Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you and welcome to the June 17th meeting of the Planning Commission. The time is 632. I call this meeting to order. Will you please rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance. And the secretary please call roll.

Commissioner Lee.

President.

Commissioner Broadus present. Commissioner Booth.

Here.

Commissioner shots here. Commissioner Hemphill here. Vice Chair Druckmann here.

Chair Sawish live from the dais. We have a meet an agenda before us. Are there any changes to the agenda?

No changes.

Can I have a motion?

Motion.

Second, Hemphill. Motion by Vice Chair Dreckman and second by Commissioner Hemphill. Can I get a roll call vote?

Commissioner Lee.

Approved, yes.

Commissioner Broadus.

Yes.

Commissioner Booth.

Yes.

Commissioner Schatz.

Aye.

Commissioner Hemphill.

Yes.

Vice Chair Dreckman? Yes. And Chair Salish?

Yes.

That is unanimous.

That leads us to the meeting minutes of the June 3rd Planning Commission meeting. Can I have a motion? Are there any amendments to? So moved.

Second.

That is Commissioner Broutus as the motion and seconded by Vice Chair Dreckman. Can I get a roll call vote, please?

Commissioner Leaf.

Approve.

Commissioner Broadus.

Yes.

Commissioner Booth.

Yes.

Commissioner Schatz.

Aye.

Commissioner Hampton.

Yes.

Vice Chair Druckmann. Yes. And Chair Sawish.

Yes.

That is unanimous.

Okay, so that leads us to the next item on the agenda. I'm going to pull up the agenda. Just give me a second. Actually, can we scroll down on this one right here? don't have it downloaded i apologize uh this leads us to general business the first item on our agenda is 2026 395 the election of the secretary of the planning commission public point of order please public comment oh yes you are correct i apologize um this leads us to the public comment portion of the meeting are there any individuals that are signed up for public comment i did not have anyone signed up or in the waiting all right thank you for keeping me on my toes um now it leads us to the general business item the first item on our agenda is 2026 395 the election of secretary of the planning commission from my understanding the deputy town attorney has some clarification on some of the roles related to the secretary

Not necessarily related to the roles, but I did get some history on the rationale and reason that a secretary was included in the officers in the November 2025 ordinance revisions. So in talking with town administration, it sounds like The intent was for the secretary role to be for advisory boards primarily only. Town staff does not always attend those meetings. So the intent was for a secretary to be elected through the advisory boards so they could take the minutes for those advisory boards. The intent wasn't for the secretary to apply to the Quanta judicial. That wasn't reflected in the ordinance. So as drafted, all boards and commissions are required to elect a chair, vice chair, and a secretary. There's no roles currently specified in the ordinance on what the duties of the secretary are. I think the intent of town administration was as the bylaws move through and are adopted by the boards and commissions and the advisory boards, the roles of the secretary would primarily be identified in those bylaws.

Okay, so if this body does in fact have rules of order procedure, I know we're one of the, maybe the only one that actually does have that, is that applicable for us or should we still go through the process of electing a secretary?

If we want strict compliance with the code, you should go through with the process to elect a secretary. I will say that in the rules of procedure, there are duties of the secretary that are more appropriate for town staff, namely the publishing of agendas. I don't think there's a formal process to sign resolutions, but publishing the agendas, keeping the minutes, and things of that nature, which are much more appropriate for town staff to ensure records are maintained and the records of the public record of the commission uh is adequately reflected in the minutes so i think it's a long-winded way of saying there's some ambiguity some some gray area here um strict compliance uh with with 3-1-4 of the erie municipal code It says a secretary shall be elected by the board, but it does create some friction or conflict in the structure of the planning commission with the way the rules of procedure are drafted.

okay um and that is my understanding it does create some ambiguity um would you advise that we continue this item until we can have some additional clarification whether or not we should or shouldn't or would you recommend that strict code basis we should elect one tonight

I think you could certainly defer action, continue the action on the election of a secretary. I also think there's not a significant ramification if a secretary isn't elected from the board. Obviously, we wouldn't be in strict compliance with the code, but there are no duties specified in the code on what the secretary's role is.

Okay. Would you recommend table or continue?

I would recommend just to continue.

Okay. Should we do a date CERN or just continue to a date that will be provided in the future?

I'd say continue to a date to be provided in the future. I think one thing I would like to do is, and this hasn't been fleshed out with town council or really with the administration, but I do think that if the intent was to exempt the quasi-judicial bodies from the requirement of having a secretary, it would make sense for a code ordinance to move forward at some point in the near future. So I just need to figure out what the timing would be and talk to the appropriate people to make sure that that can happen.

I totally understand, and I know Commissioner Broaddus had brought that up last time of the additional roles, especially with the signatures and then going through all the rules of procedure. We've had those questions. So is there a motion to continue this item to a future date to be determined?

So moved.

Second. Commissioner Broaddus? Second. Second.

Okay, that was a motion by Commissioner Broadus and seconded by Vice Chair Dreckman. Can I get a roll call vote for the continuation?

Commissioner Lee?

Yes.

Commissioner Broadus? Yes. Commissioner Booth?

Yes.

Commissioner Schatz? Aye. Commissioner Hempel?

Yes.

Vice Chair Dreckman? Yes. Chair Sawish? Yes. That is unanimous.

Okay, so this is going to bring us to the next general business item. 2026 396, the discussion of the annual report to town council, and I am going to relieve the duties of the dice to vice chair direct men while I go around. So just one moment. Okay. Okay, so real quickly, I did have a comment from staff. When you provide comments, can you please talk into the microphone so that it can be heard on the recording? So just heads up on that one. Okay, so the item that we're going over is the annual report to town council. These were based on the changes that were made last time based on the discussion that we had. So the first item that we have on here is the Commission role. I know we had something that was here previously. This is now word for word from the municipal code of our duties for the Planning Commission based on 321B. And then we have the explicit review roles that are really within the items that we have as our purview. I'm not going to go through all those because I know we've reviewed these many times. We understand the UDC. The next item that we had on here was the team. So there was, I believe, an additional individual that we had to add from planning staff. Miss Driscoll, if you could provide that information so we can just make that update. I believe there was a new individual who started on Monday. Sorry, I forgot to add that one on there. We had then the commissioners that are current as well as the former commissioners, because I agree with former Chair Humphill that they should be added in there because a lot of the work that we did do was with them. we also have communication staff as well as the town attorney's office and again town attorney's office uh we had our former deputy town attorney um now we have our new deputy town attorney so um When we were discussing this, there were comments that were provided of having information on there of the actual applications themselves, the actual category of the application, the number of dwelling units, what the vote was, as well as public comment. So Vice Chair Dreckman and myself, we went through the meeting minutes and we identified the time in which this occurred, the application, the either dwelling units, square footage, or number of acres, depending on the application, the vote from this body, as well as then the public comments that occurred during that application hearing.

