City Council - Regular Meeting

It's 5:30 and this is Durango City Council meeting. It's December 2nd, 2025. Could we have roll call? Council lawyer here. Councelor Gonzalez, Councelor Koso here, Mayor Prin Woodruff here, Mayor Yasi here.

The next item on the agenda is the reading of the indigenous land acknowledgement. This is a call to honor and respect indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. As residents and visitors of Durango, we are called upon to educate ourselves about the history and cultural heritage of the land we inhabit. The city of Durango is situated on the ancestral homelands and territories of the Nu, Ute, Hikaria, Apache, Apache, PBLO of New Mexico, Hopicome, Hopi, and Da Navajo nations. The original stewards of this land were forcibly removed and exposed to countless atrocities by the United States government, including repeatedly broken treaties, forced assimilation, the tragic legacy of Indian boarding schools, and the loss of ancestral homelands. We recognize lasting generational trauma exists within native communities today. We affirm the continuing importance of ancestral sites to descendant communities as integral to the living cultural landscape. This acknowledgement only becomes meaningful when combined with accountable relationships and informed actions. May this serve as a step toward inclusion and reconciliation.

The next item is the introduction of the translator.

Yes. Hi, good evening. My name is Liz Torres and I am here with my colleague Ruby Mauricio. We're here with um the community language co-op and I want to thank you for your commitment to language justice so that everyone can speak and hear in the language of their heart. So we're going to turn on interpretation and in order to access it you can go to the more menu then language and speech and select the language of your heart and if you have any questions please raise your hand. Ruby and we can go ahead and get interpretation going and get get the meeting Next item on the agenda is opening remarks by mayor and council. Thank you, mayor. I appreciate it. Um I I wanted to remind everybody today's Giving Tuesday. Uh really hopefully uh folks will go out and and try and support the nonprofits that make such a big difference in our community. Wanted to make sure that we reiterated that. Also, um I'm a little overdue to say that a lot of back and forth emails happen right before these meetings, especially on when they're on super long agendas like what we have. Um I really appreciate the time and the energy that both city manager staff and and the city attorneys spend answering a lot of my questions so we don't have to sit here and and listen to the answers uh within the meeting itself. So, thank you very much uh to everybody who who helps me out before these meetings. Thank you, Mayor

Next, next item on the agenda is presentations and proclamations with a presentation from Durango High School student body. Uh, up from the update with Johnny Chin, I'm sorry.

Good evenings, Durango City Council and my neighbors. My name is Johnny Chen and I'm a senior at Durango High School and the student body executive co-president. Thank you for having me today to share a little bit about what DHS has been doing lately. In late October, Knowledge Bowl competed in Grand Junction and came third and fourth in their respective divisions. DHS's healthc care pathway and HOSA, which is the Health Occupation Students of America, are focused on providing career training for students entering the healthcare profession after high school or prior to entering college while aiming to enhance the quality of healthcare delivery and provide unique opportunities for its members to grow and excel in the health science fields. Our current student enrollment in the healthcare pathway is 300 students with 125 being in HOSA. On October 30th, HOSA successfully executed a communitywide blood drive, securing a total of 87 units of life-saving blood donations. This results significantly surpassed last year's collections. Our Interex Club has been helping to make dozens of angels for Maria's bookshop in collaboration with the Llata Family Centers Coalition for their shop for an angel event. These paper angels with information that allow people to to buy desired books for kids who can't afford them are hung around DHS itself and Maria's bookshop and are al also around Durango itself so that we can try to give support to those kids who really need it the most. On November 12th, DHS student council had the honor to part to partner with veteran leaders in our community to host our annual Veterans Day assembly. During school hours, veterans were provided breakfast. Then each was professionally recognized in front of the student body and our community. Some of their stories and advice were shared in detail, including that of Christina Cous, widow of fallen hero Jeff Cous from our very own Durango, Colorado. DHS has also achieved 50 years of special education. The life skills program at DHS collaborated with middle school and elementary school programs to put on a celebration event

for families and staff in mid- November. DHS Student Council is also proudly partnering with Makea-Wish Colorado to plan our second annual Wish Week from January 12th to January 16th of 2026. We tailor the week to support Jude, a six-year-old Makea-Wish kid whose wish is to go on a Disney cruise. There will be weeklong events and fundraisers with the goal of raising $7,000 for Makea-Wish Colorado to help our local kids. We are also looking for local businesses and organizations to partner with partner with to achieve this goal. Later in January, student council will also be holding our annual council of excellence presentation. This presentation is an exhib exhibition of the hard work and dedication that student council has put in in 2025 and for almost the past 20 years to achieve national recognition from the national council of excellence organization. we put on this this presentation in front of our school administration and any public participation that would like to join and so that we can achieve that national recognition that we again we have achieved for the past almost 20 years. And last, it is with a heavy heart that I address a devastating loss in our Durango community. On Jan November 29th, 2025, Natalie Romansky, a bright beloved student at DHS passed away due to her cerebral pro pausy and ESES. She was 10 days away from her sweet 16. This is our time as the amazing Durango community that we are to surround her mom, Lindsay Romansky, with as much love and support that we can. There's a GoFundMe to help Lindsay through this devastating time. Next Monday, December 8th, is Natalie's memorial service hosted graciously by Summit Church. This would be her 16th birthday. at 3 pm at the summit church. All are welcome to celebrate Natalie's life and offer their support to Lindsay. Lindsay specifically chose this time at 3M so that hopefully

as many peers and friends of Lindsay can join as they ca as they can from the nin our school district seeing that it is early release that day. So if you would like to join please, we would love your support. Thank you for your time.

Next item on the agenda is city manager updates. Uh yes, mayor and council. I do have two updates. Uh first is uh an update regarding our outreach uh that Tom Sloo and Clancy Nixon will be presenting to the council. Ignore Ignore the goat screen. [laughter] Was not me. Was not me. Um sorry. Good evening, mayor and counselors. Tom Slooh, public information officer. Um, tonight I've got a quick update for you on the PIO outreach efforts for 2025 and our plans for 2026 and then after that Clancy is going to give you an update for the outreach efforts on her half um for the community engagement side. So I got it, Evan. Um, no I don't. Okay. Uh so anyway, our combined efforts uh big picture uh are part of the city's strategic plan goal of engaged and informed community. Uh the objective is to cultivate and leverage communication systems through convenient, open, and accessible information. So for 2025, uh I want to focus on that for you guys because that's really where we had the largest growth. Um, by no means qualitatively was it the most important and I'll get to that in a second, but uh I did want to explain just what we saw for the social media. So, our engagements were up 92% to just over a half a million. And really what this means is anytime that somebody literally engages with one of our posts, could be a comment, could be a like, could be a forward, clicking on a link, um they they took part in what we were exposing them to. So, engagements were up 92% to 523,000. Our video views uh went up 25% to 2 million. Um and that's uh up from 1.6 million in 2024.

The impressions, which is a uh a very large number. It's 8 million up 125% over the 3.5 million in 2024. And really, this is just the number of times that our content is displayed to users uh throughout the internet. um take it with a grain of salt, but it's also informative in terms of just how much we are actually getting our our our word out there. And finally, our new followers for uh 2025, we had 8,000, which was an 81% increase um compared to the 4,464 that we had in 2024. So, with those 8,000 new followers, uh we uh now have 38,599 followers for the city main accounts. Uh, I do need to point out that this is just for the city main accounts. If you included police, airport, the other accounts, we'd probably have close to 100,000. Obviously, there's some duplication there. Um, but as far as the city main, Facebook, Instagram, etc. were just under 40,000. Couple highlights I did want to point out. Um, Tik Tok, which I personally love, um, is now our second largest account. Had a 68% growth. It's actually outperforming uh YouTube, which uh was surprising to me, but it's creeping up there. It's growing fast. Um X, formerly known as uh Twitter, is actually down of all of our accounts, 9%. But that does follow uh national trends uh to a considerable extent, so there's not too much of a surprise there. Otherwise, uh Instagram and Facebook are are heavy hitters, and they continue to see the largest number of uh new followers, 30% growth um this year. uh for Instagram and 22% growth in uh Facebook. Uh just 9,500 ballpark for Instagram followers and just under 16,000 for Facebook. So it's great, don't get me wrong. love the social media numbers, but um we are

still heavily focused on our traditional um outreach because uh this are really the channels where it it's almost exclusively used by by city residents, you know, um Facebook, who knows, New Jersey, could be anywhere. Uh but these channels you see in front of us are the ones that we are still heavily focused on for PIO. Uh for news releases, we send out about 280 per year, which is pretty much one every weekday. A little bit more of that. uh doesn't typically fluctuate that much um because there is a certain saturation point you have with news releases where it's just too much. So we think we've got a good uh a good rhythm right now with about one per weekday. Um city currents our newsletter has about a thousand subscribers. Uh it's got a 46% open rate for an email newsletter. Government uh channels typically are 14%. So we're getting some really good engagement there. Uh we've got about a thousand people on our notify me platform in general. Um, Cclick Fix has been used 1,400 times in 2025, uh, which is a 21% increase over last year. And of course, we always reach out to the media and, uh, work with them on, uh, getting out timely, informative information to the public, u, as quickly as we can. Thank you, Christian. And then, uh, that's it for 2025. So for 2026, um there's three areas that we're really looking uh to kind of um move forward. Um in social, you know, we love having this kind of cross-pollination approach where our news releases link to the website, which links to our social media accounts, etc. Um the problem we're having on social though is despite the growth, everybody hates clicking on links. So what we're going to start doing is putting the full text of our news releases in the post. Um that was not typically the standard for social media because everybody wants, you know, quick hits, 100 words or less, but we're going to try this um because a lot of people just they don't read the news for reasons and then that doesn't stop them

from making comments. So hopefully that'll help. Um on the website, we're going to uh add uh community events. It's been a long-standing goal for PIO to have not just the public meetings, but to have the stuff you typically see on like what's happening in Durango, uh the community events, the fairs, the stuff down at Buckley. And then on video, uh we're going to try something pretty brave um to correct some of the misinformation that we see on uh social media. We're going to have some brave souls from the various departments responding to some of the factual misstatements by saying politely, hey, we noticed you said the parking lot at transit was only for city employees. It's not the case. It's actually for everybody. Um, so that'll be fun. We are we already have some willing uh participants which will be great. So, we look forward to doing that. Um, I think that is actually the end of my presentation. Um, that's it for PIO at this point. turn it over to Clancy and then if you guys have questions afterward we can take them then good evening council I'm Clancy Nixon I'm the community engagement specialist and uh also this aligns with engage and informed community comes out as as a surprise with our strategic plan goals um so uh kind of a 2025 year in review. It's not over yet, but what we've accomplished so far is we've hosted 23 community meetings. That doesn't include our boards and commission meetings. It doesn't include council meetings. That's kind of those neighborhood and community meetings that we're hosting that are usually project specific. We have had 764 attendees to those meetings with 453 of them being new. Um our average number of attendees per meeting is 33 which is up 41% from 2024. And then our community contacts um that

you see down there, our community outreach contacts is 560. That's folks who are seeing me directly, whether it's in their classroom, whether I'm meeting them for coffee, um kind of those small groups if I go to a Rotary uh club meeting, things like that. Um, so those are the direct contacts and I I like to point that out because there is a ripple effect there, especially with students. You know, if you think about them going home and talking to their parents about their day, um, that can have pretty profound impacts with our community. So, um, those are up 48% from last year. Those focus groups, we ran two of them this year, which is on the smaller side compared to last year. Um, but one of those focus groups was five months long that we were meeting monthly. So, some context there. Okay. The Engaged Durango website, for those of you in the room who haven't visited Engaged Durango, it's at engaged.durango.gov. It's a place where we host all of our projects that we're seeking feedback on. So, we have 38 projects on that site right now. This project or this website launched um in the end of the first quarter in 2024. So, we don't have two full years of data with really any of this. My position is fairly new. So, I loved your bar graphs and I can't wait to have them someday. But this is from the the last year that we've had on the engaged Durango site. So, we have 20,000 over 20,000 views, 14,000 visits, 9,000. These visitors are unique individuals who are visiting that site. Um contributions are somebody who is giving us their feedback in the form of whether that's a survey, a quick poll. Um and then there's 897 individual um contributors um who provided those 1600 contributions. And then that followers category is each page, each project page

that's on that site has a follow button. So if somebody wants to follow that specific project, they can click follow. So that's been done 213 times in the last year. Um folks can register to use the site. Um in most cases we do not require that in order to interact with us on engaged Durango, but we do have 520 registrations from the last year. And then um project followers, we have 512 total. And then this is a a fun one to present as well is how many times something has been downloaded on the site. So that information is getting out in the form of those extra kind of resources we include in what we call our document library on a lot of those sites or those p. So um folks have downloaded things over 10,000 times in the last year. Um if you're interested um that spike I did mean to mention this. That spike that you see there in the middle that's from the speed management plan survey. And then the one that's on the far right, that's from downtown's next step. This most recent um we have a three question, I think it's still open. We have a three question um questionnaire on the downtown's next step page that is asking about materials and color schemes for that design. And then another key piece I wanted to share is 63.7% of the visits to this site are new, which I think is a key bit of information as well. Okay, so some highlights from the last year. Um, we I'm really proud of the fact, speaking of downtown's next step, that we had robust community feedback from that downtown's next step project that helped inform that design throughout the year. Um, there's a lot of work from a lot of different staff members that went into that and um, I'm really proud of how much feedback that we got from the community and I'm really proud of our community for coming out

and helping us with that. Um, I'm really proud to also say that we received the International Association for Public Participation. They do their core values awards every year and we won organization of the year for North America which really proud about that one as well. Um, and then engaged Durango forums for 2026. They'll be back in February on the 24th. And then just a quick reminder just because we always want more applicants than we know what to do with um boards and commissions that the applications are open now but really we'll start pushing that in the spring uh along with a bunch of focus groups for checking in on our strategic p plan and and how we've been doing on accomplishing our mission. So things to come.

Thank you uh Clancy and Tom for your presentation. Mayor and council just kind of the um the overview or the reasoning for the presentation. Uh we're at the end of the year of 2025 and I think there's been some exceptional work that's been done in 2025 and 2024 uh in regards to our engagement efforts which kind of includes two parts. Tom's area pushing out information, Clancy's area receiving information and we're starting to grab that data. So to show you kind of what it's looking like uh when the council made the shift to trying to find a more diversified uh input from our community and being able to provide data in regards to how we're going about it. Um always not to say that we're perfect and that we've got it figured out. I think most governmental entities struggle very hard uh with community engagement. Uh because community engagement is is can be different just depending on the project or how people feel. Uh sometimes it's easy to say uh that the city does not engage. Um and this doesn't to say like haha we do. It just says that there are meaningful data that shows that we are purposefully outreaching and grabbing input to make help decisions that we're making uh to bring recommendations for the council. Well, thank you very much. I'm real impressed with the amount of engagement we do for Durango, and I do believe we're having more new people come in and be involved. So, thank you very much.

