Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. It is September 17. I call to order the city of Glenwood Springs regular city council meeting. Ryan, would you please take a roll call?

Mayor Dame, Mayor Pro Tem Zielinski, Councillor Townsley, Councillor Schmall, Councillor Weimer, Councillor Schachter, Councillor Smith. We have a quorum.

All right. Thank you, Ryan. Any changes to the agenda from anybody tonight? We'll see none. We'll move on to disclosure of counselor conflict of interest. Anybody have a conflict. Except for me. Okay. So. I'm going to have to recuse myself for item 10 tonight. The ordinance 2026, an ordinance city Glenwood Springs. amending the city municipal code regarding the regulation and permitting of accessory tourist rentals and short-term rentals in the city. Mayor Pro Temselinski will take over for that item, and then we'll come back and we'll finish out. Any emergency there, Chief Hassel? Are we good?

Excellent.

Okay, if I see no other conflict of interest, we're going to move over to item four, citizens appearing before council and council respond for items that are not on the agenda tonight. We're going to make a small exception tonight for Ella Kyle. She is here tonight to speak about the habitat update, I think. So if you would like to come forward, please, and speak into the microphone, that would be great. Please state your name and whether you live in city limits or not. Thank you.

Thank you. I live in the city limits. I'm a little shaky, both because this is a very emotional topic for me and because I'm not feeling well right now. That's why, even though it's on the agenda, I was allowed to speak sooner so that I could leave. Thank you. So I just wanted to let you know, I've been in this valley working for 60, since 1966, my family moved in the valley and I worked for over 42 years over 60 hours a week on average, and was never able to purchase or get ahead financially, as you can imagine being a worker bee. And so I'm at this stage of life, retired, with medical issues. And my children live here. My grandchildren are here in Glenwood. I live in the city limits. They live and work here. And I help take care of my grandchildren. And my friends and I have all worked here for decades, have always marveled at the fact that if you're poor enough to qualify for low-income housing, you're too poor to qualify for financing to purchase. So I just want to acknowledge that, first of all, I recognize that there are a lot of needs in a community between health care, child care, everything that What you're doing to help with this program for the Carter L3, what Habitat for Humanity is doing for myself and for others in the building is creating a community there in which I not only am sheltered, but I feel safe and I feel like I belong. And so after all these years to have the people at Habitat for Humanity who have been bending over backwards trying to piece together different possible ways to qualify for financing and extending my rent to lease option. I mean, rent to purchase option for several months now. And the preferred property management people who have been so, so responsive. I mean, everyone from top to bottom has just been wonderful. And I want to just let you know how much that means to us. And in this case, me, but I know there are others and I've spoken to others in the building. And I hope it works out. But if it doesn't work out for me, I just want to let you know that it is already working out for a lot of people. And it means a lot, not just for me personally, but my family, their friends, the rest of the community in the building and their family and friends here in the community. So thank you so much.

Well, thank you very much for being here tonight and good luck to you. I'm going to need a second. I'm a little verklempt here. So, okay, well, let's go down the list. I have a list here and we'll start with Mike Henry. Please state your name and whether you live in city limits or not.

Hi guys. Mike Henry, 1522. Thank you. Um, local business owner. Um, after being in the meeting last week, I just wanted to, I was going to try to prepare comments, but I was too busy running a business with employees and government pressures, all the woes of me. But anyway, I just want to make the point. Thank you for addressing the issue. Um, last week I saw council talk to the city Mount manager, go to law enforcement and then back to the state. And when the state came, I had to duck cause it came back over my head to you guys. And then you're doing your best to assimilate the information. And I really appreciate that. I appreciate your, uh, um, civic contribution. So the high points I want to make are that the enforcement, as it's been, is not equitable. You're targeting the current enforcement that's being directed, especially with people that are managing multifamily units, the property managers, there's really no way to control who is putting their garbage in, locking it. Even with cameras, you can't identify who those people are. And to write blanket tickets seems like it's something that is really hard to overcome for us. You heard my wife speak with emotion last week because of the situation she's been put in because of that. So I just want you to consider that as we move forward with this issue. It's something to keep in mind. We just can't control it. I think that we should, I don't know if municipalities can push back on the state, but I think that it's a management issue that was caused when the spring bear hunt stopped. Because I was here when that happened, and I watched the bears come into town more and more during that time. And as I listened to all the issues, that just enforced that. So it was kind of biology from the ballot box. I know that's a cliche. But if there's any way to push back as a municipality, as a group to the state for better enforcement and better hunting so that we can control so that each bear is more healthy and the population is more healthy, but it's smaller and it's controlled. But that being said, let's just keep this in front of us because it's not going to get any better. And I appreciate you guys attacking. There's no criticism here. We're doing the best we can. But as we try to do this, let's also make sure that the things that maybe we can enforce, like this noise ordinance, I read a sign to say that we're enforcing it today. And they're racing up and down our streets, revving their engines. It seems like a video and a license plate would be a way. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is as big a problem to quiet enjoyment as the barrier issue. I got to tell you, it's crazy. Maybe not quite as dangerous unless you walk in across the street. Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here. Moving on to I only have one name, Lily.

Yes, please.

I think I only have one and the rest is scratched out. So please let me know whether you live in city limits or not and state your name.

Yes, I'm Lily Freiberg. I do live in city limits.

Thank you.

I have a we're talking about school safety and pedestrian safety here. I have a first and fifth grader at Glenwood Springs Elementary and a sixth grader at the middle school. I'm here as a parent, PTA member, and Glenwood Springs resident to show support for you, the city council, to start advancing safety initiatives around GSES and the entire 10th Street corridor from Palmer to School Street. The research has already been done of the safety risks imposed on families who walk across Grand Avenue, down 10th Street, and over several blind alleys to access public education. All while the majority of the Up Valley workforce is commuting to or from their jobs and cutting down the side streets, as well as the high school traffic that is in that same area at the same time. The commuter traffic is a known risk to our entire community. Downtown residents have been sounding the alarm for years. Although the research has already been done, to my knowledge, no increased safety measures have been put into effect for pedestrians in that area. We don't live close enough to walk, so I was not aware of how bad it was for these families until a student was hit on the corner of 10th and Pitkin the third week of school. As a school community, it showed an immediate need to ensure better safety for our students. While we're waiting for the city to help, the PTA has implemented a crossing guard on 10th and Pitkin each morning and afternoon that is staffed by parent volunteers when one of us is available. At this intersection, there's a school zone light that until today was not flashing. As of this morning, the school zone light across from this very building is still not flashing, and we're in our fourth week of school. When I drive around town by Sopers Elementary, by the middle school, I see permanent pedestrian safety measures being implemented, raised crosswalks, flashing lights, mid-road crosswalk signs that slow traffic and draw attention to the fact that it is a highly used pedestrian walkway. We are thankful for that. However, when I drive around our school, GSES, it feels like we have been a bit forgotten. Please listen to the families this is affecting daily. They can tell you of all the close calls. Listen to the parent and the student that have been hit by cars in the last two weeks and two years, and help us prevent future accidents like this or worse from happening in our community again. Thank you.

All right, thank you for being here. Thank you for your comments. We'll go to Heather Exby. Please also state your name and whether you live in city limits or not.

Hi, my name is Heather Exby and I don't live in the city limits. I live in Newcastle.

Okay, thank you.

I'm here tonight, along with Debbie Bruhl, to introduce and present to you two election protection pledges for Garfield County. We are a bipartisan group of four Garfield County residents, myself, Greg Rippey, Eden Steele, and Debbie Bruhl, who have united around helping protect the foundation of our democracy, the right to vote, to have our vote counted, and to have the will of the people prevail. We represent different parts of the county. We are from Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, and Newcastle. We have created two pledges that support our elections here in Garfield County, one for businesses and organizations, and another one for individuals. The pledges are not partisan nor controversial. They simply affirm Garfield County residents' trust in our elections as administered by our county clerk without interference from outside forces, including the federal government. In times like these, it can be easier and more comfortable to say, why stick our necks out? Garfield County has never had a problem with elections before. This year won't be any different. First, Garfield County has been identified as an area of concern for the midterms by pro-democracy groups. Second, the 2020-2026 midterm elections are a critical moment and we cannot afford to be silent. Threats to election integrity from disinformation and voter intimidation to attempts to reject legitimate results are real and escalating. but so is the power of organized communities to push back. We all have a role to play in protecting our democracy. But as community leaders, you have a special role. You can amplify our voice through your public actions. Finally, staying silent only contributes to the rising threats to our elections. So we urge you to get on board by signing these pledges, both as the city council, and as individuals. Our democracy depends on all of our participation. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And to read a little bit more about the budget, right?

Please state your name. Oh, I live in city limits. I'm gonna call on you Debbie bro, please come up.

Yeah, okay. Debbie parole.

I don't live in Glenwood, I live in Carbondale.

Thank you.

So you'll see the pledges. I just wanted to, inside the pledge is a little background information and then the pledge. So I will read a little summary of the background information and then the pledge, it says in the pledge. The U.S. Constitution gives the authority to the states to conduct their own elections without federal oversight. Colorado's election system is widely recognized as one of the best in the country and serves as a national model. Colorado's elections are run by well-trained professionals and assisted by election workers who are Republican, Democratic, unaffiliated, and from minor parties. Colorado's elections follow the laws and legal processes to ensure only eligible voters can vote. Our county clerk and recorder in Garfield County has conducted our elections with integrity and without incident since her election in 2022. Democracy demands an educated and engaged citizenry. We all have a role to play in protecting our democracy and our democratic elections. And then what you'd be agreeing to in the pledge is the following. We have confidence in Colorado's election system and in our Garfield County clerk and recorder and the election officials under her supervision. We trust and expect these officials to conduct our elections without oversight or interference of any kind from any outside sources, including the federal government. Threats or intimidation of any kind against our election officials or against any eligible Colorado voter attempting to exercise their right to vote are unacceptable and illegal. Such threats undermine our democracy, may keep eligible voters from voting, and make the job of our election officials harder and more dangerous. Moreover, Colorado law prohibits anyone, including law enforcement or the military, from interfering with a voter attempting to exercise their right to vote. We expect the final results of our elections to be honored by Colorado citizens, both major political parties, minor political parties, and the federal government. We encourage all eligible voters in Garfield County to make their voices heard by making sure they are registered to vote and casting their vote in the November 2026 midterm election. So that's what it's about. You all have a copy there and a link to more information. We hope you'll consider signing as individuals and also consider putting it on your agenda next time so you can vote as a whole body. And we're happy to answer any questions anytime you'd like to reach out to us.