And real quickly, you'll notice that

There are some situations where there was an SRU and a site plan at the same time, so that's why they're listed both. We then had the UDC amendments. We just had some additionals that were added in for the description, the date at which we did that, as well as the code that was affected. Obviously, with the 526 last to bottom, it was a laundry list of those, so I didn't think we had to note every single one of them. We then had the various other items that we have accomplished. We had the discussion of the Planning Commission roles and responsibilities, overview of town plans. We had the active harbor training, comprehensive plan discussion of Prop 123, recognition of Commissioners Bay and Burns for our rules of order, the Prop 123 fast track discussion. And then we had the orientation, the series of training. We had the elections, as well as the discussion of the annual report to council, which is what we're doing right here. I will say based on the conversation and agenda items tonight, we could add those additional items. We don't have to get this to staff until July 10th. So we do have time. We will have two additional meetings, including this one that aren't listed here. So if we wanted to, we could add those as well. So this was then, Prefacing some of the conversations, some of the previous slides and presentations that were provided to the councils in the past, there was the determination of the roles and responsibilities. And it has always been said, the reason that we wanted to do this was because we're having a large number of the meetings canceled. So what this is doing, and this is my own volition adding this in, so if you all do not agree with this, we can remove it. This is a body collectively making the decision on this presentation, but this is going through by year since 2020. It is understanding the total meetings that were available, the number that were held, the number that were canceled, the amount of average time so that was the start time and then the end time based on the meeting minutes so for uh miss helmer i know you were the one who did a lot of those thank you for putting those in there Understanding then what the shortest amount of time the most amount of time and then utilization you might say what is utilization so typically we we estimate about 2 hours so 638 30 we want to get out of here by 830 with all the business items sometimes there are. a large number of additional items on there. We are getting out at 9.30, 10 perhaps. This is understanding that two meetings per year, they get canceled. That is because, say, last year, January 1st fell on the Wednesday, so that was automatically canceled. There is that understanding also that the holidays, we do typically cancel one meeting or so. So it's understanding of the time that is available to us in the year, 44 hours, 22 meetings times two hours per, how much of that time is actually being used. It's running through and understanding that this is not a situation that is just unique to us or the previous version of this body. This has been going on since 2020, and I didn't purposely go before 2020, 2021 you'll notice that we have 94% utilization and the reason is because That was extensive rounds of UDC updates that were occurring. We had almost every chapter that was updated. We had some meetings where we were there for two different public hearings. We then had a study session item as well as the UDC amendment and updates. So that's why you see a maximum time of four hours and 43 minutes that was a grueling one and i believe uh miss helmer was also in that one so thank you okay um so we'll get back to this in a second so now we get into the goals um We've had in the past talking about the roles and responsibilities. If we turn that into our work plan, that basically funnels down to what are the roles and responsibilities. We know that they are going to require action by the council to either do an ordinance update or we have it added into the bylaws. We had that conversation last time. So a work plan would prioritize that. and have that conversation open for discussion. As well as then we have the bylaws, which I know that based on staff's information that was provided, the administrative office here, so town administration, they're already working on general bylaws for every single board and commission. So there isn't gonna be a large lift in terms of the base and foundation. We'll just be adding in there exactly what it is that we envision for our specific bylaws potentially. And then that work plan are those items that we know are coming. So this is intended to have our time. Again, we have 44 hours in a year. We know that that is the time that is available to us. We also have staff time that is available to us. but they have other competing needs as well. So that work plan will have those items that we already know are coming down the pipeline, UDC amendments, the drafting of the bylaws work plan, the joint study sessions, comp plan amendments, and then the other items that we are potentially going to discuss with the council and board. the discussion that we have here. So that'd be the joint study session with other boards and commissions. One idea that we've had is commissioner-led presentations. So we are presenting topics that may be applicable to this body. Basically, if this is all supposed to be that we're educating the body, we are ourselves knowledgeable and experts in certain areas. And I know that there are a number of individuals here where some of the questions, comments have very much so surprised us and brought a lot to that conversation. So that'd be another topic we can have on here. And then again, the additional roles and responsibilities. So now that is all. I'm going to stop and ask, does anybody have any questions?

on slide four five and six you have july in there um but with us submitting this in like mid-july does it make sense to just capture that as june and call july a wash and then capture july next year

yeah um so there uh and uh former chair humple thank you for using the town's template because the clerk's office is already getting the boards and commissions to standardize all of their presentations and it does indicate july through july essentially so and i believe that is one of the other attachments so let me open that up So this is the draft that the clerk's office has, and you'll notice that it has, well, I guess it's July through June, so I would be fine with moving it to June and then having the next one as July. We can make that adjustment to have it as July. I have no preference on that, amenable to either one of those.

I think June makes sense because that's what the town is hoping for with the template. So I would say June makes sense.

Cool. And no updates are needed then. Perfect. Unless we have updates. Well, it says July. No, I know. Oh, you're going to move it all to the template? Yes. Yeah. So, well, no, I'm saying if we were to add the additional things that we're doing in July as well as June, I'm fine with just doing that. Okay. Okay, I will make that update for June. So do we want to include this meeting and last meeting? Just confirm, we're going to include last meeting and this meeting. We're not going to include the July 1st meeting and we'll have the July 1st meeting recapped in the next round of presentations to the council.

Okay. It also helps if we ultimately approve this presentation at the July meeting, then it's easy-peasy and no more updates.

Yes, I would very much agree.

The other question I had is on your slide seven, the meetings by year. I get where you're coming from with talking about the utilization. My one thought is...

When I was working the meetings, the goal was to be efficient.

So if I see this, it's like if we don't have a two-hour meeting, we're not doing our jobs. But I don't think. It's kind of a weird balance to provide. It's like just working for the sake, or being here for the sake of being here. But again, I understand that we have the time available. So it's just making sure that i don't mind i like this table it's a very nice table um but if you're presenting it i think just making sure that a canceled meeting isn't a bad thing or if we get our work done quickly in my opinion it's it's just efficiency so those are my thoughts on the table

Yeah, that's my one comment is I just think that right-hand column should be stricken because it's not replicable. There's so many assumptions that go into it that, you know, maybe it's replicable, but it's not apparent. So just, you know, I think your point about utilization is made in any number of other ways here, so you don't need that, and that number just I don't think is very meaningful, and I can't replicate it. So I would get rid of it.

Okay. Commissioner Booth or Commissioner Leif, do you have any questions, comments?