I'll just chime in real quick. Uh, four and a half years ago when I got on council, I think your biggest job was the TV station that we did and you didn't exist. um and your department didn't exist and there was no um media outreach plan or strategic plan for it and I remember kind of advocating for that a little bit in our first one. So I just want to say like I think it's great what's been done since I've been on council in terms of this and getting like the word out. Um I did have a question for you real quick in our social strategy. Do we do you have a budget for like ads or anything or is this all organic? It's all organic. And I did have a slide I took out specifically that said direction from council in 2020 was get the word out. And I think you said it actually.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it was great. Yeah. We don't have a budget though for I I did wasn't sure cuz the numbers are still growing. I mean, you'll see that obviously since we just started really doing this and pushing like the first cat video was just this year I think and so our numbers will continue just to skyrocket with brilliant ideas like that. Tom, um I'm just kidding. [laughter] I'm not kidding actually. It is genius. But um you don't like the cat videos. No, he loves Tom is a big cat video guy and if he could turn everything into a cat video, it's the internal joke cuz everything in ELT he's looking at. How do we make this a cat video? Yeah. And it's not just cat, it's a stupid cat video.

Stupid. Yes. Anyways, all I'm saying is that um if eventually you expect those numbers will taper out a little bit just because you went from nothing to now. Um, but you're still seeing great growth, which is great, which means you're putting out it's stuff that's entertaining. Sure, that's great to get people's attention, but then also informative. And so, um, I follow I think what you're doing is great. So, congrats. And what you're doing is great, too. I'm not ignoring you. So, and that is the the caveat I think I had last year, too, which was, you know, we can't sustain this kind of growth. It's just too too fast. Um, but once again, we've had another stellar year, but I do want to prepare everybody that this will level out at some point and start doing something different. So yeah, until then it's fun.

Yeah. No, but good job. Thank you. And thank you for all your hard work and being creative. I think that that's super important with community engagement and just, you know, when I worked with you kind of handinhand, you're so creative and what you're doing is just really expanding and the people that we get to hear from and talk to are so greater than we did um two years ago. So kudos to you guys. Yes. Um well and I think it almost really gets to my question you know when I see that level of growth numbers I know we were talking about social media and clicks like it actually gives me pause like why would you have such a huge increase in I mean from it's not like social media is new or these platforms are new

um you know and in fact well perhaps you I'll just let you I I mean it not not to um how do I say this politely? I mean it's it's all because of Jose because he took a chance hiring me. He gave staff that freedom to take these kind of risks and and traditionally you know the government sector was very um they played it close to the best. And so when I started doing things people were calling me even the Herald was calling me like what is going on down there? You've you've lost your mind. Um, but it was very I think um it was a great way to engage with people to make us more human, to make us more approachable and I think it just kind of lowered that wall between us basically and the public I think to a considerable extent and to a I mean people were in on the joke uh a lot of the time and and I think that really resonated. Um and again since Durango as an organization had never done that it I I think to be expected for a year or two or three you're going to see that kind of stellar growth. Now again, does it continue? I don't know. You know, I think it just depends on how many

Does your creativity continue? Well, pushing a little bit.

And just so I I don't do social media. I just I'm sure like many people just at one point checked out and never checked back in. So, um, what exact There was one that was something incredible. So, you go from 3.5 million to 8 million impressions. Yeah. I mean, what does that mean?

It is just literally the the number of times that your content is displayed to people on the internet through Facebook and Instagram, you know, and they have their own algorithms in terms of what they're going to promote it. I don't understand honestly the ins and outs, but I have had people reach out from literally New Jersey. He's like, "Why am I getting City of Durango stuff in my feed?" And I'm like, "I don't know, you know." Um, but you are. Um, so there's something again I think that that resonates with him. Um, if I had to guess, they were probably going to connect it in some fashion to advertising revenue because they don't do anything. Um, now I don't know how they're monetizing us or in what capacity, but I I think that's what they want.

So, um, and Right. So because the from the engagements to the impressions to the new following and then uh and then could you go to the next slide because that was the platforms that you mentioned. Um but but um how does this help us?

I think I know where you're going. So I think where you're going is target audience and that's discussion that's been brought up before uh different counselor has brought it up too and that's the I don't want to say unknown but you know and I I would put it back on you who is your target audience. Is it the um people who voted in the last election those 4,000 people? Is it the 20,000 people who live within the city of Durango? Is it the county? Is it the tourists? Who who is your audience that we are trying to appeal to and for what reason? you know, and it's it's a I think an impossible answer to come up with, which is why we've cast the net so widely. And I think that's why our our numbers have gone up because we're trying to appeal to pretty much everybody.

Maybe for just one more question for clarity. So obviously this looks impressive. Um as Durango, are are you just obvious? So obviously I don't know what you're posting or what you're since I as I mentioned I don't do social. What are you posting that is get I mean is it that would surprise things like engagement is it really cat videos? I have no idea.

Oh yeah it's absolutely stupid cat. Absolutely stupid cat videos but there was a method to the madness. I mean the whole point was you know we post a video about a a cat and it's called politics in Durango and it's about how a a cat doesn't wants to speak out to council because it has a disagreement with what council decided. So it finds its voice and then it feels empowered, engaged, and informed. But after that, once we've got your attention, then we'll have a a post that says, "Hey, we also need people to volunteer for pedestrian counts for multimodal." And then we also, by the way, you know, have a cleanup going up on Aoyo Drive and things like that. So we we kind of get their attention. And then like now that we've got it, here's here's the real meat of what we're trying to communicate. Okay. So you are actually putting serious stuff.

Okay. Information that people need to know. Yeah, council meetings, council wrapups. Okay, great. Thank you. That's what I [laughter] was making sure. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

I think uh if you look on your screen, mayor and council, there's some of the shorts of the videos that uh that Tom's team works on on getting out to the community. I will also say that um going to the AP2 conference, people knew of our social media. They were like, "Oh my gosh, your social media is hilarious." So um just a heads up on that. I thought I'd give you some kudos there because if I don't have eyeballs on the stuff that I'm doing, then it's all in vain.

Thank you'all. Uh mayor and council, I do have one more update. I'm going to ask Chief Currant to come up and uh provide just a little bit of background information and just some information to the public regarding our Flock camera system. I know that we've received a few emails over the past couple days regarding Flock. Uh and thought it would be a good idea that uh we can kind of get that information out not only to the council but to the public of kind of our flock systems, what they're used for, who actually has access to them uh and how they operate. Chief,

thank you. City Manager. Um, hello Mayor and council. Uh, my name is Bryce Currant for the YouTube world out there and I'm the chief of police here in Durango. Um, I've gotten a lot of questions. I'm not going to bore you with a lot of stuff that I've already sent. Um, and you know, part of the reason why Durango is so great is all the difficult questions we do get. Um, Mr. Benjamin Peters is out here. I've spoke to him this week and there's a lot of questions coming in. um and specifically around the flock software um flock safety and which is a license plate recognition software. So DPD currently has 21 flock cameras. Um we have 13 stationary and then the others are on a trailer and so the flock system hits specifically on one of our mission values and that's precision policing. Um, it focuses on people who actually commit crimes and are not bothering people who are um innocent, which we can sometimes do when we get calls from dispatch on a specific color car. It's based on stopping the exact people who are um who are involved in the crime. Um, and it's uh smarter policing with less intrusion and exactly what our community expects from modern professional police departments like ours and others around the state and the country. Some call this technology a form of modern surveillance, which I can see. However, it's the opposite, helping us avoid blanket searches. It replaces reasonable suspicion with exactly with exact specificity. It replaces um we're so we're far less likely to violate the Fourth Amendment when using this technology because of that specificity. So, I find it ironic that most people that will be speaking on this subject um for today, tomorrow, or throughout the past year um will be doing so holding an Apple, Google or Samsung smartphone with

cellular service. You know who turns over data to the federal agencies? Um Apple, Samsung, Google, and um we never know about it. And some with Verizon, the same thing with Verizon, T-Mobile, and more. So, our local license plate recognition use protocol has far more protections than those companies will ever give us. We keep far less data for less time than those companies keep on us. And those companies do not do regular public audits or show a public-f facing database like we do so that everyone knows what's going on. So, I also understand the concerns about p about privacy and immigration enforcement. Those concerns are incredibly valid. As your chief, I share them. So, I believe the federal government is overreaching. But our policy and vendor contracts paired together with state law meet that headon by prohibiting any sharing of data with ICE and Border Patrol. Even further, thanks to some of the citizens, one of which I mentioned today have done some research, the 287G state departments, um, not federal, but the state departments that are 2887G certified, which allows them to cooperate with ICE, we've eliminated. And anyone who is designated to even cooperate with ICE um, in in the future that we can learn about um, can be eliminated with one click of the mouse. And I'll I'll I'll explain a little bit more about that in a minute. So, as a seasoned investigator, I'll tell you a 30-day retention, which this has, um, is very short and we will lose data in turn, keeping us from prosecuting important cases, but that is a good balance. So, in California, the governor even vetoed a 60-day um, statewide limit data storage, stating that it was not long

enough for investigations. However, in Durango, we are showing some restraint balancing safety with privacy, which we feel is important with a 30-day retention. So, I understand why some do not trust Flock as a private company. That's another concern. But Flock Safety does not own the data we do, and we control it. These cameras are not spying on anyone. The cameras are placed in public places and it's a and it's public knowledge and they capture license plates and vehicle identifiers only, not faces, not home and not pedestrians. So, this is a smart focused policing that helps us find the right suspect. Um, deliver justice for victims and prevent violence before it happens. So, flock safety cameras are fixed motionactivated license plate readers. They're placed on key roadways in Durango, mainly the entrances and exits here in Durango. So each image is instantly compared against a law enforcement hot list for stolen vehicles, wanted suspects, Amber alerts, silver alerts, and so on. If there's a match, officers receive an automatic real-time alert with the license plate number, with a timestamp, the camera location, and a vehicle image. If there's no match, the information is stored in a database for 30 days. And if there's a vehicle that committed a crime in that area and a timeline, we could research for that license plate. So, DPD provides an outward-f facing public transparency portal where anyone can view the camera locations and data. This allows the community to see exactly where the cameras are and what they're being used for and reinforces accountability and trust. So this system is passive surveillance and the passive word is in all caps. Not live monitoring. Flock cameras do not

are not live cameras. They do not stream video. They do not monitor people continuously and cannot view in into cars. They operate as a passive surveillance system, meaning they only capture vehicles that pass in front of them. They are not actively watched by a human. They only become active when the plate matches a legitimate hot list entry. All searches by officers require a case related reason and are logged and audited. So the flag is the start of the investigation, not the end. So the officer needs to confirm the information and it's not probable cause. So courts have consistently ruled this information admissible because photographing a vehicle and its license plate on a public road is not considered a fourth amendment search. making access to those images permissible because vehicles are in public view and the plate is displayed for a reason. So many appellet federal district courts and state appellet courts um have uniformly upheld the legality of LPR cameras, license plate recognition systems. The most notable case is USV Martin um as was sent to the the council. So Flock is focused on crime related vehicle data, not general public monitoring. Courts have upheld this, including denying suppression motions because license plates on a public road carry no reasonable expectation of privacy. And in the Martin case, there were 188 cameras captured only three images in 30 days of one vehicle. And the courts said that that was far too limited to track someone's actual movements or reinforce that the LPR data is the kind of pervasive surveillance mentioned in the case. So is there potential for abuse? Um yes. And you saw a couple of examples that have happened around the US. Um one

of which where there was an officer tracking um her ex-boyfriend. Um, and these types of incidents are rare, but they've happened in previous databases that we've had as well. And the few who abuse the system find themselves either fired or arrested or both. I've been a cop for 26 years. I have fired and indicted officers for abusing internal databases. That's why we have strict policies and internal affairs department to ensure accountability. Each month, Durango has between two and three million people pass through more in the summertime. Even if we did have somebody viewing full-time, which we don't, and we won't, it would be impossible to view even 1% of the plates before they're deleted. So, when we get a hit, it's like a needle in a haystack. And it still needs to be investigated. And nobody views the haystack, but just the needle. It's the only start. It's only a starting point, not the finish line. As I said, so the New Hampshire law um has a a limiting storage of 3 minutes. Well, I'm not sure, but I think Colorado has maybe three years. Um flock data is limited to 30 days. Um which is still limiting. However, it strikes a good balance, I feel, allowing officers to retrieve data and start an investigation for recent crimes. So, the good news is that public uh public safety and privacy do not need to be mutually exclusive goals. Cities that adopt LPR cameras are increasingly also adopting robust safeguards to protect civil liberties. Cities can harness the crimesolving power of um cameras like Flock while rigorously respecting citizens privacy and their rights. So,

