City Council - Special Meeting

Right. It is April 14th, 2026. This is a special meeting. City Council of Lewisville, Colorado. Can we get a roll call, please? Council member Fehee here. Council member Coopermanman here. Council member Hefner here. Council member Dickinson here. Mayor Prom Hamilton here.

Council member Kurt just made it here. Hey,

here. I thought that was on. All right. Um, the pro long range plan and trails update is our first um item. get my notes up here. Um, this is on for um discussion direction. Um, and I can go a little bit. The only thing I wanted to say about that is we're here for high level discussion, not line edits of the document. Um, and we can get to more specific issues as we come in. So, staff.

Excellent. Take it away.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh, good evening, mayor, council. Adam Blackmore, director of parks, wreck, and open space. Appreciate some time this evening. Uh, tonight's check-in or special meeting um discussion and direction is intended to provide council with a recap. We met with you in January, went through kind of what we would call phase one of our engagement, outlined what phase two of our next round of engagement uh was going to look like, what we were hoping to accomplish in these four months that have gone by pretty quickly. Um so we're going to give you kind of a debrief and a recap of what that phase has looked like and kind of where we are. Um there's a focus on um what we're calling our goals and our strategies and at the highest level a guiding principle for this 10-year 10 plus year plan that we're working on with our long range plan. Uh we'll also be introducing you um back to the inaugural trails system plan. That is what we're terming it. Um in the charter it is termed the trails master plan. We've moved away from that language and calling it the trails system plan. Um, so both of those items will be covered uh by staff. I'm here with our project manager, Brian Weber, and our marketing and communications specialist, Ginger Cross, as well as our lead consultant from DTJ Design, uh, Keith Wzac. And so, uh, that's the goal tonight is to get through those principles, um, the goals and the strategies. You'll hear the feedback that we've received from every advisory board through multiple meetings um, with those groups, as well as a recap of our second open house that some of you attended. and I appreciated you being there. Um, and then we'll lastly we'll talk about kind of next steps and kind of what you would like to see accomplished um before our our intention is to bring a draft plan back before you in June. Um, and then a potential final adoption for both of the plans uh late July. So that's our timeline we're looking at at the moment. So without further ado, I'll

turn it over for a presentation. and it's kind of going to be a discussion and presentation format tonight um that Keith will be uh leading everybody through and we're here to answer questions as well. So, thank you.

Good evening everyone. Thanks for your time tonight. I know you all are very very busy and I really do appreciate this time. Um this is really, as Adam pointed out, this is really timely for us to to get together. Um we've had a lot of um movement since January. Uh but we're right in the midst of drafting these two plans. And so the reason why this is so important is that we want to make sure that we're heading in the right direction from your point of view as policy makers. Um and then not not forgetting about anything and uh and staying on track. So this is really super important and it's not really a presentation. It's really kind it's truly a work session to be able to talk about uh the guiding principles, the draft guiding principles, the goals for each division and the strategy. So, um, we're not here to necessarily get into words smithing, but we definitely want to make sure that we're on track when it comes to each one of those components within the study process. So, what I'd like to do first is just give you a very, very brief uh project update. Um, touch on some of the additional community engagement findings that we've um experienced in the last couple three months since we last saw you, and then quickly dive into the goals and strategies u going forward. I want to encourage you to certainly engage in the conversation, right? We don't don't don't expect me to kind of go through a whole series of slides and then talk. Interrupt, talk about these things, tell us what's on your mind. We want to record this and we want to make sure that we're staying on track. So, thank you again for your time. So, from a project update standpoint, uh you can see down on the bottom, this is where we are. We are truly in the draft plan stage. We are writing the two plans currently and right above the diamond the the pink diamond if you or square if you see there are four diamonds above right next to a plan adoption process. I

want to point that out because that's our second series of advisory board meetings that we've had in the last two last month and a half. And this is important because each one of the advisory boards that we've met with um has done exactly what you're doing here tonight. They're giving us specific guidance on the guiding principles, the strategies and the goals. It's been really effective um going through this process to touch base with each one of these advisory boards during that particular this particular process. So, I think the biggest thing I would say about that is that all of the boards are highly engaged. They're giving some great feedback. Um, there's a lot of consistency in terms of what we're hearing. Brian, do we have that handout

and print some copies of that? Oh, sorry. Um, I will get this to you, but basically, we put together a simple little matrix table that shows the four advisory board meetings and the key topics on top. And what we're really trying to highlight with this matrix table is what is the messaging that we're hearing? What's the consistent messaging? Where are some of the outlying thoughts from each of the boards? So, it's been really effective. Just real quick, it was in the packet addendum that was sent out this afternoon. So, if you haven't had a chance to see,

so we just put that together just literally today and this morning um to refine it. But basically, if you kind of take a look at that again, as I say, it's really trying to help us understand what are the individual boards saying, where are the consistent messages as we've been talking to each of the boards. So, thanks for putting that in the packet at the last minute. Last thing I'll say is that um um we still have I would say a good solid three to four weeks of drafting the plans. The last advisory board meeting we had was just last week with the open space advisory board. Uh we received a a notification, a letter uh from the open space advisory board highlighting what they were communicating to us last week. Um and it's again super helpful information and so we're digesting that information as well as we go into the draft plan. Um all right, on my laptop I have a different slide presentation, but that's okay. Okay, I'll go with it. Um, just as a reminder, the guide book, the guidebook is the universal approach to both of these plan documents. The long-range plan, uh, the the the pros longrange plan, which is a 10-year document, and the first ever, if you I understand, trail system plan for Lewisville. It's all falls within the the pros guide book. Um, two distinct plans. You'll be reviewing both of those at the same time. Here's something I really want to focus on and I'm I know I touched on this in January, but the last item, the action item down the lower corner is is uh is important. What we want to do is tonight is focus on guiding principles, goals, strategies. The action plans are coming forward in the next few weeks. We're working on those items as we speak with staff, but we're not getting to that level of detail tonight. So the guiding principles are if I can describe it for

you the guiding principles is the vision for the pros department. It includes all of the visions all the functions within the pros department. It's the universal guide guiding principles that drives the entire department. Right? When you get into goals, now we're talking about specifically into divisions, parks, recreation, open space, golf services, and there's a whole series of goals on trails, even though it's part of uh the open space currently. Same with the strategies. As you move down from goals to strategies, you're getting into more and more detail, right? Goals are really intentionally sp meant to be very aspirational, high level. They're not necessarily measurable. And I use the analogy, I I steal this from Mark at the golf uh services. The goal is to win the Super Bowl. The strategies are how to get to win the Super Bowl. You got to hire a coach. You got to have a ball field. You got to have a stadium. You got to have uniforms. All of those things. You're drilling down into that level of strategies. The action items, which we're not going to talk about tonight, are when do you hire that coach? How much are you going to pay that person? Those levels, that level of detail. Okay. So we have a lot to chew on with goals and strategies here this evening. The guiding principles as I say is a vision statement. It's a series of statements. I want to give tons of credit to staff particularly Ginger for developing this particular uh acronym which is the compass the north arrow and aligning the north nth to these guiding principles. Um the question was brought up a couple days ago last week at open space is is this sort of standard procedure when we write these plans. You might see vision statements that look different. Your comprehensive plan that you're just now I think adopting has a vision statement. It doesn't necessarily have a series of guiding principles like this but they they are generally doing the same thing. They're aspirational. They set the

compass and the overall direction. They're not meant to be tactical or strategic per se. They are if somebody picks this document up for the first time, nurture existing assets. Uh optimize connections between people and places. Reinforce commitment to health and wellness. This is a huge component of parks and recreation departments all over the country. Tailor systems for sustainability and resiliency. Honor community resources. Now, I will say that um after uh the feedback we got from OSAP last week, a couple of these descriptors that you see are going to be tweaked slightly based on the input that we're getting and staff is going to we're going to make sure we update that, but we did not have that information when we put this slide deck together. So, Brian, the the nurture existing assets um I think the word was community assets feedback. Oh, sorry. There's a couple items of feedback. Um, two questions. One was how does the north uh encompass new assets that might be added? Um, and the description kind of mentions in there new opportunities, but we wanted to make that a little bit more evident. So, um, proposing nurture and evolve community assets. So the evolution piece speaking to um potential new opportunities. The other thing um that we had heard was about risk management um and disaster response um which we saw as falling under the resilience in the T um but tweaking the description. So rather than just saying long-term resilience of natural and built environments to say um something along the lines of strengthening long-term

resilience through ongoing preparedness for and we could list wildfire, flood, other risks, etc. So um those were the the two things. The other thing that we've heard um was the idea of policy. Um, so could we highlight uh potentially in the letter H about honoring resources that things would be policy aligned? So, um, so like he says, kind of some moving pieces here. Uh, but those are the three items that we've heard. Um, trying to elevate those and make them a little more apparent uh, even at this guiding principle level. So, so when you see the draft plans, you might see these subtle changes to this particular item as well as some of the goals and strategies as well, but that's because we're continually vetting and working with the community members and the boards to refine it before it comes to you. Any thoughts on this what you see here right now? the draft guiding principles.

I was going to make a comment about the end for um nurture. Um that I guess it aligns with the the comment the feedback you're getting from the boards that it doesn't speak much to what might go on in the future except for that second half of the descriptor. Um, so I'm glad to hear that you're gonna edit that to uh to try to account for, you know, what we might do in the future.

Yeah, I appreciate you're wanting to go through and taking questions on each of these, but I think rather move through this and then we'll come back to the ones that I think are are critical that council has because I'm I'm virtually certain that if we go through all of them, you're going to get line edits from all of us. So, we don't want that. Um, and I I appreciate you wanting to do it um this way that I think we can probably make it through and do what you need.

That sounds good to me. Okay. So, let's move forward on community engagement findings. The next couple slides are really an overview of of and you and you've seen this slide before. What I want to draw your attention to is the last item on the right, the second openhouse. So, since January, that event occurred. As I said earlier, we just wrapped up 10 formal advisory board meetings just last week with OSAB, but the last open house number two, some of you all I know that you attended that. Um, I just wanted to point that out to you. Um, just, you know, full disclosure, we did not have the same level of attendance at that openhouse, but I don't think that's relevant on in terms of the quality of information that we gathered at that particular meeting. So that's new in terms of the engagement process. With respect to the openhouse number two, what we the key takeaways went were again it followed the same openhouse uh process two sessions a midday a mid an evening work session multiple stations each division had a station. We focused on the goals and strategies we had some 130 different strategies. It probably was and we did hear from people it was information overload. It was a lot of information. We tried to make it as simple as possible and simply ask people to kind of digest the information and give us some dot preferences, not to try to overly complicate things, but it was a ton of information. No question about it. And so, as I say, we did get some really great feedback from people throughout the entire process. This is just simply showing the t the counting up the dots and what were the five top goals. No particular order except for numeric trails goal number one improve trail connectivity. It received 85 dots. This is not statistically valid. It's just a good clear measure because we had everything out on the table. The second goal was

open space goal which was enhance the open space system to promote ecological benefits and equitable access. 78 votes. Another open space goal number two advance the m and maintain foundation found foundational inventories plans and procedures to support informal uh informed land management decisions. Uh the next one was recreational and senior center uh goal topics support lifelong health, wellness and social connections. And then finally parks received 59 go 59 votes. Goal number three advanced sustainability resiliency initiatives. Just looking at those that diversity of those five those those items right there, we're starting to hit on topics that every one of the divisions are are touching on. So for instance, parks in the bottom, while I've got 59 goals about sustainability and resilience, the recreation insult and recreation facility is all about sustainability and resilience. Open space is about sustainability and resilience as well. Just trying to point out where the dots measured up from the openhouse event. Okay, this is where we're going to get into some questions if you have. Um, I want to focus on what the challenges are on the left. Um, the potential strategies are listed to respond to each of the challenges and that helped inform where we are today in terms of refining the goals and establishing the strategies. So, under parks, what we heard was deferred maintenance, take care of what we have. The second one is that there's a lack of outdoor sports courts, exercise equipments, and multi-purpose fields. Multi-purpose fields, parks um helps and works with recreation division to jointly develop um and program active ball fields. Parks designs and plans and builds them, but recreation manages the

programs, right? So, there's a relationship there. Uh the third one is additional trail connections needed for parks, literally accessing into parks. Uh safety at crossings and intersections near and adjacent to parks, vegetation management for uh uh visibility and fire mitigation. Those are things that we kept hearing over the process for parks. I will skip over the potential strategies because we have other items to to address. So as a result, these are the six goals that were developed for parks. Um first of all, we need to prioritize and take care of these exist existing assets and support highquality user experiences and efficient operations. Uh the second goal is target recreational amenities. recreational amenities on the park side are those active ball fields again right that specifically are addressing addressing community needs. The third goal is advance sustainable sustainability and resilient initiatives on park maintained properties. The fourth goal is cultivate a diverse healthy and adaptable urban forest. There was a lot of discussion about that item being directly related to the goal statement above which is all about sustainability and resiliency. So it's possible that we could see a reorganization there, but this is where we have landed at that at this time. Goal number five is enhance connections between parks and the surrounding neighborhoods and community. Uh and then also six, support funding partnerships to sustain division services. You're going to see that goal number six repeat on every division partnerships funding. It just is a repeating uh um idea. It's throughout the entire document.