All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for bringing this forward. Okay. Next up is Connie Gaiman, please. name and whether you live in city limits or not. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Connie Guymon. I do live in city limits. I'm here as the parent of a kindergartner and as a parent of a child that has attended Glenwood Springs since 2019. I don't know if you know, but last week a Glenwood Springs elementary student was struck and severely injured in a crosswalk in a school zone. It was 7.58 a.m. and he was just 200 feet from school. Our littlest citizens are facing an extremely dangerous commute to their school because their route traverses downtown Glenwood Springs. We're talking Blake Avenue. We're talking Grand and Pitkin. These kids must navigate a gauntlet of drivers who speed. They run stop signs. They run red lights. The drivers often are distracted. They're late for work or rushing to get home. And frankly, most of them feel like they have their right of way over pedestrians. It's kind of mayhem out there. Just three years ago in another Colorado town, a 13 year old boy was hit and killed on his way to school. His father set forward to make all Colorado students walk and bike to school more safe. And under a new Colorado state law passed earlier this year, school zones are now defined within a thousand feet of a school. Signs are required indicating that it's a school zone and they should explicitly state that fines are doubled. Glenwood Springs can also designate Pitkin Avenue as a school street and decrease the speed limit even further, down to 10 miles per hour. Let this child's severe injuries be a wake-up call and let the fatality of a boy in our sister city guide us in our hard work ahead. Our youngest citizens need some adults to make some changes to keep them safe. We need to increase the school zone to 1,000 feet and add appropriate signage. This would include actually making Grand Avenue a school zone. And I know school, it's a state road, but under this new law, we can work with them and they will make it a school zone. We just need the approval of CDOT. Last year, we had a parent after they dropped off their kid walking home, crossing Grand, and they were hit in a crosswalk on Grand Avenue by a distracted driver. As we're making safety improvements all over town, I'd like to see making improvements to the intersection along 10th Street from Palmer Avenue to School Street and designating this a safe walking corridor. Expanded school zone would even allow Cooper to have school zone lights. And then, yes, new signage, but we also need enforcement, right? We need to enforce these. Other suggestions include crosswalk lights like those that we just installed recently on Blake at the ditch between 11th and 13th, elevating crosswalks, and adding mirrors at alleys along 10th Street. I'm asking you as city council to do everything in your power to keep these students safe and prevent further serious injuries and even prevent fatalities because I'm worried that at the rate that we're going, all of these will certainly happen. Thank you.

Perfect timing. Thank you, Connie. Okay, Emily West, please. Also state your name, or do you live in city limits or not?

Yep, my name is Emily West, and yes, I do live in the city limits. Thank you. I am attending my very first city council meeting today. I am attending as a member of the Glenwood Springs Elementary School PTA, as well as a mother of two and an aunt of one, who attend GSES and walk and bike the 10th Street Corridor to get to their grandma's house on Bennett. As many of you know, there was the accident at 10th and Pitkin. The student is attending school this week in a wheelchair. Many children saw him lying on the ground, surrounded by emergency services. For the sake of those who have been injured along this route in the past, and those who may be injured or worse in the future, I and the GSES community are asking for change, and we have ideas for this change. 10th Street funnels directly to the entrance of GSES. Community members have been asking the city for changes along this corridor for the last two years. In that time, a parent and child have been struck. This is our chance to do something now. I am aware that the city released a request for proposal to contractors on September 11th. We appreciate the proposed upgrades to the listed crossings. However, upon review of this RFP, more can be done to protect our children in this corridor. Downtown parents are requesting creation of a 10th street safe route to school corridor, not just improving Pitkin and 10th. I don't know the history, but when I drive by other schools, such as Sopris, the improvements between the two schools, they don't feel equitable. At Sopras, there's raised crosswalks, flashing on-demand crosswalk lights, and signage. At GSES, there are two blinking school zone lights, one at Picken and 10th and one at Picken and 8th, that as has been mentioned, they didn't work when this incident happened. One of the lights that didn't work was directly facing the car that struck the child. Many have suggested that the school should provide volunteer crossing guards as a solution. The GSES PTA have been volunteering as crossing guards at 10th and Pitkin since the incident occurred. Lily and three other teachers were out in the rain this morning. However, we do not believe that this is a long-term solution, nor is it feasible to cover this entire corridor. I contacted Sopris PTA. They're not doing this. Their teachers are not doing this. They have infrastructure. These are children. There are most vulnerable pedestrians. Merely meeting code is not sufficient. Protect our children and protect our community. Chief Hassel, the city engineer, and members of council have shown genuine, deep concern and have visited 10th and Pitkin with the PTA. However, Edward Abbey famously said, sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. We thank you for your sentiments. We look forward to your action. Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. And last one on the list, Emily and Zoe Kuhl-Greener, please.

Okay.

My name is Emily Kuhl-Greener and this is my son, Silas, and we live at 1025 Cooper.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Silas Greener and I walk to Glenwood Springs Elementary School every day. I saw the boy get hit by a car on his electric scooter, and I want to increase safety on the walk to GSES. Just last year, I almost got hit by a truck at Grand Snotville in the time it's happened. My neighbor got hit by a car last year, and I want you to help ensure that it does not happen to any other kids on our town. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I'll continue just at the same time. Thank you, Council, for listening to our concerns. I also am here as a concerned Glenwood Springs Elementary parent. I've walked my children to GSES every day for the last nine years. So this is something that I've been experiencing for a good long while. And Councilor Schachter and I had a really productive conversation last week after the young boy was struck. But we do want to take our time to just let you all know about the gravity of this concern. And I can't really describe to you the number of near misses and terrifying incidents that have happened every time I've walked my children to school. In fact, just today on our walk home, a semi truck blocked the entire intersection of Grant. So all like 10 children that I was with had to go around this semi truck through into oncoming traffic to be able to make our way just to the crosswalk. This is a daily concern. This is not just something that happens every once in a while or once in a blue moon. So I know that you're aware of some of the concerning injuries and incidents that have occurred. And I imagine that you're also aware of the comprehensive safety action plan that I imagine you were all part of creating. So we as constituents have given a lot of input into that plan. There's documented recommendations in that plan. And Councilor Schachter has on record, I believe, a lot of the kind of places where I've documented page 114, page 118. There's a plan that exists. And there's also, with the new state bill that has passed, HB 26-13-18, which Emily referenced, there's potential new revenue streams as well. We also, as a school community, have talked about there's these new speed cameras in town. We imagine that there might be some additional revenue that's available to be diverted towards pedestrian safety for the most vulnerable residents of this city. um i one thing that i do want to say is that a lot of us downtown families work multiple jobs we're working really hard and i think we also have a lot of vulnerable residents um folks that maybe didn't have the opportunity to show up tonight but are definitely wanting their voice to be heard And I want you council to hear that it's our responsibility collectively to protect our most vulnerable residents. So when children are commuting independently to school because their mom or dad is already at work, that's something that we as a community need to take seriously. And I, as someone walking, I always act as kind of the community crossing guard, but that is not the infrastructure that we're requesting. We're requesting city-led improvements to ensure that this corridor remains safe and is improved. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay, that concludes my list. But is anybody else here that would like to come up and speak? Maybe we'll stick to the school subject? No, I see none. Okay, then anybody else here to speak about anything? No, we'll close the public portion tonight. I'll bring it back to council. But before we do that, I think I'm going to let Steve Boyd talk to school safety for a minute, if I may, please.

It is never OK for a child to get hit in an intersection, ever. It's never OK for an adult to get hit or an animal to get hit. I will meet with anybody that wants to meet with us. I'm easy to find. Send me whatever you guys would like. We will go and walk it with you. We're going to get a meeting together with the school district. I hope the PTA will come. So we will lean into this. I think everybody here has been very respectful, and I think they have good points. I would like to make a plea to keep this in perspective a little bit. Some of the emails that came in to you guys I thought were way over the line in terms of some of the accusations. I have read the police report. I've read what the witness statements say. I'm quite certain that none of those people have. So as long as it stays reasonable and respectful like this, we will do everything we can. Our kids' safety is important to us.

Okay. Thank you, Steve, for that. Back to counsel. Mayor Pro Tem Solinsky, please.

So I just wanted to say I had the extremely unpleasant experience of watching my daughter get hit by a truck on her bike when she was seven years old. And it was a situation where there was, I guess, culpability on both sides. I'm going to cry because it was really, really awful. And so I know how lasting, you know, she just turned 21. This happened when she was seven. So I can tell how lasting the impacts of that experience are. I do believe, I remember when I first moved here, there were more crossing guards. I think that I would like to offer my time as a volunteer, coordinate with me, reach out to me. I'd like to be able to be available, you know, couple of times a month, whatever it is, you know, just to, I think this is something that needs to be addressed, you know, with infrastructure, the improvements that you cited around Sopris, I think those only went in last year. You know, it's like, it's ongoing. So we're definitely aware of where we can do better. But all that takes time, unfortunately, and it sounds really hollow. So personally, I would like to put my energy towards helping just be an interim solution as we work towards a more long-term solution.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Schachter, please.

No, thank you. And I appreciate the reach out by the community very much. And this is not just about that accident. This is about a greater joint community responsibility. The way I see it, the city has responsibility, the parents, the school, public safety. There have been some interesting solutions and our CSAP has some as well. There's even some options of maybe a little longer, but a route that doesn't include crossing Grand Avenue. Regardless, my expectation, and I've talked to staff about it, my expectation in the immediate future, there will be a meeting involving parents, public safety, the city, maybe CDOT if we can get them, school administrators say, okay, what safety measures measures can we implement quickly and which ones will we implement more gradually to make everybody safer. So thank you.

All right, thank you.

Councillor Smith, please. Thank you. The incident that got everybody's attention most recently is, is awful. It just is for anybody to come up against a vehicle like that of any size, any age is pretty terrifying for somebody that small that age is just magnified. I'm a great believer that policy and projects move most successfully when they're not based on anecdotes. So this, I like the phrase, I think it was Connie who called this a wake-up call, or maybe whichever of you used that term. It is a bigger package of need beyond one intersection, beyond one incident. And it is a definable corridor. In fact, it's been defined several times by the city. As early as 2007, a safe routes to school audit for the whole town included a circle around Glenwood Springs Elementary School and each of the other schools. And sequentially, we have a long range transportation plan We have a local road safety plan. We have the fairly new comprehensive safety action plan that Councillor Schaffner and others of you mentioned. In each of those instances, 9th and 10th are specified. And I happily, as part of that 2022 local road safety plan, some installations were actually put in. It's paint on pavement, but it's a start. The yellow striping around the intersection to help define the crosswalks and draw attention to the crosswalks at 10th and Pinkin. So that step was done. I know that there's a more thorough structural design in the city files. The engineering department has prepared All that to say that this has had some thoughtful attention all along. And the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan and your turnout, both tonight and at the crosswalk over the last week, I think really helped spotlight the incremental nature of that progress where the city is very conscious of an opportunity to together improve this situation. But now I think it's going to put some extra extra grit into the to the traction. to move to that. Also, as mentioned, the last three years, the city has invested generously and creatively in parent-student pedestrian safety measures at Sopris Elementary School, at Glenwood Springs Middle School with some kind of ripple effect improvements for the charter school nearby and at Glenwood Springs High School. Two of those projects finished just in the last three weeks. So I think it demonstrates a genuine concern and initiative and investment by the city in school safety. It's Glenwood Springs Elementary's turn. We've shown that we can do it as a city, and I think we have the tools, we have the engineering expertise, we have the ideas from consultants to now step up to pick up our fourth school and put some real good thought into it. As others have mentioned, I am just really stoked impressed and delighted at the way that individual parents and the PTA have stepped up to take action out on the street and to draw attention here. And that needs to be honored with action from the city. You all know children, the school knows the neighborhood, city knows structural features and that teaming all those together, I think is going to be really remarkable combination. So I'm confident that the city is in on this now more than ever. And thank you for helping us get there.

All right, thank you. Any other comments from council? Okay, we'll see none. Thank you very much for coming tonight. We heard you. I think I can confidently say that Steve's on it. City manager, he will be in touch with you guys or reach out to him. We will find a solution. I believe there's a solution for most everything. And this one definitely has solutions that we can implement. So stay on it, become a team, work together, and we'll figure this out. Absolutely. So thanks again for being here. Thank you. Okay. We're going to move into item five, the agenda tonight, council announcements. Start with Mayor Pro Tem Solinsky, please.

So there will be the Air Expo at KGWS Airport. That is happening on Sunday, October 4th. So in about, I guess, three weeks. From 8 a.m. until roughly noon. There'll be flights with the Young Eagles. There'll be... airplanes and flyovers and cool stuff. And so the aviation expo, there's going to be a pancake breakfast. So lots of reasons to go out as a family and visit our local municipal airport.