Flock cameras give cities a targeted, passed, passive, timelimited vehicle identification tool that helps solve crimes without generating long-term surveillance records. And they balance public safety, short-term data retention and automatic deletion, strict ass access controls and audits, no personal identifiers or tracking of individuals, transparency and community oversight and ethical usage policies and training. So there is a balance between our greatest fundamental human right, which is privacy and safety. And there's also public safety benefits. So other cities are showing concrete measurable results in solvability and we hope to be able to do the same with our data. So technology provides real outcomes on real people and real return on public investment. Prevention matters and prevention is absolutely happening. So when cities across America flock and the statistics reducing violent crime are staggering. Um it's especially easy to see it in the bigger cities with their statistics. So I'm going to provide a few examples of successes that we've had here in Durango. Um there was a uh kidnapping suspect on his way received information he was on his way to Fort Lewis College to kidnap a young male student and he didn't have anybody specific in mind. And then there were specific crimes that he was going to do with that student um when he was when he was taken. Um sure enough, his license plate flagged coming into town and officer or actually Chief Dimming uh was waiting for him at the top of the hill and provided him with a protection order and we later arrested him. the Fort Lewis car bombfire. Uh they looked at hours of video of other people that

were not involved when this system could have specified um a specific timeline and plates and vehicles. There was an Albuquerque murder suspect um that was flagged and had they flagged him through the vehicle of the victim victim's car and and how it works is they just get a flag the time stamp and I I'll explain that in a minute more further detail but that they found the vehicle at a gas station. So it just starts the investigation that this vehicle passed this area at a certain amount of time ago um on an alert for the officer. There were four individuals in that car with things they shouldn't have in a city they shouldn't be in, in a car they shouldn't be in, and uh and we didn't we didn't need them here in our community. Um the county had a stabbing suspect that we would have spent hours um surrounding a house or areas or businesses disrupting that was in California. And uh we found that out very quickly. Vehicle assault at Town Plaza. I think almost everybody saw that on our social media where a guy's PE or uh pelvis and legs were crushed and the vehicle drove off and we didn't have a license plate only only identifiers of the actual vehicle which we were able later to get a license plate. Um and I just think of this the victim um and being able to find justice there and insurance and everything else. It's so disrupting. Um multiple stolen cars. It's no secret that Colorado is very high in vehicle theft and we have um 40 vehicles per year here just in Durango, which surprised me when I first came here. Warrants and stolen property. Um oftent times when these vehicles with warrants are pulled over, there's a lot of stolen property. A lot of cases are cleared. Um and then we're able to terminate pursuits and uh go to people's homes uh and not endanger the public. Um they we had credit card skimmers in Cortez, Farmington, and Durango here

this last week that we were able to catch in Cortez. Um so there was an assault at a dispensary this last week where a suspect tore up the business and punched somebody and we were able to find that individual using this system. It identified Ben Smith, the school teacher, the prolific sexual assault suspect who could still be praying on Durango children. That's one of the worst cases I've ever seen in 26 years. And uh um it was just a a license plate read that started that. Um highway patrol caught a double murder suspect out of Arizona who passed through Durango and when they stopped uh there was a an officer was shot. Um, and then let's talk about the hit and run. Those are the ones that really break my heart. All these others are violent and they're horrible and uh, but when you find somebody down at, you know, a plaza somewhere that's working three jobs, barely making rent and just incurred a a three to $6,000 dent in their car. Um, and it either operates or it doesn't to be able and even the the the college news reporter when we got done with the report this on this LA this week, it happened to her and within an hour we were able to come back with insurance and um, you know, it's uh, those are the ones that really break my heart that I see because they happen every week here in this town. Um, so I'm hearing two significant concerns. Uh, one is ICE, like I mentioned earlier, possibly getting information and then also safety in Durango. ICE is not receiving information from flock cameras operated by the Durango Police Department. If I ever find out someone is on a list or um even close to receiving that information, then we will cut them off immediately and we'll continue to partner with the public in that in that

regard. Durango. Um, Durango's publicly posted transparency portal states that data is owned by Durango PD and is used for legitimate law enforcement purposes only. Is not shared for immigration enforcement. Immigration enforcement is explic explicitly listed as prohibited and the system logs and audits all access. There's no evidence that Durango PD or Flock has provided Durango's cameras um data to ICE. So, we live in Durango, Colorado, and I would say it's the safest city in the surrounding area. We live next to Cortez, Farmington, Bloomfield, Aztec, between Albuquerque and Denver. We've had frequent visitors from Albuquerque and have had and they have devastating crime rates. I've worked undercover narcotics in Farmington and I know the criminal element that surrounds this town. As chief, I would like to know if we have a person entering or exiting our town that's suspected of murder, a mass shooter, a sexual predator, or find a basic hitand-run vehicle. We regularly see violent offenders fleeing larger cities and heading into our region. sometimes threatening to shoot it out with police. And this isn't a hypothetical. It actually happened in Cortez where an officer lost his life. If we're the only city in the area not using this technology, we not only reduce safety of our area with our partners, but we also become the magnet for criminals as surrounding cities are are using it and not us. I do I do not want criminals to operate anywhere. But as chief, my main concern is Durango. These cameras started in HOAs as a passive service uh surveillance system and they go back and look at to go back and look at witness vehicles um during

small time frames when crimes were committed in those HOAs. Um and we here at Durango want a culture of solvability. So why is solvability rates and clearance rates so important? Um well, our greatest constitutional right is that of privacy and equally important to the right of privacy is the right to live in a community without fear. And we look to strike that balance. Our vision is one Durango. Our strategic plan and our mission focuses on preventing crime. The word preventing is a big word if you really think about it because that's hard to do because most police departments you'll see coffee shop uh chiefs and they respond to crime but preventing crime. We want a culture where crime feels risky in Durango. Increase safety through sharing information with neighboring towns. Safeguard lives, not just property. Balancing privacy, purpose, and public safety. So our mission, vision, and strategic plan revolve around creating solvability culture to deter crime um by measuring and focusing on those solvability rates that I talked about to create a culture of do not commit a crime in Durango or you'll get caught. So deter crime before it happens and pu pursue justice after it happens. Prison does not deter people. Getting caught does. To keep up with our current call load and our work of our um and do the work of these cameras, we will need many more officers. However, this is where responsible and effective and efficient and cost-saving modern policing looks like rooted in transparency focused on cost effectiveness and aiming to protect victims. So what our vision and our mission and our strategic plan focuses on in

Durango, strong oversight, smart technology, shared accountability, and a public that ask a lot of really hard questions, which I'm sure I'm going to get tonight. And most of all, a culture that you do not come to Durango to victimize our people. And that and by people, I mean not just citizens, but our entire community. So that's all I have. Um, and I'll answer some questions or I'll get back to you if I don't have the answers.

Chief, thanks. Appreciate the the presentation and it's timely. Um, certainly a topic we're talking to a lot of folks about right now. Um, can you give me just an overview of the terms of the contract that we've got with Flock? What's what's the term length and and when is the renewal on the contract? In 27, we have the renewal and it's every two years two-year contract. And then what's the exit opportunities within that contract? Do you know how give them 30 days notice or anything? I think we have exit opportunities through the council on any contract that we and Mark's really good at at ensuring that.

Okay. Um, in regards to the transparency, the the you talked about the auditing that happens on who who's viewing the information and that it's reviewed. Is is there opportunities to have an independent entity review that as well? Have you have we ever had had something like that? I would welcome it. Okay. All right. And no, we don't. But I'd welcome it. We do it quarterly. Tess, our analyst, does it daily, really. Um she talks to us constantly because she's always on it. And um but yeah, we'd welcome it. Okay. Appreciate you addressing the issues of the ice. Yeah. And anything that's ever found, we'd love to, you know, ensure that um we're doing what's best for the community.

Great. Thank you. public comment. You can do it during public comment. You can do it during public comment. Okay. You can ask for whatever you want. Um, so also, Chief, what do you see in other peer communities like there's ever warrants that are asked of any sort of municipality for information regarding their information stored on their flock cameras? I I can't I can't hear you really.

Yeah. Do do you ever hear or see any like warrants ever being issued for our flock information from other, you know, law enforcement agencies? Are there are there warrants that that are they that ask for our information? Is that that not something that that happens? They don't like they don't ask for our information and we have to give it to him because of a judge signed a warrant saying that we have to give them that information. Not that I'm aware of. Oh, okay. Great. Perfect. Thank you.

Uh thank you uh Bryce for the presentation. Uh I think you asked you answered the question about ice which was a a great concern of mine um and was brought up by many of the constituents. Um is is this new technology?

Um we've had it since 2024 but it was around a lot longer than that and we researched it for a long time before that and we also watched other cities and which other cities were implementing it. And I'm really close with the Colorado Chiefs Association, the International Chiefs of Police Association, and so was the predecessor and that's why I am. And we um, you know, kept very close tabs on, you know, um, how many other cities were using it and spoke to a lot of different chiefs. And we also wanted to see who because there's a lot of other companies out there that do the same thing, but we wanted to know who was going to have the safeguards and um how much control we were going to have over it as well. So, we were a little slow to the game. There's a lot of different cities here in Colorado that have it.

And how much does it cost? Um I think we're looking at I'm going to have to get back to you on the exact numbers. Um it depends on how many cameras and the which contract we sign and for how long we sign the contract and it gets um So is it do we own the equipment or is it leased and No. So it is paid for um on a contract. Okay. So we lease the equipment and then I I suspect we lease the equipment,

right? And it's maintained and um it's part of the software. Um, and so it's not just the cameras and we don't operate everything the company does and we pay for that service. So it's a third party. Is it a third party um third party system? Yes, it's a private vendor. So private. So I I guess private company. It's a private company. But how do we have control over the data?

We do. Yes. It's our data. We pay for our data and we have control over it. And so you gave some examples of how it's been used. Um, which I'm um grateful for those specific examples because it seems like we haven't had it that long, which means it's probably been a good investment or would you say? Um, well, you don't know how much it costs. So, um, well, yeah, it's a very good investment.

Okay. Um cuz I I think that would might be important information if we determine how much it costs and there's a public good which it sounds like there is a public good um that comes from it. You've given many examples and also um that you're not sharing information. I guess I I just comes to mind the third party system. Um I suppose they have to comply with certain government regulations. Um is it possible that a third party would share data with the federal government regarding

Yes, but we do have a contract in place um that explicitly defines all that and so does Denver. I mean, Denver even turned theirs off for a little while to research all this and then turned it back on. Um, they would lose all of these contracts and plus they, you know, they they don't have access to NCIC, um, which is the database that the warrants, the hot list and everything else come from. Um but they um they get the information that pushes out um the hot list that pushes out and they have a relationship with that database and so they're they're they're confined to the same rules that we are in the use of that information. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all.

Okay. Thank you for the information. Um, beyond the 30-day retention limit, can you elaborate on some specific uh policies and audit me mechanisms in place to prevent misuse, such as the tracking of the ex-girlfriend example that you brought up? Um, like how frequently are the logs audited? Do you have an audit?

Well, it's quarterly, but like I said, she looks at it often and will if there's ever any concern, um, we could get it a lot quicker than quarterly. However, uh we also have the um you know our internal affairs group within and there's a sergeant Sergeant um Hock that's in charge of the internal affairs group um that is also you know we we don't just have citizen complaints we also file internal complaints anytime there's any type of an issue and like I told said before um I have investigated these before and not just this system but any system we have we take an oath of office for a reason um even just a your basic police call, you receive information from people that's not public information. And that information can't be talked about downtown at the bar or at a dinner where somebody could overhehere or other things. And if those things are um ever violated, um and and we we can find that through an audit or through an open investigation or an internal investigation or a citizen complaint or the myriad of ways that we receive information. Um, we have standards that we uphold. And like I said before, I have literally fired and indicted officers for this misuse.

Um, and it's very rare because they all know the rules, but we still audit and still look into it. Do you have or could you have maybe like a regular public report maybe quarterly or semianually or something that details how many times the flock system was used, how many successful case clearance was resulted, how many times an internal audit was flagged for a policy violation. You talked about that public facing eye and wanting to, you know, collaborate. So, I'm just wondering if there's things we can do.

Yes. and um the deputy chief and Tessa the analyst are the ones operationally in charge of this and have a lot more information on how that works than I do but we do have a public facing database and we can add to it and and subtract to it if we wanted I'm sure.

Okay, awesome. Um given the ev evolving nature of this technology, how often will the department review and update the usage policy to ensure it keeps pace with best practices and legal standards? I think we continue to do that. Um, you know, there's a lot of individuals here today and as we get questions, we can't, you know, you can't let your ego or try to be right or anything else get in the way. You listen to people. Um, and that's part of one Durango. Um, our our vision uh with this community is working with the community and and you have to listen and um there's a lot of really smart people in this community um that do a lot of research and look at things and um we continue to work with the community. We also talk to other chiefs and other departments and see issues they're having. You got to stay up to date on news articles and different indictments or people that are fired or different um things that are happening and uh continue to question things and we need to do that because there's the technology is going to continue uh to increase in in every facet of what we do. I think obviously our tensions and like feelings are really high around ICE getting information from our community that we don't want. U almost every email that I received, we've received had that as its core concern. Um and I understand why. And um but that being said, we can't let one person saying one thing that's not true elevate everyone's scare everyone so much that they don't want something that's maybe beneficial for our community. Um I have a child that was part of one of these cases that flock solved. And so um we ha we have to be open and honest and respectful here because I'm there's some nonrespectful things happening. And so I just want to like lay that out first and foremost that we're all inquisitive and we're all asking questions. I mean Dave and I were texting the other night about flock

cameras back and forth trying to figure out like what is the best policy for our community and so I want all of you to know that we are talking and we're inquisitive and we're open and I hope you are too. Um my question is you you say there's a contract that explicitly states that we cannot share information with ICE. would you be able to like bring that language out in a press release and say like listen city of Durango like this is our contract and this is what we're you know banking on and this is what we're saying is true and this is what our state says has to happen like are we able to do that or not

yeah I think we should be completely transparent and work together as a community one thing that I love about technology and police departments if you just look at our internal affairs auditing software and the software we use just to document our our citizen complaints, um our vehicle pursuits, firearms discharges, everything that a police officer does and the database that goes through that. I remember when it first started and you have all the police departments around the country that are starting to jump on with this software, they start questioning the company and together the company grows and does and and conforms. And you saw that happen a lot with Flock here in Denver um when Denver shut down and before they turned theirs back on. um you know uh Flock completely changed its policy um with ICE and so there's there's a lot of uh critical changes that happen with these softwares and that's why we're very careful um on which one we try to partner with. We try to see which one's going to be um you know responsive to the police chiefs and the international chiefs of police as well.

Sorry, one more question and then I'm done. I apologize. Um, does the department maintain a log of all external agency requests for flock data? Okay, ask that again. Do we do like do you maintain a log of any external agency that asks for our flock data?

Yes. And we've we've looked at it and uh Mr. Peters asked for some of it this week and it's um if we cancel people or delete people um then we can no longer look up any of their searches. However, we can um we we can look, but it's somewhat uh vague in reference to and I'm, you know, I'm still learning. I know Chris and Tessa could answer this a lot better than I could. Um it's somewhat vague in reference to if it was a national search, if they were actually just looking for Durango. So, if they search nationally for a plate, um it's hard to know if they really wanted to just search Durango or if they just put in Durango. deduct vehicle passed to Durango.

It would just be interesting to know if then maybe that can make available for public review with like redacted things obviously if to make people comfortable that it isn't the you know ICE asking for information. I don't know, right? Yeah, we know who. We just don't know if it was specifically Durango, if it was a state agency or a national search. But those are questions we need to continue to ask these software companies as they develop um and stick with the ones that stick to the guidelines and the state law. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Bryce. Okay, so I just have two questions. Okay. So, I want to know if I heard you right. And the first question is, okay, so somebody who has a cell phone, whether it's a a Mac or a Android, those are less secure than the flock system. Absolutely. That's my belief. if uh you know the minute we uh give up on comfort or or choose comfort and choose a phone then um yeah I'd be very nervous what how we're being tracked on our phones.