So skipping up to recreational and senior c center the senior center the challenges that we have heard over and over is staffing shortages uh present constraints on the operations and the programs. There's a desire for additional teen and senior programs. One of the advisory boards that we touched base with twice was the youth advisory board. extremely engaged in the process. They were super helpful. They have entirely different perspectives than other other advisory boards. Um so they were they were instrumental in helping us understand what their viewpoints are. Um there's a huge demand on the aquatic center and we're exceeding capacity for the population that we have today. uh field conditions just generally those athletic ball fields u the courts we need to constantly maintain and up update those the conditions for those facilities and then finally insufficient sports courts and multi-purpose fields. Your population is leveling out. You've declined slightly. You're starting to shift towards a more aging uh higher age bracket uh community, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to stay that way. And so we have to make sure that we're dealing with all of these aspects universally just because that we're in one point at this at this moment in time with the demographic shifting. These things are all coming into play. So the goals are continue to maintain facilities to support safe and consistent user experiences. Goal number two, support lifelong health, wellness, social connections for all community members. Three, utilize data to make informed and balanced decisions. Four, manage operational capacity to support effective program and facility operations. Five, enhance um enhance facility and operational sustainability, resiliency,

and efficiencies. Six, plan for the long-term future of aquatic infrastructure and programming. There was discussions about is the facility enough to handle the growth and the demand in the future. Is there a need for a new facility? Uh, seven, support funding and partnerships to sustain diverse services. I'm going to move on to Cole Creek Golf Course. The challenges are here. No surprise, I think. Um, there's been a lot of study in this that the clubhouse facility is undersized and antiquated. you did just put a lot of money into that facility and I know the staff over there is ecstatic about that. Um, but it's still undersized in terms of what the potential growth might be for the for the uh golf uh the whole the holistic view of what the golf uh division could sustain over time. A limited engagement for non-golf participants. Soil and drainage issues limit turf quality. This is a constant battle for golf courses everywhere. It's always a maintenance issue. Um the restaurant offerings are are lacking. I know there's a new vendor there and uh the staff is pretty excited about that, but uh there's potential to grow that. And then finally, current operational the current operational model limits flexibility and market retail opportunities. This I believe is about uh diversifying the potential for other retail opportunities at that site, event centers, things like that. So the goal the goals are there's five goals. One, maintain high quality operations and consistently positive consumer experiences. The golf staff are all about the user experience. It's really critically important. It's high to them. But there's also opportunities

to expand potential for events and other opport other needs there. And if that's the case over time, the golf staff are good at what they do, but there's going to be the need for other staff to support those other events down the road. So, there might be some staffing uh implications as well. Goal number two, ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the golf facilities. Again, leading on to that, what are the other potentials, event centers, um other other ancillary opportunities to to bring in additional revenues? Three, invest in the facility and infrastructure improvements to support the course's long-term vision. Four, continue to deliver engaging programming that strengthens the Coal Creek community. And what staff means by the Coal Creek community is not just the golfing community, but the potential other community members that can use that facility over time. And five, support funding partnerships to sustain uh division services. It's a um the golf facility is a enterprise district zone district. it functions differently and staff brought up quite a few times that their operational needs from a retail perspective are different than other retail operations within the city. It just operates in a slightly different way. The enterprise function works pretty well, but maybe procurement doesn't really quite understand that system entirely. And so that's that was brought up. shifting to open space. The challenges are there are diverse perspectives on land management, how we operate and protect land management. Um I think this is worth drilling in a little bit. Um there are folks advocates who believe that the open space needs to be about protect natural resources, conserve open spaces. there are other people in the community that feel like open space is also a recreational opportunity. And so we're constantly

working to make sure that we're striving to recognize both of those perspectives and I would say balance them based on what the community's needs are going forward. So when we say diverse perspectives really that's what it's about. You have the infrastructure in place with article 15 and the land classification system that is being updated. The data is being updated. So we now have new data to understand that land classification system better. But there are really two parts to that land classification system, protect and preserve, but then also visitor experiences from a recreational standpoint. So the land classification system, article 15 acknowledges both of those. The plan needs to acknowledge both of those as well. Um the other challenge is that there's a need for additional mapping and inventories needed. staff just completed a vegetation survey and we've modified the mapping to reflect that that vegetation data which is a really solid move forward. Um but it never stops right next few years there's going to have to be more additional analysis right uh limit policies for undesated social limited policies you literally don't have a policy on social trails and we're trying to stress in the plan you need to develop a policy and it needs to be informed by the data and the policy then needs to establish criteria on how to manage those social trails whether they're on recreational open space lands or they're cutting through a work. We need to help you establish a policy. Uh the other challenge is opportunities to increase educational awareness. You can never have enough educational awareness. You need to use technology to the best of your advantage. You need to use social media. You need to use print. The whole library of opportunities needs to be applied. Uh and then finally, need for permanent dedicated funding sources. You do have funding sources that are

assigned to open space. Um With the new trails plan, we're going to suggest that you identify trails fundings as well so you can move that plan forward. There are five uh goals. One, goal number one, prioritize open space, natural resource management to support environmental stewardship, resource protection, and sustainability practices. Number two, advance and maintain foundational inventories. Foundational inventories. inventory data, science-based data plans and procedures to support informed land manage management decisions. Three, promote environmental stewardship through outreach and education. Four, enhance the open space system to promote ecological benefits and equitable access. And then five, uh support funding and partnerships to sustain division services. Again, I want to remind everybody that we are fine-tuning this language. So, we're not making radical changes to this, but we're trying to make clear what we mean by certain things. So, the word foundational inventories caught our attention on what do we mean by that? We're trying to clean those kinds of things up. And then moving into trails, there's been a lot of community uh support and engagement in the process on the trails component. And there's been a lot of robust discussions about recreational trails on open space lands, shared use path systems within the city, which are basically managed uh by public works for the most part. And there are port portions where there's an interface that happens between those two things. I'll give you a good example. A shared use path, paved path that crosses a road that's adjacent to a park. Currently, park parks is maintaining that shared

use path and the park system. We think there's a little opportunity there to clean up that sort of operational piece. But the conversations over the last few months have helped us to understand that dynamic. So, some of the challenges here are by far and away connect the system whether it's recreational path systems, soft surface trails or the hard surface um multi-use system. Connect the system. The two the second one is safety. Improve safety conditions. Deal with these crossings and underpasses where everybody is using them to get to parks or open spaces or recreational facilities. This is where the interface happens between um parks pros department and the and and public works. Uh a lot of discussion about ebike safety rules and regulations, etiquette and enforcement. This is an area where I don't know that there's many communities across the United States that have figured it out. It's changing all the time. you have motorized uh uh bikes that uh simply don't meet the the law and you and other cities don't have a law that addresses that issue. But there's also enforcement and regulations and and education as well. Um trails, natural resources impacts uh from undesated social trails or recreational trails. And I want to point out that these are not in any particular order. They're all challenges. And finally, there's a lack of uh trail standards. There are six goals, draft goals at this moment in time. Is it okay to keep moving forward? Okay. Uh um number one, improve trail connectivity to better link neighborhoods, local destinations, and the regional trail system beyond the city of Lewisville. Two, established clear and consistent written written

standards. We've substituted the word written with design standards because that's what we're talking about here for trail and trail maintenance protocols. Three, enhance safety for all users across the trail system including the shared path system. Four, protect natural resources and sciencebased data informed uh you know information. So this was brought up by OSAP rightfully so. The word thoughtful seems a little subjective and so we're deleting the word thoughtful and being more specific here. Five, adopt a decision-making framework for undesated trails. We're recommending to say literally what we mean, adopt a social trails policy. And then finally, support funding and partnerships to sustain the system. Okay, this is what we want to do is try to get your feedback on not necessarily the word smithing because we're working on that. We're going to bring the plan to you and you'll have lots of opportunities to to do that. But the big questions are are there are there elements that you know that are missing from what we just reviewed? And I'm happy to go back to slides. Um, is there is there are there missing elements? Are there elements that are just simply confusing that we that you want to tell us to fix? We don't need to solve it here today, but are there things that we just need to clarify and be a little more uh just clear about it? So, I would love to hear from you all at this point. Yeah, let me let me try to put a little bit more structure around that. Um, often the way we we do this is to go um sort of by working by exception. Um, and I think I would you set this up

very nicely. I want to make sure that we're all on the same page. You've provided uh guiding principles. We can go back. I may have you just work through these um and we can talk just to make sure everybody um is comfortable with the the guiding principle. Appreciate having a nice uh um acronym there. Um are folks comfortable with those um thoughts? I see some questions or comments. Yes. No, I mean I think it's it's great. It's catchy. It's like Northstar. I think there's a lot about it that's wonderful. I think at the same time it's nurture, optimize, reinforce, tailor, and honor anything like it has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Um, right. So, I wrote down um existing assets, people, places, health and wellness, sustainability and re uh resilience, community resources. Like those are the bud buzzwords in each section. But I I have no like I think this is great. I actually think like being able to point to this and use this and are we doing these things that aren't necessarily Nth, but they are the things buried inside NTH um that are really important. So I I do look at sort of the second, third, fourth words of each one. And I think it's great. I think it's great work and we need things that are catchy and people see and they notice and they can point to and they like refer back to and so I don't think epiphysic is going to be very good. Um I wouldn't go that way. So I think this is great and and the note I had is when we're talking about stuff, you know, is it covering these five pieces? And if we notice we're we're constantly never addressing number four or number five, maybe that's

an issue, right? And so, are we doing a good job of pointing back to this as we're looking at different things we do over time? And I'm not saying we are or not. I'm saying at over time asking ourselves that question. And I think the last one is maybe the hardest. It's sort of like in which way are we honoring community resources? In which resources are we talking about like in how is that different from nurturing existing assets? like if it's about people, you know, so just kind of thinking how do we I I see multiple times where I feel like the NORT is being called out. Maybe less often I'm seeing obvious moments of H, but but maybe I'm I am conflating or I should be conflating those two. So it was just kind of my only thought on this. I like it a lot. I think it'll be really useful and I hope we use it as a tool for a decade.

Um Council Member Kern,

thank you. Yeah. Um I mean I agree it's it's it's catchy. My concern is that it prioritizes and I don't think that's the priority list and that's that's one of my issues with that people will focus on the N and the O and then everything else will and I'd be curious to see how we implement this so that those are the five priorities not it's in one two three four through five order because it feels like it's in an order and I don't care for that especially given that resilience which doesn't mention this is my overreach reaching thing for the entire document. There is so little conversation about wildfire mitigation. I wanted to ask your point. You had mentioned a couple of times it says um about mitigation for parks. I think it was because there was no selection opportunity for the public to choose mitigation on open space. You only designated that as parks in the in the uh open houses if I'm not mistaken. And so I think it's parks and open space that requires the mitigation to protect all things, people, structures, but that also includes plants, animals, like all of nature is also being preserved from like wildfire, floods, um all of that. And I I unfortunately and I think that that is an exceptionally high priority for this community. and it feels like it's a maybe we mention it in the document instead of a leading you know priority. That's one of my so that was those are my concerns with it. Thank you.

Others comments about the guiding principles. I think it is a good thought in here by the way to take our mind away from the Nortth and look more closely at the substance of the uh because I you know it's the we don't want the tail wagging the dog. Tail's very nice. Uh it's catchy but the dog is more important here I think. Are there so maybe if we can focus as you are u and uh council member Dickinson did are there other comments about these does that mean for those of you who haven't said anything are you comfortable with the thrust of each one of these the rest of you not you'd explain to yeah council

so I guess I sort of have the the same concern although I'll ask it as a question which is it's not clear to me in this part or any of the other parts of the document whether there is a priority like does the does the ordering of the list is it meant to communicate priority or is it is it just a list yeah I mean both this and and the balance of the sections it's a question I had throughout is is whether there's intended to be a priority associated with the numbering or whether it's it's just a list with respect to the goal statements and the numbering that I buck through. Is there a priority to that? Is that

Yeah. Or or this or anything else? I mean, tell us which which aspects are prioritized, which are not. NH is intended to be holistically understood. There's no priority on the screen. Got it.

They all matter. Every time the department looks at a project or initiative or a campaign, they're always going to point back to Nort equally. So there's not a priority. That's why the north works very nicely because it's not a 1 2 3 4 5 in the goals, right? I walk through there and I kind of list talked about 1 2 3 4 5. Recently at the open space advisory board, the conversation was are these prioritized in that order and we all came to the conclusion that we should eliminate the number on the goals because again the goals all the goals matter. So there's not necessarily a priority when it comes to the goals. Now give me give me some leeway here. You really do need to look at the draft plan to understand how the contextually all this comes together. We're just having this conversation at this point. But I truly believe that the goals are also equal, but the strategies and the action plans, that's when the priorities start to occur. So you're not going to have enough money, you're not going to have enough staff, you're not going to have enough time to do all those things. That's where the implementation plan, the chapter called implementation plan, is now going to start prioritizing these things. That's where the the crux happens. So that's why we purposely are not wanting to talk about action plans now because that's another heavy lift discussion.

And so I mean it looks like what we have now includes more action items than the the last draft, but you're saying there's additional action plan content that we haven't yet seen. Exactly. Okay. That's what I was um referring to this particular slide. Oh gosh, wherever I just sorry this one the the action items down below you haven't seen that we're we will be presenting that as part of the draft plan. So we we have a bunch of action items in the in the packet those well what I mean is tonight we're really talking about goals and strategies.

Okay I guess let me just let me just make sure I'm clear. We we have a full draft plan in the packet or the the thing in the packet is short of a full draft plan. Okay.

Yeah. What what's in the packet is the framework. So the goals, strategies, action items just basically in a table format. What they're preparing is when we say full draft plan, the text, the explanation, the background, the context that creates a booklet. Got I don't know how many 100 pages that you know whatever it is ends up being. So this is just the the backbone that that plan's extrapolated from the contents here. But what I will say the action items are in the last week you know up to this packet deadline. So there hasn't been prioritization. There hasn't been refinement of language. this was more just like a first pass to try to capture what the steps would be, actionable items would be. Um, but like he's saying, there's a lot of work to do on those. So, we're a lot of refinements needed. We recognize that. So, we're trying to focus on the higher level. The other thing in terms of the numbers as we are developing this for our own brains where the numbers are helpful is to tie strategies and even action items to the goal. So to say goal one, strategy 1.1, strategy 1.2, strategy 1.3. So we've heard feedback that psychologically our human nature wants to associate number one with the most important. So we can definitely do that. The challenge will be how do we track that information throughout the sub levels? And that open to any and all ideas that you guys have on how to do that. If we take away a number or we take away a letter, we lose some context of how we refer to that. Uh, so that's a challenge we can work through. But the the numbers were intended more for organizational purposes than to try to communicate the number one priority.

