City Council - Regular Meeting

you

Recording in progress.

Alright, welcome to the Lewisville City Council meeting on September 1st, 1st, 2026. We have a roll call, please.

Councilmember Cooperman here. Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton here. Councilmember Fahy here. Councilmember Kern present. Council Member Dickinson?

Here.

Mayor Lay?

Here.

Council Member Hefner?

I know he's here.

OK. If you would join with me and rise as able to say the pledge.

I agree.

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. We have a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

So moved. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Do we have any public comments tonight on matters not on the agenda or on the consent agenda?

Yes. First up is Don Parcher.

Okay. Just to... over the rules on that. You get three minutes. You don't need to use all of them but please say your name and whether you live in Louisville first of all and if everybody can give him or her your full attention and not make catcalls or other comments so that person can feel comfortable giving their comments. Note that, as it is in every matter on the agenda, you can always provide written comments to council members through email. find that on the city's revamped website. We treat the council comments that are made, excuse me, the comments that are made to council in those fashions, or in that fashion, just the same as we do online.

So with that, Go ahead, Mr. Parcher. Good evening. Don Parcher, yes, Louisville resident. And I do live right next to Polk Dahlia. So I'm kind of curious what's going on there. We're not going on. I kind of like the way it was before. But now I'm thinking maybe no stripes might be as good or better. Maybe just one stripe dashed down the middle. But we would like to see the bumps, the speed bumps painted as soon as possible. I think that's a hazard to cars, if nothing else, and maybe bikes. They're so hard to see right now. And then also the crosswalks, we'd like to get those painted as soon as possible. I thought I'd mention also real quick, we did do the spring get-together, May 16th. I enjoyed it. Attendance was lower than I'd hoped, but we did have some threatening weather, and we had high school graduations. But anyway, it was good. I would appreciate it. send some stuff to the city council, um, city manager about, uh, my thanks to different people that exhibited and all that and, uh, photos, uh, linked to a photo album. Um, the highlight, one of the highlight, what we did, e-bike, e-bike demo by e-bike of Colorado. I really appreciated that. They had, uh, things to hand out and we did a trivia contest, which was won by a police chief, uh, He actually donated his prize, $119 gift certificate to Spavia, which I don't know if they've opened yet. They have in the old Qdoba location. And in third place was Josh. So he got a book on the history of Louisville. I was just amazed at the police chief's knowledge of Louisville history. He knew dates, I mean years, and really impressive. And finally, please keep climate change and biodiversity in mind. Thank you. Thank you, Don.

Oh, that was it? All right. Good. Do we have a motion on the consent agenda?

Move to approve. Second.

Any comments?

Any comments on consent, Judy?

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. Next is council informational comments and committee reports. Do any people have committee reports in the last week or so? Hold on for just a moment. A couple of city announcements and then I have another. The city's Labor Day parade is coming up. It's the 90th parade for Labor Day that we've had. And I believe it's the only one that is left in Colorado, certainly the only consecutive one. A lot of people have entered. I don't know whether the entries have closed for that. It sounds like from city managers that they have. There's information that is on the website, and then it's been blasted out on social media, and there will be more of it, I'm sure. That is on Labor Day, and it'll be a lot of fun, I think. All of us get to ride in it if we want to, or if we're around. So that's always fun. It's the 40th anniversary of the museum, which is something to be celebrated. And I think there's going to be activities relating to that shortly, too. So keep an eye out for that. And that kind of brings me to a comment that I wanted to make. Tonight, it's a little bit unusual comment. 2026 is an unusually special year of commemorations. You just heard the 40th anniversary of our museum. the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the 150th anniversary of Colorado's founding, and locally, the 100th anniversary of the Lewisville Public Library, and of course, the fifth year commemoration of the Marshall Fire, which is coming up. Those events are all amazing and worth remembering, and we've done some of that already. Next week is a special meeting, so we won't have council comments. So I'm going to take the opportunity to remember the brutal murder 25 years ago next Friday, September 11, 2001, of several thousand people, evil men planned or flew four hijacked commercial airliners, which were diverted from their destinations. One intended to destroy the White House, which instead slammed into unpopulated farmland in Pennsylvania. The three others were flown into the Pentagon in Virginia. and the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, respectively. Many of us watch these events or their aftermath in horror on TV in real time. That tragedy was deeply personal to me. I lost one of the smartest and funniest friends I knew in college who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the Trade Center There were innocents, firefighters, police officers and EMTs and other first responders and other heroes murdered that day. I lost a friend and classmate from NYU Law School who had, after graduation, become a police officer and who, after turning in his badge and his retirement papers that very morning, had run over to one of the Twin Towers and up the stairs to help evacuate the living and never came out. That day, there were many more who lost friends and family members, including one of my daughter's soccer teammates and acting buddies who lost her father. So much has happened in the wake of what happened on September 11th. So much time has gone by, but what we who are alive then or now can still do is remember. Please take time to remember those who lost, who were lost, and about what all of us lost that day. And for those who weren't, were old enough to remember or those who weren't old enough to remember or those who hadn't been born yet, please tell them what happened. Share the painful stories of what you saw and who or what you lost that day. And think of the family and friends of those who lost, those they loved, the lost deserve that from us, and the living shouldn't shrink from it. Thanks. Any other council comments? All right, city manager's report.

All right, thank you. So September is Preparedness Month. And so as we work with ODM, we have partnered with their team to mirror their talking points and share their offerings, including two events in Louisville. The two events are Disaster Preparedness Basics on September 21st from 6 to 7.30 p.m. and Disaster Scenarios Workshops on September 28th from 6 to 8 p.m. Both will be held at the Louisville Fire Protection District Fire Station 1, We will also be sharing and sending related communications throughout the month. And then to address polk dahlia striping, as well as the other striping that's remaining on Jefferson, some follow-up work on Main Street. The striping contractor is supposed to be in town tomorrow. We are doing baseline striping on Polk Dahlia, which will include stop bars, crosswalks, and then also the speed cushions. At that point in time, we will leave the remainder of the roadway without lane line striping. we will monitor for a while to see how the road operates collect data and then from that we will make a recommendation as to how to move forward so there's going to be some time in between the baseline striping and any additional striping perhaps in the future with that thank you

All right, it's on to regular business. First is the city manager's initial budget presentation. I just wanted to say in advance of this a couple of things. One, as the city manager cautioned me, this is not really a city manager's budget. It is the staff proposed budget for our consideration staff members all the way up and down the line across our city government have participated in helping to prepare and refine this. You'll see I think from the presentation and how many different public meetings we've had on it and that's all great. We're going to be talking about the operational or the operations part of the budget, the general and then we're going to pick up later the capital improvement budget in another session. The last thing I'll say is this is, as I've said before, probably next to hiring the city manager and perhaps the authority to sign off on documents. for the city the most important thing that council does and it's done with a great deal of care for the taxpayers of the city businesses or residents and for the residents whether they're of age to pay taxes or not so with that

Thank you, Mayor. I am calling this the city manager's initial budget presentation. However, we have met a few times, and this is a culmination of significant work from my staff and department staff throughout the city. So thank you for that introduction, and thank you for all your work so far. Good evening. Ryder Bailey, Finance Director. With me today are Mr. James Franks and Mr. Mahyar Mansourabadi. Today's agenda and purpose will touch base on the budget calendar, transitional budget years. We'll revisit the council direction we've received to date. I'll summarize our operational personnel and service level adjustments. I'll summarize other council direction received at the budget retreat and sense. Seeking some direction tonight to balance our operating budget. As the mayor alluded to, this evening we're really trying to get to the point where we are structurally balanced our operating budgets. This will allow us to spend a lot of time, September 22nd, on our capital budgets, and I could bring them together for a few more presentations and adoption. We'll also be reviewing our latest long-term financial forecasts for city major funds. So I'd like to recognize again all the significant work taken to date from department directors and their staff. We began this early in the year. It's now September. July 2nd, the finance committee had a budget retreat preview. July 22nd, we spent five hours together in the city council annual budget retreat. August 11th, we spent some time on capital plan and service level alignments. August 20th, we had a budget update and a retreat recap to our finance committee. Here we are today, September 1st, for the city manager's initial budget presentation. There'll be a few more bites at the apple here. September 22nd, we'll be talking about our capital. Tuesday, October 20th, you'll receive the city manager's final budget presentation, and we are slated on schedule for adoption Monday, November 2nd. So we're seeing these as transitional budget years, laying the foundation and groundwork for 2028 and beyond. And as we enter this two-year budget cycle amid fiscal headwinds, rising costs, and economic uncertainties, this measured approach will allow us for thoughtful exploration, consideration as we work towards financial stability. Department heads at the August 11th meeting had proposed reductions, alignments, and efficiencies that can be implemented in the near term. But over the course of the next two years, this allows us time to implement more impactful changes. So revisiting operational personnel and service level adjustments. I'm going to do my best here to focus on and highlight changes since the budget retreat. So these operational adjustments are included in your 27-28 budget. And financial modeling, this includes the market adjustments for police, an increase to citywide training, NeoGov perform modules and policy management modules, and the hard to recycle voucher program. This is unchanged from the budget retreat. Continuing on operational adjustments, A set aside for the Sundance Festival. The cost allocation analysis adjustment here since the budget retreat has been revised downward from $100,000 to $50,000. Compensation policy analysis. Every four-year community survey. And another adjustment since the budget retreat is the inclusion of event cost inflation for the 4th of July, summer concerts, and special events. This was a board and commission request that was supported by council. Continuing on to full-time personnel adjustments, now here one notable change I'd like to highlight is the PROS deputy director has been removed from the modeling. This is an important position, a much needed position. However, the direction at the retreat was to retain this position so long as the impacted operating budgets could bear. Unfortunately, at this time, that is not the case. However, noting the amount, the significant amount of capital projects in the PROS department, the Parks Project Supervisor has been added. The remaining positions, the Youth and Sports Coordinator and Rec Assistant at Recreation Fund, the Natural Resource Technician, Open Space, and then three public works, Operations Tech One, Construction and Stormwater Inspector, and Civil Engineer are all unchanged since the budget retreat. Summary of variable adjustments. We have two changes here since the budget retreat. First, as it relates to the golf variable expenses, this has been revised downward to $85,000 to align with latest trends and latest expenditure refinement. And secondly, the part-time special events coordinator. This was, again, a board and commission request that was supported by council at the budget retreat. It has been added to the budget in the modeling. Revisiting the August 11th meeting, department heads proposed a number of service level adjustments, alignments, and efficiencies to help balance our budget and manage our staff's bandwidth and capacity. Those are reducing sustainability programs that have been previously grant funded, discontinue the piloted community event sponsorship program, eliminate dog licenses, cease printing of utility billing inserts, Consider board and commission mergers, consolidate communication channels, extend the life of library computers, shift utility billing credit card fees to a customer while retaining a free option, eliminate data axle, eliminate mango languages in 2028, eliminate the employee golf discount, reduce the number of capital projects, consider limiting scope and amendments to code, reduce the number of EV business beats, reduce PD community engagement events, evaluate the number of special events, review cost recovery for special duty pay, and eliminate the block party event. So I would also like to summarize other council direction received at the budget retreat and sense. Those are as follows. Within the parks fund to extend and increase the conservation trust fund transfer to support park operations by $25,000 to $125,000. within the Open Space Fund to adjust the acquisition reserve to $2 million, which was previously $5 million, within the Golf Fund to continue to refine projections and engage the Recreation Advisory Board, within the Recreation Fund to refine our projections and evaluate fees, Within the rec center debt service fund to suspend the temporary credit first implemented in 2024, adjusting the mill levy to 1.7 mills from 1.35. And within the capital fund at the August 11th council meeting to reduce our paving budget by 2 million in 2027 and 2028, and to continue to refine the capital improvement program, all funds. So here, council direction sought today necessary to balance our budget. At the August 20th Finance Committee meeting, staff presented the following items for consideration to close our operating budget deficits across multiple city funds. We are seeking your support, direction to model the latest insurance increase projections. These were below our original projections. This adjustment impacts multiple funds and saving 300K citywide. Staying within our projected insurance costs, eliminating the optional wind hail buy-down. A reminder, this is a deductible at the per building level. Our existing deductible is 3% of the value of the building. This brought it down to 150. We are still insured. We are insured through the buy-down through March 2027. Eliminating this optional insurance product add-on will save multiple funds citywide $160,000. As mentioned before, staff is recommending unfunding the PROS Deputy Director position as the direction of the budget retreat was to retain if the impacted funds could cover the cost. In unfunding this position, it saves multiple PROS divisions $200,000. However, with the significant amount of PROS capital projects, the Finance Committee did voice some concern about whether adequate staff resources were available. So staff is recommending funding the requested parks project supervisor position. This position is primarily funded by the capital fund. Again, these adjustments are necessary to balance our city operational budgets. Staff has modeled these modifications over the following slides and long-term forecasts. So here are your latest long-term financial forecasts, beginning with the general fund. 2027, 2028 revenues are $28.7 and $29.5 million. Our forecasted expenses in 2027 and 2028 are $29.0 and $30.0 million. This does include $268,000 in one-time expenditures in 2027 and $108,000 in 2028. This also includes operational turn-back of $1.5 million, largely comprised of salary savings there. So we're close. Our current structural gaps in the general fund is $100,000 in 2027 and $400,000 in 2028. Staff is confident that we'll be able to balance 2027 by monitoring our revenues and expenditures by the city manager's final budget presentation. So we will continue to monitor revenue and expenditure projections throughout this process. Here it is graphically. And really what we're focusing is our efforts in our now, our 2027, that 28.6 number versus the 28.7 number. We want to make sure these are at least equivalent or the blue bar is greater than the red bar. And then for 2028, the 29.5 in ongoing revenues versus the 29.9 in ongoing expenses of that $400,000 delta in 2028. So looking forward in the general fund, we will continue to refine our expense forecasts. We have modeled our medical insurance increases that came in lower than expected. We have modeled the property insurance, the latest information on our property insurance renewal, as well as eliminating the wind hail deductible buy down. We will continue to refine our revenue projections and sales and property tax. There's also potential to reallocate resources to higher priorities, to continuously seek cost saving opportunities, assess vacant or newly added positions, and to evaluate our fee recovery and cost allocations. So moving over to the parks fund. Again, with the proposed adjustments and modifications that impacted several funds just a few slides ago, the parks fund is structurally balanced in 2027 and 2028. Again, we extended and increased the conservation trust fund transfer. Notable future needs and some current are not funded. Future park capital expenditures are in the capital fund, not the parks fund. There's that information graphically displayed. You've seen this a few times, but just a reminder that most of Park's fund is funded by dedicated sales tax, a general fund transfer subsidy, and then now you can see at the top that little, that lightest of blue bars, the conservation trust fund transfer. And with no future capital expenses in the fund, the red bars are entirely operational expenses. Continuing with the open space fund, structurally balanced for 27 to 2028, the acquisition set aside at $300,000 annually through 2029. Again, council directed to model up to 2 million at the July 22nd budget retreat. There have been no adjustments to the capital project since the budget retreat, but there likely will be some at our next meeting, the September 22nd meeting. This also includes the new position, the natural resource technician. So here is the latest. I'll spend a little bit of time on this slide, even though I know you all have seen this a few times. Just looking at honing in on 2027, the tax, the main, the only or main revenue source for the Open Space Fund is that dedicated tax for open space. Operational expenses, you can see the blue bar is greater than the dark red bar, meaning structurally balanced, the ongoing ones. It also includes capital, $200,000 in 2027, about a half million in 2028. That orange bar along the top is the 30% of the incremental tax, about 12% of the total tax, or approximately $300,000 a year set aside for acquisition. Okay, continuing on. The recreation fund is structurally balanced for 27 and 28. Again, we have incorporated the latest financial revenue information. Previous slides, previous presentations had revenue analysis from May. So as we get later and throughout the year, we can revise that with the latest information. Staff has refined and updated our 2026 projections. This has impacted the long-term modeling in a positive way. We haven't made any changes to capital projects since the budget retreat. the renewal and replacement target is achieved throughout the model. Here's that information visually displayed. I will not spend much time on this. You guys understand these charts now? Going to the golf fund, there's been some changes to this fund in this slide. We've spent a lot of work. We've spent a lot of work, staff has, golf staff, and we engaged RAB. We've refined many revenue and expenditure line items. I'm happy to say that the fund is structurally balanced in 27 and 28. Revenues annually the next two years, 3.1 million to 3.3 million. Expenses, 3.1 to 3.2. Within those numbers, it does include a parse down, a refined capital improvement plan, so 160,000 in capital approximately over the next two years, and we do factor in some turn back. So one of the big drivers here was that we incorporated the latest RAB fee recommendations from their August 24th meeting. Those were great increases of 13.5% and 6.5% over the next two years. That does factor in a residence discount to align with the senior discount, and an annual pass increase in 27, depending on the pass, between 17% and 26%. If you recall on August 11th, council did direct staff to delay non-critical capital expenses. This work has been modeled in this forecast. Other capital refinement has yet to be modeled, will be at our next meeting. So you can see that capital investments were toggled down, revised down from 1.6 million to 600,000. So this dramatically changed the forecast from one seen previously. I'll just pause here for a second. You can see 2027, 3.1 million in revenues, 2.9 million in ongoing expenses, with 0.2 million in capital, or 160,000. 3.3 in ongoing revenues in 2028 projected, 3.0 in expenditures, and 100,000, $150,000 in capital. Again, this model does assume 13.5%, 6.5% increase over the next two years. a resident discount, and 17 to 26% annual season pass increases from the August 24th RAB meeting. Okay, the capital fund. I'll spend a little bit of time on this, although we'll roll up our sleeves and dive in deep at the September 22nd meeting. Council's direction at the August 11th meeting was to reduce the pavement budget by 2 million in 27-28 with no impacts to Marshall Fire-related road paving. This forecast has been updated for that. Council directed staff to further refine the 27 through 32 capital improvement plan for future budget discussions. This work is underway. It's not currently modeled. Staff is also concurrently evaluating the existing plan, which is robust, has 80 million, 180 projects. We're seeing some themes come out of there. We talked to this last time. IT costs. Decarb costs pavement and then balancing not withstand staff bandwidth and capacity Right now our total capital investments within that fund over 62 over 60 million and again one notable change from the budget retreat is the inclusion of the PROS project supervisor At the August 20th Finance Committee meeting, staff was asked to highlight some of the recent budgetary changes to the capital fund. Just a reminder, a refresher, that Parks Capital was shifted to the capital fund beginning in 2024. This is about $600,000 a year. Notably, the capital fund did historically provide support to Parks Capital projects, but now it provides more. We shifted police vehicles beginning in 2025 into the capital fund from the police operating budget. That was $160,000 annually. More recently, we have increased the volume of replacements from three to five. So that cost has gone up in the capital fund. We have shifted, beginning this current year, we did shift IT hardware allocations, these like computer replacement program from operating budgets into the capital fund. We're also seeing, and as we spoke last time, and as we will speak at the next meeting, just IT infrastructure, being shifted over to the capital fund and just taking more funding from the capital fund. These are things like tax administration, the police body cam, general data security, cloud backup and storage, and other multi-year agreements totaling over $1 million annually. Also, notably, that GASB statement 96 does require us to capitalize multi-year agreements that meet our capitalization threshold. So that's another thing that we do. A brief update on the capital refinement work. Finance staff and departments have met. and gone through the existing capital plan and their requested capital plan, and we are making progress. So I will show you a slide on the next one, a chart on the next one that will change at September 22nd. We've gone from over $400 million in our preliminary CIP to about $130 million. So a lot of refinement has been done on that fund, a lot of prioritization, and a lot of work from department heads, their staff, and city manager's office. Happy and excited to share that with you at the next meeting. So here is the latest capital fund forecast, but will be changing, is changing under refinement at our next presentation. A couple things to highlight here, just the changes since the budget retreat. We did reduce the paving program in these two years, and we are also evaluating the entire existing program, not only in the capital fund, but all funds as well. So that work will be presented to you at the next budget meeting. I believe this is the last fund, the last forecast you'll see this evening. August 11th direction for the consolidated utility funds was to shift the credit card fees to the customer. This has been modeled. This saves about $70,000 annually for the city. We have renegotiated and will retain a ACH e-check free option for customers to take advantage of. Notably, within this fund, bonding is likely needed, as you'll see in the next chart, to smooth out some large and significant capital projects. We will hold a public financing studying session for you all in the near future. Capital investments in the utility funds total over $67 million. So again, with significant capital expenditures on the horizon, these funds are not able to cover it on a cash flow basis, and we will be exploring financial options for the funds for those projects that have a life cycle that will benefit current and future residents. All right. So with most, all but the general fund, but staff is confident we'll be there, structurally balanced for 27 and 28, staff is now focusing our efforts in refining the 27 through 32 capital improvement program for your September 22nd meeting. After that meeting, staff will combine our operating and capital budgets together for the October 20th city manager final budget presentation. This keeps us on schedule for adoption Monday, November 2nd. Thank you for your time and attention. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Director, I appreciate that. And again, all the work that's gone into bringing it to the current state. I think what I'd like to do is, well, let's get council questions from council first, and then we'll go to the questions from the public. Anybody? Yes.

