City Council - Regular Meeting

Steve Muntean.

Yeah.

Gail Gary. John Agosta.

Here.

Dave Barnes.

Here.

Michael Bettino.

Here.

Amy Dixon. Here. And Brian Swintek.

Here. Brian's here. Okay. Well, everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

We have a flag at the back of the building room here and in the front.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OK. Thank you, everyone, for being here tonight. We will be taking public comment tonight at around 6 o'clock or so. So if you want to make a public comment on something not on the agenda tonight, you may do that then. Tonight is a work session. We have two topics on agenda.

agenda for tonight and the first topic is communications and engagement strategic plan update Mike you want to take that yeah good evening Mike Lane marketing and communications manager tonight we're sharing an update on the city's communication and engagement strategic plan it's an effort focused on improving how we as a city connect with our community The city is partnering with Slate Communications to evaluate our current efforts. The goal is to identify opportunities to improve coordination, effectiveness, engagement, while developing a roadmap with actionable priorities, measurable goals, and an implementation strategy. As you'll hear, Slate Communications specializes in local government communications and public engagement. Leading this project is Kristin Null. She's Slate's Director of Strategic Communications. She has 20 years of experience in strategic communications, media relations, and issues management. As you know, this work is a key strategic initiative for the city and will help ensure our communication efforts continue to support organizational priorities and the evolving needs of our community. I'll turn it over to Kristen to share some of the observations and emerging trends from the initial discovery and assessment phase and where we're going to go from here. So Kristen.

Great. Thank you, Michael. And hello, everyone. Great to see many of you again. I was in Steamboat Springs just about two and a half weeks ago. And today's update is really to share high level observations from a lot of the conversations that I had with many of you, key stakeholders, members of staff as well. So I will go ahead and share my screen. Hopefully you can see the first slide. So as Mike said, I'm the Director of Communication Strategy with Slate Communications. I've been with Slate for about nine years now. Prior to joining Slate, I worked in-house in communications for the city of Lone Tree, just south of Denver and for Larimer County. So I've spent my whole professional career in local government and specifically in communications in a variety of roles. And we were hired, as Mike said, to help develop a communication and engagement strategy. So a little bit more about Slate, mostly for anyone who's listening or online or individuals who I haven't had a chance to meet with yet. Slate is about 13 years old. We are a full-service marketing and public relations firm that is based in Fort Collins, but we all work remotely, so we even have staff across the country. Most of us came from local government jobs, working in-house in communications, just like I have. focus on really supporting communities with communication strategy, developing strategic plans like this one, providing staff level communication support for smaller communities who don't have a communications department or any communication staff in-house. We also specialize in storytelling, so video, content creation, full production elements of communication as well. And we also have a full publication team who does city magazines and parks and rec guides and all those printed communication pieces as well. And we're really proud to tell that we have a lot of industry knowledge, that we really are partnership driven. We talk about, you're not a client, you're a partner in communications and we've received quite a few national awards for our communication efforts in supporting other communities. A plan like this is, Nothing new. It really is a great opportunity for an organization to really take a step back and look at your communication efforts and assess what's working, where are there opportunities for improvement. where can we implement new strategies to reach new audiences? And this is just a list to show you that we've done this before and we've supported a lot of communities, many in Colorado, but again, across the country in developing both communication plans and also Amy Willard- Developing department assessments, so this plan for steamboat is a little bit of both we're doing both the communication plan and the communications department or division assessment as well. Amy Willard- So i'll dive in to what i've learned so far. This is really, again, a high-level overview. I was just in town, like I said, about two and a half weeks ago, and I'm still conducting some interviews and meeting with community members. And I'd love to connect with you, Brian. I think you're the last council member who I haven't had a chance to meet. Would really like to get your thoughts as well. But so far... I have done six council member interviews and met with over 30 staff members when I was in town and conducted 12 external stakeholder interviews. Those were both one-on-one and small group interviews with folks like your local media. So I met with both representatives from the newspaper and the radio. I met with the communications director for Route County and for the Housing Authority and the Chamber of Commerce, among others. So trying to get a broad overview of other people's perspectives of the organization's communication efforts since I'm an outsider really looking to get input from others in the organization and around the community to help develop this plan. I've also started to do an audit of existing communication tools so Mike and the communications team have shared a lot of current communication tools and I'm diving into your digital communication assets like social media, website and all of those pieces are starting to inform again how this plan will look and what I've learned so far. So the next two slides include just a summary of the interviews, and I have kind of three buckets which are really kind of You know themes that i've started to hear throughout these conversations, so the first one is about internal process and capacity. Right now there's mostly an unstructured or more informal intake process for general communication requests, this is mostly an an internal process. When other departments need communication support, how do they reach out to Mike and his team? Right now, that's a little bit more informal. We know that it's a really small communications team that covers a lot, does a lot of work. And right now, it's primarily reactive communication output and less strategic because of all the work that's coming in. Under storytelling, narrative, and reputation, I heard that the city doesn't celebrate wins or tell its own story enough. Sometimes we're really good at it, and other times a big project has ended, something has opened, and we kind of move on to the next project and haven't celebrated that win. Misinformation often fills information vacuums. So when there isn't information being shared, people are getting sometimes the wrong information from other sources outside the city organization. Channels brand and digital experience. So fragmented social media accounts and inconsistent branding across communication channels. And I heard that there was some frustration from some that the city website and that Engage website or platform is sometimes a challenge to navigate. Under audience reach and engagement, I heard that some of the hardest to reach audiences or individuals in your community in particular are the working and middle class, those kind of young adults, teens to young adults, age 15 to 25, then our seniors that are over 60, And non English speakers. And I also heard that existing engagement opportunities are great and some of them are working really well, which we want to continue, but I heard that often reach is is the same you know same few folks. For crisis and emergency communications, there's limited or no redundancy in PIO support during emergencies, most notably with police or fire or even utility outages. Those kinds of emergency responses fall to one staff member without a defined kind of process for backup support. And no formal PIO support request process when there is more of an emergency folks from other departments reach out in different ways to get support. So it's not formal there either. What I heard from external partners and the media is that there's really strong collaborative relationships with community partners and the local media. The media really had great things to say about how responsive the city is to their needs, their press deadlines, that sort of thing. They really feel like they get a lot of good information from the organization, which is great. So based on kind of those themes, I started to develop a mini SWOT analysis, really breaking out again what I heard into communication strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This SWOT analysis is just like what I've been hearing is going to continue to expand as I work to build out the communications plan. But again, here's kind of high level what I've noticed from the conversations as well. So strengths are that the communications team is really trusted and responsive. Everyone had, again, great things to say about the current team. There's just a lot of work to do, and are there different or new ways that we can approach communication? The city has a wide variety of communication engagement tools, and you use those pretty well and effectively to reach the community. elected leaders and city staff understand the value of communication and are supportive of staff and their efforts and that certainly shows in this process to you know i'm here for a reason, I think, because communication is so supported. And the city has strongly relationships with Community organizations and is viewed as a collaborative partner. Some weaknesses that have kind of risen to the top are that communication staff is spending more energy maintaining day-to-day operations, which leaves them limited time and capacity to expand that strategic communication effort. As stated before, there's no formal communication request process, especially when internal staff needs communication support. And it's a small team doing a lot of work. Some of the opportunities that have started to emerge are standardizing how communication requests are received and prioritized. Provide media training to city staff who are subject matter experts and create department ambassadors for additional communication support. So how do we build the team and provide appropriate training to spokespeople in the organization that can assist with communication output? And tailor outreach and engagement efforts to neighborhoods or other more hyper-local audiences. So doing some engagement activities, but finding new and different ways to do that. And some of the threats, and I want to preface by saying oftentimes threats are outside your control too. but we wanna identify what those threats are along with threats that we do have control over. But some of the threats are word of mouth and social media gossip often travels faster than official communications and that can shape opinions before facts are shared. There's a perception by some that there's a declining sense of community as Steamboat Springs grows and changes. I think that's natural, but that was shared. And we've seen or heard that there's a shrinking capacity of local journalism, which reduces opportunities for kind of that nuanced or in-depth coverage of city initiatives, which means that that kind of communication falls back to the city organization to fill that gap. So, Again, that's just a high level overview of what I've heard that many SWOT analysis that will continue to be developed. Next steps in this plan process are kind of outlined here that I want to cover. So these blue smaller bullet points you can kind of think of as chapters in the communication process. plan and the first chapter is the discovery report. It's all of the information I'm gathering, pieces of what you've already seen in this presentation, a deeper dive into social media analytics, review of peer communities, and that helps us develop and move into the next three chapters of the plan, which is really developing the actionable items within the plan. So that includes first a strategic framework. So identifying communication goals, messaging, priorities, and then how do we measure success of those. There will also be a chapter on the department assessment. So that is really taking a look at current staffing levels and structure and providing recommendations. Really diving into core functions and service levels of the communications team and building out workflow improvements as well. And then the first or the fourth chapter or last section of the plan is Tools templates and a roadmap for how to implement. So what I love most about these plans is they are not just a document that sits on a shelf. It's really a living document and these tools are kind of pull out pieces. and templates that can be utilized by the organization immediately and not something that you have to develop on your own. We like to develop kind of a handful of those tools and templates along with this plan so that you can start implementing right away. And that all results in this full comprehensive communications and engagement strategic plan. So with that, I will stop talking and open it up for any questions that you might have.

OK. Well, thank you so much. And I just want to say something to Mike before we go to questions. And I think we've, at least my perception is, we've requested a lot more this year than we have in the past. Whether it's the City Corner articles that go into the pilot, whether it's social media, I see so much more on Facebook from the city than I ever have. Whether it's special projects or communications, we continue to request from your department. So I just wanted to say thank you for a lot more work I think we're throwing your way than ever in the past. So yeah. Okay, questions? I'll ask one.

Thank you again for the presentation. I think that was really helpful and set the groundwork and the stage for how we move forward. When we're talking about next steps, how do you balance... or find the balance between being reactive, because there's things that do just come up, versus proactively getting the message out there. And then the second part to that is how does this all relate to the strategic plan as well as council goals?

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So to dive into your first question, it's really about several things. So building capacity in the team to develop some like evergreen content and having those tools and resources that are just ready to go. We know that it's, you know, winter's coming and we need... Snowplow, snow removal type communication. What can we do now to create some of that evergreen content? Everything from actual message development and visual communication pieces, photos, video, rec cards, whatever it looks like. can we start to build those kinds of things out now, which creates capacity for those, um, inevitable situations that we have to be reactive to? Um, and how do we, um, more efficiently and effectively work internally as an organization, um, to be responsive to those, um, emergencies or last minute requests again so that there's capacity then to to do the evergreen type communication as well. And then how this ties into you know city council goals, I think it, it is similar to other strategic plans. really is meant to be a guiding document for the organization. And we look for kind of approvals of the plan throughout the process to make sure that the way we're talking and want to implement elements of this plan really align with your goals on council as well. So they should, you know, kind of fall in tandem. And while this is a plan really for, you know, staff to follow, I hope that it's a resource for the entire organization, including council, you know, when appropriate to implement and use some of the tools and resources as well.

And I think it might be to like making sure we're not missing out on connecting with anyone across the Community just really prioritizing where we're going and making sure we're talking to everyone.

All right, thank you yeah thanks. I have a question, Kristen. It's Amy Dixon. Good to see you. Yeah. So first, for anyone that's worked in a large organization, you know how important this is. And this is not at all a criticism for Mike or your team. I mean, this is a city has grown, and I think this is an area we probably haven't put much attention to, but it's so important, as you all know. Kristen, if I missed it, what's the timeline that we're looking at for the different steps, the deliverables?

Yeah, great question. I realized I didn't include that. And I was like, I bet someone's going to ask. And if they weren't, I was going to share. So our project timeline is to have the whole plan, kind of all four chapters, done by the end of the year, like early December, really early. So that discovery report piece will be done in about a month to five weeks or so. It's like the second week-ish of September. And each section is about, again, a month to six weeks for development.

Perfect. Thank you. And one more plug for a city to look at, I think does a really good job is Durango, Colorado with their social media and what they get out and what's going on with the city.

So, okay. Thank you. Thanks for that.

Thanks for that.

Anybody else have a question or comment for Kristen?

Yeah, I have one question for Kristen. First of all, thank you for doing this investigation for us and really highlighting our opportunities. And one opportunity, I'm hoping that it would echo a little bit more, is basically when Mike and his team, they do great work in terms of their communication. They put this all together, especially the press releases. how do we, what's those avenues of today to really get this information out? Because we used to, you know, say, hey, you know, look at your web metrics and, you know, your page hits and things like that. And that doesn't, that's not a, you know, so much, well, it may be a measure of what you're, you know, of what you're doing, but it's not a measure of, you know, how do we improve upon that? And I'm looking for... the continued challenge of how do you get this great information out there?

Absolutely. Yeah. So that part of that is I think going to come out in the audits of current communication. You may know that, you know, evaluating communication success is a challenge, you know, when aside from, you know, online metrics or how many people showed up to a meeting or an event, we can certainly grab easy numbers from there. But beyond that, it's kind of hard to measure success. But we do have ways to do that. And through evaluating current communication efforts and evaluating their current success. I think we can use that as a starting point to identify, again, what's working and where might there be new tools that we can implement. And sometimes it's a little bit of trial and error. And we say, you know, we tried something new several times and it didn't work. Let's pivot and try something else.

Thank you. Anyone else have a question or comment for Kristen or Mike? Okay, well, thank you so much. We appreciate that. And before you go, we'll just open it up to public comment to see is there anybody in the audience? Or anybody online, please raise your hand or if you're in the audience, come on down and you have three minutes. Okay, see no one and see no hand being raised. We'll close public comment. And again, thank you, Mike. Thank you, Kristen, for your time.

You bet. Thanks so much.

As you think of new stuff or anything comes to you along the way, please reach out. The process doesn't end just because we stopped talking to you during your session.

Absolutely. Great comment, Mike. Thanks. Bye.

Okay. We'll go on, move on to our work session topic number two, airport operations and revenues. Josh and John, you want to come on down?

Good evening. I'll need just a moment to share my screen here. All right, good evening Council members josh Schroeder airport manager Bob Adams field, thank you for having me tonight here to discuss with you our airport operations and revenue plan. I'm not gonna give you death by PowerPoint and read these word for word, but give you a rundown on our executive summary. So we wanna outline the airport's goals to expand and modernize our revenue sources so that we can strengthen our airport enterprise fund and advance our fiscal sustainability. We're gonna do it a little bit strategically. We want to use some strategies that are capitalizing on untapped revenue sources. We're gonna utilize medium, short-term, and long-term planning to do so. And the phasing of those plans will provide capital to support development and help us close that funding gap that we're seeing between the revenues and the expenses at the airport. So as you all know, the airport is one of the few enterprise funds within the city. It's often relying on subsidies from the general fund. It also relies on grant opportunities from the FAA and CDOT to support the capital improvement projects. And under all those grant funding opportunities, we're expected as an airport management team to remain as self-sustaining as possible. And we're not quite there yet. So that's why we're discussing this tonight. Right now, our current expenses exceed our revenues that are generated at the airport. And by working to close the gap, we're hoping to support the city's efforts to maintain a balanced municipal budget. I'm not going to read every one of these, but I wanted to highlight our primary revenue sources. This is a pretty robust list that pretty much captures all the revenue sources we have at the airport. I want to note the first few on that list, though, fuel sales being our highest, ground leases also one of our highest, and In the correct years, our terminal leases is also one of our primary sources, as well as hanger rents. The other fees are ancillary and don't generate near as much revenue, but they still create open opportunities for us that we're going to discuss. With that, I figured we should share our expenses as well. I didn't list all of them out because there's, as you know, in the budgets, there's quite an extensive list. So I just wanted to highlight the first few. So aviation fuel, again, at the top of our list. But we do want to note that this is an item that we're using as a cost of goods for resale. So we're never upside down on that expense, thankfully. Our next highest expense is our personnel. We pay a lot to make sure that we have funding at all times, or I'm sorry, staffing at all times, primarily to operate a safe and efficient airport up there. Allocated overhead often comes in higher, and during capital improvement years, those are also high revenue or high expenses as well. So again, going to the planning of the revenue, we wanted to structure it with phase development plan that maintains continual growth potential. I'm not going to read all this because we'll talk about it in a second. But again, short-term, medium-term, and long-term planning. So with the short term, those are our initiatives that are focusing primarily on the underutilized opportunities, the unrealized opportunities, and generally they're not going to cost anything to implement. We're hoping to close again that expense and revenue gap with those funds. In addition to that, we want to generate additional capital to support our medium term goals that we're going to talk about in a moment. So the low hanging fruit I've listed below. So things we can tackle immediately. We're working on our unused terminal space right now, terminal building space. As you know, we're only about 50% occupancy. Currently we're working with our real estate partners down the street at the group realty. They're helping us to work with a tenant that is hoping to lease approximately 3,100 square feet at the building. If we get the rate that we're hoping for, we should see about $79,000 in annual revenue for the first year, and then those revenues generally escalate year over year. The remaining space that we'll have after that agreement is in place should cover about 4,600 square feet, creating an additional 115,000 in revenue. So that right away, if we can get those revenues agreements in place and find that other tenant that we need for the additional space and we could certainly close that gap pretty rapidly with that first hit. Following that, we want to continue to promote the transient hanger space that we've recently begun to use. As you know, we're in agreement with a couple of private hanger owners. They allow us to use their hangers when they're not in it. They're out of town folks that are rarely here, so we have a lot of open availability on those hangers. In the past 12 months, we realized about $18,400 in revenue from those. And important to note that we only had approximately 25% capacity or utilization on those, not capacity, sorry. Occupancy was the word I was looking for. And in addition to that, we also have the city-owned hangar. There were some questions that came through in an email today. That was one of them, is that the city owns 10 total hangars, and one is used for transient use. aircraft so we're seeing approximately uh 50 occupancy on that one currently so we have an additional revenue potential on that one as well additional short-term opportunities again no no cost to implement tools that we generally have available or can get our hands on pretty quickly As part of our budget planning, we've submitted to the manager's office updated fees that we're hoping to implement next year. Tom was able to review and approve our fee proposal. Some of those fees include updates to our ramp and tie down fees, other parking services. an introduction of some new fees on the Air Force field that we hope to utilize. Those new fees are actually going to help us capture expenses that we're already utilizing for operations. For example, if we have an aircraft that lands with his wheels undeployed, then we can go capture that plane and actually charge those hangar owners for those closures and for the time and equipment and materials that we're using to recover. In addition to that, we're also looking at digital advertising space in the FBO, much like you'll see over at Yampa Valley Airport. They have digital advertising screens. We have the capability. We just have to get a structure in place and start advertising. We're already getting a lot of requests for it, unprompted. We haven't advertised anything, but we're getting a lot of requests around town. So we think this will be a big opportunity. Not a big revenue generator, but it'll be a popular item as well. In addition, we want to improve our FBO retail and can certainly improve on promoting our airport flight simulator. Moving on to medium-term revenue opportunities. These are the ones, the items that we can develop relatively quickly. They won't require a ton of capital funds. They will require some, but they will help us to generate additional revenue to, again, close that gap and also hopefully support those long-term projects that we're gonna discuss next. So some great examples are our self-serve fuel site. As part of the terminal projects that we're actually wrapping up this week, a foundation for the fuel site was part of that construction. So it behooves us to continue moving forward with that project. And once we get that in place, we should see additional revenues because of the demand from after hours use. I won't go too far down the rabbit hole on this, but there's also alternative fuel options that are going to be mandated both state at the state and federal level. So this will give us the opportunity to kind of fall in line with that. So moving on. We also have opportunities for non-aeronautical development. So this is the space on the airport that can't be used for aircraft or hangars. So under the FAA and the state, with the grant assurances, we are allowed to lease land for non-aeronautical purposes. Think wood shops, retail, manufacturing, things of that nature. We are allowed to do that as long as we charge fair market value. Not relying on trying to follow aeronautical rates, that actually gives us a lot of opportunity to generate further revenue. It'd take a lot of exploring to see what would be feasible out there, but there are approximately 40 plus acres on the north side of the airport that belong to the airport. They're just outside the fence. completely unutilized. Pretty much just cost us money right now because we're having to do weed spraying out there right now. So if we can convert that at some point in the near future, I think that'll help us close the gap even further. Moving on to helicopter parking development, I only wanna mention that right now, because I actually have a diagram further on in the slide, so I can describe that a little bit better, but please note that one. And then on our existing tie down line, if we can potentially construct some covered spaces for some of those tie downs, we could potentially generate additional revenue for our parking fees out there on the line. So those are just a few of the examples. We could certainly dive into more later on down the road, but those are our primary targets right now. Now our long-term revenue opportunities are going to be the initiatives that require significant capital investment and planning. They're going to be generally guided by the airport master plan. And once implemented, they should be able to provide the airport with perpetual return on investment. Of note are two hangar areas that are pretty well ready to be developed, and then two additional hangar development areas. And I'm gonna go over those real quick for you and give you an idea of what we're looking at. So on this image above, you'll see two hangar sites. We're looking at the north ramp area at the airport. labeled sites one and two, basically just depicting available hanger development area. The great thing about these sites is they're already going to connect us to the ramp. So the capital investment to build these types of hangers are going to be pretty minimal. All we got to do is get the foundations and the utilities in place to build these hangers, and it's almost going to be a turnkey operation. I've put two revenue options on here and see if my mouse shows up on that screen. It's not showing up too well. Anyway, so two revenue options. So option one, if we went the traditional route that we're generally using, allowing a private individual or group to come in and build their own hangar, we would enter into a ground lease with them. Based on calculations using current ground leases and our escalation rate of 3% year over year, we could potentially see a ground lease on site one generate about $185,000 over a 30-year period and Site 2 could generate over $245,000. Option 2 If we wanted to get really bold and build our own hangars, increasing our capacity up there, again, based on the current rates that we have on our other city-owned airports, a 30-year hangar rent could generate as much as $1.3 million on Site 1, again, and as much as $1.8 million on Site 2. So we don't have to... be married to either option right now but they're definitely worth exploring on both ends to see what could what could help us push these initiatives also I think it's important to note that on our current wait list for hangers right now we have 79 individuals I've got to acknowledge there's probably a fair number of tire kickers on there, but even if we went with 25% on that, we're looking at nearly 20 people looking to build right away. So I think the opportunity is there, and we could certainly keep our eyes open to see if this could be expanded upon. Now, as far as hangar development areas, I wanted to zoom out a little bit. So this image is an image, sorry, an overview of the entire airport. And I've broken it into three sections. This top section in yellow here, that's our helicopter parking area. The smaller section right in the middle, that's immediately adjacent to the FBO. That was a site that was previously put out for RFP for hangar development. It didn't take, and so that kind of drove the terminal area improvement project that we're currently wrapping up. And then the bottom area, we have quite a bit of acreage down there. It requires quite a bit of fill and infrastructure to be brought in. So it's definitely going to be a bigger lift to make that happen. But I'm going to put some potential numbers in there to highlight what we could do with that. So over $5.5 million on this bottom site over a 30-year period. And this is just for ground leases. I didn't calculate the city-owned hangars on this one. Another $678,000 on this really small area adjacent to the FBO for 15,000 square feet. And then the helicopter area, this one's really important. I want to clarify. I only put in revenue projections for 22,000 square feet of hangar. We're already utilizing this space for helicopter parking. I'm merely serving our firefighting teams that are coming in and utilizing the airport. But we're seeing quite a bit of revenue this summer from it. So I think it's really important to note that We're generating revenue there now, and we can continue to develop that, and we can use that immediately to start pushing us in the right direction. So for reference, during the big week of fire that we had back in July, we generated $99,000 in fuel sales and ramp fees just from the firefighting operations that week. I'm going to open the floor for some feedback. I know there was a request for a spreadsheet. We do have that available if you want to review that and talk over some of the details on that.

Okay. Thank you, Josh. You're welcome. Lots of stuff going on out there planned for the airport. Thank you. Yes, sir. What questions do we have for Josh?

What's the cost of building a hangar?

The cost of a hangar?

We saw the revenue. What's the expense?

If the city were to construct one? That's a great question. I think right now it depends on a whole lot of details what you want to put into the hangar, but a good rough estimate on the hangar is roughly in that size range. You could expect between $250,000 to $350,000 in construction costs. All right.

So just to follow up on that, in terms of the numbers that you showed, were those net revenues to the extent that if the city owned it and that's over that 30-year period?

No revenue over 30 years strictly for the ground leases. I didn't want to get too deep into it and try and calculate how many additional fuel sales or ancillary sales.

Right, but that takes into consideration the cost as well as the annual operation and maintenance. So over a 30-year period, it would be $1.6 million?

Roughly, yes.

I think I got that number right.

Let me go back to that.

1.3 or 1.8, yeah.

Can you clarify that, Josh? That 1.37, that's the revenue over 30 years, so roughly $45,000 a year. That goes up, so it's less now and then 3% more every year. That's for an initial investment of between $300,000 and $400,000? Roughly, yes. So the payback on that at $35,000 or for $300,000 is about nine years.

Sounds about right.

OK. Other questions, comments?

I had one. On the two that you have, the hanger development picture, hanger one and hanger two, those seem like low fruit on the tree. I'm surprised we didn't look at that in previous RFPs. But it seems like that's low fruit on the tree. And then to me, when I look at it, more of a question, but then also that helicopter hangar site, I mean, if you're looking from a certain direction and kind of where we're going, to me, first of all, seeing hangar one, hangar two, that's next to corporate A, right? That's that other hangar.

Let's see if I can get my... Rusty owns that one. Yes, that's next to Rusty. This is Corp 1 and 2. I lost my screen. Sorry about that.

Talk a little bit more about the helicopter hangar opportunity because it seems like in as much as not... I mean, granted, it would be nice to make some money, but it's also providing what kind of service that we're seeing with that You know, we started off with just putting some gravel down there and flattened it out. Now there's a trailer and it seems like it's really appreciative of the fire crews that are coming in and others that are using that. Is that mainly used for fire?

Right now it's mainly used for fire. So it checks a couple of boxes for us. So one, it's unutilized space. And as you said, we brought in gravel. It's actually asphalt millings from the runway project and many of the streets projects they've all been brought over there and smoothed out. It's great because the helicopters, I mean, in this image, you can see a whole lot of airplanes out there. They can mix together nice and tight because you pull them out and they taxi out to the runway and they take off. You start putting helicopters out there, you have to create a ton of separation for that safety. And then even deeper when you get into the firefighting operations, there's a lot of support vehicles that come with those helicopters. So you'll get a full 9000 gallon fuel truck and then you've got trailers and pickup trucks and all kinds of other support equipment that's out there. So it gets really crowded and To maintain our safety, we'd like the idea of separating the helicopter traffic from the fixed wing traffic. So by putting them down in that unused area to the general public who's not familiar and may be listening in, that area that we propose for the helicopter site is actually quite a bit lower. I think we've got about 50 feet difference from the runway area. Down to this site right there.

That's really one of the problems is you don't, with slopes, planes don't do well on sloped runways and taxiways.

Absolutely. And there are design standards that we have to follow for any taxiway. So we're limited by grade that those can taxi on.

So really a helicopter in that low spot is premium because otherwise it's unused for everybody else.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, and there's, you know, to highlight, there's approximately five acres depicted in that yellow box, so you can fit some pretty large aircraft. And for context, since mid-July, we've had nine large aircraft utilizing the airport. So those huge sky cranes that you see, they gobble up a ton of space out there, and they're great revenue generators, but... They push everybody out. There was a period where we actually had to close the ramp. We didn't have any more space. So this increases our space. It increases our capacity. The hangars down there would be a benefit to those long-term operators that want to utilize that space down there. We have Classic Air Medical, who's already based there. If we could separate them and group them with other helicopter operators, I think they'd be more comfortable.

Do they currently have a hangar right now?

They do. It's immediately adjacent to that hanger number one that I depicted, right, in that other slide. So this is moving slower, yeah. So they're right on the end right there. And with that, if we were to allow a hanger to be built in this site, this is the launch site that classic uses, so it would kind of disrupt their operations a little bit. They'd have to get a little more creative with how they launch their helicopter out of there. So it does check a lot of boxes for us, like I said. And the last thing I want to mention with that is we were approached, in fact, they approached the fire department, but the state has a couple of fire hawks. The state owns the two Black Hawk helicopters that they invested quite a big deal of money on. And they've approached us to see if we could be a potential staging site for them. So that'd be a long-term agreement that we could enter into with the state. And again, we've had two fire hawks in the past month. So we're already seeing the need. And if we can start capitalizing on that need early, we'll be able to generate quite a bit of growth out there for the helicopter operators.

So with that kind of opportunity, to get into an agreement with a couple of hawks on our property, and then we would need to put a hanger there. Would you see that be a private person building that hanger, or was that really more beneficial if we as a city built that hanger, got into a lease, and kept that revenue in-house? How would that really affect our overhaul bottom line?

It'd be a significant investment. I think for that type of operation, it'd probably be more than just a little box hanger like I'm proposing on this slide. They'd probably want more facilities in that building.

Yeah, pretty far from everything else.

Yeah, yeah, and I think they would just need more than just space for the aircraft. They'd probably look for meeting spaces perhaps, maybe additional bathrooms down there. I'm not sure. Yeah. We could certainly look into that. I could crunch more numbers and I could actually get more detailed on it than this. If you'd like to see that.

Well, I mean, I don't want to just spend a lot of time on it. Truly. I mean, it's, I like the idea of an ROI of building infrastructure on our city owned properties. I just, you know, we've got so many else, you know, parks to build and parks inside to build and streets to cover and things like that, to build something there that does have an ROI, but it may be 10, 15, 20 years out. It'd just be interesting to see if that's, again, one way we can keep the revenue internal. To be honest, I think... Maybe just the lease would be enough, right?

I think the lease might be a more practical approach, at least for that area, simply because if they have special needs that need to be built into their hangar buildings... It'll be a lot easier to let them just enter into a ground lease, figure out the architecture that they need to figure out, put it in place, and we just approve it and enter into a ground lease.

Does that seem more attractive to them to be able to get a ground lease and they build whatever structure they want?

That I don't know. I could find that out. But that was only our preliminary conversation was to discuss whether that space would be available or not.

Okay. I mean, anything we can do to get our revenues back up is great. Absolutely. I'm a little concerned on the lease of the terminal building. We keep talking about this potential tenant, but nothing really comes to fruition. So I don't know. I know that in what you just sent us with the spreadsheet, you have asked or budgeted for like $240,000 in terminal lease fees. Is that because we don't have anyone to fill that and we have to backfill that?

We know in in my 2027 budget we're pushing for full occupancy on that building, so we based our revenue numbers based on full occupancy we're already working on one agreement. The potential. The potential tenant has not been moving very quickly recently. So I share your concern.

And I apologize. That shows it's under the revenue side. We just got this recently.

No, that's okay.

That would be good in 2027 to budget that kind of an increase would help.

certainly yeah yeah we put it in there right now and we're hoping to keep moving forward with that but we'll we'll have to play it by ear um kind of balance out what happens between now and budget retreat so that's our preliminary projection okay can i follow up on some of the helicopter hangar conversations that we started so so i'm i'm confused um we're already realizing revenue

this year from wildfires and helicopters coming in. So we would have to see more wildfires to have more helicopters come in to exceed the revenue that you're seeing right now to meet that number that you proposed. Or does that number you propose include what we're already realizing currently?

That's a pretty great question. That is a projection based on if we allowed for a more permanent staging area down there. We're hoping to attract more than just firefighting. We want to use it as a supplement to firefighting, but there's a lot of helicopter operators that pass through Steamboat on a regular basis. You have utility inspections. You have wildlife counts constantly. We have Flight for Life, not just our local base, Flight for Life, but other operators that come in there as well. So with that, with the state fire hawks proposal to come in, we think that we could actually generate space for a heli base that serves any type of operator. We have another helicopter that's based there. It's a private owner. He does... All kinds of contractual work. I don't think he specializes in any one thing. But I think what it's ultimately pushing for is all those requests that we get. We even get military requests to come up and use it as a staging area for training flights in the vicinity. So I guess I should have highlighted that earlier on because it's not just the fires that we're using. That's just the recent narrative that we're working on right now.

So for the helicopters, are you currently having to turn folks away and say we don't have space?

The only time that happened was during the Fish Hook fire, just during that week, because we ended up with a group of military helicopters and the firefighting helicopters all at the same time. So it got very crowded very quickly. Okay.

And so this is back to my kind of, the numbers just aren't numbering for me, that we're already realizing this revenue. We're not really turning folks away. And the state said we would love to have, whatever they were called, What are they called? What type of helicopters?

The Firehawk group?

Yes. But that was not with the caveat of, and you must have a hangar for us.

No.

So, okay. No. Has any private folks approached you saying, wow, we'd love to have a hangar for our helicopter?

uh well the firehawk group said they'd like a hanger and then um uh classic air medical who's based right here said that they would be happy to expand into a larger hangar if it were available to them okay because they have their own as i think i was tracking okay correct yes okay okay i have other questions but i'm going to stop those are my helicopter questions other questions um

I know every airplane comes in different sizes, but how does this translate the 4,200 square feet and 5,400 square feet to an average number of airplanes that can fit in that space?

That's actually a really great question. 4,200 square feet is too small plane. So privately owned, like a little Cessna or a little Piper that your neighbor might be flying on the weekend. The 5,400 square foot hangar, that's those big, bigger turbines, you know, or twin engine turbines often. We're already fitting them into that hanger adjacent to that spot number two. That's one of our transients. So we could certainly expand that space even further. And quite a few turbines already based on the field, and we regularly get requests for additional hangers from those turbine owners that are coming in. A lot of them are private owners. We have... gen owners that pass through on a regular basis. We have some that are here multiple times a week, you know, local business owners that are traveling to and from the Front Range. So some of that's just to accommodate existing, most of it's to accommodate existing traffic.

So 4200 can fit two small planes, the 5400, you know, two medium-sized planes, it sounds like.

Two medium-sized planes or four small ones.

We have a wait list of 70 plus. Is that what I heard you say?

Yeah, 79 is the number we have on our current wait list. I like to always say there's a lot of folks.

79 is permanent. You have 79 people looking for permanent plane space.

That's correct, yes.

Seems like there's a different type of opportunity. I mean, we're talking about building... for two planes versus when we have a wait list of close to 80?

Well, just to give you some background, John, we've had two or now three RFPs go out to build in that one blue square. You don't see it in that one, but it's in the parking lot. And we approved to... One of the things was that they were going to have to move electric and some utilities that were under that parking lot to be able to put the hanger on top of it. And that was an added cost that the RFP was requesting the developer pay for. And we got zero responses. And so it's like one of the big complaints was... you know get the utilities done yourself and we'll build the hangar kind of thing and so we took a year or so and we put it on the cip and in the process and we've actually increased that and have been budgeted for that right john the uh infrastructure underneath the what was the rfp from before

Yeah, John Snyder, public works director. So yeah, we did allocate some money two years ago for that that rolled into our terminal area improvements project. And so what we did in that blue square is we relocated the road that goes through the corner of that blue square so that that's no longer a cost for a future hangar developer. However, we fell short of funding to relocate any of the utilities. So the utilities are still in that blue box there.

So as we look at it, because I agree, I mean, what's two hangars going to do when we have 79 people waiting? And so I think what it comes down to is really realizing that's kind of what I wanted to educate with you guys. What I've learned being on the commission is the airport commission is most municipalities have the ground leases of where we make our revenue. It's small, but we don't have any upfront capital costs. Like, very little, right? So they build the hangar, we let them put it on our land, you pay us for 30 years. And so any past conversations we had is when we renew those leases, you know, we were like saying we want that hangar back because the FAA requires us to be able to get the hangar back if we need it. So some of those things in the agreement makes it real difficult for the developer to be able to invest the kind of money they need to put 60 hangers let's say they were going to do 60 planes and they wanted to just mass you know a whole project um there's always that risk that the city could take those hangers back at the end of the lease you know so you better get your revenue in the 30-year lease that you have most of the time ground leases are always renewed because it generates revenue in a um For gas and stuff like that. But I think the concern and what I'm trying to get to is that we know we need hangar space. And we're going to need hangar space moving forward. I've been on this now for five years on the airport commission off and on once or twice. And it's just when this RFP goes out and we kind of do this dance, we kind of think we're going to get something and nothing comes back. But the need is still there. You know, and so what we want to talk about is, like, some of these low-hanging fruit, like the ones you just pointed out on the other slide that had, you know, the infrastructure's kind of already there. It's already next to the taxiway. We could build it or put an RFP out. And I think that's where, as a council, we need to kind of decide. Do we want to... Give staff the direction, and I don't know if that's what you're here for tonight, but give staff direction to say, get an RFP to build that, that, and that, and go talk to the guys about the hangars or the helicopters. Knowing full well that as a team, we're just wanting the ground lease and more fuel sales. When we start talking about the capital to build a hangar and invest city funds, tax dollars into the airport for a chosen few, some people are like, yeah, it's just a select few out there. 79 people want it, and we're building them little condos. That's where the private sector really comes in. And so as we're talking about this and hearing his revenue opportunities, recognize the fact that it's really the capital expenditure that we just don't have to give to such a small part of our citizens. But I think working with people to say, ground lease this just like the pickleball facility. They have a lot of people coming for that pickleball thing and we let them build it and look at all the revenue that's coming from it. And we just did a lease. We didn't have to build the vertical. And so I want to aggressively approach us increasing our hangar space and the helicopter, the low fruit on the tree to get them to do an RFP. But as much as I've looked at this from a, you know, private sector developer standpoint, where does that money come from? You know, the one thing we can do is COP, right? Certificate of Participation and borrow the money. But that may be silly because the numbers then don't generate at the end of the day by just letting somebody else do it. So as we listen to this over the next few more minutes, keep that in context as to where maybe our best direction would go. From my perspective, is there anything we want to add? Am I missing anything?

I think that's a great assessment, and that's why on the other hangars I wanted to point out we could go either direction. We can do a ground lease. We can build it ourselves. On this one, I only put that out for these numbers are strictly ground lease numbers. So what I want to highlight here is So it's in our best interest really to develop the areas, to do what we can to develop those areas and then let those private investors come in. I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. That's really the direction it's going to go. If we make it feasible. for them to build, them being investors, whoever they may be. If we make it easier and tenable and help them to generate revenue over that 30-year period, because none of us will probably be here in 30 years, so we don't know what the management decisions will be when those leases expire. So, yeah, we should help them find the best way to generate revenue for themselves if they invest.

Thank you.

But I had a couple of questions just as follow-ups. In terms of the terminal, and again, I think Councilor Pacino mentioned that. I mean, we've heard there's interest, but it's been sitting vacant for quite a while. Are you pretty confident about the potential... What's on the horizon or does it make sense to get somebody to contract with somebody that really is more specific in terms of kind of economic development and really it tries to attract the kind of industry that we would like to see and would benefit the airport?

Yeah, that's a good question. I think the realtor that we're currently working with is an active pilot himself. He's familiar with the aviation side. I think we started going down the route of space available to local businesses because that's what we already had in here, and that's what he was able to pursue quickly. And that was, frankly, the first proposal we got was from a local business. So we started pursuing that. It seemed like a pretty strong proposal and looks like I lost my screen. Pretty strong proposal. I don't really know the reasoning behind why it's stalling so much. It's on the prospective tenants side. They keep saying they're really interested, but no movement yet. uh i guess the short answer to your question is hopefully we can lean on our our real estate partner right now to have him help us start looking more directly at aviation based businesses because i think that's really where the bread and butter is going to be okay and then the second question and i don't know if we can get your screen back up but the covered tie downs where would they be Yes.

Let's see if I can bring it back up. And is that, what kind of structure is that?

Best way to describe that, if you go to a car dealership and they've got the covers over the cars that are for sale, it's real similar to that. In fact, it's the same manufacturers often make these, but it's a structure specifically built to accommodate the wings of the aircraft. And so it's just a covered tie-down area. So our tie-downs, let's see, my screen's back up.

And while you're looking for that, is that particularly then for transient aircraft?

It'd be a mix of both. We have both transient and based aircraft on our current tie-down line, and it wouldn't require us to change anything on our ramp. We'd simply erect the structures on our current tie-downs. One of the cool little pieces to this is if we were to construct something like that, it actually gives us the ability to put in – let's see if that's coming up – would give us the ability to actually install solar panels on top of that as well. So we already have electrical power going out there, and we're giving away free power every time a plane plugs in or plugs their heater into it. So we could develop our own power and maybe even put a little bit back into it. So that's a small little tidbit.

Have you reached out to the 79 people that are on the list? I mean, do you have a good sense of what their needs are? I mean, you know, and would any of them be interested, right, in this covered tie down or, you know, kind of what they're looking for?

yeah actually that's where where the idea came from was we had a request earlier in the year for an individual that said i don't want a hanger i just want kind of a cheaper spot but i still want coverage would it be possible to would the city ever entertain the idea and so that's kind of where it started and i'm really sorry i'm losing connection it's not

That's okay. Is it in one of the boxes that you've already shared?

Yeah, it was in the box that showed the two hangar sites. And there was a bunch of T-shaped hashes on the ground where the airplanes were parked. So on the north side of the ramp.

I mean, it'd be interesting to see. See, that would be a capital. That would be low capital, but could have a high return because we can charge for those nights or weeks or months underneath the cupboard.

Right.

Yeah. Not everybody wants that. Some people want their enclosed space, but a lot of people say that's all I need.

Yeah. Some say they just need coverage from the elements. I mean, some folks just say, I just want to be under undercover in case it hails or so I don't have to clean the snow off my plane.

And in terms of the 40 acres of non aeronautical development, there are limits or restraints, right? Or constraints in terms of what can be developed out near an airport, right?

Yes, there, there are constraints. Um, Ultimately it boils down to our own building codes so whatever we've restricted for those areas is what we would have to stick with the FAA and see dot don't mandate specifics on that they leave it up to the individual municipalities to decide. How they build how they structure their building codes.

So nothing to do with flight pattern or?

There's a small area where we wouldn't want to build. It's the runway protection zone off the end of the threshold. But it's a relatively small footprint compared to the available area that's out there.

What are your thoughts around what you would build out there, if feasible?

Housing.

Hold on.

I wouldn't recommend it. I think we'll get a lot of noise complaints. But I think the workspaces, did you say restaurant? industrial industrial type type areas yeah you know the the construction operators that just need warehouse space would be great for that type of thing um in fact we've had a proposal from within the city to make part of that area out there um a capture site for all the bio uh biomass that comes from the chipping programs and landscapers that are dumping stuff. Give them an offset from taking items to the landfill.

Are we actively pursuing utilizing that land or is this just thinking at this point?

We're actively pursuing the biomass site and then we're looking at other opportunities that may come up.

looking for opportunities that may come up.

Okay.

Okay. Other questions? We also have one person. I'm not sure if they're for regular public comment or for comment on this. So if you don't mind, I'll just put them on and then we'll come back and see more questions. Yeah, just hold on a minute. I just want to go to public comment quickly. Bill, you want to unmute and state your name, address. You have three minutes.

Bill Jamison, Burgess Creek Road. Interesting presentation. Enjoyed the potential revenue stream enhancements. But one thing that wasn't... there was landing fees. I know general aviation airports typically have landing fees, recognizing that they exempt certain smaller planes with a weight. But I heard no discussion about Landing fees, landing fees for larger planes. And what are the current landing fees out there, if any? And how do they compare to the Yapa Valley Regional Airport? Because landing fees... never seemed to be discussed in any of these presentations. So I would ask city council to ask the airport manager to enlighten themselves on this. And that's my comment. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Bill. Is there anybody else online who would like to make a public comment? Please raise your hand. Seeing none. Is there anybody in the audience who would like to make a public comment? Seeing none, Josh, I'll bring it back to you, and maybe you can just answer Mr. Jameson's question regarding landing fees.

Sure. So currently the airport does not charge for landing fees. There are a couple of reasons for that. In lieu of landing fees, we use parking fees and tie down fees. So there's actually a difference. So a parking fee would be the day use. A tie down fee would be an overnight stay. So as soon as we have a plane that comes onto our ramp, we'll initiate a, and we know that they're gonna turn around, we're gonna initiate that. that parking fee. We check our aircraft every morning at the very beginning of our shifts and we track those aircraft and we create tickets for all those for the tie down fees. So It's a little easier to track that because we can capture those planes while they're stationary. Landing fees get complex for a multitude of reasons. One is if you have planes that are going around using the airport more than once, you've got to initiate a landing fee every time. Or you've got to figure out a way to track that you're not going to charge them more than one time. In addition to that, um those after hours fees start getting tricky and right now there's a lot of a lot of lawsuits going around because airports are charging landing fees using a tracking system um that that's getting them in trouble so it's not to say that we couldn't do it it's just a little bit more unpopular right now and would would be subject to a lot of scrutiny at the moment so we could certainly explore it if we really want to go down that road and as uh the comment stated we could waive some of those fees for the smaller aircraft. That's standard practice, particularly for single-engine, privately-owned aircraft. So we could certainly explore that, but it's a trickier ball to juggle, and it can get political, and I try to keep counsel and my supervisors out of trouble and out of hot water. So generally don't broach the subject unless we would really need to.

We have a question from Councillor Swintek, I believe. Brian?

Hey, thanks, and thanks for being here to present. I feel like this municipal airport is a subsidized amenity for the wealthy in our community. Can you please tell me how I'm wrong?

The airport is more than just a rich man's playground. A lot of flight training happens out there, and most of the students I see are not wealthy individuals. They're just folks that are working their tails off two and three jobs just to pay to learn how to fly. There's a lot of local business owners who are They may live comfortably I don't know I don't look into their finances, but a lot of our local business owners also use it to travel to and from other locations where they're conducting business. We have a lot of flight for life that comes in and out of there, we have, as I stated before, we have a lot of firefighting operations that were supported. I talk about firefighting a lot because we're kind of a premier site in this region of the state. The Forest Service prefers to use areas like Steamboat, Hayden, Kremling, because it stages them well and quickly to protect our assets. So there's a lot more use than just jet setters that are coming here for ski weekends. We actually see a lot more business travel here than we see leisure travel. So... I hope that clarifies for you, but I wouldn't say it's just rich folks flying. It's a huge mixed bag of people from across all income spectrums.

Thanks. That's really helpful context.

You're welcome.

Councilor Dixon? So do folks have to register their planes or their aircrafts? if they have a hangar. And I ask that because I have heard through the steamboat rumor mill that we have hangars up there that people no longer have planes in but now use as their storage unit.

Is that true? When you ask register, you mean with the airport?

With you all, yeah. Like is there some requirement if you have a hangar you have to have an aircraft?

Yeah, the leases require that it be utilized for aircraft storage. The only caveat to that is we can't require that it house an airplane all the time, but it can't be used for storage space in lieu of an aircraft. So that's a great question. That's a real common problem across all airports is, Essentially, you're getting a really great deal on your storage unit if you've got that much space. 100%. It's a really great deal compared to the square foot price on a storage unit.

Yeah, 100%. And then what's the main flight pattern for folks landing at Bob Adams? My assumption is that it crosses probably several, possibly, but that it comes over Steamboat.

Sure. So the landing pattern, the approach pattern, they come from all over. So as they're approaching, it depends on which direction they're coming from, of course. The landing pattern itself, the traffic pattern for the airport, if you imagine, I wish I could put something on the screen, I'm sorry, but for those of you in the room, have you imagined the runway running north and south? The landing pattern goes to the north, and then out to the west and back around in circles to the south. So imagine like a rectangular box that ties into the runway in that pattern. So that's your main pattern. The approach paths are much higher up, so you're not going to see the same impact that are coming in at higher elevations. And then as they get closer to that traffic pattern, that's when they're getting into those lower elevations. However, there are published approaches that instrument rated pilots are going to be using for inclement weather or nighttime operations. So that pattern does come in over town and kind of steps down as it approaches closer to the airport. Perfect. I hope that was a decent visual for you.

It is. I mean, yes. I see, you know, we had a Learjet, a private jet, fly in yesterday morning at 6.30 a.m. So I am probably, I think there's one other counselor who is highly attuned to all the planes flying in and out. And every time I pull up my flight aware and I see. And so lots of them are flying out. over town in some part of town certainly so the more aircrafts we get the more flights and air over town essentially we're going to get as well

And we've talked about that at the airport commission meeting at that last, actually the night before that accident that we just had up on Emerald. We did. Because of that. And so we were talking about seeing if, because that's regulated by the FAA, if I'm not mistaken. Generally, yes. Generally the approach. And so we were trying to ask if we can adjust and change that approach. Not for residents sleeping in their beds, but more so for safety of the planes and the mountain stuff like that. I don't think there was any traction. I don't know where we're at with that request. I know Steve Birch and I did talk about that. But it would be, because I was curious to see what that landing pattern is. for the purposes of safety. But now you're thinking about hearing it at 6.30 in the morning, because I hear that same Learjet coming in at 7 something. I can almost plan my clock on it.

Yep. And so how, I mean, since we're going to talk about, since we're kind of on this topic, I mean, I look at municipal airports across Colorado, and I get they're all different. Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, outside of Boulder and Broomfield, lawsuit got dismissed. But residents are fed up. Centennial Airport complaints, residents are fed up. Even Aspen, they have all sorts of stuff that they're concerned about. But one, they're tired of the private jets flying in. So, I mean, you can look at all sorts of municipal airports. I get those are larger. Like, I get it. But we're talking 2% of our population, probably 1%, utilize the airport. So what's the benefit for, if we were to do any type of expansion or capital, what is the benefit to the rest of the, you know, 98% of our population? Sorry, that's a loaded question. I get it.

I think part of it is for the... It is... I don't know. It's loaded. It's definitely a tricky question. Yeah. Not just for Steamboat. It's just a tricky question for airports because you highlighted some very key areas, particularly Broomfield and Centennial Airport with lots of complaints and a few lawsuits. So I can tell you, I spent my young years living in Parker, fairly close to Centennial Airport. There weren't many people out there, and the airport was there, and that's the tricky one. The airport's there, and if you want to build next to an airport, you're definitely going to be impacted. But to your second point, it appears that it serves a small population, but I try to dissuade, as Brian Swintek asked earlier, how do we convinced me basically that it's not a rich man's playground, right? It's not. We had a UC Health flew one of their aircraft up here from Denver the other day to load up a patient. That very same afternoon, a helicopter came from Aurora to load up a child that needed medical, emergency medical services out there. We're critical to the operation of transportation here. And it's not just serving those rich guys. And I don't know what all of them do here, but I know that some of those individuals that are flying in on jets, some of them own businesses. Some of them are ranch owners up here. And they're investing in our community. And so I don't know exactly what they're doing, but it's a very tough balance to say, It's great that you're investing, but you sure are making a lot of noise in the morning. So I understand it, but I don't know that there's really a great answer to it other than a lot of aircraft out there, the manufacturers are trying to develop better ways to make those aircraft operate more quietly. You'll never totally get rid of it, but.

Yeah, and it's all concerned about the emissions. Sorry, Gal, as well. Go ahead. No, no, that was it.

I mean, I think at some point for us, it becomes a policy question, right? I mean, certainly from the perspective to the extent that the examples that you talked about, we obviously want to support. I think, right? But to the extent that we're going to have more and more from my perspective, right? And I think, so again, it's back to asking the community, you know, what's the level of interest in having more flights come in over town or over, you know, Emerald when you're out for your morning exercise?

Certainly. Yep.

And I think the question is, too, which I've asked, I don't know, Tom, since you've been city manager, I know it's a really hard number. I believe it's a really hard number to come up with. Is that... I can get behind subsidizing the airport for Flight for Life, for the wildfire, for things that actually are of public benefit. I can get behind that 100%. I'm sure all of us probably could. We just don't know that dollar amount. That's my sticking point. You know, if you said, Amy, here is what it costs us, what we'd have to subsidize to keep the flight for life, then that's a conversation we can have. I am not trying to solve the problem of finding a hangar for 79 folks at all. I'm trying to solve the problem of we run the airport at a deficit, which I get lots of cities to, and so trying to find that balance, what's an appropriate deficit for public benefit versus should we be trying to break even or generate revenue? To me, that's the crux of the issue for me.

Okay. Any other comments?

The only other thing I would add is I think it is part of our overall, you could argue, regional transportation system. Just about every transportation system, as you know, that is a public transportation system is subsidized. So, I mean, this is an example of another regional transportation that requires a public subsidy. I also think, and we have it and we can provide it, that there is a significant economic impact, positive economic impact to the airport. And I, you know, John can share those numbers, but when you look at the numbers in terms of what it generates from an economic standpoint, it's significant, much more than I thought when I saw the analysis. So I think there is a public benefit in that it is generating sales tax. It's generating economic activity that is far above and beyond what we do from a subsidy standpoint. So I think that would have to be part of the calculus.

That's a good point. I think that was brought up at the economic summit, not this one, but the last one, because there was the Yampa Valley Airport 2 in there, and it was astronomical numbers, the impact on the overall economy of the Yampa Valley. So, yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Josh.

Thank you for the floor time. I didn't mean to take up so much meat. Oh, no, you're fine.

If we didn't want to talk, we wouldn't ask you questions.

Fair enough.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all.

Have a good evening.

Okay. That concludes our work session topics for tonight. We had originally planned an executive session, which we aren't going to have, but I thought I'd let Dan give a quick attorney's update report on that situation.

sure um the city manager and i thought it would be prudent to schedule the executive session last week when we um you know initially started looking into the appraisals that we received on the cdot property that we were hoping to acquire as part of the stock bridge housing project um the uh you know the early numbers are pretty far apart um but we have made a substantial amount of progress in the last week um and we are about 300 000 apart right now so um i don't think that it's necessary at this point to ask for any direction from council we're going to continue to work with cdots on a couple of remaining issues or you know mostly comes down to some some rather esoteric differences of opinion as to how appraisal should be conducted, but I think we're probably going to get there.

Okay. Yeah. Quick question. What's this appraisal cost? Is it, we're about 200, you know, K apart from each other.

So I do not know what it would cost to appraise this parcel, but I think ballpark would be, I don't know, five to 10, maybe $20,000 on the outside.

Less than 10.

Yeah.

What's the timeline that we need to get this resolved by? Sherry, don't answer whatever. I mean, is that...

Well, I mean, there are a couple of things to consider. One is that we want to acquire the parcel for a project, and so we need to get it secured so that we can continue the planning. There's no hard and fast deadline for that. The real deadline that we're working on is there is a 30 business day time period in our purchase contract for us to agree on a price. That 30 days expires on August 21st. um but the contract does provide for a second 30-day period or a 30-day extension and based on our conversations with cdots so far i don't think that's going to be an issue for us so i would say you know to the extent that we have a deadline it's going to be whatever 30 business days is from august 21st so that would be some time at the end of september everybody good okay is there any other business we need to talk about tonight

If not, I'll ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. We have a motion to adjourn from Councilor Gary, seconded by Councilor Dixon. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Councilor Dixon and I will be at the Farmer's Market Saturday. I don't know if anybody else is planning on being there, but if you are...