Urban Renewal Authority - Regular Meeting

Council meeting on May 26, 2026. Will you please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Okay, will the town clerk please take a roll?

Council Member Pessimarelli.

Present.

Council Member Behr. Present. Council Member Mortallaro.

Here.

Council Member Hoback.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Bell.

Here.

Council Member O'Connor. And Mayor Moore.

Here. all right we'll jump into the consent agenda tonight oops hold on first to ask for an approval for the agenda tonight we have a motion to approve so move second all right all in favor say aye aye aye all opposed say no all right now we have an agenda we have a number of items on the consent agenda so please bear with me uh the first item is 20 26 347 approval of the august 26 2025 town council meaning minutes Next item is 2026-348, approval of the December 2, 2025 Town Council Special Meeting Minutes. Next item is item 2026-349, approval of the December 9, 2025 Town Council Meeting Minutes. And I'll just say these 2025 meeting minutes were missed in the process. We haven't made updates. They're just coming to us now. The next item is 2026-351, a Memorial Day proclamation sponsored by Mayor Pro Tem Bell and Councilmember O'Connor. Item 202672, 2026 Pollinator Proclamation, sponsored by Councilmember Pessaramelli and Councilmember O'Connor. Item 2026209, an ordinance of the Town Council of the Town of Erie granting an easement to United Power and approving the associated easement agreement. Item 2026325, a resolution of the Town Council of the Town of Erie approving an eighth amendment to the lease agreement with Vector Air Management Incorporated, LLC. Item 2026336, a resolution of the Town Council of the Town of Erie approving an amended 2026 Council work plan. item 2026339 a resolution of the town council the town area approving the first amendment to the professional services agreement task order with kimley horn associates for the design services at compass park Item 2026.340, a resolution to the Town Council of the Town of Erie approving a First Amendment to the Professional Service Agreement Task Order with Kimley Horne Associates for the Design Services at Morgan Hill Neighborhood Park. And the last item is item 2026.343, a resolution to the Town Council of the Town of Erie adopting modifications to the rules and regulations governing the Erie Cemetery. With that, do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Still move? Second. All right, motion is second.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. All right, we have approved the consent agenda. We'll move forward to public comment. This is a time for the public to address us on any non-public hearing items. Please remember that public comment is not an interactive Q&A forum, but rather a time for you to state your comments on a particular item or issue. Public comment provides the opportunity to discuss items that are not public hearings. Please sign up using the kiosk in the lobby. if you have a handout please give it to the town clerk to the left they will distribute to council and include it into the meeting records when called upon please state your full name and location for the record public comment is limited to three minutes per person you'll be given a 20 second warning when your three minutes are almost up at the three minute mark you'll be asked to wrap up your final sentence and all opinions are welcome but please be respectful of each speaker To ensure everyone feels welcome and to share comments, please refrain from any cheering, clapping, booing, or otherwise disruptive behavior. With that, I'll look to the town clerk.

I'm not sure anybody has signed up.

Oh, I'm a little surprised. Would anybody like to address this public comment tonight? OK, seeing none, then we will move right into general business. And the first item is the 2026-327. It's the 2026 Pride Month Proclamation sponsored by council members Baer and O'Connor and myself as the mayor. And I'm going to read the proclamation tonight. This is the 2026 Pride Month proclamation, whereas Pride Month is recognized each June to honor the history, resilience, and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other individuals and communities. And whereas Pride Month commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a pivotal moment in the movement towards greater equality, visibility, civil rights for the LGBTQIA plus individuals in the United States. Whereas despite progress towards equity and inclusion, many LGBTQIA plus individuals, continue to experience discrimination, harassment, violence, and barriers to safety, acceptance, and opportunity. And whereas the 2026 Pride Month theme, for all of us, inspired by the words of Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson, there is no pride for some of us without liberation for all of us. honors the frequency of early LGBTQIA plus advocates and recognizes the ongoing importance of inclusion, visibility, safe spaces, and equal opportunity for all members of the LGBTQIA plus community, particularly those who continue to face discrimination, marginalization, and barriers to belonging. And whereas the town of Erie encourages residents to celebrate Pride Month through reflection, education, community engagement, and acts of allyship that strengthen unity and belonging throughout the community. And whereas the town of Erie Whereas the progress toward recognizing and protecting the rights of the LGBTQIA plus individuals has been shaped through decades of advocacy, landmark court decisions, civil rights protections, and presidential actions, including the recognition of June as Pride Month by President William J. Clinton in 1999, and its continued annual recognition by subsequent administrations as a celebration of equality, visibility, and inclusion. And now, therefore, the Town Council does hereby proclaim that Pride Month be celebrated from June 1st to June 30th, 2026, and call upon all residents in the Town of Erie to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs. This is dated the 26th day of May, 2026. You can clap for this month. And I believe Gabby is hanging up the banners that will hang in our Old Town. Is that correct?

Yeah, so these three designs, we have eight of each of them. And they will be hung on Bridge Street from Newport on the 30th as the proclamation states. But you'll be able to see these in the two major blocks on Bridge Street, the 500 and 600 blocks.

All right. Wonderful.

All right, we're going to move on to our next item of business, which is equally brought up and discussed in our community. It's item 2026.345. It's a presentation on our e-bike education and enforcement. I'm going to welcome up our police chief.

Thank you for me.

Mayor, council, Lee Mathis, police chief, and I was asked to give you a quick presentation on our efforts surrounding e-bike education and enforcement. As you know, this has been an issue for our community. We want to make sure everybody stays safe, and everything that we're doing in this area is exactly that, is to try and make kids out on their bikes, their e-bikes, people on our trails, other bikers on pedal bikes, we're trying to make it as safe as we possibly can.

So just to give you a quick update, we've been doing this for quite a while.

We started back in November where we sent out a flyer in the utility bill insert, basically explaining what was legal and not legal on our trails. I think that was even before that was what we were proposing was going to happen with our ordinance. And we sent that out. We sent 1,500 flyers were distributed by our school resource officers to students our various schools our soaring heights parents teacher association put out a video series on e-bike safety what's allowed what's legal and what's not legal and then we also do our social media weekly recap where we do try and emphasize e-bike safety let let the community know what we're doing in those in those areas and some of the things we're seeing As far as youth and community education, we've tried our best to involve youth in this. CDOT has a parent education class that we've been promoting. It's a resource that's shared on their website, and it's actually a class that parents can have their teens take before they send them out on their e-bikes, so we've been trying to promote that. Here youth for change who's here tonight, which is great Also joined us at our booth at the Bike Derby event and they gave out bike lights and and helped us educate Educate there some of the some of the younger kids on bike safety and e-bike safety Our communication has been strategic and it's to raise awareness We have information on our website If you saw the CBS News story, I think it was back in March, maybe March, April, that featured Erie and some of our efforts in that area. And then just our social media engagement. And as you know, we passed the ordinance. All of that information is available and out there and being presented to folks as we contact them. And then some things we've done in terms of signage on the trails, which I know is still in progress, but we did have temporary signage as soon as we passed the e-bike ordinance allowing class 1, 2, and 3 e-bikes, class 3 on the roadways, and class 1 and 2 on the trails and sidewalks. We had temporary signage out there in the high traffic areas. We worked with Parks and Rec on that. We also had a long, widespread discussion, and it's continuing. Online on where those signs should be we I know Luke our parks department is still working on permanent signage also for speed limit signs on our trails and our paths and enforcement is ongoing we're constantly doing this i can tell you we don't go more than one day with without getting two to three we we get two or three calls a day on on use on e-bikes either driving recklessly or driving where they shouldn't we respond to those with uh Measured response our goal is education obviously But we do at some point have to get to enforcement and we have issued a few tickets But it's been probably 80 90 percent warnings and then speaking with the parents letting them know that if a kid is on a particular type of e-bike that is not allowed we let them know that that's not allowed and then if we have a repeat contact or Two we will move to enforcement. We do have some directed enforcement activities that are going to take place this summer. I'm not going to give out the dates or the details because that would kind of defeat the purpose. But we want to make sure that we're getting those who don't really care about the laws and they're out there. They challenge us. We're obviously never chasing kids on bikes. We don't want them to get hurt with a police officer behind them trying to contact them. If they run, they run. But we have some ideas that we could do to help identify maybe some of the folks that just do not want to follow the law and are endangering themselves and others. and then like i said like i pointed out our enforcement actions are guided by the risky behaviors and repeat offenders we're not out there trying to make it an us versus them or or trying to tell youths to get back indoors and play video games we're trying to help them be safe we're trying to make our trails and our our roads and our sidewalks as safe as possible with these devices So with that, we do have some next steps. We are going to do some pump track visits and some skate park visits with the SROs over the summer. We've got some things planned for July 3 to hand out some things at the event there. National Night Out is coming up on Tuesday, August 4 at the community park. We'll have an e-bike booth there to, again, help educate and help folks understand what is allowed out there. And then we have made arrangements to purchase a safety course for e-bikes. to hopefully include that in the bike rodeo next year or when we have an opportunity to do that. And so with that, I will take questions or discussions. All right, I'll bring it back to council.

I certainly have a couple. Go ahead, Councilor Hoback, and I'll just work my way around.

Thank you. Thanks, Chief. You said a pump track visit. Do we have people riding e-bikes on the pump track?

We have them riding them at the pump track on our open space, in the fields, on the ball fields. We get complaints of e-bikes almost everywhere, but the pump track is certainly one of them, also at the skate park and those places.

I guess that's not surprising. It seems fun. Can you give us an idea of the number of engagements that your staff has had?

If you got a time frame, I certainly can get you a more exact number, but I would say we get two to three calls a day on complaints on reckless e-bike usage or e-bike usage where they shouldn't be or aren't. Now, obviously, we don't make contacts on every one of those calls, but we do respond and we try to educate where we can. And then you also have officer-initiated contacts. When an officer sees an e-bike that is obviously or looks to not be allowed where it's being ridden, the officer will attempt to make contacts there. So I would say three to four a day at least with the officers contacting folks about e-bikes.

Thank you.

You bet.

Go ahead. Thanks, Chief. Appreciate all the efforts on this. I know it's a big deal and really appreciate the Erie Youth for Change team being here today because I'm sure that kids would much rather hear from their peers than from us and certainly don't want to be pulled over or whatnot. So appreciate that. What would you say the biggest challenge is

The biggest challenge, I believe, is getting, and I'll just put it out there, the parents on board, and understanding what is allowable and what is not, and not buying the bikes that put their children at risk. When you're buying a bike off of Amazon and it doesn't have that class one, two, or three classification, it's likely an illegal bike to be operated on the roadways, the trails, or the sidewalks. And so I think that's our biggest challenge is not only educating the youth, but educating the parents on what can and can't be written.

Okay, yeah, thanks. And yeah, I don't think about buying bikes on Amazon. But I guess that's a bigger thing than when I was a kid. But what about the retail stores? How are they helping to educate and the parents and the kids on what bikes are, are the proper bikes or what ones are illegal?

Yeah, I can certainly say that the bike stores in town are great as far as helping us educate what is allowed and where. They're really good at having their bikes labeled. I can't really speak for some of the bigger stores, but I think there's a movement towards that, too, of you're not going to see the ones that aren't allowed to be ridden, at least on the roadway, too much in the retail stores very much longer.

That's good, because it's not good for business either. If they sell a bike that kids can't use and they didn't tell them, I'd be a little upset. Great. Any feedback on the signage yet?

As far as location or?

Just general feedback from folks that are seeing, are they seeing a change or whatnot or is it a little early yet?

I would say some of the feedback on the signage is we obviously need more. You know we have a speed limit on our trails now and for enforceability it's important for us to get that signage out there when we can. But it's also important to get it at the location that's needed. I mean, you can't just stick signs every 10 feet. They become part of the environment and people start to ignore them. So important to get the location right and then also have it in the right place, you know, at the right time. Yeah, thanks a lot.

And thanks for what you guys are doing.

Council Member Behr.

thank you um so thanks for this um council member hoback and i are at the rec center every thursday for senior lunch and last week um there were some kiddos hanging out in the lobby and just started chatting with us jack and charlie and joelle and there was a fourth one and i can't remember your name i'm so sorry but we talked for a good 10 or 15 minutes and um they mentioned they had ridden their bikes and some of them had scooters um as we started talking about e-bikes i had also ridden my e-bike over to the rec center So I just ask them questions about what kind of bikes are legal. They seem to have an awareness of what's not and what is. And a lot of their friends have ones that aren't legal. Not them, of course. These four kids are angels.

You want to give me their last names? Yeah.

They didn't give me their last names. I don't even know if these are their real names. But I asked, you know, what their experience was, and they said they feel a lot of anger from adults, and I said, who do you think is making reports? They said, I don't know, probably Karen's, like, your age group. It's like, yeah, you're probably right. But so I just, as we were going through this conversation, and they're not wrong, right? And we talked about safety and how it's scary to see a kid who might be in danger and we want to help. So we talked more about, like, what would help bring awareness and the community together. and um one of them actually said I think we should have a meeting where we where the Karens come together with the kids and uh so that you know this is something that I have been saying I think would be really great to sort of facilitate the conversation ensure that we have policy that reflects the needs of the adults because also you know our senior lunch folks are they're they're living this the fear right they can't jump out of the way if if a e-bike comes speeding around the corner um but then these kiddos are just trying to have fun and um so anyway reinforce that need for the the common conversation like everyone at the same table um and then I think that also reduces the ability to other people and leaning to humanity i'm always a fan of that so i just wanted to share that experience and that story and also i just thought it was so cute that those kids just started chatting with council member hoback um henry was there a henry henry yeah that sounds right let's say it was henry um anyway so i and i also think um because i do have a 15 year old son who would love to have an e-bike

There's still some confusion about pedals and what if it looks a certain way, but it still has the sticker.