Council Member Cooperman. Thank you. So first I wanted to clarify, in some places this project supervisor is referred to as a parks project supervisor and in other places a pros. So is the intention that this staff member would work in all those different departments or just parks?

I believe it'll be more than just parks, but I'd have to look back at that form. So I believe it's a cross park project manager.

get nods wonderful how about page 247 of the packet there it looks like well at least what you've said is it impacts multiple funds golf fund general fund parks rec and open space is that

I'll get answers in just one moment.

That's fine. OK. My next question. So if you look at the financial forecast for the park fund, which is now looking a lot better, in the long term especially. So in 2027 and 2028, right now the revenues are a little bit higher than the expenses, right? So I'm wondering that extra $25,000 from the Conservation Trust Fund, is it really necessary anymore. I mean, especially because when you look out farther, that transfer becomes insufficient to balance the fund anyway. So, you know, do we have, yeah, I don't know. What do you think?

Council Member Kirkman, that's a great question. It's definitely, you know, these forecasts are moving along the way. So what I would say is that establishing the appropriations for me to do a transfer up to $25,000 would still be useful as these numbers are moving and we're funding our budget. One thing that I do for many of our transfers, I actualize them or effectuate them at the end of the year. So what I could do for this transfer is only transfer what is actually necessary. at the end of the year. Right. So I would recommend leaving the appropriations at that level and then you can give me the direction or I can infer that I should not transfer in excess of what is needed into that fund.

Okay. That's very helpful. One other question about the parks fund. So on the slide it talks about current and future needs that are not met. So the list looks kind of like capital projects, but would you say that these needs are more operational or capital?

Councilmember Cooper, I would say both. Okay. Certainly operational when you add more parkscape, streetscapes and the like, you're going to need folks to maintain them. So both. That's fine.

Okay. Okay. So then I had a little question about open space. So the slide doesn't say anything about turn back for open space. Is that just an omission or is there not usually turn back for that fund?

Council member Cooper, there is, I believe I removed it from the slide just due to space constraints.

Okay. That's perfectly fine. Um, and then, um, So the open space, the long-term forecast also looks improved, which is great. I'm wondering, you know, can we let that acquisition fund ceiling go up a little bit more because now the outlook is better?

Certainly up to council's direction on this one. I would answer yes, there's clearly room when you see the purple bar acquisition reserve at 2 million at the end of the forecast and 1 million in just operational reserve for the fund. So you've got 3 million projected at the end. By policy, you have to maintain at least that orange bar, which is half a million. So you could toggle that. You could increase the top, the cap. I would just say that the green bar could be used for acquisition. It could be used for more than just that. So I don't necessarily think it's something you have to do, but you could give me that direction.

OK. Thank you. OK. And then in the golf fund, which also is looking much better, One little question, because the revenues are now, well, with those fee adjustments, the revenues are now much better. Could we think about bringing back any of the capital investments that have maybe been curtailed?

Council Member Corbin, that's a great question for probably Director Blackmore to address. We have discussed a lot of the capital needs. I feel like he's pretty confident with where we are today. You'll note that we've got some capital in the early years and less in the outer years. It's definitely something we'll be monitoring over the next six years. So as we're refining the capital program, we could definitely evaluate that with Director Blackmore. But... where we landed today was after some significant work, so.

OK, that's fine. Thank you very much.

Other questions? Yes, member Tim.

Council member Cooperman asked a number of my questions, but I have one more about the golf fund and It's okay if we have to take this offline because I'm toggling back and forth between The memo from Rab and the projections and then the projections today. I believe based on the memo from Rab it included the same increases, right? 13.5, 6.5, and then the 17 to 26% pass increase. So can you remind me how the projections improved so much from that memo to here, if everything else was similar?

Yes, Pro Tem. Let me kick that one over to Deputy Director James Franks, who has been deep in on this one and can answer your question.

Thank you. Certainly. Thank you. We started by refining the 2026 revenues. Those early projections were based on early data in a fund that is very seasonal as far as revenue and expenses. So as we got more data, we refined those and notably made some decreases in expenses. But factoring in the green fee increases as posed by rab in that most recent read committee meeting. Essentially what we did was we recognize that we need to generate about 13 and a half percent increase in revenue to meet our minimum reserve in the 2728 and the direction from rab was to take existing fees at a bout 15% of them and then benchmark them against Other courses in the area and so in doing that you'll see in some of that recommendation that some of the fees may be lower than that 13.5% some of them may be more, but that is the aggregate effect on green fees and totem and so just factoring those in and then dialing it back a bit for they did carve out a. resident rate via the senior rate Extending that rate to residents. So we ruled a little bit of that revenue increase back but taking all those factors into account the increased revenues for 26 some refined expenses for 26 and moving forward and then those projected increases for green fees the those in addition to the stripping of the CIP plan, really push the fund from deeply in the negative to kind of in a surplus position to, as Director Bailey alluded to earlier, kind of take a look at the CIP plan maybe next year and refine what that capital investment for this fund could kind of look like.

Okay, thank you.

I just wanted to clarify something, which I think is probably relatively clear but may not be for everyone. To keep us above that 15 percent threshold pretty steadily, we're not talking about or we are excluding any major capital expenditures like a new clubhouse or other kinds of major expenditures, is that right?

Correct. Those larger capital expenditures have been taken out. Even some of the course improvement things have been rolled back temporarily for further evaluation. A good example of that would be the bunker renovation project that is partially funded for 26 and then i believe it's in 27 for the unfunded list as well so that project i think golf's plan is to kind of try and piecemeal attack that in stages and then further evaluate revenues when we've got a more clear picture of where the fund stands okay thank you

Sorry, now I have to follow up on the Mayor Pro Tem's question. So I went and pulled up the RAB memo, and it looks like the operation expense had been pulled down since the memo from, like, we got up, I think, Friday or Thursday of last week. That's an adjustment that's been made since then? Correct. And what's the savings?

I'll turn this over to my deputy, but I would say we have modeled this fund more than any other fund. We've gone through the expenses multiple times. Furthermore, we've refined current year projections on revenues and expenses that do compound through the model. So while I give them a moment to look into exactly what that was, my suspicion was we trued up, evaluated our revenues for 2026, which would then change the model run through, as well as current year and future expenses. But I'll turn it over.

Yes, certainly. One of the large changes that we saw was a rollback. We had initially proposed an increase to align the variable expenses to $120,000. It was going to increase $120,000 a year to align with $24,000 and $25,000. Further data from this year refined that to an increase of only $85,000. So that's $35,000 a year in savings that compounds through the model. In addition, the golf contractors that were generating some of the lesson revenue that was revised down was adjusted as well. Initial adjustment was about 45,000, I believe, and then that adjustment actually revised that expense down 70,000. So, again, that's an additional 25,000 that kind of aggregates through the model.

Thank you.

Actually, and I will also note the removal of the PROS deputy director position, which was in previous models. But actually, it was not in the RAB model. So that is an adjustment, but not from the RAB recommendation.

Got it. one follow-up question, which is in terms of revenue for golf, is it assuming that the recommendations of RAB are accepted on fees?

Correct. This modeling does assume those recommendations of the rates presented by RAB do go in effect for 2027.

And I I did my understanding is they had kind of multiple meetings on that I don't know that you is that right.

Yes, we had several rad meetings a couple of subcommittee meetings where we kind of refined some of the modeling we looked at. We looked at I would say from 4 to 6 different models and in each of those meetings really kind of targeting in and helping them understand what kind of changes needed to be made to make this the fun solvent.

Good. If we don't have any other questions from council, why don't we take public comment? It looks like we have at least one.

First up is Cindy Larson. Hi, can you hear me?

Yes. Oh, this is Cindy Bedell. Cindy Larson is my email. I just wanted to say I hope we can maintain the $5 million reserve and keep open space acquisition a priority. And I have a few points I'd like to reiterate. So the proposed budget would lower open space acquisition as a priority and reverses last year's commitment to a $5 million, not a $2 million. reserve funded by voter approved open space tax. So voters want this to be open space to be a priority. Open space fund is structurally sound through 2028 with revenues covering uses capital costs and the annual 300,000 acquisition set aside. Parks is receiving substantial general fund and CTF support, while open space is told to more or less live within its means. So this creates an uneven approach to the two programs, which are funded by the same sales tax. Council has multiple tools to stabilize the open space fund without reducing acquisition readiness, including reallocating staff costs, adding CTF support, using GF capital for OS projects, retaining OS turn back, and allocating some of the empire sales gains to the acquisition fund. So a combination of these steps would fully resolve the long range model concerns with keeping acquisitions strong. Open space is one of the most desirable factors people continually say about Louisville. Once the land is developed, it's gone forever. So we really need to keep acquisition a high priority and maintain that $5 million reserve target. I also want to say, just to remind everyone, that if we use partnerships for acquisition, we can really maximize our city acquisition budget. And we have a history of that, working with Boulder County, working with Lafayette, and maybe even some private partners. That's what I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Cindy. Any others?