So in my consulting business, I deal with utilization. And maybe there's another way to present that in terms of capacity. Um, as opposed to utilization, um, I agree that there's different ways to interpret that, um, both in a negative and a positive way. The positive way is that there's capacity.

Okay, would you. so what's what's been proposed is to strike that column would you want an alternative instead of striking it or would you prefer just striking it well maybe as an alternative listing hours used versus hours available or something like that and i think verbally the presentation can

address the fact that there's two ways to look at it, either being extremely efficient at the same time as having extra capacity available.

Kenley, I have no trouble keeping it there. I mean, it shows really how much information comes before us, and it matches with the other slides, so I'm fine with keeping it. if that made sense what I meant by matching. What I mean is it's showing how much work comes for us. We've already given the details of what the work is and agreed about capacity.

So do we want to change that to capacity or strike that column entirely? I'm indifferent and it's not my decision, it's our decision, so.

I can see both sides of that. Sorry. I can see both sides of that too. And I think it can also be down to how it's presented. The information is presented. You can definitely explain it both ways, efficiency and capacity. My, but I did have a question on that side specifically. Were you able to get that all from town staff or did you come up with all of that to yourself, Andrew?

As former Chair Humphill said, the easiest way to get the information was from the meeting minutes. So our meeting minutes have the start time, end time, and I just rolled through each one by year. Somebody wants to check my numbers, please feel free to do so.

You made a pivot table. It's easy to check.

Any other comments, questions, adjustments?

I think my only other comment was I liked the layout of the presentation. I think it was good adding some of those recommended changes, looking at each of the applications and adding units. So I thought it looked nice. It was a good presentation.

Any other questions, comments? Commissioner Leif?

I'm fine with leaving it in.

Okay, so I'm doing this recap because I'm going to rewatch the recording to know what we decided. So Ms. Driscoll, if you could provide me the information for the planning staff section.

It's in your inbox.

Thank you. We will change the headings on these that have the time period review. It will be September 2025 to June 2026. We will add in the June items largely into this item right here. So we'll just be adding these couple items to this section right here. And then we will change utilization to capacity. Are there any other changes?

I'm just thinking about capacity. It's almost the opposite of capacity, isn't it? I think utilization is fine because it shows the time that we've used.

I, yeah. Please, go ahead.

It's fine as utilization. I still don't think it's replicable, but I appear to be the minority.

Well, I think maybe since we're not all on the same page, removing it might be, because unless someone feels very strongly that it's in, I think it is more representative of the whole board that we remove it, unless someone disagrees with it.

Yeah, I'd agree, because with the fun part about averages, if we had three five-hour meetings and canceled a bunch of them, other meetings we'd still end up with a high utilization so it you can get skewed results i think like your four four hour four and three quarter hour meeting i think really did some work on bumping that utilization that entire 2021 year when we did the udc updates that changed the average for all these years so yes i totally understand what you're saying so i think just removing it and keeping all the other columns i'm fine either way

Okay, so in agreement, we'll strike that utilization column?

Sure.

Yep. Okay. Any other changes that need to be made? Okay, so then that means on the July 1st meeting, we'll have this so that we can, as Commissioner Humphill said, just so it's easy and clean, we'll have this as an agenda item so that we can make that approval. Is everybody in agreement on that? Any objections?

No objections. And if you want to send me your spreadsheet, I'm happy to check your numbers. I definitely will. Thank you.

I am not offering to do that.

I just want to thank the chair and vice chair for the work.

it was uh it was definitely the former chair and vice chair so thank you as it was easy to to work off of so thank you for getting it to that template now i will say with the template that was provided it's generally what we have having seen many of these in the past They're basically all over the place, different templates throughout, different colors. Somehow they're all really unique and descriptive of that body that does it. But it's very similar in the nature of what we already do for our item. And you'll notice it has a work plan on there. We don't have a work plan. We'll be coming up with a work plan. And then again, highlights and stuff like that. So I think for the most part, we are following the template. We don't really have a going forward. We're not one of the boards and commissions where, yet, we're not one of those yet.

We're not one of the boards and commissions where they're coming up with the items on their own of what they're doing.

And OSTAB sustainability, I'm sure you both are well aware of that, trying to figure out what's next. So I think that we'll eventually have a going forward, but we don't right now. We'll have to figure out that work plan so we can understand going forward, but okay.

sounds good you could add the udc update and some of those larger projects that will be coming to you all for consideration um yes if uh i should have asked the staff have any recommendations i didn't mean to you know jump in there no please

I did note on here for the items anticipated to be included for that work plan where we have the UDC updates, alignment with the comp plan, the administrative review process, as well as the other items we know you haven't yet proposed but will be proposing. So I did.

Well, I would say the spirit of the template, I think you've captured it, so.

That was my thought too, but any objections, concerns? Do we think we're along the right path and we should make the updates? And again, I'm going to watch the recording to go through what the updates are. Anything else that we should note or are we fine for the July 1st meeting to bring this back forward for approval?

That's good. Agreed.

Commissioner Leif, Commissioner Booth, any last comments, questions, concerns?

Looks good.

Looks good.

Okay, thank you. Okay, so this leads us to the, no, can you do the next item since I'm out of the time? Thank you.

okay um this leads us to the next item on our agenda which is 2026-397 intro to erie town hall 101 and or chair so how much would you like to proceed with your presentation

yes uh chair saw the planning commission for the time okay so we are going to be going into um we're going to be going into a joint study session with the council in the future we're going to have a conversation about roles and responsibilities amongst ourselves as i had mentioned last time i know that there are a lot of items that are occurring within the town that we may not know about This ranges all the various departments, and this is to get us aligned just to understand what is occurring in all these. I will be your pilot for this flight. We're going to be at 30,000 feet, so if you have any questions related to any of these, let me know. I do not plan on going through every single one of these in detail because there is a lot of information. There are a lot of links, so if you want to, after the meeting or many weeks, months down the road, review any of this, feel free to do so. And let's go. So we're going to run through this. We're going to start with the organization as a whole. We're going to understand the actual organizational chart where we fit in there, the town council, who is the elected body, the town departments throughout, other boards and commissions, the Home Rule Charter, Municipal Code, and the UDC within the Municipal Code, some of the various strategic plans, budgets, financials, capital improvement plan and fund, and then our commission duties and authorities. And please, if anybody has any questions, Any comments about anything that may be incorrect, specifically for staff, please feel, or anything to add, please feel free to chime in.

This is a interactive period, so this is not like public comment.

Let me see if I can.

I don't know if I can do this. Yes, I can.