All righty. And um the other question I have, and I've been asked this um quite a few times, and I haven't decided which way I'm going to think on this, but a lot of the people who are um really concerned about black flock um possibly have warrants out where they might get picked up by the police if their license plate gets flagged or parking tickets. Well, it was kind of like the question that was asked in study session when we were talking about bikes and speed limits. And I loved that question and I love how the commander answered it. You know, he's not just going to stop a bike because it looks like a type three. There's going to have to be something else and then he's going to see that it's a type three. And it's the same thing with these types of investigations. They're not going to just go pull the vehicle over because there was a hit. There's going to be additional um you know, they're going to follow the vehicle. They're need to violate the law or there's going to have to be some additional information. if they run the plate and the person they see the person in the car and it matches the description or something of that nature, it's not just going to be a blind stop. Um,

oh, sorry, just that's a good question though. But okay, so basically people who are against block, they're not necessarily have something on their record that would pull them over. You know, they don't have an outstanding warrant or some kind of criminal activity that can be associated with their license plate. Could you ask it again a little bit? Okay. Even in the thing where the audience are saying, "Oh, the Okay. So, sorry.

My um my question is Okay. So, and I still have concerns about this. Okay. So, the people who are against the flock system, they necessarily aren't the ones who have a criminal record because you can't trace that with the flock. you're only looking at the license plate.

That's actually a really good question. So, yes, it looks at the plate, not the person. And um I think that's a critical point that it is looking at a plate that is displayed and it's displayed for a reason um in the public. And it's taking a picture of the the license plate and the car, not the people. And you still don't know who's driving. The four people at the gas station, not one of them was the murder suspect, but it was still four people that had no clue why they were in Durango, why they're driving somebody's car that they didn't know that was killed and probably shouldn't be in Durango.

Thanks for again for sitting in the hot seat, Chief. Um, I appreciate you. Feel like you're doing that quite a bit these days, so thank you. Um, so you said earlier the CIA or CIC? CACP. Colorado Chiefs of Police Association. Well, NCIC. Oh, NCIC. Yes. Okay. So, you said that was kind of like a Is that fair to call it like a pool where all of these hits live? Yes. They're state and federal and it's a database that has the information for warrants and wants.

So, so Flock sends the data to this pool. Is that am I am I understanding this correctly? um police departments and agencies send the data and dispatch and um agencies send the data to the NCIC and there's a hit list that's sent out that they retrieve. So they can't interact with NCIC. They only can interact with the hot list. Um and they interact through our portal and it comes directly to us and it's our information. Okay. Okay. Um, and then do we interact at all with like the um the Colorado Information Analysis Center at all? Like the CIA like the kayak?

Yeah, I just believe that's different. That's information that comes directly to us and Okay. And then the flock doesn't have anything to do with the CIA or or integrating with any of that information? Not that I'm aware of. Okay, great. I was just kind of curious like where the information is going and who has access to that kind of secondary like bucket of information. may be asking and I don't know in a roundabout way other departments can put flags in for different reasons that will that can pop up and that we can see as they drive through our town. So a lot of the flags that we get may have nothing to do with Durango but a different city where there was maybe a homicide suspect headed this direction and they put it in the system and it alerts our officers that he entered our community or she entered our community.

I see. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out like where this oo quote unquote of information can live and then um because I'm assuming those flags are you know coming from wherever and that all that data is shared. It's protected but it's shared but then who has access to that secondary kind of pool of data that even though our information is ours like who else has access to to that? Does that make sense? Am I making sense at all right now? Each department controls their own data, but other departments can get a flag, an alert on their phone. So even if we turned ours off to where we don't share with any other organization, we could still, and hopefully they wouldn't do that to us, but we still get the flags from them. Okay? And we have done that in retrospect um with federal organizations primarily and um specifically obviously ICE and HSI and the U 287G affiliates that are state that could possibly cooperate with ICE.

Okay. So there is potential in that regard. What's that? There is potential in that regard then for ICE to get this information or or No, no, not at all. Okay, perfect. That was that was exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you, Chief. Yeah, thank you.

Mayor, I just think there's enough people in the audience. We just ought to clarify that this was a courtesy because there was a lot of conversations going around. The city manager had you just come in and and inform us. There are normal policies where if there's any changes that are going to happen, we have to go through our process. Um comments will be done tonight, but this was not a formal um item on our agenda. So everybody's just got to understand that you'll be able to comment, but it'll be at the end of the evening where that normally is. It's not up for consideration.

It's not up for consideration. And for us to make a vote on anything, changing contracts, directing chief to do anything or whatever, it's got to go through a normal process. So you are trapped in the municipal process uh of sausage making right now. But um but we will listen to all comments at the end of the evening. Um and we appreciate everybody's time and energy, but thanks for taking the extra time. We know you scrambled to make this happen today. So Oh, thank you. Thank you, Bryce. Uh, committee board and is on reports. All righty. Who has a report?

Nobody. Thank you. Go ahead.

Thank you. Um, thank you, mayor. Uh so I uh had the opportunity to attend the National League of Cities. It was in Salt Lake this year and um it's a organization where we talk about different issues related to cities around the country. Um but you know I thought it was a meaningful and lots of discussion around things that we worry about here in Durango. Housing in particular was a big issue for cities around the country. um water and water issues, issues related to climate. Uh and so I learned a lot. So, thank you all um for the opportunity to attend that. And um thank you, mayor. That's all I have.

Thank you, Shirley. All righty. So, um, on my report, um, basically I did the singing with Santa this past Friday, and I tell you what, it was really invigorating because I knew most of the songs because I had been listening to Christmas tunes the whole week and I got an opportunity to meet some of the younger Durango residents who are waiting in line to um, get a picture with Santa. So, it was a good turnout and thanks to the bid for pulling it together because it's a really beautiful event. And that's all I have.

Dave,

just real quick, mayor. Thanks. Um, on the 19th, um, I met with Gage Sippy. talked about UCI 2030 and kind of where we're at and what all we've done, what all they have done, not we, they've done quite a bit um in terms of kind of making sure that we got the road map to success. So yeah, it's really good to to hear from Gage on what all is going on on that front. And then uh last one is 20 the 20th on Thursday. Um I went to the um fire mitigation meta meeting which is a big uh meeting that talks about all different you know different fire agencies throughout the region. Um and a lot of atmospheric data about where our fuel loads are and um what is being done um from not only a local but regional and kind of statewide what grants are available. So yeah, it was really good information to see how we are trying to mitigate fire danger within our community and yeah, it was good to kind of hear from all these different um different agencies about what they're doing and how they're doing it. So it was great. Thanks.

All right, item seven. Item seven is public comment on items under consideration for adoption tonight. Uh could we have the recording, Tom? Public comment is encouraged on agenda items set for consideration and a vote by the council tonight. Public comments on items not set for consideration by the council come later in the meeting. Please begin your comments by stating the agenda item set for a vote you intend to speak on, your full name, and if you are a resident of the city of Durango. Make your comments directly to the council. Do not expect a response from the council or staff. Comments are limited to 3 minutes per person unless modified by the council. Unused time is not transferable to other speakers. Comments must be specific to the item you identified when you began your comments. Profanity, hate speech, personally derogatory remarks, speech unrelated to the item you identified, or other speech that is disruptive to the meeting will be ruled out of order by the chair, and any remaining time will be forfeited by the speaker. Exceeding the time limit infringes on the rights of others and is out of order. Only a majority vote of the council can modify time limits. Please note, you must sign up prior to the mayor calling the item on the agenda. Signing up after the item is called will result in your name not being called to speak.

Mayor, we have three uh citizens sign lined up to speak under uh this item. All are speaking on item 11.1. Uh the resolution opera uh amending the city's um operating in capital budget and the first is Karen Pontius. service to the community. It is appreciated. I urge you to look more deeply at our flux surveillance camera system and this relates to the budget. So that's why it's

Mayor This is it. I kind of expected this to come, but you could stand up there and say that anything is related to the budget and the flock comments on the flock camera system are not on the agenda for consideration tonight, right? So, this type of public comment would have to come under items not on the agenda later in the meeting. Yeah. 13. So, Karen, you're going to have to wait. The budget doesn't include the flock. Karen, I'm ruling you ought to order. You can speak at 13.

Okay then. not in the budget, you don't pay the because it's two years. The next uh person signed up to speak is Nathaniel Bowen. Nathaniel Bowen. The third person signed up to speak is online. Emily Riggs.

Hi there. Could I also speak under public comments?

Oops. What's your topic? Uh, the flat camera system. Okay. Okay, you're under 13. Thank you.

So, no additional people have signed up to speak under this item. That brings us to uh item eight, the consent agenda. Item 8.1 is approval of minutes with 8.1.1, approval of minutes of the November 4th city council regular meeting. 8.1.2 is approval of minutes of the November 18th, 2025 city council regular meeting. 8.2 is final reading of ordinances. 8.2.1 an ordinance regarding consideration of the annual operating appropriation ordinance for the budget year 2026. 8.2.2 was an ordinance regarding consideration of the annual capital appropriation ordinance for the budget year 2026. 8.2.3 2.3 is an ordinance amending in pertinent part the Durango code of ordinances chapter 25 utilities article 2 water section 25-30 charges um and article three sewers and sewer disposal section 25-114's uh service rates sir charge 8.2.4 Four is an urgent stating that the city of Durango opts out of revising the Durango code of ordinances regarding electrical electric vehicle permitting processes as described in Colorado House Bill 241173 prior to December 31st, 2025. 8.2.5 is an ordinance for text amendments to chapter 27 of the city of Durango code of ordinances regarding non-functional turf landscaping and related definitions. 8.3 is adoption of resolutions by consent with 8.3.1 a resolution to approve the 2026 city of Durango employee handbook. 8.3.2 a resolution to approve the 2026 Durang City of Durango pay plan. 8.3 is a resolution regarding the acceptance of the annexation petition and initial zoning for 1720 county road 240. 8.3.4

Four is a resolution to accept an easement from the Cal Catholic Health Initiatives Colorado for Public Access and Recreation on the property at 1785 Nighthorse Circle. 8.4 is approval of other administrative items with 8.4.1 approval of the 2026 city council meeting schedule. 8.5 is a request for a public hearing with 8.5.1 a request for a public hearing for the 1720 county road 240 annexation and initial zoning to be held on January 6, 2026. 8.6 is introduction of ordinances with 8.6.1 an ordinance regarding the annexation and initial zoning of 1720 county road 240 and 8.6.2 2 is an ordinance amending the Durango Code of Ordinances, Chapter 24, Traffic and Vehicles. Article 3, parking administration and regulations by adopting 24-82, parking violations fine schedule. 8.7 is request for excused absences and no items are listed there.

Does anybody want to pull anything from the consent agenda? Mayor, I'd like to pull 8.1.1, please. Mayor, I'd like to pull 8.3. Oop, sorry. 8.3.1. Please make a motion to approve the consent agenda removing 8.1.1 and 8.3.1. Second.

Councelor Gonzalez. Mayor Yazy. Mayor Pam Woodruff. Yes. Councelor Lawyer. Yes. Councelor Kosa. Yes. It brings us to 8.1.1 approval of minutes. Uh just have to make a motion. Oh, sorry. I'll make I can do it since you don't maybe want to vote on it. I guess I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from November 4th, 2025 city council regular meeting.

Second. Um, there were comments on page of the of the minutes on page 10 of the meeting minutes. Um, there were comments that were attributed to councelor Koso that were instead my own and thanks councelor Koso for pointing that out. Um, I just wanted to make sure that for the record that what was said is to the appropriate person. So, and we don't need to give counselor Koso more words. [laughter] We could make those corrections. Yeah. Stealing. So, um I guess I would vote no for the move to approve the minutes with that amendment.

Okay. So, do I need to make the amendment on the floor though? Yeah. Or that was the amendment. Yeah. I mean, you pointed it out. It's pretty common at some of our other meetings, but yeah, if there's an error in the minutes, you can pull it, point out the error, and then move to approve it with the understanding that the um the change will be made. Okay, great. I'm good. Mayor Yazi, yes. Mayor Prom Woodruff, yes. Councelor Gonzalez, Councelor Koso, yes. Councelor Lawyer, yes. And that brings us to item 8.3.1. I'll make a motion to approve a resolution for the 2026 city of Durango employee handbook.

Second. Thank you, council. I I wanted to um talk a little bit about the handbook and I've given a a heads up to to both city um manager and Bonnie as the department head. um in the handbook there was and I really appreciate the time that uh Bonnie helped me understand a lot of the deletions and eliminations in particular that were going on. I wanted to talk about um the complaint procedure uh portion of the handbook and this is on page 121. I suppose maybe I should have asked for us to be able to show that up on the screen. I don't know if that's possible or not. if we've got the ability to show a specific page from the agenda.

It'll take a while. Uh but I we can try to go through.

We'll we'll soldier on. So my apologies. I should have asked for that before. The key consideration here is that there's a a complaint process um for an employee that's specific for the employee to meet certain milestones but vague for the city to meet certain milestones. I do not have a problem in any way, shape or form with the number of days that are being uh proposed in the handbook edits. Um but the fact that the employee is responsible to hit a five business day mark or a 10 business day mark and the language for the city to meet their responsibilities is phrased as typically within 10 business days. Um it leaves it to me is an unfair situation where the employees being required to hit the mark exactly and the city is being given a lot of latitude to that.

I can answer that question. Yeah. Uh for sure. So what councelor Koso is referring to is not necessarily it's not the complaint process but the appeal of discipline that's been rendered.

Sorry. So, if somebody has been rendered disciplined, they have the ability to appeal if the city if the employee uh files that appeal within five business days. The city has within 10 business days typically, I believe, is what that wording sounds like. The reason the city has more time is because we have to investigate what the appeal is, the findings that the employee may want to appeal on, right? So, we have to take into consideration if they bring in new people to interview that they're not on vacation because if they're on vacation, well, that's going to typically push us out past 10 days. If we need to get legal advice to come in, it can push us out past 10 days. It all depends on what they're dis what they're appealing regarding the discipline that they've been rendered. Does this happen all the time? No. In 2025, we had one appeal of discipline and we responded within 10 days. This just gives us flexibility of not knowing what they're going to appeal or that reasoning to. That gives us extra time to investigate to ensure that we fully investigate the reason that the employee believes they should appeal their disciplinary procedure. Jose, could the could the amount of days be specific for the city that gives you plenty of time? I mean, can you change it to 15 days and so it's 5 days for the employee to to to submit 15 days for the city to respond or do you does it need to be open?