So there's always more we can do. I wonder if we, are there videos? I know CDOT has videos we can repost, but are there specific videos for Erie we could develop?

You know, CDOT has a great resource on their website of what an e-bike is and isn't, Class 1, 2, and 3, and our ordinance follows that almost exactly. When you talk about pedals, it's got to have pedals. If it doesn't have pedals, it's not an e-bike.

Working pedals.

Yeah, working pedals. Yes, yes, absolutely. It has to have pedals or it's not an e-bike. If it's an electrically driven motorcycle or... even an electric scooter it's not allowed on our trails and our sidewalks and i know the kids don't like that but that's the way it is for everyone's safety and i understand that i'd certainly be willing to stand at a meeting answer questions um you know for any any of those kinds of things that we can i think you might find some folks reluctant to do that not necessarily at the senior lunch, but, and the kids that talk to you, that's awesome. I mean, those are the kids we're looking for. They're usually the kids that stop and talk to us. The ones that don't, they're the ones sometimes that I think are generating a lot of complaints. The ones that are like, catch me if you can. And we'll work on that part too.

It wasn't those guys, but another person that same day pointed out a bike that was locked to the rec center. He said, that's illegal.

And I agree with you, council member. I think a lot of the kids know when we contact them. Sometimes they may not admit it, but they know what's allowed and what's not. And then there's conversation, a larger conversation with their parents and whether they're allowed to ride that bike.

Yeah. Yeah, and I like the idea of the outreach for the parents because, yeah, it's a little overwhelming at what's available and what's labeled, what might not be labeled, where to look for the label.

And it is important to point out that our ordinance regarding vehicles on the roadway, if they're not legal to be driven on the roadway, we can actually charge the parents because they allowed their child to do that. We've done that in a couple cases, but we do it in extreme cases where we're just not getting the education through.

Good to know.

All right.

Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for reporting this. And I will just say for council member bears sake, it's, it's not just the Karen's. I like, I just, it's the car a couple weeks ago. Yeah. There were some kids I saw riding around Clayton park and I. I was driving by there. I just pulled over, and I said, hey, guys, you can't be riding on the grass. And, you know, they must have been big fans of mine because they told me I was number one with a different finger. Those are the catch me if I can, guys. Yeah, those are the ones.

Yeah. FYI, you're a Karen. Yeah, there you go.

There you go. What's Ken? I said Carl. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway. I'll just say that it's been a struggle. I know, especially where Councilor Hoback and I live, yeah, just the nature of Clayton Park and Highlands, it's like a racetrack for them. And they like to do wheelies right down the middle of the street. Going back to something you said earlier about the parent education and making it a parents understand about what what's allowable what's not allowable and i think in addition to the amazon problem you mentioned i and correct me if i'm wrong i thought even on like the class threes don't you have to be a have a valid driver's license to correct well you don't have to have a valid driver's license but you have to be 16 years old so 16 years old yeah okay exactly so and it again it's hard to judge you know kids ages looking at them probably maybe not the best judge of that but there's someone I look and I'm like, I'm not sure if they're 16. So seeing that a lot, and again, I think the parents just aren't aware. So also appreciate our community youth being a part of the solution, because I think that's, although, Girls, you got to get the boys involved with this, too. Yeah. Okay, awesome. Okay, yeah.

They're out riding their e-bikes.

Yeah. There we go. But, yeah. So, thank you.

All right. Councilman Pesce from LA. Chief, I had two questions. One was, how hard is it to enforce? Don't mention, like, punish, or is that happening, or?

Yeah, thank you for that question. You're right. It's a hard one to enforce. We're not out there trying to spoil anybody's fun. We certainly can't get behind kids and chase them when they run away from us. We're not going to do that. We're not going to put these kids in danger to catch them and give them a ticket. We try and be very reasonable with our enforcement and try and do it in a way that helps the offenders understand the risk that they're putting themselves and others in the community at.

And I heard some concerns from people as to why don't we put cops on rails to catch these and do the enforcement part of it. I was talking to them about the education part and then see how it goes. And your department is doing that already. The second question is, Do you involve the parents when you're counseling these kids at the same time?

We do. So we'll contact them after we contact the kids and let them know, hey, the officer should. Now, we get busy, and we might miss one or two. But we do try very hard to contact the parents and let them know that we contacted their kid on this bike. if they get contacted again they could receive a citation or the parent could receive a citation as well i want to go back to where you talk about cops on the trail that's part of the plan but i won't say where and and obviously we can't have cops on the trails all the times we do have other priorities and that's part of the challenge of enforcement as well so yeah don't leak the exact location no we have our own e-bikes that we may use to be out on the trails and and help educate

It'd be like, remember Chips from the 70s. They need the e-bike version of that. Exactly.

Well, I just went on Amazon, and it says I can click here, and I'll have my 45-mile-an-hour, not e-bike, but electric dirt bike at my house tomorrow. If I want the 65-mile-an-hour one, I have to wait until Monday. So that is how fast you can actually order it. Council Member Baer, would you like me to? No, I'm good.

Just double-checking.

All right, I may have been in the generation that was skateboarding. And I may have been in the generation that was in empty swimming pools and causing havoc at the time. And as a society, we figured out the skateboarding problem, right? We built skate parks. We educated. We put those little metal things on the edges so we weren't tearing up our streets. I don't know what the answer is here, but it seems like as a society, we're going to have to figure that out eventually. Can you tell us a little bit about accidents involving e-bikes in the town, both auto and e-bike accidents and e-bike pedestrian and maybe even e-bike e-bike?

Absolutely. I think what we're seeing the most of, Mayor, it's a great question, is e-bike versus car or car versus e-bike. We're seeing that at intersections where you would expect the typical conflicts to be. Bikes not looking, cars not seeing, cars not looking, the whole thing. We've been... I won't say lucky, but we've only had one very serious e-bike that I think everybody's aware of. Thankfully, that young man did survive. But that was a close call. And I hate to say it, but we may have more of those. This is a problem that's not going away very quickly. You mentioned skateboarding. It's going to take some community awareness, some parental involvement. only thing i'll point out is that speeding has been illegal on our roadways for a very long time and police have done everything we can to address the speeding problem because speed kills and and when cars are driven fast they are big heavy pieces of metal and you can say the same thing about an e-bike or an e-motorcycle going 65 miles an hour all it takes is one 15 year old on that e-bike that doesn't see a car or or makes a bad decision and you have a tragedy and so we will continue to do our best with enforcement and education to address the problem as best as we possibly can but i hope that everybody understands that this is something we have to tackle as a community with With parents and everybody, because those tragedies may be headed our way if we don't approach it in a different way.

It feels like it's just a matter of time. Something will happen and it won't be good. Have we reached out to St. Vrain Valley School District and Boulder Valley School District to see if we can't get into lunch hour or morning announcements or anything like that?

Yep, we certainly have. And our SROs have been very active in our schools, especially with summer coming up, passing out those flyers of, hey, here's what's legal, here's what's not legal. We try to do our best in the schools because that's where we build our relationships with our SROs. And so that's actually how we're identifying some of the kids that are Catch Me If I Can because they ride their bike to school. And our SROs know who they are and they see their bike. And so when their bike gets described or we see their bike out there, we can actually contact them. so you know the kids are great i want them to have their fun but but we also want to make sure the ones that are putting themselves at risk and others at risk we we contact them if we can all right in boulder valley they pulled their sro at some point correct did they bring them back yeah they do not currently have sros in their schools they do have campus security who we also work with they are employees of boulder valley school district but we we keep in contact with them well as well and work with them over at meadowlark all right um

And then on July 3, we're going to have a big fireworks display. Is that an appropriate venue just to hand out flyers to the parents?

Yep. I think that's a great opportunity, Mayor. I think you're exactly right. We do have some things planned there to try and help educate and then also our national night out.

Okay. Cool. Well, I appreciate you doing the best you can. I think we're going to continue to see our community be frustrated that more isn't being done. But I think you've explained why it's very difficult to do more without putting somebody else in harm, chasing, for example. I think Council Member Pessaramelli's question about parent involvement, when we go and talk to the parents and if they're not engaging. that we bring them in for accountability as well in some way. I realize it's a fine line there as you build relationships but also have to do the harder job too.

Yeah, Mayor, and if you'd like to get an idea of our enforcement efforts, we did post a video on our Facebook page the other last week, I think, with some engagements where we've had and how we address the youth and how we address the problem.

Generating a few comments, obviously, but it kind of gives you an idea of how we're approaching and we'll continue to do our best All right, the last thing I'll say is that if you do see an e-bike or any safety concern in our community, please call 303-441-4444. That's the non-emergency number, and the police will respond.

Thank you.

All right, thanks for coming out and doing this.

I know.

All right, we'll go on to our next topic, which is the 2026-330 Erie Youth for Change Annual Presentation. So please come up and join us.

all right good evening my name is savannah schifrin i'm the general interest coordinator with our parks and rec department so first off i want to thank all of you for your support of this program this is a very small part of my role here with the town but it's definitely the part that brings me the most joy erie youth for change is our informal teen town council here in the town of erie if you haven't encountered us before and this is their second year of existence and they have a lot to share with you today about all of their accomplishments in addition to thanking you all for your support i also want to support or thank luth luth bollinger and rachel weisup the leadership of my department for supporting me as well in helping get this program off the ground my role is as the staff liaison for these incredible group of teens i make connections for them, and I remove obstacles. But mostly, I try to get out of the way and let them do what they know how to do. So in that spirit, I'm going to let them introduce themselves.

My name is Neha Pasarameli. I had the pleasure of presenting last year.

And I will be an incoming freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Congratulations.

Hi, everyone. My name is Sam Meddy. I'm a rising senior at Peak to Peak Charter School, and I'm going to be the co-chair for EYC next year. Excellent.

Hi, my name is Nye Boyd, and I'm a rising senior at Holy Family High School, and I will be co-chair with Sam.

Excellent.

My name is Elise Quay, and I'm an upcoming junior at Peak to Peak.

Excellent.

Hi, my name is Marissa Shessa, and I'm an upcoming junior at Erie High School.

All right, excellent.

And then we're also missing Claire Nguyen and Pranavi Mantha, who were part of our leadership team last year. We made a video just talking a little bit, briefing a little bit about some of our events and who we are. And so we'll probably play the video first and then talk a little bit about a little brochure we made, outlining a few more details.

Great.

Erie Youth for Change is a group of local teens who serve on an informal teen town council here in Erie. Their goal is to provide a link between the town of Erie and our local teen population.

My name is Trisha and I joined EYC to make a difference in my community. My name is Elise and I joined EYC because I wanted my voice to be heard.

Hi, my name is Marissa Stresa and I am part of the Erie Youth for Change.

My name is Deha. My name is Panami. And my name is Claire. And we're your 2025-2026 EYC leadership.

As an organization, we hope to represent youth voices and foster positive change across our community.

This school year, EYC recruited five brand new members and now represent four of our local schools.

This year, our main goal was intergenerational connection, bringing together various generations across Erie. My favorite part of EYC was bringing back Tech Fest for the second year.

My favorite part of EYC was gingerbread making in December and helping the kids out during winter break.

What Tech Fest is all about is seniors coming to the Erie Rec with their technology, and us, Erie Youth for Change volunteers, will help you with your technology questions.

In addition, EYC partnered with the Erie Community Library to host a summer reading buddies program and hosted a gingerbread making assembly at Camp Erie's Winter Camp.

Hi, my name is Sam, and I'm the co-chair.

Hi, my name is Naya, and I'm the co-chair.

My name is Elise, and I'm the new secretary.

and we're your 2026 to 2027 leadership team. Our goals for next year is to continue connecting multi-generations through events like Tech Fest and Pickleball, a new event that we came up with this year.

It's gonna be Pickleball Under the Lights in June.

Eerie Youth for Change have already accomplished so much in their first two years. We can't wait to see what's next for this dedicated group of teens. Thank you for that. I guess I was in it.

Again, my name is Neha, and I had the pleasure of being a co-chair this year for Ear Youth for Change.

Do they have the co-chairs?

We don't yet.

Oh, all good. I'm sorry. That'll probably be important to be looking at.

But as the video covered, EYC is a group of high school students. We're currently around 13. We represent four different schools in the local area. Our main goal is to be advocates for our community, for our demographic. And so we host various events and try to find opportunities to connect with our community and serve in Erie. And so our main focus as an organization is what we like to call intergenerational connection. The idea is that we want to bridge gaps between different generations in Erie and find opportunities and host events to bring different age groups together. And so last year, our main event was TechFist, which was essentially a space where older members of our community could come in and bring their technology questions and enjoy breakfast, hence TechFist. And this has been a really popular event. We've been able to not only help out some of our seniors with their tech issues, but also connect with them, which has been a really big problem. Because before we even started, TechFist realized that there's so much stigma and so many negative stereotypes with both demographics. And we feel like we've really found opportunities to find common ground and connect with our older generations. This year we also had the opportunity of going out into our community and really connecting with our broader community as well. So we were able to host a table at Bruin Briggs, we were at the Strider Derby a couple weeks ago, and we also volunteered at the Dia de los Muertos event, which has been really awesome. We got to meet a lot of our community as well as organizations in Erie, and so it feels like we're really kind of spreading our wings in the community. And then finally this year we were able to kind of go the other way in intergenerational connection and we hosted a gingerbread making segment at camp. And so we got to spend some time with some of the little kids there and do some crafts and gingerbread which feels like kind of a full circle moment where we're kind of connecting with all sorts of different age groups. And so overall we experienced a lot of new change this year. We had a bunch of new events and new opportunities and also brought in so many new members, which have brought cool perspectives and really just brightened up our group. And so we're really excited to keep embracing new change and looking to the future. And so they already introduced themselves, but I would love to pass the baton on to our new leadership team, who is going to talk a little bit more about some of our future events, as well as some of our goals for next year.

