want to notate that there is, um, at least in our initial conversations and openness to exploring, um, what these things could look like further. Um, so with that, I think we'll pause and see if there are questions, comments, um, or feedback on any of this. I know that was a lot of information. So,

Commissioner Matimore,

I had uh, two questions. We discussed this at the depot. I think if you want to use either system for uh getting funding, downtown is too small. The current idea of downtown is too small. I've always believed it should run from Lewis to the highway, from the tracks to the west side of Third Street. and that would give you a much bigger basis to finance anything. The second point is as a long-term downtown merchant, uh funding is is okay. I think most people would go along with either one of those options, but they're going to want their businessmen. They want to know what are you going to do with the money? if you're just gonna throw the money in a pot and divvy it up, you know, politically. But if you go project by project, you'll get a lot more receptive response to the funding. That's

Yeah, that's great feedback. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Uh, councelor Odory.

Um, so the first the mill levy idea if if someone could remind me. So the city the city gets six gets eight mills right now property tax and then I can't remember like so I'm trying to put it in perspective 30 sounds like a big number like that's what schools get some number like that or is the school mill anyway um so but it seems to me the mill levy really doesn't depend on us it depends on the the owners right the um the owners of those properties whether they're willing to do that and um so that doesn't seem like our decision. So I like not having to make that decision.

Yeah, the the mill levy definitely would have to be um backed by private sector champions in order for that to be a a real um possibility here. Um, so I I I had mentioned that there would likely need to be some additional process, some additional outreach, um, a deeper dive into the numbers and what this all would mean for, um, for businesses and for property owners. Um, so that that point is well taken. Uh, Vice Mayor,

thank you. I just a couple of comments. one was that I think the DDA going into this very much recognizes that there needs to be buy into whatever project is there before pursuing any of this. Um, and the comment about including more people in the downtown district, I think the property owner has to opt into that. Is that correct, Derek? I remember thinking or considering this. So, it has to be their choice to opt in. And then the um third thing is is more of a question because our property taxes are so low in Wyoming. Um I remember hearing conversation about having to stack some of these things to actually bring in the in the generate the the money that would take to do some of these projects. Could the mil levy and the tip be stacked in this case? Would you have you wouldn't have to choose one or the other? You could do both. Is that correct?

Yes, that's absolutely correct. and and a lot of um DDAs in in Colorado do utilize both uh mil levy and tax increment finance. So there is um precedent for that at least in in your neighboring state. Further questions or comments? Councelor Freed.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you uh Amanda for the for the information. Just curious. I know this is probably going to be really hard uh a hard question in terms of answering it because you know for downtown development authorities across the country. Is there one I'm sure each community is different. So there's no oneizefits-all solution, but what have you seen in your work that is like an effective kind of use of finding funding that's been successful maybe in our region uh or for communities of our size if you had any any of that info.

Yeah. And Melissa, I would I would welcome uh your your um knowledge on this as well, but what we see what we've seen most commonly uh at least in Wyoming is the is the use of the mill levy. Um there are some limitations and I I mentioned this briefly. Um but there are some limitations about uh tiff for DDAs in Wyoming. So they are um only able to um collect increment on the 8 mil property tax um the city's portion of that. So that does create some limitations on what uh you can generate through tax increment and finance in Wyoming. Um in Colorado for example that cap does not exist and so the the revenue generation potential using tiff is a lot larger. Um, and that is a reason we see TIFF um, as the most commonly used financing tool by DDAS in Colorado. Um, and actually less so on on the mill levy side. So, um, I'd offer that. Um, Melissa, I don't know anything anything you would add from other western communities you'd work you've worked in.