I would I mean I think it just depends. I I mean looking at what the issue is based on data, we don't have an issue. If you look at trying to I would hate for us to rush an investigation or try to come up to an employee who feels that they've been wronged and trying to get them a response back without having the time to fully investigate it. You don't know what it is. It's very limited based on why they've been disciplined. But if it's they were disciplined for sexual harassment and they're appealing it, those things are going to have time that we need to go through. We need to talk with legal. I don't want to hamstring us and being able to fully investigate on a time frame. What I would tell you is that on this in our employee handbook, it's all reviewed by outside legal counsel. Uh they take a look at it. The time frames are fine with them. Again, the employee has five written days just to talk why they believe maybe that discipline was unfair. The city has to investigate that. And depending on people who could be on vacation, could be on FMLA, uh an attorney may be out, anything in that aspect can push that through. And I'd hate to just create a date that's somewhat arbitrary to think that we can always meet this uh but have the ability to say we're going to do it within 10 days typically and we've met that if the one person that did it in 2025 when they had an appeal.

Okay, it looks like Bonnie would like to say something or and Bonnie tell me, correct me if I'm wrong, but once the employee initiates the appeal within that five days, no further action on the discipline is taken. Correct. Yeah. So the employee is not at any disadvantage because of this policy. And Jose mentioned that this policy has been approved by specific outside council that it helps us develop our employee handbook and it is also HR peerreviewed by the same organization. So other uh you know for best practice HR handbook policy. Um it it has not been flagged as an issue in the past.

Okay. I I hadn't realized that the employee wasn't as a disadvantage depending on the length of time to like a a written warning, right? Or a verbal warning or something like that along those time along those lines would be the disciplinary action. Okay. Um and it gives them an opportunity to say, "Hey, maybe this side, this is my side. I think this is what should be discussed a little bit further." Um you know, in instances we've pulled video, camera footage, things like that. So, it gives us a little bit more time to make sure that what we're actually disciplining the employee for is warranted.

Okay. All right. Great. Thank you for that. I've got one other thing you you might want to stick there for. So, and anything else on that one? Um the um the elimination of appendix one. Um I I found a lot of that information. This is the appendix. Sorry. Yeah. No, I just want to say it's not an elimination. It's just removing it from the back cover to its own standalone document. We're all done here. Thank you very much.

Just a vote. Mayor Prom Woodruff, yes. Councelor Lawyer, yes. Mayor Yazy, yes. Councelor Koso, yes. Councelor Gonzalez,

yes. That brings us uh there are no public hearings under item 10. That brings us to uh resolutions 11.1 a resolution amend the city's 2025 capital operating and capital budget. All right. Good evening, Mayor Council. My name is Heidi Weise here to represent the financial services department. Um, this particular item on 11.1 is for the 2025 year end operating and capital budget amendments to close out the year, hopefully our final 2025 budget amendment. Um, this resolution falls under the organizational stewardship goal area and in line with our mission, vision, and value statements to provide exceptional service to the community. First, we have the operating amendments. The operating amendment requested as a cleanup entry in the general fund and the transportation fund. It is related to the annual maintenance transfer from the 2015 sales tax fund. The entire amount of the transfer out of the 2015 fund was budgeted as revenue to the general fund and a portion of this transfer should be revenue to the transportation fund. This entry decreases the transfer in general in revenue to the general fund by $200,000 and increases the transfer in revenue to the transportation fund by the same amount and appropriates the the expenses that were intended to pay be paid um

from the transfer in the transportation fund. The expenses offset by the transfer um include a a trailer in the amount of $9,125, the curb ramp design for 30th Street in the amount of $6,875, the West Park A pilot in the amount of $30,000, and other maintenance in the amount of $62,000. Um some more details on that maintenance is um the Pedlet removal from Mod Street, the ROW signage for C dot snow removal contract, college and 8 business access signage, sign replacement for bike corral, and other repair m and maintenance costs for multimmoal. Additionally, there is there are annual personnel costs that are intended to be offset with this transfer, but those were already included in the budget. This table shows the overall change to the general fund revenue appropriations decreasing by the two $200,000 to equal a total revenue of 40 uh 54 million856,01. This next table shows the transportation fund. Um it shows the increase to the revenues of $200,000 um totaling 5,52,639 and increasing expenditures by 108,000 to equal a total expenditure appropriation of 7,476919. We also have a couple of capital amendments. The fir uh sorry the first is for the historic high school renovation project for the future city hall and police department that was approved by citizens

of Durango. The city issued bonds that were authorized in the election and we closed on the bond issuance last month. Early in earlier in the year, council approved a reimbursement resolution as part of the bond ordinance authorizing the city to begin spending on the project to be reimbursed from bond proceeds. So, this budget amendment is just housekeeping item to appropriate the funds in the in the bond fund to reimburse the city and to appropriate funds for the project management, preconstruction, and design costs that are now underway. The budget amendment request is for 3 million based on the project timeline prepared by Artaic Group earlier in the year. This project amendment was presented to FAB on November 6, 2025 and recommended unanimously. This slide shows the entire budget amendment request including appropriations from the bond issuance revenues in the amount of 66,958142 which includes the bonds in the amount of 61 million and the premium in the amount um of 5,958142. These reflect the actual numbers from the issuance last month. The amendment when added to the sales tax revenues budgeted in the fund bring the revenues to 69 million 942388. The expenses include the bond issuance cost of 371 uh,800 and the project cost of 3 million already discussed. The expenses that were already budgeted in the fund include bond payments for the previous bonds that were defeased and paid off prior to the 2000 two 2025 issuance. After adding the proposed amendment, total budgeted expenses will be 7 million429863.

The other capital amendment is requested in the 2019 streets fund in the amount of $90,000 for an emergency repair of a 72in storm sewer line on Rosemary Avenue, sorry, Rosemary Lane and Parin Canyon intersection that was comprised um and had to be repaired compromised and had to be repaired. This budget amendment was presented to FAB on November 6, 2025 and recommended. Here are here we are showing the increase of the 9 $990,000 for this repair bringing the total budgeted expenditures for the 2019 fund to 15,43727. And it is the recommended motion on item 11.1 to approve the 2025 operating and capital amendments. Make a motion to approve the budget of resolution R-2025-0086 amending the 2025 operating and capital budget for the per budgets for the purpose of the 2025 year end amendments for the 2025 budget year for the city of Durango, Colorado.

Second. Yes. Um, hi Heidi. How are you? Good. Good. Hey. Um, would you mind going back to the transportation? I don't know. You, you know, you know, just making sure, you know, making sure peeps are good, you know. Um, could you back the transportation one, please? So, we've got $200,000 going in, about $108,000 going out for transportation. What what's going on with the Delta, the $92,000 that's going into the transportation fund? Yeah, that was a piece that we actually had already included in the 2025 budget for the personnel cost of I believe the multimodal supervisor or coordinator.

I see. So, it's been factored in, but this is just the amendment. This is the clean up. I see. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks so much, Heidi. all of the work that everybody's done on this budget. I've thanked you before and I'll continue to thank you guys for everything you've done. Hopefully there's a party at the tail end of all this for you guys. Um the sewer line repair, this may not even be a question for you, but the sewer line repair is this do we have public works around? Is this connected in any way to the hawk nest issue that we've got down there? I know it's in the same zone. I just don't know if it's connected. And

um I don't know exactly the answer to that question, but this is this was a failure that was degrading the road um by about six feet. So um it was a storm repair storm sewer repair that we had no choice but to okay go ahead and manage. It seems like it's close. This is the that that clean out of that. Yeah, the the sediment pond. I don't believe this will do that in the neighborhood. Yeah, that's just always going to be this was an emergency repair. The um the 72 inch uh storm pipe failed um completely 55 in or 55 ft of um storm sewer completed rotted out. Completely rotted out. So,

okay, that's not the first time we're going to see that. It's probably not going to be the last time. It won't be the last time. Good point. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks, Heidi. Councelor Gonzalez, yes. Councelor Koso, yes. Mayor Yazy, yes. Councelor Lawyer, yes. Mayor Prom Woodro, yes. Brings us to 11.2, a resolution summarizing expenditures and revenues for each fund and adopting an operating budget for the 2026 for the city of Durango.

All right, I'm gonna stay up here. All right. Um, so this presentation is for items 11.2 2, 11.3, and 11.3 for the 20 thou 2026 operating and capital budget resolutions as well as item 11.4 for the mill levy certification. These resolutions align well with our with the organizational stewardship goal area, ensuring the city has the resources to support strategic and operational focus and is aligned with our mission, vision, and value statements to provide outstanding services for our community. Um we've we you may have seen this timeline several times through the budget process and tonight we are here on December 2nd for the budget adoption and mill levy certification with only the January 31st submission of the budget to Dola and the government finance officers association for the distinguished budget award remaining. This slide shows the purpose for the approval of the operating and capital budget resolutions. You have already approved the budget earlier this evening by approving um by the approval of the operating and capital budget ordinances per the city charter. Budget amendments that may arise during the year are made in means of a resolution. This item is a formality to establish the budget by means of resolution in order to make possible amendments um to the budget later in 2026 if necessary by resolution. This slide shows the operating fund summaries as approved by by ordinance with 1,333 million 251455

I can say numbers I swear operating revenues and a mill 134 million 514 934 operating expenses. This is the recommended mo recommended motion for item 11.2 to approve the operating budget by resolution. Move to approve resolution R225-0087 appropriating the sums of expenditures shown on exhibit A from the estimated revenues and reserve carryover overs of each operating fund. Second.

Mayor Per Woodruff. Yes. Mayor Yazi. Councelor Gonzalez. Yes. Councelor Lawyer. Yes. Councelor Koso. Yes. Brings us to the motion on 11.3.

Yeah. All right. So, um, next on on item 11.3, this slide shows the capital fund summaries as already approved by ordinance with 21,971,464 in capital fund revenues and 28,27843 capital fund expenses. We also show for reference the combined funds with capital and operating budgets again for reference. So this is the recommended motion for item 11.3 to approve the capital budget by resolution. I move to approve the resolution R-2025-000088 appropriating the sums of expenditures shown on exhibit A from the estimated revenues and reserve carryovers of each capital fund.

Second.

Mayor Yazy. Councelor Koso. Yes. Mayor Prom Woodruff. Yes. Councelor Gonzalez. Yes. Councelor. Yes. Brings us to item 11.4, the resolution establishing the mill levy for 2026.

Thank you. Okay. This is the final item covered in this presentation. For item 11.4, a recommendation a recommended recommended motion to approve the mill levy by resolution approve the net assessed valuation as provided by Llata County. Move to approve the res go. Uh move to approve the resolution R-20225-000089 levying property taxes for the year 2026 generating approximately 3,857295 in property tax revenue for the city of Durango from a net assessed valuation of $786,12 or60. Second.

Councelor Kosa. Yes. Councelor Lawyer. Yes. Mayor Proton Woodruff. Yes. Mayor Yazi. Councelor Gonzalez.

Brings uh to 11.5. A resolution to amend the city of Durango and Leotic County joint planning area map to include the Silverview Lane area within the boundaries of the joint planning area. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, members of city council. Daniel Murray in the community development department presenting this evening on the Silverview Lane joint planning area map amendment. This item aligns with the strategic plan goal of innovative housing and economic development given the potential for residential and commercial development. I'll start with some background on joint planning. This is an area that is in the county. It is either near or adjacent to the city. It is characterized as transitioning or likely to transition from a rural character to a more urbanized character. The city and the county have mutually agreed upon development standards for development in this area. The goal being to facilitate greater efficiency in the delivery of municipal services such as water, sewer, and roads, and to promote economic development and enhancing community character and design. The parties have entered into and designated the area known as the joint planning area map. Now, what you see on your screen is predominantly city limits in pink, but everything surrounding in color is known as the joint planning area. The most activity for joint planning either occurs good um up on County Road 250 on the northern end of the city up Florida Road, County Road 240 or the subject of tonight which is the Grand View area where you see the red circle. This is where three areas where the city is growing and services are being expanded.

There are also occasional enclaves within city limits and those are also subject to joint planning. The foundation for joint planning is the intergovernmental agreement IGA between the city of Durango and Llata County. Prior to 2014, the intergovernmental agreement actually mirrored the city's comprehensive plan and that's what you see on your screen here. At that time, the city's comprehensive plan and the joint planning area went past Elmore's corner. Elmore's corner is this red uh hub here. However, uh and actually at that time, joint planning included the subject parcels in Silverview Lane. However, um over time and with our current agreement, the 2014 agreement, the Silverview Lane area was excluded from joint planning. The city's comprehensive plan though has not changed. The image you see on the screen is the city's comprehensive plan. This is where the city is planning for growth, not in a imminent sense, but more in a broad where will the city see itself in a very long range um pattern. And this is areas where we see ourselves also providing future services. The future land use map coincides with the city's service map. If you recall, the last time you saw a joint planning area amendment was just across the highway on County Road 233. And that was a similar proposal where we were expanding the joint planning area to capture um what could be development on the horizon. And that is largely council's role. You are in the quasi legislative mindset here, which is applying broad brush. This is in or outside of a boundary. you are subject to this standard. We're not

looking at any development proposal. There's no sight specific uh permitting to be had. No one walks away with an entitlement tonight. That all happens at the joint planning commission level. And so between the city and the county, there's a very equitable arrangement between the two planning commissions and they're the ones that decide on development. tonight. This is a very high level uh identification as is this in or outside of joint planning. So, getting more specific to the proposal, this is an image of Silverview Lane shown in red. It's comprised of [clears throat] 26 properties. All but three of them are accessed off Silverview Lane. The three that are not accessed there are um accessed from a frontage road, the Grand View frontage road that you see here. And this is the proposal that's come before you, an action item tonight to amend the joint planning area. The same item is in front of the board of county commissioners on December 16th. Things are done a little differently there. The terminology they use is since the county is broken into district plans. This area is currently in the Florida Mesa district and they would take this area out of Fita Mesa and put it in the Durango district. The Durango district is synonymous with joint planning. That's why they call it the Durango district. So that's the action uh yet to occur at the county level. Tonight is what you are considering at the city level. So what is driving this amendment and that is availability of water. On the screen is Silverview Lane. Again shown on the right side and on the left side of that image are city water lines. The lightly colored blue lines are water

that serves the elevation park subdivision. And you see how the water lines are stubbed right up to and adjacent to Silverview Lane. So it is that availability of water that has prompted uh this inclusion in joint planning. There is a particular parcel in this area, a 7 and a half acre parcel that has inquired with the county and said we have an idea. We'd like to present this idea to you. And the first step if they want to be served by city water to achieve their idea would be to be included in joint planning. So that's why we need to make this change tonight or proposed to make this change tonight. So let's look at what land uses could occur. This is uh again a zooming in of our future land use map, the city's comprehensive plan. There are four land use classifications starting with the one in orange. It's known as medium density residential allowing up to 5 to 11.9 units per acre. From there we go to low density shown in yellow. 4.9 up to 4.9 units per acre. And then the area in purple and red are pretty similar. These are uses that you can picture in your mind as you drive the 160 corridor. It's anything from outdoor storage to some warehousing units, um, retail, office, more serviceoriented businesses, and that is what's contemplated along that corridor. As mentioned, the city and the county have agreed upon development standards to achieve the more urban design. This could include paved streets. It may go as far to include curb and gutter and sidewalk depending upon the type of development. There's also standards for landscaping and lighting, all common elements that we know of in the city. And that is how we would envision growth and development occurring if it's on