No.

Okay. Good. Back to council for discussion and direction. I wanted to at least give a nod, if not more than that, to the questions that were raised by the director that he wanted to have answered by us. And then there obviously may be other questions and comments for council members to make. If you could put that slide up on the screen, Director, that would be helpful to us. If there's any, it's really a question of whether we support those, right? Go ahead.

Yeah, I'll just maybe start by saying we did look at these in finance. I think there was support on the Finance Committee for all of these. I know some of them had BEEN DISCUSSED BY COUNCIL. I THINK THE FIRST TWO HAD NOT. YOU KNOW, OBVIOUSLY WE'LL TAKE THE INSURANCE SAVINGS WE CAN GET I THINK WAS THE SENTIMENT WE HAD. THE OTHER COMMENT I WANTED TO MAKE ON THE CAPITAL FUND SIDE, I JUST THINK IT'S REALLY SIGNIFICANT. that we've moved in the last, since 2024, we've moved more than $2 million of recurring expense that used to live in other funds into the capital fund, which is about a $10 million a year fund. And so we're talking about 20, 25% of our capital fund being absorbed by these other projects all of which are you know they're good expenses we should keep them it makes sense to use the capital fund for them but but we should keep in the front of our minds that you know a lot of the way we've been solving BUDGET TIGHTNESS IS BY MOVING THINGS FROM OPERATING FUNDS INTO THE CAPITAL FUNDS. AND IF WE CONTINUE TO USE THAT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS, IT WILL EVENTUALLY BECOME HARD TO USE THE CAPITAL FUND FOR OTHER THINGS. I DON'T THINK WE'RE THERE YET AND CERTAINLY WE'RE FINDING SAVINGS IN PAVEMENT AND OTHER PLACES. As we look at I think it's relevant to this side as we look at other areas for savings We shouldn't feel like we're out of the woods.

A lot of the problem-solving we've done has just been moving expenses to elsewhere Other comments Let me follow up on that one the prost or deputy director position I Just can you clarify, when you see $270,000, or $270,000, $207,000 in savings, tell us how you mean what the savings actually consists of.

Yes, Mayor. So in prior models up through the budget retreat, we had the PROS deputy director position funded. That's the fully loaded position for deputy director inclusive of health benefits and retirement and FICA. So that's the fully loaded. And it was apportioned or split over those 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 funds. So a number of those funds. in addition to the insurance adjustments, needed further cost reduction to get to balancing. And so that unfunded position, unfunding it from previous models to this one, resulted in that savings across those funds. While I'm on this slide, the next position, the PROS project supervisor, and my apologies for calling the parks one earlier, it's for all of the PROS divisions. So the next bullet is not a parks project supervisor, but a PROS project supervisor.

Thank you for clarifying that. And with that being said, can you help me understand the process behind the decision to not distribute the cost across those funds and instead shift it to the capital entirely?

Many of parks, Mayor Pro Tem, many of the parks capital projects do land in the capital fund. So it would make sense for it to carry that burden. proportionally. And also, you know, from a balancing act standpoint, it is a fund that can bear those costs, whereas some of the other ones would be challenging. So it's sort of a way of getting this position over the finish line.

If I could add to that. So, and Brian Weber's online and he did confirm that this position will be overseeing multiple projects throughout the entire department. Funding staff that oversee projects is I think somewhat standard practice that they are funded by the projects through the capital fund. This is done for utility staff, the engineers in public works, Brian Weber's current position is funded largely out of capital fund, and so this is standard practice that you would charge the positions that oversee those specific projects to the projects.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.

Other comments? Council Member Cooperman.

JUST TWO COMMENTS. I DO QUITE LIKE THE DIRECTOR'S SUGGESTION THAT WE ONLY TRANSFER SORT OF AS MUCH FROM THE CONSERVATION TRUST FUND AS IS NECESSARY TO THE PARKS FUND. THAT'S ONE COMMENT. AND THEN THE OTHER ONE WOULD BE ON THE CAP FOR THE OPEN SPACE ACQUISITION FUND, YOU KNOW, ON THE ONE over the number of years that are modeled, I don't think we would even reach 5 million. So it's a little bit of a, I don't know, a little bit of a moot point. But I guess I'm, I don't know, I'm a little bit interested in maybe pushing up the cap from 2 million. And then, yeah, I don't really know how much, but, you know, to certainly maintain, of course, a healthy balance. But, yeah, but to continue to put a little bit more into that fund.

Thank you. I'm not ready at this point in time to make a decision if we should change that cap for the acquisition, but I'd be open to seeing some projections about what the fund would look like if we were to change the target for acquisition.

Member Haffner. I would just add my back of the envelope here, which is the minimum at the end of our projection period is about 500K. The fund balance is about a million. So I think there's about 500K of headroom. If you very carefully distributed it through the years, maybe you could get to two and a half, which to me doesn't feel that dramatically different than two.

Yes, Council Member Kern.

Yeah, and I'd also like to add, as the Finance Director was stating, the funds can be used for acquisition. Should the right opportunity come before this Council, I don't think that we will turn down a good acquisition opportunity just because it would exceed that fund balance in the next couple of years. I'm fairly certain that the rest of the, or the Finance Committee would share that. Maybe it feels like there's some sentimental value toward seeing in the longer term there could be more money. I think what people would rather see is that we actually buy some open space land with the dedicated $2 million and then continue to replenish it personally.

Council Member Cooperman.

I just had one more comment. I mean, I'm not really wedded to this idea. in part because what I didn't say before, or maybe should have, is, you know, even over the, right, we're setting a two-year budget, and over the two years, we're not going to hit that max, even if it's $2 million. So the question is, again, like, it doesn't really matter for this budget cycle, in a sense.

Yeah, so it's not crucial, but... Looks like we've got a comment or question from... He's not a congressman, not yet anyway. Councilman Dickinson.

Um, yeah, I just wanted to add that on that issue of the. Open space fund that. Again, if we, if we spend it, I don't think we ever want the fund balance to be 5Million. That means we're not spending the money. Right? So, I don't think the goal is to save up, save up, save up till we have 5Million. and can only spend it on acquisition. We can't spend it on, let's say, open space maintenance or other preservation. And so if we're actively using that acquisition fund, it's another reason it won't build up to even $2 million or $5 million. So I have no problem with a $2 million goal and kind of like alarm bells should be going off if we have $2 million and we have not figured out how to spend it. So I'm comfortable with it.

Okay, I'll just say with that then I don't I personally don't think staff need to spend time making projections you can Cross that off your list. There you go.

Thank you Other comments Any comments apart from the direction that's been asked of us and a couple of issues that we've discussed dropped or discussed today. Again really appreciate the work that you all have done. because this is just a big lift. It's been a big lift for us up on the dais too, but coming up with the numbers that you've come up with and continue to refine over time, we really appreciate that. And it's good to know, you know, the information that you've been able to glean since our last discussions on this is really important because some bits of information have come in on different aspects of insurance and other kinds of costs that I think are really important to factor in. So, thanks. Any other comments before we close this out for today? Maybe one last question for the city manager if she has anything to add or

I just want to say thank you. I want to say thank you to council for the time and effort to get us to this point. To the finance team, they've done a fantastic job. The department head staff. And then also the public input. You can tell from what's been presented. Council and staff have taken the comments from the public. seriously, and I'm excited about the September 22nd capital discussion, as exciting as these long-range forecasts were tonight. You know, the capital forecast conversation is going to be a great conversation, and I You know, I'm happy with the direction that we're going, and with this theme of transitional budget years, I'm looking forward to working with Council on, you know, some of the more policy-related items to help have a long-term, stable budget. Thank you.

The last thing I would say is I do want to call out, especially on Council, the members of the Finance Committee. Council Member Hafner is the chair. Councilmember Cooperman and the Mayor Pro Tem, I think they've done a very, very good job at asking and helping along the refinement and asking good questions. And I think we'd be remiss if we didn't recognize their input, too. So anyway, all right. Thank you very much. All right. We can move on to 2026 council work plan update and 2027 work plan discussion.

So mayor, before we go to that item, I just want to check with council. Would you like to swap the next two items on the agenda? I know that we have Rob here and doing this item next would give him a chance to leave. And then also I know we have the applicant here. And so, um, Would you like to swap or continue as planned?

I would move for us to change the agenda to swap out those two. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you for the suggestion.

Would you like me to proceed?

Director?

Okay, yeah. Good evening, Mayor Lay, members of City Council, Rob Zuccaro with the Community Development Department. I'll be making the presentation on a lot consolidation plat for 1006 and 1008 Honeysuckle Lane. This was continued from the August 4th meeting. Staff did identify a note on the PUD that we needed to investigate to see if it was a regulatory note related to lot size. We have looked at that closely and determined that there are no maximum lot size regulations related to the Centennial 8 PUD. So nothing has changed from staff's recommendation from the August 4th meeting. But getting into the actual proposal here, there are two lots that were impacted by the Marshall Fire. in the Centennial 8 neighborhood, lot 35 and lot 36. So the applicant owned one of those lots prior to the fire, has rebuilt, and is interested in purchasing and consolidating the adjoining lot into a single lot. It is zoned residential estate, RE. And then I wanted to note that this wouldn't be our first lot consolidation in a Marshall Fire impacted neighborhood. There was a lot consolidation in the Enclave neighborhood that took place in 2023 as well. So staff has reviewed this against the minor subdivision procedures. The proposed lot would be 13,077 square feet, have 150 feet of lot width. So those meet all of the minimums within the RE. zoning district. The applicant has stated that the purpose of the subdivision is to have one larger lot to increase the space for a garden, play area, and to support future plans for an ADU on the property. So here's just an image of the lot consolidation plat, eliminating again that lot line so that it would become one new larger lot. And then here's some images from the applicant of the home and the potential future ADU that would be constructed next to it. So staff finds that the application meets the criteria for a final plat. It's meeting the applicable zoning requirements, subdivision design standards. A note on the zoning standards, the smaller lots have a lot coverage limitation of 30%. So that's the... footprint of all structures on the lot. There is a maximum in that zone district. With the new lot size, that goes down to 20%. So there could be up to 3,000 square feet of lot coverage within that zone district. If they were to build an ADU, that actually goes up to 3,500 because the ADUs, there's an allowance for another 500 square feet. Staff did look at compatibility with the neighborhood. This would be the largest lot in the neighborhood, but with the higher percentage, the highest lot coverage we would see with the next largest lot in the neighborhood would be 2,700 square feet. So if this were approved, they could have 3,000 square feet of lot coverage. So it is the highest amount of lot coverage in the neighborhood, but it would be 300 square feet, which in staff's view was not significantly larger than the next largest allowed lot coverage in the neighborhood. They would need to make one public improvement, which is to install a new water line to 1006 Honeysuckle Lane as a public improvement. as a public improvement. That might be wrong. It might be to eliminate it. I'm not sure. I'd have to get more information on that. But there may be some public improvements related to that. So the Planning Commission recommended approval of this. They reviewed it on June 11th at a public hearing. They voted unanimously to recommend approval. Staff's recommending approval of Resolution 72, approving the lot consolidation plat for 1006 and 1008 Honeysuckle Lane. I'd be happy to answer any questions. The applicant is here this evening as well. I don't know if he has a presentation, but he's here at least for questions.

Thanks.

Does it look like there's any presentation? Are there council questions about this item? Yes, Councilmember Cooperman.

One question. So the application materials were dated in January. and we approved our current comprehensive plan in March. Some of the criteria for evaluating this draw on the comprehensive plan. Are we supposed to draw on the current comprehensive plan or the comprehensive plan that was in place when the application was submitted?

So I think it would probably be appropriate to draw on the currently adopted comprehensive plan in your review.

Okay. And then that leads to a follow-up question. No? Okay.

It would be the rules in effect at the time that the application was made. So if the application was made in January, you said the application materials were dated in January. That doesn't mean they were filed with the city in January.

I don't know the actual filing date, so I'd have to review that to get back to you on that and see when it was actually filed then in relation to the adoption of the competency plan. And thank you for the clarification to the attorney on the applicability.

Okay. I feel like that makes a pretty big difference.

Does the director want to confer briefly with the applicant about that?

I submitted the application, but the initial agreement with the city was, I believe, in October of 25.

So I don't know when I formally submitted, but I know that I had a pre-application meeting with my department, and they had my application immediately filled out in October.

Okay, so I'd have to go back to my computer to confirm the application date. I think it's likely that it was submitted under the previous comprehensive plan. So we could look at the previous comprehensive plan policies. I don't have that whole document memorized. I'm not aware of anything that would impact this application, but If Council needs us to, we could look into the previous comprehensive plan to see if there are any compliance issues with that comprehensive plan. And I'd be curious if there is anything in particular under the old comprehensive plan that may be relevant, or if you just need a thorough review.

No. I was going, you know, if we were to judge it against the current comprehensive plan, that was going to raise some extra questions for me. With the previous comprehensive plan, I think I don't have those questions.

Other council questions? All right. Any public comment on this? Doesn't appear to be any, so back to council. Yes, council member Heffner.

Yeah, I move to approve resolution number 72, series 2026. Second.

Any further discussion?

Yes. Just as an item for all of us, this is the kind of thing that when we do our land use code rewrite, I hope we can not have to send through staff, planning commission, and city council review to lighten the load on the applicants.

You beat me to my comment, Council Member Heffner.

Nevertheless, we are voting on your motion, your motion only right now. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We'll move on to the Council work plan update for 2026 and the 2027 work plan discussion.

See enough? Can you please assist me to bring it up?

Sometimes you just have to move it over.

Thank you. Good evening, Council. So the item before you tonight is the update of the 2026 work plan and then an introduction of the 2027 work plan. With this introduction, the intent is to get initial Council feedback. We can then revise depending upon you know, the number of revisions that council is requesting, we would bring it back for review or we could bring it back for adoption. If you recall, the 2026 work plan required quite a bit of back and forth. And so we will take your lead in terms of this plan. In terms of the presentation for tonight, would you prefer to go through the 2026 plan and the current status of the different items, or would you prefer to go directly to the proposed 2027 plan?

I guess I would propose that you go through the 2026 update just to sort of let us know and let the public know what our progress has been.