Yeah. Um, I'll start with Wyoming is a little unique. We all know that. Um, our statutes are a little unique as Amanda has kind of highlighted. Um, we only have three maybe four like active DDAs in the state. So, it's kind of hard to um and our statutes are a little different than Colorado as Amanda noted. So, um I went back and I pulled up the Cheyenne plan. Um Cheyenne only leverages uh the mill and they are at 20. So, they're bringing in about $485,000 per year using just the mill. Um, I would say with either of these funding mechanisms, they take a couple of years at least to really start to kind of gain some traction and be used for um projects. And some of the projects specifically that we've been looking at um are some long-term projects. So, there's potential for those to need to be kind of multi-fund stream projects. Um, but the mill levy has been really successful in the state. Cheyenne did leverage um TIFF at one point um but they going back and reading what it said um that was pulled and it was mostly that was bringing in a lot of funding because of one large business and property or business in downtown once that business left downtown wasn't generating money. Um and then the tiff district I believed Amanda they can't overlap a URA tiff district as well right? So,

yeah, that's right. You you can't have two overlapping tiff districts, but you can have a mill levy and the and the tiff overlapping. That's just a a slight nuance there. Yeah. So, that's kind of I don't know that I have a great example for you. Um, but it has been done successfully and DDAs are successfully financed in this state as well as our surrounding state. Um, I think a lot of the downtowns that folks look at that they really love have had a financing mechanism in place for for a long time. So, Fort Collins is always a a a community that's kind of listed and they've had a very active DDA with a very active financing um for for decades. So, that's something to kind of keep in mind that none of these things are really quick fixes, but they all move us in the right direction as as a community and for downtown reinvestment.

I hope that's a good enough circuitous answer. Thank you. Uh, Commissioner Moody, um, walk me back. I don't know anything about Laramy's DDA. Do we have one? Is is Laramie one of the three or four that you referred to? Yes. Uh, and so you said we've had it since 2005 or that was when de DDAs were sort of developed. Mayor Thu, 2005 is when the Main Street Alliance was created. Um, the DDA has was created in 98.

I don't have the that off the top of my head, but it's it's been around. Um, the uniqueness with Laram's DDA right now is that it's not it doesn't have a funding mechanism. So, it's existing, but it doesn't have the ability to finance projects. Um that's kind of why this conversation is coming up is there's no method by which we can actually implement the plan development right now other than through um grants or um dedicated council uh funds. So up to this point, Main Street Alliance has really been doing the heavy lifting of doing downtown improvements. Is that is that correct? If if DD8 hasn't had any funding.

Mayor 3. Yes. the the LMSA has really been kind of spearheading a lot of the things that are happening downtown. Um, so that's kind of another unique thing about about Laramie is that the Main Street Alliance has really been that kind of big organization, financing organization. Typically, you see the Main Street Alliance as more of kind of the events and then the DDA is doing that heavy lifting for um physical investment and things like that, but hasn't had funding to do it. Correct. So, it's conceptual heavy lifting, but not actual heavy lifting. Okay. I I just I just want to get this thing straight in my head, that's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. And if I can add to that a little bit, um when we talk about this with um LMSA and the DDA, um we discuss the idea that oftentimes the DDA and and Derek, please correct me if I'm wrong, but that typically they would be if they could implement something like a mill, they could do something that is more structural, that is looking at sidewalks, that is looking at like some larger scale things, whereas the LMSA is looking at the vitality of downtown and thinking about um historic preservation and celebrating, you know, kind of re-energizing that sort of thing. So, it would be more like one person would be working more on the bricks and mortar sort of thing where the other would be the other side of it. Is that accurate?

Yeah, that's that's a good way to think about it. And um I will say too, one of the the powerful things we see um DDAS do in other communities is um help to to close gaps on financing larger scale um whether it's public realm improvements or um I mentioned that DDAS can can get involved in public private partnerships. Um and so we we see DDAs helping to close um financing gaps even when they aren't able to 100% um cover the cost of some of those larger scale physical investments. Um so we've seen we've seen that happen really successfully in other communities.

Further questions andor comments. Oh, councelor Shamway. Thank you, mayor. Um, just for clarity, I think for all of us, first step in order for us to have a mill levy is to have the city council approve it because the funding will come from our mills, our a mills. The second is the district. I think the uh downtown district has to approve the uh the mills and their participation in it. And my understanding it's been attempted but it's failed several times. Is that correct?