So when we look at that organizational chart, we are a form within the states where it is a council town manager form of government, home rule municipality. So we have a town manager and then we have had Two deputy town managers. There are various departments that are placed under each of them and there are rotations that will occur every year or period of time so that each of them are able to understand what is going on in each department. Obviously we have a vacancy currently for one of those deputy town manager positions and our interim is filling in with our current deputy town manager. might ask where do we sit as the planning commission we are an arm of the town council so we are an advisory recommending body just like the other boards and commissions i'll go through in a moment so we are there for the specific purpose of either legislative or in our case quasi-judicial matters With the town council, they have purview specifically to the municipal prosecutor, the municipal court judge, as well as the town attorney and recently, or should I say the town manager, and recently now the town attorney's office, which Mr. Schaefer is part of and I hear are building out additional individuals. So it's very cool to hear. So the responsibilities of the town council, obviously these are the elected officials. They are the ones who provide the vision for the town. They are the end for all things within the town. All decisions must go through them.

all appropriations, legislative, quasi-judicial, up the board.

They also sit as the urban renewal authority, codes, code adoptions, resolutions, you name it. I'm sure we all know what the council does. They also have these various boards and commissions that they are liaisons for. There are a laundry list of these over here, in addition to then the town boards and commissions, which I know we're familiar with being one of them. They have a legislative agenda. I know this is something that for those who had to just recently reapply or for our newest members who applied, there were items on there, the work plan and so on. The legislative agenda was created in 2023, I believe, where it was items that were were being discussed at the state capitol and how we wanted to have those affect our community as well as those that we really wanted to have as either supporting in nature or trying to be an opponent too So this is basically the vision in terms of any of those items that we might look at that occur at the State House, even federally. Those are the ones that we are basically going to advocate for, including with the Colorado Municipal League, who has a lobbyist portion that advocates for municipalities. I think it's like 260 plus municipalities. Town Council also has the work plan so this is the most recent version this is also something that we are supposed to be aware of so this is really the priorities and goals that are outlined by them and staff is continuously working on goes through every department and these are the main items there's obviously the day to day items and some others that are mingled in here but these are the large items throughout. We have the town departments. I'm not gonna go through everybody, but here's pictures of them. We then have the various town departments, town administration, day-to-day operations, the town clerk responsible for the meetings, communications of boards and commissions, elections, liquor licensing permits, the municipal court, violations of the municipal code. We do have a primary municipal judge, who is appointed by the council. We then also have assistant judges. Those are the ones to fill in in case there has to be a PTO request out of office, something like that, where they do need to fill in. And then, of course, we have the town attorney's office. So this is all legal matters for all departments. They are the ones who handle everything legally for the town. Just wrote a little too much. We have the environmental services, so this includes sustainability, oil and gas regulations, waste reduction, community engagement. Adam, the man behind the curtain right now, who is helping us with the VA, he is part of the communications team. Thank you, Adam. Human resources, we all know what human resources does. And then IT, human resources and IT, they are probably the backbone for the organization since they are the ones who are handling all the personnel as well as all the technology that we all love. We also have the finance department made up of the accounting, budgeting, grants, utility billing. So that water bill that you have that you pay every single month, or hopefully you pay every single month, that is handled by the utility billing department of the finance team. We'll get into more of what they do later. Police, we all know what they do, led by Chief Mathis. We have economic development led by Julian Jackwind, and then we have a number of different initiatives that I'm sure all of us are aware of. And then we start getting into some of the larger departments. We have Parks and Rec. There are four different divisions within. So everything from the ECC, the various park facilities, the actual mowing of our mowing maintenance and upkeep of our facilities are all organized through here. The recreation, so even the personnel within the facilities are organized through Parks and Rec. It is, I believe, the largest department that we do have. then that's followed up by utilities and in a moment uh public works so utilities this is uh the um we have the water storm drainage and wastewater so they operate the water reclamation facility the Lynn Morgan water treatment facility. Then they also have the meters. So those meters on our water that we have out front that they collect now digitally, they're all taken care of here. So they all work together in nature, but they have a lot of personnel for obvious reasons. And then public works, street maintenance, transportation, mobility, facilities, engineering. It used to be that engineering was part of planning and development, but that shifted over, I believe, two or three years ago. In their eyes, it just made more sense since they were working with public works more than they were generally with the planning team. And then we have the newest transportation mobility division on there. where obviously we had that TMP that came through a couple of years ago with the comprehensive plan. And then we have the planning development. We obviously have the planning division, which we work with every other Wednesday. Annexation, zoning, plats, UDC items. We have then the building division, permits, inspections, up the board. And then operations division, which is the administrative side, which is, I believe, a new division within the planning departments or newly categorized division. new-ish so i believe that's also uh encompassing of the um affordable housing uh no former no affordable housing got it's in planning gotcha okay so any any questions so far i know i'm going fast any questions okay So we have the various boards and commissions. I'm not going to go through every one of them. ADAB, Airport Economic Development Advisory Board, the Board of Adjustments, Board of Appeals, they have met three times for one set of hearings in the past, I think, six years. So they are, if you watch the movie, uh santa claus you know elf the ones who fly out whenever they're needed they're basically the ones who will fly out when there is an emergency situation of a variance where somebody's appealing decision that was made. They don't get enough credit because they never meet, but they are there as needed for the town's needs. Historic Preservation Advisory Board. So these are the historic structures, documents, artifacts within town, HPAB. We have the Open Space Trails Advisory Board. I'm gonna actually let it to Commissioner Broadus. What exactly does OSTAB do?

they make recommendations for open space to be purchased and the use of the open space TNAC the trails natural area and community character fund they review all development referrals housing referrals to make sure open space is accounted for safe passage to schools things like that thank you

Planning Commissioner, I'm not gonna go through that, because we all know. Hopefully. Yes, hopefully. The Sustainability Advisory Board, so I'm gonna go to Commissioner Hemphill, a former advisory board member, so if you could explain what exactly they do.

Sustainability, it's mainly, they work a lot with staff and kind of progress and come up with more innovative ideas on sustainable practices that the town can try to implement with electric vehicles was a big topic when i was on there just talking about chargers and that sort of thing i also work with the tree board put on a great party in the spring is it arbor day or earth day i call it earth day arbor day but the tree board would have something to say about that they would call it

so which is then uh the tree board so we are a tree city designated municipality so one of the caveats with that is we have to have an advisory panel or individual on staff who accommodate staff for recertification as well as they have to hold an arbor day every single year so they are that body they put on bunch of different events as well there are tree walks that they are doing with the town forester as well we also have the urban renewal authority we sometimes see items related to the uras we recently saw one i believe last year related to the pd for i-25 gateway which was a ura property yes i know it's town owned but it's your property The body that facilitates the URA as the Urban Renewal Authority is the council plus four individuals, one from the school districts, which is represented by St. Vrain. We have a mayor appointment. We also have an individual that is from one of the metro districts, and we have one from Weld County.

so it is a 11 body panel yes please you mentioned that the planning commission or this is in your role on the council had seen something we uh we saw were you on there it was last year with the i-25 gateway correct yeah so it came it was on our agenda but it actually just got removed from our agenda because it was like

Yeah, I'm wondering the role that the Planning Commission has.