All right. All right, so Council has four priorities that they've identified, economic vitality, core services, safety, and housing. As we start with the economic vitality items, the comprehensive plan was completed. The downtown vision plan for streetscapes and public places, this is really the front and center project. As you know, we are in the midst of design for that project, so it is in progress. We anticipate construction starting next year, most likely in early spring with a completion in 2028. In terms of economic vitality policy recommendations, those are ongoing. This year, EVC evaluated the 2025 business survey, made a recommendation to council related to the short-term rental festival license ordinance for Sundance, which was approved by council in April. The targeted development code and process amendments, this is ongoing. This includes your work related to the inclusionary housing ordinance, which is coming back before council on September 15th. For the development code rewrite, we anticipate bringing forward a contract award for the consultant also on September 15th. This project will take between 18 months to two years. During that time, we will have deliverables that will be coming before council for consideration. The next item is the Sundance Film Festival. Again, Council approved the short-term rental ordinance, and then we would be continuing as 2027 is the first year in Boulder. We will evaluate the impacts on Louisville. And then with McCaslin Corridor, we've had Economic Vitality and Sustainability staff engaging with the businesses along the corridor regarding city business assistance programs, and then also sustainability programs that are available. Any questions related to economic vitality items? Okay. Next is core services. So we have the pros long range plan and trails plan. This was brought before council recently in draft format. We'll be bringing it back for council consideration for adoption at a future meeting. The website update was just launched. And so that is a project that's completed other than ongoing tweaks that need to be made as we receive comments from users of the website. The wastewater treatment plant expansion, we continue to work with Sterling Bay on the Red Tail Ridge Improvement Project, which includes the expansion of the wastewater treatment facility. Currently, we are working on the submittal package to be submitted to CDPHE. We're hoping to have that submitted this year with a goal of receiving the permit late next year so we can start construction. For transportation infrastructure, we have the work on the Front Range Passenger Rail. And so we have the station in Louisville. And then also Front Range Passenger Rail announced last Friday that they are proceeding forward with a ballot measure for a sales tax. And then also we continue to collaborate on the Future 42 project. This project will reach its limit in terms of funding that's currently available. And so with the completion of the design, I think it's about the 60% level, this project will likely go on a shelf until additional funding is identified. And in terms of advocacy, Council adopted your legislative agenda in January, and then Council continues to do additional advocacy efforts related to RMMA operations. You're successful in the RTD Route 228 operations. And then also, we submitted a letter related to OMB's proposed revisions to CFR Part 200. Next is the biennial budget and capital improvement program. So you just had the presentation on the budget. We anticipate adoption on November 2nd. The next item is the Excel franchise agreement. This is in progress. As noted to you before in a weekly update, we are waiting to receive the draft from Excel. Once we receive that, we will review it, engage with council to let you know what they're proposing as part of it, and then also get considerations for what should be considered. For core services, as part of this budget process, we have recommended some initial service level reductions. This work will continue in the transitional budget years for 2027 and 2028. For strategic planning, the comp plan, the post plan, all fall into that. You also have cultural services working on a strategic plan, which will come forward to council, I would anticipate, within the next three to four months. Historic preservation tax completed. Council placed a ballot measure on the November 2026 ballot to consider extension of the tax. Parks and open space initiatives. This is one item that's no activity. The integrated weed management plan update and other open space planning documents are recommended to be deferred to 2028 due to funding and staff capacity. These are part of the changes that have been addressed as part of the CIP based upon funding availability, staff capacity. Also, I would note that I think we're nearing study fatigue. In terms of, you know, you've had major lifts with the comp plan, the post plan, you're going to be considering the cultural services strategic plan. You know, this is something that we did not start in this year, nor do we anticipate starting these items in 2027. Environmental sustainability initiatives, you received the wedge analysis presentation in June. The sustainable networks pilot program is launching in September. It's unfunded for 2027. And then the commercial sustainability rebate program launched. The Cultural Services Strategic Planning Initiative, as I noted, that is ongoing. There have been multiple public engagements. There's a survey that's closing. And then Cultural Services, this is a document they are drafting in-house, and then that will be brought before council for consideration. Consideration of potential charter amendments, this is completed in terms of placing on the agenda or the ballot for November. Future considerations would be, do you want to have a more formalized process for ongoing consideration of charter amendments? Image and video capture policy, this is in progress. This is coming before council on November 17th for discussion direction. Funding options, this is also in progress with a public financing study session that is being coordinated for the first quarter of 2027. The impact fee evaluation is in progress. We contracted with Tischler Weiss. We are underway with the analysis of our impact fees. We will be developing an impact fee committee that will be before council. at some point in time, and then community engagement framework. This is another ongoing item. We discussed this at our retreat earlier this year, and it's scheduled to come back for discussion direction on November 10th. Any questions on the core services items?

Just one question from my perspective, which is on the impact fees. We haven't really talked about this, and maybe I'm just jumping the gun. I just can't remember whether we've been thinking about having two members of council sitting on that.

You are jumping the gun.

All right.

That is part of the discussion related to the impact fee subcommittee.

We'll wait on it.

Okay.

I withdraw my question.

Okay. We'll move on next to safety items. So we had under safety building the foundation with potential study session topics. This is an item that has been no activity. The topics that were identified while we have accomplished specific items under these specific topics, we have not had study sessions related to these specific topics. On preparedness, we've joined Boulder ODM. We completed the home hardening educational materials, and then in progress is establishing an IGA with the Boulder County Sheriff's Office for wildfire mitigation services. The WUI and fire risk reduction initiative, this is completed. So council adopted the WUI code in April. You also adopted an updated home hardening code for Class B decking in June. The ODM buy-in is completed. So cell coverage, I'll go into more detail related to cell coverage as part of the proposed 2027 plan. I will note that we do have an item scheduled in October, which would be phase one of our three-phased plan for cell coverage. Related to traffic safety, this is in progress. So PD was conducting over the summer an enhanced traffic safety campaign. We also have an e-bike discussion direction item scheduled for October 27th with council, in which Chief Gutierrez will have some recommendations for you. And then completed, PD launched their motorcycle program in July. And then Public Works has added raised crosswalks at various locations within the city, including on Jefferson, Main, and then also on Polk. Any questions related to the safety items? Go ahead.

Did we initially have defensible space as something to try to work through this year?

We had that as part of a follow-up to the WUI code adoption. We do have that included on the 2027 work plan. As we look ahead to the remainder of 2026, The council agenda forecast is getting very packed, and it's something that we need to continue to work on with the Louisville Fire Protection District. I would also say with the work that's proposed with FireSmart Louisville and the Boulder Watershed Collective, that's going to help to also inform related to defensible space. Sure.

Thank you.

Okay, the remaining item is the housing policy. So potential city initiated rezoning. This is in progress. This was one of the items that was completed was the specific rezoning related to the Coble proposed affordable housing project in Centennial Valley. That was a city initiated rezoning project based upon that application. Next, we have potential property acquisition or project contribution for the creation of affordable housing. This is in progress. So we supported the COBOL project, which was not successful in receiving the Prop 123 grant. We do have an Affordable Housing Strategic Framework Phase 2 presentation. presentation scheduled for Council on September 15th. We have two additional projects to discuss with Council. One would be the Penrose project. The other would be the Kestrel project that's being managed by the Housing Authority. For Prop 123 compliance, this resolution is scheduled for council consideration on October 20th, as we have a deadline in November to have this completed. As part of that resolution, it also addresses the next item related to expedited building permit review that's required under the Prop 123 requirements. And then with the housing plan, it's in progress. You have the inclusionary housing ordinance update And then, which is part of the affordable housing strategic framework. And then finally on this item is the affordable housing strategic framework and funding prioritization, which is a little bit of repetitive of the previous item. But the first presentation to council was December 2nd, 2025. And we have our additional presentation that's scheduled for later this month. Any questions on the affordable housing item? Okay. I just want to reflect, going through this 2026 work plan, It's easy to lose sight of everything that's been accomplished and everything that Council has taken on in 2026. And I think that this reflects the tremendous amount of work that Council and staff have done to really focus on Council's priorities while you've also managed day-to-day, as well as additional items that have come before Council. Just want to say thank you because this is a reflection of a tremendous amount of hard work. All right. So moving on to 2027.

Can I have you pause for just a minute? Because I wanted to do a little bit of framing before we go into this. Because this is, first, it's an ongoing discussion and we can talk about what the next step is as we get into it. I do want to say several things. First, as the city manager's discussion of 2026 work plan indicates we're keeping both close tabs on this from a council and a staff standpoint. It really is an incredibly meaningful document. I do remember work plans in the past that were not as closely followed or referred to in our meetings and I've really appreciated the discipline of both the council and the staff in helping us with that and I think I would again be remiss if I didn't mention the deputy city manager who really really pushed us and pushed the staff to be in sync on these and to have the council informed by staff and the council properly directing staff on this, or at least giving them a sense of what was going on. Second, there are a number of items that are ongoing And we'll talk about that, I think, as we go. But that's something to keep in mind when we're thinking about staff constraints on some of these things. I think the third thing is that there have been some comments on council or different council members wondering about whether we could potentially reduce the number of meetings over the course of a month, maybe either to not have Some meetings or maybe to swap them out like a regular or special council meeting for a study session And I think that's something we can keep in mind as we go through all of this as well.

So with that Pass it back to you Thank you before I get into the specifics of this plan. I just want to note that you you know, we continue to have two lenses through which we're supposed to review these projects. And that would be EDI and then sustainability. So as I go through these, I'd like to keep that in the back of Council's mind as we're evaluating this. And then also, are the four priorities still the same priorities that Council shares? Do we need additional categories? Are there things that we are missing? Or are there things that we need to call out as part of the description of these items? So I just want to set that as the stage as I moved into this next discussion. Okay. So again, starting out with economic vitality, just note that I felt good to cross out the comp plan as completed. I'm sure it feels really good for community development to see that completed. So the downtown vision plan for streetscapes and public places. So again, that's the front center project. Construction is anticipated to start in 2027 with completion in 2028. This is going to be a major lift for public works. I would also say economic vitality as a liaison with the downtown businesses. And so we anticipate this to require a lot of staff focus. Next would be the Economic Vitality Committee Policy Recommendations. As part of EVC's work for 2027, we anticipate reviewing the first year of Sundance with the festival's impact on Louisville and any work required in advance of the 2028 Sundance Film Festival, and then also discuss and identify any business support measures required during construction of the front and center project. Next would be we were proposing to strike out targeted development code and process amendment. As we move to the development code rewrite, we really want to focus staff's time on that overall rewrite. We would like input from council in terms of are there priority items that you would like to consider first that we can work with the consultant to figure out scheduling and how we bring that to council. But we want to move away from these targeted development code rewrites that would take us away from that overall rewrite. Next of course is the development code rewrite. The next item is Sundance Film Festival. This would be continuing to partner with neighboring communities to identify needs and opportunities after the first year and then bring forward council policy and resource allocation considerations. We're proposing to cross out McCaslin Corridor. We're recommending removal of this item and add an item to consider new urban renewal areas in Louisville, of which the McCaslin Corridor could be one of those areas for consideration. And so we've added a new item related to consideration of new urban renewal areas. When we had the joint meeting with council and LRC, this was identified as an item that both would like to explore. And so we want to add that to the work plan. Any questions on economic vitality? Are we missing any important initiatives?

Council Member Cooperman.

Yeah. The one that we crossed out on the McCausland corridor, you know, on the one hand, like, if this is not something that we're going to address in the next year, I think it's fine to cross out. I just feel like with a variety of different things happening along that corridor, that there might be some room to think big about what could go on there. And whether or not that should start next year or not, I don't know. But it's something that has been on my mind for a while.

Yes, so something to consider. We're anticipating an application from Coble to rezone some of their properties to residential. We also have the CU Boulder project that's along that corridor. So as we were contemplating this item, Part of our consideration was why are we calling out McCaslin specifically? And if we're going to keep it, what is it that council wants us to specifically do for the corridor outside of considering an urban renewal area? We'll be working with, you know, as I said, Coble on potentially rezoning with CU Boulder. So if there's interest in keeping it, we would like to understand from council, what is it specifically that you want us to be doing that's maybe outside of those projects?

I don't know exactly. I mean, the one kind of thought I had was I don't know, like some kind of advisory group or something like that or a task force that would sort of, I don't know, would draw from these different, well, first of all, from these different projects that are going on, but then would also just draw from existing residences and businesses in the area to think about Like what kind of synergies are there? What could we do more than just these pocket projects? Maybe not, maybe pocket is the wrong word. You know, along that whole stretch of Louisville. I don't know.

To the point, I have similar concerns as Council Member Cooperman, but I take the point that you're making, City Manager. I think considering it as a potential area for urban renewal may be something that will be good. I don't hesitate to speculate about whether the entire area is blighted. I think That's a whole other issue. But to the issue that Council Member Coopman was making, One of the things that EVC does is discuss these kinds of issues. And I think in addition to some of the other ones that the city manager talked about, I think this is probably one that we may be able to do in some respects more informally, more surgically, as opposed to creating a whole new thing. I mean, we can talk about that at some point, but that may be one way of bubbling up some recommendations to council for further action, consideration, and so forth. Yes, Council Member Heffner.

I agree. I just want to check. Are we doing questions now or discussion now? Because I have other discussion, but I thought we were doing questions.

Very good question. We're kind of getting into I'm violating my own rule, which was never a really good idea. Any other questions that folks have?

Yes. Actually, I would like to just see if you don't mind if we make a procedural recommendation that maybe by section we do questions and conversation. It seems to be more fruitful for the discussion when we're able to kind of engage, just as Councilmember Cooperman had a couple of questions, but then that led to some interesting dialogue that I think helps further our conversation. The other comment is actually about the EVC and the I do not like the word corridor. It implies it is a drive-through. That is not it. It is a residential and business region of our community. It is not a corridor. I've had this pet peeve for 30 years. So you actually are in a, the city's in a unique situation given that the two members of council, two of the members who are on the EVC happen to live and one specifically directly on McCaslin. We live, eat, sleep, breathe everything about McCaslin, the community that's along there. And we are very, and, and Council Member Vahey has been for a long time really active with the businesses specifically. Because the one thing that we hear over and over, especially from the residents on the west side of town, is please have a more activated space. Get our retail back. Those kinds of things. And so this is something that we really do frequently discuss, even if it's not an isolated big agenda item at EVC. It almost comes up every single month.

Good point about the procedural order. The problem is, I suppose, the public comment. We haven't really gone through the entire work plan document. We could, I suppose, take public comment on what we have gone through and on the materials that are in in the packet already i don't know whether um i'm inclined to um i'm inclined to do that actually um tonight just uh but i'd be interested in what others think if uh rather hear the entire presentation by the manager on the 2027 plan then do public comment and then do the discussion um that's fine but i think We probably need to figure out where we're going to get the public comment in. Thoughts?

I'm fine to, as long as we're doing one round of public comment, I'm fine to do it now. and then we can just have our discussion section by section.

Yeah, I think Councilmember Kern makes a really good point. Do we have any comments, public comment on the progress that's been made on the 2026 plan or the 2027 plan that is part of the packet today? Looks like not. So let's go forward with that and talk about the... this section. Do you want to pick it up?