It uh so the process is correct as we've described and so the it has been attempted one time um but it did not pass uh in the downtown district um about 20 years ago. So, um, mayor, if you don't mind, I think kind of to circle back to kind of one of the broader questions, too, is, you know, when we think about this funding and what the DDA looks like, you know, I mean, that that's really the purpose of this plan, too, is to outline those major investments. Where does the where do the down where does the downtown want to invest in itself, right? And if if they so choose, they potentially have a funding mechanism to do that. And so through this plan, you know, our hope is that they outline those things that they want to see done and then if they so choose, potentially develop a funding mechanism uh to maybe help them help themselves. And so I think, you know, we, you know, as we go through this process, I think we're going to start to see those projects and those the the what's important come to the top. And granted, not everything will probably get done right away, but it starts to outline our ability to know where potentially from a I think Madam Moore mentioned the business sense, right? Like where does the money go? And if you look back at the failure of the last time this was attempted, there really wasn't that available for the downtown business owners to know what they where the money was going. And I think that, you know, when I read back and try to interpret the documents, right, my best I can. I that's what I that's what I saw, right, is that it was not quite clear where that money was going to go. And I think that that's our real hope in uh developing a plan like this so that we know what projects might be able to come come together with whether it's funding or going after any of these

other options depending upon what we hear from the downtown. So, um I'm just curious if you know what percentage of businesses downtown lease their property versus own their property. I don't think I have that off the top of my head. I'm just thinking, you know, a concern was that the rents are going up.

So then if we levy the owners, then I would assume the rents would continue to go up. So I think it might be interesting at some point to get a handle on ownership and leasing and what percentage it kind of gives us uh an idea about the power of those businesses to uh implement these kind of decisions. Yeah, that's for that's great feedback and um definitely would be um part of the consideration if we do recommend going down the road of exploring a mill levy further.

And I do think that it's hard to vote in favor of something if you don't have a vision for what that's going to become. If you can give people a vision, I think they're more likely to get on board. So, any further questions and or comments? All right, seeing none, we will go to public comment. Is there any public comment? Yes, Mr. Glass. Good evening.

Good evening, honorable mayor, counselors, members of the commission. Um, my name is Brett Glass. I'm the owner of two downtown businesses and co-owner of the tallest building in downtown and uh greeting this plan with a little bit, you know, with with interest and a little bit of apprehension. This is the first new plan in 15 years. Um, and I'm not sure how it's supposed to how long it's supposed to last. Um, but in general, long-term plans, making making any kind of a long-term plan is a difficult thing to do because you have to be agile to have a downtown business or have do anything downtown. You have to respond to changes in the market quickly in weeks, not years, and certainly not multiple years. Um, and for the city to impose too rigid a plan or too rigid of a regime on downtown can truly harm it instead of helping it. And the so far what we've seen with the plan is that displays downtown at the Forge popup um focus too much on non-essentials and not on the essential things you need to to do to work downtown. They talk about public art and other nicities. Um unfortunately they don't focus on what businesses really need and a lot of that is freedom from plans that are too prescriptive and too much uh burdenome regulation and bureaucracy. Uh one thing that's especially worrisome and this came out in some of the sessions that uh that were conducted already is the possibility of taxation on downtown. Um it it's it's hard enough as it is and has already been mentioned. rents rents are going up because insurance is going through the roof. You almost can't insure a downtown building. It's very there are very few choices and the taxation mechanism which you do have is not fair. Um if you have a mixeduse building especially um then the tax impacts you whereas residential bu a

residential building that's all residential right next door to it gets a tax break and that's not fair. As the co-owner of a mixeduse building, it would especially concern me that my neighbors weren't paying in to whatever was done. Um, myself, I would really only favor I would only really willing to be be willing to be taxed for one thing and that is a parking structure because parking is the main issue downtown and this is the one thing that we most desperately need. Um also during the sessions I was concerned that uh that the again there was there was a bias toward uh to toward what particular groups and organizations wanted LMSA in particular has a particular of favoring things with you know it its own pet interests and trying to on

sorry I guess we're not in a regular meeting but if we could abstain from calling out individual they were mentioned by name before so I was hoping that was Okay, please. We've we've asked you before not to do that. Yeah. Well, like I said, it's a concern, but in any case, um Hello. Please pause the clock.