It was a statutory requirement that the Planning Commission certify that the I-25 Gateway URA complies with the comp plan and .

The plan or the URA as?

The URA as outlined. A charter, OK. Yeah.

So it was the- Is that coming back because it got withdrawn?

I think you're confusing the zoning, which did get withdrawn. Okay. So, yeah, that one.

Yeah, I guess Julian came in.

Julian came in presenting.

Yeah, it was to form the URA for I-25 Gateway. Yes. Yeah.

All right, so.

One question on the URA.

Please. Are the four people, like, does it have to be the St. Brain representative or Weld County representative?

It is by statute who is required to serve. It is, you have one that has to be from, so three of the four have to be from the various taxing districts within the municipality. There is an agreement between St. Vrain and Boulder Valley School District where St. Vrain will take the individual for that seat. And then we have one of the Weld County Commissioners. We have, it has to be another taxing district, so we have Ashraf Shaikh. who is on the Metro District, I believe in one of the, sorry, he's the mayoral appointment. The other one is, I'm blanking on his name. It'll come to me. I'll be five slides later and I'll remember it. But yeah, the other individual is on one of the Metro District Boards. So that's one of the taxing districts within the area.

Would something like Mountain View Fire have an option to be on the URA since they're a taxing district?

They could potentially facilitate that. It is a statutory requirement for URA that it has to be a school board, one of the counties, and then you have that other one. So, yeah.

Thank you.

okay um we are as of november of 2023 we are a home rule municipality um i am not going to say what the home rule charter is i'm going to leave that to our two former charter commissioners to let us know what exactly a charter is and why it's important

The charter is the guiding document of the town. So it's kind of the guardrails of how the town is run and managed. One of the comments that we got early in the charter from Weagle kind of as a joke is the ideal charter is saying we are the town of Erie, we are a home-run municipality, and that's the only thing it says. So you can, when we were writing it, we wanted to make it not too strict, but we wanted to put the guardrails on to, as what we thought would be best for the town to last the life of the town for hundreds of years was the goal.

almost like a constitution if you will it's a prevailing document that talks about it but we definitely did not want to make it too specific because it's a living document to change it you have to go through another commission and so it's hard to change well it's just a vote to change Yeah, that's true. You're right. There was something, though. There was one part. I thought that we needed a new commission if we wanted to redo things. But anyway, it doesn't matter. But, yeah, because we did the vote for – we had an amendment to it. There's been one amendment, which was when it first came out to – tie the salaries of the town council to cost living um because they hadn't gotten a raise in ever it seems but anyway uh but yeah so it's really trying to set up the framework and to let the specific ordinances and things like that do the details the less is more route if i remember correctly

yeah we had some strong opinions on some things and some things we left to ordinance and we we wanted to have strong opinions on other things i remember one excitable thing was selling water rights to go to a boat

and that we got a comment like the next week and it was like please do not do that that's a terrible idea and the next thing the other thing which we will talk about has to do with open space because that was a big character issue that the residents of the town really wanted included in the charter and we've gotten part way there but not enough but we'll talk about that later

All right and then we have the municipal code so the as as the 2 commissioners said the home rule charter is our constitution it sets up everything for the local municipality local matters are of a local decision and discretion so the ordinances are what affect the municipal code if we ever have a change in the municipal code it goes through an ordinance we have the ten different titles obviously the tenth title is what we look at the most But there are a wide ranging number of items. And I know we had the UDC update recently, which encapsulated like four or five different chapters, pieces within each that moved it into one section for consolidation. So, but if you ever are bored and you want to know more about the town, check out the UDC or the municipal code and the UDC, which the UDC now is what we look at or what we use as our criteria. It has the application standards, development standards. basically everything related to what we do here in terms of zoning and development within the town, as well as certain aspects of planning when we have the comp plan rolled in there as well. I'm not going to describe what the UDC is. I'm gonna actually ask Ms. Driscoll if you can, in a nutshell, explain what the purpose of the UDC is.

It's basically the regulations that apply to how you can use and develop land within the town

No, yeah, I think it sets the, as you mentioned, the requirements for land use sets the parameters on who has authority to approve certain applications, rezoning and things like that really touches and concerns. Anything related, most things related to land use.

One comment on the UDC. Please. The website that goes to the beauty code is actually pretty helpful whenever you're digging around the code to figure out if the application applies if you need to dig into the udc that is the rule of the town the law of the land so i'm typically digging around there trying to find some provision i know you dig around in there a lot but the website it works pretty well so the search is pretty strong would recommend

So I'm not going to go through all this, but this is the purpose of the UDC. It's lengthy. There's a lot of them. Basically, it is for the health and safety of the residents within the town, creating a municipality where it is orderly, safe, has the utilities, the infrastructure, and so on and so forth. There's a lot of items in here, obviously. So this is the true purpose, all 18 sections. I added this in here because I know Commissioner Broadus had brought this up. So back in 2021, through those updates of, I think it was eight different chapters that we did, One of the things that staff identified is it takes a lot to change these ordinances, so they actually created these user guides. It is for an applicant exactly what they need to go through from start to finish, pre-application process through the actual application itself. to understand what exactly do i have to have included and if you've ever noticed there are some of these more recent developments where they actually have this attached with the with the application and it literally goes through checks every single one of them crosses it out whether or not it was applicable This is if you were ever wondering what an applicant is required to have for this specific application, this is where you want to go for that. Anything else to add, Ms. Driscoll?

No, I just, sometimes there are provisions in there that we can ask for additional information if needed.

Thank you.

And then we have the strategic plans. Obviously, we briefly went through this. There's a litany of these. Some of these are currently being revised or about to go through revision. I'll get into the comp plan in a moment, but the one that most recently, or the ones that most recently went through, PROS, the Parks, Recreation, Open Space, and Trails strategy, strategic guide it's not called prost it's connecting you to fun I believe it is and then there was a needs assessment related we have the strategic plan from the police department as well as all these if you ever want some bedtime reading this is great to go through some of these um they are very some of these are very technical but they all work together um i'll get into the comp plan in a moment but say the comprehensive plan there we had a dola grant that was received from the state in order to do that we had to have it where it was to a t exactly what was required. And one of those elements was a water master plan element. We already had that, so we could just reference this. So again, there's a lot going on in here. Some of these, you'll notice that they haven't been updated in some years. It's not that they're not still current. There may be some recent revisions that are locally done as developments have occurred. So as time goes on,

Most all of these are gonna continue to be updated.