One of the things that I hope we can do sort of broadly with the work plan is find ways to delegate things either to boards and commissions or to staff where there are not substantial new policy choices to be made. And moreover, rely on our expert boards and commissions where there is sort of policy development to be done, but not a decision to be made yet. In that vein, for this section, I would personally try and push as much of the Sundance stuff to EVC as we possibly can. And certainly if there are budget actions we need to take or policies we need to consider, we we should leave some time for that. But I think the bulk of the work is probably done in a more nimble body. Similarly for front and center, I think we've provided a lot of good input. And although I think there will be final approvals that we necessarily have to do, I am comfortable giving as much of that work as we can to LRC. Especially the sort of business impact type stuff and other operational Type activities push that to LRC or EVC if that's more appropriate And try and reserve our time for the the big policy choice Yeah, I actually I kind of agree with that I think

We have staff dedicated already to help us during those meetings, and it may be more possible to get input from Chamber, DBA, and business owners in that environment. the EVC environment versus the full council meetings where also we have you know the tire like CMO staff and it's at night so I agree I think that that might be a more effect and then we can bring back if there's like substantive recommendations bring that back to the rest of council and see if everybody likes the direction and it could be much faster council member Fahey

Yes, I agree with just what's been said. I think it's really important to engage the committees that are focused on economic vitality. to really focus on the particular areas and what each area needs and would like and engage with the businesses, with the Chamber, with the DBA, and find out how we can best serve them. what they need what they want and how we can provide it uh... and vice versa how they can help us and then provide more tax revenue for us so i would like the the evc to be much more involved in in especially the mccaslin and the sundance issues i think i would agree with all that with the exception of sundance i think

Our staff has done a remarkable job, and that's through Community Development and Vanessa in particular, as well as Brandy Cummings in doing the heavy lifting much of that kind of work is you know some of it will bubble up to us but a lot of the policy decisions are really you know we we made one big one this year with short-term rentals that's certainly one and there may be others but I think a lot of that is We don't even need to, you know, we get reports in EVC, and those I think are good to come up to council, but I'm not sure we need to wade into that too much. The others I think are really good to have EVC doing, and I think we're equipped to that. I mean, one other thing I would say, Just generally, this is more of a general comment, is that to the extent some of these can be like task force items that we can consider, that may help ultimately cover some of the areas that we're talking about a little more efficiently, economically. But just keep that in the back of your head.

I was—could you elaborate and explain—I mean, I'm feeling like the Economic Vitality Committee is sort of already a designated task force for economic vitality. So I'm trying to think of—you're going to do a task force of a task force? No.

No. It's more of a general comment about all of these. Not so much economic vitality, but other areas as we're going through the four main goals.

One of the things that has concerned me, other than when we're trying to think of something like a ballot initiative type item when we do that, is... I feel like we lack the input from enough staff and enough council members, and we certainly lack the public engagement piece when we're doing these very private task force meetings. And there's literally no opportunity for additional comment. It's like, here's the recommendation of a task force. you should take it and you're not part of the conversation. And I think so some of these times we miss a lot and we find that there's nine community members that are making decisions and nobody else has really participated in the conversation with some of these task force things that have come to us. We make policy decisions on that. And I think that we should be very careful about how we strategically use a task force um unless it is to discuss some items that then that that bigger policy recommendation would come to council for an additional discussion well i don't want to get too sidetracked on this all task forces

present to council. They don't make any decisions on their own. We don't allow any task force to do that, including the ones we've had this year on historical preservation tax and so forth. But to your point, we don't have to be delegating. But I think it's just... As a larger point, we have a lot to cover. We have a very, very ambitious council, very, very high expectations in the community, and we have only so many meetings that council can, and I think it's incumbent on us to try to use our council time as efficiently as we can. It's, you know, we can deal with it as it goes. We're never gonna, we always have to appoint task forces anyway, so it's not something that will be undebated. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem.

So I'm on board with the suggestion that we should rely more on our boards and commissions and like LRC and Economic Vitality Commission as well. I will also add that I think we can continue to... Well, let me back up a minute. Our city manager has now been with us for 18 months. I think she has more than proven to us all her ability to successfully lead this organization, to take projects to the finish line with minimal involvement from council apart from direction, and then she manages her staff to get it done. So I think what I'll add in addition to leaning into our commissions and boards more, think we can hand things off more to the city manager to bring them to the finish line with and she does regular check-ins with us all consistently so I think that will allow us as well to be more efficient and then staff and their work as well be more efficient could potentially reduce some meeting time, I will say, not number quite yet, but meeting time that we need to spend on those things. So I want us all to keep in mind the success that she's shown us thus far and how we can use that confidence to improve efficiencies in our work plan as well.

Any other comments about economic vitality? Yes.

I agree. I was just curious if the Mayor Pro Tem was being specific to this category or other ones where I would agree and was going to make the comment in some other categories. I would like to apply that philosophy to all categories.

Second. Looks like from the smiles and the comments that we're all in agreement on that. Thanks. Shall we move?

So before we move on, are we missing any elements as part of this economic vitality piece?

One moment.

So just a couple of, you know, with the feedback that I've heard, you know, downtown. There's a lot of questions about the vacancies downtown. What is the city doing related to vacancies? This is something that EVC, it's brought up to EVC a lot, so that could be considered also as part of the comp plan. We have another opportunity area along South Boulder. That's not something that we've discussed in terms of any type of focus. That's another consideration that could be part of EVC's discussions. Now that the comp plan's completed, we have these opportunity areas. How are we addressing these opportunity areas? And so the McCaslin conversation could be expanded to the larger opportunity area conversation.

I think that's a good suggestion. Okay. Yes. It's maybe just to operationalize that maybe we want to add to the consideration of new URAs you know like specifically including but not limited to McCaslin and South Boulder Road just to throw it because it's like a like let's let's tell them we want you to look at these two let's let's just be clear with LRC that these these should be in the running yeah I understand

I think that's probably, what do people think about that? That seems a good. I think they'd figure it out on their own even if we didn't say so. But it might be nice to at least give them the runway to be able to consider that.

Okay.

The only other one that I was gonna mention is you've taken out or you've, I think you've indicated that we're not really going to be talking so much about the specialized, the targeted development codes and processes updates. And I do understand that. I always... And maybe it's just an exception, but I wonder if it comes to a place in the discussion between staff and the... consultants or it bubbles up to us that there might be a fix or measure that might be appropriate to do again on a surgical basis. I would hate to foreclose that by kind of marking this out. I don't think we need to go looking for them, but I'd be interested in what other council members think of you know, of that.

I think removing this item does not mean that we are not going to evaluate or look at any of those. What we're saying as part of the development code rewrite, working with the consultant, getting council feedback, prioritizing how we move forward with that rewrite, And then what are the things that can be addressed shorter term versus longer term? Also, we identified something tonight that could be addressed. Just because we're removing it from the list, like you said, we're not necessarily going out searching for things. But that doesn't mean if something comes up, we wouldn't consider it. It's just that this is not going to be a focus of trying to do these specific things.

That addresses my concern.

OK. All right. I think Samma was going to summarize this section.

Yes, so your direction on the proposed economic vitality 2027 work plan section is to add McCaslin as a discussion item for the EVC agenda. They can, of course, make recommendations to council, add Sundance as well as an EVC agenda item, defer to LRC on front and center, and add to that URA discussion the specific recommendation they look at all the opportunity areas. Is that correct?

Council Member Kern.

I do not think we should be deferring the front and center to LRC. I think that the portion that we've been discussing as a council trying to decide if we're going to be moving some general funds, Chris knows where I'm going with this, to do even something small on Main Street, that needs to stay with council. The LRC can't determine how we spend the general fund. So I bet... that clearly needs to stick with us. But I think it could start with EVC as a recommendation and bring that forward with information from the businesses on where we think the best bang for our buck would be.

I certainly agree with that. Go ahead.

I just want to clarify the comment about McCaslin. Again, I thought we were folding that under urban renewal, not a separate item, right? Urban renewal and EVC. And EVC. Yep.

I heard two pieces for that. Okay. Perfect.

Okay. The one other gloss on this might be that I think we've had discussions, certainly on EVC, but I think we've had them in council, maybe with LRC, that there's some synergy between the LRC and council as to support of businesses. Obviously, we're in charge of our own general funds, and I'm not sure there's much money in LRC to be able to do that, but there's some thoughts that they have that might be. I don't think any of this forecloses cooperation between our body and theirs, but I think that's probably the place in the middle. Yes, Council Member Kern.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think especially if we're contemplating adding new urban renewal areas, based on, you know, however we make these determinations with assessing the value here, I would say we need to increase the collaboration. I think one of the things that we heard a lot from community members was, what? The council isn't making... We don't decide on what's happening with Steinbaugh? So a lot of people get, like... want to know how do I engage and if I'm engaging with you and you guys aren't the decision makers, it's the Lewis Revitalization Commission instead, that becomes something where I think collaboration with us, because a lot of times we have a little bit more input from the community members, can be helpful.

Are those thumbs up? Those glosses? Sorry, Mayor Amanda. Pardon me, Caleb. Oh, yeah. Councilman Dickinson.

Yeah, I just want to chime in as the LRC member from council. You know, I think. The LRC has been working for two years more, maybe three or four years on the front and center plan. So I just want to make sure that we feel confident with that group. and the work they're doing. And they don't, they don't get to do anything without permission from council. Like there is no decision-making power with the LRC. That's been really clear. So it's not as if the LRC is making decisions and council is finding out about them later. Nothing happens without council approval and no money is spent without council approval. And so, you know, I don't, I don't know if we need to go, I hope that we can take the recommendations for what we're doing and how we're doing it from that body, of which we have a representative from council always on that body. And the question of what we can afford is ours. And I think that, to Councilman Kern's point, If we're going to spend zero out of the general fund or two million or four million or six million, we are certainly, of course, going to make that decision. I mean, the LRC has no capacity to make that decision for us. So I don't know that anything needs to change. That's already set up is that. Yeah, I don't know if I can say it, but the LRC cannot. make any decisions about the way we spend our money. And so what we want to lean on them for is the whole plan, this vision for that entire area, and that it's all done at one time conceptually. And I think it'd be great if it was done at one time actually, but I think the LRC has always known Well, we're going to plan the whole thing out and we can only afford to do so much of it. And then it'll be up to council how quickly they want to do the rest of it. Um, with general funds, cause the LRC funds won't be able to get it to completion, but we should at least have a, a United vision for the whole thing and not just plan little parts of it. Um, and so that's what they've been doing for the last three or four years. I've been on that body for the last almost two years, but, um, yeah. So I don't know if there are any other questions about that, but I think we're headed in the right direction.

The only final thing I'd say about the LRC and all of this, and the city attorney can chime in if she would like, but the process for approving a new urban renewal area is really extensive and one that ultimately is going to rely on us to make decisions one way or another. Is that fair to say?

Yes, it is the city council that obtain the condition study, the blight study, and make the decisions for creating a new urban renewal area. It is involved. I don't know that I would call it extensive. You know, the city's done it twice before.

Perhaps it's the public debate that I'm remembering. That was a little more extensive. Anything, do we have an understanding now? It looks like staff has got the thumbs up, so. It is 8.05 and if we could take a five minute break, we can do that and then power through the rest, okay? And we've just finished the part of the 2027 work plan discussion on economic vitality. City Manager, pick it up from there.

So we will move on to core services. So the first two items have been, again, completed, will hopefully be completed by 2027. So the PROS long-range plan and the website has been completed. As noted previously, the wastewater treatment plan expansion will be ongoing through 2028. For transportation infrastructure, this was listed in the 2026 plan as pretty broad. In terms of initiatives for 2027, we're proposing with Front Range Passenger Rail, continue to advance measures for the placement of a station in Louisville. For multimodal infrastructure, continue to evaluate and implement opportunities to enhance multimodal transportation options. For impact fees, update the city's transportation impact fee. And then for regional efforts, continue collaboration with regional partners and transportation infrastructure improvements. For advocacy, this would be continuing with the, you know, relying on supportive legislation, regional partnerships, and grant funding and incentives. And so this would be a general item related to that. For the budget, we've already discussed. XL franchise agreement, this does expire in 2027, so we do anticipate a lot of work on this franchise agreement renewal. CORE SERVICES WE'RE PROPOSING TO REMOVE SPECIFICALLY FROM THE LIST. WE FEEL LIKE THIS WILL BE ADDRESSED AS PART OF THE Strategic planning we're proposing to remove this item as well Not only will this be covered as part of the budget process through the implementation of the budget But we also have the pros long-range plan the cultural services strategic plan and as I noted previously I feel like we're getting plan fatigue And so as we move to implementation and working on development code rewrite and things like that we would propose not to start necessarily a new plan in 2027 Historic preservation tax, this item would be removed if it is approved for extension. The parks and open space initiatives, I want to spend just a moment on this. This was consideration of initiatives and policies such as an updated review of the integrated weed management plan. Staff is proposing to fund the integrated weed management plan, I think, in 2028 or 2029. There's also... like a open space plan. There's various plans within the PROS department. Again, we are proposing to defer these until when we have funding available and through the CIP, which you will be considering in September 22nd, and then also just based upon staff capacity. I know at PPLAB's meeting tomorrow night on the agenda, is for them to submit a memo to council requesting that you place the integrated weed management plan on the 2027 work plan. Again, staff's recommendation is to defer that for some time. Next, we have the environmental sustainability initiatives. We are recommending that we refine sustainability priorities, align with core services such as reducing water usage, and evaluate decarbonization projects to refine scope and determine funding requirements. As part of the capital improvement program budget, on the list of defunded projects, we have a few decar projects. It's not necessarily because we don't I think we should do DCARB projects. We need to detangle these DCARB projects and then come forward with a recommendation for DCARB projects that match where we are today. So, for instance, reevaluating solar. A lot of these projects have solar included, but we've also noted that solar isn't necessarily the best way to meet the council's goals related to our DCARB and sustainability initiatives. And so we want to be able to go through the plan, identify some projects, and then bring that back to council for consideration for funding. We've already talked about the Cultural Services Strategic Plan, the consideration of potential charter amendments. One question that I have, would council like to revise this item to consider establishment of a process for future charter amendments? As of right now, we've crossed this out, but you've received input from the public in terms of how they would like to see future charter amendments considered. Some cities have a separate committee that evaluates the charter, makes recommendations, and then council would pick from those recommendations, amendments to move forward to as ballot initiatives, and they do more routine amendments to their charter. If that's something council would like to explore, then we would keep this on the work plan and not cross it out. The image and video capture policy, again, you have a discussion direction item coming before council later this year, but we do anticipate that based upon direction provided, if council provides direction, we would have follow-up items in 2027. Funding options, again, we will have a public financing workshop in the first quarter of 2027. From that, perhaps as noted with the utility fund, we may need to bring forward like SRF loan to fund some of the projects or look at other public financing options, say, for instance, for purchase of like large vehicle purchases or things like that. Impact fee evaluation, I would anticipate we'd be bringing forward recommendations to council for impact fee updates. Community Engagement Framework, based upon the discussion direction that'll happen later this year in November, we could have follow-up items related to this item. Two new items that we're proposing is Facilities Planning. So this would be to develop a short-term plan to address staff and storage space needs. And then another new item that I understand came up from Council in a recent discussion is the Donation and Sponsorship Policy. So that covers the core services items. Again, are we missing any specific items that you think need to be addressed? Do we need to make modifications to any of these items? And I also want to note, You know, we have this work plan. That doesn't mean that we're not working on other items. And, you know, a couple of things I want to specifically address. We have a lot of projects that we're going to be working on. We have front and center, South Street underpass. Those are going to both be about the same time in terms of construction. You know, South Street underpass is not represented on here. It's going to take a considerable amount of staff time. The other thing that I want to note is open space or cultural services, a lot of people take it, well, it's not listed here. So that means it doesn't have the same priority as these other items. That's not true. These items have priority. It's just that there's not a specific, you know, council potential policy question that could be coming up. Now, with open space, you may argue that there could be a policy question. And so as you are deliberating on this specific section, these are the types of items that we would like to understand from council is, you know, are we meeting what you think we need to discuss or are we missing items?