But in any case, if you do go ahead with making a plan, please make it general. Don't put too many restrictions on it. Make it adaptable. Make sure you actually listen to the residences and the residents and businesses there. try to reduce regulation rather than imposing more. And please don't tax us except for absolutely essential in infrastructure such as parking. Please let downtown develop itself and help it to do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Is there any further public comment? Nancy Sendelar.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, and thank you for letting me bend your ears twice in one night. Um, you've been talking about money and really dense, really detailed stuff. And I've got a way that I think will help the downtown businesses. It won't cost Laramie any money to do it. And what it is is you've been sitting here for how many years? counselors, people watching that intersection right out there. It's not very busy. There's a sign on it that says bike route to UW campus. There's no bike lane. If we get rid of that left turn lane for the people on Ison, not Fourth Street, just the people on Ivansson. Point of order. Uh this is to help the downtown businesses get more people downtown without their cars.

Okay. It seems a little off topic, but

well, from what I saw in the agenda, this was that I wasn't understanding called Monday money. Um, and I'm just trying to get it in get ideas into the head that if we can make it the connection between the university and downtown easier, we'll get more business downtown without the cars. I went to college, returned to college. Uh, the mayor knows very well. She was my instructor. I would get on my bike. I would ride downtown. I would get lunch. I would do a little bit of shopping. I would head back to class. I had an hour and 20 minutes. And everybody else had to walk up to the union, get in their car, drive downtown, find a parking place. Now it's time to reverse it because they got to go back up to the Union and find another parking place. But I got to go shopping. I got to eat lunch downtown every day because I could zip down Ionson and go back. And if we make that easier for other people, I think we can help the businesses downtown. And paint is paint. It's going to be the same price whether we paint a left turn lane or if we paint a bike lane. And right now there's nothing between third and fifth. Thank you.

Thank you, Nancy. One minute to go. Yeah, I made up for the last one. All righty. Any further public comment? Councilors, commissioners, any final comments? All right. Uh, Director Tiny, final comment if I may. Of course.

All right. Now, I first off, thanks for tonight. Um, just remember we're not done with this process. you know, as you go back and think about this all night long, which I know you will, um, you know, feel free to email us if you have ideas, if you have thoughts. Um, you all know people that do business in the downtown, shop in the downtown, use the downtown, if they have questions or comments that they want to try to get into this plan, have them get in touch with me. Um, as Melissa mentioned earlier in the process, we're still still open to doing one-on-one interviews with anyone who wants to do those with us. Um, all you got to do is reach out to the office. We'll set up a time just kind of based on whatever our schedules are. Um, so that we can get those incorporated into the plan. So, um, you know, we're still in that process of engaging with the public. So, if you know, if you know people that want to get their voice heard, have them get in touch with us. Planning city.org or will get them there and we'll get them in touch with the right people with our consultants or with staff. So, I'll leave you with that.

Thank you. Thank you. And Melissa and Amanda, thank you very much for your presentation. Commissioners, thank you so much for joining us. Uh it was an honor to have you tonight. Um all right, we have uh business to conclude. So, if you would like to exit stage left before we do that.

Thank you so much. All right, councilors. Um, any updates? Can we start with councelor Newman? No updates. Yeah, I don't think I have any. Councelor Freed,

I'll be brief. Mayor, uh, last Wednesday, parks, streets, and rec board met. Uh we decided at our next uh meeting places and some tours of some parks in the summer and we also heard a really awesome presentation about the capital projects of the park trees and rack including a new bike park uh that will start going underway and and I think consulting with some local trail experts uh to make sure that there's some really safe and fun features. Um and then traffic safety commission met um last last Thursday um and we had a really good conversation working with the university to talk about Bradley Street and potential removal of stop signs to ease their traffic congestions. Um and then the railroad depot board met on Thursday. Um and it was really fun. They're talking about some of the funding and big boy coming back next Friday I believe. So the big boy train will come back through Laramie next Friday. So, um something to take the folks and family to. Uh and then the last thing I have was I got to attend the um soup kitchen fundraiser for the first time. So, thank you, mayor. Uh and that was an incredible experience and really cool to see members of our community supporting an awesome program. So, those are my updates.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, so DDA has been working on what you all have just uh had the pleasure of going over. Um, Main Street had that same presentation. So that was a big part of the Main Street meeting. Um, Pilot Hill is going to host a cleanup day on the 20 is the 24th, whatever day the Saturday is, that's the 20 somethingth. Um, they'll be hosting a community cleanup day for our community cleanup efforts um that the city is putting on. Um they also are narrowing down names for all of the trails. So those should be unveiled soon. Um which has been fun to kind of be a part of. Um and then city manager, the mayor and I met with um folks at UDub. Our last meeting with President Sidell um before the transition to the new president occurs. And that was really beneficial. Todd was great. city manager was great about telling them to really prep themselves for what's to come on Ivansson. So, um I think they are they're in it and and going to be part of those conversations to make that as easy as possible even though it's going to be not easy. So,