And then of course we have the comprehensive plan. I'm not gonna go through all of it because I know we referenced the comprehensive plan in our decision-making up here, but this was in 2024, which was a technical update of the 2015, or which was a full update of the 2015 plan, which was really a technical update of the 2005 plan. So we were going for, what, 15, 19 years, somewhere around there. I think it was approved in 2006 originally. We were going 15, 19 years where we were essentially working on a vision for the town from 2005, which was the technical update from 1999. So it's a lot that was done, a lot of outreach, communication with the town at the fairs. I think you were on the trails as well, working with various bodies. There was a number of different groups that were formed in order to provide input on this. And it's lengthy, but there's a lot of information in there. So continue on. So let's stop, ask, does anybody have any questions so far? Anything?

I keep forgetting we have the two in the clouds.

Commissioner Booth or Commissioner Leaf, do you have any questions so far?

All set.

I'm good. Thank you.

I want to go all the way back to town council and ask a question about them.

SO WE THEN GET INTO SOME OF THESE ASPECTS AND WE'LL DIVE INTO ONE OF THESE LATER THE BUDGETS AND FINANCIAL SO THE BUDGETS ARE THE ANNUAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE TOWN THESE ARE WHERE ALL THE FUNDING THE REVENUES EXPENSES THAT ARE PROJECTED AS WELL FOR ALL THE VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS ARE COLLECTED There is a long, lengthy timeline that encompasses every single department that all this goes through the finance department. It says in here they start in May, but really they're planning last year for this year. this year for next year i mean they're already looking at this ahead of time there is a study session that is provided to the council there is then an additional study session later on followed by the actual public hearings it is a two-part hearing first one is the presentation of the of the budget for the future year and then it's typically november december where the final public hearing occurs that is where the adoption of that budget actually is formalized There are two supplementals that happen each year. The first one is typically two or more. First one is a rollover of those things that were appropriated last year that didn't get completed. They get rolled into the next year. That typically happens around March, April. And the reason is because that's when they're now going through the annual. I got to make sure I'm calling it the right thing. It's the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, ACFER. I believe they flipped at annual comprehensive around a couple years ago anyways, but the supplemental is the rollover and then we have the additional appropriation so if there's a new initiative that Council will take on or one of the departments as hey we need additional appropriations for this project that went over that's where the supplemental everything every single penny that is spent has to be accounted for in a budget appropriation. So this is a forward-looking document. We have the various fund accounts. I'm not gonna go through each one of these in detail. The general fund, that is the general operating fund for the town. We have the capital improvements fund. I'll go into that in a moment. We have the special revenue funds, grants fund, trails, conservation, cemeteries. Some of these are impact fund related. When we go on, so the capital funds, transportation, public facilities, parks improvement, police facilities, tree impact, storm drainage, all of those are impact funds that are typically paid for at the permitting process when we have a dwelling unit that is going to be going into town generally that's where most of these occur we then also have the fleet and equipment acquisition fund and then we have the enterprise funds waste wastewater water storm drainage and even though it isn't actually an enterprise fund we treat it as an enterprise fund should i say that has been the stance of our former town attorney but that is the airport fund

I would just add that non-residential also pays impact fees.

Yes. Sorry. Commercial as well. Yes. My apologies. So then there's descriptions on each of these. I'm not going to go through each one, but there's some information here. um so when you look at the budget memo it lays it all out here this is basically reconciling every single dollar that is spent and listed out by the actual fund account you notice it has that beginning balance ending balance this will typically change as the supplementals come through because we have what we assumed to be the year-end amount that then comes the next year-end amount, and then what wasn't used comes back in, and now we have the new beginning balance, and that is typically reconciled in that annual comprehensive financial report. If anybody has any questions about any of these funds, let me know, but I'm going to stop. Any questions on the budget? Financial reports, this is looking in arrears. It is looking at what happened in the past. So this is reconciling what occurred in terms of the budget, the spends going through every business type activity as well as governmental activity. um this is collective of every single dollar there's a lot of information in there if you've never looked at one check it out it has the actual um the value of the town in there based on the amount of property in the town how much is collected through the ad valorem taxes um the capital contributions um i think we're up to about six to seven hundred million dollars the value of the town based on everything throughout um there's again a lot of information in the in the annual report and then we have the monthly sales tax reports they don't go into detail in terms of the actual location that was collected but they might have like the Baseline Colorado 7 corridor or the 9-mile area, by law cannot discern which specific location actually provided the funds and make that public. It can be in general in that area, but they cannot go to specific locations. So you say, hey, how much has the King Super provided us over a 9-mile? We can't get that information by law publicly made available.

one comment on the annual comprehensive report please it is a now that is a great report for going to sweep yes but it is a standard report like effectively across the country it's they use the generally acceptable accounting principles gap yep and one of the I looked into it. There's a thing called Strong Towns, and they actually made a sheet where you can track the history. I mean, the town publishes back 20 years, so you can monitor the trajectory of the town. I did that a few months ago, and so far it's looking good.

and it's it's incredible some of those years where it was a significant spike because of all the development that we had yeah um yeah it's it's it's the history of the town in numbers essentially yeah it can be convoluted but it's it's everything it is um and yes it's impressive if you try to match it back to a budget it kind of gets a little difficult because the budgets are assuming what it's going to be this is actuals

So, and I know if our finance team is watching this, I swear I didn't do this enough justice.

They put so much time and effort into this and it leads to some of those supplementals, as I said. You know, I just have to give credit to that entire team because this is a lot of time that goes into the reconciliation and the audit of all those All those items. This is where they'll also identify concerns for the town that they may address. Honestly, each year we have one or two, and typically they're small. It's like, hey, there was this item that we didn't have the contractor include a provision in there. Of one of those related to a federal standard that needed to be agreed upon, you know, like something like that. Um, so it's just, it keeps them on their toes. Um, some of these in the past were. There isn't, uh, There isn't a clear delineation of role or responsibility. And since our two finance directors ago, that changed. And under our current finance director, Sarah Hancock, things have considerably changed. So there's a lot more that I know that they're doing.

If I remember correctly, under Home Rule, we can do our own collection of sales tax now. yes i'm not sure if we decided to do what we're still doing through the state but um we are not correct we don't have staff okay it would save us some money and time right but it's priorities

Um, so. When we were statutory municipality, it was required that was collected by the Department of revenue for the state. We moved to the home role municipality and yes, we could collect it on our own, but we actually still have them collected on our behalf because. of the staffing the different systems that would be required we would basically have to have our own process for collection yes there is a state a state system that you can you can utilize um we are part of it because the uh department of revenue collects for us but uh yes you're correct i think they said it'd be at least like two staff members at a minimum to collect yeah yeah revenues so it's a lot of effort just to collect the tax it is um and then here's you know the financial um aspect so uh this is from the most recent um december 31st 2024 and you say well we're in 2026 well because 2025 hasn't come out yet so that'll be and uh should be very soon within the next month or two Typically. I don't want to put any pressure on our financiers.