That's helpful. Thank you. I I do think that maybe in the final plan a little explanation of that would be a good idea. Just just if I could just real quickly, there are currently seven chapters in the long range plan and there are currently five chapters in the trail system plan. Of course, you haven't seen any of this, right? Staff hasn't seen it. We're writing this as we speak. The first is an introduction. It's context. It's it's putting getting an understanding and it's the demographics, the population, and we just continue to build through it forward. Much like what you saw with the comp plan, right? It isn't until you get to the last chapter of the implementation plan where you see the action items. So, we're excited about presenting this information to you, but we've got some work to do to to keep refining it and and getting staff comments first.

Thank you. Um others? Yes, Council Member Fay. Yeah, I have a question on the priorities. Um, at the open houses there, you had setups of jars that you're supposed to put your little balls in. Um, what and those were priorities and you put the ball in your top priority or whatever. How did that enter into developing this and how do we know what the what the public's high priorities were?

No, thank you for that question. Uh much like that matrix table that you have in front of you that's simply trying to show you what we're hearing from the four advisory boards. The public engagement has five or six different tiers of information gathering. The marble jars were very early on. It's one simple metric.

The statistically valid survey is a major metric that we're using to understand what the community preferences are on all of these things that we're talking about. The dot exercises are another metric, right? Um the list goes on. The pop-up events where we did pop marble jars, all of these things cumulatively are being analyzed and we're putting it into a community engagement summary report to show you how all these different metrics align. Did we hear something at a pop-up event that's unusually different than what we heard at these other five metric points? Right.

Right. I I just a good example, one of the pop-up events out there at Davis and Mason Mesa, the trail head, I a woman came up and she's a resident of Boulder County and she talked about how she's actively involved in the Boulder County ambassador program for trails. Wow.

And so we talked about that and there is no ambassador program for volunteerism in Louisville to raise awareness and talk to people on the trails to monitor things. So that was a touch point that we heard one thing. We didn't hear it anywhere else, right? And so we're embedding that into the concept plan. Think about developing an ambassador program. So it's a cumulative uh effort to take all these data points and then present it back to you to to show you quite quite clearly and with transparency what we've heard. Okay. Thank you. Other comments about guiding principles? Yes. council rail may prom.

Thank you. So I think with the guiding principles, we're certainly headed in the right direction and I like the attempts to make an acronym that we can just easily refer to um in conversations. Um so so I look forward to seeing how this gets fleshed out and what the final wording is that we land on. The one piece of this that I'm struggling with because I'm putting on my hat of like if I were a council member in 3 to 5 years looking at this document, is there any ambiguity that would make it difficult for me to figure out how to apply this to my work and policy? And the one I keep coming back to is the O. I keep stumbling on this one. When I read it at first, it felt like a public works title. And then as I'm going in and looking at the little paragraph underneath, I I I'd like to see this one fleshed out a little bit more um because I'm I'm struggling to think of how I would use this to, you know, in the future. I don't know if anyone else has struggled with this one, but I don't know what strengthen connections means when it applies to these other things. Maybe I'm just dense. No, that we were trying to hit at once kind of tied to trails.

So, we there's a lot of um input and engagement about trail connectivity and connecting both um pro amenities and also different areas of town. So, there was that was the attempt, but what I hear is we could tighten that language to help connect those dots. Yeah. Because I was also thinking of like social connections too, right? Exactly. So, I think really trying to hammer out what we're trying to get at would be

for sure. Yeah, that's great feedback. And that's the type of thing where Keith has said um that a lot of these board meetings have been super helpful is getting that fresh set of eyes on things and asking like when I see that word, I think X, Y, and Z, is that what you mean? And we're like, oh, no, no, no. So that's yeah, that's great feedback for if we have an O, how do we tie that better to the trails plan if that's our intent? Yeah, the other ones make more sense to me. That one I was just struggling with. So Okay, cool. Cool. I look forward to seeing

your point. It is about social connections, too. So the implementation plan, the action matrix table that we've been speaking about, we'll have all of these divisions, all of these goals, all these strategies and action plans. It'll have a series of tables that says high, medium, and low priority. It could be 1 to three years, 3 to six years, 6 to 10 years. It will then have another column that says who's responsible for it. Is it public works? Is it parks? Is it, you know, facilities? And then there might be another column that says, how do we tie it back to this? Does that actionable item, you know, Brian's going to go out there and build a quarter mile of trails, does it relate back to this? and we're going to try to embed the NRTH into that matrix table. So, it's directly assigning those elements into the strategic implementation plan. We haven't vetted that out yet. I'm not guaranteeing that it will be successful, but that's the intent. Um, and a couple of points, um, I mean, it sounds like there's you've heard some fairly significant push back on North. Um, I'm gonna actually give the most push back on that because I think it's just I think it's putting round pegs and square hole or square pegs in round holes. I I think um I appreciate the attempt to do it. I just don't think that it's going to end up being something that uh that's going to be workable. It maybe maybe you will. Maybe you'll surprise me. Um, but I I I find some of these are they're all over the place. Some of the the each of the the topics and I don't know I I think and the the the second point that I had is this reminds me very much of the first discussion we had

about the comp plan vision. We spent an enormous amount of time talking about the vision uh statement. I think that's actually a good thing. I don't know that we needed that much time. But the problem was we really we struggled with some of those value. They're very difficult to get right. I think we did a pretty good job in the end, but it took a bit of time to get those right. They certainly, if I'm remembering correctly, didn't have as much text. I mean, we were able to kind of boil it down. I think the other thing you could think about doing if you if if I don't know whether people agree with me about the the north, uh, but you know, you could put it around in the circle just as easily perhaps to avoid the hierarchical piece because I think that actually is pretty significant. Um, as council member Kern just said, it's uh you don't want these values or principles to be in lexical order, you know, in in order of importance because you're going to end up taking away I mean, I just looked at this and it takes away just the visual takes away from what the point is, which is to say, if I'm understanding it correctly, what are the most important things that are going guide all of the rest of it. What's the the big vision here? And you know, whether you use I don't mean to throw well, I sort of meant to throw cold water on it, but I mean I think really hard about whether you're capturing the real values that we're talking about here. A number of them have been discussed. Um or whether you're missing them. And if you're missing them, get them right and then figure out the

acronym. That would be my suggestion. But that's just um me. But I think you are getting some sense that it's not necessarily in the right order. Yep. Council member,

I apologize. I brought it up first. I just I actually think that's kind of what they did. Like I think our main principles are here and they found an in acronym by using words like nurture, optimize, reinforce. Like what they did is they they they found our five major guiding principles and then they found some letters that would make an acronym. And it isn't the nth that they fit it into. They were they didn't start with north and like god how could we get goals inside north. They had the five goals and they got some sort of random words to get an acronym. Now, if it's in a circle or if it's north star, like I don't really care either way, but I I I think the point is we aren't f that's it could be thorn. We're not focused on the nth. We're focused on the second and third words. And so, I apologize for kind of bringing it up. I I actually think it's catchy. It means something whether it's in a circle or straight line. I think it actually kind of solves the issue we're concerned about. It's like, hey, they're in order. Like, no, they're not. They're clearly just a word. So, there is no hierarchy of importance. They made a word and so they're randomly I I see it as they're randomly assigned and of course if it was Thorn that'd be awesome for you because the T would be first, right? But it's like the point is it's random and so there is no order here. They're just following some letters that make it all a thing and hey Northstar points this is our goal. So actually I think it's very catchy. I like it a lot and I think to your point mayor that north isn't the point. The point is all the stuff we're doing inside of it. So, I I respectfully think they crushed it um in doing what you're asking them to do is are are these our guiding principles and I think they are and I don't I don't have something that's missing from it. Um so I'm I'm I'm happy with it. I just wanted to reinforce that because I'm the one who started the conversation about it. Sorry.

It it sounds well. Yeah. Hope

so. If we remove the north re remove the top sentence the bold sentence and focus on the first sentence in each category which is maintain and invest strengthen the connections foster inclusive programs shape plans and practices and provide highquality services and community benefits. Does that hit the mark? because those those are the core beliefs that we pulled from the community survey and from all of the needs assessment and thing and you know all of the documents that we had those were the core principles that we had pulled from there and you're right Caleb that's what we did is we pulled those core principles and then said how could we make this into a acronym or something to take off the weight of numbers or order or something like that. So those key principles are those first sentences right there. So if you want to look at those and do those meet our department because those met was asked for from the community from our open houses

thoughts. Yeah,

I think that uh the north is a wonderful idea and I think it does get all of the priorities as you said that all of the priorities are there and this is just a way to very clearly and creatively say here you go. Um I don't it's not pointing out one priority over the other and like you said if you go with the first sentence in each one that's what's important in the whole document. So I am good with keeping it the way it is. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yes. Um, you know, I mean, I think it's better to have some short description of the longer description, um, rather than just a longer description. Um, you know, I have some minor quibbles with the north, but I think it's fine. Um, because it's a word, I didn't really feel like it was prioritizing. Um the I think the one thing I would just reiterate was that I felt like in the the top one uh under Nurture um that it wasn't as forward-looking um or as I was hoping or sorry

sorry um since everyone's like getting into the details the the thing for me that I liked about the um the reinforced commitment to health and wellness was actually the statement below And like you said, that was actually the the more important piece, which is the foster inclusive programs. I think emphasizing inclusivity as being a high priority, meaning it's in the top five core principles. I would like to see that be the word that says reinforce our commitment to inclusivity, health, and wellness because it is the the the main that was. So those were the things for me. If there's a key thing in the description, which is where what you pulled, right, let's make sure that is in that bold like that ties to the acronym. So, who is the primary user of this document? Is it all of you in and in moving forward in future years and like looking to what you want to do, what you want to present to the community and to future councils?

Yeah, there's a lot of answers to that question. So, the primary user is going to be future staff who use this as their guide book for what to request from future city councils for how to communicate to future city managers and to how to relay information to future advisory boards. So, it's really meant to be. It's not a like bestlaid plans, right? Like the 2012 plan didn't include a future pandemic, flood, and fire. Um, that, you know, has led a lot of that to be in this still. And so, but yeah, at a holistic upper level, like we invest in this and we appreciate the support of council and city managers to invest in it so that we have a reference point with really good community engagement on where we want to go in the next 10 years. And then in 10 years from now, these youth advisory board members are going to be the adults with children who will be engaged from a different perspective. So that's where we start though is staffguided. Yeah,

that'll be fun when they're in their 30s for them to go back and look at what their comments were when they were 15. That'll be fun. Yeah. They only they only have themselves to blame.

People like, was I planning for my future or my present? Um, so I I think given given the who the the primary user is and that your goal is to just really, you know, provide for the community what they're asking for, I'd say if this allows you guys to best understand or like you think future staff to understand the needs, then stick with it. We're not the people sitting here that are specifically using it. We're going to be listening to all of you. So, make sure that you know that the person the people you're going to be bringing in to take over can follow it the best. And that would be that would be my and that's why like for a lot of this I was like you I mean this is a tremendous amount of work for all of you and I I can't thank you enough. Um I mean this is big work like the comp plan was big. This is equally as big. the level of detail that was in this um was really difficult to even try to read through the course of a weekend. But to be honest, I like pieced it out to get through it. That's how much work you all have um even and this is not even all of it have done. So I just wanted to make sure that this wasn't meant to be like a community document like in its detail that was meant for you to be able to build upon. Right. Okay. Good. Thank you.

Can I just had just one historically the way these plans are written they're very technical and and they're written for that audience right there right internal but there's been a shift to make sure that it's also presented to the community so that it's an it's an educational piece it's something that the community can be inspired by and so we've been shifting away from writing you know 150 200page you know word after word after word table after table to breaking it out into smaller pieces where the trails plan and the longrange plan are actually more magazine style presentation so you can flip through it quickly and go, "Oh, I get it." You know, if you see that page, I get it. And you can flip through the other pages and get it. If you really wanted to go to the implementation chapter, you can do that. If you really wanted to go to the needs assessment, technical reports, and the comm and the community engagement summary, you can go to those documents as well, but we're splitting those all out. So, it's more user friendly for the average person in the community to read it as well. So, it's dual purposes. It's definitely for staff, but it's also for the community. Um, it it sounds as though number one, people are comfortable with the north, and that's good. Um, I threw that in there because I wanted to move the discussion ahead and I'm glad we actually were doing that and it sounds like some of the language on the goals needs to be adjusted a bit. I think there's some really good specific suggestions uh from Mayor Pro Tim, from council member uh Kerna particularly on that. Um, and you can come back uh, you know, with the next draft and I think probably resolve those things. I don't it sounds as though from our discussion there's nothing in here that is um apart from

maybe a little bit more um discussion or mention of um uh resiliency or wildlife or wildfire concerns perhaps that we're missing in this sort of very general initial set of values. Why don't we go on because I think the others will come faster is my sense of it and we're sticking with um you know we've essentially solved part of the problem or part of the the issue because we've dealt with the guard guiding principle. So it's really the goals on each one of these uh sections that I think um we probably ought to focus on. Um I mean to the extent there's a conversation that people want to have we'll get that but we'll do that after afterward.

Um that um if there are uh additional um you know if the challenges need to be kind of clarified that's fine but I think we'll start with the goals and see how we do that. Um, and then after we get those finished, then we'll take public comment about what we've discussed. If we need further clarification, we can do that. Um, so on the draft parks goals, what um, and again, these are not meant to be in order of priority, right? Um, and I, you know, you explained that before and I I think that made perfect sense. Unless somebody has a strong disagreement, I think you got to have something like that in here um to try to tie things together as you've been describing. But how about these? Have they caught any or some of them uh ones that you think shouldn't be in there? or you think there's some that aren't in here that should be in here and then council member Cooper.

Um so I have I I'll tee this up with just a broad comment so I don't have to repeat it in every section and then um something specific to parks. So, as we were going through this tonight, one of the things that came to mind, um, is is smartfalls. Um, and I think we're going to head in that direction based on the high, medium, low timelines you mentioned that'll happen once we clean up and create our final draft. Um, but I think that's a an approach. I would like to see some version of that because I think it'll help hold us all accountable um to this document over the years as it relates specifically to parks. Um I had a question about number three about park maintain properties. Does that include medians as well? Okay. I think somehow calling out medians um in in our draft at some point if it isn't already being planned is a really important thing to consider. Um go ahead.