thank you uh Councelor Lockheart. Thank you, Mayor. Um thank you guys for coming to the soup kitchen dueling pianos the other night. It meant a lot to Deina. So, thank you very much. I guess we donate money. So, we need to get that collected, don't we? You don't you you get said 1,000 bucks for the for the council, so we have to get that. Oh, yeah. So, we got to get that all done. Did that again. So, thank you. We did that again. Uh so, so anyway, so we'll figure that out. A thousand for Yeah. We'll figure that out. Um also, uh got an email

last night. I attended the planning commission meeting and we get to vote on what they looked at last night on a deanexation of 80 acres uh on the north end of 30th Street. So that was a quite a lengthy conversation last night with the planning commission. So we get to see it next week. And that was pretty much the whole meeting. We had they postponed the next section because not all parties were involved. So that's all I have. Thank you, sir. Councelor Shamway.

Thank you, Mayor. I uh have some preliminary reports on the preparation for the celebration for the year for the celebration of the 250th year celebration. Have I think I've already reported that we have a semitr full of food coming to interfaith which will be distributed to the soup kitchen and other places here in town. A complete semi load. And then also I have a group that I've I've talked to uh this past week that wants to perform patriotic um songs during the uh celebration and they're looking for a maybe the band shell or maybe the downtown during Jubilee days or such to sing patriotic songs. So I need to find somebody that will give me ideas on where to do that and how to do that.

Thank you. Thank you, Councelor. Councelor Vhill. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, we have a Human Rights and Relations Commission meeting tomorrow, unfortunately. Also at the same time as our work session. Um, so I'll probably try and make the first like 20 minutes or so. Um, but that's at the Larie Boomerang conference room. Thanks,

Councelor O'Dhy. I feel like a slacker. Um the environmental advisory commission didn't meet, but um they're part of the part of the incentive for doing the waste um the um waste characterization study. And so the city's asking for volunteers and I signed up to sort through garbage um April 21st through Friday the 24th. And it would they're asking volunteers to sign up for four to eight hour blocks. Won't that be fun? I have to get pictures. I think you'll enjoy it going through it. You're so curious.

Um All right. Um let's see. On the ETH, I had towning gown. Uh we are continuing to move forward with uh the rental app and that is being sponsored through Wiiotech uh at this point in time. Uh also uh we discussed reaching out for community members to be a part of town and gown that uh it's really city county and higher ed and there's no community members. So that's our next step right now is to add that. Then that afternoon I had civil service commission. Uh on the 9th we had the quarterly meeting with the president and that went really well and it was kind of a nice closure and summary and hats off to Todd for saying it's going to be tough that Ivansson getting them ready. Uh on the 9th that evening I went to the heirloom business after hours and that was uh really good. Uh a lot of people were there very interesting and I got to meet a lot of the engineers uh that are working there right now. Um then we had the soup kitchen fundraiser and uh we did pledge uh city council $1,000. So, um, anyway, I'll send out an email so that you all can, uh, see what you might want to do. Um, the vice mayor and I, uh, on Sunday met with a group of UW grads who have formed