Hi, my name is Nya Boyd. And as you already know, I'm an incoming senior at Holy Family High School. And I joined EYC because I really wanted to make a difference in my community and connect with teens in the community. I'm taking on the position of co-chair with my partner, Sam. And I would love to bring a unique twist into the group and integrate more teen events in order to allow teens to further connect with each other and grow more intimate connections. Thank you.

Hi, everyone. Like Nya mentioned, I'm the other co-chair of EYC, and my name is Sam Meddy. I'm a rising senior at Peak to Peak Charter School. And I joined EYC because I really wanted to be more connected in my community. And one of the major events that UIC has started planning this year to connect all the teams together is Pickleball Under the Lights, which is happening next Friday at the Erie Rec Center, which is a pickleball tournament where all teens under 18 can come play and hopefully win a prize. Our main goals for next year are not only to continue the intergenerational connection that we have been doing, but also to connect with teen communities all over Colorado such as the Lafayette Youth Council to bring change on a bigger level and also to bring one new event each year. So this year that has been the pickleball event and next year we plan on hosting a PG-13 family movie night where a bunch of families can come play lawn games together and hopefully watch a movie outdoors in the summer. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Marissa, and as you know, I'm an upcoming junior at Erie High School. I am currently a secretary for the Erie Youth for Change alongside with Elise, and Erie Youth for Change is a student-led organization dedicated to giving youth a voice in creating a positive change in our community. We appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight and hope to continue strengthening the connection between students and our local leadership.

My name is Elise. As you know, I attend Peak to Peak Charter School. I'm the other secretary for Change, and I'd like to say that next year we hope to create more involvement in our community, especially for teens, families, as well as continuing our ongoing projects.

Just to echo what Marissa said, we just wanted to thank the council for your continuous support over our first year as well as this year. And we're really excited to come back next year and share some new progress that we've had as well as some more updates. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Excellent. Thank you.

And we would love to take a picture with council.

All right, ready? Yep.

Go for it. Yeah, let's do it. No.

all right thank you so much for the presentation it's so exciting to see everything you guys have done this year and it plans for next year as we just talked about how important that connection is with you know specifically the teens in in town and around e-bikes and some other safety issues i think that that's a place where youth for change can really step in and help the adults figure it out you know help us so i really recognized that we needed a youth council when i attended doing democracy day a couple years ago um for the st vrain school district and um just i got to talk with a bunch of juniors and seniors from all over st vrain valley school district and they asked questions they were doing projects they were solving problems in communities and so i talked with them about questions about speeding, road safety for new drivers. We talked about the use of Narcan and access to that in schools because kids were seeing friends overdose and how important that was. and we talked about youth homelessness. There were so many topics that they were really adept and really had a deep understanding because this was their daily life, and I thought, this is what we're missing in Erie. We need to hear from our youth because you guys really experience, you know, what are the issues, and we're sort of removed from them, so... um i really i look forward to being able to connect on a policy level with um with you guys and future councils too um because i think it's important that we're hearing when we're talking about e-bike safety what does that look like on the other side of the coin because we maybe are only looking at it from one direction so I think I saw Owen at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in Lafayette, and so I got to talk with him then about maybe some connection with the Lafayette Council. They have a very active youth council. Have you guys been able to connect with them or make plans for next year or anything?

I think we had an attempt to connect with them this year.

but it kind of just got a little lost in translation but that is definitely one of our goals for next year is to make sure that that connection is there yeah i think that would be great and then also broomfield has a great youth council i think it would be amazing to kind of bring together a un of sorts um and have all you all of the kids connect and um maybe bring council members in so we can hear about some of the things that you guys are talking about and um yeah i think that there could be more engagement i'm so amazed and compelled by your leadership and the things you've been able to accomplish i love tech fist i went last year and my favorite thing was um one of one of our seniors said that she needed help downloading spotify so she could listen to her favorite song and then she turned it on after we downloaded spotify and it was jelly roll It was her favorite song, and she blared it. So anyway, I think that the small things like downloading Spotify onto someone's phone are really the big things because they're connection, and that's such an important part of leadership. And I just want to say girl power. You guys are amazing. I'm so excited for what's next. And please reach out to us if there's something we can – we can do to support you guys or if there's something we need to be aware of conversation we need to be part of so yeah thank you thank you yeah well put council member go ahead

Thanks for being here tonight and helping to educate the community. I love the fact that you're starting to reach out to other communities and youth groups. Certainly you give us a whole different perspective. It's been a little while since we were considered youth, so appreciate that. Just being a part of the community, trying to be in a helpful hand, helpful hand to us. So yeah, please let us know what we can do to help you guys out because we appreciate your voice and what you guys are doing. So thanks a lot.

All right, I'll just say thank you as well for coming out. My political career got started in high school, not because I ran for office, because I went on close-up to DC. And it was with a bunch of other schools. and I think that connection so one of the things that jumps out here is that Erie High is represented Centaurus is represented a lot of people don't know that on the Boulder Valley side of Erie Centaurus High School is the home high school so that's great Holy Family Peak to Peak I think that covers them all no one's at Dawson right no but wonderful and I would be happy to as council member Baer said you know if we could come out and participate in discussions or talk policy I think many of us would would be there and participate in the conversation all right have a great evening all right we will move on to item 2026346 an ordinance of the town council the town of erie consolidating all provisions of the erie municipal code related to penalties and enforcement for code violations it sounds like a perfect topic for our attorney

it is it's also a follow-up from our study session on march 31st we took this ordinance to you all to have a brief conversation there are two colorado supreme court cases camp and simons that stand for the proposition that there can be no municipal penalty that is tougher than the equivalent state law penalty Our judge had put in an administrative order to prevent anything from conflicting, but this is going to make sure that those are both cleared up and taken care of. What we've also done is we've simplified how the code itself looks and made it very clear on how our code enforcement folks can issue citations and do their own enforcement work. So a bit of a cleanup bill, or excuse me, cleanup ordinance in here. And I'm ready for questions if you have any.

All right. Any questions tonight for a town attorney? Council Member Barrett?

It's basically what we talked about. I didn't notice. Nothing jumped out at me as being different. It's all the same information. Okay.

It is. There's a little bit of a change in that the table was changed a little bit after some feedback from our judge. But yes, you are correct. Nothing substantively has changed.

Okay, I will see if there's a motion to approve Ordinance 232026. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no.

Motion carries. All right, now we'll move on to the heavier items on the agenda tonight. 2026.338, Water Allocation Policy and Implementation Items. Number one, an ordinance of the Town Council of the Town of Erie amending Chapter 1 of Title VIII of the Erie Municipal Code to amend the water dedication and fee-in-lieu water dedication requirements.

Number two, a resolution of the Town Council of the Town of Erie of

approving and adopting the Town of Erie water allocation policy. Number three, a resolution of the Town Council of the Town of Erie adopting the town's fee schedule. And number four, an ordinance of the Town Council of the Town of Erie amending section 912 of chapter one of title nine of the Erie Municipal Code to revise the local amendments related to permitting in the International Residential Code. And with that, I'll turn it over to our Director of Development, Sir Namela.

I purposely made the title that long to buy me time. So Sarah Nirmala, Planning and Development Director. I am joined by Todd Fessenden up here, our Utilities Director. But as you can see, there are many other directors that have been involved with developing this policy, including Economic Development, Parks and Rec, Public Works, Finance, Communications, my deputy director so I wanted to just shout out that this is a multi-departmental effort so tonight we will be going through a somewhat complex set of motions that will implement the overall water allocation policy that we'll be presenting to you tonight so I will try and walk you through each piece of it So the intent for this water allocation policy is to help us set a course for delivering the remaining water allocations that we have within our constrained supply within the town. we currently have multiple water projects that are delayed that should have been delivered sooner and we as a result have about 749 remaining acre feet that we would like to be able to allocate to development while we are working on developing additional water supply and waiting for those other water projects to come to fruition. The intent of the water allocation policy is to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of the community through public services, as well as ensure that we have continued fiscal resilience, and that means continued development. We are also ensuring that our fee in lieu for water dedication aligns with the town's cost for water as we continue to purchase and develop our water supply. So not only are we looking to adopt the policy and this fee realignment, but we are also looking to implement two code updates that we'll address in Title VIII and in Title IX, and I'll walk you through those in more detail. So as I mentioned, we have a limited supply of water. And I will always let Todd jump in if you would like.

TODD BANDUCCI- Quickly, I'll mention that, as you all know, the Northern Integrated Supply Project, which we'll be talking about later on tonight, has hit various roadblocks along the way. It's now at a place where it's about ready to move forward. But there's been some challenges with that project as well. The Windy Gap Firming Project, also known as Chimney Hollow Reservoir Project, once it was constructed, we learned that there was uranium in the rocks in the dam. So we're projecting about a five to six year delay while they mitigate the uranium in that reservoir, which would have been delivering water as soon as next year. And now it has to be mitigated and incrementally filled over time. those are the challenges the projects were coming along and ready to deliver in a timely fashion at least this chimney hollow reservoir but it ran into this unforeseen issue so as Sarah mentioned we've been obtaining other water We've purchased 123, I think, shares of CBT, Colorado Big Thompson Water, and that's what's affecting the price. So we've spent about $7.2 million so far this year acquiring that much water, which is about the amount of water we'll be allocating annually. So for us to be able to keep up and keep developing our supply, that's a cost that we're realizing right now. And we're also looking at other alternatives, other types of supplies as well. But without getting too far down in the weeds on that, I'll pass it back to Sarah.

Thank you, Todd. And so with this supply, we do want to be able to address the needs of our capital projects. As we all know, we're working on an expansion of the police building as well as a potential expansion of the ECC that could come into the future and other projects. These capital projects are different with each year, but we will be planning to make sure that those needs are being met. At the same time, we have new developments that are continuing to build out, and that includes both residential and commercial development. And what that looks like in terms of a map is that we have multiple projects that are in various stages of development. So when we talk about the stages, development can be just in a very rudimentary planning stage or under application, but it may not have zoning, it may not have any entitlements to build. Those are in yellow on this map. and then we have projects that are in some level of entitlement i.e they have their zoning they may have a preliminary plat but they don't have the final plats in there and basically cannot pull a building permit to build they have more work to do that's those projects are in green on this map and then we have projects that are entitled and planted that means they can and are pulling building permits and developing actively. And those projects are in purple. They include both commercial and residential. The ones that are in the bigger color blocks, those are residential projects primarily. And then there are little stars that show where commercial developments are occurring. So the policy is structured to make sure that we are providing allocations, not only annually, but to specific uses. So with the remaining water supply, and of course that will change over the years, we acquire more, we will set an annual allocation. And that allocation will be distributed among the following uses. The first is a contingency use. It's really just for the town manager to be able to apply to whatever emergency or unexpected need might arise. Public projects, as I mentioned before, those are those capital improvement projects that, again, would be in our capital improvement plan and would change and evolve each year. Economic development, that's primarily our commercial and industrial and office development. and residential development. Those projects that you saw on the map on the previous slide, those are the types of projects that we would be giving allocations to and the ones that are entitled and plotted. We may determine that limiting the monthly number of allocations is needed to make sure that we continue to have development occurring throughout the year. At this point, we're looking at a pretty steady pace that will based on the number of permits that we're seeing each month, we don't think that we'll actually need to limit them, but we may if we feel like that's a need. And then the last category is affordable housing, and the distribution to affordable housing will specifically be if we have something in the hopper for the year when we set the allocation, we will certainly apply some allocation percentage to that. So these are all, again, based on what we know, either in the capital improvement plan or in our development pipeline. We're pretty well versed with what's coming down the line because we have land use applications in various stages and we're able to predict what's going to be happening over the next year. So what we are proposing for the remainder of 2026 is allocating 125 acre feet. And with that, the distribution that you see below, the contingency use will pretty steadily set at 10% each year. The public projects, from what we've looked at for our need, are at 10%. economic development again which is covering the commercial development we predict that we'll need about 15% of those acre feet and then residential development will get the rest of the acre rest of the allocations at 65% because we don't have an affordable housing project at a stage where we think that we'd be able to utilize those allocations this year We aren't allocating any at this time. So if we do have any unused allocations, those would roll back into the bank. And so we would allocate those into future years. That's the basics of the water allocation policy, but there are some details. In order to implement it, we are proposing changes to Title VIII. We have two emergency ordinances this evening for your consideration. These are primarily set as emergency ordinances so that we can immediately be responsive to the water allocation policy. and ensure that the changes that we're proposing in here are in alignment, keep us to and minimize speculative reaches for our allocations, and making sure that if somebody is paying for an allocation, they are actually going to be using it this year. So Title VIII is actually just removing the preference that we state in our code for fee in lieu for water dedication. We want to make it clear immediately that we do want to open this up for developers to be able to bring their own water. So we are adding language to that effect.

They can do it right now, but we state it as a preference, and we want to change that.