Yeah, it would also not to interrupt, but it would also so we call it streetscapes. We can say what that means, but it also we forget sometimes that the cemetery is included in that as well, right? So I think that's a good point. Yeah, I think those sorts of of things would be helpful to make sure we spell out clearly. um so we know how they tie into these goals. Okay. Uh Council Member Cooper. Yeah.

Um to actually follow up on my previous comment um I felt like aside from number two, there's not much that speaks again to sort of future facilities um in particular future parks. Um I don't know if we want to put something into one of the goals or one of the strategies around future parks um and particularly looking at equit equitable distribution of parks throughout the community. Um Council Member Hefner and then Council Member Fig.

Yeah, I'll just echo um the mayor prom's comment about moving in the direction of smart goals. I I do think as we get down into the finer grain strategies and action items, we're going to need substantially more detail and in particular detail around priorities, right? Like it's if these are in no particular order, if we're prioritizing existing assets but also developing new assets but also trying to maintain funding for all of that, that's sort of a zero sum. At least as we approach it now, I'm hoping we find our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But we need some framework to well, how do we assess the tradeoff between replacing an existing playground versus building a new one versus building sports fields versus whatever. And if we just have a long list of things that are all equally important, I think it's hard to sort of make those trade-offs and judgment calls about what direction are we trying to head. Council member Fate. Yeah.

My one concern is on number four says cultivate a diverse, healthy, and adaptable urban forest. Um, my concern with that is that this naturally is a high mountain desert and trying to maintain an urban forest in a desert with the lower water amounts that we're going to be getting for the next however many years is going to be challenging and perhaps um foolish. So either eliminate that line or change it to urban uh natural environment.

Yes, council member Dickens. Yeah, I'll just briefly echo and and this will be for similar to mayor prom all the topics of tonight um that that need for an understanding of prioritization um of just it's you know we want all these things and we can't have all these things we certainly can't have all of them all at one time right so there's timing and there's otherwise but um you know as as as I say if you prioritize everything you don't prioritize anything and so I think that's that's fine if that's not today. But I think that's kind of the crux of it is like, yeah, there's a hundred things we want to do, but which ones are we going to do and when and what's that what is that strategic roadmap that gets us to those things? And so h I'm excited for that part of the conversation to come and I think that will be a really tough conversation because not even just competing like we talk about open space versus like affordable housing like how do we use that land? It's like oh no we're going to do both right next to each other just which one do we do first right? So, we're not even talking about competing. We're just talking about like timing and funding. And so, that that it's a really tough topic. And I think I just want to make sure we're not overpromising by saying these are the hundred things we're going to do. We'll get to two of them this year. And I I don't think that's accurate, but but um yeah, I'll stop there. I just think it's really important. Others. Okay. We move to the next one again on uh recreation senior center goals. Um there are ones missing, are there ones that need to be changed, etc. program.

I'll use this section as an example of something maybe we can apply to like all the sections. Um cuz I have specific examples of here of a few um that feel more like strategies rather than goals. Um so the one that really sticks out to me is three. that feels like a strategy that should be implemented consistently across different goals rather than its own separate goal. Um, and I could pick out a few others in this document, but I'll just leave that example there and let you all kind of sort through if there's any other opportunities to extract something for a strategy rather than a goal.

Did you talk to Keith today? Sorry, what' you say? Did you talk to Keith today? No. Are Keith and I vibing right now? Yeah. He literally, to give him some credit, he told me that on the phone earlier today. He said this whole idea about data. He's like, you know, that that goal at the end. He's like that kind of applies to everybody. He's like, we really we should rethink that and think about how that applies to everybody at the strategy level. So there we go. Here we are. Good work, Keith. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Kern. Am I missing in this list of goals the mention about senior services

that's number two the lifelong health and wellness social connection so under that the strategies start to talk about seniors youth etc.

So actually so there is no specific mention of the largest growing population in the city. So, the youth population is declining, the senior population is exploding, and yet it's not one of the seven priorities like as a as a line item list, but we do for the pools. So, I'm just thinking that that seems to be a really high priority for this community and probably should be for our staff that we are not just maintaining but continuing to expand and improve upon. um our senior services as excellent as they are, they can always be even better. And I think we want to make sure that we're planning for the capacity for them as well. Um so I mean I I hearing people make the comments of, you know, oh my gosh, it's so busy, it's so packed, we can't get in, there's no room. Um I just want to make sure that our seniors don't get uh forgotten, displaced, and blended in to everything. I think it should be its own priority.

I wonder, Council Member Kern, I mean, it's a great point. Um, in the strategy section, it it mentions uh sustain and where feasible expand senior. Does that help address that concern? Are you saying it specifically has to be called out in a goal? Yeah, I I think if we're going to say like we want to call out some of these other things that I think I think it should be one of the goals of our community is that like that needs to be a high enough of a priority that it isn't a subset of something that it should be something that we continue to maintain. I did see this in here. It just says I think it was under the strategy too. It says sustain and enhance senior wellness and social programs and then it just says maintain senior programming. Um and so that's why I thought raising it to a higher level of awareness because the next you know 10 20 years in this community that is the the fastest growing consumer. It's the fastest growing population of residents and if we're not planning for that my concern is we will fall behind in in servicing them.

Anyone else? Council member Coopermanman. um to ask one question about number six. Um are we specifically calling out aquatics because of the challenges regarding our our current use of the aquatics infrastructure? Yeah, this was mentioned several times in different community engagement efforts that the aquatic center is is over capacity. We we need to address it. So specifically to that, but there are other aspects of the rec center and senior center that are over also over capacity. The aquatics component tends to be a very costly element. Yeah. Difficult to maintain.

Um it's also in reference you saw in the community survey there's a lot of attention through this process focused on the future of memory square poolool

and aquatics programming demand. I think that goes back to council member Kern's point also about senior programming. It's, you know, one of the primary growth areas for senior programming in demand is aquatics related. So, as we invest in that aquatics infrastructure and programming growth throughout the community, are we keeping in mind what types of programming we're going to do? Um, as well as what kind of infrastructure enhancements we need to do. So, it's called out just again back to Keith's point though, I don't think it's unique to this community that the aquatics facilities get a ton of attention from the community because they're so centric to health and wellness of six months old learning all the way up, you know, through senior age, but the exercise. So, they're really popular with community feedback.

Okay. No, I mean, I'm fine with it being called out. I just wanted to understand a little bit more calling that out versus other aspects of recreation. Um yeah, I mean the only the only other comment I had um again it's sort of similar to a couple previous comments. Um again sort of aside from six there's not there's not a lot in the goals that speak to you know um what sort of other resources we might need in the future. Um um I can piggyback on a couple of points that have been made on six. Um I looked at this and sort of plan for the long-term future of aquatics infrastructure programs. Well, all of this is planning. I'm not sure that necessarily is adds anything. But to to Council Member Coopermanman's point, maybe it's not just aquatics infrastructure and program. Maybe it's other other kinds of um current and and novel or um you know up and cominging whatever the words are. Um it might might be good to include that or to embrace it. The second thing is I um I'm torn about the senior piece of it. I I think um to Mayor Prom's point, I think it's very important to include that in strategies especially, you know, not to not to I mean to have really specific strategies relating to that. I I'm not so sure I want that called out in the goals. And here's why. I think I'm worried that

in mentioning seniors it one place we're you know somebody can look at that and say well this other thing isn't as important to seniors. just simply throwing seniors into one of the goals or whatever doesn't strike me as necessarily uh a good thing because I I think you could you could look at it and you don't want to put it in every single one of them. Um also on the issue of um you know how this how the future looks. I mean, we are in our in our um comp plan really trying to address the issue of younger families. I likewise don't want to put that in here specifically even though probably each one of these touches young families too and there might be a good place to put those in strategies. I think um you know I don't I have problem just I mean I had to have a problem knowing which of these things to mention in terms of seniors because all of them all of them are issues relating to seniors not just you know one or the other. I mean operational sustainability, resilience and efficiency definitely aquatics definitely um you know the the wellness the lifelong wellness spans from as you say 6 months to 90 years. So I don't know I I think it's okay not to me not to call them out. I just worry calling them out is gonna minimize other um others. But other comments? Yes, council member.

It's interesting though because this is um a recreation and senior center. If we had a separate senior center, you call out each one of the other things. The golf course had the line in them. Parks has a line in them. Open space has a line item. Wreck and senior is combined because we have our senior center within our rec center. And I do think it is worth addressing. I think a lot of times it gets pushed to the side in a lot of ways like, oh, it's what you walk past when you're going into the rec center. This is a place for our seniors to go. It's a place for them to, you know, be a part of the community when they're not able to participate in maybe everything else. It's specific to them because they have specific needs. We have an amazing um kid and teen programming and we focus a lot of time and effort. We hear from our seniors, oh we in the winter time we get to use or during school season we get to use the gym for rec for senior things but when school's out all the kids are the priority and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying we want to make certain that we lift this and and our and as a community and as the staff since that's who's using this that they understand this is a wreck and senior center and yet it is a subset of everything where it is not a subset it is its own programming entity within the building that's the only reason mayor that I was wanting that to be called out and I will say in some communities they do have a separate senior center they don't blend Right. So there's it reaches that kind of priority level. Um I think it's uh Highlands Ranch that has a brand new phenomenal senior center. And so it would it gets addressed separately. And I just I don't want us to forget and like make that a lower level of importance when we're when we're focusing on some other new and added things.

We're getting rid of three. So if you can come up with I'm not going to die on this hill. I I think coming up with language that doesn't that's not um redundant of the others is the challenge but we can I'll leave that to others. Um okay. Um why don't we move to the golf course? Can I ask one question quickly on that? Um, if it was more prevalent in the strategies, like throughout the strategies of different goals, do you think that would elevate it enough or you really wanted to have its own goal?

Would it elevate for you as staff enough if it's that way? Because that's where I'd like I'd like to make sure that all of you are feeling that since it's your document primarily. So, wherever that will get the best level of recognition and attention is where I'd like to see that. So, it helps you. Thank you. Council Murphy, are we are you on to golf course or are you back at

I I want to uh add on to this particular topic and emphasize my desire to have the senior center emphasized in its needs, in its development and its expansion because of the increased numbers of seniors that are going to be participating. and the numbers of programs that we could provide for them will just make it more usable and helpful for the seniors. Right. Any other part about the wreck and senior center? Right. Let's move on to the Cole Creek golf course goals.

Mr. May, you mentioned item number three correct as going away. I I think the comment was was that it was more of a strategy that's going to affect everything. Not that we're going to eliminate data as an issue that I don't think that was the point that Mayor Prom was making. And I gathered from the nods around the table that that was something that everybody agreed with as a good general comment. Does that help?

Yes. Okay. Um, right. Cole Creek Golf Course. Yeah, I I guess I'd like to see either a new goal or something in one of the existing goals um that refers back more strongly to the T in the north around sustainability and resilience. Um you know that there are a variety of things that the golf course has done um on on both of those fronts. Um but I'd like to see more in the future along both fronts as well. And yeah, I think that's my main comment.

Others? Yes, Council Member Dickens. Um I don't I think one thing that I feel is missing but I may not have consensus on that um is sort of a this is a city course right which is you know a public city course which is um not unusual but is special um and so some sort of goal of like increasing resident usage I think the percentage I'm trying to remember what the percentage is my my memory has like 25% resident 75% % non-resident usage. Um, and so thinking about like, you know, are there ways to, and this isn't a membership thing, right? It's it's like I'm a resident and I don't go there very I mean that we talked about some of those battles of like I can't get a tea time because I'm not a member. Uh, so as a resident, I go to Indian Peaks. Um, so like a goal of increasing resident utilization of our city golf course, right? Like it's a city of Louisville golf course. our residents should go here first. Um, so I don't mean to muck it up in the debate we're having around memberships. It's it's a separate actual actually a separate issue, but I don't know if there's support from others to that that that is a goal that that we should want that because it it could sort of damage number two, right? like it doesn't have to. You know, you can increase prices on outside and not increase prices on inside and that that might change your utilization numbers without changing finances. But just wondering if there's any interest from council in either including it in one of the five or adding a six goal to simply, you know, increase resident utilization. Okay. Um, I think it's a great call out. Um,

and I I would be supportive of it being a strategy. I think it could fall under a few of these different goals here. Um, I won't sit here and read them. That's where I would would land on this. Um, and then I also want to double click on Council Member Coopermanman's comments regarding the T and North. That was something I was going to mention. Um, it's a very resource intensive, right? Um, uh, resource that we have. Um, and so I I'd love to see some goals around that. This is council member.

I'll just repeat a different version of my earlier comment which is this is another area where we need clear prioritization of tradeoffs. I I think in relatively recent history, we've heard from the golf community both that golf is far too expensive and that we need a a brand new clubhouse facility. And it it is difficult for us to square those. Um right, if we're if we're going to continue to provide bargain golf, we cannot also provide country club level facilities. And I think trying to get down from essentially a wish list to more of a plan uh would be super helpful to me.

Council member Curtain.