I'm sure they're watching right now.

So now we start getting into some of the other things that I know Commissioner Booth you had asked about. So we have the Capital Improvement Plan and the Capital Improvement Fund. So CIP, CIF. The Capital Improvement Plan is the list of all those items that are those capital projects. You can see down at the bottom, what is a capital, you know, what is capital? They are assets with an initial individual cost of more than 10,000 and an estimated useful life of three years or more. So these are purchasing a new server, the construction of a new water or wastewater pipeline or a new street, renovation or extension of town hall, a new park. so those are the ones where basically we depreciate the life of that project as time goes on and We have a large upfront investment that the town has This is one where we have the immediate items that take up the large amount of our budgets each year and But then they also look at the future years. So we have a five-year plan in terms of the various Various projects that might occur. These are things throughout every single department water wastewater storm drainage Planning and development has actually had some in the past with the new Cities what's the new program that you you use now for development applications? I

Oh, that was townwide, Central Square.

Yeah, Central Square. So that was a capital project because it was a large upfront investment as well. So this isn't just, you know, we have our enterprise funds that have these. This is every single thing within. And one of the items that is also included here is street maintenance.

And the reason is because we don't have a dedicated fund, a dedicated tax fund.

for the street maintenance um street maintenance uh paving of the roads we also have then the so it's asphalt and concrete um that is in there so street maintenance out there paving of the roads as well sidewalks rebuild of curbs those kinds of things are all included in that and they cost a lot more than you expect a lot more um and i know with the uh new NEW WATER TREATMENT FACILITY, IT WAS EXTREMELY LARGE IN TERMS OF THE AMOUNT, SO WHICH THAT IS A WHOLE DIFFERENT DISCUSSION. SO OBVIOUSLY THIS IS ONE THAT I KNOW AGAIN FOR THOSE WHO RECENTLY REAPPLIED OR NEW MEMBERS WHO DID APPLY, there was the item that said have an understanding of the capital improvement plan so you can understand what is occurring for the current year as well as for the future, so the five-year period. Which then brings us to the capital improvement fund. So back in Back in 1998, I believe it was 1998, they created this fund. However, this really wasn't used until 2023, 2024, when the previous council decided to remove the reserve accounts. The excess amount then went into this now capital improvement fund. So basically, we had this amount that was above and beyond what we had to legally obligated, as well as through one of our ordinances in the past. We had more that was sitting on hand that was necessary. So they said, okay, we're going to start. This was actually our then new finance director, Sarah Hancock, who said, hey, we can start using this essentially. So we have, and this is basically all excess revenues from the current year at year end go into that fund and fund the future year. We have had an excess amount in there since this was first used in 2024. However, we are now at a point where because of the capital projects, we are getting to that pay as you go situation. So we're actually going to be at a point where the excess amount of revenues from this year or what is assumed to be appropriated in the forecast, that is what we're going to have for that next year. To see how this looks, this is where we are looking at having a negative ending fund balance in 2029 and 3030. Now, this was May, I believe, this most recent one that I'm showing you here, April or May. However, with the new water allocations, it is going to change the projections and forecasts because we are not going to have the development activity that we once thought we were going to have. And it's not just for this current year, it's also going to be for the next five to seven years. So based on that ordinance or resolution that was approved recently for the water allotment. So this is one that is gonna be extremely important for the town moving forward, because as I said, there's a litany of these items that are taken care of from this capital improvement fund, those capital improvement plan items. they use this and as i said we have four and a half million dollars for street maintenance right off the top so we're gonna have to get wise in the way that we plan for the future and i will say that our finance team starting in it was uh may of 2022 they came out with the first forecast and they've improved upon it ever since they've really tightened up the numbers and that's why we now have a Um, or we have more individuals in that finance department because they are looking at this in a future looking, uh, manner and trying to understand how are we going to be able to pay for these things? Um, I'm gonna stop there. Any questions, uh, commissioner booth, commissioner leaf, any questions on your end?

Very helpful to have that. Thank you.

Agreed. Thank you.

Okay, so that gets us to now what we do. And I'm going to look to our deputy town attorney if there's anything that I'm saying that is incorrect or you want to clarify, please let me know. So obviously we have 2 parts in where we receive our ability to have a planning commission or zoning commission for the town. That first one is obviously the CRS Colorado revised statute. which allows for the creation of a planning department or a planning commission, as well as for a zoning commission. So they're within the same title article, two different sections, 200s and 300s, but this is where we initially get that authority to be a actual body. We also have then the Home Rule Charter.

So hypothetically, if something were to happen to CRS, we still have our Home Rule Charter saying we have to have a planning commission.

So we have the duties that are assigned to us by the charter, state law, as well as the ordinances. So there are some things that are within the charter explicit to us, as well as the statutes.

And then there are other items that are within ordinance.

Generally, most of these are coming from ordinance unless it is statutorily required, which we still do have an ordinance that has that item in there, i.e. our UDC.

Please. One comment on the charter. The CRS, I believe, allows the council, in our case, to be the planning commission. So that was one reason that we put that in there to have our own planning commission is that.

the um crs does allow by ordinance council to assume roles and responsibilities or duties that are delegated to the planning commission through statute yeah i mean most a lot of municipalities have because under the statute subdivision regulations the enactment of subdivision regulations are vested in the planning commission unless town council adopts an ordinance otherwise so council control subdivision regulations and council approves a comprehensive plan. So there are things that even statutory cities and towns where the mayor and council, town council can take, so to speak, from planning commission.

yeah that was just one of the items of making sure we wanted to we enforced two boards on the charter so we can't be disbanded yeah yep they can't kick us all off yep um so that obviously uh thank you we have and thank you too um we also have then the municipal code where it explicitly identifies that planning commission um spoiler alert The UDC, that is where our roles and responsibilities currently lie, our duties.