a group to learn about civic engagement. And it was really uh a most interesting group of uh young people uh in their late 20s probably who are interested in civic engagement, how you do things, how everything works. And I imagine that you all will be asked at some point to come in uh for one hour on a Sunday afternoon. Um on Monday we had the WHAM planning meeting and we looked at the schedule and it looks very interesting. Uh I did put a plug in for housing and that was picked up positively and so we might have something where we feature both Laramie and Sheridan since there's commonality in in our two groups. I really wanted to get that on there. And we looked at some of the events. Uh I would remind you that uh we are still needing some uh sponsorship. So if you all have forgotten about that, if you could put it back in your frontal lobe, that would be good. And let's start working on it. Myself included. Um, and then next week I have the region one whim meeting and I'll be meeting with uh Ryan O'Neal in student services at Wiotech and that's Can

I have one thing? Yes. Okay. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you. I was uh recruited by the um LCBA to their membership drive, renewal drive and there's it's a big deal, big teleathon type deal next week and I was recruited to be a captain on there and so now I attended this pow-wow the other day which was pretty fun. Guy has a zoot suit on real good and he does it all across across America and so it's basically to call people that are current members to get them to renew and then maybe upgrade. Okay. Then also maybe try to recruit new members. So then they assigned me that I need to get five more people to do this with me. And so if anybody would like to have fun for three hours with me next, let me see. I haven't focused on this until today when I found out I have to have everything in on Thursday. And I'm like what? on the 21st, Tuesday morning at 8:15 at the Hilton for 3 hours, we're going to have a teleathon. So, if anybody would like to, they give you the list and all that kind of stuff that we we just call people and there's a it tells you what levels are that they're at and what they can get if they upgrade and things like that. So, I volunteered to do it cuz I'm a big believer in the LCBA. So, I'm going to upgrade myself based on what I saw. So, if anybody would like to join me, it'd be fun.

Can we see the times again? Sorry. For 3 hours. Oh, dang it. It's in the morning. Okay. Well, you can do Yeah. Whatever. I'm just That's what we're our session that I get to do. Thank you. I got recruited by Shelly. You understand? I understand. So, okay. Uh so counselors if we can uh do a review of the agenda and then we will be finished. Mayor, um I do have two requested changes to the agenda when you're ready for that. You what?

I have two requests for changes to the agenda when you're ready for that. Well, would you like to put that in now so as we're reviewing?

Absolutely. So, on the consent agenda, um we received um a Delansancy Enterprise um LLC request for a Laramie County retail liquor license to be able to pull an alcohol catering permit for a one-day event at the Mary and Rochelle Gateway Center on May 5th. Um so, we'd like to put that on consent. Um and then I was informed that 11A um is being worked on a little bit more in detail. So they need a little more time to complete that. So they want to remove that one from the agenda.

Okay. So we're removing 11A and all right. And is that it? Yes, mayor. Thank you. Thank you very much, city clerk. So, with those changes in mind, uh, is there any comment on the consent agenda? It's rather simple this time. It's pretty simple. And any comment on the regular? All righty. And tomorrow night's open house, correct? Tomorrow night is here. Oh, it's in the MOC. It It is here. It is here. Oh, yeah.

All right. I had an invite. It says MOC. Yeah, almost tenative though. Oh, there are two that are out. I think Oh, I apologize for the confusion for that. But it should be here. Um, we had talked about maybe having it at the MOC, but we weren't able to get all of the arrangements um done for that. So, I apologize for that um confusion there. And the focus of tomorrow night is the specific purpose excise tax uh to talk about that and uh to help uh inform the public about that. Uh counselor.

Yeah, thanks mayor. I don't know if there it's worth doing a social media post or news blast about that. I don't know if we're the only ones who saw that tenative calendar invite for the MOC, but I don't know if any members of the public would have thought that who would have attended. So, I don't know if it's worth putting some out. The newspaper um announcement did say here. Um and everything else that we've put out says here. It was just that calendar invite that went to management team Amy, Terrell, and you all. So, um no one else has seen that. Awesome. Thanks, city. Appreciate you bringing that up, though. I with my absence last week, we just didn't have the ability to get it all arranged to have it out at the MOC.

All right. councilors. Ryan, thank you. Uh, I appreciate all your good questions and comments tonight. We are adjourned.