city services. Uh if a project is on city services, but it's not eligible for annexation, we utilize a tool known as an implied consent agreement. It essentially allows the city and the developer to come to terms as to what standards would apply. And more often than not, we apply our full development standards because someday we anticipate as we have grown over time that this area would be part of the city. Now, I can speak to this notion of annexation because that question has come up quite a bit. With respect to process, we held a neighborhood meeting, city and county, on November 12th, and all residents within uh Silverview Lane and surrounding received public notice. And some of the questions generated at that meeting were, if we're included in joint planning, does that mean we're required to annex? And the answer is no requirement to annex. Annexation is up to the land owner, and you also need to be contiguous. Currently, there is no contiguity between Silverview Lane and City Limits, which is the red dash line you see at the intersection of Three Springs. So, even if someone wanted to annex, we haven't met the contiguity test, which is one sixth contiguity, that will come over time. It's inevitable that one parcel at some point will annex and then the next and it's a domino series. Uh eventually, that's how annexations work. Another question raised, if we're in joint planning, are we required to connect to city water? Similarly, no requirement to connect to city water. It's only when a land owner wants city water or is redeveloping will that come into play. Another question raised is is there a requirement to redevelop and there is being in joint planning doesn't mean you have to redevelop your parcel. And lastly, who will pay for extension of

water infrastructure? who pays for road improvements and the thinking the mindset is development pays its way. So any future road extension any extension of these water lines as done with Elevation Park was their responsibility. It's not the city's responsibility nor is it a neighboring land owner that gets obligated to commit to these improvements just because they're in joint planning. It is only triggered if and when someone decides to redevelop. Procedurally, the next step was the jointly seated planning commissions. That was on November 20th. It's a little different than joint planning because joint planning is three and three. Jointly seated is when our full planning commissions, in our case, community development commission convened in the same meeting. And that is a nuance of the intergovernmental agreement. It goes to show how we want to make these decisions concurrently yet independently. It's a it's a well-designed system just as you're making a decision and the county will make their decision. So at that meeting we had jointly seated planning commissions CDC and the city's community development commission did recommend by a vote of 3 to one that council should not object to this joint planning amendment. It's a bit reverse language there. I can elaborate on that language and some of the discussion that our commission had and the dissenting vote was largely around the availability of infrastructure as it relates to water and the ability to serve additional growth. It has come up and it is um established for the city to ultimately provide a redundant sewer line uh water line I should say to Three Springs. Currently Three Springs is served by one water main. It's in a long range infrastructure plan to to design that line to bring that line to fruition. It doesn't currently exist and that was

understood to be a limitation of our infrastructure. Measures that the city is making that you are well aware of to address that need. It is planned in 2026 that we'll be updating the water master plan to identify what is the best way to bring that redundant line to Three Springs. Currently, the best way, at least in our plans, is to bring that water line up and over Durango Mesa. And one example of how we're incrementally making progress towards that is this year 3,000 ft of water line was extended up to Durango Mesa with the um construction of the road. And that is how water is incrementally making its way uh to create a redundant system. The other questions surrounding the CDC is will there be access improvements? Will Silverview Lane need to be improved? And it is more than likely it will need to be improved, but the level of improvement, the width, any turn lanes, all of that really depends if and when development occurs in Silverview Lane. So the community development commission was trying to anticipate what type of improvements could occur. All of that is yet to be determined when there is development. The next step in this sequence is where we are tonight. It is city council has a resolution to support or object to the community development condition commission's recommendation. Your recommendation will then be shared with the board of county commissioners. They have the same item on their agenda December 16th. If either city council or the BOCC object, then the the proposal is in ineffective. It doesn't happen without both jurisdictions agreeing. So, I'll just leave that there. That actually brings me to staff's recommendation, which is to approve a

resolution supporting the community developments commission not to oppose the amendment to the city of Durango in Llata County joint planning area map to include Silverview Lane within the boundaries of the joint planning area. I'll make a motion to approve a resolution supporting the community [clears throat] development commission recommendation to not oppose an amendment to the city of Durango and Llata County joint planning area map to include the Silverview lane area within the boundaries of the joint planning area. Second,

Daniel, thank you. Um, I didn't get a chance to listen to the CDC meeting. Um, but what was the loan vote against including this potential development to be included in the JPAM? It was that limitation of water infrastructure. Okay, great. Thanks. It's not a capac I will add it. It was question is it a capacity issue or is a infrastructure issue and it's not a capacity issue. It is the recognition that it's a onewater main serving this area.

And there you go answering my question. So, thank you for that and thanks for the education on this. That was really well done. I appreciate that. The language here recommend recommendation to not oppose an amendment to the city of Durango. Why do we see why do we use that language?

This comes verbatim from the intergovernmental agreement that the way it's structured is that either jurisdiction can oppose this happening. So it's framed that way and that is why we have structured it such that we are recommending you not oppose this proceeding essentially not opposing this C comdev commission's recommendation for it and not oppose the board of county commissioners approving this action. I I um I mean so I support the the so I I I mean I I want to support the staff recommendation I think but I I guess could you just could you go back to the beginning of the presentation and you talk about how this came to um our attention you mentioned here the future. Okay. So regarding the future use map this year joint um

so so could you just please uh re reiterate that again. So this particular parcel is private and they submit to become uh um annexed. It's it's not annexation because we haven't met contiguity. They this is actually initiated by the county since this these parcels are in the county people developing approaches the county first and they say we'd like to do X Y and Z. I'm sorry. Just go back one one one second. You who who did that? Who made the approach to the county?

A land owner with a personal private property owner approaches the county and they say we'd like to propose X and they say that you can do that. Uh if you're on city water, then you need to be in joint planning and that has kicked off this process. I I'll uh I'll get it um oneon-one so I understand this procedurally a little bit more um because we have had a few of these come before us. Am I correct? This is not the first time we've seen something like 2023 was the last time we did something like this. Okay. So I have not seen this. So that's why I I feel like it's not flowing um as easily as So I have

some questions for future, but I'll um I'll continue to support what's presented today. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Daniel. Okay. Okay. So what the CDC is asking that the city of Durango not oppose joining into another intergovernmental agreement with the county. Now just from my recolleation that these intergovernmental agreements seem to not work for the benefit of the city. You know, when you look at um 911 building and the rent with, you know, who owns the top, who owns the bottom, how come you're paying for landscaping, we're not paying for landscaping. All these little nitpicky things always come into play and it just seems like we're always left holding the bag. Um, so I I think this is a little bit premature that we provide water to the county's residents. I I just can't see that as progress for the city of Durango.

Okay. I can make two clarifications there. We're not changing the intergovernmental agreement. That document exists and it sets up the framework for what we're discussing tonight. Within the intergovernmental agreement is the joint planning area map and that's what's changing. So whether these parcels are part of joint planning whether or not we serve parcels that are in the county is what this would enable. Now serving water gets development to a higher potential if you will absent central services and if you stay in the county you would have a 3acre minimum largely not the highest and greatest use of land. And I'm not saying that that's right everywhere, but when you're this close to good access to a highway, good access to hospital, jobs, and city limits, those forces are what are prompting developers, land owners to consider connecting to our services, which gets them to that highest and greatest potential.

All righty. But I don't see how this benefits the residents of the city of Durango because we're not contiguous to the city of Durango city limits which is our what our baseline for annexing cities. And so if people buy these lots bit by bit, you know, this may happen in 5 10 years. So I don't see the rush to doing this this year. What if we wait? Because this doesn't seem like it's really necessary at this point. And I would prefer like trying to work out our 911 and our emergency building agreements with the city before we enter into any more contracts with them.

Yeah. No new contracts. But I think you've raised a really good point is why are we extending city services outside city limits?

Exactly. And I my best response on the fly is planning isn't always very neat. Development happens. It can kind of get outside of where you have city limits. In this case, you see city limits there. Uh top of the screen. Development has now occurred. Elevation Park being that catalyst, the first catalyst. They wanted to do something more urban and we felt that was in the best interest of our community because the more in this case residential development we can bring the better it helps our affordability issue bringing in more supply. So that is what drove this developer, Elevation Park, to extend city water. And now you have the next person saying, "Great, I'm next door to that. I'd like to do something, too." And it doesn't always coincide with annexation. It's just it's not quite as neat as we want it to be. I don't think we'll ever get it that neat, which is why we create instruments like joint planning to say someday we'll get to you. you'll be contiguous. But if you're going to develop, we want the sidewalks. We would like paved streets, street lights, landscaping. So, we do it in a way that positions us that it it fits when the time comes because what we want to avoid, and I'm not going to find a perfect example, but there are portions of the city that did get annexed and then we're kind of stuck with these less than ideal roads or something about that development just looks out of place. It doesn't like there's even signage that doesn't meet our code. So, we're trying to position that development in a way it can be annexed in the future.

All righty. Thank you, Dan. Well, I'm opposed to this um this process.

You ready for a vote, Mayor? Yes, we are ready for vote. Uh councelor Lawyer, yes. Councelor Gonzalez, yes. Councelor Koso, yes. Mayor PM Woodruff, yes. Mayor Yazi, no. Brings us to item 11.6, Six, a resolution to clarify the purpose and intent of resolution R2250078 concerning the Animus River and its tributaries.

Mayor and council, um, as you may or may not know, water rights are a specialty area of the law in Colorado. [snorts] We actually employ, um, a water rights attorney. He's kind of renowned through the state as being one of the best water rights attorneys around. He contacted me the night of our last meeting with some concerns about um how the resolution that the Fort Lewis students proposed might affect some of our water rights. And uh he and I have met several times since then. And I also reached out to the instructor at Fort Lewis who proposed the ordinance through our students. and we all felt that it was appropriate to put before you tonight a clarifying resolution uh that essentially preserves and makes it very clear what our legal rights are um to the Animus River and the water development there. So that's simply what this is. It doesn't completely undo or undermine the students um resolution you passed last time. It just clarifies our legal rights and makes sure that um that resolution can't be used in a future water rights hearing to try to undermine or take away our water rights. So that's what that one's about. Move to approve a resolution to clarify the purpose and intent of resolution R2025-000078 concerning the Animus River and its tributaries.

Second. Be quicker. Councelor Gonzalez, yes. Mayor Yazi, Mayor Pro Woodruff, yes. Councelor Lawyer, yes. Councelor Koso, yes. There are no uh consideration of ordinance items. That brings us to item 13, public comment on city matters not under consideration tonight. If we

Mayor, can I have a moment to um address the council before you start this public comment? Um, if you guys have noticed over the past four or five meetings, I've been very meticulous about make sure making sure that when we're doing things that aren't in conformity with our rules, our minutes reflect that we've suspended the rules. Sometimes we've come back and done it on the back end, but I've done that very very specifically because of the history we've had here. And I'll remind you of a little of that. you know, about a year and a half ago, we suffered through the anti-semitic hate bombing on people came on the the internet and were saying all kinds of horrible things and we had rules in place and we were able to stop that fairly quickly. Um then we went through the period with the um the pro Palestine movement and we struggled with conducting our regular city business when people wanted to voice their opinions about something that didn't directly affect the city and you guys actually passed a resolution. and you made it very specific confirming our status as a limited public forum. I'll remind you there's three kinds of public forums. There's traditional, there's designated, limited. We are a limited public forum, meaning that we only talk about city business. And that all goes back into maintaining your rules. If we don't maintain our rules, we risk um our status as a limited public forum. And if you if you become a designated public forum, you would never be a traditional public forum because that's out on the street or at the park or whatever. But if you lose your designation as a limited public forum, your meetings can be overtaken by things that don't have to do with the business you're here to conduct. So I want to caution the council that when you suspend the rules, you can't do it arbitrarily. And there's been some examples and we've been the corrective word, so I think we're okay. But we're getting to that point where we've been suspending the rules so often that we may lose that status. And I just want to remind you because one of the comments that came out earlier that it can't be

arbitrary. Um you've given additional time to community leaders. I think the superintendent of schools appeared here. You moved to give her extra time to speak and that's appropriate because she's someone who's recognized by the community leader and it's traditionally appropriate to give those people extra time. At our last meeting, we gave the um the mother of the children who were taken out of the community by ICE. We gave her extra time. Again, that was appropriate because she had special status. she was essentially the victim of that situation. So, it was appropriate to give her extra time. Um, it's not appropriate, unless you don't intend to maintain your rules, to give people extra time just because they want it. So, and I know that request is going to come tonight. These are your meetings. You do what you choose to do. My advice to you is to maintain your rules. You can't do it. You can't have arbitrary enforcement or arbitrary extensions of time. Sure. Mayor, I just have a question. So, the the way to correct this overall, the council could make a decision that the threeminut time limit is is instead five minutes for everyone and that would be an applicable way to to lengthen out some of the the time. Correct.

Sure. And I always talk with the chair and and I explain that, you know, one of the things I've seen work well in the past is you have to manage your time. This is at the end of the day, this is a business meeting. You have to finish it by a certain amount of time. And I'm always thinking about the situation not tonight but three meetings from now or one that we can't see coming. So my advice is always that you know if you have 30 people signed up to speak and you have an hour to do it that's two minutes a piece instead of three. So it's up to the chair and the council as a whole to manage the time. My caution tonight is that your rules don't have effect if you give extra time to people just because they want it. There are times where it's appropriate and I gave you two examples of that. But just giving people extra time because they feel they're extra important or they're extra passionate about something is an arbitrary um suspension of the rules. And with this history we've had where we've been letting people speak out of order. And again, when we're not in super controversial meetings, we can relax that a little bit. The caution is we're just getting close to the point where if someone was to challenge our rules, it may be difficult to defend them. So my advice to you is just whatever rules you decide to have um enforce them unless you have a non-arbitrary reason to suspend them.

All righty. Um you have a question too. Okay. Let let somebody else uh thank you. Um so are is it common practice for a speaker to request time from another speaker?