Okay. Thank you. Any other announcements? One more. There you go.

And we need volunteers if anybody wants to volunteer.

So there you go.

That's better. Thank you for that. Any other announcements? No, we'll see none. Moving into consent agenda for tonight. We got one, two, three, four items on it. And I'm entertaining a motion. Whoever makes the motion, please read the items.

We got it.

Mayor Protem-Solinski. I don't want to anymore.

I would like to move to approve the consent agenda. With item A, approval of the September 3rd City Council Minutes. Approval of the Arts and Culture Board appointment. Approval of item C, purchase of a D6XE Trash Grade Dozer.

Sounds great.

And item D, Ordinance 2026-19, which is an ordinance of the City of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, approving the franchise agreement with Comcast of Colorado 9, LLC, on second reading.

John Potter, Excellent emotion to prove the consent with the red items, can I get a second. John Potter, Council tansley seconded motion a second any more discussion on the consent see none call for the question. John Potter, Seven oh it passes Thank you Ryan. very good okay that was consent moving into action actions and or presentations for tonight uh let's see item seven is presentation from stepping stones

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Hello neighbors. My name is Jonathan greener. I am in fact a Glenwood Springs city resident and I'm happy to be here and I'm looking for that place. I was supposed to share and I don't see that because I'm in process.

Right down here. Didn't It's just far enough down.

So I'm passing out the 2025 annual report and I'm going to blitz through some stuff because I know I have a short time frame, which is not my forte because I am so eloquent. All right, we're going to start this slideshow, right? Nope. Well, we'll just do it from here, I don't care. So Stepping Stones is a nonprofit that serves kids 10 to 24 years old in a broad array of things. In fact, pretty much everything except getting hit by cars at intersections is under our purveyance. We are operating out of these brick and mortar spaces in Carbondale and now Glenwood, hence why we're here now. So I'm going to run through a bit of what we have quickly and then have some time for some conversation, hopefully. So demographic, This is last year. This year we're on track to more than 500, I believe. So a lot of young people, they are coming from all over, but they're increasingly coming from down valley from where we started in Carbondale, right? And so what we noticed is there was a need for expansion and we followed it. So a strong show out of really honestly, demographically, we reflect the school's demographics. We're pretty much an exact reflection of what we have in our local schools and we exist for everyone. Although we really thrive in providing services to the underserved. High percentage of living with a disability, a high percentage of experiencing homelessness as the state defines it. um and yeah low income definitely makes up a large percentage we also have justice involved youth as victims and perpetrators and do a lot to support them in all those spaces our work is rooted in relationships we are positive adults with young people hopefully we're extremely well positioned to do so we have strong backgrounds licensing credentials in order to provide the most depth possible and our youth report back to us that they They benefit from being with us, right? That we have an impact on their lives. And so mentoring is the lens for how we approach everything. We're working with them a different, I'll just say depth of engagement, right? And so of those young people, 150 of three of them received one-on-one mentoring, right? So that means they were actually paired up and they got significant benefits personal time with my team, with our staff. The case-managed youth are even more depth. We're talking about more comprehensive care, looking at things such as addiction, employment, housing, things like that. And then crisis, we define as anyone who, if something was not done within 24 hours, we have a serious problem. So that's suicide, active suicidality, homelessness, overdose, things like that. We provide safe space. Right now we are renting space out of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 1630 Grand. It's great. We're looking for a place to buy. It's hard to find one. Let me know if you have one. Looking for 10,000 square feet, please. We are there all the time. We are hanging out with them and we are just really enjoying life on life so that when things get difficult, we have the context, we have the rapport. And so it looks like organized chaos. You come in, there's a lot of play, there's a lot of art, there's a lot of silliness, there's a lot of music, there's a lot of laughter, there's a lot of game. But underneath all that is intentional care, comprehensive care. Mental health, we provide two free on-site therapists in Spanish and English. We are doing the crisis response, as mentioned. I'm going to keep running because my time is short. And we're tracking everything. So what I mean by that is that we're looking at the quality of the engagement with school, with employment, with medical care, with sport, with every single connection point. We're actually tracking the data on that so that we can see, if we're looking at the young person ourselves as the center of a hub, each spoke matters, right? And so we're trying to come alongside everything and ensure that it's strong and ensure that the spokes that don't exist, they're put in where they should be. Do a lot of job placement. 95% of our youth ages 16 and up are employed. We believe that's, well, it's increasingly required, honestly, in our region that the young people are contributing to the financial needs of the household. We do a lot of educational support. I am in my team in Yampa. rebound England Springs High School every day, doing something, providing addiction support groups at lunch, helping in classes, things like that. We're in the school space and trying to really come alongside their team to ensure that all needs are met in and out of school. We're always breaking bread, having a good time, going out and doing things. 97 outings. That's just skiing. That's hiking. That's everything we can think of. Camping, exposing young people to amazing things. We get money from different places. You have given us some money. Thank you. And we are hoping to just continue to work on Glenwood. So Glenwood, we did a lot of research looking at where to go after Carbondale. What we found mathematically is that the community that needed the most support was actually Rifle by numbers and by some things, but Glenwood was a very close second and it made infinite more sense to start with Glenwood in the geography of expansion and so and a lot of our families and kids frankly have already moved to Glenwood from Carbondale and so we already had a base of service that was pretty well developed just with the I'll call it the down valley gentrification of our region right just like we move down as we can afford to do so and so we are in phase three or phase two which essentially means that we are in the schools and we are operating three days a week of service After school, we'll be four shortly and we'll be five after that next year for sure. I have two full-time staff dedicated entirely to Glenwood Springs. They have full caseloads and we keep growing and growing and growing. So you can see year over year, we got to 103 youth served with direct service and care that the stuff we've mentioned before. In 2025, we will definitely surpass that in 2026. And we see nothing but growth. potential for continued growth, frankly. There's a lot of young people. We are free in everything we do. And we are all bilingual. We can offer everything we do to everyone in our community that fits this bill. And so it's, we are, I will say that right now, Yeah, that's happening. Okay, so right now, we can only do high school so far because of the space we have and the staffing we have. So until we find a permanent home, again, would love to talk about that. We are limited to doing high school and up as an age range. In Carbondale, we do middle school as well. And I've had a lot of communication with the middle school staff here wanting it for the middle school. I had two meetings today that was about that. So it is our intention, but until we have the space to do so, we're stuck with what we have. And so I wanted to come present, let you know about that expansion and what we've been doing. The last time we talked was, I think, three years ago. It's been a while. And so we're just really thrilled to be here. This is my community. I care a lot about it. My kids are in the schools and everything.

um we're just it's just a privilege and a joy to be working with young people and and to be partnering in brumland frankly so questions all right well thank you like you just said i think i remember you being here looking for space yeah last time yeah and now you got it and now you know we have great space but we'd love more that's awesome counselor townsley let's start with you and somehow i can't no Did you know nothing? I don't know. You were on my, you were on my thing. So anyway, something's up. I think you're green. Try it. Yeah. That's from the, from the motion.

Got it. Okay.

Right. Counselor Schmoll, please.

It's green. There we go. Sounds like you're doing great things. Do the schools not have any space available?

It's a great question. Schools can collaborate with us to give us space. What we have found in the past is that having a space outside of school has enabled us to go a little deeper and have a little more comfort, especially for accessing services around mental health, around things that there's kind of a stigma or an awareness that I'm in a space where people can see me. and know me and I want a little anonymity. Sometimes that's helped us. What we've done is we've tried to bring services to school during the school day so that we are hosting groups, doing support services in the schools during the school day. And we have a great MOU with the school district in order to be doing that work deeply. It's a great question and it's worth still exploring, I think.

Thank you. Any other questions? Councillor Smith, please.

Thank you. This does sound really profound and, as you say, joyful. It's at least... in kind of a categorical or overarching sense, it seems at least similar to some organizations that have been operating here for a while, including- Let me tell you how we're not.

That's a great question.

Including Youth Zone, River Bridge, programs we've seen the schools initiate on their own through counselors. How does this differ from, overlap with, coordinate with, is redundant with any of those others?

Yeah, that's a great question. I would posit that there is no redundancy, but we collaborate closely with those agencies. And what we provide is something where we have long-term full choice for the young people who are engaging. You have to go. You don't have a choice. And when you're done at Youth Zone, and we're very close with Jamie and everyone there, you're done. You have two to four months, you're done. We operate continually. I have a huge percentage of my young people who have been involved for 10 years straight. And sometimes as much as 30 to 40 hours a month of direct service and care. So that's one way that we're different from Youth Zone. We're also in the courts. We also provide therapy, but it's on the terms and at the agency of the young person. 100%. When it comes to things like Buddy Program or River Bridge, Buddy Program is connecting community mentors or volunteers with young people. It's an incredible resource. My team has a lot of certification and degrees and expertise in order to provide much higher depth mentoring and care. And so what that means is that people have the counseling backgrounds, the legal backgrounds, the education backgrounds in order to work with what would probably be considered like higher risk young people and for that to be effective, right? And safe. And when it comes to the crisis response, we hand it over when we need to. The thing is we get it first. We hear it first. The kid comes to us first and tells us about the sexual assault, about the homelessness, about the suicidality. And we triage and manage everything up until the point where we're contacting law enforcement, Hope Center, River Bridge, et cetera. And we didn't choose that as a programmatic piece of content. It's just what we found to be true when we got the depth of relationship. And so our staff were all certified and trained in order to do that. But you can come visit. If you come visit, Mr. Smith, I think you could see how it is different in that it is youth-led, youth agency, youth voice. They're on our board. They're voting members of our board. We have a youth advisory council. They choose how we spend our money. They choose the expectations and culture around our environment. And so it really is their space.

Do you have any interaction with ASAP?

Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. We have youth. We're not jealous about our kids. We want them to be involved in everything. Like get, get a, get a, get someone from the buddy program, go to Asia, you know, go everywhere you can because the more, the more, you know, we know from research that the more positive adults that are in person life, the better the outcomes period. So we're just a piece of that puzzle. And I think we're really good at that piece that we do, which is a lot of the connecting.

That youth radio just reminds me of the atmosphere you're describing. They, they, they, engage with each other. They're very creative and they have a lot of fun.

Absolutely. You got to have fun because sometimes it's dark. So thank you. All right.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

No, we'll see none.

All right. Anybody from the public like to say anything about stepping stones?

Yeah, my wife.

A little biased here.

My name's Emily Fulgreener, and I'm actually the development director for Stepping Stones. I'm here. But I also want to invite you all. We're having our annual fundraiser and community party tomorrow night. Jonathan forgot to mention. So if anyone wants to really feel what Stepping Stones is like and experience it, we're running this in Carbondale at our drop-in center. So 1010 Garfield Ave. Everyone's invited. It's going to be an absolute blast. And I think you really would get a sense of what we do for the community and for young people. It's really powerful.

All right. Thank you very much.

And I think the biggest ask for us is honestly the future of space and development. So as there's ideas for development, even with creative use of space, we've been in office spaces like with like couches out of the alley, like we can figure stuff out, but we do need space to make it work and we'll do everything else. So, let us know if you have ideas or, I don't know, Steve or whoever you know you're thinking about. I know there's been creative solutions in the past with with different spaces being utilized in collaboration so.

Okay, great. I think we got one more comment from Mayor Pro Tem.

A quick question.

i didn't and you may have mentioned it i missed it but do you have you used the blake center from cmc have you been able to utilize your space at all we talked to them about it and they didn't have the availability we actually were trying to get the old bank on the corner of eighth and grand we were gonna rent that first and then they had a different idea for it we've talked to everyone we can okay at this point the mall wants 16 000 a month rent for a space um it's just untenable like so far for what we've had a lot of conversations with some odd spots And we're not opposed to building. We could figure it out. But yes, we've talked with CMC. It's a good, we do some collaboration with them, but they didn't have enough hours consistently with a space that would be safe and kind of set aside.