Yeah, I'll definitely echo Council Member Hefner's comments. uh that would be much appreciated and it' be helpful for us and and future councils because I think that's a goal that's uh going to take a while to accomplish personally. Um I actually I agree though. I I like um I like Council Member Dickinson's comments about the golf course being more user friendly to our community members. It's a public course. It's sort of not a city course. It's not Lewisville Golf Course. It is Cole Creek and it does work as its own entity. we as taxpayers don't pay for it um unless it's like a super mega pinch. So, it it does provide for itself. So, I think in that respect, but you're right. I And maybe it isn't maybe it's uh something as simple as like if sort of like with the rec center if there's classes like we residents are allowed to register for classes a couple of days before non-residents can. Maybe it should be something similar with the golf course. Uh and I think and as far as using the clubhouse, it would be great. Yeah. if it was more something that everybody felt comfortable going into versus you didn't golf or you're a non-golfer and you feel excluded not even like oh I don't have you know golf shoes on it's more like oh you're not a golfer why are you here so it would be really lovely if it was a place where lots of people went like if I just wanted to do like a chip and putt cuz my shoulders bummed out for a year I would feel just as welcome spending my money and spending an afternoon with other friends because it is my community golf course um versus again like feeling more welcome to do that in other communities golf courses. So yeah, I I absolutely agree and 100% the the tea is absolutely missing. Uh we just recently had an incident and I am so thankful to all of you and and to our golf uh manager for um being safety conscious in a high level drought to ban

smoking on the golf course uh as to hopefully not accidentally ignite a fire that uh could be challenging to put out with reduced water resources. So I think that goes to that that resilient piece and the sustainability. So I appreciate that. Yes,

maybe a little out of turn, but just to I guess notate the discussion about residents use and that kind of thing. It's going to be part of the ongoing discussion with the finance committee as we establish the fees for 2027 philosophies, that kind of thing. Moving forward, we're going to try to be more um transparent and open with kind of where we're at financially. So it goes to one of the goals, but I also think that shorter term, not just the next 10 years moving forward and what's adopted in this document, it's going to be a topic of a conversation for that group and then by default full council. So that topic's coming.

Um I had several points on this. a number of them have been made, so I'm not going to make those again. But I um I I think there is something that really is missing in terms of talking about its relationship with the Lewisville community in particular. I'm not going to tell you how to do that. I think the the council member Dickinson suggested something. I I I'm not quite sure in number four what Cole Creek community means. Whether that's the golfing group, the people who do golf, or whether it is Lewisville, or whether it's people around the course. What was that? What does that mean? Yeah, it's an it's an attempt to do what you all are sort of talking about that is broaden the limited scope that some people have of the facility. Broaden it to think about other ways of using the facility. Be more welcoming to people that are non-golfers. Welcoming because you're a Lewisville resident. It's it's it's somewhat abstract, but it's intended to broaden the perception that it's not just a golf course. It

it may be good then not to just say continue um continue to deliver certain programming because we're talking about expanding kind of it's not I it's not even just programming, it's it's services. It's you know if you're trying to get people to have weddings out there and I'm not saying that that's a good idea, but if you were trying to do that, that's a service um and not a program. And if you're trying to get people to eat out there, different different story. Um but you get the idea. Uh I too have some concerns about sort of financial sustainability. I'm not sure it's just ensuring the long-term financial short-term medium-term and long-term frankly. Um and uh I think the third one um you know it's not just investing it's maintaining those uh those improvements or or the infrastructure that we have. Um you know and I I share the concern about calling out a specific goal. I don't think it does it here, but a specific goal of having a new clubhouse. I think that is a very complicated thing, who pays for that, how big it is, all that kind of stuff, whole different can of worms. I like the way you did it because you're just talking about infrastructure more gently. So, those are my comments. I a lot of really good really good suggestions about the goals I think around the table. Anything else for the good of the order before we move on? Okay. Uh let's go down to open space.

I'm sure there's just zero discussion about this. Am I right? Okay. Let's move on. How about the open space goals thoughts? I mean, you mentioned something which we certainly know to be the case, which is that there are really strong advocates for just about every piece of the for preservation, for maintenance, for the the use, the nonuse of um open space and and it's hard to capture that um in goals. I I appreciate your attempt to do that. Um yes, Mayor Pam. Yeah, I think you know we've received quite a bit of feedback via email um from uh some different folks in the community and I think they bring up some some good points that in my opinion a number of those things fall more into strategy rather than goals. So I think once we get towards talking about strategies, open space is a unique opportunity to reference our charter to make sure that our strategies align with that charter and everything outlined there. So, I think where we stand as far as goals is tonight, I think we're headed in the right direction and I think there might be a little bit more of a meaty conversation around the strategies um where I think a lot of that feedback could be pulled in, but I don't know if anybody feels differently if any of the feedback we got is more goal driven than strategy implementation. I'm open to

hearing that. Council member Cooperman. Um I largely agree with that comment. I think maybe the one exception is goal number one where on the one hand I feel like the first six words is kind of a mouthful. Um and maybe aligning that more closely with the language of the charter um would not only make it clear but would also give us better alignment. current

again. I think um kind of like with the the goal in parks um with sustainability and resilience and I think if we're saying we're prioritizing open space natural resource management a very big component moving forward for the future of this community one of those is m is wildfire mitigation for natural resource management and the reason I think it absolutely has to be an open spaces over and over and over um fire department, office of Boulder County's office of disaster management reinforces to us that that is going to be a critical barrier to help us prevent the next wildfire. Um they are actually now attributing the successful um I guess snuffing out of the fire in North Glenn a couple of weeks ago with the fact that they had just mowed the day before their open space. and they believe if they had not done that they would have had houses lost and then a confilgration fire. And so I think that we absolutely one of the goals of open space must be to help wildfire mitigation wherever we want to tuck it in because if it's not a goal we need to figure out why it's not a goal. Thank you. Other comments, council member Afro,

I would just say this this area in particular needs um I know we're not talking about the action items, but of the action items we've seen, they need I think substantial work and detail from where they are now.

Comments. Um not a couple of comments that I had. I um the term maintenance is kind of used in the first one kind of gets lost I think but it's not in the first one sorry uh sec the second one ma maintaining inventories plans procedures I'm I'm concerned about maintaining infrastructure um maintaining I mean you could use that in a whole bunch of different ways that the infrastructure I mean you could use just maintenance of the land and I think that's kind of missing in here the concept because we've we've talked about it certainly when we've discussed the comp plan we had a lot of discussion about that I think that's something that may be an extra goal uh I I think it should be its own goal personally Um I I'm not quite sure I understand the fourth um whether promoting ecological benefits and equitable access or whether that's the right list. Um, I think each of those is obviously really important, but does it exclude things? Um, or there's the primary ways we're enhancing open space system. Um, you know, I understand those two things. You want to get in there somewhere. I don't know the best way to do it. It just struck me as kind of an odd thing. I don't want to get into the too much of the word smithing, but it just seemed like an an odd list. Yes, go ahead.

So, we had a lot of focus on that one at the last OSAB meeting on goal 4 and there was a general consensus that it was trying to do too much in two different directions. So the um kind of the sentiment was that the acquisition piece was specific enough to be elevated either into its own goal or to at the least be a strategy under goal number one. Um and then that the other two strategies under there were a little more human focused on the kind of passive recreation side. So those two would likely stay together under a kind of a newly worded goal specific to the passive recreation or kind of human component. So um so yeah, we had quite a bit of discussion with OSAB about how to restructure number four. So you're spot on there.

And I'll just add number two to your point, Mir. We agree it's a little bit too wordy and what it's we're really trying to get at is science-based data. just having strong defensible science-based data. Keep it as simple as that. Update that information regularly and use it for decision- making. So, trying to get away from foundational inventories, things like that. Try to say what it's trying to say. It's about the It's about the data, updating the data. So, we're as earlier as is earlier today, I was uh amending that one.

Other comments about any of these? Okay, for right now, I think we'll have other comments in public comment.

I just wanted to say thank you under um trying to remember which one it is. Now, it it's an engagement in education. Um we had some comments, some emails come in. I I love the idea of us enhancing a uh volunteer program. We have so many people who love being able to be involved, not just users. And so I think that creates a phenomenal opportunity for our community. So thanks for that. I know because I know it's a lot of work. Okay. Does is there any other staff comment or consultant comment on that? All right. Um, how about trails, thoughts?

I'll just say right away again today I was kind of editing these and trying to get too more specific, fewer words, more specific. So the number one is about connectivity, the second one is about safety. trying to just get uh and then moving down number two. I know they're not in order, but if we really uh honor what we've been hearing throughout the study, connectivity and safety rose to the top. Balancing recreational trails with natural resources rose to the top as well. What are the tools to be able to do that? Develop trail standards, address social trails. So there is not a prioritization but it's a kind of understanding of logical hierarchy and respecting what we heard from the public. So bottom line is this is the the sequence will look a little different.

Thanks. Um, I I was just actually curious because I was I was hearing some of the early comments too that you guys were making about recreational use trails versus shared use trails. And there was some conversation around like shared use trails or maybe paved or paved end unpaved trails and are we defining them by the surface type, the location? Because I'm also thinking I I have a note here to ask you to send us um a policy list of items that you would like to send to the city measure for the council to review because it sounds like there might be a couple like maybe we want to rethink where we allow bikes or ebikes and there might be a distinction like bikes might be allowed in certain places but not not ebikes. Um it may be that um there are some uh recreational trails that are really pedestrian pro I mean appropriate. maybe they're near the the creek or the Raperian areas and a high-speed vehicle like a bicycle could be very disruptive. And so those are the those are the kind of things I'm curious if you want them to come to us and speeds again. Um and then we're talking about use in the open space. There's an equitable use kind of piece about this and access and I was looking for and it's probably in here and I just didn't see it. So if it is here then that's great but if not um it's like access on the trails for people. A lot of people who have lesser capability like physical abilities are have a hard time using some of the unpaved trails and so they can't get access to these locations or without places to sit in decent intervals. They also reliable places they can't go out because they can't know if they are able to actually go out and enjoy a spot because they can't walk. so far without stopping and I mean that's from breathing issues and heart issues to you know physical limitations

and I think making sure I mean this is such an like a a physically capable community of like athletes in a lot of ways I mean I've had many triathlete neighbors over the years u which has always so impressed me uh but there are also a lot of people who don't have those same abilities and it would be lovely if we make sure and it doesn't ne have to be a goal but if at least could be part of strategy program to make sure that those people um you know are really considered. I mean we've we've been so wonderfully thoughtful saying let's make sure that like neurodeiverse um solutions are in our parks and I think that we need to be looking that when we talk about our trails as well. Um, I think that I think that that's really a smart thing. But again, I I would love to understand better this wreck use versus shared use and surface. Um, if that's part of what the designation is,

but to or you sorry, not to you. Um, many trails plans take different paths. They they might only focus on the recreational trail system in a community. staff elected to address both the commuter hard surface multi-use system as it relates to the recreational trail system. So it kind of complicates things a little bit but in fact it doesn't really complicate it because we're including a matrix table that talks about trail typologies, user experiences, who uses that trail, why do they use that trail, and what do they need to make that user experience better, right? whether it's seating, amenities, uh you know, universal access is oftentimes used as a term, access for all. We're using those terms in the in the draft plan. Um making sure that all users of all capabilities, those who are visually impaired, those who are wheelchair bound, whatever, they still have the right to be able to use that trail system. And so we're trying to explain this whole dynamic of trail types. And then we're trying to make sure it's very clear who's maintaining who's operating what trail type. So public works has a role. Um, you know, parks has a role, open space has a role. So we're we're getting into that level of detail with the trails plan, which is not unusual, but as I say earlier, some communities only want to focus on the recreational soft surface trail system. We're not doing that. We're expanding the scope.

Yeah. I I love that. I I do hear all the time, and I've heard it for the 30 years I've lived here, that people like to be able to get on trails everywhere. So, they want to go from one park to another or from, you know, downtown or to the schools to a park. And so, having things connected instead of like, oh, here's you can ride and walk over here, but you better get in your car and drive if you want to walk like and do something in the other part of town. And same thing with um and I appreciated this in the open space piece that the connectivity with spaces for animals to get from one to the other so that we don't have coyotes like having to run through people's neighborhoods or across roads. There's places for them to get from one little open space where they live into another. And um I I I may have missed that on on the uh open space piece to mention the high priority of that, but um that kind of ties in with the trails is like the consideration of the placement of the trails so that it still facilitates um the the environmental need for for that too. So

other comments? Yes, me too.

Um, one comment and it's to um, echo council member Karn's desire to have some sort of accessibility call out in the goals. I think it could maybe fit really nicely in number three. Um, but I'll I'll leave it to you all to to workshop that. I wanted to ask you what you generally understood to be equitable accessibility. That's a term that comes up over and over and over again and I don't know that there's a shared understanding for that.

Yeah, that's and equitable these days is a very much negotiating actively being negotiated in our society. So I'm I'm I think that needs to be in there, but I want to make sure I kind of understand or we understand that.

So there was a lot of discussion about this at the OSAP meeting, which was really great. And uh one of the takeaways was there is a significant difference between the definition of equal access and equity. So someone might perceive being able to equally access that trail head because there's a curb cut there, right? And so the perception is that everybody has access to it, right? But the equitable issue is that well there are people who are with different disabilities, different capabilities and they need additional features to help make that experience and access equitable to everyone else. And so it's a it's a really interesting conversation and you can get into it pretty deeply to explain it. And I think we do need to in the glossery of terms need to explain the differences, but we'd like to use the word equitable access because it's really starting to define that we're aware of the context around the site, the situation, and we're responding to all people, all needs.

When I personally think of that term, I think of removing barriers, removing hurdles. um which is a different thing than just saying well nobody's being barred from a trail you know everybody can somehow um have minimal access is not equitable necessarily um I'd also expand it I think it's there is there's a social aspect to equity there is a there's sort of a mental health or mental uh um accessibility for people who for example are on the autism spectrum that's important maybe not on trails as much perhaps but uh definitely on parks and I mean we use these terms consistently I don't know whether they have different meanings depending on which part of the report or which part of the which section of goals we're talking about but certainly in parks. Uh that's definitely um you know it's it's just a question of um it also is a question on programming certainly. Um when you're talking about maintaining enhancing equitable programming, it's huge. Um who who exactly is your audience? Who isn't your audience because you never reach them? Um who do you want to be your audience? those kinds of things. I I think all I'm not being um comprehensive. I I just think that will be a term that will be really important and a great um advantage to the community, both to staff and the community um in all of this. Um, one thing before we start

taking public comment, one, I want to make sure we take a break because it's about 8 o'clock. Um, and I want to kind of check in with council um, about where we're at on the things that we're doing, we can get through everything, but also I there was conversation earlier about who the audience is for this. Um, and I want to underscore I think Council Member Kern made the the point, but um, it's great for this to be uh, a document that can be used very much by staff. No question. Um, but it's a it's a document which council is going to need in driving budget decisions and so forth. um you know and to the extent things change there may be good reasons to change the claim but the community this community is not content with reports like this being you know just on uh staff member shelves. They want to know they want to have input. They want to be able particularly on the strategies. I think as we go further that will be that will probably tell the tale. I I think you can count on that. Um, yes, Council Member Hefner.