That's prohibited under our rules. Okay. In fact, if you listen to that announcement they're going to play in a second here. um that's prohibited because and all this is based on, you know, my experience and other lawyers experience in these public meetings is that if you don't have that rule in place, you know, you have 15 people come and people bring their their cousin or whoever and they all just designate their time to them so they can speak however they want they want to. Um and again, the whole idea here is fairness and equality to your public so everyone gets an opportunity to speak and a certain one individual can't dominate the meeting and prevent you from doing your business. And again, this is not I mean We are a free speech city and all the rules and everything that I tell you guys, they're actually designed to encourage free speech. You guys do not have to have public comment on non-aggenda items. That is not required by the law, but this community wants it and you guys want it and so you allow it. I'm just telling you legally it's not required. The only thing you're required to have public comment on is things you're voting on. So again, some people will say that this is, you know, this is a free speech limitation and under the law it clearly is not. you have the ability to restrict time and subject matter in a limited public forum and that's important for you guys because you guys are doing the business of the city of Durango and there of course there are other opportunities in the community for other types of free speech. So again, this is just me over the past few meetings noticing how many times we suspended the rules and cautioning you if we continue to do that. It may be difficult to enforce the rules going forward. Does anybody else have any questions about this topic? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead at um 13.

So if we could have the recording, Tom public comment is encouraged on city related matters even if they are not set for consideration by the council on tonight's agenda. Please begin your comments by stating your city related topic, your full name and if you are a resident of the city of Durango, make your comments directly to the council. Do not expect a response from the council or staff. Comments are limited to three minutes per person unless modified by council. Unused time is not transferable to other speakers. Comments must be specific to city matters. Profanity, hate speech, personally derogatory remarks, or other speech that is disruptive to the meeting, will be ruled out of order by the chair, and any remaining time will be forfeited by the speaker. Exceeding the time limit infringes on the rights of others and is out of order. Only a majority vote of the council can modify time limits. Please note, you must sign up prior to the mayor calling the item on the agenda. Signing up after the item is called will result in your name not being called to speak.

We have a total of 11 uh folks signed up. The first is Karen Pontius. All right. My name is Karen Pontius. I live on Animus View Drive in Durango. Thank you all for your service to our community. You just said we are a business. Really? City Council is a business. Profit or nonprofit?

Okay. New to me. I thought city council represented the people. Whatever. Okay. Wondering how residents can be heard then. And I'm not being disrespectful. I'm only asking. So I'm against the flock system because the more I learned about it over months, uh worried about the ICE connection and uh Chief Current said we're no longer in sharing information, which is good, but we were before. So there's a point at which they stop sharing an information and I don't know who's going to um give proof of that. I'm worried about the predation of workers here in town who are already afraid. They pay taxes and they work hard and now they have to hide in their homes because of a daily risk of capture. Um, I thought this had to do with the budget, but they said that the um the renewal of the flock contract, I guess, is probably buried somewhere in the police budget, which I'll have to figure out how to discuss that. Uh, there are better alternatives to this. There's principles lined out in a New Hampshire license plate reader law and others that do not violate our rights in the same way that Flock does. So, please investigate them and make the switch. Let's see if I have any more. Um, all right, that's it. Thanks. Uh, next I'll recall Nathaniel Bowen. Uh, next would be Emily Riggs. She is online there. Can you all hear me?

Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Hi, my name is Emily Riggs and I'm a citizen of Durango. I'm a therapist and social worker in the community and have spent a few years working in the Llata County Jail as a therapist and case manager. And I'm speaking tonight to express my concern with the number of flot cameras that have popped up in the Durango City limits and around the perimeter of Fort Lewis College. While extensive research shows a direct correlation with lack of housing to crime, indicating a need for the city to majorly prioritize funding on affordable housing efforts. There is minimal research showing flock and similar systems. Cameras reduce crime rates. On the contrary, these cameras increase risk of community members as they track citizens without a warrant and target marginalized populations. These cameras have been used to track women seeking abortions across state lines. There are several known incidents of these surveillance systems being used to track and stalk women. Chief Currant earlier in this meeting mentioned that these incidents are rare. However, Llata County is unfortunately very incredibly familiar with law enforcement staff taking advantage of invasive technology for their own personal benefits. Black presents major privacy and immigration concerns. The Durango Police Department reports that they are not collaborating with federal ICE agencies illegally, but their contract with Flock has suggested differently. This contract has allowed them to share our data with other with our federal agency with any federal agency without even informing us as was reported in August by Nine News to have happened when Flax shared the Customs and Border Protection. The federal administration is targeting what they call the enemy within, those exercising free speech. While the city has sought to differentiate federal versus city matters, passive assistance

with these efforts is very much still assistance and erodess public trust while potentially violating Colorado law. All citizens, regardless of political status, act differently while being surveiled. It puts the community on edge. Use of this system leaves DPD and the city vulnerable to lawsuits. Due to numerous rights violations and legal concerns, I'm here speaking tonight to express my vehement opposition to the violation the violating use of these cameras. I urge the city to terminate their contract with Flock and rather than following this federal trend of mass policing and surveillance to invest funds instead into the livelihood of our community members. Thank you. The next person signed up to speak is also online. Katcha Speaker Kata, you should be able to speak now. If you're having difficulties unmuting, uh, you can use control shiftm to unmute your mic. We don't see that this person has tried to unmute their mic. Uh,

okay. I'll come back to her uh in person. Philip Riff. Hello council. Uh my name is Philip Reich. I live in Hesperis. Uh I was glad to hear the police chief say that they are not sharing data with ICE. That's my primary concern. But um I would like to read from you from an ACLU website specifically concerning Flock. Uh they say that Flock's default agreement with police departments gives the company the right to share data with federal and local agencies for investigative purposes. Even if a local department chooses to restrict data to its own officers, every community in the nation that is home to flock cameras should look at the user agreement between their police department and the company to see whether it contains a clause stating that the c customer hereby grants Flock a worldwide perpetual royalty-free free right and license to disclose the agency data. for investigative purposes. This is the language that will govern in the community unless a department demands changes to the standard user agreement that Flock offers. So, I urge the council to look into this contract and make sure that that language is there so that we are not sharing our data with ICE. Thank you.

Next is Stefan Park. Good evening, council. I hope today finds you in good spirits and good health. Uh my name is Stephen Park. I am a born and raised Durangutang. Um I am also opposed to the flock cameras. Um just doing minimal amounts of research myself, but I hear things from people who have extensively looked into such matters. Um and it causes a lot of fear. Um, sorry kind of this is my first time doing this and speaking with here in front of the council, so please forgive me. Um, um, I strongly ask that we do consider um, transparency. I do appreciate what the chief of police has said um, giving us a little more information. I do disagree with some of those points. Um, and I question how true some of that may be as we were just stated with the user agreements. Um, I feel if we have full transparency, if it's possible, I don't know the legalities on it, but sharing things such as the user agreements, terms, and policies so that the people can see these things um, actually see it might be good. I don't know if partnering with the outreach team here uh if possible to do something like that but I think if it were something you know that our community does want you know giving that full transparency to show that these fears are invalid I guess not well yeah um I I think we need to find some way to have full transparency there to ease people's

fears at the very least. Um, with that being said, hopefully things can change and that I will yield my time. Thank you. Next is Deborah Nielsen. I'm going to try to see you over this. Okay. It's not for sure, people. Um, hi. I'm Deborah Nielsen. I'm a resident of Durango and I've been here for almost 40 years. Um, and I have concerns about our city's relationship with Flock Safety. Um the chief of police mentioned Denver's contract with Flux Safety and it must be noted that Denver renegotiated their agreement to be um so that that that [clears throat] they can only use it for emergency use only. And there is a process to identify the agent and the contact information and it can only be used if it helps prevent the risk of death or serious injury. So it would be good for us to look at Denver's new um uh contract with Flock. Uh I really don't think that we should um continue to work with Flock Safety for a lot of reasons. Um, one is that, um, federal agencies can have backdoor ways to access the data even if we say that they can't. And, and Durango saying that we are the ones that own that data is not actually the case. Other people can access the data because Flock has the ability to share it. Um, and the last thing that I would say is when

we're talking about cell phone tracking access, there are warrants required for cell tower data. And there are currently no warrants required to access flock camera data. So, that's something else we should probably look at if we're trying to u maintain a feeling of safety in our community, which already doesn't feel safe since we've already had illegal abductions of children and um members of our community who had committed no crimes and which the state of Colorado now says were illegal. Um so, thank you for your time. And

next is Ben Peters. Hi, good evening, mayor and city council. I am going to ask for a 10-minute extension of time on the account of I authored a petition that has 750 signatures from people in our area. And um I'm also the one who submitted the records request that found the 60 agencies that had the ICE 287g agreements. That was my research. I would like to and the mayor I'm excuse me the police chief made a number of false and misleading statements in a 45minute presentation and I would like to try to address at least some of them up here um at this time. No, you're already down to 217, 216, 215.

Okay. I'll talk about the New Hampshire law because that's what I wanted to talk about in the three minutes. Um, this is a way that the system could ease concerns about Fourth Amendment violations and data sharing. This includes LPR devices that only capture images of license plate. Flock can and does capture images of people. If you look on their website, they advertise a feature called the free form search. You can capture access of people. The mobile police trailer was at the VFW park during the No Kings Rally where there were barely any private vehicles present, but there were thousands of people present. I Anyway, um the New Hampshire law also says that LPRs cannot transmit data um if it doesn't match a hot list. The the the point of the New Hampshire law is you're only capturing data if the license plate is on a hot list. The Durango Flock camera captures data of every vehicle. Every single license plate is captured and stored. It's transmitted to a cloud that's administered by Flock and then is searchable by the department. Um the New Hampshire law requires permanent deletion of data from the LPR device within 3 minutes if it does not match a hot listed plate. It was misleading what the what the chief said. it if it's a hot listed plate, you can save the match and you can save the search and you can save it. Okay, the the sharing uh by the New Hampshire law would be on an individual basis. DPD shared with over 600 departments. Okay, 60 of those had the ICE 287g agreements, but there are still almost 600 departments. It's, you know, now it's 540 as of yesterday, right? Um, but we don't control how those departments use Flock. We could have great policies here at Durango. We could have great control on how we use it, but we have no control on how all those other departments use it and they have access to our cameras and they have access to our data. Um, I was denied unredacted audit data. I have no idea what the I have 15 seconds. Okay. All

right. Cool. Sorry. Um, anyway, I I asked for this to be on the next agenda uh uh in two weeks and I asked to have more time to speak then. Thank you. Next is LA Morris. Hi, my name is Ellie Morris. I'm a resident of Durango. Uh, thank you very much for allowing us to participate in the democratic process. Really appreciate it. I am here also with concerns about flock. as other people have mentioned, I'm not sure that it is a really reputable company. So, I assume um given no monopoly laws addressing this that we have other options. So, I would encourage the council to look at other options besides this specific company. Um, I have heard tonight from various people that including the chief and some people online that the cameras have been designed to look at the license plates and there's a lot of talk about the license plates and that they're up around Fort Lewis and again more on license plates. But my question is, I'm a cyclist and for over two weeks on the river trail, there was a flock camera set up there. And I don't know anybody that's a cyclist that has a license plate on our bike. I don't know any of the runners that have license plates on their bodies. And I don't know any dog walkers that got their license plates out there. So I would like some information about why this was set up there giving all the data is supposed to be coming from vehicle license plates.

So that's something very confusing to me. Uh I have tonight for you two hakus. One is bikes and peds only. So what you flocking us for on the river trail? The second one is if we have choices flock has poor reputation cut the contract please. Thank you. Next is Antonio Espinosa. go ahead and kick it off. Um, [clears throat] first and foremost, I want to say you everyone here should be familiar with which hill I'm going to die on tonight. Um, I think this system presents a a very flock system obviously presents pretty pertinent danger to the homeless individuals. They are, as always, have been my biggest concern. And I don't think it's cool for a system to track someone with a warrant for missing court because they were homeless up to their camp where they're camping with their agent. It just seems like something that can cascade into a very dangerous thing. And seeing that the city doesn't really have any provisions in terms of addressing homelessness if these cameras are used to go track down the homeless where they sleep and the hills and the cuts and the forest. It just seems like a really good way, and I hope this isn't the purpose of it, but to flock them out into the open and take them to jail. It seems like a really slippery slope. The advertisement for the drone on the web page for Flock says it launches without human intervention. So, who decides when and why the system operates? The advert The advertisement for the first surveillance trailer says, "Place video coverage where you need it most without wires or permits." This is no way This is in no way a public safety system, and it is more than a little unsettling that it would even be considered by this city. Flux

promotional material shows the system is clearly capable of reading a license plate at 2,000 ft. And when you can associate uh registered vehicles with someone's face and name, the assurances from the department that the system doesn't track people is untrue. That's exactly what the system does. Capable of keeping 30 days worth of data backlogged information tracking locations for every vehicle without discrimination. Flock provided backdoor access to Customs and Border Protection this year without letting us know. And it scares me to wonder who else they would provide the same privilege to. There are cases across this nation of local law enforcement conducting searches and providing login information to outside agencies. To top it off, we aren't allowed to see how the department is using these systems. We know they've conducted 5800 searches over the year, but that's all we know because everything else is redacted. I understand why the interest I understand why to the interest of the general public, but the risk-to-reward ratio is not in favor of the public or our freedoms. With the inclusions of AI being utilized in these systems and the lack of federal regulation around AI itself, it seems like a very slippery slope to the abuse and/or misuse of these systems a danger more than a safeguard. We are deserving of privacy and security, but are equally, if not more, deserving of our right to privacy. Please cancel the contracts, take down the cameras, end the data sharing. I don't feel safe. I feel scared. Thank you. Next is uh Davey Sherman, Davey Davyy, one of the other Sherman. Uh we can go back to Katcha speaker if she is online and could unmute.

Are you all able to unmute Katya? I think they're unable to unmute on their own.

We have unmuted Katya. Uh if they would please try unmuting right now. Again, if you do have some trouble, sometimes using control shiftm does unmute your mic. See that they've unmuted. Katya, are you able to speak? Can you hear me right now? We can. Oh, hallelujah. Thank you.

Good evening, counselors. My name is Katya Speaker. I am a resident of Durango and I am here tonight to express my concern with the installation of flock safety cameras within city limits and this implementation of mass surveillance in our community. I recognize that the Durango Police Department has an ongoing commitment to keep the community safe. However, many so-called license plate reader and video surveillance companies lack the appropriate safeguards to guarantee that a data breach won't occur. Also, their interests lie not in actually keeping our communities safe, but in collecting data that they can market and sell. Scarily, as soon as data is collected, it is susceptible to abuse and theft. And the company the city has contracted with, Flock Safety, unfortunately has proven itself extremely untrustworthy. Over the past few months, flock safety has been the subject of significant press attention and come under heavy public scrutiny across the country, including by the ACLU, as well as local, state, and federal officials. One reason of many is because over the summer, against its own word in customer contracts, Flock allowed access of data from its nationwide network to Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, the Secret Service, and the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. During this time, Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security investigations conducted hundreds of searches. Flock later admitted it misled its state and local law enforcement customers, including the city of Durango, after it after it initially said it wouldn't share data with the feds. US Senator Ron Weiden became concerned with Flock's practices and asked his staff to investigate, finding Flock built a faulty platform for which it takes no responsibility to prevent or detect abuse. If a letter to Flock in a letter to Flock, Senator Widen stated, "Abuses of your product, this is a quote, abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and Flock is unable to in and uninterested in preventing them."