Got it. OK. All right. Well, I'll keep my, if you want to reach out to me later and just give me kind of a budget. I know River Bridge is looking for a space, too. Everybody's looking for a space.

We talked about going in with them, actually, with Bridges. And we were sad because we

wanted to make an offer on the old church down by the river but then we were told oh yeah and also the other church that sold right by anyway yeah like yeah anyway okay thank you yeah reach out give me give me an idea what your budget is and i have a couple of people i might be able to reach out to you just that can you give a heads up if something's coming up all right great well thank you for being here thank you for your presentation it's a good thing you're doing so thank you so much

Okay, item eight for tonight, habitat for humanity. And we're going to get an update on some things.

Here, take your heart. Thank you.

No, I won't, because you guys talk too much.

Good evening, I'm Darla Calloway. I lead the Habitat for Humanity group that is from Parachute to Aspen. We are your partners on two projects in Glenwood Springs. Overall, we are delivering 114 homes right now across the region, and the bulk of those are right here. We feel a strong sense of accountability to do these updates, come tell you how things are going, what's close to wrapping up, what would we do differently? If we could do it again, we're just here to share these updates with you tonight. I'm going to start with the Carter project. Again, we have this vision from Aspen to Parachute where everyone has a decent place to live. When we thought about the Carter, it was a completely different idea about how we get to that vision. It was an iteration. It's something we've never done before. We're testing it as we go. But there are some amazing wins that are coming out of the project that we want to share with you tonight. First of all, homeowners are paying less to own at the Carter than they were paying in rent in many locations across the valley. And it's the number one win we want to celebrate. This idea of converting a project for homeownership is playing out in really fascinating ways. When we thought about the project, we had three things that we were trying to solve for. The cost to deliver housing versus what people can afford, that gap had become so challenging. We needed a new idea, a new way to approach things. This was an existing building that was converted from apartments to condo. We didn't have to do anything to make this conversion physically a reality. It was all on paper. It is development neutral. It was already here. It was already existing housing stock that we could bring a new lens. There's a ton of great rental projects that have come online. They're serving a need. It's important. But this was another piece to add to the housing continuum. And it has been a way to stabilize housing costs. So while rental plays a very important role, you have this risk of your costs continuing to go up, up, and up. This has leveled the playing field and halted that kind of cost increase for many of our buyers. It was an expensive idea. It was a $34 million free market purchase. The city is a major investor in this with a $1.5 million grant and a $1.5 million loan to make that a reality. To address flexibility for housing in our community, there's a tiered pricing structure. We know as an organization that if you work in our community, regardless of what part of the valley that you are in, you cannot afford housing. Working incomes just do not match up to the free market. And we saw a need for this project to play a role in all income levels. There's two tiers. If you are making above 150% area median income, which is a tier that is not being served by a lot of housing projects across the valley, you can buy at the Carter. If you're making below that, you can buy at the Carter. There are these two tiers of pricing to meet people where they're at. Our current tenants, many of them have been there for a really long time before this conversion started. They're not ready to leave yet. We're saying, great, stay. You've got time to be here. And we have some future buyers who are renting at the Carter. It was Instant stability. Ella shared her story tonight. It's a really good example of she's under contract. She's living at the Carter today, applying for the city's down payment assistance program, and she has stability in the midst of working through really complex financing tools coming together. Our homeowners give the feedback that they love the high quality aspects of this. This is not just a unit. It is a home. It is filled with natural light. They love the amenities for daily living. The fact that you don't have to cart your laundry off site to some other place. It's all there in your unit. They love that there's a mailroom. They don't have to go all these different places. When you're working multiple jobs, this simple thing of when you're home, your home has really been just a great thing for our homeowners. They love the access to the meadows. There's the grocery store. Pets are allowed in the Carter Picos right there. It is just fully immersed in daily living there at the Market Street shops, the meadows. Today, there are 28 homeowners at the Carter with 12 contracts pending. 14 of those are Glenwood Springs working residents of all kinds of backgrounds. The three kind of main categories of who this project is serving is young professionals, mid-career Valley locals who just hadn't quite gotten their foot in the door of housing, and some retirees. like Ella. We have the ability for employers to come in and purchase units at the Carter to rent to their employees. Alpine Bank has made this a tool for theirs. And there's a few other groups that have come in as well to provide housing for people they care for. We have this fear when we're doing a project of what if we can't figure out all these really diverse financing options to make this make sense for a lot of different people. We were worried that only one type of financing tool would make this a reality, but that's not been the case. We do have a great deal of buyers at the Carter who are leveraging USDA 502 direct lending, a phenomenal program. impact development fund, and then actually a strong amount of buyers coming with conventional financing. There's a handful of cash buyers. That includes our employer purchase, as well as a handful of retirees who moved out of other affordable housing stock and were able to purchase at the Carter. The area median incomes is diverse. We weren't sure really where this was gonna land given we don't have a set amount of units designated for different categories, but this is who's coming to the Carter. It is some 50 to 80% AMI buyers, sweet spot there in the 100% area median income, some 120s and a handful of above 150. It's important to remember that there's a cap on how many RO resident occupied units are available to 150% area median income and above. It's about 25% of the project. Buyers have received significant tools to make this possible. 52,000 in down payment assistance. Ella was here to say thank you for considering her application. This has been game changer for so many of our buyers and it has resulted in mortgage payments, $1,250 a month to $1,800 a month. You cannot rent for that. So by working with our buyers on these, innovative mortgage products, down payment assistance, like the work that you're doing here at the city and elsewhere, we've been able to put really creative financial packages together with our buyers and walk them through those steps each step of the way. And again, we love that they can rent while they're working through those somewhat lengthy processes. Before I move into Confluence, any questions about Carter updates?

any questions let's start with counselor smith please thank you uh we covered these and many other items in your similar presentation to the housing fund advisory board thank you for that but just to kind of double check um sounds like the city's down payment assistance

is helpful very humble functions well do you have any suggestions for refining or improving that um thank you for uh the staff time to put those programs they take time i know it takes time to evaluate applications to apply for it stay the course thank you it is a good tool and we're very appreciative that the city puts this program together great thanks

And with this relatively new concept of selling units to employers to then rent to their employees, do you have provisions safeguards in place that keep the rental version of that unit affordable.

Yes, it is in the master deed restriction. And the reality is employers are purchasing units as a retention tool. If employees can't afford to rent with their employer, they're going to do something else. So there's some natural safeguards in that too. They're using it as retention tools to keep and honor their existing employees.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Schmarr. Thank you. How many total units are there in Carter?

88. 88.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? No? All right. We'll move into the confluence. Thank you.

Confluence. Just quick reminder, six condominium units for Glenwood Springs working residents. These aren't units that are available for the outside workforce. These are for employees working here in Glenwood Springs. 10,000 square foot of vertical construction, a very big project for us. It is modular construction and we are getting close to completing some of our site improvements like the two parking spaces per unit. This is a similar slide that I showed you back in December. This is the timeline of the project when we started. I told you that we were aiming to complete in the Q3, Q4 of this year. and we're on track. We are getting to the finish line. Homeowners are expecting to move in before the end of the year. All six homeowners are lined up with their loan approvals ready to go. I say end of year because those USDA loans do take some time, and with getting into this part of November, December government shutdowns sometimes can delay things, so we are aiming to finish the project and try to get them in before any impacts there. But if they don't move in right away, that's what we're working through in the background. Our steps to completion include things like the balcony connections of the modular units to the earth, stairs, sidewalks, parking, landscape. We really are getting just to the final finishes. We feel called to be transparent about the numbers to do a project like this. It is a $4.1 million project, which is a very high cost per unit to develop. This is a result of only having six units on a half acre. infrastructure is infrastructure cost and typically you're able to spread those out across a lot of units we just we don't have that but the importance of this project's location it is strategic infill it is walkable these six homes are worth it in this community our source of funds are home sales community donations prop 123 grants which is the state's funding of affordable home ownership And even Garfield County housing mitigation fees. So private development happening elsewhere in the county has mitigation impacts. They have housing obligations to do in Garfield County and have not been able to develop housing on their site, which is well outside city limits. They're mitigating and helping our project cross the finish line and keeping housing located near employment centers. So far, what we're projecting on affordability is really, really exciting. We think we'll have homeowners in for about $1,100 to $1,400 a month. We're still fine tuning HOA budgets. The homeowners have had an active role in HOA planning. What are they willing to take on versus what you just have to do, like insurance and things like that? And that has been a back and forth iterative process with the homeowners that has been a new thing to try. We have other examples of down payment assistance, federal home loan bank, 20,000 for five of the units. That's huge on a project like this. And others are working through down payment assistance with the city and the Western Resources of Colorado. So I just wanted to say thank you for your patience on this. We are committed partners to the finish line.

and we would i hope to invite you to a dedication very very soon we want to celebrate this one together that sounds great thank you so much i know this one took a little longer than we expected but i'm glad to see you um getting there so any questions counselor smith thank you uh another one we covered at the housing fund advisory board but and you touched on is

worth touching again. The costliness per unit of this particular project because of the limited number of units, which in turn was prompted by a struggle between living space and parking space. essentially how much parking to provide and that limited the number of units you could build that parking discussion is one very familiar to this room so can you talk a little bit more about that conflict and anything unique about this one where maybe traditional parking requirements aren't necessary.

it's six units on a half acre, and we just have fewer units to spread the overall infrastructure costs to. So as you're thinking, this is a lesson learned, as we think about our future projects and you're thinking about what projects you support in the future, really finding that balance of density It is a numbers game. I think we as Habitat are the only organization that can come and say, our cost to build was twice as much as what we're gonna sell the homes for. That is a Habitat only thing that we can do. It's why it took a little bit longer. We had to raise funds along the way. So as you're thinking about the balance of site decisions, density, parking is a piece of that. Just know that having more density in strategic infill locations like this alleviates traffic and actually gets numbers to pencil. There's no developer that would have touched this site for those reasons. Did that answer your question?

I think so. I think there's going to be follow up questions as people actually move in. We see how they live and drive and travel. But I think this is going to be a test case for that. That housing versus parking. Continuing discussion. Thank you for starting it.

Okay, thank you. Council small, please.

I do remember that you were working with potential owners to develop sweat equity into the units that they were buying. And that's a wonderful concept. That's how I got my first house in my life was all sweat equity. Do you carry the insurance on the construction that those homeowners are doing while they develop their sweat equity?

Our builders risk policy is through an organization that has a strong partnership with HFHI, our umbrella organization. And so yes, we carry insurance that cover homeowners as well as a significant amount of volunteers that move through our projects. It's sort of no different than having subcontractors out on site. It's that kind of approach.

So the subcontractors, when they're out on site, provide their own workman's compensation insurance.

Yes, and we have insurance policies in place on the workers' comp side, but specifically builder's risk, and we have liability coverage on our projects as well. It is a standard model that all habitats across the U.S. have access to these insurance policies that keep it affordable, but provide that important coverage for the amount of volunteers and homeowners that are moving through habitat projects.

And can I ask, have you had any... work comp type claims?

With homeowners or volunteers, no. No.

Excellent, because I've seen an awful lot of violations and they can be very expensive. You probably have an additional advantage in the position that you're in and what you're trying to do from ordinary workers.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you. Anybody from the public like to comment on habitat tonight? No, we'll see none. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for the update on both projects. Wish you best of luck with the corridor. You got 48 units to go. We're making our way somewhere there.