I just have one final substantive comment, which is it may make sense to consider collapsing that final goal in each category into a catch-all section somewhere because it it looks to be pretty much identical content and just for the sake of brevity, not repeating it across each category.

That's that's a great observation and I'll add one more to it. Um we are have a tendency to under each division to use language like monitor this track this uh fund this partnerships this and I think all of those things are equally applied to every division you're going to monitor you're going to track you're going to raise money you're going to develop partnerships to your point rather than keep repeating these things you might want to sit somewhere else in the implementation chapter and really stress it because it applies to council, take a break here, but um we think we can get through the rest of this tonight comfortably. Okay, we'll do that. After we get back, we'll take public comment on uh this first item. So, why don't we let's come back in about uh say we never make it back in five minutes. So, we just don't. So, let's say let's say get here on the on the early side of 810. How about that? Thanks.

back. Um we are now going to take public comment on some of the things that we've said in the report. Um as we've discussed it, um you have if you'd like to speak uh just fill out a card, hand it to the uh to clerk and she call your name. When she calls your name, go to the podium and uh state your name. And whether you live in Lewisville, you've got three minutes to say your piece. Uh you don't have to use uh three minutes. You can if you u pull your time. You can speak for up to six minutes. Again, you don't have to speak for that length of time. all of the comments that we've gotten and we've gotten some really extensive and uh helpful comments by email are going to be weighted just as the comments that we hear from the podium are. So, um we're looking forward to some great public comment. So, why don't we get going?

First up is Suzanne McKern followed by Tamara CR. Hello everyone. I'm Susan McKern, a Lewisville resident and I'm chair of the open space advisory board and I'm speaking on behalf of the open space advisory board here. We did submit a memo and so I apologize if it's a little repetitive but I wanted to emphasize a couple of points especially. Um first of all uh there was a mention by a couple of council members about the need to include charter language or reference to the charter in the goals and um the guiding principles as well. Um so we suggest that in the um in the N that we include adhering to the city charter's open space management standards. You know, obviously staff and city council is very familiar with the charter language, but you know, given that this is a document that the public is going to be referencing as well, I think it's important to include some detail about that so everyone understands what the charter language says. Um, we would also in number four or I'm sorry, now we're going down from guiding principles to um draft open space goals. There we go. Thank you. So, we would suggest changing the wording on the first item to prioritize open space natural resource management to support established ecological principles, stewardship, resource protection, fire mitigation, and sustainable practices. And council member Kern, this is where we would suggest getting in your concern about fire mitigation being language being included. We felt that this was the best place to incorporate that. And then um this also came up in the council discussion number four. We feel

we felt like these two points as Keith mentioned from our earlier discussion in OSAP that these were two kind of diverging elements. Um so we wanted to have goal number four to focus only on access and not on um natural natural resources per se. So that and we also had a lot of um discussion about the issue of using the word equity. You know equity does mean so many different things to so many different people. So we really proposed leaving that out entirely. It could certainly be something that is discussed in the appendix, but making it a more general statement so that there isn't the confusion about what equity means. And the fact um we had public members talk about, well, you know, if you want access, if you want wheelchair access that you would pave all the trails, but then what would you do for people who have joint issues and need a soft surface trail to enjoy, you know, to be able to use a a trail? So it's a very complicated situation. We certainly recognize that. But we would also like then to create a new number six that talks about strategic acquisitions. Um so that language would be pursue strategic acquisitions that maintain and enhance wildlife habitat and corridors. And again, that goes to your point about making sure that wildlife can can move adequately and provide passive recreation for a growing population while supporting healthy ecosystems. Um, and again, this goes down into strategies. So, draft open space strategies. I guess we're not looking at that right now, but um, we would move strategy 4.1 to the new goal. six, which is what I described above. And we would also like to add a

strategy that would enhance and protect open space water resources. Water is be going to become such a a growing critical area for us that we felt that addressing water resources was really important to include in the plan. And then Keith had also mentioned this in the draft trail system goals that we change thoughtful to researchbased so that we're really I apologize your time's up. All righty. And then approve a council approved policy for managing undesated trails which also came up earlier. Thank you very much.

One thing I'm I'll insert here. Thanks. um is that since we're focusing tonight on goals and um and the the overall we call them kind of the overall vision statements, the guiding principles. There will be more time to talk about the strategies. You're welcome to touch on that if you like, but since we're not addressing it on council right now, um that may be that may have been a little bit of confusion. Um, you're welcome to do it. I don't want to discourage anybody from doing that, but but know that there'll be another chance to have uh public comment on those issues.

Next, next up is Tamar CR, followed by Katherine Smith. Hi, thank you. My name is Tamar CR and um I just asked Tyler who goes to Monarch where my kids go if I could use some of his time because I wanted to pass on not on his behalf but on behalf of my kids a comment about youth. Is that okay if I have extra time? He's willing then that's fine. Thank you. Um yeah thanks. Do you want to say anything about the about the youth? Um

or I was going to speak. I was I'll go first if that's okay and then you please chime in. Um I just wanted to say really quickly that um my kids use the skate park. The skatepark didn't come up directly, but um um my kids go to Monarch as well. And I think that keeping kids interacting in person, having a place to go is like super important these days. And I just noticed that there's new obstacles at the dog park. My granddog loves it, but I think the kids would love to see some new obstacles and some updates at the skate park as well. And then just finally, regarding the um rec center, um I know that it's difficult, not for not for all kids, but they just don't always have money with them. And I always kept a punch pass for my kids to let their friends go in so they don't sneak in because sneaking is bad. We want to teach them not to do that. So, they always use the punch pass. But it would be great if there was just a free pass once in a while for kids to use to get into the rec center, keep them off the streets, especially in the winter time. And I I if you don't if you please go ahead. Uh all I all I really would say is um I think the trails the whole trail network and the sidewalks and bike paths are really important because just like for you know whether it's just trails like walking or if people are like commuting on bike paths with electric bikes or you know bikes or just even walking I think that's just important also just to keep maintained too. Can you state your name and whether you're in Lewisville?

Um, I'm or I'm Tyler Levens and I I live in Louisville. Thank you. Good. Yeah. Are you are you finished? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for caring your time. Yeah. I guess is that okay if combined we have six minutes? You know, I'm I'll make an executive decision and say you're fine.

Okay. Thank you very much. I know. Yeah. Thanks. You know, I really appreciate you sharing your time with me, Tyler. And um I just want I since I have a little bit of extra time, I just wanted to take the time to say thank you to Mayor Lei for taking the time out of your Saturday after going to an open house to come to the CAC open house on smalltown character. It was really appreciated to see you there. And I also wanted to say thank you to Director Blackmore for um taking care of a goose issue immediately. It's just you guys are great and I really appreciate that. Um but um I also finally just to to um to follow up on what Susan McKetan was saying um regarding the strategies I I think I don't want to misstate what you were saying but I felt like she was actually talking about a goal something that's in the strategies which is acquisition that needs to be elevated to the level of a goal. Am I saying that right? So it wasn't really on the strategy. I felt like that was relevant to this conversation. Um, regarding the the plan, um, I would I was, um, listening to the conversation of the guiding principles and I really like the circular way that it was done in the comprehensive plan because first of all, it's good to have consistency throughout our plans and mainly because I feel like the guiding principles miss something really important on open space. I think that there needs to be another level um for adding the charter language into the guiding principles. Open space doesn't seem to fit neatly into those guiding principles. So for that reason, I like the circular one more because it gives you room to add something else on the o using the open space some of the open space charter language. Um, I really encourage you to support um what was in that OSAB memo to incorporate that um into the next um series of changes that you make. Um, specifically, I'd like to see

adding a goal on acquiring priority parcels and creating habitat connections to be one of the goals. And um for trails, I I agree and I heard it said and I saw and I saw the survey, connections are really important, but I also really think that you need to treat the trails and I think um Council Member Kern mentioned this, the trails that are going through open space very differently from the trails that are used for commuting. And I did take the time to read the really um wonderfully put together and summarized um summary of all the of the statistical survey that was done. And you can kind of see that the connections are really important. There really is a big emphasis on how people use open space. When you get down to the question of what do you use the trails for? I mean people use it for spiritual reasons, for meditating, for connection with nature. It's a lot more than just for commuting. So, I really hope that you can separate the different trails. And um I like I saw somebody had written a letter in to say consider using pedestrian only for some open space trails. I'd love that. Um undesated trails are also getting really out of hand around the Warrenburgg Pond area. I really would hope to see some of those um undesated trails closed. Um and um and I just wanted to remind you that um Keith had said something about balancing the recreational aspect with the preserve aspect for open space, but I just wanted to remind you that the charter language specifically says passive recreation. So when we're defining recreation, I hope you can add the word passive recreation. And finally, just regarding the trails, um, for if you're changing trails, building

new trails, I just wanted to ask that you just for preserving reparian um, areas, make sure that no trails just don't go put it in the I think you could put it in the goals or maybe this is down at strategy level, but make sure that trails don't go on both sides of a creek and that they keep a 120 foot buffer and make sure that we don't circle ponds. all the way around. I know we have an island at Warrenberg Pond and a trail that goes all the way around, but it would be much better and we'd probably attract nesting birds if we were able to close and create a buffer on one side. Um, and yeah, that's that's a lot of things, but I really appreciate you taking my comment. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next up is Katherine Smith, followed by Susan Lou. Hi, I'm Katherine Smith. I'm a Lewisville resident and I'm here tonight to talk to you about golfing. I'm kidding. I'm here to talk to you about open space. Um, I support all of the comments that you heard from Susan and I support Tamar's comments. Um, I think I guess I heard tonight that people feel like there's a case to be made that the city charter belongs every place in the plan. Um, but given that it's supposed to be a reference for staff, council, boards, and commissions, I'm arguing for a prominent place, and I'm arguing for the full language of the city charter because anytime you start paraphrasing, you say something similar, but not exactly the same. Um, I just wanted to speak to one comment you made, Keith, and I don't think you meant to be divisive, and I might have misheard. Um, but I wanted to say that I consider myself both a person who wants to protect the land, and I am also a user of the land. And I feel like sometimes we split the community into the people who are the users, who are on the trails, and the people who just want to protect. And I just want to say I'm both. Um, and I think in many ways I'm representative of a meaningful segment of the community. I am in the whole discussion about um equity and inclusion and getting more people on the trails. I am the person with the creaky old joints. Um, and so I am here to say soft surface trails are a good thing, but I'm not

expecting them on 100% of the trails. Um, and a principle that I would like to see reflected in our trail placement is ecology first. And there are national standards that reflect that principle. It's not a radical crazy idea that I came up with. The US Forest Service says when we decide where we're going to put trails, we look to see what the impacts will be on the wildlife, on the habitat, on the ecosystem. And I would like to see us follow a nationally recognized standard. I don't think that's a cuckoo idea. Um I want to echo what Tamar said about the importance of the water habitats, riparian areas and wetlands. Um I have paid attention particularly the last couple of springs and noticed that Cole Creek is 100% dry in spring runoff. Um, and given that 92% of wildlife depends on riparian areas, at some point in their life cycle, that has huge impacts for our wildlife. Um, the um concept that there shouldn't

Okay, that's fine. Um, it would be a courtesy to people who are speaking who can't keep track of the time if you could at least give us a warning so that we have some idea and can prioritize our comments. I apologize the timer isn't working this evening for some reason. Oh, well, if we've known that, I think that I could have brought my phone up. So, communication is key. Thanks all. Next up is Susan L. Susan, you're muted on your end.

Okay.

All right. There. Hi, Susan Lou. Uh, W 2 resident, 35 years. I I want to talk at a high level and and I think you know what what you on council need to understand is okay what's going to be the headline when the press gets a hold of this and I'll tell you what I would like to see the headline be um you know in the moniker north when you talk about nurturing existing assets and then there was some discussion about well you're you're not you you need to add new opportunities in there. Um I think the way it was written is fine. And going back to what I think counselors Hoff Hoffner and Dickinson were alluding to, nurturing existing assets can sometimes be contra contrary to adding new new assets. Okay. So that's a totally different subject and I think the community has told you time and time again that we really care about you taking care of what's existing. There's also not enough emphasis on living within a budget and some fiscal responsibility. and there needs to be clearly stated that future projects and additions need new funding sources. The other thing um I I don't see a lot of is enforcing the current rules and regulations. I could go on and on about all what what I'm talking about, but I'll just use one blatant example, and that's the dogs in Harper Lake all the time.

Um, and finally, um, I agree with what I thought I heard councelor Kern and the mayor saying that there's not enough emphasis on prepping for disaster, especially wildfire. And I'll conclude by saying the average resident who pays the bills for all of this is too busy living their life to show up at these council meetings which go on forever to put up a defense against all these wellorganized interest groups that you guys say represent the community. They don't. The average person hasn't got a clue what you're doing till you present them with, "Oh, well, we can't pay for it all and we need more money." So, try to remember that when you're coming up with these grandiose plans. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Sue. Do we have it? That's it. Okay, great. Um, council, uh, any other thoughts that you'd like to add, comments or responses to other discussions?

Yeah, thanks. Um, I actually really do appreciate uh the comment about fiscal responsibility. We've been talking about that a lot with a lot of different things. We brought up the golf course and let's, you know, throw an aspirational uh, new clubhouse there. And I think, you know, adding new trails and we know how expensive it is um to to try to add trails. It it is important that as we move forward um especially since this is a staff um reference budget is to consider budget maybe first and the goals of what you can achieve within that budget versus here's what we want. You go find the money. Maybe it's here's the money for the year. figure the priorities and then bring them and and talk about that. So, I think um that's a really smart thing. I think uh the idea of adding more taxes and making the cost of living even more expensive in Lewisville um is just very distasteful. So, I think we need to figure out how we do this within our means. Thanks.