Thank you.

Other questions? Yes, Council Member Cooperman.

One little question. Do you think it could make sense to have a study session on our current integrated weed management in anticipation of later on doing an update to that management program?

I would put that question back to all of you. If you find it would be beneficial, then that's something that we could coordinate. If we're not going to be undertaking that until 2028 or 2029, then it may be more timely to do it right before the kickoff of that update. But I would defer to council in terms of if you would find value in that.

Any thoughts on that? Member Kern. Mayor Pro Tem, then Council Member Kern.

So thoughts on that, was your thought specifically? And then I'll bounce it back up. And then I'll wait for my other comments. I think if we're not going to tackle it in the near term, then I would prefer to wait till we do approach the time when we'd be able to talk about that particular line item. I have a few more comments, but I'll let Council Member Kern comment on that as well.

Yeah, it was something similar. I was thinking from a staff capacity perspective. I really appreciate the enthusiasm coming from the participants in PEEP Lab and their concern on this topic and their, like, their involvement and interest. You know, they might have some very specific and unique suggestions, but if our staff right now doesn't have the capacity or the funding to follow through with it, my concern would be in a year or two, there might be new and other plans that those current members of P-PLAB would would be engaging on and would not want to rely on the conversations had now. So that's where I was thinking best to wait and let people be able to engage at the time that we know that we can act on this. I don't know how we have staff capacity, honestly, from what you're talking about. And we're adding another position for a project manager that's going to be part of all of these departments. And it would just be one more project added in. And do we even have enough people to manage it if we did move forward? So I think I would take the city manager's recommendation.

Also a compromise perhaps on a presentation to council is there could be a staff memo that provides a broad overview of the plan that we could present to or provide to council just so that you have the understanding. I'm trying to recall if there was one provided like last year. I seem to, there's something in the back of my brain that's kind of, but that's something that we could do as well.

That wouldn't be something that would need to go on the work plan though, right?

No.

Can I ask my other two questions? Sure, yeah. Council Member, or Mayor Patam, and then Council Member Hefner.

So my other question was, for the items in which we think they need to be i'll call it put in the parking lot because we either don't have funding or capacity to do it in the next year for example this weed management program one could also argue depending on the outcomes of the ballot initiatives this year maybe charter amendments doesn't need to be something it's not time sensitive for next year where are those listed so that we don't forget about them and we can go back to them and reevaluate them in the 28 work plan, for example.

Yeah, we could create at the bottom of this work plan a list of items that consideration for 2028 or a list of items if there's capacity that we could address as part of the 2027 work plan similar to what we do with the agenda forecast where at the bottom we have just a list of things that item that council's brought up that we need to figure out where to fit in we could do the same for this if there's specific items that you say well if something comes up where you have capacity we'd like you to work on it if not we'd like this for consideration for 2028.

A few things on this section. One, and I think I just heard support for this, I don't feel compelled that we need a process for charter amendments. I think we can tackle those as they become known to us. There's a number of these that I think Much like my comments on the last section could be taken on by finance committee and I'll take off the ones that appeal to me and see if others have interest in this. The XL franchise, the impact fee and the donation and sponsorship policy all strike me as work that could be done mostly in finance committee and then bringing forward a strong recommendation hopefully for approval to council rather than putting them on sort of something that council is going to spend a lot of time working on. Happy to hear feedback on those. And then my only other comment is on the sustainability initiatives. I feel like we've recently given a lot of direction in this area and I would be Pleased to see those come forward as part of the budget proposal next year, but I don't know, speaking only for myself, that I need to have further council discussion and direction. I think we've made our sort of policy priorities clear in that area.

Yes, Council Member Kern.

I largely agree with Council Member Heffner with the exception of maybe the Excel franchise agreement. Just I think the nature of the public comment around Excel Energy, the services, a lot of the engagement actually that the city manager has been having. The community might be best served if if the conversation was it was done from the dais with the entire council just because of the how big this is and there's been a lot of public um request that maybe something more could be done uh to change this that's my but i do i i actually agree with all your other suggestions take it

Yeah, I don't feel strongly about the Excel piece. I think there may be aspects of that franchise agreement that may be very well suited to finance committee. There are some parts of it which are, I mean, in the end, we're going to have a discussion with the community. So I wouldn't, you know... the finance chair offering to do stuff, I hesitate to turn away.

I didn't say continue chairing the committee in 27.

No, that's a requirement that comes with that suggestion.

That is beyond the scope, I'm afraid. But the one that I do have pause on because I was told that it was premature earlier is maybe the impact fee piece. I don't know how we're going to constitute that. So I think, I mean, that's a really good... In the past, there has been, if I'm remembering correctly, quite a bit of involvement of finance committee members in impact fee work. I just don't know how that's going to be... assigned and how we're going to work that up. So that would be my only sort of caveat on sending it to finance.

Other thoughts?

Silence? I'll just offer, I mean, I think we, I'm not saying finance necessarily does all the work, right? If we, if we The work may be to constitute an impact fee, a separate impact fee committee, and that could be the work of the committee. But certainly happy to take direction from this group.

Sounds good. Okay. Other pieces? Yes, Council Member.

I just actually wanted to thank the City Manager for offering the facilities planning idea and for Director Kohar, I'm assuming, to be participating heavily in this given the other projects. I mean, I think it's a priority for staff that we make some of these decisions and specifically, I think, for you, but also absolutely appreciate but do think the appropriate spot would be for finance, the donation and sponsorship policy. I just can't stress enough how much I think we need to get this put as early in the agenda as possible so that we can start taking advantage of this as a city. Thanks.

Yes, the staff has already been working on that item so that we can bring it forward to council pretty early.

The other one that I was just thinking about is It's an issue which is really, really important, which is the wastewater treatment plant expansion. And clearly, there are financial impacts to that. And maybe that's what you're referring to. But there's not going to be huge policy decisions around that, are there?

There'll be funding decisions. So, for instance, the third digester, once we determine what the city's cost share needs to be, then that would need to come to council for approval. And then, you know, to be determined on implementation.

Okay.

And eventually we need to award the construction contract approval. for the overall expansion project, which would be largely funded by Sterling Bay. So we have to see how that progresses.

Yeah, so it's not just approving amounts. No. Okay, good. I think that's right. Yeah, Council Member Kern.

So one thing that's already being discussed this year, I just wanted to see where this is falling in this plan, finance committee, staff, which is, because it's falling under the wastewater, water and wastewater. conversation. It's about the billing of it and, you know, discussing restructuring this possibly for both residential and commercial. And I wanted to see where that was falling in the work plan or have anybody else comment on it.

Yeah. So the rate and tap fee study, I know that Public Utilities is finalizing a scope of work with the consultant that Director Cower discussed with Council at a recent update. That would be ongoing work in 2027. That would be appropriate to add to this work plan as it will require considerable staff time and also that will require policy direction. But that would go through Finance Committee first as well would be the expectation of that.

You guys good with that? Great. I just want to make sure that the city manager sees that there is more than one of us who thinks that should be on the work plan.

Any other comments about this? It sounds like, and I'll let the deputy city manager back clean up on this one, but certainly the items that have been taken off This draft, I haven't heard anything to the contrary about that. And it sounds like there are some other ones that I can...

Yeah, so, Council, I believe I heard support for a memo update on the integrated weed management plan. I heard support to add a parking lot for all items on this work plan, not just this priority. Items that we can consider if we have additional capacity or just on the list for consideration in the future year. I heard that we want to add donation and sponsorship policy to FICOM. I heard that we'd like to remove the environmental sustainability item. We want to add utility rates and tap fees, which will go to Finance Committee and then to Council. I did hear some other discussion about Finance Committee items, but there was not consensus, so I didn't put those on listed for Finance Committee. That doesn't preclude them from going to Finance Committee before they come to Council.

I'll just say, I mean, can we just take a quick show of hands on like the XL franchise and impact fee, just to have clarity on whether we want those to be primary work of council or primary work of finance committee. There was disagreement. I think that's an accurate summary, but let's make a choice.

So I could see maybe the precursory impact fee work, because there's going to be a substantial amount of work, I think, from staff. I think Director Zaccaro is going to have to provide a lot of information and input. So I think if you're good with taking this on, if it can, and as like the alternate for finance, I'm obviously paying attention and participating, so I'm good with it. I do think this is one of those times, Chris, that a task force oh i said that word um is actually is probably a really warranted thing depending on how like staff feels and where we're at with this i think if the huge evaluation but hearing from diverse members from of our of our community representing whether that's like residents and businesses and developers understanding that so if you guys want to

take that on as well or at least get it going before it comes to the council that's probably a good idea i don't know that you want to take it all the way to the finalized recommendation though i'm just my my only question i think all of that is true my only question is do we want council to be the body sort of supervising putting together the impact fee study committee reviewing what they say making a recommendation on what they say To me, it makes sense to have the Finance Committee do that, but I just think it would be helpful if we decide one way or the other so that we know we're not duplicating the same effort in two places. You know, I... Oh, go ahead.

If I could weigh in on that for a moment.

If you'd weigh in particularly on the impact fee one.

Yes. My previous experience with impact fees... is it's a heavy, heavy lift. And part of that is you do have multiple individuals that are interested in this specific topic of not only are we adding new impact fees, new categories of impact fees, how much we're increasing impact fees, how is this going to impact building within Louisville? Because if we are recommending large increases, that could potentially impact building. couple that to recommendations related to the water and sewer tap fees. Those go hand in hand in terms of when you're looking at the collective cost to develop in Louisville. And then if we get any engagement from any building industry representatives who want to pick apart the proposed fees, it can be a very long and arduous process, which I strongly recommend that we have a committee Like we did with the last process and so for that specific I would recommend It might need to go to Finance Committee and EVC first for consideration and then go to the full council for consideration because there's a lot of different things to consider and we're evaluating impact fees my experience is it's never been a fun process and that it's it can be very controversial and just based upon the fact that there was a ballot measure last year related to this specific item and we're going into an election year next year I would anticipate this to be controversial again and so I think this would be so I would recommend that this be something for the broader council versus just the finance, not to say I think Finance Committee could do a great job, it's just there's a lot of considerations.

I agree with the recommendation.

And on the Comcast Excel, excuse me. you know anything that the finance can do kind of as a matter of in the first instance i think is great i know that there are there are issues that councilman kern talked about excuse me there are issues around what you know what may be able to be there may be other issues that affect other kinds of interests as well so You know, but I, I think it's a good thing to sort of generally.

Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't think we probably will take it up if the full council is also intending to take it up a fresh. So the offer is to either to do it and make a recommendation, but it doesn't make sense for us to sort of pre preview the same presentation and talk about it and then not, and then just come to council and do the same thing a second time. is not a good use of anybody's time.

That makes sense. I mean, that's why I was suggesting in the first instance you consider it and pass recommendations on to council, and then council, as it does sometimes, will discuss whatever.

Yeah, I think that's what my suggestion is.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any concern, question, thought about that?

I wouldn't mind if City Manager Langley weighed in because I'm reluctant to just have this be on the Finance Committee.

I don't think that was the proposal. It's not just on the Finance Committee.

Sorry, let me just back out what I'm trying to get at. This is our council work plan about what are the big substantive items we want the group of seven to spend time on next year. We will vote as a group of seven on the Excel franchise agreement, whether finance takes it up or not. My suggestion is rather than, say, have two or three or four council meetings to do the ins and outs of the franchise agreement, let finance take it up, do that work, bring forward a strong recommendation. Certainly, there will be council review. Certainly, there will be opportunity for council questions. But trying to avoid, trying to use our committees strategically rather than as a duplication of what the full body does.

I know that Councilmember Cooperman has a comment. It may be similar to mine. Just recognizing LSAAB's focus on the XL franchise agreement, I'm wondering how their input would weigh in on bringing this to Finance Committee and then to Council.

Councilmember Cooperman. I actually had a different comment, but that's fine. I'm just wondering, so, if staff had to negotiate with Excel, would you need, I mean, wouldn't you need consensus from council about how to negotiate? And so, I mean, it's not that there couldn't be preliminary work that finance could do. It just seems like it would, in that instance, it would have to come to council as a whole to give you direction, I would guess.

Yeah, Excel is going to be providing us a draft agreement. So at that point, we're reviewing what they are putting forward to us. And we would compare that to other recently approved Excel franchise agreements, like with Broomfield and Boulder, and then looking into what were they able to negotiate as part of those agreements. Those are items that we would put for consideration to counsel in terms of do you want to accept what Excel has proposed or here's some other options for you to consider. What would you like us to go back to Excel with to try to negotiate? So that could be done. with finance committee if we're really focused on like the bottom line cost to customers. If the focus is more related to sustainability and how we can achieve our goals, there could be an enhanced cost to that. That could also be a finance committee conversation or that could be expanded to the full council just because of its bringing in that additional element related to sustainability.

Let me make a suggestion, which I think we may be able to get us moving forward on this. This one has several different angles, which I think are pretty interesting. And I think Councilmember Heffner makes a good point that it may be a great thing to be able to... push at least a part or maybe, well, at least a part of it to finance first. I wonder if staff can maybe think through the different parts of that franchise agreement and maybe suggest some of those areas that we could kind of consider, I think, a little bit more than just on the fly here. Because I just get the sense that that one is maybe a little bit more complicated. It's worth a little more.

Yeah, we don't need a decision tonight. We can wait until we receive the agreement and then make a recommendation.

What do you think about that? I think that's fine. I'll just say one more big picture thing and then I'll let it go. We had 47 council meetings in 2025. I do not want to have 47 council meetings in 2027. Unless there's something that necessitates that level of work, a topic being interesting to me is not a good reason for us to spend a couple hours here talking about it.