We are outpacing the Glenwood Springs condo market. 14 of 18 one bedroom condos sold in Glenwood are the Carter and 14 of 34 total condos. We're making great progress.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Good to hear. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, Councilor Schachter.

All right. Just a historical reminder when we talk about the city's contribution. The land was donated to Habitat, was it not? Yeah. Okay. Just one reminder by that, that there's a significant investment by the city in this project, besides time and effort. Thank you.

Yeah. In both these projects, the city contributed heavily.

Yeah.

That was it. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. We're done. Great. Okay. So what is it? 730. We're doing good. No break yet. Economic data. The, the, one of the more exciting items tonight on the agenda. Evening. The evening's agenda. That's right. The afternoon one was definitely the budget. There's no doubt. Um, all right, Jacob, let us have it. Oh, it's, it's, it's amazing. And then tell us where you got the software. That's the best part.

For such large TVs, this is pretty small. So I'm going to try to zoom in for you guys. Sounds good. My name is Jacob Zuck. I'm your economic development specialist. And I am here to show you some charts and graphs. It's going to be pretty hard to follow Yvette's pie chart from earlier. Try. So this is the economic research dashboard. This is a culmination of a lot of data collected over the last probably year or more. I've been creating dashboards for a bunch of boards and commissions, ad hoc reporting for brokers, people interested in locating in Glenwood, businesses that want to expand but need to finance it. They ask for numbers from the city. So what I've done is collect all of that into one single place, and that is This here. So I will show you just kind of general overview without going too deep. I know you guys want to go to the bar later.

So we got time. Yeah.

So here we have just some headline statistics about Glenwood. We have our population, we have household income, the number of jobs located here, unemployment, home values, and gross sales. All of this is collected from different sources, automated through API keys, keep it easy. Population comes from the State Demography Office, household income from American Community Surveys, jobs are from the Census Bureau, Longitude origin destination employer survey, which is a mouthful. But what it means is every job is addressed to the home location of the employee. So we know our commuting patterns in a very exact way. We get employment statistics from the county level every quarter. Home value is from Zillow. It's kind of like a body mass index. It's not very accurate for a single house, but when you're looking at thousands of houses, it's a pretty good look at what the housing market looks like today. And gross sales is from Colorado Department of Revenue. So that 2.6 billion number represents 50% of economic activity in the entire county. We are actually higher than Aspen in that regard. They're at 2.4, which I think is an interesting stat.

When you say 50%, does that mean Glenwood makes up 50% of Garthay County's gross?

Yes. 48% for being specific. That's, yeah. Wow. Population trend here, starting back in the 1890s, because I get asked about 1890s population very frequently. You can see that population growth as well, when that happened, what decades. You can see that from 2010 to 24, we've actually seen our slowest growth yet. And that might change a little bit as the next few censuses come out, but an interesting statistic. You can also see compounded annual growth rates, so just looking at on a yearly basis what growth looked like through the decades. You can compare all of this as well to all of our neighbors and see how Glenwood stacks up to growth in our region. All of these areas near us I'll say since the 90s have pretty popped off. So this is comparing us to Newcastle which they went from 600 to over 4,000 in just two decades. We also have age, race and household data from the American Community Survey. So we have population data through the years. You can look at specific groups. So the under five population has gone down in Glenwood. You'll hear that from groups like our school district when they talk about enrollment. That is a demographic trend that's hitting this side of Garfield County. You don't see that as much on the Western half and you can compare all of these towns as well. We have our aging trajectory. Glenwood Springs is getting older, not by much, but you can compare us to Snowmass and it's a very different picture. We are also 37% Hispanic or Latino, and that is a number that has been increasing through the years. So that green line there is from 2010 to 24. Went from 20% to today, 37. Household income. This comes into play when we're talking about housing a lot. What is affordable? What is cost burdened? Incomes are growing. They're not growing nearly as fast as housing values. So that's why we spend so much time talking about that. And all of those different variables are captured here. There's a couple of different ways to talk about income. By the household, which is unrelated people that live in the same housing unit. Family, which is family units. They are related. And per capita. You can also adjust for inflation and see what that looks like. You can see from 2010 it actually decreased quite significantly in Glenwood and the county. That is mostly attributed to the depletion of oil and gas jobs going away and well starts pulling back in that time. You can also look at Income change by town, a number of towns in our region have also seen household incomes decrease comparatively. Education, language and connectivity describing socioeconomic variables that we deal with and what makes up our community. That's education attainment, bachelor's degrees, how that's trending over time and what languages are spoken at home. very high Spanish language population. We also have broadband adoption on here. Glenwood is above the curve. doing pretty well in that regard. And this is where some of the cool data comes in with GPS phone traffic, so we can get an idea of who's moving through our valley. So each one of these purple dots you see on this map here is a virtual gate, if you will, that I put on different major roads through Placer AI, a subscription we have to this data. So you can click on one, say South Canyon, and find out who goes through South Canyon and from where. So you can see each one of these lines kind of looks like a metro map. Represents an origin. So we can zoom in a little bit. This purple line represents people going through South Canyon that were from out of the region. It's a very significant part of that traffic. 17% is not local. So when we're talking about backups in the morning, it's not always somebody from RIFLE coming to Glenwood for work. It's people going... from Grand Junction to Vail. It's a lot of non-local traffic. And we can parse that out by phone traffic. And we have 16 pins located throughout the valley. So you can compare all of these and see what traffic looks like on the bridge, for example. Who's going through there? Glenwood Springs represent only 28% of traffic on the Grand Avenue Bridge. And that is 20 million impressions in one year. So that impression is one person going through. You can go through multiple times in a day and be counted multiple times. We have that on an hourly basis as well. So you can look at what times of day are busy. I would avoid the bridge at 7 a.m. on a weekday. Don't do that. And every day for the last year. and all the specific origins are listed here if you wanna dig into that. These are home locations. You can also look at work locations. This is the... longitudinal origin, destination, employer statistics data from the census. So this tells us where our workforce lives. I have this pulled out for every community near us so we can compare who's commuting the most. We can look at inbound traffic. Aspen has the most inbound commuters at 9,500. It's important to say that this is W-2 workers. This does not include contract workers that are not counted by unemployment insurance. So that is an undercount. That and J-1 visas are not counted. You can also look at Outbound, who's sending the most people onto the road. Carbondale sends 80% of their working residents somewhere else for work every day. And we see Glenwood Springs here, our local workforce, people that live and work in Glenwood is just 3,700 people compared to our total number of jobs, which is just under 12,000. Very significant amount of our workforce is not local. So when South Canyon is closed in the morning, our businesses are not able to open because their workforce isn't here. Also added some tools so you can dive down even deeper than that. If you'd want to, you can look at specific census blocks. You can circle an area and look at where the workforce for that specific area comes from or anywhere in our entire region. I did this for the DDA, and there are 3,300 jobs just in the downtown development district based on the census data. And that doesn't include contract workers, so that's probably an undercount.

Wow.

We can also see pass-through traffic. I think that's of interest when we're looking at this traffic data, who's coming through Glenwood and continuing to other places. We can click on rifle and see exactly where they're going through when they pass through town. Very significant amount of them are headed east. They're not headed up valley. They're going to Carbondale, Aspen, Basalt, Snowmass, all those places you'd expect as well. Here's some of that economic data looking at gross sales for our region, just as a pie chart organized by, as you'd see them on a map from Debeck to Aspen, that massive line in the middle is Glenwood at $2.6 billion in economic sales. That's pulling people here. That is why we have traffic because we have the things to spend money on. And that's what pays for everything.

Simple as that.

Yeah.

All this is broken out by what industry everybody works in. That green bar at the top is health care. We are dominated by the health care industry in Glenwood Springs. We have tourism by age, by earnings. Looking more at some county level statistics here, we get unemployment rates. We get average weekly wages by industry. And this little graphic, you can see the height of the bar is the weekly wage for that sector. And the width is the number of jobs in that sector. So you can see some pretty easy clusters. That really big one right here is healthcare. We have construction, education, retail trade, and accommodations and food services as our primary sectors. that labor force participation rate and unemployment, our unemployment rate and labor force participation rate show that Glenwood Springs is working and we don't have a lot of free employees to get everywhere. So when a business is saying they have a hard time retaining employees, these are the numbers that support that. They need to pay more for every employee that they have, which puts stress on our small businesses. Housing stocks, you have Glenwood Springs housing units since the 70s. We were on a pretty significant or pretty steady growth up until 2010. It's when the economy pulled back in our region, we saw a lot less housing growth. And then at the same time, we saw a lot of housing price increases due to a constrained supply. Cost burden households, you can compare us to the region. We're right at the top. 40% are considered cost burden because they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. You can see that over time, we've remained pretty much the same for the last decade and a half. Let's see when our stock was built, the unit types. This is more of that Zillow data. So you can see home values over time. For Glenwood Springs by the type of unit, you can also compare us to our neighbors. Thankfully we're not Carbondale. Their typical single-family home is 1.5 million dollars. We are around 860. You can also compare incomes to home values here. So I took that sector level data for income and compared that to our housing types. So you can look at what it's like to be a healthcare worker looking for a condo and comparing how that has changed over time. It's also a mortgage calculator if you wanna see what that looks like on a monthly basis. It's not very pretty. Share of wage before tax is 45% if you're an average healthcare worker in Glenwood Springs. And that is for a condo. If you look at single family, that's 103% of their wages. That is the problem we are faced with. All right, sales tax data. So this is actually a little bit more than sales tax data. This is actually economic output from the state. That is that gross sales of 2.6 billion retail taxable. And we can compare us to the region. We are that bar at the top. See our neighbors there. And in terms of sales, gross sales per resident, that would equate to $237,000 spent per year per resident.

Hey, Jacob, real quick, does that include all retail sales, including online sales?

Yes. So gross sales also include services as well. Thank you. Retail includes any physical product that is bought here or addressed here by a delivery address.

So Amazon's in there. Yeah. Really? That's cool.

We also have our city sales tax data in here if you want to break that out by category. Our lodging tax collections by funds, so you can see both tourism promotion and workforce housing since 23. Our economic data, so county GDP, what that looks like compared to inflation. If you adjust that, it's been pretty flat for the last 15 years. You can see the components of that. Finance and insurance is the largest single component. Since this what's selected there was mining and energy peaked in 2008 has since declined. And you have more oil and gas data that well starts for the last two decades and oil production those jobs. That is the community profile. Now I'll just quickly show you the other pages in here. We have tourism to support our tourism board. This has all of our visitation data broken out by out of state, front range, local, day trips, overnight, when they're coming during the day, year over year trends. Points of interest. So we identify specific attractions in town, how they're performing. We get that as well as specific locations where our visitors are coming from. We use this to inform where we're spending ads. If something is trending in the wrong direction, it's probably not somewhere we want to keep sinking money. We're going to move that to somewhere else. Retail hubs as well tells us about foot traffic, who's going to certain areas. So for example, looking at Bethel and Seventh Street. So think of the footprint of the farmer's market in Bethel Plaza. You can see who's going there. 62% of foot traffic is people living more than 50 miles away. Another 20% is from the region. Only 16% of foot traffic in the middle of our downtown is Glenwood Springs residents, which I think is interesting. Shows you who's spending money. This is just for that Bethel and 7th Street area. You see similar trends on 6th Street as well. Sixth Street East is only 14%. West is 15%. But then you compare that to, for example, City Market. That's 62% local. Also have a page in here for downtown. So for DDA board, we have a specific subset of data for them to keep an eye on at their business meetings. They're very clear. They want to know what time of day people are coming, what day of the week, how they should plan for that on a seasonal basis. We have some environmental trends in here. So every hydrograph and gauge in the region is here and updated live every five minutes. So you can see hydrologically how we're doing, how snowpack turns into river flows, all of that fun stuff. To be at a later meeting, we have all the transit data from Ride Glenwood on demand. You can see a map of every pickup and drop off. You can select an area. Nicholas Alberson- See who's going within there. Who's leaving it and going where Nicholas Alberson- And all that map she make a little weird map.

Nicholas Alberson- Looks like coolest one yet. Yeah.

Nicholas Alberson- So that is about half of all data in there, but I will leave it there. Any questions. David Ensign, Awesome.

Thank you, Jacob council small

Jacob, incredible, incredible amount of data. And if we don't make smart decisions, having all of that data, then we ought to be shot. I didn't say what with. I have some concerns about overvaluing the data or not recognizing some skews that may exist in the data. The first thing that comes to mind is the data dates from the various sources. If they are not jiving, can they be affecting the overall conclusion that we might draw from any of this, the total stuff? And whether it's important, it clicks to me that it could skew the data.

So like here, for example, each one of these KPIs at the top of this page has the timeframe that it's in relation to. So that first one, population, is from 2024. That's the most recent available data we have. I have looked at more recent cell phone traffic data to see if that is trended more recently. It's not super different, but not as reliable as the state demographer's office published statistics. So I would rely on 2024 for that. But when it comes to unemployment, those data are released on a quarterly basis. So we have that up until June 2026. So all of these data points, the date is important. You need to make sure you're aware that some of it lags more than others.

And similarly, when we count W2 workforce, we may not be counting a significant part of the workforce.

Yeah, that's true. And that's where I use the GPS data so we can classify inbound commuters as well.

So we may be able to discern the percentage difference between the two by looking at the differences between what looks like everybody going to work in aspen and how many w-2s are being reported in aspen right that's correct that would be handy to know i can get that too thank you awesome okay any other questions counselor smith please thank you um following the format and the introduction right

All of these images you just spun through almost are actually on the city's internet site.

Yes.

We don't need your slideshow. Slideshow is the site.

Yeah. So this is a live data dashboard on its own server. You can find it on our website. You can also find it just by Googling Glenwood Springs Economic Research. It'll be the first six results.

Great.

A couple of little individual snippets. We've been learning for quite a while your traffic tracking, basically using cell phones. Is it possible to track how people are traveling at least solo cars versus carpools versus bus by proximity of the various phones?

What I would do for that, and Lee and I have explored this a little bit, is using the CDOT vehicle counters and comparing that to the GPS traffic. So then we get the number of people and the number of vehicles. So then we get vehicle occupancy numbers by just averaging that.

So we couldn't decipher yet the difference between single riders from Newcastle to Glenwood Springs compared to carpoolers.

Yeah, not for specific geographies because only the GPS is attributed to a home location. The vehicle counters, we don't know.

And you talked about the data you showed that affirmed the difficulty of local employers getting employees. Where do those people go to work instead? Can you tell that yet?

So I will go back to that to help explain what I was kind of mentioning. This one. Yes. So this chart, the top right, sorry, it's a little hard to see, the top line, which is a gold color, is average weekly wage. That bottom line is green. That is the number of jobs. This is for the county. What you're seeing is the total number of jobs hasn't even passed the 2008 number. We haven't seen a lot of change in employment totals. What we have seen is the cost per employee, average weekly wage, skyrocket in that same period. So the cost of each employee for each business has gone up.

diversion that you that caught my attention do we know why that doesn't work are they getting more money somewhere else or are they still working close to home or competing for the same number of employees every business has the same workforce to work with whoever pays the most keeps the employee and that and that payment may be somewhere outside england springs

Yeah, this data specifically is county level. But yes, that applies to us as well.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Any other questions? Quick. What's your average margin of error?

For the census data for Glenwood Springs, it's between 4% and 6% usually. For the GPS data, I've compared that with closed, fenced-in areas where we can have actual attendance numbers to compare to. It's between 1.5% and 2% accurate.

So it's not that bad, actually. Yeah, pretty good.

Okay. Anybody from the public have any questions?

Jacob's dashboard. I don't know where he is. Okay.

The economic dashboard, whatever you want to call it. See none? Okay, great. If I see no more questions, thank you so much for being here. That was great. I'm going to go play around. It's incredible. I will go hang in the hallway while you do the next one.

And then you said, so you get to come in for public comment?

No, I just want to come back for the... City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers.

City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers.

City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers.

Okay, Emory Ellingson Community Development. I'll be sharing my screen presentation.

Help with the mics.

Thank you. Oh, thank you. Welcome.

Okay, so today is a code amendment regarding short-term rentals and accessory tourist rentals. So there are potential changes to code. The intent of this code amendment was to provide additional clarity on renewal of short-term rental permits. And so again, that was a follow-up to the appeal that council previously heard for a short-term rental renewal on Park Drive. So Planning and Zoning Commission at their August meeting made a recommendation for a six to one vote. Planning and Zoning Commission did make a minor change to the original language. And then I do have a public comment that I did receive the other day that I can hand out when I'm done with my presentation that you can take a look at. So again, it's code amendment. This is the language in front of you. And so essentially this is looking at when people renew their permits, what is the minimum threshold for renewal? And so this is the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended language. And the change would be renting the unit for at least 10 nights within a two-year permit period. Previously, we did not have the red text and we did not specify more than $0 in lodging taxes. And then documentation for meeting the number of nights would basically be submitted as part of the person's renewal application every two years. And so that's what it looks like for short-term rentals, which again, that's rental of the entire house. Accessory tourist rentals limit would stay at one night. and remit more than $0. And so again, meets all the criteria for code amendment as outlined in the staff report, motion for approval, alternative motion for denial, or continuance. And I'll hand out that public comment.

Thank you. All right. So are we ready to start? Yes. Okay.

I'll turn on.

Looks like Ray is next.

I see in there that we have currently 125 short-term rental permits. Has anybody figured out what the max based on the spacing limitations we could have?

uh so not there is a max based on number of housing units and that's 210 so that would actually be our cap so the the we have basically two functions it's there's a maximum cap of there can't be more than 210 and that's based on the number of residential units we have in the city and then past that then we also have the individual you know by neighborhood you can't be more than 250 feet so that kind of that spatially determines where ones can and can't go As a total, we can't go past right now 210. And that number will increase as new residential units are built.

And I asked that because if we have 125 short term rentals now, that's taking roughly 4% of our housing stock off the market, which is contributing to increased values. John Potter, So it's just I just bring that up because, to me, that seems like it's a conflicting incentive in our in our city goals. John Potter, Something part of the decision making process, I guess, that data helps observe. I also, I also, I believe this has been a long time ago since this was brought to my attention to ask when the opportunity came up about the short-term rentals are taxed differently than hotels. I understand.

Correct. So they're residential properties.

So they pay residential rate for property taxes, property taxes, but sales tax also, um,

Yeah, they contribute to that.

Yeah, so short-term rentals also pay lodging taxes the same rate as hotels and sale.

I think the difference is that the services provided to short-term rentals are not taxed. Whereas a hotel has an in-house staff that does all of the in-house maintenance, service, cleaning, all that stuff that's included in their nightly rate and is therefore taxed. Whereas a short-term rental deducts those services that come in charges a fee on it but that fee on their nightly stay is not taxed because it's a service have i got that right they'll they'll collect and remit tax on what they pass through to their

Right. So whether they get that good or that service inside as an employee or outside as a contractor, they're still going to cut past that cost through to a renter.

But the renter, the renter pays the service fee, but the service fee is not taxed is what I had understood. It's not taxed as a lodging tax. It's taxed as... It's not taxed. It's an additional service on top of the rental fee that is taxed.

Yeah, I don't know. We don't tax fees. That's true. But anything that they pay should be included in lodging tax. I don't know exactly how big a difference... I don't know enough about the fee structure to really be able to weigh in on that. I'd have to look into that further.

I don't hear anybody telling me exactly what the answer is on that either. But it may be another one of our inherent things that's disincentivizing or working opposite the way we would want it to work. And my other question was, did the dissenting vote from the Planning Commission give any rationale?

They felt like the existing rule is good enough. They didn't feel like we needed to increase the number of minimum nights.

Thank you.

This kind of harkened back to something when I was reading through this originally. if we're trying to make it such that people are not picking up permits to block neighbors from doing something, the 30 over 10 does seem to make more sense, but also why do we have that they just have to present more than zero in sales tax? I mean, isn't there, that again makes it very easy to circumvent what we're trying to do. So why either do something and make it really easy to circumvent or why do it at all? I guess it's kind of my theory. It's like, I don't know what the lodging tax typically would be for a $300 a night place, but 10 nights and zero tax or 10 cents in tax seems like a waste of time. And this gal or whoever it is that sent this in, I think is maybe alluding to that. Any thoughts as to... as to why there's a not in the first place. Yeah. I mean, why aren't we, why aren't we wanting to see either more nights or more nights and some actual tax coming in or somebody's paying it in? Because if you say, send me a buck and you, and you met it, then it's like, what are we doing with this?

Yes. I think the, well, first of all, the, the reason for having a limit in the first place was to push people towards, if you have a permit, you need to at least use it. And then why was it not set higher? Why was it, I think it was just to establish a minimal threshold. People use it a lot of different ways. Some short-term rentals, it is their primary residence. When I went back and looked, that isn't the largest proportion of actual permit holders. And then some people, it's their family home. So I think it was to at least establish a minimum, have people use it. And then that was really our start of doing that. So maybe... intent was not to put it too high see what happens and really that's what's before you tonight is really to discuss what is what limit do we want planning and zoning commission was at 10 nights original staff language is to keep it the same this public comment says push it to 30 so i think that's part of the discussion thanks any other questions no yeah okay can you get

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Thanks Emery. Um, PB, Harmon Zuckerman, From your perspective. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, What is our goal with this, but with PB, Harmon Zuckerman, What are we trying to accomplish with you know, adjusting numbers, talking about minimum, just help me understand so that I know that I feel like I'm helping to meet that goal. What is it that we're trying to accomplish?

Sure. So again, like the original intent, like we want people to use these, we don't want people to quote, you know, sit on permits. And then, so really, you know, planning is on a commission, reviewed it and thought that, okay, the way we have it, that's pretty low in a two-year period. basically one night in a two-year period, that's a pretty low bar. So let's move it to 10. Now, what I will say is whatever number is picked, that could be subjective to someone who it's their primary home and goes away for a week. They're like, man, how am I going to make 10? To someone that has the home and rents it every night of the year, they're not probably gonna stress about it. So whatever number gets picked, that's gonna be a threshold. And just like we saw with the renewal, potentially there might be life circumstances and we might come up against that rule. That's just the reality of rules. But ultimately it is to keep people from getting permits. If you get a permit, you should be using it. Now, what I will say is that when we get the reports back, PB, Harmon Zuckerman, It's we have a large amount of data. And in the past, I haven't tracked how many nights because that wasn't a condition of renewal. So unfortunately don't have the best data for that. It was just looking at the amount of accommodation tax.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, So our goal is to prevent people PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Our goal is to prevent people from pulling short term rental permits.

purely out of a defensive posture right and then and then to do nothing with them and prohibiting anyone from 250 feet to also do nothing so maybe the question for council tonight is at what point is someone really using it at what point constitutes okay that person is getting it in good faith and really using it the way it's intended versus are they just getting it to block their neighbors

So it's like, yeah, defining what good faith means here.

And again, too, there's a lot of different ways to use a property. And if you have a property, maybe it's in the family, maybe use it solely for short-term rental, maybe use it for spring break. So that's what we do see, different uses of the short-term rental in town.

My other question was around the other type of rental, the auxiliary or the whatever, accessory, right? What do we care if somebody rents out their spare bedroom to somebody?

So we only care if it's for a period of less than 30 days. If you were renting out a bedroom in your home to someone for six months, that's just the long-term rental. Because at 30 days or less, then it becomes a short-term stay and you are subject to accommodation and lodging taxes.

Is that a Glenwood rule or is that a state law?

with the 30 days?

Less than 30 days thing.

And that's our code.

Yeah, that's generally how short-term accommodations lodging is defined both by us and by state statute. It's not a requirement.

Yeah.

I guess if you wanted to exempt that for whatever reason.

It felt, when I read that, it felt a little bit too much in somebody's business that we were, you know, I rent my spare bedroom to.

Yeah, I mean, keeping in mind, remembering that Airbnb, that's actually how it started.

Yeah, that's right.

was renting your extra bedroom in a house that was occupied, not renting the entire unit. So that's been an evolution, I think, of both VRBO and Airbnb.

Does that still happen? Do you know that? Are people still renting just spare bedrooms?

We only have like 11 of those permits and I hardly ever get people asking about them. I think, you know, when Airbnb started, that was the model and what people did. And then it moved to more just here's your house. You have, you know, both parties have privacy, but that option is available. And also it's that one doesn't have the buffer distance. So anybody in town that has a residential unit, you always have that option.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

All right. So then someone else.

Your he's going to thank you piggybacking off the question. You said we don't have hard data on. Number of nights per unit. Do you have a sense though of. What's the smallest amount of. Tax people were admitting, I mean, do we do we have.

many units that are really only doing seven nights a year uh so what makes this hard is uh with suts which was a change in how sales tax was collected everybody that lists on airbnb and vrbo basically airbnb and vrbo collected on behalf of the owner and then give it an alum sum to the city so we lost the threat a little bit on being able to track that where previously every single person had their own individual business license it would have been very easy to be like this place has this much accommodation taxes.

So given that, and we can't deconstruct it, is this even enforceable?

Well, yeah. So the thing is, is Airbnb and VRBO, you can pretty easily print off an earnings report that tells you how many nights that someone stayed. I wasn't super picky about renewals because again, when, code the way it was, was I just needed to see, okay, it's more than $0. So the reports I got from a lot of people were Airbnb reports that just had the total number of basically remittances.

And it didn't have the little like night, you can make custom reports.

So from an enforcement standpoint, whether we do zero, 10, 15, it doesn't really cause an issue for staff to enforce it. We would just be asking certain documentation going forward with those numbers.

different documentation that you get from Airbnb and VRBO?

So if someone's listing with those, it'd be those. Also in Munirevs in the city business licensing, if you're listing independently, you'll have it there. If there's other booking agencies, they can provide, we would work it out with, okay, well, here's your agent. This is the third party company you used.

So there's a significant more time than what you're doing now?

I wouldn't say significant. It will be more because it will be a different request, but it's pretty similar concept. Thank you.

I wonder if we're still clear on what the objective was to begin with. Because to begin with, it's a property owner's right to do with their property what they want to within the law. We've instituted a law now to regulate what homeowners can do with their property and we've and we've set the supply limitations generally if we take it to extremes and we said everybody all 4,000 or 3,000 of our homes in this town could be short-term rentals because they're so popular and so profitable. We could have a whole town full of short-term rentals. We didn't want that. Clearly, we didn't want that. Now, if a neighborhood doesn't want short-term rentals... Thank you. The question is, how many short-term rentals do we want in this town? Because now we're saying, if you have a permit, you have to use it because we want short-term rentals. Is that what we want?

I can't tell what you think. Okay, yes.

Councilor Smith.

Thank you. I'm feeling kind of dense. And I and I almost came out of that density. With counselor Weimer's question, as it was along the lines of trying to ask, what are we trying to accomplish? If indeed, it's to make it harder to have what you might call an artificial short term rental in order to blockade a more active one. Was that indeed kind of the answer?

So actually, I would take this back. So the original genesis of this code amendment was we had an appeal. The appellant made some points of maybe code is not so clear. So staff's reaction to that was, let's add some language to clarify the existing requirements we have. Planning and Zoning Commission, based on after hearing the appeal, talking about it, planning and zoning commission's recommendation was let's lift that threshold, that bar for that renewal. So that's where that came from. And ultimately, yeah, the intent is if it's a use it or lose it, you either have your permit and you use it in some fashion or you're not going to have it and someone else in the neighborhood that might be more wanting to use it can have an opportunity.

And I read the background materials from planning and zoning to try to sort this out. So again, that's where I'm feeling kind of dumb. It seems backwards. If you want to be sure somebody's actually a genuine operator of a short-term rental, wouldn't you want to have a minimum number of days rather than a maximum number?

That we have at the minimum. That's what we're talking about.

As it's drafted, Councillor Smith, it is a minimum of 10 nights.

So now it's minimum 30.

No, no, no. Currently, there is underneath the proposal as it came from the Planning Commission, they made a recommendation of that for a full license, you would have to do at least a minimum of 10 nights and remit some amount of sales tax.

And then that's where I'm getting lost. Between the 10, which makes sense in terms of this conversation, what's the 30 accomplishment?

That's just a public comment that we received.

This is just a comment. Yeah, that's a public comment. That's not, okay. So that didn't get incorporated into that proposal. Correct. Thank you. All right.

Councilor Shatner.

I'm just.

Mayor Mrakas, Okay, mayor pro tempos to get a discussion, but appreciate that there any further questions before we entertain a motion.

Mayor Mrakas, yep.

Mayor Mrakas, Any in the public, are there any further questions before we entertain a motion. Mayor Mrakas, I see nine. Mayor Mrakas, And i'll bring it back to Council.

Mayor Mrakas, you're lit up. Mayor Pro Tem regarding planning file number CDA 000049126, consideration of a code amendment application regarding election 070, 03030, use specific standards for short-term rentals and accessory tourist rentals. I would move that we approve the recommended P&Z changes with the following adjustments that we add over a two-year period that there be a minimum of 20 nights and a minimum of $3,000 of sales tax remitted, which I believe are reasonable prices. And that's my motion based on the findings in the staff report.

Can I clarify that that was a motion to approve Ordinance 26-2022, an ordinance of the City of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, amending the code regarding accessory tourist rentals and short-term rentals in the city to include 20 days as the minimum and a minimum remittance of $3,000 in sales tax in a two-year period.

I'm sorry. $3,000, not $3,000, $150.

I stand corrected. $150. Thank you. Which represents gross revenue of about $3,000.

Because I was like. No, I stand corrected. $150 minimum, 20 night minimum and the findings on the staff report.

Right. And that's a motion on the.

All right. Yes. And do I see a second? Councilor Weimer.

Mitchell Weimer seconds. All right.

Okay. So now. It looks like anybody discussion.

Yes.

All right, go ahead.

Um, a couple things and partly because of the long history. Um, addressing some of the questions that, uh, that. Counselor small had in clarification my understanding. I, I think that's clear across the board. This came up for 2 reasons. not just one. One was to clarify language because there was ambiguity that was raised by an appeal. And this does that. The second one, the secondary one that came out of it is to not use the code to block accessory dwelling, short-term rentals that comply with the rest of our rules, including our 250 foot barrier. That's my understanding of the purpose. in relation to the question counselor small that you had and a lot of others haven't had history glenwood was one of the most proactive proactive and earlier adopters to short-term rentals that said based on the community needs based on the strategic plan based on input from everybody that yeah we want short-term rentals but we don't want a ton of them we don't want Dave Kuntz, A breckenridge type style where there's a plethora of short term rentals that take up inventory that affect neighborhoods and, as a result, the the staff. Dave Kuntz, And the PNC and the Council of time did a ton of work coming up with a formula that has worked extremely well given those goals and and. Dave Kuntz, has kept us from found the balance it seemed for the Community stated need say yeah short term rentals makes sense. but not everybody can have them and not everybody wants them next door. And so we've got a reasonable fair way to spread them out. And that's kind of the background. And actually we've been a model for many communities saying, oh my gosh, I wish we had done this. And so it seems to meet our goals. You asked how many, that's an interesting question. I have raised a point and then it's not for tonight's session that because our actual number is relatively low, And we had this discussion two years ago. Because our number is actually relatively low and seems to be working for our housing inventory and the quality of our neighborhoods, yet our theoretical maximum is about twice that, perhaps at another time, we should consider dropping that cap, but still keeping our current system in place. Anyway, that's what I have for discussion. Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Councilor Schma? Sorry.

That is exactly the discussion I was trying to get to. But it's with the question, how many is good? And how many do we want? And how much do we want to regulate private property uses by private property owners? I don't think the language Dave Kuntz, As I stated in the meeting at during the appeal I don't i'm pretty imaginative i'm not as imaginative as adjacent meaning, whatever we want it to me. Dave Kuntz, But i'm pretty imaginative in language and I didn't find it unclear at all, I found only a lawyer could find that to be unclear, and so i'm reluctant to fix something that isn't really broken.

Okay.

Dave Kuntz, Question for you, Carl. So if we have this, so I'm also trying to think, how do we cheat proof the process, right? And so we've got some new reporting mechanism that they're gonna be required to come to us, right? And prove out what they've rented. And it's a question, if that form gets, if we require that document to be notarized, does that give it any more legal weight if they're fibbing?

I think that the change that I would, if you guys are inclined to move forward with some version of this tonight, I think on, we might want to look at, to address that concern, Tightening up consequences in other places around licensing in terms of there's currently, I believe, revocation for or denial based on misstatement or denial. Not just a misstatement, but an actively lying on your application, essentially. So I think if that came up, I mean, there's always going to be somebody who's going to want to try to gig the system, always, and is willing to spend that extra $150 a year or every two years or whatever. But I think that the consequences of that can be... Dave Kuntz, Increased a little bit about not being forthright in your application materials okay and and probably move it a little tight a little closer to what we would do saying liquor licensing or marijuana licensing. Dave Kuntz, On that there are some you know fairly severe consequences on your ability to ever get a license again if you yeah if you. Dave Kuntz, Miss state or lie on your application so okay.

All right, let's yep. Dave Kuntz, Okay, because they're Smith.

Thank you. Probably still in the realm of questions for me. A variation or maybe a companion to Councillor Small's question, how many are there and how many do we need? Well, not how many are there, but how many do we need? What is the trend in how many we're getting? Is this lost popularity? Is it gaining popularity?

So there was in 2018, 2019, we had a peak of 138, at which point that's when the distance regulations went into effect. Building inspections were required. And then it dropped off to 106. And to date, we haven't, again, reached 2018, 2019 levels, although it has been increasing. Kind of on a slow increase, but the last permit period, we actually had 137, and now we have 126. Some of that attrition is due to we had a handful of people not collect taxes and didn't renew. A couple properties sold. A couple properties just didn't want to do it anymore. And then some of it also was when the buffer rule was instituted, you had some properties that were allowed to continue. even though they were closer than 250 feet. But then when they sold, the new owner can't have one anymore. So that's basically where we're at with the trend. we had a peak, we made some changes, dove off a cliff, and then it slowly rebounded, but not to where we saw it before. And I would also say too, probably Airbnb, I think, just in general, retail industry, there's a lot of options in Glenwood also when people come here.

Thank you. That leads very nicely to my second, I think last question, which may be a crystal ball question. With the Hilton home, getting ever closer to opening, which is sort of an Airbnb, basically little apartments for people who are here for a longer period for job or for vacation. Do you have a sense of what impact that facility like that is going to have on this larger market?

It would be interesting because, yeah, you are correct. It is the model that the, you know, extended stay Hilton has could be some competition for short-term rentals because you do have a little bit larger rooms, a little more accommodation. So it would be interesting to see if that affects things.

But nothing we've seen from their own data from other towns or anything like that.

I didn't look into. Thank you.

All right, any other well real briefly I personally think that this makes sense to put in. I wasn't very comfortable with you know kind of the big language that we had in the former ordinance I think clarifying that is just being kind to our constituency and the residents, people who are operating in this space to understand exactly what the foundation is. um i don't have any problem with putting the common sense kind of boundaries around it i think that that also makes sense i don't like the thought that we could have like one of our tools weaponized against your neighbors um and that's essentially what that is you're putting neighbor against neighbor but i also don't think that this is going to encourage like excessive airbnb development and you know as far as like how you know kind of this new um to home in town i think the market will decide if that is going to impact it or not i know personally i probably would be more inclined to stay at a extended stay hotel instead of a private residence for parking and you know housekeeping and some of the other things and so i think that was one of the reasons that the council prior to this one approved that so easily was because it did make sense for the visitors and for our community so i think this is just like a really sensible next step So if there's nothing else, we call for the question.

Can I just ask a clarification question? So the amount of tax remitted in the course of a permit period is $150. Yes. Okay. So whether or not our tax rates change in the next two years or permit period, we'll just stick with that amount.

We'll stick with that amount now. I think we can, in this next permit period, we'll see how it plays out. I don't see another tax change on the horizon, given that that's an election issue, and that would be a November from now at the earliest anyway.

So that leads to another question I have to have with council is, okay, so we are approximately, you know, almost halfway done with a permit period. So if this change is being instituted, is it going to take effect for the next renewal period? So people will have this next 15 months to meet this minimum?

I think that seems to be the intent of council.

Yeah.

Yeah. Sure.

All right. Now I think we're ready to call for the question.

Yes, Councilor Townsley. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem Zlinski. Yes, Councilor Weimer. No, Councilor Schmoll. No, Councilor Smith. Yes, Councilor Schachter. It passes 4-2.

Can you call Marco back in? It looks like Sumner wants to say something else.

No, it's Marco.

You're back on. Can I be here?

Yes.

Regarding Bragg's or the motion.

Councilor Schacht. Thank you. Just regarding the nature of this discussion, I'm going to bring up a little frustration or a little goal of mine that I've been talking about now ever since our new council took shape, that we haven't had a reasonable discussion, in my opinion, Dave Kuntz, of council's general feelings about housing unit growth short term rentals is and doesn't mean we all agree, but we haven't done an overview for us. Dave Kuntz, Now we've charged housing department to come back with five things, and I think one of them might have involved short term rentals and I understand that's coming soon and or. we can look at some seven overriding questions that at least we can articulate as this council what our goals are for housing and see where we align or don't align. So I would encourage us to do that. I've been encouraging for quite a while. Now, whether it takes a workshop or whether it happens on the dais, I don't know, but we haven't done it yet. And that leads to some of the, not confusion, but it leads to some things on the dais that probably could be

discuss beforehand so at least we know where we align thank you that's all are you sure you guys don't want to save this for council comments yes that's what's up next but it's kind of related all right emery congratulations yeah yeah okay great well he's sitting there i know that's fair good enough All right, moving on. Item 11 tonight, Council of Comments. We'll start with Councilor Townsend. Councilor Schmoll. Mayor Pro Tem Selinsky. Councilor Smith. Okay.

Since it's a relatively private or small group moment, without being too airishly public, I just want to be sure everybody knows, as you may well, that former councilman and mayor Leo McKinney's son, his youngest son, died in a horrible car crash on Saturday night. So you may want to look out for Leo or just be aware of that. Also, since we last met, or at least since the last time we talked about this, ballot initiative 175, has been withdrawn from the November ballot. This is the one that would redirect a fair amount of transportation-related state funding to go to all roads construction and maintenance. That is based in some parent negotiations continuing over how to make more people in that mix happy. I, for one, am hoping that those discussions include ensuring that we do not undercut funding for transit, among other things. So I will try to track that and maybe others of you will come across information as well. Building on the Carter presentation and update tonight and the positive model that I consider that to be, the opportunity to create affordable owned housing in a way that is what we like to call development neutral, is indeed affordable, is indeed locally convenient. They took rental apartments and are converting them into owned homes. One of the factors that made that possible was the fact that the building originally was built to city... Uh-huh.

Oh, God. That's serious. The city. You said Siri there, buddy.

That building was originally built code for or owned for condos. And there is a small handful of differences in the code between whether you're building multifamily for rental purposes or building multifamily for sale. And not all the ones that are currently multifamily for rent can be converted the way that Carter can because of these code differences. So I would encourage and ask other council members if they might chime in to encourage planning and zoning and city staff to look at that difference and see if we can eliminate that difference so that future multifamily construction would retain the possibility of becoming a Carter. pitch that notion for your consideration and hopefully for P&Z's consideration. And finally, we received this week an email update from the city manager that federal funds proposed for the proposed South Bridge project were obligated, I believe is the correct verb. I suspect that that may uh prompt a sense of uh a temptation to to dash forward with this with this proposed project that is to go as as city manager suggested to the bidding process i think steve asked unless i see receive different direction we'll proceed to the bidding process early in the year i'll offer a bit of caution and suggest that we beware automatically embracing that assumption and consider whether or not to go to bidding as the next phase. I think the project is ill-advised structurally, and the impact it would have on neighborhoods and travel patterns within our town It's also all along been a disproportionate financial and staff working burden on this city government, disproportionate to the benefits it would provide to city residents. While the bidding process may well inform the viability of this proposed project. And that's part of the temptation. Well, let's just find out how much really gets lost. And if it's too severe, then that's one thing. If it's affordable, that's something. So bidding may be an informing thing, but it might be possible to do some calculations and project whether the project is financially viable. Aside from its structural problems and its neighborhood problems, in the name of city protecting city finances, we may be able to calculate whether it's worth the gamble to go to bidding, both to help protect the city's finances and to relieve potential bidders of a whole lot of work to submit their packages on a project that may not go anywhere. I think it also Dave Kuntz, is valuable to keep in mind. Dave Kuntz, The Oregon projects that might be more directly functional and usable by city residents if we don't spend this kind of city money. even aside from a federal grant on a project of this scale is disproportionately of lower local value. So I encourage some more discussion before finally committing to a bidding process. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Councilor Schacht. Microphone?

Is that mic down there?

Yeah, I got you. Thank you. to Councilor Smith's prior comment about condo ready again and Councilor Schmal and our discussion again, that to me rather than piecemealing would be very helpful for us to have a council overview of where we wanna go with housing policy. So then there's no mistake to CommDev what things we wanna prioritize other than what's already been done on our strategic plan and comp plan but council's changed. So we have not reemphasized that. And all these things that have been mentioned, I believe are a reason to go over that. Second thing was brought to my attention, and this is not an action item, but because of some construction in my neighborhood, a neighbor brought up the fact that unbeknownst to me, and unlike a lot of communities, Glenwood doesn't have an ordinance that prohibits construction any time of the year. holidays, weekends, and I'm not sure the weekend times, but it may be something that ComDev confirms for us and say, hey, are we in the right zone in terms of neighborly interruptions or injections of noise? I don't know. It just came to my attention today and had a brief discussion with Trent. That was something else. The third thing Um, and maybe at some point we get some clarification. There seems to be some ambiguity of what we mean by the confluence. And so hopefully we get that cleared up was what this committee is actually looking at as I'm not even sure. Um, that's all I had tonight. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Council. I'm good. You're good. Okay. Excellent. Councilor small.

I'm back to following up on Southbridge. I think I had stated publicly before that if we have any idea about going to bid before we have all of the right away acquired, I will squeal like a mash cat. That is a tremendous liability for the city for getting bids and getting under contract without owning right away. But I think that's, I can't imagine that that's going to happen.

All right.

Yeah, I kind of want to see that a little bit. Not much for me, just following up on Council Schachter's about the confluence. Steve and I had a talk, and we're going to bring this to work session for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, to make sure we all understand what it means that we're actually looking for.

Might take longer than that.

All right, 20 minutes, that's fine. Is that going to be at the beginning of the month?

Yeah, the next week.

Okay, excellent. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Where are we going?

We're going to reconvene at DAX.

Excellent.

Is there an issue?

Is there an issue?

I think they wanted to have updates. Oh, right.

Oh, well, the whiskey was more important. Terribly sorry.

City manager, what do you got?

I'm good.

Yeah, okay. I actually had a couple of things tonight. The first is they held a hearing this week on the Safe Women Springs Act that was introduced by our congressional delegation. So Senator Bennett made a point of nobody else really got to testify at that hearing. It was an administrative hearing. They made an exception for the senator. The senator specifically testified on behalf of Glenwood Springs. And I think that is huge. It's huge that Senator Hickenlooper sits on that committee and that that happened. The administration comments were actually not directly in opposition that were submitted. So, I mean, that is a huge step in a long running battle over making sure that the city is protected from that development. So that's the first thing. Second thing is just kind of where we're at on grinding through the potential lawsuit against the property owner and the detention facility. I've been running parallel tracks with outside counsel as kind of a red team separately, had a discussion today about our respective research and where we're at. I think that that will move forward and probably about the next week based on the Council direction and where we're at at this point. So I wanted to touch base on that. As to your point, Councillor Small, absolutely. That's kind of the point of why bidding wouldn't be until January as we're grinding our way through. the finalizing right-of-way acquisitions. Because I agree, it's a liability in terms of bidding that I don't want to have there. I want to have possession before we get a bid.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Smith?

Just a question to follow up on that, if that's the right protocol? No, but okay. Your update on the evolving lawsuit over the West Glenwood facility... I was irked at the last city council meeting when one of the perennial citizen commenters again called for seeking second opinion legal counsel. I hope that we are not going to take that bait again.

No, we'd actually already been doing that because I wanted to take an outside look at this. And part of the reason for that is a very fundamental one to my profession, which is, am I engaging in frivolous and groundless litigation? If I am, am I personally sanctioned for that? It was also something that I had suggested way back in August to the council. So Rob Marsh from Prescott and Moore down in Denver, he does a lot of federal litigation, is doing that kind of parallel track because I don't want to get it wrong. This is a big deal. It's a big deal to the community. So I think we're in a good place. It doesn't change my opinion that the likelihood of success is low. It doesn't mean that it's zero, but What's the line? It's like being killed by a chicken. It's not impossible, but unlikely. So getting through that, and I know it has taken some time, but the reason for that is that in all of this, you don't want to make a stupid error. And also something, there was a case, the There's been recent litigation around the state statute regarding inspections that was just enjoined in late August from being allowed to be enforced against the Aurora facility. Had to take that into the analysis as well because that, while not an appellate case, it is an analysis of very similar legal precedent to what we're going to be facing in this lawsuit. So wanted to work our way through that as well. So just trying to be careful.

Dave Kuntz, Thank you and maybe i'm making a distinction without a difference, but the distinction I strikes me is seeking corroborative and advisory. Dave Kuntz, Assistance. strikes me as very smart and very different from, we think this lawyer doesn't know what he's doing, so we want another one, which was more the implication of the first and more recent request from his citizen.

Yeah. No, thank you. I appreciate that. And you're right. This is about corroborating the positions that we're taking. It's not that you guys said you don't believe what you're being told.

Smart. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Any correspondence?

Yeah. We, we got five pedestrian safety crosswalk letters.

Thank you. I think we saw them all. They came forward to us and I'm entertaining emotion to adjourn. Microphone, please.

Social event announcement.

He did that. I changed the agenda. Microphone. Please.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, He him to turn me know I forgot there's a process. It's me. PB, Lupita D Montoya, I move that we adjourn.

Okay. Second, please.

Oh, he's gone.