Other comments? Yes, Council Member Horn. Yeah, I'll just agree with what was just said and you know, I think my hope for this plan is it does more than just identify the difficult decisions facing the city and that it helps us chart a path toward making the hard decisions and and some guidance on which things to choose versus not choose. It's a good first step to identify that the hard decisions are out there, but for me to for it to be a plan and the way I understand that word, um, it needs to offer some guidance about how to make those decisions. Any other comments? Um, I would just add to that maybe one nuance, which is it would be nice to have some something in the plan that talks about conflict that recognizes that we do have in this community. Um, uh, we have we have folks who have multiple priorities. I appreciated Miss Smith's comments about that that that not every person represents one kind of interest, but we do have folks who emphasize one area over another and it can get challenging. Um, I think a recognition that that's going to happen um is a good thing. I think that's going to feed into the financial decisions and decision making. I think it's important to to recognize not only that we have to live within our means, but we have to balance community sentiment and concerns and equity concerns are ones that are not going to be representative necessarily of people. That's exactly why we have to pay attention to them.

So, um you know, that's not a big issue. Uh but in practical terms, it really is. uh you know, we all got to get along um show each other a little bit of grace in all of this going forward because there's a lot of competing interests and I I think to the point about uh financing and or the finances generally um some kind of indication that you know just because you want to add something doesn't mean you have to uh you don't have to justify it. Uh um and the fact that you do want to add something ought to be um you know there's a bar for that. Um, and it may be you have to look for things that you don't want as much and or you propose that um you get some resources somewhere else and there's not going to be as much thrill about raising taxes and so forth for that. So, I agree with comments that have been made previously, but I wanted to add that. Anything else? Okay. All right. Thank you for um the comments that we have. We'll look forward to the next phase of this. Um I think that the next phase of this will be really interesting talking about strategies because I think that's where the rubber is going to meet the road. Um, and you know, some of what I just said about uh giving each other a little grace and uh potential conflicting priorities and financing challenges are all built into that. So, thank you. U we'll take into account the comments that have been made and

those in. Um the next item, item B is uh discussion direction on the board and commission handbook update. Um and do we have a staff report on this? I think we do.

Thank you, council members. Yes, we do. I'm Sam Fox, deputy city manager, and as the mayor said, we are here to talk about the board and commission handbook update. So, one of the things we've heard from our boards and commissions and our staff is just that importance of doing having clarity and consistency in all of our items. So, tonight we are looking to do some centralizing of the resources and really scope this project with council members. This is the fun night. You get to decide what we're going to look at. The hard nights will come when we bring you all of those things that might have conflicts and we have to make decisions, but we'll work through all of that. So, a little bit of background. We do talk about boards and commission related items pretty regularly. Uh, back in 2023, we had a larger conversation about this. Council had a meeting on this. In 2024, we updated the existing board and commission handbook. And something I want to keep just for awareness on the radar, we're currently sitting at about 100 hours per week of staff time on boards and commissions. So I think that's an important context here for why we do need to have these conversations. It's clear as kind, right? We want to help everyone so that these are efficient and effective and having value adds for us. This is up about seven hours a week from when we did this in 2013 2023, not 2013. Don't have those numbers in front of us. A little bit about who this applies to. So this applies to most of our boards and commissions. We are looking at your advisory and your quasi judicial boards. We are leaving the LRC out of this because they have a separate working agreement with you all. They're a different type of body. We are not talking about council committees. So just those 13 advisory and quasi judicial boards. An idea of why we may need to do this. This is the current schedule just so you can see some of the consistency or inconsistency. We have

overlapping meetings. We have different times of day. And I put a little bit of asterk on I believe this is the current schedule because some of these boards change pretty regularly. So the schedule can be a moving target for these. Some of these boards meet monthly, some every other month, some as needed, some seasonally. So there's some just a lot of different pieces going on here. We're going to talk about four areas where we really need direction tonight. That's supporting document consistency, board and commission role confirmation, which would be a follow-up conversation, additional items for council consideration, which is kind of a fun list of things we're going to ask you whether you'd like us to consider or not. And then how you if you have any thoughts on engagement for this process, we'd like to get those now. So, I'll start with this. We have multiple documents that our boards and commissions look to. We have a handbook, we have rules of procedure, and we have bylaws. We really do try to keep these all consistent with each other, but having multiple documents just creates the opportunity for inconsistency and lack of clarity. It's easy for them to conflict at different times. So, the baseline of this is we would like to roll all of those into one document. That's pretty common among our peers and we'd like to create consistency there. This may require code updates or resolution updates, especially for bylaws. We are not proposing doing anything related to the charter requirements other than working with what's existing there as any adjustments to charter requirements would require a vote. Um, one thing that I do not have clear in the documentation, but I'm going to ask for some forgiveness because I'm too close to this is there are three inconsistencies in particular in these supporting documents that I'd like to get some insight from council on if you're open to having a conversation about them. Um, and those specifically are number of members. This can range from five to eight for boards for our boards and commissions term lengths which is also inconsistent

and alternates. And so I think I'd like to just pause and see if you have any questions or if you need me to repeat those and if you support this rolling together and looking at those three things through this process. Yes. Yeah, I'm curious. Do do any of our boards have term limits and if so, how many and how long? Term limits is actually one of the um other areas that we're going to ask if you want to look at that. I am not aware of any term limits at this point in time. Oh, okay.

But we do have different term lengths. Some boards and commissions it's three years, some it's four years, some vary a little bit more widely. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Is it fair to conclude that people are comfortable with having a single document that governs the boards generally? Yes. Dickson. Yeah, I think in practice consistency is better. concern that I think probably a lot of these things exist for a reason, maybe not a good reason, but um you know that if you try to make everything the same I for instance I think at some point like the culture board was bigger because there's a lot of volunteer volunteer needs right so it's like oh you know a lot of board members and some other like

um board of adjustments like five will do just fine this isn't like a big discussion we just need some experts in the And so I think if it's like, oh, every board has seven. Do you lose some flexibility there? Like, well, we just we can't find seven for this board or seven is not enough to do the work of this board. So, I like the idea of consistency, but I'm concerned. Um, and then sort of same thing with like term, you know, it's like, well,

can we get you to do it for a year? So, like I I think the reason they have one year, three year, fiveyear different term lengths, I'm sure that that came up for some reason over time. So again, I I'm concerned if you say, "Hey, just blank it." Like when you start it's three years and the only exception is when you're like filling someone's term, right? So maybe like you're taking over someone's three-year term, so you only have a year left and that's fine. Yeah, just threeear terms, that's it. And then we struggle to find people that are willing to commit to three years on a board they never been on and then we have vacancies, right? And so okay, would you do it for a year? And so I'm just curious how much of that came about because it was needed. Um, and so what are we going to lose?

I don't feel strongly about it. I think it's more just cautionary that like it's a great idea in principle and then we might we might struggle to to execute um if we're too rigid and so maybe there's goal and then an opportunity for flexibility. I think maybe same thing with alternates. It's like does every board actually need an alternate or or not? Is there I think I think being clear about what that policy is is maybe the point that like clarity of the why. You know, this board is special. It only has five members and this is why because every board has seven members. So, this one's being called out

for only having five or three or nine because of specific just doesn't happen to have that. It it's breaking a rule and so it's nice to have rules because then you have you know what you're doing when you're breaking the rules. Um I think that's most of the thoughts I have on on that. I think it's a good effort. And as far as one document, um I think that makes a lot of sense. Um same issues probably of like y you know I think HPC and you know the need for experts and other boards don't need experts and that kind of thing. So feels like you still have to have some individual stuff and I'm sure you thought of all that.

I agree. Yeah. In the document we'd need to have individual clarity on roles and then some of them might have some unique membership requirements, right? because some of them do need that. I also hear that there might be some reasons for these inconsistencies. So, one of the things we can do is bring back a recommendation around these and highlight the why if we're recommending differences for some of these things. Other comments. Yes, council member. I agree.

Okay. So the next piece we're looking at is is council interested in a conversation to confirm board and commission roles. I think role clarity is something we've heard as an ask from everyone. We've hear it sometimes in your joint meetings or in your workshops. This could be this could look like a follow-up session where we really dive into what the roles of each board and commission are and council says is this accurate or do we need to adjust this for right now? Yes, Council Member Heftner.

Yeah. Um, I have two comments and they're maybe going different directions. One is I recall doing an exercise sort of like this in the notsodistant past and it seems like maybe that that iteration has not resulted in the clarity we hoped for. and and so if we're going to do it again, let's um make sure we we apply any lessons learned from the last go round. And the second piece is I mean I think

as we approach the the role of the various boards and commissions, it's important to me that we're not just sort of inventing a role that there's actual needed work for them to be doing that that benefits staff, that benefits council, that benefits the city in some other way. And if we're essentially just coming up with justifications to have a board, and I'm not saying that's true, um, but I think we should take a hard look at, do we need quite so many boards as we have, especially given the the staff time commitment you just discussed? Or maybe, you know, to your schedule things, should some of them meet less frequently? Is it really we just want their their buy in on budget and work plan? What like what is what is it they're doing that adds value to the city or to our job or to SAS job? If we can't come up with anything, that's probably a bad sign.

Council member K.

Yeah, I think those are u really valid points. We did, you're right, we did talk about this in not too distant past and um and right, it feels like nothing really changed. Um I I would definitely agree that there are some of these boards that probably do not need to meet monthly that some of these things can get consolidated to whether it's an every other month um type of thing. Like I was kind of thinking around Peab and really more accurately working with the staff to provide the information. And so maybe more work for staff to be trying to meet every single month instead of saying, "Oh, okay. We we've got this together and we can, you know, think about what it is we want to work on, what information we're looking from them to gather." Because I always I always think of the advisory boards to council as being that's the the boots on the ground, the eyes and ears that like the seven of us may not have an opportunity to always gather instead of saying I want seven individual residents opinions. I we they probably just come to a meeting if we wanted to just get those seven people to give us their opinion on a topic. I think the point is they're having discussions and looking into things and talking to the community and and more closely having conversations with staff that works on projects and I feel that somehow that isn't present anymore. Um we're we're missing that that there's the outreach piece somehow. Um so I I mean now recently with some of the golf stuff and RAB that was not true. There was a lot of public engagement. Um, but that was good because it helped to kind of inform some of their secondary, you know, goaround decisions and advice that they gave to us and we saw how valuable that was. Um, so I think that's important and I I I noticed in Superior's guidelines, um, one of the things that they particularly comment on and call out is that advisory

board members are to be representing like the the community as a whole in views versus a specialized group, an interest. So, um, if there if somebody is part of like an an activist or, um, group of some sort, that may be part of what we have to take into consideration in the appointment. And even if they get appointed, it's we didn't appoint you to bring that group's view to the advisory board. It's instead we still want you to do more outreach. I think that that's part of it. And I um just one other piece and I think it's on the list but it's maybe also getting I think we tried very hard to do this with open space this last time is um diversity in thought and diversity in perspective um from the board members right so that it actually better represents our community that is not the case where we have like like expert level knowledge needed like BCBOa or something um but I think uh I think making sure that Again, it's I mean, I think um Sulu when she was commenting was like, "Hey, you've got these people with these very specialized interests who they can put it on their calendar and make a time to show up all the time, but 98% of the residents like they're going about their day and maybe that person could once a month or once every other month join a group and give us their opinions of what they're hearing in the neighborhood, in the community, but they can't show up at every meeting. So, let's see if there's a way for us to tap into that a little bit better.

Council member Cooperman.

Um, I'd be happy to have this conversation. I was going to make two suggestions. One would be to have staff give us some indication like what would they what would be useful for them to get out of the board if or if they think the board is useful. Um and then the other one would be well maybe we should ask the board what do what does the board think uh its role or uh should be. Um I think that would be useful input before we had the conversation amongst ourselves. I I have maybe I guess a different perspective on on the rule clarity and expectation setting. Um I think expectation setting I'm not sure I'm I'm not I'm not quite sure what that means in this context. Um

would you like me to respond to that? Yeah, please. Yeah. So I think expectation setting is a great question. For me, it's a little bit of what I've heard tonight. Like, do you expect boards and commissions to represent the whole community? Do you expect them to go out and be talking to people? Yeah. What does that look like? Um, and and I I I'm very clear. We represent the community.

That is our job. It's our job to get the larger community's um understanding of what policy priorities are. So, it's our job to to um to reach out as well. Um I don't absolutely do not look at boards and commissions as being representative nor I mean I think that would be frankly completely contrary to being advisory. I think that the problems, one of the problems we've run into is that you've got people on boards that say they do represent a whole bunch of people and then it's like, okay, and there's tension. I mean, I think we have boards and commissions. This is just my this is just my view. But we have boards and commissions to advise us within the context of the goals that we have set in work plan and other kinds of documents that we have. Doesn't mean they can't bring new ideas and suggestions and that kind of thing. I think we anticipate they're going to do that too. But I I definitely do not want to try to make a border commission a mini council on that particular issue. I think that's very that's part of the problem that we're trying to solve. I mean I I think that's kind of a first question is what not what problem we're trying to solve by having boards of commit but what challenge are we seeking to have more information and why I think also that it's good to have folks who are subject matter experts. I think that's been lovely to have. It's free consulting to be honest. So yes, council member Dickson.

Yeah, I agree entirely and I think you know the process in which they are put on a board kind of you know enforces that or reinforces that that they apply, they're interviewed and they're placed they are not picked by their neighbors as someone who represents them, right? They're they're placed because of their their knowledge or expertise or or their individual viewpoint. So I I support everything you just said. Yes, me promp.

Yeah. I just want to make sure I have clarity about what our intention and goal is tonight with this discussion. I think what I'm hearing is that we do need to discuss this further and our intention is not to solve this tonight. So I'm on board with you know clearly amongst council there's some differing opinions. It would be helpful to staff and the board. So, I would be on board with the third bullet point there that says let's talk about this. Thank you. I feel like that is what I'm hearing. Sorry, council member. I will agree with mayor prom. Perfect.