End quote. Senator Widen found flock so dangerous that he advised local officials in the entire state of Oregon to protect people from the inevitable abuses of flock cameras and remove them from communities. Block Safety is a private venture capitalbacked startup valued at 7 and a half billion. They're valued that much because their nationwide data collection, which they plan to sell to big players like the federal government and the companies that train algorithms on video and image data. Flank has no intention of making its system auditable by local officials like yourselves, of building in safeguards that say prevent a police officer from looking up an image and alerting ICE or from giving an ICE agent their password. Even for Denver, whose contract is supposedly custommade, FLAC has worked in a clause to preserve this nationwide data sharing and allows Flack to share data without notifying Denver first. Flock's actions and negligence with its system and data have proven these cameras of mass surveillance actually put community members in danger of Flock's greedy ambitions and nefarious law enforcement officers. I ask that you please keep our community safe, turn off the cameras immediately and do not renew Durango Flux contract. Thank you.

And that is the last of the people signed up for public comment. Mayor, all righty. Thank you. Can we move on to item 14? Uh item 14 is uh other new business. Item 14.1, a resolution directing the city manager present a process on how to fasttrack child care facilities similar to the proposition 123 model submitted by councelor Koso.

I'm sorry. Do we need to move? I had to switch tracks there. Do we need a motion? Okay, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about it.

Council, thank you. Um the um this item has been uh talked about before. I'm trying to propose that council direct staff to include the fasttracking of child care facilities um with the required fasttracking that needs to go along with the Prop 123 process that we have um already uh under um under design. Um Mr. French. Mike French has indicated that there's a grant uh paid consultant position for the Prop 123 process uh that's to be filled and uh if we are to make any modifications to that so that this grant this grant um position grant paid consultant position would also look at a fasttracking for um child care facilities that they need direction from council. And so that's why I'm pressing this issue uh tonight. Um, we've got a couple of key reasons why I think this is important. Um, it's supportive of the efforts that we're trying to make to expand child care within the city. Providers in the recent past have been trying to establish new facilities or expand existing facilities and met with inconsistent communication, long delays and approvals and miscommunications between various public entities involved in child care regulation. This would include the fire district, the county, the city, early childhood council that represents state regulations, um as well as Llata County Public Health. Um we've seen child care facilities also be given a very short timeline to find a new facility and uh the multiplier effect that that has on the families that are accessing those child care facilities. Those are recent examples of of reasons why we need to try and fasttrack facilities better than uh than what we're doing right now. Um it's is one improvement in a broad effort to improve child care in the community and um those efforts also include um other items uh navigators uh AI tools um enabling early understanding

for provincial or potential providers around cost and modifications to be addressed um other elements as well. But um since we're going to go ahead and u create a process uh for affordable housing, it makes a lot of sense to me that we also uh parallel that with a childare facility.

Are the processes the same? Like does this co coincide? No. So, I'm not opposed to fasttracking a child's care facility or or the process to get a child care facility, but I would feel like wouldn't uh the child care investment, what is the team called? Child care that Heather Hawk leads up. They would they not come to us when they needed that? Mhm.

Well, so they do need it. It's just the opportunity that we're going to be working on fasttracking for affordable housing right now, there's going to be some similarities to fasttracking for the child care facilities as well. And so if we're going to be building that system for affordable housing, there's enough overlap, I think, that makes sense to do it in parallel at this time. Like fasttracking through planning through planning

through planning. I don't [clears throat] disagree that like it could be potentially beneficial. I just don't like if we go through the housing one, wouldn't it make and we figure out all the ins and outs and tweaks and stuff, would it make it faster to do it after when they need it? Like does that I I hear what you're saying. It does. There's a piece here where there's a consultant being hired to create the fasttrack system for the the affordable housing. If that position can also be filled so that they pay attention to the child care, there seems to be some some savings or or speed.

Okay, let me make a point here. Okay. So, I've been working on the affordable housing um regional housing task force but since I got elected here and it takes a lot of partners in the um the state, the county and local cities and the builders to follow the Prop 123 guidelines. And I don't know if you know that the one two three guidelines they have a 3% growth um part of that issue that means that after 3 years you have to grow 9%. [clears throat] Okay. So just working with that affordable housing structure um going forward with affordable housing here for the city of Durango when this comes up again. I'm going to make the recommendation that we do not uh sign on to Prop 123 because it's too restrictive in what we can do and there's too many um hardships that we could fall into. And there's going to be municipalities and cities who aren't going to be able to follow the 123 requirements to finish out their contracts and they're going to have to pay money back to the city. So, would it make me feel more comfortable? I feel like you um Jessica does that. If we just didn't compare it to one, two, three would be better for me. Do

we know the like would we have to fund more money to the consultant? I'm assuming to do something totally separate. Is it I don't know. He the cost I'm I can't speak for Mike, but

you would need to. It wouldn't be in their original scope of work. So, there would be some parts that you would have to fund with the consultant. Also, I'm not sure community development doesn't really been in line. So, when you sometimes when you have conversations with staff, they're looking from it at the perspective of like the prosperity office. Spike's like we have a consultant that can go through. There's has to be also a lot of talks with community development because maybe we can get a consultant to do it, but I don't know where community development is in regards to what that process is for uh child care centers and childcare facilities. So, I would imagine there's going to be cost associated with it. and then also other issues that may arise on what that would entail.

Is there a more enhanced planning process that goes into childcare facilities than normal? Ask uh Jamie to Thanks, Jamie. [laughter] Got him.

It's not that it's a more enhanced process. It's just there are more stringent guidelines because a state comes into play in addition to the planning guidelines. Um, and I think that there are more unique circumstances that people try to do them in areas that can be more complicated when we're trying to approve them. Housing is a little different that usually you're starting with a blank slate or converting a hotel so there's something already there. Um uh we've had a lot of daycarees that want to move into houses or move into an existing building and sometimes that can create issues because of the type of occupancy that it is and the building regulations are going to run into. So it's not just planning. You got building and fire regulations you have to will come into play for that as well. And just wanted to add a little bit. Prop 123 is and and what we're doing for fasttrack is very specific to Prop 123. There are specific regulations that and targets we're trying to meet with that. And I don't think it's going to be the same type of process would work for child care because it's different targets that you're looking for in that process. Can we look at something for for child care? Yes, we can, but it's going to be something it's it's going to be something different.

The substantially different. I mean, there there won't be any it seems to me like many of the components of trying to get a childare facility built would be somewhat similar to to trying to build housing. similar. Yes. Um the Prop 123 is really just looking at timing. It's not looking at the regulations. It's just trying to compress the timing to get it done quicker. Um child care, I think, is more getting caught up in the regulations versus the timing. So, it sounded like to me there might be more barriers or roadblocks with other agencies than our our process. Would that be fair? Yes, sir.

I see. Okay. So cuz we're relying on or they're the person trying to create the facility be having to go through the state to get accreditation and all that sort of thing. Yes, sir. So there's already kind of steps that they need to go through that we may not have,

you know, we've got our piece and if we speed up our piece, that's all we can do control. I mean, I I don't think we have any control over the county piece or the the health department piece. I mean, that's that's the limitation on this. So, no, I I I understand that. But, you know, we keep coming up with reasons why we're not making an impact on child care. And so, this is one more tool in the tool chest to try and and pull out. If if not tying it if it doesn't have any benefit to tying it to the fasttracking that might happen with Prop 123, then it just needs to be proposed as a separate item. and treated just like there's no benefit to tying it to Prop 123.

No sir. Okay.

I would I would and also just for real quick because I'm a fan of the way we say things sometimes. You say we like don't we keep stopping and not doing anything for child care. We gave a ton of money towards something that I think is more impactful than us doing something on our own with the alliance and the strategic child care foundation. So I'm not saying that we can't do more at all, but I feel like we did more than we've ever done before. One in this council has for child care and two what was requested to be the most impactful for us right now. And I think that there's probably things we can do. I would be interested like tomorrow I want to go and talk maybe when I'm at the alliance meeting and talk and say like hey is there where are people getting hiccuped and hung up on is it city land code is it our processes is it state is is there something that we can do that would be easy rather than just you know I don't if it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense and that's the only reason why I was questioning and cost and like making sense I'm not saying there's nothing we can do but the way that that was worded was a little like we haven't done anything.

Accelerating the ability for these facilities to expand and to get built is one of the key components of trying to increase child care slots in the community. And we haven't addressed this topic in decades. I I've never heard this topic being addressed in regards to this the the enabling these childcare providers to expand slots and build new ones in a long time,

you know. Um Okay. So what maybe six weeks ago I went down to the powerhouse and was with their opening to do their expanding the child care and the city has made accommodations to our code to make sure that the powerhouse can expand child care there. So they're working on that. Then also we just did the head start you know that doubling the capacity the last when when did we vote on that to uh move that forward. So we have done a lot for child care.

Well, I think that's separate from what he's talking about is I think he understands that we've done those things. What he's trying to say is there this is a separate um initiative that we could do. All I was saying is that if it makes sense like yeah, let's look at it and like fund it. But if it doesn't make sense, if if we're not the hiccup, why spin our wheels and waste? Well, how about if we have a discussion on this and like see what our regulations are? And I know that the alliance has been working on their child care initiative. Yeah. But mayor, we are hundreds of slots short at this point and it's only getting worse. The the the infant and toddler slots are are horribly insufficient for what we've got. You know, a lot of the slots go to county residents, you know. So,

well, if they're working in Durango, I'm not sure that that's necessarily a bad thing. But anyway, that's a that's a it's something that we should discuss and, you know, think on it. But maybe let's see what um when she goes to her alliance meeting and talks with Sarah and see where we're at there because if there is a hangup, maybe we can help that out. s um

I know I'm trying to follow procedures. Um I guess you know I mean truly like there's nothing fast about child care. I mean that's why so um I would welcome a presentation again like a staff presentation on what's currently the process and how we could advance it. I didn't see the connection to the Prop 123. Um, you know, that's why I I I'm not sure how they're related. Um, so, uh, but I welcome a presentation on like what's required for child care and is there a process for advancing it should there be a project. Um, it's my understanding here as in other places, the problem is not the city, it's all of the many state requirements. Um and you know having a building um that is meets all those requirements. Um it's not the city's um it's not the it's not being held up because of the city. It's all of the regulations. But I welcome a presentation on what it takes to

open a child care facility. I'm gonna caution you guys that new business should be a rationale by the mover and you either vote on whether you agree or you don't agree with his rationale to move it forward. Having a full-fledged debate about this without notice to the public that you're going to have a full-fledged debate about it can get you into trouble. So, I know it's tempting and I don't want to be the, you know, guy who's always raining you in, but again, the system is designed to where you have these type of debates once something is moved forward in the process. This is really just new business. Give your rationale, short, small comments and then just see if it moves forward through the process. And again, this is to protect you guys with the public because this is not an announced debate. This is just new business. Just like to read the resolution again. and it's directing the city manager to present a process on how to fasttrack child care facilities similar to Proposition 123 model. This isn't asking for much more than presenting the process. The motion dies for lack of a second. Can we go on to 142? 14. There was no second.

14.2 is a resolution directing the city manager to introduce an ordinance modifying the land use and development code and code ordinances to allow electric fences and electric mats for deterring bare access. Very briefly, council, this is the ongoing process we've been doing to legalize these critical tools. It remains the only issue I have had where only positive comments have come on with no objections. So, um I'd like to slightly modify the request to ensure that staff provide an outline around a loner program. If we do approve the mats and electric fences, I think from a timings perspective, it makes some sense for us to discuss that we might have loaner materials so that homeowners or folks could use them quickly, uh, check them out from the city or from Bears Smart,

whoever, because I think Bearsmart handles that. I think there would be some complications I'd have to work out with legal if we were actually the ones loaning that. I'm I'm not interested in saying one over the other. I'm just interested in a loaner program existing. If that's through the best one through Bears Smart, then that makes a lot of sense to me, too. I would agree if it was specific to Bears Smart with that component. I don't think the city should be in the business of loaning out loaner mats and figuring all that out. I'm fine with the modification.

I I will support that. If if it's a bare smart loaner program or nothing, if they don't want to do it, then people have to buy their own. Changing the ordinance is the key thing here. I think it's important that we allow the allow the pieces the the loaner program would just be something that hopefully we talk about with that. Um could you restate your resolution please? uh

use and development code and code of ordinances to allow electric fences and electric mats for detouring bear access. Just leave it at that. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, we got a second discussion. I'm sorry and it just came to my head and kept like council koso you're gonna throw something at me but uh two ways to go through this. Normally this goes through CDC. Uh the other way can be straight to the council. Which process would you follow? Would you would you like to follow? It is absolutely at the council's pleasure. You don't see any positives or negatives going one way or the other?

CDC is just the traditional path that it goes, but the city attorney has ruled that the council can do it on its own. So, it is at the pleasure of the council if you want it to come straight here and be done or if you would like the CDC to uh have an opportunity to review and rule on it. With with such a lack of opposition to this, it seems to me like the most efficient method would be to bring it to council. I just want to make sure I was in line and make sure that you had that information

to amend. Yeah. If it if it said if if it goes forward, it would come back as an introduction of a resolution or introduction of an ordinance.

Okay. The motion fails because there wasn't Oh, we got a second. Okay. And we going to have discussion then. Roll. Wait, let's have discussion.

Okay. So, as long as the city's indemnified from any lawsuits and that it would go through the proper channels of the CDC to look at any areas of concern that we don't have um that I don't know about at this point. So, I would prefer it go through them and we get all our ducks in a row. I can't imagine that we pass an ordinance without it being cleared by legal that the city's not putting itself in jeopardy.

Part of the process. Yeah. So, the what's on the floor now is new business and there's a motion in a second to move it forward as an ordinance for introduction. That's what's on the floor.

Are we ready for roll call? I will read for roll call. Mayor Yazi, no. Mayor Pton Woodruff, yes. Councelor Gonzalez, yes. Councelor Koso, yes. Councelor Lawyer, yes. That is the last item on the agenda, [sighs] unless there is additional new business by council. All righty. 15 a jerk.