They are explicit and they are right here.

largely in this table this is a summary of administration and review roles i have highlighted the sections that are the column that is us as well as the actual items that we are a typically a review referral uh and hearing situation there is that one that we are the decision making Hearing body, which is the site plan Planning Commission review. We did have one Recently at the beginning of the year So it does occasionally occur But largely we are that advisory recommending body for the most part the table obviously also has amendments to the UDC text as well as amendments to the comprehensive plan and again, they're the referral reviews as well as

review items on there and then for the comprehensive plan review and hearing i'll make another comment please i appreciate i didn't say it and when you were going over the uh presentation to town council that you condensed that on like one of the early slides so that was helpful i i don't know how i even fit this into one slide so um

So that is, in a nutshell, what's going on at Town Hall. Should I say? 30,000 for you. There is a lot more that is happening behind the scenes that I'm not going to get into because we'd be here for hours. You can look through the work plan and see all these different activities that are occurring. Largely, what we focus on today is that UDC... um what i see potentially in the future of us having an impact on are looking at that capital improvement plan because there are a lot of items and based on the comprehensive plan you know we have to have a comprehensive look and vision for the infrastructure for the parks and rec for you know everything that occurs that is the vision for the town that comprehensive plan so there's a lot going on here um but any questions How long did it take you to put this together? I honestly did not count, and I do not want to count.

It's very, very comprehensive and very much appreciated.

To the two in the sky and the clouds, Commissioner Booth, Commissioner Leif, any questions that you might have from any of these items?

I don't have any questions. I just have a couple of comments. Wow. Just gives you a whole different perspective for town staff and everything that they do on a daily basis. So extra shout out to them and a thank you to them. And then also thank you for putting this presentation together. in conjunction with what former Chair Hemphill put together with the Robert's Rules, all of this additional training is very much appreciated. So thank you.

Commissioner Leif?

I'll just echo what Commissioner Booth said and the gratitude of providing all this training it's incredibly helpful and you know i think it speaks to the the width and breadth of the the planning function and you know in my experience planning is best executed when it's not fragmented or practice in isolation. It's holistic and reflective of systems thinking. So I applaud the kind of systems thinking and a holistic viewpoint that you've provided for us tonight. It's a lot to consider. So thank you.

Any of the other commissioners up here?

Thank you.

And staff, anything else? Anything that I missed that you would add? Not that I can think of. All right, I'm going to go back to my seat. Thank you. this is a different view okay so that is the last of the items that we have so move on to staff reports does staff have anything to report we have two items on the agenda for the next meeting July 1st and then possibly a couple of land use applications

things pull up from the next week? The answer you sent out didn't have anything listed for next week. So did things pull up?

Sorry, yeah, the chair requested a couple of items. The presentation that you all got revision and then discussion and preparation of the joint study session. Okay, thank you.

so i figure that we have two meetings left one of those is already jam-packed um use it to discuss anything that we want to um and um i'll have a better idea at that point of what the agenda is going to look like for that joint study session so we can talk about those topics um yeah um okay so let's go to now commissioner reports and i'm gonna start with the i keep looking up like they're gonna like sure uh the two the two commissioners that are uh joining virtual um let's start with commissioner leaf nothing for this evening thank you commissioner booth

I don't have anything to add. I just wanted to get to a question I couldn't quite hear. Can you tell me the dates of the July meetings, please?

July 1 and July 15. And then your joint meeting is July 21. OK.

Thank you.

And let's do Commissioner Schatz.

i have no report for this evening just look forward there is a wide realm that we have defined here tonight to working with everyone in the commission a lot of good work we can do i have received and turned in my ballot so don't forget to vote

On Friday, 6 to 8 is the town's Juneteenth celebration. It's going to be by Stacy's Kitchen in that parking lot. So it's a much smaller thing than what we do for Erie Fest or for Pride, but let you know what's happening.

And Vice Chair, would you like to?

Happy Father's Day to all the dads in here. Good weekend.

Thank you. um i have one item so last time when we met we had discussed having the joint study sessions potentially with uh with the other boards and commissions so i did reach out to the ostab chair to see if they would be potentially willing he's gonna bring that forward to the body just like we have had a discussion about it seeing if they would be amenable to that i know that i had I had sent an email to Ms. Driscoll about this, and depending on specifics, depending on the topics, there will be some staff time that will be needed, and one of the specific items that we are identifying as the review of the potential properties, since that is an OSTAB item, obviously OSTAB is gonna be leading that, will be there for the relation to the UDC, the comp plan, et cetera, to have that conversation. The question would be if there are other topics that we would want to discuss during that time. I'm gonna also ask Chair Martin from OSTAB, see if he has any other items. But if there are any other items that we want to discuss, let me know. So to answer Ms. Driscoll's question that she posed on the email, we don't know exactly what it is. We just know that we think it would be a good idea to meet with these bodies because there are all these different items. So we as the commission will have better understanding of topics,

items in there so we'll let you know okay um i would just ask that the um the rezoning of open space on its face seems fairly straightforward but there is a lot um behind the scenes that has to happen and i've talked with um the ostab staff liaison luke bollinger our parks director and it is not something staff is prepared to take on this year council directed the rezoning of the page property which you will see come before you some of that will be rezoned that reserved open space some of it will be probably the ag open space so i would just ask that you let us get through that this year, and then we can kind of dig in with OSTAB on those, all of the town-owned open space properties.

And especially with our advanced agenda filling out with some of the hearings being pushed where now they're being consolidated. When I look at the advanced agenda, it's October, November, and it's not to say, hey, we're going to identify the properties and get this moving. It's gonna be to have this conversation about these various topics. So I wanted to confirm that there were no, Objections, again, that we meet with OSTAB, we have a joint study session somewhere at the end of the year, October, November, knowing that we have competing needs from staff and we don't wanna obviously overuse their resources or strain their resources, knowing that their 2027 work plan is gonna include this, it'd be a discussion of these to hash out these different topics. Any concerns with the 2 in the clouds? I keep looking up.

I don't know because that's where the voice comes from.

Yes.

No concerns.

No concerns. I did have a question. I think it was brought up at our last meeting that we have a very small budget that could be used to for the, the work plan of of the commission. And I'm just wondering. In terms of the budgeting process, um, if that, uh, if there's any accounting of how that's been used in the past and and what it might be going forward. Um, just a question about that.

Please yeah, um, there's. We've used some of the money. There's still a significant amount left if there's any sort of trainings that you all would like to do or other efforts. As far as next year, our finance team has asked for a 5% cut across the board. So that'll bring it to around 3,400, I think, for the year. So if there's particular trainings that you're interested in, We have provided resources prior. We can provide what's upcoming as far as annual conferences and things like that that you might be interested in.

And I know you had provided those resources, links to all those. So we can share those out again.

But there are different training opportunities.

It doesn't hurt for the individuals who have been on the commission to take part in some of those.

also for the new individuals.

So just something to look into. And then we can also, in terms of the budget, we can have quarterly dinner or something like that if we wanted to, where just we can get together. Don't talk shop because we can't talk shop. But just another way of us having that rapport with one another instead of just sitting around this half moon over here. Fighting. But I believe that is everything that I have, and I'm not going to change from tradition. I'm going to go to the commissioner in the sky.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Time is 8.07. We are adjourned.