I appreciate that. Point taken. Shall we, is there anything else? Yes, Council Member Cooperman.

Yeah, I just wanted to ask a question about the Deputy City Manager's summary on the Environmental Sustainability Initiatives item. I mean, for what's listed in the second column, does staff feel like they have adequate direction at the moment or not?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. So we would, my assumption is that we would still come to you with some of these items that we need to have discussion about. So decarbonization, for example, we would still come to you. We may still come to council at some point in time and talk about reallocating resources. I know there was a recommendation to do that during the budget process. And if that timing aligns, we can do that as well. If we determine during the year that we do need to have other council direction, we will bring that up.

Okay.

All right, ready to move on to safety?

Let's do it.

Okay. So under safety, building the foundation on the 2026 work plan, this was some workshops that were more safety related. We're proposing to conduct public workshops for each department to present what they do, challenges and opportunities to set a foundation for service level alignment discussions. I think this could arguably be moved to the core services item versus safety. There was a question about would these be council meetings. These wouldn't necessarily need to be council meetings. They could just be public workshops that whoever from the public wants to participate, they can. This would help to We've heard feedback in terms of the service level reductions. And we brought forward initial service level reductions. The next round is going to be more complex and comprehensive. It might be surprising to the public to understand why we're having those conversations without having this foundational work. And so this would be more on staff side to do these workshops. Council could attend if you wanted to, but it didn't would necessarily have to be a council like study session or a discussion direction item. The next item is preparedness. This is more so related to implementation now that we are part of Boulder ODM. I would anticipate trainings. a training specific for council, and then also trainings for staff. I would like to bring forward an IGA with the Boulder County Sheriff's Office for wildfire mitigation services. This would help with clearing some of the ditches. Eventually, it could help with prescribed burns at some point when council's ready for that. This would also be the work with Boulder Watershed Collective and FireSmart Louisville on their initiatives. This isn't necessarily work that would need to come to council. This is just a note of this work's going to be taking place in 2027. The WUI and fire risk reduction initiatives, to address Councilmember Cooperman's earlier question, this would be working with the Fire Protection District on consideration of other strategies such as defensible space. So we committed that we would be bringing forward defensible space at some time. We're anticipating that that would come forward in 2027. Odium biome has been completed. Next is cell coverage, so opportunities to increase cell coverage and reliability. This is our three-phased approach, so understand and educate. What we'd like to do is create a web page in which we want to invite the community to go to a map and put their address and note whether or not they get cell coverage, who their carrier is, so that we can get public participation in developing a map that shows where we have spots within the city that do not have coverage and by which carriers. If you go to a Verizon map right now, an AT&T map, a T-Mobile, it's going to show that there's coverage throughout the city. But we know that's not true. And so this is where we want to engage with the community, help them to understand what the issues are, The next phase would be research and advocate. This would be connecting with the various cell companies. Why aren't you interested in Louisville? What would it take to get you to provide additional antennas in Louisville? This would also be researching on our own. Where should antennas be located for the best coverage? Should these be standalone cell towers? Should these be building mounted? So again, this is more staff work. The third phase would be tactical options. This is the point we'd be bringing before council. Like here are the options that you have to expand cell service in Louisville. Next is traffic safety. This would be continued efforts to support traffic safety. This would be as a result of the discussion direction item in late October related to e-bikes. This could be follow-up ordinance changes related to e-bike safety, or it could be other traffic-related items. And with that, that concludes the safety item.

Okay, questions, T.S. Mepperton, and then Councilmember Heffner.

Based on how you described the first two, building the foundation and preparedness, I got the impression that like, they maybe don't have to be on the work plan. They're happening anyways. Did I misrepresent what you're thinking about those?

No, I'd say building the foundation, we could move, remove from the plan since if council, as long as council doesn't have a preference that these are council decisions, discussion direction or workshops, then we would remove them and these would be more staff related and related to the public. For preparedness, I do anticipate there's going to be work with council related to preparedness since we're now part of ODM. It's getting, it would be a training for council to understand your role in an emergency situation. Outside of that, I don't know that we will be bringing forward necessarily ordinance changes specific to preparedness. ODM is going to need to take some time to update their emergency operations plan. We do have a multi-hazard mitigation plan that's being updated in which council will probably need to adopt a resolution of support. These are not big items, and so that could be removed as well. I just know that in previous years, this has been a sensitive topic. And so as long as council's okay with removing it, understanding that there's still work happening behind the scenes, then we would be okay with that.

Okay. I'm curious on the discussion about preparedness. For building the foundation, I personally... would I'm leaning towards a preference to take it off and make it more of a community education event because I think when it's labeled city council meeting it gives it a certain feeling and impacts who shows up to it just knowing that we can attend the building foundation if we want yeah and I would say the follow-up conversation with council could be part of the the supplemental budget discussion in terms of service level modifications yeah thank you

Yeah, I agree and it was My question as well, you know, I think I think we've tried to make the council work plan a list of the items that we want to take up and I think we've Typically tried to avoid listing items that are important to the city and important to the residents but don't necessarily represent work that we're going to be doing and I wonder if similar to the parking lot idea, there's a place we can put sort of ongoing, important staff-led initiatives that we don't anticipate are going to take significant council engagement just to separate out. Because we do get a lot of comments, well, you know, open space is so important and you don't have an open space work plan. It's like, well, that doesn't mean it's not important. It just means we don't have anything that the seven of us are going to work on. So teasing that out a little bit. And I think I agree with what you said as to who's doing which one of these. And it sounded like cell coverage is largely a staff-led initiative as well with maybe some council engagement at the end.

Yes, I agree.

So that's my comment.

Yes, Council Member.

Yeah, I largely agree with that. I really do think that the fire risk reduction initiatives, we stuff should stay on the plan because this is still coming to council. These are some big citywide decisions that we still have to make. And they are still just as critical. I mean, had we completed it three years ago, then it wouldn't have to be on the work plan now. But thanks to the city manager's hard work, we're going to get to it in 27, which is fantastic. So I think that should absolutely stay on the work plan. The cell coverage one, again, I do think it's going to require some financial, some budget investment. like consideration for the council, but I also think there's more to that than just the budget. It is also allocating the kind of staff time that's going to have to go into things like that. It's also going to be negotiating locations, land use, potentially things like that. And this should be on the council work plan for 27. I don't think that this should just be something that we say, this is 100%. you know the staff's responsibility i i think you're going to have to take some guidance from us i think in the community as to what we can spend and where we put these things and how many go in because i think that's going to be those are going to be big issues um Yeah, the preparedness piece. I like your idea, Council Member Huffner, of creating a specific spot for something like this. This is a very high priority item for the community. It is continuing to be addressed, but it's being refined. And until this becomes... This is part of our normal course of action in police, fire, city management, and council. It's just a known commodity every year that we repeat, and I think we're still fine-tuning it. This should be a high priority for all of us to make sure that this is done right. And I'll actually, just this is again where I'm so thankful to have your leadership on this one because that's even how we've gotten this far with it. So thanks.

I'm so thankful for the team that we have. Yeah. because it's really a lot of their work. So I appreciate that, but I just want to recognize the team. The other thing that I would like to say I appreciate council's input and to remove items that are more staff-led or more staff-related. This is my one ask of council. Then as we move forward in 2027 and other items come up and you say, well, can we just keep in your back of your mind that there's all of these other items that staff's working on that are not on the work plan? So when you bring that up, we're going to have this big poster that says... Okay, but look at all these other items. What are we going to remove off this list?

Fair enough.

Other comments? Yes, Council Member Fahey.

I'll say I would like to at least be a subtext item on the work plan because first to make sure that it is part of the council's work and also that the public knows that it is a project that's being worked on. If it's by council or by staff or behind the scenes from a consultant, it doesn't matter, but they need to know that we are working on this.

I think the one that I would point to, all really good comments and I agree with the ones that have been made so far. Cell coverage is an interesting one because I know that there are plenty of staff pieces to this and there's a public facing piece and the phase one is going forward beginning next month as I understand it. getting some feedback. I hope that that will be relatively quick, only because I think everybody I think you're gonna find that a lot of people are chomping at the bit to kind of move beyond that pretty quickly, just getting the information, but there is a lot of education to do. People sometimes forget how hilly our city is and that that's an obstacle in some ways to this, but I know you're working on that first piece and it's gonna be pretty, quick after that. I think the advocacy piece is going to be something that will be a good thing for council to be involved in. I see the phase two being research and advocate. One thought that comes to mind is that I've had a variety of discussions over the years with staff about how can we push this forward, how can we get, and staff being um, you know, frustrated with the situation, not with me or the concern in the community, but that it's hard for staff to get the attention of carriers, for example. And I think that's where council, I think can be very helpful at making a pretty forceful, um, case about what some next steps may be in getting the public's input on that I think will be helpful.

There's some great, in this particular case, there's some great consultants out there that help with this work. Most likely we would be bringing forward a budget amendment request to engage with one of those consultants to not only evaluate this, but also our existing cell tower leases in terms of are we getting the most out of those that we can. I will say I am a bit murky on council direction related to some of these items. I'd ask Samma to summarize what she's heard.

Yeah, I have a recommendation on this one. So I heard to remove the Building the Foundation and generally stick with items on here that are council direction items. I also heard a desire to highlight some of these really important ongoing initiatives. One of the things that I heard council say is maybe we got to list all of these really important ones. I think we want to be thoughtful about trying not to make an exhaustive list about everything that's important to council because inevitably you're going to miss something and that's going to be really hard. After listening to this, I wonder if council would let staff kind of make a first run at updating this section and updating maybe it's in the intro language, maybe it's some referrals to the website, just a little bit more oomph to what is important to council and pointing people to that.

Yes, council member.

I just have one, sorry for this, but I have one specific issue on the last item, which is for traffic safety. We're saying specifically related to pedestrians, bicycles, and e-bikes. Can we add cars or motorists to that list as the leading cause of traffic safety problems?

I like that.

Okay.

All right. Are we ready for the next, the final section?

I think we are.

All right. Housing policy. Um, so this, the potential city initiated rezone, we are removing from the list. Um, In talking to Director Zuccaro, with the specific rezone of that cobalt piece of property, that's the only parcel that we're really aware of for targeted rezoning. Outside of that, we are anticipating potentially an application in Centennial Valley for some rezoning, but that would be working with the developer. Potential property acquisition or project contribution for the creation of affordable housing. This would be utilizing the existing budgeted funds. You're going to have a presentation, the phase two related to implementation and what we could do with those budgeted amounts. This might be one that we could take off. Because as you have specific projects, as I previously mentioned, I know of a couple of specific projects that are going to be coming forward for council consideration or asks. That may actually take place in 2026. And so, you know, if council were to move forward with that, potentially we may not have a lot of budgeted money remaining. And then it would turn into a discussion of what do you want to do with funds that are collected in lieu fees and how those are implemented. But that seems more of, I don't know, more maybe of day-to-day versus having this specifically listed. Next, the Prop 123 compliance, we are proposing to remove, as we should be in compliance by November. The development building permit processes for affordable housing, we are recommending removal of that as well, as that will be addressed as part of the development code update as well. The housing plan, this is a pretty generic item in terms of continued implementation of the Louisville housing plan. Right now, we're not aware of specific things that would be coming before Council, but this kind of fell into the category of we know housing is really important to Council, so it felt strange for us to remove it, but based upon the conversation tonight, and it's also part of the housing category, but based upon the conversation tonight, we could remove this item as well. The Affordable Housing Strategic Framework and Funding Prioritization Act, That should be completed this year. Development code rewrite, we discussed previously. So the other new item that we are proposing would be short-term rentals. What we've heard from council and the community is that after we get through year one of Sundance, that would be an opportunity for... potentially EVC because short-term rentals for Sundance went to EVC first, but this could be an opportunity for a discussion related to, does council want to expand the short-term rental policy to the entire city? So with that, open to questions or suggestions.

Council members.

Council Member Haffner. Just a couple on this. I think consistent with what the city manager said when I saw the housing plan implementation, it struck me that we're going to be doing a lot of that work in the development code rewrite and that maybe we want to collapse those into one item. I think a lot of the strategies in the housing plan are land use code. Not all of them are, but a lot of them are. And maybe we want to focus our efforts there. And then I also agreed with the recommendation to maybe pull out, at least from the work plan, the potential property acquisition knowing that we have some discrete items in the pipeline.

Others? Yeah.

Yeah. I guess I'm wondering on the potential property acquisition or contribution for affordable housing and also on the affordable housing strategic framework. I feel like those two sort of depend on what happens in our conversations later this month. And so I don't know what to expect necessarily from that conversation later this month. but it feels like there could still be work to be done. I don't know if you have anything to add there about what to expect or not.

Yeah, so we're aware of two specific projects that at this point in time look like they are going to be making specific asks from council for contributions from this fund. They're both... Yeah. They're both, I believe, 100% affordable housing projects. And then with the presentation from Thistle that's occurring later this month, which is just phase two of that prioritization plan, that would complete that strategic framework element. of what council requested in terms of evaluating specific projects, making a recommendation in terms of what we... And part of these two projects were part of those discussions that took place. And so if for some reason they didn't move forward, then we would be looking at... We know there's some other projects that potentially could move forward, like the... I always get it confused, thistle versus trestle, the trestle project. I believe I have that correct, on the north side of town. We haven't, huh? Reversed, okay, reversed. The Thistle project on the north side of town, we haven't heard from them lately in terms of a request, but I would anticipate something coming forward from that. So again, we have, we know, add the Coble project into that as well, in which they've indicated that they may apply for Prop 123 funding in 2027. So there's some affordable projects in the pipeline.

Yeah. Okay. I just, yeah. For me personally, I feel like I need to see what happens after that meeting to sort of make a more formal decision on those items.

Okay.

Yes.

I just wanted to say I agree with the recommendation for the short-term rental to come to EVC. and that some of the data that comes out of Sundance and some other things and then bring that to the council to make a decision is my suggestion on one of the ways to reduce maybe some of the work for everyone.

I agree with that. I also agree with Council Member Cooperman's comments. One of the things that... we know is that there's just a lot of policy issues swirling around affordable housing. There are going to be more legislative action on that. There's probably going to be action in the executive as the new governor takes over. And a lot of ferment locally as a result of that. So, you know, I don't have any trouble taking out some things just with the idea that we may want to fill in or backfill with maybe some better defined Language than we have in here because I think there's gonna be policy decisions to be made the council's gonna have to make we can You know where exactly those are gonna be and how they come up is is kind of up in the air, but That would be my only gloss on it

Sorry, I'm not sure I totally understand.