I mean on I mean it is good I think to kind of raise some of these issues so that you have some direction when we do come to that. Um, I know that there have been issues around work plan and setting agendas and maybe the lengths of meetings. I know that that's been a huge issue in some boards and commissions recently. There have been meetings that have gone how late. Yeah. I mean, that's just that's not consistent with what anybody wants. Um uh and I I really appreciate the attention to trying to get some uniformity in some of this without being as you've heard tonight too rigid because there's something you know some of these boards are have specific ordinance requirements some of them are in the charter um and I would hate to see you know personally I'd hate to see term limits on things like planning planning commission where um you know maybe 30 years on planning commission is enough but you know there's there's a lot of nuance there and it would be good to talk about these things. Does that make sense to people? I mean, it sounds like we have have more discussion, but I I do hear some I mean, we're comfortable with trying to move toward the kind of handbook uh some kind of handbook that we can use that has maybe the least common denominator of the issues that we can agree about as council members currently.

I'd actually also really be interested to understand more on the staff perspective of like how how how this helps them or if it isn't if it's just, you know, like a another task that has to be done. Um, if it's they're doing it because it is something that helps us. So, I I would I'd like to know how how engaged the staff feels like they want to be, need to be, and the community to be, and kind of their perspective on the usefulness of um the the type of people or the interest levels that we have on those um different boards. And and it might be different for each one, right? It might be that um you know there like there's something very specific that we need for sustainability but maybe not for parks or something. So yeah,

I think I can summarize where we are on this topic if that works. So I heard that we are interested in follow-up conversation. We'd like to get that insight from staff and from the board members. Um and I heard that we want to frame some follow-up around our expectations for the boards. You know, some of the things that we've talked about internally just to give you an idea of what this could look like is we could bring to you some expectations that we are looking for every board to spend their this month meeting focusing on budget and give you a recommendation by this time. So, we could set some of those things that we could then give to boards for guidance through that conversation. Okay, I think that's great.

Comfortable everybody thumbs up. Did you have something? Council member F. I'm wondering if there's also a possibility of eliminating or combining some of the boards that we have. Y'all are jumping ahead tonight. Okay, I'll pause.

No worries. We can dive right into other items for consideration. So, a number of these things have come up uh in our conversation already. Um but I'm just going to kind of go through them in the order. There is no particular order here. These are just how things have come up. One of the things we want to talk about is clarifying communications with council. So, does council need to be communicated to via memo? Is this in the form of joint meetings? What does this look like? I think it happens in a variety of ways right now. Are we supportive of adding clarity to that in the handbook?

I mean, I I'll just say what you have on here I think is really important as a whole. Um the only I'll do the ex by exception rule

the the subcommittee and friends of organizations I'm extra sensitive to cuz I want to make sure like if there's a subcommittee it is a subcommittee of the committee members and that friends of organizations do not get special treatment and that their voice is somehow like being elevated by the committee. they are members of the community and their voice as such. So that one I'm I be I want to see where you land on it. The other ones I feel like I appreciate the other ones as a council member having those. So I would imagine someone on a board and commission would like them as well and I leave it to you all to decide based on your experience in other communities and reviewing their information like what's the best way to go about those. Second.

Yeah. Third. Fourth. Can I Can I just pick on a couple that I really want to make sure we have policy confirmation before I explore before before we do that? Can I just

put one little additional piece on subcommittees? I um I'm nervous about subcommittees just generally because I'm thinking that that's going to be additional work for staff and subcommittees can morph into something that we have going right now in one which um I think is you know it's going to have the potential to sort of conflict with something that the committee as a whole would be. Um, one of the things that I think has been a strength of the way we've done the standing committees for council is that we make recommendations. And I think that's, you know, I mean, there's we don't, you know, finance and EDC both don't make decisions. They make recommendations to the bigger group. So, if there's going to be some kind of thing, I hope that you can cabin that. The other thing is it may just be a matter of, you know, they're doing, you know, uh, some kind of like quick hit task force of a couple of people doing things. I just am I'm concerned that those things end up creating even more challenges for staff, for council by splitting up the group because it is an advisory board commission like one So, I think that I would echo the the part of that and I I think these other ones are are really pretty good. Yeah. Council member Kern and then Council Member Hefner.

No, go ahead.

Um, thanks. So, I you kind of brought up something that made me think about this. First of all, I think if we're going to do a separate meeting, these are really good for us to maybe like hammer out so that you have more specificity. Um, I think that makes sense and like for the h for a for a handbook type of thing, but you're saying like the expectation that the boards are making recommendations and I I feel like anymore a lot of our boards come to us, they make a recommendation and I think the most helpful thing every year is always their recommendation on projects, especially the capital improvement things. That's really really useful to find out where those priorities are, right? But I feel like on all the other stuff they make recommendations and if we don't take that recommendation and implement it, it's like we're looked at like why do you even have us? Because you're still helping. I mean, you're still very useful. You know, we even if it's only one out of 10 ideas, you know, it was so great that you still took the time and you engaged and got together and gave us that advice. I want that's the kind of expectation I would love to be able to maybe clarify with our boards and commissions. Um even and this includes planning right planning commission is still you know it's quite judicial but they're supposed to be advisory. They have information or knowledge maybe backgrounds that some of us do or don't have. Um but I still doesn't I don't think it means that we just take what they say and make it so. And I I think we should clarify that expectation for for our boards and commissions. other. Yes, council member.

I agree. I just I want to echo the mayor prom's earlier comment that I think this is a discussion about what we're going to discuss, right? We're trying to not get into the merits. So, I think we should all like I have opinions on a lot of these and if we go through the list and everybody shares an opinion for five or 10 minutes, I think it's going to be a pretty long meeting tonight and and so maybe we could focus on getting the right list and moving on. It's fair enough. Other comments about the list? Did you u I did want to I want to come back to you.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I think for me before staff spends time on these, I want to make sure that council's comfortable talking about these and I hear that council's comfortable talking about all of these at this point in time. I do want to just confirm term limits did come up. Is that something council is comfortable with talking about? Okay. And then I also heard time commitment came up. I know we'll talk about that and meeting length and trying to make sure that we're we're at a ending in a realistic time for everyone to participate.

Did did that include um quickly was that also like the consistency with start times and things like that just from a more of a communitywide engagement process? Okay.

Yeah. I think it's helpful for the community if they know when things are starting that they're not overlapping as much reasonable end times that makes it more predictable for them to participate in. The only question I I would raise about term limits as I think about them is that one and and maybe I don't know maybe some rule clarification is that there are uh at least arguably some boards and commissions that are more equal than others. Um and that is they they have a special place right for for whatever reason expertise uh I mean planning commission is special um clearly open space special you know I mean these are things that um the only thing I worry about a little bit is lumping everything together because I think term limits could be a very more complicated discussion with respect to state planning commission then it would be say with people um just something to think about as you're as we're planning ahead um you know you may I want to leave it comfortable for you to say whoa that seems like it's going to be a policy choice or policy decision maybe we're going to be able to get to it during the meeting that we have with all these other subjects maybe we aren't I just want to give you the freedom to come back to us and say, you know, maybe time out.

We will definitely be coming back to you for those choices. They're your choices. Other comments? Is there one more thing that we can add in? Um it's people who might want to serve on more than one board like right now where we're so short staffed in in help. There might be somebody who is on open space for example that would really love to also help us with parks and on public land. And if that was the case, I think I don't know if we have a policy, so maybe that should be something that we discuss. Great topic. Thank you. Great topic. Yes, council member Faith.

I'm wondering if under this meeting date and time consistency, you're going to uh we're going to discuss not having two boards meeting on the same night at the same time. Certainly. and nothing else but us on Tuesdays. Okay. So, so thank you. This is a big list. Honestly, I wasn't sure you were going to say yes to all of these things. So, you've just upped my project on this a little bit. But what we'll what we'll do is we'll we'll do a little bit of research around what others are doing and we'll come back with some recommendations, but we will certainly be seeking council guidance on these.

We probably should have taken public comment before um Sure. But we ought to take public comment before we close out this. I Yeah, I have another slide. So, it's up to you whenever you Oh, you got one more slide. Do it.

Um, so I just want to touch base on engagement expectations because this is kind of a broad scope project. Certainly, all the staff liaison have been engaged to this point in developing these lists and they will be engaged going forward. We'd like to engage our boards and commissions. um this is a pretty broad scope right now which makes it both important to engage them uh and a little bit of a lift to engage them and educate them. So at this moment we definitely recommend a survey. I'm not exactly sure what that'll look like but I'm going to think through kind of some phasing of this. One of the things that we had talked about is we could pull the chairs or a member of each board and commission together into sort of a working group on some of these topics. um that's an option or we could also attend each of the boards and attend a meeting there. That's a pretty timeintensive approach. Certainly some of these things could be a big impact.

Um I think I would be most in favor of a survey uh to make sure that we encompass everyone who's on the board and their thoughts about this. I I kind of like the survey idea, but if we could include maybe some previous board members, too, like mo more most recent people um who've had experience, that would also be pretty valuable because some people have left a board or a commission, not reserved, and they might have some insight that would help us all. Other thoughts? Yes, Council Kal.

Yeah. Um, I assume the board could decide to have a discussion if they wanted to. Um, so I wouldn't necessarily ask you to go to every board. Um, but I think I would leave it up to the boards to decide if they want to have their own discussion about this as well.

That makes me a little bit nervous. Um just in terms of we know that we have some boards that would probably take us up on that and then it could be um I would just be concerned that they have more weight than the others that just decided to do the survey. And so I think if if we're going to do the survey then we do the survey for everyone. We're going to engage with all the boards and we engage with all the boards. But I need think it needs to be consistent in terms of how we approach them. So there's not one group that's waited more than another group. Council member Kurt,

I also feel that way about the survey. The survey will then weight, if you will, the value of everybody's comment who chooses to versus we have seen this in some of these boards and commissions. Some people's voices heavily outweigh others. And I would not like to see that happen. And I think everyone should get an equal voice and the survey helps facilitate that. Comments about that. Do you have what you need on that particular set of issues?

Yes. So now that I have the scope in mind, I'm going to go revise a project plan to meet this scope. Our goal is to bring you information to adopt by October. Given the broad nature of the scope, depending on how our follow-up conversation goes, we may phase this. We may start with some document consistency and then take a next phase next year, just depending on the conversation going forward. Um, but again, we'll bring a draft to council in October and that is with the intention that you can recruit for the boards of missions with the new information and it goes into effect January one of next year to have as minimal an impact on the existing board members as possible.

Great. Any final comments from council on that? Doesn't seem so. Thank you very much. Nice work. Nice work. All right. Uh we still didn't get public comment, did we? So before we close it out, do we have any public comment? No. All right. We're going to close it out now. Um upcoming agenda items and identification of new ones. April 15, 2026 to July 31st, 2026. I believe the city manager is going to jump in on this one.

Yes, thank you. So, um, included in your, uh, council communication packet is the report that shows the agenda forecast for the next three months. Um, just want to note a couple of items. Um, as we look ahead to, as you know, these things are very um, fluid. So, we have items that move on and off the agenda. And so that is occurring um April 21st, the grant licensed to XL is going to move to a later date. Um when we look ahead to May 5th, we have the playground replacements are likely going to move to a later date as we're working out the contracts. The May 19th meeting, the golf course pond liner is going to need to move because we received one bid that was $100,000 over budget. So we're looking at options to proceed forward um with that. And so um again very fluid. What I really want to focus on as we look ahead is um items that remain to be scheduled. We just have the work session that we'll do on the boards and commissions handbook. But we also have I broke this down by departments of community development, home hardening code update, defensible space, Lewisville economic snapshot, affordable housing fund, and short-term rentals citywide. For public works, we have um we're going to scale back. We're not going to do necessarily a facilities plan. We're going to focus more on an employee office space plan to uh provide to council um what we anticipate in terms of needs of office space. For the police department, city attorney, prosecuting attorney, we have the model traffic code updates and animal regulations. For city attorney, we have the um municipal code update we need to do related to the Colorado Supreme Court decision for um penalty provisions. and then for the city manager's office um communication study session and then

cellular coverage. And so lots of items um and as you can see based upon the agenda we are pretty packed through um at least the end of May we do have some openings as we look into June and July which brings me to the next topic of summer break discussion. So currently our uh when you approved the the calendar for 2026, we had the summer break scheduled for June 22nd to July 4th. So that is highlighted here in pink. Um one of the things I know that there are at least two council members that plan to be out on July 7th. So there's some options. We could expand the summer break from June 22nd to July 10th. So this week would then be um break as well. That would mean that our council meeting would be June 16th and then July 14th. So we would have about a month in between council meetings, which is why we're having the discussion now so we can plan accordingly. Another option is to shift the summer break a week. So it starts u the week of June 29th and then goes through July 10th. And so we would end up having a meeting on June 23rd. You will note in July as it's currently scheduled, you have five meetings between the budget workshop and then the other regular meetings and the two um special meetings. And so if we were to expand the summer break to include July 7th, you would still have four meetings in July. So, at this point, I'm looking for um council direction as to how you would like to address summer break.

Yes, Mayor, I would propose we just expand to July 2nd. What is it? The 22nd through July 10th or whatever. Okay,

agreed. So, does does anyone have any level of concern that we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, the 150th anniversary of the state of Colorado? And we will not have a meeting before that event or like the immediately after. It's going to be because it's going to be a pretty big public event. Staff's going to be very actively involved. So no may I pretend

I mean I'm personally not I think we can acknowledge it and participate. I don't think the meeting from the dis will will change that much. Um and I think to your point of how much work staff is doing in relation to that that's in my view all the more reason to have this gap. maybe gives them a little bit more time. Exactly. Exactly.

Um is there um I have my own selfish reasons for trying to push to um push it back to June 30th which have to do with my own vacation schedule which is not going to be able to begin until July 1st regardless. Um is there any interest or indifference to um options one and two or are people committed to doing um option one?

What I heard was option two was the right to expand it. So, we would be on break from um basically at the after the June 16th meeting, we would not have another meeting until July 14th. Doesn't sound like it. All right, we'll do option two. All right. Thank you. So, we're going to be off from 22. Correct. That's it.

So moved. Second. All in favor? Hi. Hi.