In Title IX, which is essentially our building code sections, we are updating the residential building code and primarily adjusting the application and issuance timeline. So right now, you can hold a building permit application for 180 days or six months. Once you get the building permit, you can also have six months or 180 days to do any type of work on the building permit. We are reducing the length of both of those from 180 days to 90 days. Again, focusing on if you're applying for a building permit or if you're having one issued to you, that you are actually acting on it. So we are also, with that, adding clarity and a definition of what an active building permit should include. So we right now are kind of silent on what is the detail? What does that mean to have an active, to be actively under construction? So we added some detail. Essentially, it's constructing your foundation. And then the water allocation will be reserved at the time you pay your fee in lieu. And you can do that at two times, one at the application of your building permit or when you get it issued. So we want to give some flexibility to folks. And finally, we are updating the fee-in-lieu cost. And of course, Todd can answer additional questions on that as needed. But this fee-in-lieu cost is actually reflected in our fee schedule. And so we are updating the fee schedule. We are also adding some clarification, as I mentioned in the previous slide, as to when you would actually pay for that fee-in-lieu. And this would all be effective May 27, 2026. So I repeated myself there. With our next steps, in addition to this being effective tomorrow, we would be reaching out to developers and builders to just help them answer questions. I know this is a new process and policy that they will need to absorb. We are setting up a stakeholder meeting this week, as well as office hours this week and into next week. And I will create more as needed. I want to make sure that people have a chance to get their questions answered. And I think this is just a little bit of a repeat. But we will, as I mentioned, require the payment of the fee in lieu. at the time of building application or at building permit issuance, and that's when you would actually acquire and reserve your water allocation. So I wanted to just make that clear. And if your building permit or your building, if your application or your building permit should expire, then you would need to get a refund of your fee in lieu payment. So that's, you would or would not you you would be able to ask for one um we have more detail on the timing of those you would fill out a form for the refund we are holding back five percent of the fee in lieu um we do this typically with any fees that are paid to the town some are ten percent some are five percent some have a high um a maximum limit etc so Our refund policy will be similar to what our policy is for other impact fees, but you would be able to ask for a refund. So I will open it up to questions and discussion.

All right, I'll bring it back. I think we're due one round. I think I'll start with the Mayor Pro Tem this time and just loop around.

Sure. Thank you, and thank you for the update on this. A couple things. First, year to date, you know where we're at on building permits.

i don't have may's number but we're at about uh i think it was 87 we had about just over 50 single family detached and then a few around 20 some odd town homes or duplexes okay yeah um i guess overall one concern i have with and i totally understand the policy but um obviously we're

putting limitations on our own budget by doing that. So I guess this is more, Sarah, do you mind coming up? Sorry, I'm afraid I asked the right people. Yeah, there you go.

Sarah Hancock, Director of Finance.

Thank you. Contingencies for the budget based on this, if we're going through, because it sounds like that with the number we're at, we're probably going to be

pushing the threshold so yeah um uh how are we going to deal with that on the budgetary standpoint so um as sorry i feel like i'm far away from this as you may remember from last year we actually budgeted our building permits at a negative one from the prior year simply because we were seeing a slowing permit um so more or less that means around 350 to 400 permits give or take because each permit's a little bit different And effectively, we've seen our revenue cut in half in that area. So from about four, four and a half million down to more two, 2.25. So it's not a huge part of our revenue in terms of the permit itself. Now the fees and lose and other things like that are different attributes to it. But the permits themselves are not like, don't represent like a substantial amount of our revenue. and we're already budgeting for that flattening. So yes, we would continue to see it go down a little bit more, but we have already started to build that into our budget assumptions this year. And part of this process was to really understand that. But again, it's not enough of an impact that it would blow out some section of the budget that we wouldn't be able to provide services anymore. We would just have to adjust accordingly. And I think part of what we were talking about too was the staff time and everything involved in it. We recognize when you have less permits, you know, we might be able to allocate resources and move things around and see how that would work. But from just a purely number standpoint, it's not, it would be going down, but it's not substantial enough that I'm concerned. Okay. Long-winded answer.

Yeah. So I guess my next question would be with some of the economic development projects and things like that. So we're working on LOIs with certain developers and things like that. I know we're having this round table with developers, but is there a general sense that they're aware of what's going on?

I see Julian coming up, so.

Well, I will, so the development community is, they are learning the details about this today and then moving forward with respect to how we allocated economic development allocations we looked at what projects were actually in planning and which would be delivered in 2026 and we will do that every year and prioritize economic development because it's not a huge portion but we want to make sure it's covered okay

she said all right uh julian jackman economic development director i did try to get all the water for economic development that was not successful wasn't flying um but yeah the 15 was made up based off what's in the pipeline so that we knew based off applications what's in the queue how much in square footage how much that translates to acre feet what we need and that's what's currently set aside because we will set certain allocations annually based off what's in loi stage or contract stage in future years we can revisit whether it's 15 or 100 or somewhere in between okay it's on the record you can bet julian but all right we'd fight for that um so my next question would be and i know you mentioned about developers potentially being able to bring their own water i know

I think we kind of talked about that in an either-or situation. Would potentially a developer be able to get whatever their allocation is through the fee-in-lieu, and then if they could bring additional water, if they have additional permits that they'd be looking for, can they bring that additional on their own with it?

I don't see any reason why we wouldn't allow them if they want to bring their own water to do more. If they got some of the allocation and then they wanted to bring more water to do more, someone could come and bring a thousand acre feet and build a whole giant thing if they wanted to. We need it to be of the quality we can treat at our treatment plant. I know there's been some talk about some projects that could deliver water already finished. CBT is the easiest one for us because we're already plugged into that system. So there's an opportunity for them to go out and find that water as well. Some water like South Platte water, for instance. we can't treat that at our treatment plant and um it would get very expensive and i think we've solved the riddle on do we need another treatment plan and i think the answer is no um but we have a lot of uh work and planning to do around that and i will also mention we're also working on develop continuing to develop our boulder creek supply WHICH, DEPENDING ON HOW WE UTILIZE IT, COULD BE EXPANDED TO DELIVER QUITE A BIT OF WATER, MAYBE ANYWHERE FROM 1,000 AND UP ACRE FEET, COULD BE QUITE A BIT MORE, BUT IT JUST KIND OF DEPENDS ON HOW WE OPERATE IT. SO THESE ARE ALL THINGS THAT WE'VE BEEN KIND OF WORKING AROUND FIGURING OUT HOW DO WE KEEP BUILDING OUR WATER SUPPLY WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR THIS NEXT BIG WATER PROJECT TO DELIVER.

I think that's all I have for now just strongly with my asking these questions is in lieu of we're obviously facing a problem right now that you know a lot of it was unforeseen like the uranium at Chimney Hollow and causing some of those delays but I guess the My fear in these kind of things, it's like is Erie open for business type of thing and sending the right signals to everyone that we've got, we're not doing this to try to slow growth, we're trying to manage what we do have until we get some of these other things online. The other thing I'll say is I know that there's a concern about the cost of, you know, the some of the fee structures and things but but they're i mean this is it goes back to we can't burden existing residents with with new things coming online i think that's something we've got a pretty clear message from the from the residents about that so appreciate all your work in this it's a situation i don't think anybody wishes we had right wish wish we could wave a magic wand and

Yeah, same here. And I would just wanted to mention that we have a, we show a comparison in the packet that shows where our fee will land relative to all the other communities that are either in Windy Gap Firming or NISP, because that's what uniquely brings us all together is we're kind of on the same supply and that is the supply that's available. So just for folks that want to look at it, they can see. And we base that on a three quarter inch tap because that's the smallest tap that we provide. Yep.

So adding on to the point of developers bringing their own water, is there any code change that we need to do or is it taken care of?

Yes, that's the Title 8 code change that we are doing.

So another question was about the allocation percentages. How did we come with the percentages of 65, 15?

Right. So for contingency, as I mentioned, that will be a set aside of 10% pretty consistently every time that we do allocations. And then all of the others, well, we took our priority uses are the public serving uses, so our capital projects first, and then economic development second, and then the remainder goes towards the residential projects. So we looked at precisely what was in planning and what we knew was going to need to be delivered and would need allocations for 2026. that's those numbers we translated that into the percentages that you see being proposed so it's covering what we know that we need for this year and then in December we'll come back to you with our best projections for allocations for 2027 what our needs will be then

Yeah, that was my next question of if any changes need to be made in 26 allocation differences, like from 65, maybe we need to move it to more somewhere else or in 27. So will it need a council approval for that?

so in turn there are two types of changes one is if we want to or find that we need to change an allocation you know like 10 um up to 10 acre feet from one category to another that is in the policy that this that staff can do that but if we are gonna if we find that we want to come and ask for using additional acre feet in 2026 we would come back to council okay and do you see any other categories that might pop up other categories that might Well, we're trying to include all of the non-residential as encompassed in economic development. Affordable housing is its own category, because that's something that town council could decide if we have a project we want to allocate separately. Since we don't have anything, there's nothing for this year. And when we come back to you in December, if something is projected to come in 2027, we'd certainly ask for that. But we're pretty confident that we have the right categories for use because the public projects is pretty broad in terms of it could be a park, it could be a building. Yeah.

So... so if we are getting water from boulder creek and i read somewhere it's not it needs more treatment so are our treatment plant like do we need to upgrade it or is it enough or how much more we're doing so um

i'll try not to go down a rabbit hole with this one but we're we're so we have a water right off of boulder creek and we drilled a horizontal well that was uh drilled twice and not successful but we're looking to um put in a different type of well and then use that water and one of the things we're looking at is the potential for using that water as raw water delivered into town for outdoor irrigation And then a portion of it. And these are some numbers we have to figure out with consultants to specialize water quality consultants to help us figure out a portion of it. We want to blend into the Lynn Morgan treatment plant supply so we can take a portion of it and turn that into potable water and then a portion of it and use it for raw water irrigation. That's where our biggest demand comes in is outdoor irrigation. Um, and our existing plan, if we blend it, if we can get the right blend, which there's a right blend, it's not like one gallon per million gallons. It's going to be, there's going to be a number. We just don't know it yet. Um, that'll increase our potable supply too. And the plant is currently. uh the peak production we've seen in the last few years was 11 and a half million gallons in any given day and the plants rated at 16.65 million gallons and we're looking at doing we have to replace the membranes the filters at it now because they're aged out and when we do that we'll gain extra capacity as well so um yeah we think the existing water treatment plant we can leverage And it's already capable of producing the water we need, but we can leverage various aspects of that plan and the water supply to kind of grow the water supply. And we'll certainly be working on that every year over the next five years to try and add more water to this portfolio.

So for the upgrades, the money needed, is it already allocated in the budget?

Yeah, we have the money. We haven't gotten into full-blown designs or anything yet, but the upgrades and improvements at Lynn Morgan, we can fund that, especially since we got away from building that reverse osmosis plant.

Last question is, can we give any incentives to residents who conserve more? Like maybe they used X every month and now they are cut it down by 20%, 25%.

We have quite a few water conservation programs. We don't really do like a percentage reduction to a water bill or something, but it's a great point because that's the other piece of all of this is how do we look at the outdoor irrigation and find a way to deliver more supply to that, but also what can we, What more can we do? I will add we had about $100,000 towards turf replacement this year and we just added another 50 to that from an account where we were able to move the money. So we want to highly incentivize that too. So yeah, we've got programs and we'll keep working on them because that I think is one of the biggest parts of the equation is how do we reduce the existing demand for outdoor especially.

I really believe in that. So if we give incentives to people who have done well in conservation, maybe there'll be more people who'll be adopting that. Thank you.

I'll just clarify that the policy, the water allocation policy is not dependent on the existing, whether or not residents conserve, although we want them to. And over time, potentially as we recalibrate how we're using our water supply and maybe there will be some impact to future development but right now they are two separate elements because just imagine every home already has its allocation so this is for a future okay no further questions from me

All right, thanks. I got a few questions. So there's 749 acre feet that are unallocated, and you're metering, so 125 acre feet for this year, and then you're metering it for the next six years, right? So that 749 will last the six years, right? And we manage our growth that way.

So I'll just, yes, right now we are at 749 acre feet. And yes, we have, we've taken one sixth of that and we're applying it to the rest of 2026. Because our water supply is going to change over time, we may still have a similar approach in 2027, but the more we learn about what our options are and continue to find opportunities for purchasing water supply, we may find that we have a different amount at the end of 2027 or at the beginning of 2028. So it will change. We're constantly going to be recalibrating. Right. But that is the approach to...

With all the efforts that you're making to make our water usage more efficient, conserving water, affecting the infrastructure so that we can use more raw water in those areas, those are all going to help this, right? Yes.

I thought he was going to have more detail, but yeah.

So the building permits and the timeline from 180 to 90 days, how much will that affect builders? And will that just force them to be more efficient with their timing? Or do they usually do it in 90 days?

that's a great question yes our builders typically are on a shorter path if they are using their water allocation if they're intending to build they build so this is a timeline that we believe is and we did check on our past permits to see you know when were those first uh inspections uh you know asked for and so we we verified with our existing data to see okay if someone's building when is how much time is enough for them to be able to get to that first inspection that for their their foundation So that was something that I looked at very closely. I wanted to make sure we captured that. But the 180 days, once you have that first inspection for the foundation, then you do get additional time to keep building. So you're not building an entire house in three months. I just want to be clear about that. It's just getting to that very first piece of it.

Okay, great. Thanks. And so I want to be clear that we are affecting the tap fees, but we are not affecting any of the residents' water rates with anything that we're doing tonight.

Correct. This doesn't affect the rates at all. And it's the water dedication fee. The tap fee is staying the same. It's that water dedication fee that we're increasing to match what we're spending on that same water now, the raw water.

Thanks. And is there an estimate of how many acre feet that we're currently using with 12 to 14,000 current homes?

Pete could probably answer that. It's probably 4,000 to 5,000 acre feet. I don't know. He's pretty close.

OK. 4,000 to 5,000 acre feet? Yeah. All right. Thanks. OK.

thank you um so some of my questions have been answered um are we so we're saying that the greatest demand for water comes from outdoor use are we able to incentivize maybe not putting in water thirsty landscaping through this policy so because it's costly to replace it can we get ahead of that is this a good place to do that with developers

We'll probably both answer this. So we very soon will be bringing a small-scale landscape ordinance update that will be ensuring that we're not allowing non-essential turf, i.e., just Kentucky bluegrass, to be laid out in any commercial area or tract of a development. That will be asking developers and builders to do Colorado and sort of our arid climate sensitive plantings versus the Kentucky bluegrass. So that's one thing. We're also doing a more robust update to the landscape ordinance elements in our overall code update. while we're doing all that, that does not impact the way that we allocate water at this point. So I'm gonna hand that over to Todd for that.

Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I think we should be working on that, not so much as part of this, because this we would like to do now or we'll fall behind, but I think we wanna keep looking at that. We wanna look at, like I said, more opportunities for delivering raw water supplies throughout the community we've got a lot of ideas around that um extending certain pipelines and stuff but um without getting you know down into the weeds on that I'll just say we're looking at all those things and when you start to deliver more of that raw water there's certain plants that are less tolerant of it so that'll have to change too so we'll we'll be applying this initial uh change that sarah's talking about and then we're gonna have to evolve and learn as we go but i think that is the goal um is to get the get the um the lot less thirsty and the houses get efficient generally over time uh that's absolutely should be part of this regardless of whether we had all the water we could ever want or not i i think that's my opinion

right because you know we can see down the road we will have all the water we want right when we're not in a drought but um yeah i would like to see that it's somehow an incentive to maybe not in this policy but down the road you know to sort of get ahead of that turf grass requirement or or i mean it's not required to put turf in but if we could incentivize more native plants more um i think that would be great i know there's a grass that grows here natively that barely requires water to stay green through the summer and you know what would it look like to have lawns that are made of that instead so or no lawns at all do we need lawns i don't know i've been thinking about this a lot do i need a front lawn i never sit on my front lawn but um so my other question was multi-family versus single-family homes i know the with the multi-family home generally the indoor water allocation is the same but the outdoor use is much less with a multi-family is there incentives to do more of that yeah um so you're right that's how we do it single-family homes

we have the one SFE number that takes into account what a typical single family home uses. But for multifamily, we have that half an SFE for the indoor demand. And then the outdoor demand, they can submit a landscaping plan that shows lower water use and thereby dedicate less water, which we want them to do. because it obviously expands our water portfolio. And we are right now in the middle of a study, which came out of the meetings we had with developers about a year and a half ago, looking at lot sizes and water demand, looking at different types of uh homes square footage wise bedrooms bathrooms um and so that's something we're also looking at it's it's at the draft stage right now we still have to meet go over it probably make some refinements i want to see some changes to it to add different categories that are missing out of it right now but that's another thing we're looking at right now to and if we can we certainly want to incentivize less water use that's as much as we can we don't want to be um you know putting our tying up our water portfolio unnecessarily

yeah that would be interesting to see how that shifts development um and then in march this council repealed the sprinkler dedicate for the sprinkler requirement that was in our code and we know that sprinklers sprinkled homes home fires use only about 10 of the water that a non-sprinkled home uses so i wonder if that could be an incentive um included in the future um just a thought um so my last question is about current permits um so i'm assuming there are some permits that are out right now what happens with those the clocks start tomorrow or

So yeah, we do have over about 50 permits that are in application right now. Those permits would be able to, that application period would extend the full 180 days that they have. If they want to secure a water allocation associated with that permit from the town, they would need to pay their fee in lieu for the dedication. and that they would do at the building permit issuance. So those, I don't know, I don't have the exact number, but that's something that we'll be talking through with the developers. There's not a ton of them that have them in, but we will walk them through how that will work. But when they go to get their building permit issued, it will be the 90 days. for that first, for them to get to their construction, their evidence of construction.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Okay I want to just first say that we're even having this discussion not because of the drought although a lot of the comments about the drought apply to all of us in a grander scale but what we're really talking about here is having enough water to continue our commitments to basically developments that have already been approved or on the books to to get there. And we're in this position because we were initially, number one, waiting for Windy Gap water, which was going to be stored in Chimney Hollow. That is still all true. However, because of the uranium, which was not detected, at time of build, is now a concern and needs to be filtered out. It's going to take up to five or six years longer than what we initially had planned for that water to come. We already own the Windy Gap water, correct? And so the problem is it comes down out of the mountains, and if we don't have a place to store it, it's gone. And so the Chimney Hollow Reservoir gives us a place to store it.

The Chimney Hollow Reservoir has not met expectations at build time. That has to be figured out, and we'll eventually get the water.

We're going to have another discussion on NISP once we get through this discussion. So just if anybody's paying attention to what we're talking about, there's another complex story coming up here shortly. We, if we approve this tonight, we are going to increase our water dedication fee from $31,400 to $52,200. So this is roughly $20,000. So when I think of affordable housing, we're trying to do everything to make housing more affordable. The sprinkler ordinance was to do just that, repealing roughly 10 to whatever, $15,000 for sprinklers to draw the price down. This is going to immediately not only cost more than that, but that again, which will drive prices up in Erie, which goes against our goals of trying to do everything we can to keep costs down. I think that... This jump doesn't look so bad when you compare it against the information that was shared with us in our packets. And I just lost mine. I'm going to bring it back up here. Where we compare ourselves against the other communities. And before this rate increase, so today if you build a permit, we were like third on the list as far as cost. I think Superior was cheaper. Boulder was cheaper. Maybe Longmont was cheaper. if we approve this tonight we basically go into the middle of the pack for the cost of water water is one component of all the costs that we add on to houses and so I know when the builders are looking at their costs they're not just looking at water they're looking at all the other impact fees so we're going to be doing an impact fee study later this year to figure that out as well which may add additional costs At some point, the question is, is Erie grossly more expensive to build in than other communities? And if that's the case, then why? Water obviously being one component, but not all the components of that. If anybody's interested, all this material is online. I probably made the mistake of printing it out. It is a lot of information here that was given to us to study and lots of detail there. So I just want everybody to know, if you want the information we have, it's online.

It's available for anybody to come and get tonight as we do that.

We talked about builders bringing their own water, but if they do that, it's got to work in our plant. They can't bring, like Broomfield, for example, my understanding is they're part of Chimney Hollow. They can filter out uranium. We can't use whatever water they're bringing in because we couldn't filter that out. Is that correct?

I think they're still trying to figure that out. My understanding was that they had a supply that Windy Gap was going to replace, basically, that had radiological contamination in it already. So they have experience with it. But I think until we start to see the data coming from Chimney Hollow, I don't know that they'll know. But we know that we can remove a certain amount, but then there comes a point with uranium where you become a producer of uranium. So it's a balancing act and they're they've just now started to fill The chimney hollow reservoir with the initial amount of water that they needed to put in for testing to test out the valves and things like that and and so we'll start to see some data coming from From that effort and that'll be the initial stuff probably be the most concentrated because of it Where it's getting stored near where the quarry was Okay

all right so i really don't see that we have a choice up here because we don't do anything i mean we're going to sell out of water like this year or next year and then we're going to have three or four years where building permits would stop now i also recognize that some people in town would love to see it all come to a screeching halt development As the Mayor Pro Tem indicated, our goal is to not stop the growth because there are many other components to our growth, economic development being one of them, that we just can't slam on the brakes and be done. So this is to allocate it over time to keep a steady pace going until Chimney Hollow comes online and we can actually utilize that water.

Is that correct? yeah that's right and and as i mentioned earlier we're we're going to be pursuing every opportunity to to add more water to our water supply portfolio in that same time and so um we hope that we can even increase those numbers each year as we add more water supply and and then folks go out and find water too and bring it to the table all right thanks for the clarifications

All right, with that, we've got two ordinances and two resolutions. Does it matter the order these are read in?

The ordinances should likely go first before the resolution, but beyond that, it does not matter.

Okay, then I'll see if there's a motion to approve Ordinance 2426, amending Title 8, Chapter 1. So moved.

Second.

All right, motion second. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Next one is, do I have a motion to approve Ordinance 2526, amending Title 9, Chapter 1? So moved.

Second.

Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. All right, the next one is Resolution 26-103, a resolution of the Town Council of Town of Erie approving and adopting the Town of Erie water allocation policy. Do I have a motion to approve Resolution 26-103? So moved. So moved. Second over here. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. And the last one is Resolution 26104, the fee schedule to have a motion to approve Resolution 26104. So moved.

Second.

Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All opposed, say no.

Motion carries.

All right, we've been going at it for almost three hours here. I'm going to just call for a five-minute break. We'll let everybody get resettled, and then we'll start the last item on the agenda, which is to discuss NIST. i'm going to reconvene the meeting and we're going to get going with our last agenda item tonight which is 2026-259 a resolution of the town council of the town of erie approving the 22nd interim agreement between northern colorado water conservancy district through the northern integrated supply project water activity enterprise in the town of erie acting by and through its erie water activity enterprise with that i'll turn it over to todd festrand and let you Take us on this journey.

Thanks, Mayor. Again, Todd Fessenden, Utilities Director. Sarah Hancock, our Finance Director here. Pete Johnson and Andrea Carroll, your Water Councils. And Brad Wynn, the General Manager of Northern is here and would like to give some brief public comments.

All right, I think that'd be helpful. By the way, we've been having these discussions in executive session, and at our last executive session on this topic, I asked why we're having it in exec session, and the consensus of the council was we're going to bring this into public, and that's exactly what we're doing here tonight. Welcome.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Moore and council members. My name is Brad Wind. I'm general manager of Northern Water. As you know, Northern Water is a sponsor for the Integrated Supply Project. First and foremost, I want to thank you for your consideration of this interim agreement this evening. It's been a long haul. We've been at this for a lot of years, 20 plus years advancing this project. There's been a lot of great investment in this project by Erie and by other communities to the point where we're near ready to go. This interim agreement really gets us to the final design and many aspects of the project. over the course of the last few months, as you might have read in the paper and heard from council and others, that there's been a reconsideration by some of the participants that perhaps NISP isn't part of their future. So we've gone from 15 participants down to nine. That does include Erie. Perhaps I'm being a bit optimistic, but it does include Erie. and to the point where with that reduction in the number of participants, likewise has been the reduction of the amount of yield in which the participants need from the project. So we've gone from roughly a 40,000 acre foot project down to roughly 20,000, a little shy of 20,000 acre feet per year of firm annual yield. And with that, again, I just wanted to say hello. I want to thank you for your consideration this evening and look forward to the discussion. All right.

Thank you for coming out.

We'll get started.

Since we're having this discussion in the public, and it's been probably a year or so before we've done that, I figured I'd run through just a little bit of the history of the project. You heard Brad just talk a bit about it. And this is what our agenda is going to look like. I plan to get through it fairly quick. So with that, just to locate this for the residents who might be watching from home or from here, the the nist project has been intended to be a two reservoir project glade reservoir a bigger one about a little bit northwest of fort collins requires the realignment of highway 287 through that valley where that reservoir would be and then over to the east which is a bit northeast of greeley is the Galeton Reservoir. Galeton is a different water source. That water would be coming from South Platte, would likely require treatment before it's put into the reservoir for water quality reasons, because it's South Platte. It also includes a large delivery pipeline. and a number of other pipelines as well um and diversions to get the water into glade and galeton um and then this pipeline so the you see this pipe coming from from glade and and extending down this this pipe ends up near mead so for erie and lafayette who we've been partnered with we would need to extend that line That's something we'll talk about briefly that Northern's also looking at, but that's just the gist of the project, so folks know. Some history with this project. This iteration, as you know, this is a 22nd interim agreement we're considering, so this has been, sorry, 23 years. The water rights go back 40 years when the rights were required for this project. The project has gone through many challenges throughout the years, local, federal, state permitting, water quality permitting, Army Corps permitting. There have had to been changes to state legislation. The project got sued by an environmental group. So it's been a long haul and a lot of challenges along the way. You heard Brad talk about some of the more recent challenges with the project participants reducing and the project shrinking. And of course, the cost of the project has gone up over time as well. Galeton, that second reservoir northeast of Greeley, may or may not be part of the project for the long term. So that we'll see in the future whether it will be or not, but that one, While it has lower water quality, it's also the reusable water, so the water we can use again and again. So I think that will still be on the menu, but whether or not folks can afford it, we'll see. As Brad said, the project has shrunk now down to one reservoir glade at 19,500 acre feet. That water's single use, not reusable. we're estimating right now the cost of the project to be about 85 000 to 95 000 per acre foot and um once you add the financing to that you roughly double that number so when we're looking at the the fee we're raising tonight to pay for uh the water we've been acquiring in without the um windy gap or chimney hollow water um GLADE or NIST will have a big financial impact. Now, it's not exactly going to move to that number. We'll have to look at that over time because there's a blend of your water supply. But it's going to be a significant part of the water supply, and the cost is significant. The conveyance pipeline, About probably two years ago now, we had our last estimate on that pipe and it was 150 million. So we would be splitting that cost with Lafayette. That's why I'm saying roughly 100 million, because generally things have gone up over time. But that's one of the questions that we've, been asking Northern to look into and they are looking into is could we take our delivery of our water through some of the existing infrastructure and there's various ways possibly to do that but that would that would take out a significant part of the cost of the project for us and for Lafayette as I mentioned gelton now that it's a South Platte water it would require reverse osmosis treatment and that's not cheap And there's O&M costs, too. So the project, as it seems to me now, is somewhere between $2.5 million to $3 million annual O&M costs, depending on how that all shakes out. For comparison, the Lynn R. Morgan water treatment facility is about $2.5 million, and that includes the staff and the chemicals and the electricity and everything. the as i mentioned it could impact it would will impact in some way the water dedication fee in time um it's a potential and we can talk a little bit about this later that if we can't cover the costs of the annual debt service over time that that could affect uh utility bills obviously our goal is to avoid that um and have growth pay for growth And we're going to, this is an interim agreement. So what that is just getting us at certain milestones. And typically it's been an annual interim agreement, the one you're considering tonight. It was stalled while we tried to work through some of the issues that came up. And now we're trying to put stuff back into a new interim agreement that we'll get through roughly the next six months or so to the end of the year. we'll be seeing a new budget request for 2027. So the work that's occurring now will last till the end of the year, maybe a little bit past that. And then in 2027 will be a bigger cost for advancing the project, some of the work that needs to start happening. So we always like to present options. Wouldn't be right for us to say, here's your choice, because that's not our role. But we are recommending to approve the 22nd Interim Agreement. There's a lot of things I think we can still figure out and understand between now and the end of the year that will help us, it being a significant part of our future water supply. is uh is why we're saying that and also to help us kind of understand the costs and and where we might end up as they refine the designs better and get some of these other project uncertainties figured out that for what it's worth the the last several months been changes that we would learn of about every month, things that were evolving with the project. So it's been really hard for us to nail things down and say, well, this is exactly what it looks like. I think it's getting close to that point to where things are getting pretty certain about what it's gonna look like. but you know the other option could be to further reduce participation we reduced participation from 6 500 acre feet to 4 500 acre feet um in the last month or so and uh firestone uh stepped out of the project at that same time so what happened was we reduced our participation and firestone left and um and our cost went up because our percentage of the project went up um We will continue, as I've mentioned in the prior presentation, to look at different supplies, look at opportunities to get more raw water through town. That's what I'm mentioning there when I say dual systems, obtaining more CBT, as we've been doing. And we wouldn't suggest, if you were to reduce, that you reduce to something lower than 2,000 acre feet. And we're not recommending that either. that's the you get down into some lower levels if you want to keep it under two million dollars i think at around three thousand acre feet you'd be or three thousand or thirty five hundred acre feet beat around two million dollars for for this interim agreement um and again that's not what we're recommending but it is an option The existing current range for participants in the project are 100 acre feet to 3,300 acre feet, and 3,300 acre feet is the next one below us, and that's left-hand water. And then, of course, there's always the option to choose to leave the project. Others have. That means less growth, less control over Erie's future when it comes to water supply, and less general flexibility on the things that we can support in the future. But it's also the lowest cost risk. There's that. If we did that, we would have to focus pretty much solely on alternative supplies and bolstering up our water supply in some other way because it would be such a big deduction out of our portfolio. So that was a fairly fast blast through a project that's been going on for 23 years. But we have been up here every year presenting this project for that same amount of time. And we've just recently been having to have some hard discussions and come to conclusions. So with that, I think I'll open it up for any questions you might have for me or Sarah or Water Council.

OK, thanks. I think I'm going to start this one. So there's a long history in Erie, 2008 when we signed on. And I think there's a little irony that I was sitting in this same chair in 2008 when we signed on. And in that time, it appeared to be a good project, financially feasible. 50 participants, I think is what it was. was just mentioned tonight at the beginning of the project. 15. 15. Big participants that have left. And so when you look at that, you have to ask, okay, hold on. Is this project really feasible or has the cost gotten to the point where actually purchasing the water to store there and actually use for future growth, is it a good financial decision? And this is where I struggle. You know, there's this constant narrative that plays in my mind about how do we make the right long-term decisions for the good of the many. And then there's the business part of my brain that is looking at, hey, there may be something good for the many. You're regrowing, giving places for people to live and to call home and to raise their families. But then it puts a burden on everybody else in Erie. So in exec session, there's been just vague mentions of what would happen to our water bills, all of us that are already here. And I've heard comments made they could double, it could be less than that. And I think if this water is only for growth, why would we sign up for it if it's going to put the burden on those already here to pay for the growth? I think that's my first question. In your professional judgment, the costs have ballooned on this particular project for the Glade Reservoir from what we know at the moment. How do you see that playing out into our water bills going forward?

I'm not the finance director, so I'm not going to answer that. other aspects of this project that I should have mentioned and maybe I didn't was that you know it does add resiliency for the town it it is a supply that's not off the Colorado River which we know is very uncertain um these days and so it diversifies the town's water supply um so it could have a it could have an impact but it the the cost is definitely something that is uh has has gone up over time and um as far as like how that might affect water bills i know sarah's team has been looking at some of those things so i'm going to let her try and cover that up a little bit

In case I haven't said it yet, Sarah Hancock, finance director. So as you imagine, this is quite complex. And unfortunately, we are dealing with some uncertain and incomplete data at this point. So that's where I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage in providing you clear direction on where that goes. That said, I think that what's important about where we're at in a couple different processes really tells us where we would end up with the answer to that question. We're currently in the middle of the budget process, at least collecting budget requests from the departments. Part of that is Todd's team looking at their capital improvement fund and reallocating some of the projects and how we move forward with some of our major capital projects now that the water treatment plant is no longer on the on the docket why that's important is that because we're doing that at the same time as we're doing a rate refresh which we we've you know gotten some feedback from council that having our rates reviewed a little earlier than we intended to is a positive thing so we have that going on at the exact same time so we also have Rafa tell us consultant who has been doing our rate studies for quite some time they are the best in the business they're also looking at all of these factors and going to be collecting information from us about that reprioritization and where that frees up funding and what that looks like for rates and for fees so all those things are happening at the same time and it's unfortunately timed with us having to make decision as a town about this NMR agreement so what I will say is that we will know more about the direct impact of rates once we have better numbers about what our prioritizations are through the end of the year what the numbers actually shake out from this design phase that NISP is about to enter into, and from the rate refresh that we're doing with Rafatelis. So I wouldn't say it's a non-answer, but it's a contextual importance of us just not quite knowing the answer to that yet, because of where we are at in our processes.

And yet we're being asked to approve $3 million more for NISP. And two months from now, three months from now, you may come back and go, oh, the water bills are going to triple. Maybe not, but double. I think that's the dilemma I feel. And then I think about the big participants that have bailed, whether that is, I think you said Greeley bailed in our last discussion.

No, it was Fort Collins-Loveland Water District.

That was Fort Collins-Loveland, but I think there was another one. Firestone. Firestone. Who's the six that have left?

Andrea might be able to answer that.

Sure. Andrea Carroll, Water Council.

So that would be Eaton, Evans, Firestone, Fort Collins-Loveland Water District. Morgan County Quality Water District and Severance.

And one factor in case it's helpful on your point about current residents paying for future growth, which is true. The timing now is such that final design for Glade, 99% design should be done this year, and then construction should be starting next year. So at least that's a timeframe that we've been advised about. So I guess with respect to how long that duration out is of folks paying to start seeing the benefits hopefully. And then operational by 2031, I believe is the, Well, beginning to fill, and then I guess there's a question about how long filling would take, too, depending on hydrology at the time. But it's just a different time frame than the last 23 years as having gotten through litigation and permitting and all of these milestones that it is, if it moves forward, it's rubber hits the road time.

right rubber hits the road but then there's additional costs that we we're not privy to at the moment but nobody has indicated that our water bills wouldn't go up if we do this and and i think that plays into my mind because you know we talk about erie at whatever 85 90 000 people could erie be okay at 65 000 people or whatever Chimney Hollow and CBT take us to. And I ask that rhetorically, because I know we don't have the answer at this moment, but there's definitely a feeling that says, why should we put these additional costs on if the only reason to do it is to grow? And so that's the dilemma that I face tonight as I'm trying to sort this out in my own brain on whether we move forward or not. Some have said if we vote no tonight, that it will fail. The whole project will fail. Which as a business person... I doubt that. I think what would happen is there would be a bigger reckoning or giving us all more time to get more information so we really understand what we're signing up for. Or maybe it does go away completely, and we do need to look for other water sources. I think these are the dilemma points. But if we move forward, without a doubt, we will raise water rates to some degree in Erie. That is what I've been hearing. We just don't know how much. So I think that's where I'm at, at least at the moment. All right. Go ahead, Council Member Baer.

Thank you. Is that a true statement? We'll definitely raise water rates?

This is a question, right? So it depends on a bunch of factors. If we don't have water to sell. Um, then somehow that has to be paid the debt service, right? If we're in the project, and we don't have water to sell, but we don't have water to sell if we don't have this. And unfortunately, we don't have too many hollow to sell in the meantime. So you could probably do things like defer the first five years payments and you could reduce the size of the participation and get some of that more under control. But there's no way we could sit here and say, no, it's not going to go up or it's absolutely going to go up or by how much. That's the tough thing. And we're still trying to figure out the whole water supply at the same time. I have said before, if we can't pay the debt payment, then it would have to go on water bills. And so that's the big question is, can we afford the debt payment and then keep it so that growth pays for growth? And there's a lot of different ways to structure that. Maybe Sarah could fill out that a little bit more.

So I think some important context, too, is that the previous rate study, there was going to be a pretty significant increase to rates. And in speaking with our consultant, it was a little bit too much considering the uncertainty at the time with NISP. So we actually did not include that in our rates. So one factor of this is that now we're going to be folding in NISP into it. A second piece of it is myself and our CIP analyst, Kristen Pomery, her and I have been running scenarios the water fund and we we see it being quite sustainable with the payment structure and structures that we've been provided from northern kind of understanding those numbers but those numbers are changing all the time so that is where we really do need some of these concrete cost informations to really answer that question fully Because with that at play, depending on what that debt payment even is, that tells us whether or not it does raise rates or what the sustainability of it is for the town. And then in addition to that, we're also looking at this reprioritization of quite a few projects within the water fund in order to readjust to acquiring more water, expanding treatment capacity in different areas. And so it's possible, but we can't say anything definitively until we know the true debt service costs that NISP would put into the forecast that Kristen and I are projecting out.

um so yes it's it's it's a possibility um we just don't know to what extent and so and how much money have we paid into nesp for the last two decades 29.1 million dollars okay um so i guess i understand your recommendation to move forward um based on what you just said, because we don't have the numbers. It's a lot of money to walk away from, $30 million, and just have nothing. We couldn't sell NISP, right?

We couldn't sell our... No, we would have to divest our shares, and there's so many shares because of all the folks that have divested out of the project. There's more shares that you can't really sell shares right now.

Okay. um so we talked about water bills um what are alternatives to this other than buying cbt the you talked about the the well at boulder creek earlier yeah there's so it

There's no good alternative to NISP that's kind of a one-size-fits-all. There are other water supply projects out there. Some of them, the water quality is low, so it puts us back in that boat of needing to build a RO plant. There are water districts around that we could potentially partner with that could complicate our water rights as well, because we control the water we use on a day-to-day basis. We can decide we're using reusable water today, so we're going to store it in our reservoir. Tomorrow, we're calling on CBT, so we don't need to store that. We'll let it go. When we don't have control of the water rights, it can kind of throw A little bit of a monkey wrench, but this is another thing we're trying to figure out right now and expanding our like I mentioned earlier, expanding our raw water supplies, getting away from turf. There's many things we'll have to figure out. But there is no alternative project. And the CBT water, there's only so much. And it isn't cheap either. But that's the dilemma. In many ways, we know half the information. We feel like we need to know to make a really good decision. And so it's tough, though, because the alternative is you keep spending money for something that might become too expensive for you in the long run. or I think it'll move forward, but that's kind of the dilemma we're in is so much has changed in the last five years, especially the last year or two, that we're still trying to wrap our arms around how to grapple with all that and how to come up with an alternative plan that we can put some numbers to. So,

when we talk about growth that includes a second acc campus um any kind of you know park improvements like that's included in growth correct so serving current residents we're talking about economic development um we want a grocery store in town we want you know plans for i-25 gateway for amenities up there too is that included in in these projections of what we would use for for nest water yeah it is yeah those are those are some of the things that we've modeled and pete could probably speak better to that than me because he's he's looked at that model more times than me but those are some of the things we've looked at

Yeah, I think, conceptually, you're looking at it appropriately, that essentially, some, if not the full 4500 acre foot participation where Erie currently is, is some amount of that, if not the full amount is going to be necessary to provide for the, you know, the long term future phases of growth, what you saw Sarah Nirmala put out the map with the what she called the planned growth areas. So Some of that growth and development certainly will not be possible without NISP. As Todd said, and I agree, there's no other silver bullet alternative project out there that's a plug in place or some water of the same scope.

So what happens if Erie walks away from NISP? What happens for NISP?

It's uncertain at this point, but right now, as you look at this agreement, it has on the very last page is Exhibit B, which is the allocation of the different Percentage interest to the participants that are left in the project and the nine participants and here's a 23% participant so In the short term I'm sure northern will have to do some scrambling with how they keep the project moving forward with a budget that could be reduced by 23% at least in this interim period And then there's certainly the longer-term potential implications of just how that affects the viability of the project overall. So it would have a significant effect on other participants' interests and just the pursuit of the project overall, but I can't predict the future beyond that.

you can't um so you mentioned the lafayette is uh we've been in partnership with them with this conveyance pipeline um has there been communication what does that look like and i mean you know would they be surprised if we pulled out or would we be surprised if they pulled out

I would be surprised if they pulled out. I don't know if they would be surprised if we did or not. I do know that it would affect them in the sense that they're hoping to partner with us on a conveyance pipe. I've had conversations with some of my peers specifically in Lafayette about the idea of partnering up. They're looking to build a treatment plant right now and are finding it hard to find a location for the treatment plant as well as The cost of it is climbing like everything has been. But that's just a conversation over lunch. We haven't been able to take that further down the road yet, because that was just something we talked about in the last several months. And previous to that, a left hand was a partner with us in the conveyance type, and they chose to go a different route. But with all the changes that have happened on the project with different participants divesting or changing their amount, it's possible that we could try and get other partners together, too. Because that's, I think, one way you can start to make the numbers look a whole lot better is if everybody's not building their own separate thing. But that, again, is another thing that takes time for us to sort through.

um well i guess i'll just share my thoughts um as well and i just think that 30 million dollars is a lot to walk away from in two decades um and for me if it was certain that you know water bills for current residents were going to double or triple if we stay in i think that would be compelling for us to walk away um otherwise i feel like you know sort of walking away from water in order to manage growth is dangerous and I don't think that that's a good idea I don't think it's good leadership and so I would say we should probably take staff recommendation and continue where we're at with this and and perhaps next year we'll know if it's how it's going to affect water bills or if it will affect water bills or if there are other financial tools we can utilize to defer the cost and i think that it would be important you know to walk into that with eyes wide open um But for now, there's some we don't know. We just don't know if it's going to affect water bills or how. And it's water we've been counting on for at least two decades in the future. So it makes me nervous to think about walking away from a big water project. without an alternative. Now if NISP members come together and they're like, you know what, we're gonna do something different, let's work together over here, I think that could be fine, but I also have concerns about possibly sinking the whole project by walking away. That doesn't seem right either. That would be impactful for a lot of different communities. i feel like we should stay the course until we have more answers about how it will definitely affect our residents and i don't know that's just that's that's where i'm at

I just want to mention one thing too that the costs next year will go up significantly because they'll keep getting into the big construction stuff that needs to start to happen if it's going to move forward and at that juncture I think you will definitely have to make a decision on are we in are we out are we in for a percentage or something because it's going to go up several fold in terms of annual cost at that point because then we're moving from design to construction

And at that point, do we just allocate or do we use financial tools to, how do we, do we issue COPs?

So we actually have yearly payments towards this modeled in our financial forecasts. We have it modeled at the 4,500. We had initially modeled it at the original 6,500. That was not sustainable. That was part of why we had recommended coming down a little bit. So it is in there. We can see that the 4,500 is sustainable for a certain amount of time. But again, the cost that we've been provided for that yearly payment has not been certain so if that were to go up significantly from what we've been previously provided from northern um if it were to decrease that's where we're going to see the impact so i think that's where todd's kind of getting at that it's helpful for us to have those real numbers so that we can actually you know provide it is our forecast right now looking exactly how we would expect it to that's how they're it's going to impact rates and fees um or is it you know, astronomically much larger. And then we need to come and ask council for a decision about the sustainability of our fund, being able to make those payments to his point. Because it would be debt service. We'd be paying to the debt service through Northern, correct? Because we're not actually taking out the debt. We'd be paying them as like a conduit.

It's pooled financing. That's the same thing we did on Windy Gap. Yeah.

so it sounds like we need some certainty from northern and no surprises okay thanks all right other comments so yeah i guess my concern is we're 23 years and and we still don't know how it's going to affect our rates right and when i hear that we're cutting the project from you know, 40,000 acre feet to 20,000 acre feet, I don't see the infrastructure going away by half, right? So the cost is going to go up by go up just due to that fact, and the cost, we're going to go up anyway. So that that's very concerning. So do we have a When was the decision to go from 40,000 acre feet to 20,000 acre feet? That was after we already knew the costs were going up, correct?

That change came about, and then Andrea can fill this out a little bit, as some of the participants started to pack out of the project. So at that point, it had gone down to around 20,000 acre-feet of participation, so there was no reason to build a 40,000-acre-foot project. Andrea, do you want to?

just to elaborate on that um in the last month or two is when we started really talking about the 20 000 acre foot amount uh because of the divestments and reductions and the people started dropping out before that because the costs were going up significantly right so

So I see that as a double whammy on the cost. First, we had unexpected costs that drove some folks out of the project. And because those folks left the project, the cost went up. I really can't look our residents in the face and say, I agreed to increase your rate so that we can build more houses. I know it's not as simple as that, but that's how folks see it. And that's how I would see it. I would have that same question if I wasn't sitting here. Why would you decide to do that? So those are my concerns. As simple as I can put it.

Other thoughts, go ahead.

So couple of questions. First thing is we have alternate sources, right? And how are the prices looking compared to NISP? Sorry.

Per acre foot? You said do we have alternate sources?

Like the ones that we are already looking at, did we do any comparison between what is the price that we pay

or what is the price for this um yeah okay i understand um there's no there's no alternate sources we know of that are um of the same water quality as nisp um and the alternate prices for cbt right now cbt is less than um than the cost of NISP, but there's only so much CBT. And if NISP goes away, then there's gonna be even more competition for CBT. So you see what that'll do to that price. But we are currently exploring different options. It's just, there's no other 4,500 acre foot source that we can call on that's not, as we know right now, not the South Platte kind of quality of water.

Yeah, so my thoughts on this one is water is gold and it is just not for future housing, it is resiliency, we could go into droughts or climate changes could affect area. I feel like we should be invested and people elect us to make hard decisions, sometimes we do not have all the information looking into future. or guess what it could be. But with what we have so far, I think we make decisions which is also considering there could be a price hike on the utilities for water, but we do not know how much it is. It's not like three times that we know as of now. It could be less, but staying invested in resources like water, these are not something you can make up or have alternate sources. I feel like we should stay invested. When is the last that we can, can we do it in 26 and reevaluate our position in 27? Yes. I think it's a short-term plus a long-term combined into one solution of staying in there. And that participation question about budget is, I think you answered it, but do we have enough to do the debt payment?

So, I'm sorry, just making sure I'm going to answer the question. You're asking do we... have enough in the budget and the forecast to sustain it. It's a yes and. We can see, I forecast usually out about eight to 10 years. It is sustainable for a certain amount of time based on the payment schedule that we've been provided. But at some point, we do start to draw down our fund balance rather than than sustaining it, which isn't a bad thing in an enterprise fund. We want to be spending the money to keep the rates down for residents, right? But it will, if it continues to go down at some point, we do have to consider the impacts and we also have to reallocate and reprioritize projects so that could shift that forecast. So yes, we are forecasting with the previous numbers that we've gotten from Northern and we can see that it would work, but we would have to continue to watch it and see how that would work in the long term. And if those prices change, that's where I was kind of, you know, trying to explain to Council Member Baer, you know, that it's a probable thing that could happen, but it's just going to be very dependent on those numbers from Northern.

So are there any alternatives where with some modeling can we say these prices can be kept at a little more hike?

We can reprioritize and look at the CIP and those large projects to see which ones could be shifted. I would really rely on Todd and his team to help figure out what things are really related more to the current infrastructure versus growth related, because we do have to parse that out whenever we look at rates. But I think at this time, it's pretty clear what We have moving forward. I just don't know that there would be anything that we would be able to Pull back other than what we already have which is the water treatment plant, which was significant There are other options to look at that, you know for certain types of projects but again, we have to make those debt payments based on the fact that they would be Based on revenue bonds so they would be reliant on us in you know, collecting those funds which ultimately can impact rates and

Yeah, so I was going at some creative way or innovative way of still keeping the rates low and be invested in this because Tomorrow if you want it, you won't have it or you won't get it. And even as of now, we are struggling to find alternate sources. If there was something, we could have latched to it. And I find the resiliency part even more compelling to be involved in this project. That's where I stand. Option one. Thank you.

I'll also just add, too, that Rafatelis, they're very good at modeling different scenarios for us, too. So we might have more to look at with that once we have information from them. But they're in the exploration process right now. We've just given them all the data to look at. So the data that we have for them to look at.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. It's late, so I'm going to try to keep this as short as possible. Let me start with this question. So going back a second, because so Gailton, that water has to be treated. So I know when we mothballed our treatment plant expansion, that was planned to be an RO plant, right? I guess my question is, I know it's like pick your poison, because it's extremely expensive to build an RO plant, but if we were to partner or whatever with another municipality or something like that to get an economy of scale to get an RO plant, would that open up our possibilities of other water sources

um we we could explore the idea of of maybe partnering up with some of our close neighbors to treat the water from boulder creek that would be an ro plant we already know what that costs and that it involves deep injection wells and all this stuff um but it's it's a it's an option we could look at we could talk with our neighbors and see if anyone has any interest that thing is is then we'd be sharing our water supply with them too though because they don't have a supply to bring to that plant unless it was nisp and if we're well if we're not in nisp i don't know yeah there is a nisp um yeah just throwing that out there because i um

so I think most of my questions have been answered but just a couple things and I want us to be conscious of there's only six of us here tonight so I don't know which way this is going but like depending on how this votes without Council Member O'Connor here I'd be curious how this breaks down but because that potentially could be important. Um, uh, I, I agree with your, the, the, yeah, the other option is to think, you know, do we, you know, do we cut back growth and things like that? I think what the public needs to understand is that when we talk about things like, um, uh, Erie gateway or, um, you know, even Town Center, those are projects that are, the developers that are getting into that are, you know, they have a, you know, get commercial to come in to service what we already have here. I mean, we did grow like crazy over the last few years, but at the same time, you get, you know, a big market retailer come in and they're wanting, They don't care that we're 40,000 or 45,000. They want us to get up to those higher numbers. Is 65,000 enough? It might be. I don't know. I can't answer for that. But those are the... That's what we have to balance out, because you can't have both. You can't say we don't have enough commercial here, we don't have enough primary employment, and say we have too much housing here. And I hear this from a lot of residents, and I realize people don't like growth. And so that's very important, this decision. At the same time, I totally agree with the mayor's point that at what point does that number get to a point where it's just cost-prohibitive to do this? And I think my hesitancy in going forward with this, because, yeah, we're in for $30 million. Does that mean we throw $3 million more at this? That's... and understanding that we could throw in that $3 million and then come back, we have these increased costs next year, and then we're right back to where, well, gee, maybe we need to, when the rubber hits the road, and we're like, well, we don't want to join in, and I can't answer for that. So I'm really kind of torn on this right now, but I'm not, Chair for split 50-50 here, and I don't want to kill this if Councillor O'Connor is not here to vote on this, but I, you know, my just as a general overall thing for water um i mean i i think we we need to start thinking outside the box because when as we talked about many times when nist started out it was coming out of the mouth of the pooter you weren't gonna have to do that much treatment with it and then with nobody's fault but with all the the delays and lawsuits and everything that happened with it um uh you know it moved it down to where okay now you got to treat the water more um and uh and and those costs kept increasing and um and now we've lost participants which increases everybody's cost at the same time ideally i I think these reservoirs should be built. Water's a huge issue, not only for our state, but just about every other state in the nation. But again, it's at what cost, and does this make sense for us to continue to participate in? And it's hard. to vote one way or another on this when we don't have those projections, and that's the problem.

Okay.

Thank you. Taking a step back to the presentation, on the recent developments slide, recent developments, the 85 to 95,000, dollars per acre foot, that's the projected cost all in at the end of it, right?

That's the capital cost before financing.

Okay, and financing will double it.

Okay.

I didn't catch that. Roughly, yeah, roughly, yeah. Which, okay, in today's numbers,

CPT is currently a little below that, but in the last four years, it's also been above that.

And those shares will undoubtedly escalate along with nests, right? I have felt like this would be throwing good money after bad, but at the same time, when there's no alternative, know honestly I get concerned I get concerned about what water will get out of CBT sometimes you know we've got seven states fighting for that water what have we come up with a short end of that stick and it's not just our growth and it's today's residents as well and that could very very easily happen happen And we've been through kind of the hardest part, the design, the lawsuits, and now they're ready to build construction of the only alternative really on the front range. This is a monumental decision, and I think giving it, giving us more time to come up with some scenarios.

Let the public perhaps weigh in. This is the first they're hearing about it.

Because what else is it going to impact besides growth? No commercial? Say goodbye to a grocer? I don't know. So I think we need to not make a knee-jerk reaction right now and continue to look at it for another, you know, at least another year of the money and of the contributions. And then, well, once we know what the constructions underway and what those numbers are looking like, then make a decision and appreciate Mayor Pro Tem's bringing in Council Member O'Connor. He's not here to weigh in. So I think we ought to take the recommendation of the, biggest experts in that room and stay in it for now.

Yeah, and I'll mention I'm hearing new ideas to my Mayor Pro Tem's point about thinking outside the box. I'm hearing new ideas like I heard a new one today about water supplies. And last week I heard a new idea that I had never contemplated before. So, you know, we we're kind of getting to the bottom of some of these things with, we hope to bring better information and we, I totally understand the throne, good money after bad, um, It's just we're still in the fact-finding mode because so much has changed in the last few months. And I'm literally not kidding. I heard something today that I've never heard before and went, maybe that's a thing. Maybe that works. So we're going to, regardless of how this happens, we're going to be looking at alternatives at the same time.

All right, I'm going to ask a clarifying question on the slide that was brought up here. So CBT today, what we paid for that set the fee that we just raised to $20,000, what is that number?

It currently for us, it's been ranging from like 58 to 62, I think. As Council Member Hoback pointed out, there's times when it's been up much higher than that. That's maybe we got some motivated by sellers. I don't know, but that's what, that's the range and that's how we set our fee.

So no matter how we look at this, $65,000 per acre feet, what NISP is estimated to cost is 85 to 95, plus we have to finance it, which will double it, which will take it to 180. And we only need this water for growth. And we know that there are likely other sources, we just have to have time to track those down. That's why my business brain is going, there's a reason why six people, six municipalities have jumped ship, right? And there's a reason why we didn't have 23% participation. We almost have a quarter of NISP because people have jumped ship, not because we asked to have a quarter of it. What was our participation percentage when we started?

16 and a quarter up until the recent divestments.

So we had 16% of the risk. And now, if we vote yes to keep going, we assume 23% of the risk. And those are real numbers. And when I look at this 180 thousand dollars to buy an acre foot man that is that's magnitudes off of what we're doing with cbt and i realize cbt is a finance source so the cost will likely go up but will it go up triple and i might i might want to ask peter andrea to weigh in on this it the yield i think for nisp is a little different than a cbt unit

okay yeah explain that yeah just to clarify the units we're talking about so the the numbers that todd mentioned for the current price of cbt unit acquisitions In the range of $57,000 to $62,000, that's for a single CBT unit. The town code says each of those units is one half of an acre foot. So you basically double that cost for a per acre foot value. So that's on the low side, it'd be $116,000. On the high side, $125,000.

Which is still two-thirds of the cost of what we're projecting this to be.

with finance that's correct yeah i mean we our residents have to pay the financing too and in this participant meetings the question has been asked will there be a quota like there's for cbt and the answer if i understood it is no but it will be subject to variable hydrology inevitably

The risk is, I don't know.

Apples to apples. If you were to go out and buy CBD, you'd have to finance it too. We haven't been financing it, right? We paid cash. But if you were to buy the equivalent right now, yeah, you would probably have to finance it. Or just take it out of your general fund budget.

I don't think that's true. We have to finance this because you have to pay for it all up front. And CBT, you don't pay for it all up front. You buy it as you get it. This is, you're paying for NISP, right? Building the dam and all of that. That's why you have to finance it, correct?

Yeah, I think it's a fair point. And it's been brought up in some of the NISP meetings of if you wanted to go buy that big tranche of CBT, you're going to finance it too. But that's not what we've been doing right now. But that might be what people start doing if NISP were to go away.

and i'm going to give everybody another chance here um we do have water for town center i was told that before is um um councilman hoback i think was implying we don't have water for town center is that right oh i i think that might have been me or you were well i didn't i didn't know i was just giving examples but the grocer is not at risk because of this is that a true state i can't answer that i haven't been in those conversations i'd have to um owe you an answer from i'd have to ask julian or sarah yeah and it was julian in the water meeting that actually said that he's right there oh he's here still come on up so the the question is our current allocations of cbt do we have water for town center can't lose me that easy

Yeah, when we talked about the allocation policy earlier, the breakdown of acre feet that we have for the next six years, that's contemplated.

Yeah, OK. Just want to make sure that that was clear. You know, the way to get NIST built to me is to get more participants, not less. I think we're having this conversation because people have jumped ship. And I know that that's been part of the conversation, but my understanding is there hasn't been the energy to try to bring more people in. I think partially because we have an investment made. And then do you let people in for free? Well, I would say the investment at this point, because we have a sense on what it's going to cost.

It's bad money at this point.

It's not panning out the way that it originally thought it was going to pan out. But if you got more participants and you go back up to the bigger size, then the cost goes down per participant. And so I think that's the underlying issue on why it's so expensive. And then it just goes back to, it's for growth. It's not for what we have today. All right, let's just go back. I think Council Member Mortallero, and then I'll come back to you. Or either way, we can go. All right, let's just do that.

Thank you. So my question was, I think the conversation, it keeps alluding to increased water rates for current residents. If we stay in this, but i'm also hearing cbt will be more expensive um i'm assuming water rates are going up because water is precious in the mountain west and so i'm just curious if if we walk away from this we're walking away from watering rate increases like i don't want to i don't want to give that impression to the public if that's not true

No. Well, there's just a lot of uncertainty. Obviously, we're struggling with this, too. It's tough for us to want to come here and give you all the answers and make it an easy decision. But water rates will go up over time regardless. Water infrastructure needs to be replaced, and there are certain aspects of that that is not related to growth. Um, there's for instance, you know, the upgrade at when Morgan, most of that is just replacing equipment that's worn out. Um, there's there, we get a little extra capacity that you can, you can assess that to growth, but for the most part, it's that. So I don't think you'd find any person in this industry that would tell you that those rates are going down over time and they're not going up. It'll go up just like everything does. So it, it, it's like having a car, you know, it doesn't get cheaper over time.

right so will it um could the cost of increased cost of water whether it's from cbt or some other source cause rates to go up if we don't have this we're trying to acquire water other places It's just, who knows? Yeah, like, we don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're kind of getting at the conundrum that we're facing in general. If I don't have a concrete number to put into a forecast, it's very hard for me to give a definitive answer, which, to Todd's point, is very hard for me as a finance professional to, like... you know not have a definitive answer but that's what would give us that answer is is the certainty of knowing you know what what we're in for what the cost is over time what we're financing if it is an alternative source or a business that's what's going to give us that answer ultimately okay and i feel like that's what i keep coming back to is we don't have that we don't have an alternative source to nesp we don't have the answers to whether or not it will increase rates

currently for current rate payers and then also using water to slow the number of people that move to Erie that is it's scary to me that we would consider doing that to slow growth and you know if you don't want to be 80,000 people or or whatever it is that that's that is going to have long-term impacts um on people who live here so i just feel like we need to find an alternative if it's not nisp and we need to have full understanding of what it is going to cost and i feel like we don't have those that information yet and so for those reasons we should stay in until we know more

so our our last water rate increase was roughly four percent um four uh it increased four and a half percent the last couple years right yeah right okay i mean that comes with inflation and cost of of living and everything so so yeah we we continue to expect to get but we're not talking four and a half percent increase with with this project we're talking double digits or greater And there was a strong concern from the residents with the 4.5% that we received a lot of feedback from that.

Maybe you did out on the campaign trail. I didn't really hear a lot about the 4.5% increase. There was a strong reaction from the development community on when we raised the water dedication fee.

which was not raised to the recommended amount either which was not

And then if we voted yes tonight, we're writing a check for $3 million, $3 million more on top of the $30 million. When does the next check come due? You said it's probably significantly higher because construction will have started and whatnot. So when does that?

That's the 2027 bill that we expect to see significant increased costs as part of the next interim agreement. that would be coming in the beginning of 2027 right so this one was delayed until now the next one is going to be due in less than a year right it's going to be due in in january yeah unless we can you know talk with them to get them to see how what kind of progress they made with this one and see if we can talk with them about slowing that down a little bit more but um there's a point at which they want to know are we moving forward with the project or not so um that's kind of where it leaves us

Do we have any idea how much that one in January will be?

I can help, Todd.

What's that?

This afternoon, the draft 2027 budget was circulated by email, and it was about $28 million. And the intent is the participants will discuss it with Northern at the next meeting on June 1st. That's the draft budget, $28 million across everybody for 2027.

And we would pay 23% of that? Thank you. You see where this is going. Any other questions?

Comments? I mean, my two big hesitancies now is I've already like, I mean, I'm thinking, I think exactly along the lines that you are, Mayor, but the i guess i wasn't thinking for town center but maybe just i don't know i'm thinking we have several lois that we're have in place with developers and i i have a feeling that if we pull out of this that that might jeopardize some of those um my other hesitancy is is the fact that councilman o'connor has but but um I'm not, my term limited and I'm done at the end of the year and, but looking at 2027 for you guys that are gonna be here that, yeah, I mean, what'd you say, six and a half? Yeah. I get there's no silver bullet, but that's, Kind of the shame of all this because I know Fort Collins, Loveland, and Firestone were screaming their heads off for a long time about concerns about the cost overruns on this. And it's not necessarily anybody's fault. A lot of stuff happened over a long period of time. But, you know. I think as we talked about one time, if this were a stock, I mean, are you going to short sell it?

It's value is already zero. Remember, nobody wants to buy it.

Well, yeah.

All right. I'll see if there's a motion to approve Resolution 26099.

So moved.

Second.

All right, any further discussion? All right, we'll take a roll call vote.

Can I ask a clarifying question?

Yes.

So what happens if this doesn't pass? What are your next steps?

There would be no payments. There would be no agreement adopted. That's as far as I can tell you. I would defer to Pete and Andrea on operationally what would happen next.

Yes.

If this motion doesn't carry, you're essentially not signing the agreement, not agreeing to any of the obligations in that agreement, which is, again, the interim agreement that would carry through to the end of this year. So the immediate effect is it's essentially a forfeiture of your interest in the project. Whether there may be other options for us to discuss with Northern about potential long-term interests or resurrecting the interest, we could certainly explore those types of options. But from a legal perspective, you are essentially forfeiting your interest in the project at that point.

We would be vacating, walking away.

Yes, that's right.

We still have a motion and a second. I do have another clarifying question. At one point, we said we only needed 3,500 shares, and yet you're recommending 4,500 shares. So why is that?

We were looking at 3,500 at one time. We had 6,500 shares. And so we were looking at divesting 3,000 of them. The 4,500 comes from the recent raw water model that we did.

All right. One other clarifying question. Since there's six of us here, if this ends in 3-3, can Council Member O'Connor call for a motion to reconsider since he wasn't present, or is that?

I think you have to be on the prevailing side of the vote. Oh, there won't be a prevailing side.

Well, I was going to say there isn't. This is sort of a unique situation in that there are other, to Pete's point, operational realities that would happen. And so I'm not sure if that's possible. That's OK.

I mean, as a business person, it's hard for me to believe that Northern would say, okay, we're done, and they just move on. Because the other participants probably won't make up this. So I'm hopeful that conversations will continue.

But no way to predict that here at the moment.

It's just coming from a business perspective, right? There's a lot on the line for them to just walk away as well.

It's also a huge gamble.

Yeah, it's a $3,000 gamble right now. With a few months later, a $6.44 million gamble coming up. All right, I'm looking to our town clerk. You ready to take the roll call vote? I am. Okay.

Council Member Mortallaro?

No.

Council Member Hoback?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Bell?

Yes.

Council Member Pessimarelli?

Yes.

Council Member Behr? Yes. Mayor Marr?

No. All right, so the motion passes. All right, we have to go back to the last topic, because we needed a roll call vote on the two ordinances, because they were emergency ordinances, and that was missed in the process. So I'm going to see if there's a motion to approve ordinance number 2426, amending Title 8, Chapter 1. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. I missed the first. The first was Council Member Martellaro.

OK, and the second was?

Um, hold back.

Okay.

Uh, let's see here.

Council member bear. Yes. Right.

Yes.

Well, I don't know council member hold back.

Yes.

Council Member Passamarelli. Yes. Council Member Mortellaro. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Bell.

Yes.

And I think Mayor Moore.

Yes.

Passes.

All right, I'll see if there's a motion to approve Ordinance 2526, amending Title IX, Chapter 1. So moved. Second. All right, any further discussion? All right, roll call vote.

Council Member Hoback.

Yes.

Council Member Pessimarelli. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Bell.

Yes.

Council Member, I can't remember who I called first now. Huh? Who's hoping? Council Member Behr. Yes. Have I missed anybody yet? Me. Council Member Mortillero. Yes. And Mayor Moore. Yes. Motion passes.

All right, we cleaned up that. Clerical error. Now we'll go on to Councilmember reports and announcements. I'll start with Councilmember Rivera.

thank you um i had a conversation during the break earlier with some residents who attended the meeting and they highlighted that there is a survey out um if you go to the town website it pops up but everyone might not know about it so go find it's about um a ballot question for lodging tax and there's a survey you can take um i know that gabby and her team have been out in the out and about they're at town fair so you may have already had the opportunity to take that survey but just wanted to highlight that one more time um coal creek meals on wheels is this week's word of thanksgiving campaign with um next with kyle clark and i think that starts tomorrow um so make sure you check that out on wednesday at six p.m i think um is is what when the story will go live and then you can donate to colt creek meals on wheels and they serve lots of folks here in erie and their fastest growing demographic is young families and so i can imagine that over the summer months that'll be really important for kids who rely on nutrition from schools they won't have that access so um i testified at the puc last week um on may 19th regarding excel's request to hike rates again 10 about 10 percent per energy bill and i asked the commission to consider asking excel to invest in their infrastructure instead because municipalities and rate payers are paying the cost when they have to do those safety shutoffs um and it's because their equipment is not safe enough to operate in certain weather conditions so um that will come back before the puc i believe in august and they'll make a decision then um want to say happy memorial day to everyone and thank you to the epd and to troop 62 for a great memorial day service um out at the out at the cemetery it was so great to see council member pastor melly um and then i just wanted to um highlight the pride proclamation earlier this evening um it's very near and dear to my heart and i was thankful that everyone came out for the reading of that um this will be the year first year that our pride flag is not on the flag poles in town and i have had conversations with folks um and that is heartbreaking also juneteenth we won't have a flag raising or a flag displayed to commemorate the end of slavery But we will be having an event on Juneteenth, and so look for details about that. I saw the announcement, but I didn't memorize it, so I don't want to get it wrong. So I think that was everything from me, everything important anyway. So thank you.

All right.

just thanks for everybody who supported the town fair it was a great event great turnout so that's all for me yeah the town fair was great love the new bridge and

like to echo council member bears comments about the pride proclamation and thanking the residents uh personally being here to show their appreciation it's also very important to me um and It's still problematic to me that we altered the flag policy last year that we cannot honor and recognize at Town Hall and the cemetery and the police department where we have members of the LBGT community, people of color who are not necessarily visible and included in the safe spaces that the proclamation and our town charter refer to. And I won't always be loud, but I am determined to help bring back the pride in UT flags to pledge allegiance, not just to a symbol, but to the values that that symbol stands for in bringing liberty and justice for all of our community. That's it.

All right. Council Member Petzormelli.

Okay. Anything for Tim?

I don't think tonight.

All right, and I'll just say on June 2nd, our next meeting, we're gonna have a study session to bring back the details of the Draco negotiations. They still may fall apart, but we are to the point where we feel like we're gonna put it out there publicly and have a discussion on it. So June 2nd, 6 p.m., right here. All right, I'll look over to our town manager. Okay, and our town attorney.

the town attorney's office is hiring we cover a number of really interesting issues if you want to be part of a growing wonderful team um so if you are a lawyer or you know a lawyer please apply all right sounds good and with that i will adjourn the meeting