Like an item that we're going to react to state level changes as they happen or what's the... Yeah, no, I mean, I guess what I'm talking about is having a placeholder there because I think there's going to be issues around housing policy where I have to deal with. And I don't know exactly how we are... Like Josh, I don't know what we're going to find as a result of the presentation we're going to get in a couple of weeks around housing. And that may add some additional information that we're going to want to consider in putting in the work plan. Yeah, go ahead.

I think I'm fine just kind of holding on for a minute the things that Council Cooperman mentioned and just waiting to see how the conversation goes. I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly. I don't know if I'm on board with putting a placeholder for what may come down the pipeline from the state as it relates to housing because I could say that about a number of different topics. So I think at some point we have our plan and we are nimble and can pivot should those things come down the pipeline. Yeah, I'll just stop there.

I agree.

Yeah. Fair enough.

I can't do two. Other pieces to this? Yes.

I mean, I sort of agree with, I mean, I like the idea, just housing plan in general. I mean, that may be, that's a really broad placeholder, but we are going to have the discussion, and my understanding was we would meet with Trestle I think I got that right. When we retrestle, we will have some conversations around some changes, some policy, but we also have development code rewrite that we're going to be coming. Then we've already done some inclusionary housing things. That will become part of that, but I thought we would be making some decisions, not just listening to a presentation. I think, is that the staff expectation, too, that this year you'll get some direction from council?

I would anticipate potentially an executive session and then also requesting council direction on some specific items.

So hopefully that doesn't bleed us into 27 on those items, that actually we get the information, we give staff the direction, and they start implementing some of these policies and bring us something when it's needed. Same kind of similar thing, if there's changes that happen at the state level, just like everything that we've done with code, Prop 123, the WUE stuff, staff pivots, makes it a priority because it needs to be, and then brings it to us, right?

Yeah, and council has their legislative agenda. So if something falls under the legislative agenda and council wants, you know, to take a stance on something, we would bring that forward to council for consideration.

Warren?

Do you want to have Sam do the readback?

Yep, I will.

Okay, take two. I heard remove the housing plan implementation as it's not a council policy decision. Have the SDR conversation go to EBC first. I heard a lot of discussion on this housing strategic plan. I'm going to recommend we leave that on for the moment and then we can take that off if it's completed in 2026, if council supports that, and then support for the other removals.

Sorry, which item is the housing strategic plan?

Housing strategic framework and funding prioritization. So if you all complete that in 2026, we'll take that off of the plan for 2027, but we'll leave it there now because it's still kind of an open item.

Are you referring to the housing plan or are you referring to something else?

I'm sorry. Let me read this. I crossed it out. Affordable housing strategic framework and funding. The presentation you're having in a couple weeks.

The trestle.

Yes.

Sorry, and we're leaving it on in case we don't have the, why are we leaving it on if it's already scheduled?

Yeah, I heard some desire that there may be follow-up conversations for this, and so to have something on the work plan can certainly remove that if you would like to.

I would take it out since we're doing it this year.

What I heard Councilmember Cooperman say and then Mayor Pro Tem Hamlington say is that to hold off until after the presentation and discussion to then see if there's anything that comes from that that we need to add or consider as part of the 2027 plan.

I mean, if there's something we need to add, then we need to add it. But I wouldn't hold on to the item that we're... Maybe it's just semantic.

Are we going to get a copy of the work plan back before the Trussell presentation?

No.

Okay.

And that brings us to the next item in terms of moving this work plan forward. Would Council like to have another opportunity to review the draft and make additional modifications or would you like us to bring forward a final recommendation?

Final. Council Member Cooperman?

One question. Have we solicited our boards and commissions about what they might want us to work on in the coming year?

You have through your advisory board joint meetings. We have not taken this specifically to the advisory boards and said, please give us input on council's work plan. As you've had these joint meetings with the advisory boards, there have been conversations about how their work aligns with your work plan and vice versa. and we were not anticipating taking this to the advisory boards for input.

I'm going to play devil's advocate on this one. I think we should bring it back. It's 9-15. We've made quite a few changes to this. This is the city, you know, we're the city council. We're representing our constituents and we haven't given them the latest changes and additions and subtractions, I think we should bring it back and at least have a conversation that's perhaps not so much discussion direction, but at least, something more than just, gee, we're gonna adopt this. We're not gonna take into consideration any other changes of the public. I feel pretty strongly we oughta have that input from the public. And if there's anything that we get in the meantime, I think it's worthwhile reflecting that in the document and being able to offer that.

It's okay with me. I do have one more comment.

Yeah. Council Member Cooperman had his hand up. Oh, go ahead, sir. I'll come back to you.

Yeah, I agree with the mayor. I personally feel like our capital discussion about capital projects really helps to inform the work plan for next year as well. So I'd like to see it come back.

Council Member Heffner?

Yeah, just two encouragements. One is I do really want to focus on how can we have a work plan that is achievable during our, you know, mostly during our regular meetings and not have de facto regular meetings every week. There will be, I think to the Mayor's point, there are things that come up that require our attention and we need to save some time to deal with those. And I know it's not merely a time-saving thing. It's like We shouldn't let our meetings and our work plan expand to fill all of the possible available time because we need to save time and capacity to do other things. That's one point. My second point is just on the parking lot of things that are important but not council-led. My suggestion wasn't we should try and catalog a complete list of those because it's a very, very long list. But rather, we should be careful not to start including things in the work plan that are not going to be substantially council-led because we do get a lot of calls to add stuff to the work plan that we're not going to really, us, we're not going to work on. And so I just want to separate those out, the things that are know maybe we've talked about we want to make clear we're directing staff to do their priorities in some way but just making clear that they're not council items um and not conflating the two is is an important goal of mine

I will second both of those things and double-click on what the deputy city manager said about the perils of including lists that are not council specific items because you will ultimately Intentionally not have something on there that could offend people So my preference would be that this document focuses on City Council items and I I think I also appreciate Councilmember Heffner's comments regarding making sure we have space for all the items that do come up that we can't anticipate right now. Making room for that by not filling all our time with items right now.

And I think we have consensus on those principles. I think Councilmember Heffner, you stated it. quite well. I think that also is something we can tell residents who call us or email us about this, if they do, during the next few weeks and after that. And that'll be, in my view, a really big step forward because we have, I think, really polished up or buffed up what we're including here, what we're not, and the reasons why we're including things and we're not including others. So I think that'll be really good for the public discussion. Anything else on that? All right, yeah, Councilmember Cooperman.

One comment. When we were doing this year's work plan, there was a suggestion that we align the structure of the work plan with our new comprehensive plan, but we weren't finished with that yet, so we didn't do it. I would much prefer that we go ahead with that, restructure it according to the core values of our new comprehensive plan.

May I ask what that looks like for you?

Sure. We eliminate the priorities and we have new categories which are those values and we use those to structure the items under them, roughly speaking.

Sorry, that's a really big change that I'm not prepared tonight to direct staff to move forward with. I would like time to think about that. As a fellow council member, I would love it if I could have some more concreteness around what you're thinking so that we can review it and give feedback if that's really direction that we as a whole feel like staff should go down. So basically, I'd love to hear more from you of what you envision so I can decide whether or not it's something I think we should move forward with.

other thoughts yeah council member if we are going to bring that suggestion so that we can all kind of think about it i'd kind of like to know the the reason for it too like where's the value add in this versus keeping the two documents separate and i mean we're not the only council that's ever going to exist and so there will be other council members but we're going to have the same comprehensive plan for a very long time and it may not always be that that needs to be part of the same plan. So I would be curious to know the value of it in restructuring and also what it does look like and definitely time to think about it.

Councilmember Hafner. I'll just say I kind of like it. I mean, if you just mean like reordering the items we've already decided to try and fit under these topics to the extent they do, I kind of like having some, like we spent a long time on vision and values for the city and came up with six of them. And like if we want, to me it makes some sense to organize, just take the specific items here and just reorganize them under the six values we all spent I think a few meetings talking about and deciding. I haven't thought about which ones go in which category, but to me it's an interesting idea. I'd be happy to discuss it more if that's the group consensus.

Yeah, I'm not there yet myself. I think that's, and I'm not being flip, but it may be something that might be good, I guess, to get more information on or at least some some additional input, maybe even a good email to the rest of us about kind of a thought. So a little thought piece, which is something that council members can do as long as we're not having a discussion on it. That's what I might suggest.

Yeah. OK.

So the work plan is tentatively scheduled to come back to council on November 2nd. Does Council Member Dickinson have comments?

Yes, comment. Yes, Council Member.

Yeah, super brief. I'll just concur that I think it's an interesting concept because I know with my company, when we spend all this time reimagining our vision and our purpose and all those things, it is really helpful to use those. often, right? And so this is a way to kind of incorporate that into, again, this is our work plan. And so the things we're doing should relate. And you might find that, oh, wow, we have really nothing in one of those categories that's interesting. Anyway, so I support the general concept and also hear everyone's kind of resistance. We're not asking staff to go change everything tomorrow, but thinking about is there a way to present Present the material in a way that's really clear and. You know, it's a working document that we're looking at and it, and it represents. Like Dietrich said, all the, all the work we did in creating, creating that language. So I just want to put my 2 cents in that. I like it.

Council Member Kern.

Thanks. So I just brought it up because I needed a reminder. I don't have them memorized. And I think that one of the interesting things, we put safety as one of our issues, right? That's not listed of one of the six. So my concern is we've been very careful about safety. limiting and being very specific about what the council is working on it will encompass some of these i mean if we want to like put a footnote somewhere as to like this is part of community character or this is part of community places and we already do environmental sustainability and economic vibrancy i'm just trying to figure out well then where do we put like Is it under community connectivity that we're putting some of our safety items? And I think it will be a lot of work, especially for staff, but for all of us, to try to reimagine all of it. And that's, again, where I'm like, where's the value? I would like to understand if there is enough value in it that it is worth that much work. maybe it pays, but I think we really, and then we all need to discuss and rethink the whole work plan. So like that might, so I think maybe that's not for 27. Maybe this is something that we think about for implementing for the 28 work plan and everybody has time to figure this out and how we integrate and completely change how we view this versus let's see if we can get this done before the end of the year.

for the current plan if that if that might make sense i'd like to offer that as a suggestion and i don't know how city manager feels about that i'm going back to when i was a kid and i used to play those fun match games where you would have a list of things and then you would match it to an item this could be a game that we all play of like we'll hand you the list and then the six items and we see where you all land in terms of where they fit within those six categories and then we aggregate those together and see how close you are I think it is appropriate for us to take some time to think about it and what it could look like. Maybe as part of that, Councilmember Cooper, maybe you could take one of the small sections and just kind of give us like a vision of what you would see that would look like. We have some time because, as I said, we're not bringing this back until November 2nd for additional council consideration. So we have a couple of months to... like work through this and so I think it is appropriate to give us a little bit of time to think about what this could look like and then you know in our um our conversations with Council we could present like you know this is the amount of work involved this is what it could look like and then you can make a decision as to if you want to stick with this current work plan and focus on that in 2020 for the 2028 plan or if you want to make that transition now Decision does not need to be made tonight related to that. A decision does not need to be made tonight related to that.

Okay. Anybody comfortable with that? Contingency? All right. So I think we're done with that piece, and we are on to... the city attorney's report I Have no report. Thank you Next is upcoming agenda items and identification of future agenda items Browsing no Hands in the air except perhaps for mine. I I I had a question or a couple of questions to put to council around things we might want to discuss relating to matters that are going to be on the ballot this fall. We've had some discussions around this. Pardon me? But we have put to the voters, particularly the historical preservation tax. And I think there's certainly a question in my mind if we had both a task force and then a pretty hefty discussion among us and I guess it would seem to me that having a resolution in support of that would be a good idea for council because there's a lot of tax measures going to be on the ballot this fall and that would be one that I think is worthwhile to support with a council resolution. I'm not sure anything else is but I think that one is definitely in that category.

That's yes I'll just say I'm not opposed to it, but I also think it's Somewhat implicit in our referring it to the voters that we think it's a good idea. I Don't think we're in the business of sending things to the voters that we think are a bad idea But at the same time if you know if there's value in approving a resolution on consent I certainly wouldn't say no to it.

You know where I think I Yeah, and I don't know that we need to do more than that. I think we could do that on consent. I think where it comes in is that it's not a measure that necessarily there's gonna be a lot of, you know, a group that's gonna go out and campaign for this. And having a council resolution on it allows any one of us or others to say this is something that council, not just passed to be put on the ballot, but stands behind, perhaps in a different way than anything else, like the charter amendments, which I'm not going to really talk about. I think that one is useful to put on the agenda.

But thoughts? If we can do it as a consent resolution, I'm in.

Can we do that as a consent item?

Yes.

Did you have something to add? Okay. Yeah, Council Member Kern.

I agree. I mean, it doesn't take much effort. I don't know that there's a ton of value. I don't know how many residents would even... I mean, I'm thinking back to somebody 20 years ago living here when I got my ballot, or I would go to the ballot, I guess, go to vote, and I wouldn't have known one way or another whether a council had done a resolution for... you know, I would have been like, okay, it's here for me to make a decision for myself. And that's actually probably more important than anything. If we want to ask staff to put the time into a resolution and put it on consent, I don't object because I think we do all agree with the necessity for continuing the historic preservation tax. I just don't think there's a lot of value, to be honest.

Yeah, the value is that we have changed policy within the proposal. It's a different measure than the last time and then the last time before. So it's a pretty and a pretty substantial change. So if we can get that, you know, we just get a resolution, we can put it on consent and vote on it that way. That would be good. Yes. OK. All right. The next one that I had a question about was that I wanted to post to you all has to do with Boulder County initiative or a measure to add, it's an initiative I guess, to add two seats to the County Commission. This is one that I suppose on one hand it's like everybody can decide what they want to do. This is a something that a group has come forward with. The question that I have is this potentially can substantially change how folks are elected to county office to the highest county office. And I think because we depend on the county, because we work with the county, because we are affected by what those folks do and how they're elected, I think, makes a big difference. It may be worth it. to at least get some additional information, but potentially talk a little bit about that. I don't know that a resolution is necessary, but I do think that having some discussion on council about it may be worthwhile. I'm interested in what other council members think about that because it is a big change in the way, and it's also a very uncertain change because it's sort of like, okay, do you expand? All right, if you expand, then how do you rewrite things? So thoughts? Yes, council member.

I agree with you that it's important for all of the reasons you said. I don't think it's an item that we need to take up as a group. I think it's something we may all want to take up individually in our political capacities. I don't know that the city needs to take it up.

Any other? Oh, Councilmember Cooperman.

Yeah. While we're on the subject, I am wondering if the council is interested in taking positions on any of the statewide ballot measures.

Do you have one in mind or several?

I mean, there are a lot of them. The one that is top of mind is 177, which is the natural right to natural gas ballot measure.

It's not on the agenda to talk about it, but do folks want to put it on the agenda? Yes.

I think Councilmember Heffner's previous statement largely applies to this as well.

Okay. Anything else for the good of the order? Right. Do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye.