City Council - workshop

Good morning and welcome to the City of Colorado Springs work session meeting agenda for Monday, July 13th, 2026. It's been about a month since we've been here, so this feels really weird. I will start with the clerk. Please call the roll.

Council Member Casey.

Here.

Council Member Crowe-Iverson. Here. Council Member Donaldson.

Here.

Council Member Gold.

Here.

Council Member Hengen. Present on line. Council Member Leinwebers en route. Council Member Rainey.

Here.

Council Member Risley.

Here.

Council Member Williams.

Here. Eight present, one on the way. We'll move on to, are there any changes to the agenda for today? I don't see any. Are there any changes to the regular meeting comments? I don't see any. Moving on to 4A, will the clerk please read item 4A into the record?

City Council Work Session Meeting, minutes June 8, 2026.

Do we have any changes to those minutes? Moving on to item 6A, will the clerk please read item 6A into the record?

United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum presentation.

Good morning, Marissa.

Good morning. I am Marisa Wigglesworth. I am the CEO of our United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum. Council President Crow Iverson, members of City Council, thank you very much for making time for me to present to you today. I'm going to lead with an apology. I have been CEO of our United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum for three years, and I have not come to speak to this body before now. I apologize for my delinquents. I wish I had come sooner. But there's a little bit of good in that. In that today, our United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum is a very different organization than we were three years ago. We are much better positioned and prepared in our programming, in how we advance our mission and our strategy than we were when I arrived. We are much better positioned to evolve into what has always been the potential for our organization. I'm pleased to have the chance to share some recent highlights with you and to talk about where we're going in the future. So let me start with some recent highlights. how we have grown in the last three years. And the first thing on the list certainly is how our board of directors has evolved. Local leader Phil Layton was our board chair through the end of 2025. And Phil made the commitment that during his term as chair, he was going to ensure that our board shifted from being a board, the board that built the museum of just about all tremendous, committed, generous local leaders, to being a board that was truly representative of the national organization that it is our place and charge to become. Well, kudos to Phil. He did what he said. And today, 30% of our board are outstanding local leaders, and the other 70% of our board are leaders from around the country, helping us grow our audience, increase awareness, and expand our impact. Next, beyond that, what's the number one criticism folks have heard in our community about our US Olympic and Paralympic Museum? I know what it is. I've been. Nothing changes. Why would I go again? It was not an inaccurate criticism. Museums need to change. They need to be current. They need to be giving new content to continuously draw in repeat visitation. I'm really proud to tell you that about a year ago, we adopted a strategy document and commitment plan to continuously updating our core exhibits and our changing exhibits. The image on the screen right here is a terrific example. Our newest core exhibit that opened in May, we call it Signature Hallway. Anytime an Olympian or Paralympian visits the museum for the first time, we invite them to autograph one of what we call a diamond panel. Well, we have 14 diamond panels full of almost 700 signatures from Olympians and Paralympians. We put them up on exhibit in May, reminding our visitors that we are a museum sharing information and stories of contemporary Olympians and Paralympians, as well as those heroes from the past. We're able to keep our content current and compelling. We're able to engage Olympians and Paralympians in what we do thanks to generous investments from two lead donors. I want to take a moment and acknowledge the US Olympic and Paralympic Endowment located here in Colorado Springs for their major gift to help us engage Olympians and Paralympians in our programming. and the david and eula winterman foundation located in houston texas also making a tremendous investment in the museum that one to make sure that we can always keep our content changing current and compelling The next thing I'll note, we now have the right staff leadership team. Took me about a year longer than I had hoped to build the right staff leadership team, but today we have the talent to truly move us forward so that we can meet our national scale potential. A member of our leadership team, our chief marketing officer, Tommy Shield, is with me in the gallery today. And with all of that, I am pleased to tell you that through May of 2026, our attendance is up 22% over the same period in 2025, and we hope and intend to continue that positive trend. We are exceedingly grateful to the city of Colorado Springs for the investment that the city makes to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum through the LARP fund for us to produce the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame Festival. The most recent festival occurred just a year ago, July of 2025. The idea is that the Hall of Fame Festival will be produced in coordination with the bi-annual Hall of Fame induction class produced by our friends at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. This time last year, over a period of four days, we brought in 20 Hall of Fame legends, hosted 23 events across the city. Eight of those were what we call greatness gives back events where our Hall of Fame legends went into the community to lead workshops, clinics, coffee talks. free for participants, whether they live here in Colorado Springs or were visiting tourists from out of town. These included an open skate at Robeson Arena with Brian Boitano, a session at Valley Swim Club with icons Gary Hall Jr. and Rowdy Gaines here in the picture, and a clinic at Widener Field, a soccer clinic led by the great Michelle Akers. During that Hall of Fame festival, we had two free days of admission at the museum. We welcomed almost 5,000 visitors across those two days. And on the biggest day, we saw more than 1,000 more visitors than had been our prior biggest day of visitation in our history. It's a tremendous investment from the city. We are doing important, high-impact things with it. And we are very, very grateful. Looking ahead, as part of our commitment to being current, always having new content to draw repeat visitation, we did a hearty array of programming around the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. The image on the right is a panel discussion we had with Steven Netterosik, Folks might remember Steven Neterosic from the Paris 2024 games, pommel horse guy. He helped our U.S. men's gymnastics team win a gold medal and then pardon me, a bronze medal. And then he went on to win a bronze medal in the pommel horse as an individual apparatus. Stephen is also known as the Rubik's Cube gymnast, and he won some additional fame and acclaim participating on Dancing with the Stars. Well, Stephen was with us in February during the first weekend of the Winter Games, meeting with our visitors, doing a donor event for us, helping us bring contemporary energy and programming into the museum. On the left, a panel discussion among local Colorado Springs Olympians and Paralympians. Patrick Holgren won a silver medal in the 2026 Milano Cortina Games in the standing giant slalom. And of course, Elicom and Danny O'Shea made us all proud as the pairs skaters as part of our gold medal winning team figure skating group. They were on site at the museum to celebrate the opening of our new It's Your Vibe, capital I, capital T for Italy, exhibit featuring artifacts from those games. Again, current, compelling, drawing new and returning audiences. That's our plan going forward. So beyond the right now. We have a five-year plan to get from where we are today, a world-class museum serving audiences who are having amazing visit experiences here in Colorado Springs, to truly take our rightful place on the national stage, shoulder to shoulder with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. We're going to build on our first six years. July 2026 marks our six-year anniversary and take the next six years to evolve into our nation's premier platform to connect Americans with the enduring impact of Olympic and Paralympic sport. We have some tremendous, mostly but not all local, investors who are going to help us continue through our growth period and bridge these couple of years so that we can continue to grow our capacity, refine our business model, and ensure that by 2031, just less from six years from now, we will have a high impact annually sustainable national serving organization. We've got a strong board, the right staff, a clear plan, and we're on our way. Some examples of what's coming up in the near term. Again, with our commitment to changing content, keeping things current and compelling. In September, we will open a brand new exhibit on the U.S. Decathlon in the newly renovated Bill Daniels Gallery of Inspiration. The Daniels Fund in Denver made a generous investment to the museum to help us renovate this exhibit so that we can produce changing exhibits a couple of times a year in a way that is both efficient and allows that content to always meet our world class gold medal standard. In September, as I said, as we partner with the USA Track and Field, we will open a legacy of victory. U.S. Olympic decathletes. I didn't know this until we started the research. The U.S. has been dominant in the decathlon throughout time. We have won something like 60% of all medals awarded, and twice we swept the podium. It's a story we're exciting to tell. Just beyond that, later on this fall, we will update the exhibit where we showcase the founding of the Paralympic Games. We have a number of exciting new artifacts that tell stories of incredible Paralympic athletes that will be presented in that updated exhibit. And then next year, we'll update the core exhibit that we call The Lab, the exhibit that really helps visitors explore the science and technology behind sport at its most elite level. We're planned two years out right now. That will continue to be our cycle so that we'll always be able to share with audiences what's new right now, what's coming next year, and what's coming the year after that. And speaking about next year and the year after that, I'm sure everybody is aware that the next Summer Games will be competed in Los Angeles, LA 28. It will be the biggest sporting event the world has ever seen, without a doubt. And with that, it will present a tremendous opportunity for all of the organizations associated with the Olympic and Paralympic movement, but certainly our museum among them. We have been planning for months and months about what our role in L.A. 28 will be, and we have been very discerning. We want to make sure that what we do around those Olympic and Paralympic Games truly adds value to the movement and our athletes and our audience. And we also want to make sure that we don't get that we are remembered as the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum. We certainly don't want to be confused for the world of Coke or any other entity that also has fun artifacts to showcase. So we're talking about a number of projects right now, some that will be in L.A. or in the L.A. region, some that will take U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum content national across the whole country. No matter where you live, you can go to your local museum and see content that we've produced and that fans of Team USA everywhere in the nation are sharing in together. A number of these plans are still coming together, so I look forward to sharing them all with you when they're a little bit more concrete. So today, we are a world-class attraction. We celebrate Team USA heroes. We convey Olympic and Paralympic values. We help visitors of all ages remember that we each carry greatness within. And we helped celebrate the city of Colorado Springs as Olympic City USA. As I said, we have bold plans for where we are going to go in the next, we'll now call it five and a half years. But we have come tremendously far in our first six and in my first three. i am deeply grateful to the support we continue to receive from across the city of colorado springs and from this body i thank you i'm also very very pleased to share that shortly after we step out of session today my colleague tommy shield will be releasing a press announcement that will share the news that together with our usopm board we are renewing my contract for another five years to be CEO for the next five years and taking us through this term of growth. I'm excited about where we are. I'm even more excited about where we're going. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President. With the Summer Olympics in LA coming up, we're about a year and a half out now for everything kicking off. And oftentimes, especially, and this happened umpteen years ago, of course, when the Olympics was in LA also, Do you anticipate the utilization or the increase of the utilization of Colorado Springs as a lot of these, especially track and field athletes, are gonna use Colorado Springs for altitude purposes in order to go to LA? Are we doing any planning with a lot of those groups and entities that may generate some interest here in Colorado Springs?

Yes, appreciate your question. I very much think that Olympic City USA is poised to see an increase in all kinds of visitorship associated with the games. Now, I can't speak to athlete training specifically. not the wheelhouse we sit in within the movement, of course, but what we will be doing very aggressively, and of course we're already starting, is reaching out to tourism groups, lodging groups. Under, again, my colleague Tommy Shields' leadership, we have been very assertive in recent months, and it'll continue for the next year and a half and beyond, how we're working with the Greater Colorado Springs lodging community so that they're able to be promoting

all that we're doing in olympic city usa leading up to the games and during those games i'm sorry no you thank you for that and you just hit the last key point olympic city usa we can't continue to tout that title and we're about a year and a half away from the olympics being without next door neighbor out there in California. So I'm definitely looking forward to seeing a lot of planning on what are we doing as a city to lean in to that title, Olympic City USA.

Appreciate that, yes, thank you. Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks Madam President and good morning, Marissa. Thanks for being here and presenting that information today. Just kind of go back to some of the first slides. You know, one of the bullets on there was attendance is up 22% year to date through May compared to 2025. What is the attendance?

So our attendance in our 2024 year, and I'm giving that as a point because again, we're six years old today. So our attendance benchmarking, we're still establishing it and learning it. And what we have learned very clearly is that the games have an impact. So let me give you the reference point of summer 24 was the Paris Olympics and Paralympics by all measures across the globe, a grand success for the games. That year, our attendance was 84, 85,000 visitors. Our attendance did go down notably last year. So down to about, I think it was 72 or 74,000. So that's the benchmark against which we are up 22%.

in the first through May of this year, compared to through May of 25? Yes, sir. Right. And then there was on the next page, you mentioned there's two free admission days that welcome more than 4,500 guests. Which period did that fall in?

That was July of 2025. So it was part of the Hall of Fame Festival that the city helped us produce this time last year.

Outside those areas that you're comparing those two.

Yes, yes, it does. And of course, we just saw the comparable weekend. In fact, yesterday and the day before was the comparable weekend to that free weekend a year ago. And between the two days, we saw just maybe it was 340 on Sunday and 440 on Saturday.

So quite a bit less than 4,500.

Quite a bit less than a free day at our regular admission price. Yes, sir.

Okay, and you mentioned that there are two major donors that are helping out quite a lot. Can you inform us of what their support is financially?

Sure, and I should say, and that is indeed what I said by all means, we have a number of major donors who are helping us financially. quite a bit and over the next few years as we transition. The two that I wanted to point out really are exceptional. One, the US Olympic and Paralympic endowment because they sit within the Olympic movement and it is an indication of how the Olympic movement is embracing the museum. So the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Endowment has made a four-year, $1 million investment for us to engage Olympians and Paralympians in our programming. The other exceptional investor that I wanted to point out can i just clarify that that's uh one million dollars every year for four years no it's not it's across four years 250 a year across for each of four years and that is essentially to bring olympians here is that right olympians and power olympians for us to hire them to do work that advances our our strategies or mission not even necessarily in colorado springs okay

All right, thanks for clarifying that. And then I'm sorry to interrupt, but I interrupted you there.

Okay, and then the other, an exceptional investment, but I also wanted to note it because they are not local funders and a wonderful example of how we are being able to build our network geographically. So that is the David and Eula Winterman Foundation. They are located in Texas, and they have made a $1.5 million investment restricted to our content so that we are always updating exhibits, showcasing new artifacts.

Okay, thank you. And just a couple more questions, and you've answered that one.

Very good.

Can you remind me, what is the financial support from the city? I believe it could be half a million dollars every other year, but go ahead.

That's exactly it. In alignment with the Hall of Fame induction class for us to produce the Hall of Fame Festival. $500,000 every other year.

Is there other financial support that the museum is receiving from the city?

Not at this time.

Okay, is there other non-financial support?

Pardon me, let me step back. We do then also apply for the LART funding, the competitive funding every year. Right now we have a grant pending with the city through that competitive LART process. So I answered a little bit too quickly when I said no other funding at this time.

And can you share just some basic numbers with us? What's the size of the budget for the museum? What's your revenue, what are your expenditures?

So expenses, just about $6 million. Revenue right now through our three primary revenue sources, that's admission, philanthropy, and then the rest of our earned income sources, membership, retail sales, food and beverage catering. revenue all in just about 4.2 million annually. Obviously a significant delta between the 6 million in expenses, the 4.2 million in consistent renewable operating revenue. That's the delta we need to bridge during this next transitional period as we continue to grow our capacity.

And how are you covering that currently?

So currently that is being covered by generous funders who understand our finances, understand the investment they've made during this, what I'm calling it from time to time, a runway period, as we grow our capacity to raise more money in philanthropy and generate more income through our programming and admissions.

And just two more. What's the number of staff at the museum?

So I'm going to do the eyes up in my head because we just looked at these numbers. FTEs, full-time equivalents, about 24. Now that count goes up because we do have a hardy number of part-time scheduled staff. And that number might be in the mid-30s.

Okay. And... I believe when this was one of the City of Champions projects, there were certain financial goals that were set, revenue goals. Can you remind us of what those are and has the museum achieved those in any year so far? When do you anticipate that to happen?

so the pro forma that i'm recalling um and this is the information front of mind for me so i hope it aligns with the information you're interested in projected uh 350 000 annual visitors to the museum for a operating budget that about 10 years in and we're six years now an operating budget about 10 years in would be 10 million dollars And the museum, in its revenues, would earn, if I'm remembering the charts correctly, about $11 million. So a $1 million net profit on your operating year in and year out, based on that mostly 350,000 visitor projection. Six years in, the projection was inaccurate. That's not who we are, that is not the audience we're going to draw. We're going to increase our attendance from where we were last year, about 74,000. We're gonna continue to increase it. Our long-term plan has us at about 100,000. That's probably going to be who we are in attendance. So it is our opportunity, and we are very excited about it, to evolve these other means to expand impact, generate revenue, raise the brand of Olympic City USA, inspire our visitors, and honor our Team USA athletes.

Well, I appreciate your frankness on that or your honesty on that. And do you know, like a breakdown, maybe 74,000 visitors, how many are local?

Yeah.

How many come from out of state or out of county?

What we are seeing, this is very much seasonal, but we are about 40% in Colorado, 60% outside of Colorado, and about 70% of our visitors are outside of El Paso County. So to the degree that the City for Champions charge was to generate economic impact through sports-based tourism, we are doing well in meeting that. We are drawing visitors from outside of Colorado, despite the fact that our numbers are obviously nowhere near the pro forma original.

Well, I really appreciate your presentation today and all that information. If this does become an annual thing, and I hope it does, I think maybe it's supposed to, I'm not sure, I would ask that you include some of that more nuts and bolts information that I was asking about, budgets, numbers, things like that, along with the vision and more of a general strategy. So, but thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you. Happy to do that.

I you're being very gracious with your answers. I just want to remind everyone that the museum did open during cobit. And so that was the rough beginning of. I think it might have been a different story had not been shut down for 2 years. That's not an, you know, something that's. needed during those times. And so I know you didn't make any excuses, but I'm going to make one for you. Thank you. The only question I have, and it's not really a question. Well, I have a question and the lab. The lab is very exciting to me. And I'm just curious how many schools And students, do you have running through that lab? Because I think just seeing that and putting inspiration into those kids' minds is very exciting, and I think it's critical. So do you have school passes and school projects where those kids interested can come through the lab to see this is really what you're going to have to do to make it?

Yeah, thank you for the question. We welcome, and the number is somewhere between five and 7,000 school group visitors a year, which is fantastic. And I want our numbers to be four times that. We do have curriculum that school groups can use for their students as they come through the lab. That kind of programming is really one of our best opportunities for that next step in the evolution we have to make. We are projected in our long-term plan in 2027, so just next year, to hire another senior leader, again, adding to this very capable, finally everyone in the right seats leadership team, to help us make sure that we're doing everything we can to bring those school kids in. So we're doing some work in that space now. There's huge potential and the key hire we will make in 27. We'll lean in to that opportunity. That's very exciting. Thank you for that.

Councilman Donaldson.

Thank you, Madam President. And I just had an alibi question or I just remembered a couple. What is the cost of admission to the museum? And has that changed since opening?

It has changed since opening. So today we have what we call value pricing. So we changed seasonally. In the summer prices are more expensive than they are after Labor Day. And then we even change by day of the week. So it costs a little bit, you can come in for a little bit less on a Wednesday in July than it costs to come in on a Saturday in July. The top out price point for an adult on a Saturday in July, that full price paying adult is $29.95.

Okay, and what is it for kids?

1695 for youth four to 13? Five to 12. Five to 12.

And sorry to ask you the price. I know you're not working at the cashiers, but it's useful and people listen to this and it can be helpful. Parking, what's the parking cost?

so we we have that easy in easy out well lit easy to access flat surface lot daytime flat rate for the lot is seven dollars and fifty cents there's also metered parking available on the streets okay and you mentioned that the prices have changed since it opened have they gone up which wouldn't you go ahead and answer that yes so so prices we have increased prices even during my three-year tenure we increased prices in 2020 what's four pardon me as we were heading into the paris games right we knew we knew that pat that having a summer games in europe in paris uh was going to generate interest and opportunity and we thought did benchmarking and uh recognized it was an appropriate time to increase prices okay i think that's enough questions for uh for one day thank you very much thank you

I don't see any other questions. Thank you very much. This was very enlightening, and I'm so glad you came with us today, and we look forward to hearing more. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thanks. Moving on to item 7A. Will the clerk please read item 7A into the record? Audit plan review. Good morning, Natalie.

Good morning. Okay, does the clicker look, you got it? It's working, thank you. Good morning, Council President Crowe-Iverson, Pro Tem Risley, and members of City Council. I'm City Auditor Natalie Lovell.

Seems to be working, great.

Today we'll cover our mission, vision, and values for the office, our office structure, the office organization, the audit planning, audit resources, building the audit plan, and then I'm going to conclude with asking for your request for the endorsement of the audit plan for 2027. The purpose of the Office of the City Auditor is to provide independent risk-based advice, insight, and foresight through objective assurance and advisory services designed to add value and improve the city and its enterprise operations. We currently conduct two types of major services. The first one is advisory services, and the other one is assurance. And assurance is typically noted as audit, and advisory is typically what you would call consulting. And they really don't differ all that much other than in how the reports are prepared through my office. They all come with the same processes and procedures. And so in the case of audits, we're providing assurances that risks controls and that sort of thing are in place and that you can rely on them versus consulting is more about maybe the design of those controls and assisting with those that we would look at and do the review with building those controls in the first place. The Office of the City Auditor assists city council and management to achieve their objectives by testing and reporting on the effectiveness of internal controls, risk management, and governance processes. And our mission is to encourage responsible stewardship and accountability for public resources through independent and unbiased audits. We seek to be trusted advisors who drive positive organizational change through independent insight, integrity, and solutions that strengthen the public's confidence and address emerging risks for the benefit of our community. We hold accountability, principled behavior, service to the community, continuous improvement, and people as our values. The city auditor is an appointee of city council. The city auditor derives authority from the Colorado Springs City Code. The primary authority is given in section 1.2.706, and I'll just read that for you. The city auditor shall examine and inspect all books, records, files, papers, documents, and information stored on computer records or in other files or records relating to all financial affairs of every office, department, division, agency, enterprise, political subdivision, and organization which receives funds from the city or under the direct or indirect of the city council. The auditor may require any person to appear at any time upon proper notice and to produce any accounts, books, records, files, and other papers pertaining to the receipt or expenditure of city funds, whether general or special. If that person fails to produce the papers, then the auditor may request Council approval to search for and take any books, paper, or records in the custody of that person or public official. And I read all of that because it's very broad authority. And you'll see that when we get to the audit plan this year, when we look at our risks, we are looking at a broad audit universe for which to conduct our annual audit plan. The annual work of the Office of the City Auditor is carried out through a team of auditors. I took over the role of City Auditor in 2025, just over about a year and a half ago, and we have been working towards moving in this direction of this org chart. We're currently authorized 15.5 FTE, but you'll see on this org chart that we have 17 current FTE that we're aiming to get to. And we've been doing that through a systematic approach of re... looking at our workload and then reestablishing positions at lower levels. So for example, we started with three managers about a year and a half ago, and we've since looked at now downgrading those to an assistant city auditor, audit supervisors, and then brought in additional auditor ones where we're getting additional audit hours over just management work. So after accounting for the 17 FTE, that gives us 35,360 gross hours of work in our office. After accounting for leave, holidays, administrative leave, that gives us 24,650 productive hours. Of these, we've anticipated just over 19,000 are allocated to actual audit execution. That leaves 2,496 hours for management, leadership, and oversight. And then we have in our audit plan this year, 3,100 hours to strategic initiatives. And you may recall that last month I was in front of you talking about our strategic plan for 26 through 2030. So we have largely accounted for implementing our strategic plan in every audit plan every year. And a lot of those 3,100 hours are made up of the support we receive from our paraprofessional, our business support specialist senior. The plan does not currently account for furlough hours. This year the plan did, but next year's does not. And we are in the process, as I mentioned, of still going through a reorganization from three audit teams under three audit managers to two audit teams under two supervisors. And the reason we're also looking at doing this is it enhances the day-to-day oversight of the office. It was also a very intentional leadership development and succession planning opportunity, and it will help with employee retention and growth. Here is how the 27 audit plan will break down by entity, including a historic look. So we anticipate maintaining a relatively flat budget from 25 into 27. We've tried to maintain all of our reorganization under the existing budget all the way back to 25, just through savings in reclassifying those positions down. Natalie, I have a question from Councilman Hengeman, and she's online.

Sure, thank you.

Thank you, Natalie. I'm at Kennedy Airport, so I'm not going on the screen. But can you just go back to the org chart? You said there's 17 FTEs. And 15.5, I didn't quite catch what the 15.5 was, but could you explain that and then say how many are currently employed in the office?

Sure. We are currently authorized through the existing budget process of 15.5. The .5 is a part-time employee who has since recently retired this year. And so what you're seeing is our future resource plan. That's what I will be bringing forward through the budget cycle this year is the 17 FTE. And we currently are sitting with 4.5 vacancies in the office with some caveats. So we have an existing audit supervisor. We have another audit supervisor where we've made an offer and we are in the process of negotiating that employee's start date. We've had some recent promotions in the office and some new hires. So we have an auditor one position that I'm counting as filled when I'm giving you these statistics that includes an employee who's going to be starting in August 5th. So in about a week, week and a half. And then we've also had a promotion internally from our business support specialist position into an auditor one. And I will just take a moment to address this because as part of my leadership effort and succession planning, which I think this council has been interested in, that is that we have been putting effort into promoting our internal staff. And when you make those conscious choices, so for example, when I repurposed the manager positions into supervisor positions, we gave two seniors in our office an opportunity to try before you buy. For six months, we put them in a supervisory position in an interim role so that they could get a feel and to get that experience. That's reinvesting in your staff. But what that also means is now a delayed process getting people in bodies and seats, right? Because now you have to leave those positions open for some period of time. But what that does is it sends a message to your team that we will look to promote you and to invest in our team. And it also helps with retention. So yes, while I'm dealing with some vacancies today, and I have those 4.5, I will tell you, historically, I came into the office with three vacancies. on March of 25, we knew that we had two impending retirements. We've been averaging about 25 to 35% vacancy consistently since I've been here. But I think a lot of that is driven by a variety of different reasons. And for the most part, I would say, one of the bigger contributing factors to that is promoting within our office And that means that those vacancies, so that business support specialist we just promoted a week ago, now we have that continued vacancy, but that's giving back to your office. Did I answer that question? Thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. Okay, moving on to the audit plan by entity. So I'll focus in on 27. As I mentioned, we are looking to hold our budget relatively flat compared to 2025. We're trying to bring in new audit software without really increasing our budget. We are also looking at moving from the 15.5 FTE to the 17 FTE. And so what I call our core budget is about $2.1 million. This year it's about 60,000 in O&M costs. I will probably be looking to double that because of this audit software. So it might look a little different, but really, you know, $150,000 compared to a $2.1 million budget, it's substantially labor at this point. When we add in the 17% overhead, that takes our budget to the $2.4 million. Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President. One of the things I want to highlight is under the airport column, the 2025 budget, and then of course the planned 2027 budget, I mean, we're looking at a two-fold increase. What's driving that increase? That's a massive increase.

Yes, you're looking at the, just so I'm clear, you're asking about the airport going from 7% up to the 11%, absolutely. And I will address that here in just one second. Okay, I can hold off. If that's okay. Thanks. So we always build our audit plan, and we'll talk about this in a second, around required codes and all of the risk-based plans, and we'll talk about that in a second. But what's really driving that is the change in the risk profile that we see at the Colorado Springs Airport. What we have identified is we have not been doing what we call cycle audits in our office. So those financial system audits. So for the last couple of years, our office has prioritized the risks at the airport business park. And that has come at the expense of not auditing things like the rental car concessions or the revenue of the core of the airport. And so what you're seeing is just that increase in the shift in the risk profile to be able to address all of those.

So are you saying that the audit itself is going to be core focused on the airport? Is there any capture of the business park within those numbers or is it just core airport?

It's both. So it's not only maintaining the focus that we've been having the last few years on the airport business part, but also then in addition, picking up the core kind of financial business risks at the airport. So that's why you're seeing the increase.

Okay.

Does that address your question?

For now.

I'll wait till you get to the other part. Great.

Councilman Lineweber.

I'm probably asking the same question, a similar type of question, but ahead of when you're going to talk about it so you can answer it later. But I'm liking the idea that I see that you've separated out the enterprises, the golf and parking particular piece. But there are other enterprises, and I was wondering why you didn't call those out, America's Mountain and some of the, you know, anyway. I wonder if you can address those kind of things because I think they should be kind of handled separately. So I'll let you answer it when you want to.

But let's just address it now. So I think it's good to walk you, you know, all of you through this. Two predecessors ago from me looked at the code and said we need to do post-audit reviews. And so what that means is that every year the City of Colorado Springs goes through an external financial audit. We hire an external financial audit team that comes in and does the financials. But the code then requires, as the city auditor, that I do post-audit reviews. And so you remember I read to you that very broad, all-encompassing. So each, I think, auditor has come in and looked at that code and said, how do we go about doing those post-audit reviews? And so a couple of auditors ago, they looked at it and said, we should do these cycle, these financial audits. We should have eyes on those areas of cash disbursements, procurement. And so those go on a risk-based rotational timeframe. Those have been, and they're included in our required audits every year. We make sure we touch at least one system at utilities and one system at the city. My predecessor then looked at that and said, you know, another good area where we're seeing emerging risks for the city and utilities is in financial systems. And so we added recurring routine financial system audits. And I have now looked at that code and said, you know, one of the areas we're not getting to on a frequent basis is enterprises outside of the utilities and outside of the airport. And so what you're seeing here reflected in this plan with that 4% to the golf and the parking enterprise is my ability to kind of look more holistically at the risk profile. Now, I think the thing with golf and parking is dollar-wise, they're nowhere near the same size as, say, utilities, but that doesn't mean that they don't need eyes on them at some frequent frequency. What I think you're seeing is this transition to a fairly robust risk-based audit plan that looks not just at dollars, and we've never just looked at dollars, but it's taking that whole comprehensive look.

Well, and I agree. I think it actually is a good strategy. I like it. I'd like to see America's Mountain, because it's also an enterprise. It would be good to see that within your bundle.

I think what you'll see is that we will start making some rotations. So Pikes Peak, America's Mountain, the cemeteries, we had already had golf and parking in our risk model. And so that's why they naturally went to the top of this list. And I'll just say to you, when we reached out to the golf enterprise and said, we've got two options we could look at, they said, could you come in and do all three? So I think there is a desire to have us come in and partner. And I do appreciate that from those enterprises.

Okay, great.

Any other questions? Great. Okay, so here's the nuts and bolts, and I've kind of gone into it a little bit ahead of time, but in preparing the audit plan, I start kind of in a methodical way. I first look at city code, and I use that term very broadly because most of the audits, there's some that are in code. but like that review that I just mentioned about doing post-audits, but there's also some in ballot measures, utility governance, and I just recently got a question asking, have we looked at those to see if they're still efficient and effective? And it's on my radar, it's on the strategic plan, For example, workers' compensation is an audit we do every four years. I think we used to do it every two years. Maybe there's some ability to come back to you in the next couple of years once we get some of our foundation underneath us and maybe look at different things to change that up to maybe broaden or adjust. But we start there with those requirements. And then we look through and conduct interviews all the way from staff at individual contributor level, all the way up through some of you on council. We've met with the audit committee. We meet with the directors. you know any anybody who wants to meet with me and then we compile all of that into a fairly robust risk uh... model and then of course uh... fraud waste and abuse we administer the fraud waste and abuse the whistleblower hotline for the city and we see uh... themes that come through as we did in a prime example of is a fleet audit that we are in the process of wrapping up we saw some themes come out of the fraud waste and abuse hotline over the last couple of years and so now we are moving forward and we've audited that process. Now, once we get all of our information gathered, then we look at a risk model. It's scored, it's ranked, we look at the highest risks, and some of the attributes that we look at is who was the requesting party, the dollar value, the asset liquidity, how much government regulation there is, the political sensitivity, the control environment, how frequently we have audited, those kinds of things. And so this year, we scored over 200 individual audits in our risk-based plan. And I believe, and I'm going from memory, I should probably put it on my notes here, but we went down, I think roughly into the 30 or 40% of that list to develop the 27 audit plan. So we are working with the audit committee this year to get a metric in place on our scorecard that shows the coverage and so over the next couple of years as we continue to evolve the office we will be able to share with you kind of how deep with the resources we have are we getting into that risk model and that will start to help um kind of influence that resource plan of 17 ft's versus 15 if that if that makes sense i have a question from councilman hingeum online great thank you

Thank you, Madam President. Yes, so Natalie, you mentioned that Broadway's safety line on this slide and on page 13, you have that you've budgeted 300 hours for that hotline. To what extent do you weigh the cost of the investigation versus the improprieties or the alleged improprieties that you're investigating?

Council Member Hengema, I'm having a hard time hearing if I'll restate the question. Are you asking me the cost of administering the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline?

The cost of the investigations, yes, versus the improprieties, yeah.

Yes, so this year we, well, starting last year, this office has always kept our time, but what we haven't done very systematically is tie that timekeeping back to a dashboard. And so over the last year or so, we have been working through a timekeeping policy, working through building a dashboard that is beyond just the status of each of the audits on the audit plan. And so council will be getting theirs at the end of next week. As our quarterly update, you've gotten them in the past at the quarter. But what we do is we track now time to each of those activities on the audit plan. So the fraud, waste and abuse hotline is simply one of all of the things on the list. And so our staff is charging time. Now, what we do not do, is get down into the weeds of a specific investigation. Just like similar, we would not go to an airport audit and get down to each task of that audit. So we do track what the fraud, waste and abuse, and then we break it up by entity. So we send those hours to the airport, if it was the airport, if it was utilities, if it was the city, then they're each paying for their portion of administering the fraud, waste and abuse hotline as a whole.

I think my question is more around in whatever investigations you're doing, you are either finding or not fraud or waste.

are you tracking the amount of potential savings or the impact of that fraud and abuse and and measuring that against the time spent on the investigation thank you your question comes at a great time we recently started working with the audit committee within the last six months to overhaul our fraud waste and abuse report we are adding actively more information working through the audit committee And one of the tasks that I would like to work on for the next six months, maybe the next year, is getting that report out to the public. And what we are frankly struggling with is the confidential nature of the fraud, waste, and abuse report, but it's also really important to let the citizens know what we are achieving through those reports. And so I think your question is very timely. I don't have that data today to be able to answer that, but I think what you're gonna see is also on our scorecard, we have, I've identified a potential metric that says, you know, what is the return on investment of the city's city auditor and how are we producing savings, whether that's through the fraud, waste and abuse hotline or through an audit report that we do.

that's great it looks great thank you thank you councilman risley thank you madam president not to go too far down the rabbit hole of what councilmember hengeman was just asking about but you have no control over the timing or what specifically is being submitted to the fraud waste and abuse hotline obviously it's something that you're reactive to and so when you receive a uh or some input through that mechanism, do you have a duty to investigate?

We do. I think obviously the fraud, waste and abuse hotline is just one stream of work that we have to complete every year along with the audit plan, along with fulfilling our strategic plan. You're right, they do come. I can't anticipate exactly how many or how many hours we will have every year. And we'll talk about it at the end of this. I'll just jump ahead here. Every audit plan is built with 1,500 hours of unassigned audit work to allow for those types of things. So as we have fraud, waste, and abuse, or we have the scope of an existing audit that needs to increase, we are using that to help buffer that workflow. So you have capacity built in to try to- We have the capacity built in to administer this.

Thanks.

Okay, moving on. So just to kind of bring it all together in building the annual audit plan. So first of all, we're doing research, we're interviewing, we are researching, we're doing post audit reviews. So every time we complete an audit, the scope may or may not change. And if something new comes up during an audit, we may expand the scope of the audit. That's why we have the extra 1,500 hours. Or we could say, you know what, this is something we'll look at in the future. So my whole team does post-audit reviews, and then that cycle then refills into the risk model. We have fraud, waste, and abuse hotlines. I sit up here at the dais and listen to the public, listen to council. We're constantly identifying risks. Then we put that all into that risk model. We score the potential audits. And then from there, I'm looking at resource identification, whether that's staffing, budgeting, third party contracting, however we need to accomplish the audit plan for the year. And so I'm in that process right now. I'm looking at, do I need 17 FTE? Do I need more software? Those kinds of things. And so that is kind of the next conversation we'll be having through the budget cycle. and then i build the plan so i have looked at the required audits by code charter ballot governance and then i look at any post audits and things those major systems that we talked about earlier what do we need to do so our standards for example require that we do a follow-up audit every year on all of the outstanding observations recommendations that we have so a follow-up audit and then we have the risk-based audit plan and then that is how we get to this table here and so this year this is how the audit plan breaks out i won't go through all of the details if you want to ask me any questions we can but but really our required audits take up about 24%. Now in 27, that number is about 500, I believe less than this year. I'd have to go back and look at the math, but I think this year it was about 30%. And I point that out because that was the other strategic driver for me looking at reorganizing the office staff and bringing some of those positions down to auditor ones. auditor ones and twos. Now auditor ones need a lot of oversight. That doesn't mean we don't need supervision, those kinds of things, but about a third of our audit plan every year is these recurring audits that honestly provide a great way to train and skill up a new internal auditor. Our carry forward audits from 26 will be about 20%. We can forecast that now, looking at kind of where we're settling in in this year, what new audits we've added, what will stay, and we still want to push into 27. And then audit support tasks. Now this number surprises a lot of people. You see that 3,300, but that's where that 1,500 hours of unassigned work is. And so although that's high, that's kind of my buffer to adjust within the rest of the audits. And then the new risk-based audit plan is about 40%. And so it breaks up, again, by that 43, 42, 11, and 4%, respectively, over the city, utilities, airport, and other enterprises. The city auditor... we do have to schedule our work and i i will also point out that this isn't an audit plan that just starts january 1. this is the work it's it's more like a work stream and so some audits will start in december and november and they will naturally carry over which is why you're seeing such a carryover amount So in summary, I'm seeking council's acknowledgement and endorsement of the 2027 audit plan. It reflects support for the proposed priorities while recognizing that the plan may be adjusted throughout the year in response to emerging risks, operational needs, and council requests. And I will stop and say that, and I guess I must've missed it in my notes before, but when we develop the audit plan, and as we did last year, we started a new process where after we get through the risk modeling, we went back and met with the senior leadership, the chief of staff, the directors and officers at utilities, the director of aviation. And we said, these are what are coming up on the top of the list at the end of the risk model. And this is what we're thinking about putting on the audit plan for next year. We continued that collaborative process this year. And while it's a fine line between maintaining my independence and building the audit plan as the city auditor, I also think what it helps us though accomplish is getting buy-in from all of these other entities, the senior leaders, for our success. And so they have been through the process, they've been walked through it, and they've looked at all of the risks too, and they've agreed with what's there. In addition to that, the plan fulfills the requirements specified in code. And I will also say I have presented this and worked with council's audit committee several times. Last year I met with them through one workshop with their requests. They've asked for several workshops. We've conducted two around the audit plan. One was to get their input on risks as they see it through the citizen's lens of your advisory board to the audit committee. And then on June 2nd, we went back through and walked through the risk model, and this year, for example, we walked them through a new process we brought in, which was pulling the IT risk components out, and now we have our own standalone IT risk components. We see that as an emerging, effort in the city and in utilities and everywhere really. And so we really wanna make sure that our audit plan is addressing those emerging risks. So they walked through that new process with us. They have reviewed and recommended the audit plan at the June audit committee. So I think with that, I will take any questions that you have. Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I always want to take a moment to just state that in Colorado Springs, we are working off of a strong mayor component where the mayor is actually in charge of most of everything. But there's one area he's not in charge of, and that would be the audit group. This is the one department that city council is completely in charge of. And in a real sense, just for all those listening and understanding, our audit group is our one, giant lens of allowing us to kind of see what's happening at the city level and for us to respond to that. And so it's such a vital, vital component to how we deliver checks and balances to how government is being run. So I just wanted to really highlight the fact that people may not realize that you actually do not work for the mayor. you work for City Council and it's the one department that is completely at the purview of City Council. So I just appreciate you being a great partner and really delivering on our requests. So thank you very much.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President. In regards to the budget layout, and I'm going back again to the airport question, do you have a breakdown of what the associated line item costs are for each item within the budget? Like, so for example, if we're gonna go from 7% to 11%, okay, what is those line items? What is those designated fiduciary line items that,

makes it digestible for for the citizens to see where we're putting money sure i i'll try to answer your question i i let me just make sure i answer it at the end if i don't let me know so the way our audit process works is we build the audit plan based on the risks so The answer is that yes, the audit plan as it's published in today's meeting minutes has the hours per audit. So I believe there's one for the business park at 600 and then the other one for the airport is 400, right? So that's the itemized, but it doesn't get to how that correlates back to the cost. How am I getting that $270,000? So my budget has those line items, similar to every budget, right? So this is salaries and benefits. This is all that sort of stuff. And then we have office supplies and that kind of stuff. That's where I get that $2.1 million. Then there's an overhead cost that gets applied to my budget. That is the HR team supporting me, the legal team supporting me, the accountants paying our paychecks, right? That's about 17 to 20%. So that's how I get to $2.4 million. I take that $2.4 million and I say, this is how many audit hours my team will work on audits so you may recall that i mentioned that utilization about 24 000 total hours if you take out sick vacation holidays training we get about 24 000 hours of that out of that there's about 19 000 hours of So I take that $2.4 million divided by the 19,000 audit hours and I get an hourly rate and I simply multiply that hourly rate times those audit hours that I have anticipated for the audit. Does that address your question?

Perfect, I wanna make sure that everyone understands how we get to those numbers and how we actually line those numbers out in the budget from a line item perspective, so thank you.

And maybe I'll just add a little bit to that. It's why the utilization model that I've built has become so important, right? Because it has a direct correlation how effective my office is in producing audits and actual audit work. There's a direct correlation to the hourly rate. So when utilities or the airport or the golf enterprise gets an invoice, and they do get an invoice from me, they don't see a $50 charge. They see something more like 130 or $140 an hour. So they are certainly holding us accountable when they look at it and they say, hey, we're paying you $130 an hour. Are you giving us the value that we would expect? And it's driven a lot of that interconnection of utilization of staff and making sure that we're committed to what we're doing. So I think that's just, thank you for letting me editorialize a little bit more on that.

Councilman Donaldson. Yes.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President, and good morning, Natalie. Good morning, sir. Good to see you today. I just want to clarify something, because it could be confusing for citizens when it said that, hey, the city auditor works for city council. You are appointed by city council, but you really interact with the audit committee, and how would you describe your, well, you are autonomous, correct? You... are not directed by city council. I want you to investigate this person or this office. Can you describe that a little bit?

Thank you for giving me the opportunity. And I don't mean to, you know, minimize what council member Leinweber said. I appreciate the acknowledgement, but at the end of the day, the way I look at my job is I report and work for the citizens of Colorado Springs. My position, and that's why I took the time today to read to you what's in code and not just in the code, but what's in the charter. The charter is our constitution for the city of Colorado Springs. And that was put in place by the citizens through an election. In other words, the elected, the citizens voted to put a city auditor in place. And so, yes, while I report to council, and yes, it's part of our standard government checks and balances, and certainly you all have an equal opportunity to come and interview with me and give me input, but that is no different than, say, the mayor, the chief of staff, the CEO of utilities, the director of the airport. So just like a citizen, we've met with citizens before who shared that. I would clarify that and say yes, I work for the citizens of Colorado Springs.

Okay, and I just think it's very important for that to be emphasized that you seek facts, facts, wherever those lead you or whatever those facts are, that's what you report. Sometimes you don't even draw conclusions, you just report the facts as you find them. When you investigate something like a waste, fraud, and abuse complaint, you report the facts. Is that accurate?

That's correct. And I guess maybe I'll editorialize a little bit if you don't mind. You know, our standards are pretty explicit. In fact, this council is going to be receiving the internal audit charter that we've been drafting over the last year, year and a half. And one of the hallmarks of making a good internal audit function is the independence and objectivity. And I think that's what you're talking. about here is we follow a rigid set of standards we are very you know black and white in our office we have a number of whether it's the institute of internal auditors the certified fraud examiners but they give us guidelines and how we have to operate and independence and objectivity is absolutely the hallmark without that my position doesn't carry the weight so that the citizens can rely on the fact that i'm doing my job okay thank you thank you

Councilman Hengem, online.

Okay. Thank you, Madam President. That was a great question from my fellow council member. Clarification, I should say. I think this is a really important conversation. I think that the auditor's office is at risk at times of being potentially weaponized for political purposes or for gender purposes. And I recall under your predecessor having real concerns about that on the other side of the street, the mayor's office, as it related to work that was being done on the, oh, shoot, I'm forgetting the name of it, the work that we did for so long on the special districts and that process and that set of policies. and feeling a strong sense of direction coming from the mayor's office on that particular involvement with the auditor. And so I think it's just really important for you to be very clear with us and with the public about how you prevent your office from being weaponized for agendas or political purposes. If you have anything further to say to that, that would be helpful, thanks.

I think my only response to that is that administering the fraud, waste and abuse hotline in my sense, my take from this is it's just part of my job. It's what we should be doing, and we do not administer the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline with any concern for who it is or what. We owe it to the citizens of Colorado Springs to investigate all whistleblower complaints, and that's what we do.

I don't see any further questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 7B, will the clerk please read item 7B into the record?

Agenda Planner Review.

Does anybody have any questions or changes to the upcoming Agenda Planner Review? Oh, Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks Madam President. Just a couple things. One is on the first page of it, for the next work session, item number two is an update on city branding. I just think I've met with Mr. Hollenbach, but it's not really an update, it's a proposal or a recommendation. So I would just ask that this accurately reflect what it is.

I'm happy to change that. That's just what I received.

Unless I missed something and this is an update on something he has proposed to us before.

If I could address that. I've been in communication with Mr. Hollenbach as well, Councilmember Donaldson, and I believe he was withdrawing the request to present to Council.

Oh, okay, well then that was a nothing burger. You can go back to as you were. Okay, next is on page two, the first item is an ordinance repealing and replacing chapter seven of the code, blah, blah, blah. Is this the thing that Johnny is working on? perhaps Kevin Walker can clarify it for us, because I believe he mentioned he thinks it's actually gonna be delayed with attorney reviews and things.

Johnny and several other people in our staff. Yes, and it's just a lot of work.

Do we think it'll actually make it here on the 28th, I think, or the 27th? I do not. Okay, okay. All right, just wanted to make sure this wasn't some other thing which I was missing, so I appreciate it.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President. Just wanted to at least highlight and to not receive clarification, but to. I'm not done actually, but.

Well, go ahead. Does it have to do with that one? Or is it a different item? Potentially, go ahead.

I'll piggyback off of you, go ahead.

All right, well, just a couple more. Number three on that same block there, annex COS. I just can't remember, have we received the copy of that now that, you know, the final draft?

Kevin Walker, Planning Director. We just finished our hearing at Planning Commission last week, making some final minor tweaks, and you will have a copy very shortly.

Okay, and how long is it, Kevin? How big is this?

The essential pieces are probably 15 pages. Okay, well I can read 15. There's a lot of other appendices and other things that you can spend your time looking at if you want to.

I'll make a decision on that, but okay, thank you. So we don't have it yet, but we'll have it. Right. And the final one I think is, On August 10th, I see that we have both a presentation from Colorado Springs Police and Fire on withdrawing from the El Paso Teller 911 Authority and also a presentation by the 911 Authority by Renee Henshaw. I imagine that's correct. Do we know what the sequence of that is? Because I would ask that if they're both going to present that police and fire speak second so that they can address any questions we might have after the presentation by the 911 Authority.

Emily. We did have this conversation in agenda prep and we'll have further conversation. The way the agenda is ordered, staff and appointee reports do actually come first and so that's currently how we have it coordinated and then followed up by a presentation from the 911 authority. So up for continued discussion at agenda prep possibly.

Yeah, we can adjust the order of the agenda, can't we?

but we can yeah um so i would ask that we do that and i think it makes common sense i suspect there could be some things that are presented and we would have to we would have questions about those so i would like to and again i will i will take a note and we'll take that under consideration as we look at the full agenda i did also since i have the mic want to mention that you did receive an annex cos presentation at lunch the full council did previously receive that presentation

Okay, but it's not the actual document. It's been modified, I suspect, by the Planning Commission, even though he's not on it anymore.

Correct, it sounds like that's forthcoming from our Planning Director.

All right, now I'm excited to hear what Councilman Rainey has to add to those. I can add more if you like. That's it for me.

Well, my comment was actually the last thing that Council Member Donaldson just mentioned. So just wanted to highlight that point, but I'm not gonna say he hijacked my comments, but he covered everything. Hijacking's a crime, I don't commit crimes. No, but he covered everything in regards to August 10th. I know that's been a very hotly contested topic in the media, but just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that on August 10th, that will be on the agenda for discussion. So, and I believe chief of staff, I see your name is up, so.

I'm just going to say we're happy to have our folks, the police department, fire department also respond after the other presentation. So regardless of what order they're in, we're happy to have folks available to respond at that hearing or at the work session. So just wanted to, you know, it's not like they can only respond after theirs. They're happy to respond after the other outside presentation as well.

If we're finished with 7B, we will move on to item 8A. Will the clerk please read item 8A into the record?

A resolution of the City of Colorado Springs approving a service plan for the Terra Mesa Metropolitan District located east of the intersection of Powers Boulevard and Research Parkway.

Good morning, Drew.

Good morning, Councilman, Councilmembers, Council Chair Lineweber. I'm sorry, Crow Iverson, used to hear Lineweber's name. Okay, so yeah, today we are going to be discussing the Terra Mesa Metropolitan District creation. This is a district that is being created to support a development known as the Peach Ranch development. The proposed district has provided a service plan outlining the district powers, services, and governance structure. The service plan proposes a maximum debt authorization of $15 million to support financing construction of public improvements. Here's a vicinity map. Above you can see the location of the proposed district. It is located in Council District 2. The district will encompass the full 42-acre development. It is located east of Powers Boulevard and Research Parkway. Tutte Boulevard also goes north of the boundary of the development. The site area includes an associate approved zoning map amendment, annexation agreement, land use plan, development plan, and subdivision plat. So if any of you remember the annexation for this Peach Ranch development, not exactly sure when it was approved, but the district service plan and debt issuance will support groundbreaking and build out of the public infrastructure necessary to support the development. And again, the total debt issuance limitation for this service plan is $15 million with anticipated public improvement costs just below that $15 million mark. The maximum allowable debt mill levy will be 50 mills as part of the tax assessment for each lot with a maximum operation and maintenance mill levy of 20 mills to support various ongoing services to be provided by the district. Above is a snapshot of the site plan from the approved Peach Ranch development plan, showing the layout of 155 residential units, residential lots with private tracks and private and public infrastructure. The development will be installing public rights of way, utilities, stormwater infrastructure, common landscape areas, and other necessary improvements to support the full stage development. Go back. Earlier I mentioned that the operational mill levy was gonna be 20 mills that will be supporting the description of services above. That will be including the maintenance of detention ponds, storm water infrastructure, sidewalks that are only within the tracks since the public right-of-ways will be dedicated to the city, and then maintenance of other various common amenities throughout the site. Above are the attachments that have been included in the provided packet to include the proposed service plan, the exhibits that are associated with the proposed service plan, a red line comparison to the model service plan, the applicant's cover memo, and the city-drafted resolution.

I have a question from Councilman Hengim online.

Thank you, Madam President. I'm sorry, could you go back just a couple of slides to the IGA slide?

One more. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, there. In terms of the IGA requirement and then what services will be provided, can you just say a little bit more about the IGPs? I'm just trying to understand what what is required in the service plan and what is not, why the IGA is listed there.

Are you asking why there's all these no's with the intergovernmental agreement requirement?

Yes.

Okay, I'm gonna let Kevin Walker speak to that.

Kevin Walker, City Planning Director. So the question is, why there are not IGAs required for these particular services. It's primarily because most of these are owned by the Metro District themselves, rather than, for example, a park being owned by the city. and then requiring an IGA in order to maintain that park. So most of these are designated as areas either that they own or that they have maintenance of on the plats. And so that's the rationale for identifying this. This is actually, this exhibit is actually required by state statute. And so that's why it's in the service plan.

Okay. I think until I am no longer on this council, I will continue to struggle with understanding these metro districts and what's covered and where and what's the city's responsibility. But just to be very clear, IJ is not required, but the metro district will be responsible, for example, for maintenance of storm drains and storm sewer. And our stormwater enterprise, therefore, is not responsible for any storm damage. infrastructure maintenance in there, or we are not responsible for sidewalk maintenance in that area, or the park for that matter. And is that park, whatever park that's going to be, will that be on our city's website as a city park?

I'm not sure I followed that last question. I think that there are pieces in this development that will be maintained by the public. Those are roads, some sidewalks, traffic signals, those kinds of things. There are some specific things that are going to be maintained by the Metro District. as identified on the plats. And so that's the distinction. I don't know whether specifically this one has private parks that are open to the public or the public owns the park and there will be a maintenance by the Metro District, but I think it's the former, otherwise there would be an IGA required for the maintenance of the park. Does that answer your question?

you know more or less I think it just these things continue to create confusion in terms of what is the city's what does the city pay for what do my taxes pay for obviously they are paying additional mill taxes but it's not going to the city's general fund so it's just it just continues for me anyway to create additional confusion about what is the city's responsibility and what's the metro district responsibility Councilman Donaldson

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. Kevin, I'm gonna follow on with some of that. So what you're saying is, hey, we don't need IGAs on any of these things on this. but we will do road maintenance, and I believe you said there's a couple other things this city will do, and we don't need IGAs on that because that's in the plat. Is that accurate?

Yes, it's publicly owned right away if you're talking about streets, so that's the distinction. And that is always the case, right? Well, no, it's not always the case. It isn't always, but the vast majority of roads are public and maintained by the public, not by the Metro District.

So it will be difficult for council with our level of knowledge on real estate, metro districts, flatting, to know if this is in the best interest of the citizens of Colorado Springs. And I would say we're gonna rely on planning for that. Is this... these selections for the IGA because they can't make that choice themselves, correct? We're gonna vote on that and create this metro district with those responsibilities. That's correct. Okay, so is this your recommendation and in the best interest of the citizens? It is our recommendation. Okay, thank you.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Yeah, for my neighborhood, I know in particular we have Metro Districts and HOAs. It's a split between, for example, the description of services on those. Many of those are done by our Metro Districts. Some of those are done by the Homeowners Association. and it's confusing to the residents of our community, whether it's paid for by an assessment through the HOA or by their taxes through the Metro District, but those are pretty common. Maintenance of the parks, for example, we have multiple parks in my neighborhood that are the responsibility of the Metro District. They're open parks to anybody, but they're not maintained by the City Parks Department or not in any way have any kind of an agency agreement for these particular kind of items. Thank you.

Okay, I think this is where we left off. Yeah, so this item is gonna be proposed to be heard at the July 28th regular hearing for resolution on consent. Following potential approval, the district is required to file a petition with the district courts for formation and occurrence of the requested debt. Just so you're aware.

Are there any questions?

Councilman Donaldson?

Yeah, thanks Madam President. Andrew, I think two more questions. One is under stakeholder process and it says the staff level, staff level, special district committee has been provided with access to these materials associated with this request. As of the date of this memo, there have been no comments or questions from the committee on this request. It doesn't say that the committee has reviewed the material though. Has the committee reviewed the material?

And which committee are you referring to?

The one that is in this packet that we're given, the staff level special district committee has been provided with access.

Yeah, so a staff level committee would, I mean, that would be the planning department staff members? I'm not aware of a special districts community that's internal to the city.

Yeah, we do have a special districts committee, finance, public works, parks, others, which we distribute this to. If there's any questions, they will comment back to us. If we don't hear from them, then we take that as an approval. Okay.

If that is not- I would just ask that they reply back, reviewed, no concerns versus, I was on vacation and missed that one.

We've sort of drifted our way into no response means yes. We can certainly kick that back up and say, please just at least say no comment or accept it or whatever.

And I would ask that when this comes back to us, that we just have a note in this that it was reviewed and no concerns.

Okay.

And then the only other question is financial implications. There are no direct implications to general city taxpayers and rate payers outside the boundaries of this district. And while that's true, there's perhaps no direct implications, but what about indirect? And this is for council edification and citizens. Are there some financial obligations that the city incurs? and i won't try to play can you guess what's on you know read my mind but it's the roads right there's roads there's roads there's there's police uh so there's that concern i think the general the general policy statement that was adopted by uh the city in 2021 and 2022 uh outlines this as uh these these are

These districts are designed to be additive to the city's maintenance and or the community's maintenance and quality of life. They are insulated to the general city taxpayer in that if these issues are not accomplished, the general city taxpayer does not have responsibility for the maintenance of those. And so it actually takes responsibilities away from the city for extra and additional improvements and allows them to be managed and financed and owned and maintained. by the residents of that particular community. So it by its nature segregates these issues and therefore does not have an impact on the general city taxpayer. That's what the design is meant to do. And that's what we're certifying here today.

But just to be thorough in explaining what a metro district or like an annexation might be similar, we do incur some responsibilities as a city in the maintenance of the roads once the warranty is up, and I've forgotten, is it three years? Two years. Two years? Okay, so two years later, we're repairing the roads and replacing the roads.

That's the general development. that the district itself does not create the obligation for maintenance of roadways. That obligation is accepted by the Public Works Department through the planning process and the dedication process and all of the other planning and engineering and design aspects, which would be the same whether there was a Metro District here or not. So if there were no Metro District, the city would still be reviewing and taking over maintenance of city streets for this particular development. So it doesn't, again, it's not additive to the city. It doesn't add public streets to the city's maintenance. That is done by the developer and the platting and the acceptance of the plat.

I don't wanna split hairs and just, run in a circle, but it, Without the Metro districts, the development wouldn't occur. We can kind of agree with that, I think. I do not. You don't. You think, how would it get funded in the infrastructure and all that?

They would fund them out of just as they had for the years prior to special districts being a funding source. And in fact, a lot of the funding for these particular public infrastructure items is not financed by the Metro district. It's usually less than half. is funded by the Metro District. The other is funded in the same way all other development is funded either through equity or through debt by the property owner when he subdivides and decides to move his property into development. Okay, well, we won't... I don't know, can't spend the whole day having a nice discussion.

I'd love to have that conversation. Let's do it. No, let's do it, but either as a specific item on the agenda or over a beer. Maybe next time. Over a beer, that's better. All right, thank you. Thank you.

Stay up just a second.

Councilman Land Rover.

So I just don't want to lose sight of this because we get bogged down in metro districts and the concern. The chief thing here is people don't want to just buy a house. They want to move into a community where they want to raise their families. And they want nice parks. They want great access to schools. They want a lot of amenities that a developer might not be able to bring to the table or He might have other tools like you just mentioned, but as a developer considers, you know, how do I create a place that would be marketable, that people would love to live and thrive in, right? That's what every developer is trying to achieve is they're trying to compete in the marketplace of delivering a quality product more than just the structure of the house. It's really the community at large that, Metro districts become a valuable tool to a developer to elevate and really create that exciting place where, wow, I want our kids to be raised up here. And so it's an important tool, to be able to elevate that and deliver a quality product that people are looking for and really in demand of. I mean, you have to agree with that. And I don't want to lose sight of that, that this is a great tool to use when particularly a city is financially strapped and just can't invest in new parks. I mean, we had a park that was allocated to us and it took us, what, 10 years to get the one up north? Greyhawk. I think it almost took 20 years to get Greyhawk done or something like that. It was a long time. That's one route. Here's land for a park, and now we wait for money to come around to develop it, or we find other tools, and Metro District is clearly that kind of tool. You have to recognize that, right?

Yeah, there are a lot of different tools that are available for this, HOAs and private equity and all kinds of other tools. mechanisms, I think it's become fairly clear that in the marketplace, special districts or metro districts have become the tool of choice because they're more efficient, because they are more transparent, because they are more flexible in terms of their ability to help the developer create the vision for their particular property and make sure that those things are paid fairly by the users and those that benefit from it.

And that's really, I think that's a key statement there, paid for by the user. So a neighborhood park is really a benefit of that smaller community. And so it's more user-based, paid for, which I think is more appropriate. But I do, I have concerns about older parks, and I know Nancy has this concern too, that they're not getting upgraded and as nice as some of these others. Well, that's... You can form a metro district anywhere. If your community doesn't have a park that you like, you can pull your community together and say, let's establish a metro district and let's improve our neighborhood park. You can do that, correct?

You can, and you can do that in a lot of different ways also, special improvement districts. and other kind of district structures. But a metro district would be one way to do that. And you certainly can do that through the process of voting of all the property owners. And so it's all the property owners that have to vote.

Well, that's what I want to really point out.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Registered electors, not property owners. You don't have to be a property owner in order to vote.

Yeah, if you live in an area that you're frustrated that your parks aren't upgraded as much as they are, because our parks department is so stressed... You can take matters into your own hands and you can drive a community together and really elevate that. I mean, you have that ability as a citizen to use this kind of tool. And I guess that's what I want to kind of highlight is that this is really a very positive thing and it's a great tool to deliver a product that people want. They want their kids to grow up in a safe, friendly environment. And that really, Metro Districts is a tool that really allows for that. And I wanted to elevate that a little bit because it is important. So thank you.

Are you good? Okay, that looks like we're done. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Drew. Moving on to item 8B. Will the clerk please read item 8B into the record?

An ordinance submitting ordinance 25-95-2026 budget appropriation ordinance for a supplemental appropriation to the retail marijuana tax fund in the amount of $458,000 to fund a contract with Colorado Springs River Renewal Authority to provide security services in the South Nevada corridor.

morning good morning council thank you for having me uh jariah walker executive director of the carlisle springs urban renewal authority uh just a couple of words of other people that are in the audience should council wish to have anybody up i have danny mienka who's one of the largest developers within the south nevada area steve knoblett founder and ceo of fidelis security solutions of course our very own chief vasquez to handle any pd questions and then sheree mcdaniel and jim vance with finance and then last but not least gary pfeffer uh chair of the urban renewal authority board is here as well um we've got just a very quick presentation teed up for you uh just to kind of remind council of the map boundary of this ura what the study area that we were looking at is as it relates to these security issues and then a little bit of the the effects um of what we're going through. The South Nevada security area does extend a little bit beyond what the actual URA is because the security study area actually encompasses Dorchester Park and some of the other properties just to the north and to the east of it. One thing that we've been tracking, this URA started in 2015, so it goes until 2040. uh but we have started to see over the last three years a pretty significant drop in sales tax increment that's coming in the area uh adding insult to injury on that we're losing businesses that don't want to come into this area so we've had several uh businesses look at this corridor a couple of them would not get out of the vehicle a couple of them had major concerns about the the safety of what it would be in the area for the customers Calls for service, so in your packet, Deputy Chief Jensen, is that the right title? Deputy Chief Jensen with PD Carly did a great job of getting some of this information from him. That full PDF is actually in your packet, but this is just a nice heat map of where the calls for service have been within this corridor area, and you can see they are frequent. So the URA, looking through some solutions of this area, really decided that we felt a security solution needed to be in place. One, to make the existing businesses a little bit more comfortable out there, but also to make this area more enticing to new businesses since the city and the Urban Renewal Authority planted a flag in 2015 that they wanted to see new development uh a new increment coming through this corridor we believe this is a necessary solution to ultimately meet that goal i do believe i i said this before but i do believe this is a three-year you know runway i think that's what we're ultimately going to need in order to have success i don't think this is a a one-year thing i think this requires consistency um you know, throughout it. But here are the fees just for transparency sake that Fidelis did bring. The URA interviewed multiple security companies. We felt Fidelis just brought the needed cache really for dealing with this type of corridor, being former police officers and as well as their existing partnerships with PD. So that's it as far as the presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Of course, on the finance side, you know, want to reiterate, we got Sharae and Jen here to answer any questions as it relates to budgets, et cetera. But I'll open it up to questions from Council.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. So I understand the problem. My concern is with the solution. And how are we going to measure success and, you know, It doesn't appear to be any measures of success. Looks like we're just paying hourly employees to do certain work. So I'm looking at how are we gonna measure success? Any performance metrics? Does the contractor get paid if those metrics aren't met? Or how do we make sure that there's an actual outcome that we want?

new development is is the biggest the biggest measure of success especially when you look at that eastern side of the corridor where we're seeing a lot of these issues pop up the west side of the corridor does have a decent a decent amount of development that has occurred but there's still more that needs to come And when, you know, these businesses, the margins are very, very thin. So when they're looking at, do we put that hotel in South Nevada? Do we build those apartments in South Nevada? These are factors that they're going to look at is, do we have it? Is it clean? Is it safe? Do we have people moving on? Can we operate our business where customers feel comfortable being in this area? Now, there's some ripple effect issues with Dorchester Park and the trail system. We talked about that a little bit, I believe, in the council lunch. And there's no one-stop solution for this issue. This is something that goes well beyond an urban renewal authority or even beyond city council. comes from the state all the way down to our court system and our police system and all those factors combined what we're trying to do is we're charged with the redevelopment of this area and that redevelopment is not going to continue occurring if we don't address this problem so that that's the biggest side of measurement that i would say paid for you well that's going to take a while new development's going to take a while to show up i'm looking at are we looking for that heat map is going to go down the number of incidents are we are we tracking that and is the pay to the contractor related

to decreases in those number of incidents.

Yeah, all of that will be tracked. So we're looking at setting up, should this go through, setting up a committee where we could have council members, URA board members, and stakeholders within the corridor to be part of that, to really find out what are the specific issues. It's similar to what we're doing with Downtown Clean and Safe, saying, is it camping issues? Is it loitering issues? Is it blocking the public right away? Do we have crime occurring? we wanna be sure to have good data so we can shape exactly where the issues are occurring, how can we stop them from happening, and then frankly, try to lessen the times that PD is even having to be called down into the area. When you look at that heat map, we're hoping that having security in place is actually going to deter a lot of that activity and hopefully be less of a burden on the police department as well. But all those factors, there's no exact solution to this, but the way that those funds are allocated will go towards you know, again, everything that was outlined when recreational marijuana was approved, and we think this is a great use, especially since we've got private money, public money, and a city council and URA that planted a flag for this area to be redeveloped.

Okay, so I understand you're gonna have metrics and you're gonna track data, but you haven't answered the question about is the contractor pay related to the decreases in those metrics, the number of incidents, or is it just the hourly pay for?

Pay is the pay.

Okay, pay is the pay.

Sorry, I didn't hear your question.

No, I just want to make, I just want to see if there's any, let's say we'd start this process and we're into it for two months and it's not working or we don't see, is there a cancellation clause in the contract that will allow us to cancel the contract and move on to something else?

Yeah, we'll be able, and so this is just as much of a, you know, a woo period for Fidelis as it is for the URA and the city. If for some reason, you know, that relationship or that partnership doesn't work, you know, Steve and I will sit down, we'll sit down with our partners and look at if that's the best fit or if there needs to be a pivot, you know, to another direction. But I can tell you from talking to the, you know, the police department and Fidelis in general, I'm confident that they're the right ones for this job. I can tell you that on the record.

And just one other question, Warren, that you mentioned security officers integrating with CSPD. Can you explain how that works? I mean, I assume the security officer is going to have a direct line or some sort of communications with CSP other than call 911 type thing?

Sure, absolutely. So, you know, as it relates, and I'll have Chief Vasquez keep me honest here, but if, you know, security can only enforce, so much you know that they're legally allowed to do so essentially what this is is being able to assess and be able to have de-escalation techniques on being able to take something that maybe would be something and elevating it down to somebody moving on if it does need to escalate to police that's when the security company will call and say we've we've got a problem here and we're going to need you the the idea of that is instead of the police being that first touch they're really that second touch if there's an issue and hopefully not even having to come down at all. But if they do, Fidelis will communicate with them on that. I will also outline, you saw the drone coverage in there. There's, again, different when the drone is actually circulating in South Nevada and actively patrolling as opposed to with PD if we're sending a drone because we've got an active issue that's going on right now. But even then, those systems will be able to work with each other too.

Will CSPD have access to the feed from this drone?

That I'm not 100% sure of. I think, yeah, go ahead, Chief Vasquez.

Good morning, Adrian Vasquez, Chief of Police. To my knowledge, unless we work something out with the company, we do not have direct access to their drone feeds. Thank you. Yes.

Thanks. Thank you, sir.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President. Hi, Jerry. Hi. How are you today? I'm good, how are you? Doing well, thanks. Good. Thanks for being here. Thank you. I agree with Council Member Casey that having metrics and having a way to determine whether or not this investment is paying dividends is really important. And so thank you for your description about how that would be tracked and why that's important. I would argue though that this is more than just trying to entice development on the east side of the Nevada corridor, and I would argue that in many ways this also benefits the west side. I know there are currently existing security details and existing cameras and things of that nature that monitor and protect and keep tabs on what's happening on the west side. But having been there many times, through the course of several years and seeing the struggle that a lot of the existing businesses have on the west side of Nevada, I would argue that this is as much an investment in maintaining those existing operators as it is trying to entice additional growth. And knowing that so many of those existing businesses are service oriented businesses, restaurants, nail salons, retail shops, we as a city derive significant sales tax revenue as a result of their success. And so I would argue that by continuing to support their business operations and their activities and creating a safe place, safe clean place for their shoppers to go and spend money, that ultimately benefits and I would believe creates a return on investment for the city of Colorado Springs. So I wanna make sure that we capture that in our thought process as well, that this is not I get from your lens as the URA, right, growth and development is kind of the name of the game for you, and I don't disagree with any of that, but I think there's this other component of maintaining and supporting and sustaining what is already in place on the west side of Nevada. I also just want to underscore this concept of reducing burden on the police department, because I agree with your comment that what this really does, if we're successful at it, and I think the downtown pilot program is an example, If we're successful at this by using private resources and leveraging those private resources, private security companies and officers, if it's done right, hopefully it does reduce the burden on the police department. And hopefully, I don't know the number, but let's just say 50% of the issues are taken care of by this private security detail. That frees up police officers to be dealing with more severe issues in other parts of town and not having to focus on this quite so much. To summarize, I agree that we need to track this. We need to maintain metrics around this to continue proving that this is a good return on investment. But I think that investment goes beyond just growth and development and really touches sales tax revenue and how that drives and supports the city as well as the positive impact to the police department.

I really appreciate you making that comment.

Councilman Donelson.

Good morning, Jariah. Good morning, Council Member Donaldson. How are you?

I wanna hear you say that after I speak too. You really appreciate my comment. You can say it anyway. Just be nice. We both have the same goal. I mean, the goal is to reduce crime for sure, and then also just loitering, creating a sense of unease in citizens where they're scared to get out of their cars just because there's somebody standing there who looks scary, who looks like they could harm you, who's yelling at the tree, having an argument and punching the air, and I've seen that down there, but I've seen it other places too, a lot of other places, I see it up at, uh... austin bluffs and academy and i see it on film or and i see it kind of throughout the city that's what concerns me about the way we're approaching this reuse tax dollars which are collected all over the city uh... to to address a problem in one in one area and we're going to create the safe zones we're going to create uh... the downtown in south nevada and you're we're gonna use taxpayer dollars to do that and certain businesses will benefit while the small business on Fillmore doesn't get that. And we had this discussion before we did the first iteration of this with the downtown area is, Can we use this to have a force that moves throughout the city? Or even can we create five new police positions where they're on bikes and they're riding around in this area with a presence of PD? So that's what concerns me, is we're not applying the law evenly throughout the city. We're gonna, okay, we're really gonna enforce it here, and it's gonna be enforced less in other areas, my district for one. And citizens shouldn't have to move to very expensive or gated communities to feel safe. And I worry that we're kind of doing that even with this. I would prefer to legislate for us to create ordinances and think out of the box with CSPD or maybe back to the past when we had those police officers on bikes and do things like that where there's more of a presence and it's,

not dedicated to only one area of the of the city so if you now want to say thank you for that comment you're free to do so i i will not always say thank you i appreciate your comment as well and i i think it's fair i mean i understand i understand exactly what you're saying there um the you know couple things one We didn't start this South Nevada process until we learned a little bit more about the downtown version of this, which the URA contributed to when we sit on that committee. Learning from what's working, what's not working, and just how this interaction goes from service providers all the way through what the consumer needs and what the business owner needs on a day-to-day basis. That informed us some of the decisions that we're applying towards South Nevada. And ultimately, I think this creates an opportunity to model this in other parts, especially in high concentration parts in other areas of the city. I think, you know, I think you'd be hard pressed to find another area in this city that has as much of that issue as south nevada does just in relation to dorchester park that trail system springs rescue mission a lot you know all the all the stuff with you know all the camping that kind of occurs within cheyenne creek um it is in my opinion a hotbed you know for activity but there's there's other areas too that ultimately this can be you know potentially applied to but i think it's important to get some best practices, outweigh that so we can look at how do we serve our community better as a whole. And PD, I'll say they've been great in partnering with the URA just on how are we gonna make this work? How are we gonna provide solutions? Public Works has been a huge effort as well. I do think to your bigger point, there are opportunities to have something put together where we can look at, how do we serve other parts of this area? But until South Nevada is figured out with all the activity that we got there, I think it would be mute until we can at least get some best practices in place there. I think we're gonna learn a lot from it. Long answer to your comment, but it is a good comment, I hear you.

You know, I would ask if Chief Vasquez would like to just make a comment on this. Again, my concern is we're taking, this is gonna be 700,000, 734,000, something like that, dollars, which we won't use for general public safety. We're gonna pick areas and have private companies, and now you'll have a lobby for continuing these programs, right? Because that's how they're getting paid. versus we use the money to have additional assets for PD. And that's my general question, Chief, if you'd like to give us your thoughts on that.

Thank you, Council Member Adrian Vasquez, Chief of Police. Ultimately, my sort of long-term goal would be to have officers to fill all the positions that we need across the city. But the sheer amount of time to hire officers, we started this morning in U Academy, 34 officers started this morning, which is great. but we're talking about nearly 10 months before those 34 officers hit the street between formal training and field training. By then our attrition will have probably used up those numbers. So to build the teams that we need or a long-term investment, we have the money to hire those. I look over at Sharae here with a promise here on council that we have that money. And I believe we do, but the long-term effect of getting the numbers in to be able to do what you're talking about, I would love that also. My long-term goal is to do that. But for today, we don't have those numbers. And I think this is a good way for us to be able to supplement a police response. until we can get those numbers in, build the teams, the parks teams and the bicycle teams and things like that that can operate across the city. We just need more officers to do that, so we don't have those right now.

So would you see this as a temporary, like a stop gap? We'll use private security in these areas until we can get our police force up large enough to give it back to PD?

Well, I think that's certainly an option that I hope we get to. When I think about Pro Tem Risley's comments on sort of these responses to not even really necessarily criminal events, but to things that could escalate into a criminal event and not utilizing our police force right now for those, certainly it's a great use of that right now. If I think back 10 years or 15 years to when we had a lot more officers, we used to handle these types of calls because we had the numbers to do so. So that's what I'd like to get to here in the future. So I guess yes is my response, that's potential.

And my final comment will be that I think sometimes we focus on real, the big crimes, murders, you know, a big drug deal, things like that. And those are important, but on a daily basis, citizens are concerned about the guy at the intersection in the middle of the road who's kind of, you know, sneering at them and coming up to their car and And I think sometimes in government or in police, we think, well, that's just petty stuff. That guy's kind of harmless. But to citizens every single day dealing with that stuff, that gives them the sense that our city is disorderly, kind of out of control, not a pleasant place to live anymore. and i do think we need to to use police assets to uh deal with that when our ordinances allow it to be done so thanks thank you i appreciate what you do

Well, to Councilman Rosalie's earlier point with the development on one side that's actually working and there's grocery stores and restaurants and whatnot that sells and use tax. If we don't have taxes coming in, we can't pay our officers. So we certainly want to keep those businesses thriving as much as we can to continue to feed the police department, to continue to pay the officers that we need to pay them. So it's a double-edged sword. It's very cyclical. Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I just wanted to highlight the fact that this isn't a problem that's unique to Colorado Springs. This is a nationwide problem. Every city is dealing with this and looking at it. And primarily what every city is trying to do is fix it for tomorrow. Like, can we have this done by next week? And the reality is we're dealing with humans, and it's just more complicated than that. I mean, this is literally an elephant-sized problem, and you can't eat an elephant at once. The way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time. And so this is a progression that I think citizens need to understand, that this is movement. We are in movement. Now, it's not as fast as I think I would like or most of council would like, but it's kind of the reality a little bit because there's so many realities. restrictions around this problem that we just can't operate and move as quickly as we'd like, including a police force that is not at capacity. So we have to find these other alternatives. And so Clean and Safe Downtown was a great program. It started to provide data. That was the other question, is data. Give us data. We want to understand what data is. What is the things that are highlighted? Why is this one particular intersection a big red mark? Do we really know why? Is there good lighting? Maybe we just need a bigger, brighter light bulb. I don't know, but it's that kind of thing that that's what this will do. We'll take the next step, and this is where my question's coming. The next step, and what you've kind of reiterated, is we're gonna start collecting data on this next area. We've done it downtown. Now we're moving into this area. We're also gonna be dealing with the west side. And then we're gonna start expanding. And that's how you eat an elephant, is one bite at a time. That's movement. Trying to say we're gonna solve this problem by next week for the entire city is not even, that's ridiculous. That can't happen, that's pie in the sky. That's poor thinking. Correct thinking is how do we get movement today? And this is a solution about today. That's what I wanted to hear from you because yes, the city's paying for some of this, but we have a partner, right? I mean, there's other, this is what we're talking about is how do we create other funds to create this? So in those areas, it makes it easier to move more quickly. And so I want you to identify so that everyone understands the city isn't paying for all of this. that these businesses are coming in and doing some of that. I wanna understand what that is really quickly, just synopsis, summary, don't get in detail. But this isn't 100% on all the taxpayers in the city. So that kind of got communicated and that's not correct. So we're looking for key, when we looked to take a bite of what are the easier bites, the easier bites are where we can get additional investment in, right? So that's one place. So I want you to highlight that. And then also just this idea about movement, that we just, let's start doing something here. It might not be full scale citywide like we would like, but that's just not, we just can't do that right now. Our police force isn't where it needs to be. It's gonna take a while to get that grown. Thank you very much for all the hard work you're doing for that. But that's my little rant. address the financial piece.

Yeah, so Danny Mienka has a business improvement district within the area that provides security as well. The URA, of course, is a partner in this. And then the goal is once we do this right and once we start getting everything laid out in place, I think we're actually gonna get more businesses and we'll be soliciting those businesses to also participate in this. moving forward so it won't be all just on city council or or these funds you know the goal is to make this you know an equitable solution where we can really get you know different funnels of money involved you know ultimately into this what that looks like in year two or three i'm not 100 sure of obviously we got to build this out and make sure that it's doing what we intend for it to do but But I would be hard pressed. I really think that with this security company and with the partnerships that we've got in place, I think we can get there. And I think we will get there. And this is the step to do so. To answer your question about you know kind of the baby step process and looking at this you know it you know it is a very very complicated issue because it's not just about moving someone along it's also about you know how do you get them in services that are out there how do you communicate you know what's around the corner or what services exist The other day I was walking around in my neighborhood and there was a woman who was setting up camp in a school. And I had a conversation with her just about, are you aware that there's some services out there that can help you? And she was like, well, I am, but I don't have a place for my dog. And so we had a little bit of a conversation. She left, but she was very honest about what her situation was. But it's about how do we humanize that touch a little bit and make sure that it's like, we gotta protect our business owners who are setting up shop. It's tougher than ever in this economy to do stuff. We need to support our businesses, but also there is a human element to this. And how do we work with PD? How do we work with the service providers? These are lessons that we've been learning with downtown. These are lessons that we'll keep applying to South Nevada.

Well, and that gets back to the data. How do we how do we every every like downtown figured out a few things that they can do? Well, when we start moving forward in South Nevada, we're going to go, oh, wow, we didn't really think about that. Like the bus stops. Right. Can the bus stops be moved? I don't know. That would be a good question, right? Can we move the bus stops? Because it seems like the red little bubbles are right on top of bus stops, the way I kind of looked at it. A lot of them. So anyway, how can that adjust? Or maybe we need more lighting. Or what are some simple things that could be done and things like that? And as that data comes back, that's when we can make these decisions to make investments. So thank you very much. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Madam President. Once again, Jariah, thank you for leading this charge. It's not an easy one. It's very difficult. But the one thing, and you and I have had a multitude of conversations about this. One of my major concerns is not necessarily about the endeavor itself. I think an endeavor like this will definitely do well and bode well for South Nevada, however, What I get concerned about is the adjacent corridor. That adjacent corridor influences the main nerve central hub of South Nevada. And through policy, and this is where I'm gonna tie this together, through policy, if things on the adjacent corridors don't get fixed, then all you have is a nice, beautiful corridor that still will have the same problem set. So how do you plan on addressing certain policies from those adjacent corridor services, without throwing a bunch of names out there right now, I don't want to get into the trenches here on the dais over that. However, I am seriously concerned about that. Not because I've seen it, because I've walked through it. And not just because I walked through it, I walked someone through the process. So I've seen where Optically, yes, it looks like, hey, there's places that will support. However, the policies within definitely drives folks to go to that central area to where, I mean, whether you do it through security or not, that will become a reoccurring theme. And how do you address that theme with policy of an entity that you don't control? So can you speak on that a little bit? And I think you know exactly where I'm going at with this one.

I'm actually gonna have you, so I'm gonna ask for a little clarity around that. When you say area corridors.

So you got the South Nevada corridor, correct? You got Springs Rescue Mission that's literally right next to the efforts that you're feeding.

Yes, sir.

My problem and my overall concern is we constantly talk about services that are provided. The problem is with certain policies at certain locations, those individuals have no other place to go except for those adjacent corridors, which is your corridor. So my concern is how do you address wanting to fix up the corridor and provide that extra security, which I am definitely a supporter of, however, the part you're gonna end up having to address is how do you address the policies of another entity that is gonna influence your decision making on how you build out that corridor?

Yeah, excellent question. I think, you know, with, you know, with some of these providers, there's already been seats at the table for them as it relates to the downtown clean and safe program. And there's been good data and feedback around that about what their challenges are and what their issues are. I do think that you know with this rolling in the south nevada i think the stakes get a little bit higher to be quite honest and i think they'll realize a little bit more that hey there's we've got to be good neighbors here you know we all have to work together the i've seen uh i've seen bonfires occurring in the southern end of the mill street neighborhood uh from people that that just you know, even though Springs Rescue Mission or you name the places there, they just don't wanna go in. You know, they don't wanna be there. Now is that, you know, how do we handle that with police and enforcement and what, you know, what an entity can force somebody to be part of or not? probably a question for another day but i can tell you this i think this will actually help remove stigma from around this area and actually help create a path to be able to say listen let's work together we've already got all of these efforts in this corridor let's let's get a little bit creative about around some of these service providers and what we can do there too um I don't want to say that they're not doing anything right now, but obviously they're charged with who walks through that door. And I think we need to kind of meet in the middle with them about what happens when people leave those doors.

So I'm assuming, sounds like you've had some conversations with them already and they have a seat or have been invited to the table to have these discussions. Yes, sir. Any thoughts from them or, and I guess in your next presentation, will they be alongside you to show that partnership of how to address this in a cohesive thought process and not just isolated here and we'll address it later there?

Yeah, we could certainly invite them to the next session. We weren't planning on bringing them in, but we could certainly have that conversation and have them have a component or a piece to this. Our goal is going to be trying to get more people into that building to get the services that they so desperately need. And so I'm sure, springs rescue mission or anybody out there that can figure out a way to partner with us to not only keep that corridor more pro-business and removing stigmatism from from them being located there in the first place to being able to actually provide more of a referral service to get people the help they need i think they would be 100 on board with and that's really why they've been so involved with the downtown program even though they're a little bit outside of it

No, I would definitely like to see that because I think a collective movement versus two isolated ones could be of major benefit. So I thank you for your comments, Dr. O'Rourke.

Thank you, sir, appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next item is 8C. Will the clerk please read item 8C into the record?

Resolution of the City Council of the City of Colorado Springs approving Southeast Strong Neighborhood Plan and Community Strategy Together, known as Southeast Strong Neighborhood Plan.

Good morning again.

Good morning again, Kevin Walker, City Planning Director here to talk again about the Southeast Strong Plan to give you a chance to comment and get an update on kind of where we are. So we are moving this towards adoption sometime in the near future. And so this is not the first time we've talked about this, but we continue to refine and answer as many questions as we can. Can you move the slide forward for me? This one doesn't seem to be working.

I think it's because the file size is large. It looked like it took it a minute there to get loaded.

Okay, I'm probably on slide 11 now by the time I, that'll make it go really quick then. Okay, here we go. To start with, this plan is for a neighborhood plan that is called for out of Plan COS. So Plan COS adopted in 2019 of the seven key initiatives, and one of those was small area and neighborhood land use plans. that were publicly initiated. This gives you a flavor for some of those that have occurred in the past, but this particular plan comes out of that recommendation in Plan COS. Neighborhood plans should be advisory to identify existing conditions and gaps in services, strengthen pride, coordination and partner, with neighborhood organizations, et cetera. These are all comments that came straight out of the community planning programs or planned COS. Most importantly, city departments need to collaborate with us, and they have. I'll give you a flavor of that as we go forward. But it's important that we stimulate economic development and redevelopment, some housing development, and make sure that our public infrastructure and safety considerations are taken care of in this neighborhood as with all neighborhoods. This gives you an idea of where we are located in the general city near to the airport on the southeast part of town. The map on the right there is a more detailed area map of the six or seven neighborhoods that are specifically identified as part of this neighborhood area plan. The plan itself, in terms of the planning, the planning department has led this effort, and we'll talk a little bit about that, but other utilities, Parks and Rec, Colorado Springs Police, Public Works, Housing, and Homeless Response, and Economic Development have certainly been all part of generating this plan. And there's been a lot of community partners and many of them are with us here today. And I'd like to chat a little bit about them in terms of the steering committee. They've been members of the steering committee and is also representatives of the neighborhood. From RISE Southeast, we have Joyce Salazar, Jessie Bustamante, Emily Tamayo, Janita Davis have all made extra efforts. Thrive Network, Heather McBroom, Julie Ramirez. We have our RISE Youth Advisory Council here with us today. I think these are the ladies and gentlemen. Why don't you guys all stand up, just give a little moment there. So these, they're all here today. learning and contributing of course um we have state senator tony exum here um who's and um also would be remiss if i didn't uh salute uh yolanda avila and kimberly gold who are council members who've been through this particular process. And again, on my staff, Paige Salisbury has been here since the beginning and has provided just a lot of energy and a lot of effort and this wouldn't have been done without her, so thank you. There's also a lot of other members of the steering committee who have been on and off this as we've gone forward over the last four or five years, so this has taken a long time. But there's been a lot of input from a lot of different interests. The timeline started in 2021. We're here in 2026 to do some, hopefully an adoption of this plan and acceptance by resolution. And we'll just, all of the steps in between have been difficult at times, but we've been staying with it. By community engagement, we've had a lot of stakeholder interviews, steering committee members, attendance at public meetings, and survey responses. All of those things have come into play in terms of drafting some of these final recommendations. There's really kind of two aspects of the plan. One is the Southeast Strong Neighborhood Plan, which is really the directions and the interest of the city, the city department. So it's guiding investment by public works and parks and economic development and the other city agencies. And then there's a community strategy that is really on the nonprofit side, just more aspirational in terms of what those neighbors would like for their community. And it will be a lot of nonprofit programming going forward. I also wanna emphasize that this is not, these investments in this work has not been stopped waiting for this particular plan to, to be adopted this is just a a point in time that's a lot of interest a lot of investment a lot of work has gone on uh in the neighborhood and certainly on the non-profit side in terms of trying to advance the interests of this so this is this is not a this is a a red letter day or it will be here soon, but it's not, we've not been standing around waiting for this particular plan to give us guidance. We've been working on this for five years. The big ideas, growing in support of business and entrepreneurs, live better, upgrade how we move and support our safety. Those are kind of the public sector sides of this. The community strategy, big ideas are create special places and hubs, reflect and celebrate a diverse culture, and community strategies for health and food access. Those are, again, the community's aspirations. Priority topics, you can see, basically, those are addressing the big ideas, both in the plan and in the community strategy segment. This gives you an idea of the development map. A lot of things been going on in the Southeast since 2021 when we first started this, but this is kind of an update. So you can see a lot of activity. Again, we're not sitting still and the community is not sitting still as well. This gives you a flavor of the economic development goals, housing goals, mobility goals, all of these are in the document. If you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to talk about some of those, or have somebody who knows a little bit more about them reflect or comment on them, but I'm certainly not gonna go through each one as we sit here. Again, this is the community strategy and their priority goals. So these are the things that specifically the nonprofit sector and the neighborhood itself will be working towards in the future. This gives you an idea of where we have made both public and private investment in the community. A lot of things been going on, as we've said. But you can see some of the names of those. Some of them are new, some of them are old, some of them are ongoing, and we actually are missing a couple because there's a couple that have occurred in the last year or so that are not on this particular slide. We're trying, this economic revitalization strategy is one idea or one sort of representative of one of our city departments that has paid a little bit of attention and how they are trying to program and work to support the Southeast. So this is economic development. We heard a lot about this at your lunch meeting, had a lot of questions about that, but this is sort of the next level of investment in time, energy, and focus that the city of Colorado Springs will do inside their city departments. You could do one, one of these for the planning department, public works, parks, all of the city agencies that have been involved have ideas of how they're going to continue to implement these strategies and the things that have come out of this plan. A lot of investments been occurring, not only just by the city, but also by the private sector. And so there's a lot of, like I've emphasized before, we have not seen disinvestment. We've seen a lot of investment in this particular neighborhood and we hope that this will continue. This gives you an idea of where we've been in the past time-wise. Today's city council work session. We're scheduled for city council hearing on July 28th. Then you'll be able to hear from a lot of the advocates and some of the nonprofits and some of the folks that have been involved in this on a long-term basis. And you'll be able to hear from them in terms of their support and ideas as to what they think this plan has done. Short-term action and long-term action, economic revitalization strategies, all of these things are pieces and parts of how we will continue to interact with the neighborhood as well as to implement the plan. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President. Can you go back to slide 15?

I can go back, you'll have to tell me when I get to 15.

Right there.

There you go.

Known direct city investment, if I'm looking at that number correctly, that's 350 million over how many years now? I don't know the answer to that. Eight years. Over eight years. Okay, and do we have a, well, I don't know if it's you or you, who have a deeper breakdown of what sectors have we already invested in?

Yeah, we've had that slide before, and I know we do have a specifics around that. We didn't just make these numbers up, but I don't have it with me today.

I didn't ask you if you made the numbers up. No, no, no, I got it.

But I think we can add that slide and bring you a little bit more detail next time. The detail would be great. Yeah, great. We can do that.

And just to add, Paige Salisbury from the Planning Department, for the record, a lot of the, on the right, the bullet points, that's what's in that known direct city investment. And then also some of the private investment. So that's a highlight. But we do have a sheet. This was prepared for Councilwoman Avila when she was leaving from her terms. And it was like, you know, what happened during my term in my district? So these numbers were pulled by the departments on the left for those numbers.

Can you just email?

Yes, they're at the end of this presentation. They're just after the questions, so we can provide that again, but they're kept just not for extensive talk today.

Thank you.

Councillor Williams.

Thank you, President Crow-Everson. I know that Kimberly is not here and she may or may not chime in, but I wanted to say thank you for everyone that has been involved in this process and project over the last five years. And I wanted to ask the audience, how many of you, this is your first council meeting ever? And as far as I can tell, ha ha, Kevin, you're all still awake. So congratulations, you made it two and a half hours. You weren't the first item on the agenda, but as you can see, there's a lot of topics to cover. So I wanna say thank you for being here. My understanding is that we're gonna start focusing on kind of the southwest part of town. So I may be reaching out to some of you just to do lessons learned and things you may or may not have um done differently are the same so i would appreciate all of that and thank you for being here and if you ever want to come back and hang out with us you're more than welcome councilman risley

Thank you, Madam President. I just also wanted to thank a number of the stakeholders that are here today. When we see this at the regular meeting, I'll probably make some expanded remarks. But in case some of you are not able to join us on the 28th, I wanted to thank all of you. I see some familiar faces and some friends and colleagues in the audience. So I really do appreciate your perseverance, your willingness to stick with this process over a long period of time, your faith in us as council to move this forward, your support through that process. And this, I hope, is a true reflection of your community, how you value your community and the vision that you see. And I, for one, am certainly excited to see this move forward. So thanks for being here.

Thank you very much. We'll see you in a couple weeks.

Yeah, July 28th, right? That's correct. We're excited to see you then, thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8D, will the clerk please read item 8D and 8E into the record? And these are back to back for the regular meeting tomorrow as well.

8D, an ordinance in the City of Colorado Springs dissolving the Old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority. 8E, an ordinance in the City of Colorado Springs correcting the central business district boundaries of the Old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority.

Emily Evans, City Council Administrator. We're gonna start these two items by just providing some context on how we got here. So as you may recall, back on May 27th, Legislative Services was alerted to some activity around the OCCDDA and asked to begin some research. On June 8th, Council held a closed executive session. regarding the OCCDDA, and in the last month between the time of that closed session and now, Legislative Services has done extensive research and coordination with the Planning Department and the City Attorney's Office, and what you have before you today are two ordinances. The first one is an ordinance within Council's authority to dissolve the OCCDDA. And that second ordinance is in regard to those 17 properties that we were made aware were incorrectly included in the OCCDDA. And Trevor Gloss from the city attorney's office is here today to explain both how those ordinances work and the interplay between those two ordinances. As mentioned by Council President, these items are being heard back to back, so today a work session and again tomorrow. And then following this agenda schedule, they would come back on July 14th for a final reading, determining how the votes go. And a little bit of additional context, also as part of legislative services work, we did do a board review, as we often do with the more than 40 boards, commissions, and committees that are connected to legislative services. That was provided to Council at the end of last week. Our recommendation is to dissolve the board and the information as to why and the rationale is included in that packet. During the last month, we've had more than a half dozen internal stakeholder meetings. um and actually most recently on july 8th we met actually with the chair and vice chair of the occ dda to make them aware of this agenda item there was an invitation for them to attend today and i believe we have representation here in the audience and we also offered them 10 minutes of presentation time at the regular session tomorrow Again, the city attorney's office is here to explain those ordinances. I believe we also have Ryan Tiefertiller, a planning manager here who's worked extensively with the OCCDDA on their proposed plan of development to answer questions. We also have Jeriah Walker, the executive director of the Urban Renewal Authority to answer questions on potential financing mechanisms. So at this time, I would turn it over to our liaison to the OCCDDA, Council Member Williams.

Thank you, Emily. And thank you, Trevor and Ryan for all of your help. I think we've uncovered a lot of things along the way. And I wanna reiterate the fact that this process probably started about two years ago, maybe even a little bit before that. But as far as I can tell, it was really council involvement the summer of 2024. And for those of you who don't remember, I wasn't here during the summer of 2024 and several of my colleagues were not here during the summer of 2024. But eventually this made it to the ballot for November 2024 and portions of it passed and portions of it did not pass. Again, I wasn't here. A lot of the things I've heard from constituents is it was confusing. I didn't get a ballot. Some people got ballots. Some people didn't get ballots. Some people picked up my ballots. Nobody picked up my ballot. Everything that happened around that was before my time sitting in this seat. I have learned that there was only two weeks after that election to contest that election. So because this information wasn't conveyed to myself obviously until years later, that was not an option. So here we are today and the piece of the puzzle is that this entity has not been funded. So there was a mill levy portion of it that did not pass. I think one of the things that's really been a highlight for me over the past little more than a year is it's the Downtown Development Authority. And I grew up in Colorado Springs, and I think if there's one thing I've learned about old Colorado City is they take pride in old Colorado City. the fact that it is there the buildings the history and everything that goes with it and this really requires that development piece and i think the development piece is almost the piece that's missing as we sit here today because I have not heard from constituents that anybody really wants to drastically change old Colorado City. So this may not be the right tool moving forward, given the fact that that development piece is generally more situated for a downtown development someplace that's looking for that kind of revival and a modern take on history and economics. And I wanted to address the timing of this item because there's a lot of concerns about that. I was unaware until last Wednesday that the chair wouldn't be here, so this was not made on purpose. In a perfect world, this item would have come before council, most likely in our second meeting in June, but because there was no second meeting in June, that was canceled. That's why it's coming up now. Another question is, why is it back-to-back? Well, it's back-to-back because there's a plan of development sitting, waiting to be reviewed, and that's gonna take copious amounts of time our time, staff time, agency time throughout the region because that plan of development really sets the stage and the tone for potential monies that could come into this authority. And if there's a way to reduce the amount of staff time used, given the decision that's made by this body, I think saving those monies is in our best interests. So I'm sure we're gonna have a very robust discussion, but now I will turn it over to Trevor to explain the ordinances.

Oh, Trevor, Trevor, I apologize. Will you make sure the green button is on your microphone? I think we can hear you, but you're not.

You're right, I'm just naturally loud. There we go, okay. Would you like me to reiterate that, or? Okay, second, the ordinance removing the 17 properties. We received an email from the county assessor's office noting that 17 of the properties noted within the original boundaries of the DDA were actually outside of the city and basically enclaves. This ordinance will remove those 17 properties so that only properties within the city, within the city's jurisdiction are included. Just to note, both ordinances use the same authority from statute. It's basically a partial dissolution to remove those 17 properties.

Open for discussion on the dais. Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. So just a quick question. If the first ordinance passes the dissolution, the second one is not necessary, is that correct? Correct, it will be moved and it will be withdrawn. Thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. If others have single questions, I'm happy to wait, because I'll have a few. Does anyone want to go first? Okay. Okay, that's very optimistic, I like that. Trevor, you know, for me, the one is clearly needs to be done and that's remove properties that shouldn't have been in it to begin with. I think that's a unanimous vote. The question is should city council dissolve a downtown development authority, a DDA, which was approved by voters on a vote. They voted and they approved it. If it was a committee that we created ourselves and we've done this with multiple committees that we've created ourselves, and we've dissolved those, and I've been comfortable doing that. When it comes to one which is created by the vote of the people or citizens, I'm much more reluctant to get involved in that, and especially back to back, and especially when the president of that DDA wants to be here to speak, and he isn't. And I think my question might be for Kevin or someone else from planning. How much work is it? Because that's one of the reasons I hear that we need to do this immediately is before the planning department does any work on this plan of development, we should dissolve it. Can that be answered?

Ryan Teefer, Tiller Urban Planning Manager. As council recalls, in recent months you approved a new plan of development for the downtown Colorado Springs Downtown Development Authority. That was a very large document, a few hundred pages. The draft old Colorado City plan of development is about a dozen pages or so. done largely on a by a group of volunteers and council appointees it it doesn't include a lot of the maps and graphics and photos it simply lays out a vision some goals and strategies it does have some financial components that deal with the requested and projected tax increment financing as well as potentially some mill revenue It's a modest lift by planning staff to review it. We did formally take it in last week under our July 7th submittal cycle. It has been routed out to various review entities that would review a plan like this. I don't know if any of those entities have begun the review or not, should council vote. on the first of the two options to fully dissolve the district at tomorrow's meeting, I think planning staff would send out notice to all our reviewers that they are not likely to have to complete their review because the district is being dissolved. If you choose to delay action or pursue the second option, which is just the removal of the 17 parcels, all city entities including the planning department would complete our review over the coming weeks and issue a review report towards the middle of next month.

Okay, and that's one of the concerns when I've talked to others on council is well, if we don't do this right away, then the DDA could take on debt and then we couldn't do it. But it sounds to me like this is not something that would be completed by your office for a month, correct?

Our initial review would be issued within the coming three to four weeks. My expectation is the city, both planning department and other entities, would suggest or request a number of changes to this draft, and then they would, they, the OCCDDA, would review those suggestions and requests either make those changes or explain why they don't want to make those changes make a resubmittal that resubmittal would get reviewed and then we would bring that draft through planning commission and on to city council so and it would have to go through planning commission so this is really more than a 60-day process you're talking about The draft plan of development would not likely get to City Council until later in the fall, yeah, more than 60 days from now. I did just very quickly want to, and I'll look to Trevor, but I don't believe that they should be incurring debt until the plan of development has been approved by City Council.

Okay, so for me, that's important information. We didn't have that, I don't believe, yesterday, that clearly stated like that. So the idea that we need to do this immediately because there could be some debt incurrence or debt taken on, isn't a concern to you? So if nothing else, but for the appearance of how council operates, do we give people a fair chance to, we do something at a work session, then it comes back at a regular session for a vote. We don't need to do this back to back. That's really clear now. And I think as a body, we should be magnanimous and say, okay, if the president wants to be here for this, let's postpone until he gets back, allow him to be here, and then we can discuss the merits of the plan of development or dissolving the board entirely. And again, this was created by a vote, and it might have been kind of an awkward vote. Our clerk warned us about that, that there would be potentially some confusion, because it wasn't on the same ballot as everything else, But council voted to go ahead and do it. And I think we should honor that vote. So I think that's all I had at the moment. Thanks.

Trevor Gloss of the City Attorney's Office. If I could clarify one thing quickly. Just with the plan of development, it seemed like there was some association between that and taking on debt. Although the plan of development will often have certain future projects and maybe mentions of taking on debt and things like that, and I believe it is required for certain types of bonds, it is not necessarily linked. The plan of development is needed for the TIF, tax increment financing, as well as an IGA. as needed for TIF, but it doesn't necessarily need to mention all indebtedness. That could be covered.

If you've listened to what I've had to say, what recommendation do you have from the legal side to ensure that doesn't happen before the 60 days the president comes back, we have those meetings?

to ensure that the DDA does not take on debt in the remaining amount of time. Honestly, nothing comes to mind. I don't think there is, it is an independent government organization. It has its own authority as long as they act within the bounds of their authority. Our role is limited.

Could one of the folks from the planning department come back up, please? Have we, do you have discussions with the DDA at all?

Ryan T. for Tuller Urban Planning Manager. I have been in relatively frequent communication with Adam Stepan, who's the president of the OCCDDA.

Is there a way to just have an agreement that I, you know, Council will wait for you to come back, but we'd ask you not to take on debt until we have those meetings.

I don't know that I can speak to that. I would guess I'm probably not the right authority to speak to an agreement to that nature.

Well, the Madam President, I'd ask if I could just ask the Vice President to step up to the microphone and see if she wants to agree to that.

Trevor, can we make those decisions at work session? I just want to make sure that we're staying within work session guidelines. That's all. Otherwise, I'm fine with it, if Trevor's fine with it.

Trevor Gloss for the City Attorney's Office. So, for example, if the City Council is making a decision, you cannot make those at work session, a vote or anything like that. This is purely informational, so I would ask City Council to stay in that track. Okay.

And good, good, it's still morning. Good morning, ma'am.

Good morning.

Would you just go ahead and identify yourself?

Okay, sure. Allison Danielle from the OCCDDA Vice Chair.

And as the vice chair, like you've heard the discussion, I'm just looking for a way where council is and appears to be, you know, as fair as possible and not doing anything too quickly. Would you agree, would your body agree not to take on debt until after the president returns and... We've had the council meeting to vote on whether or not to dissolve the DDA.

Are you okay if I put it to a vote with our council, like send out that today? And I don't know if I'm allowed to.

Yeah, I don't. Is it something that you would be comfortable doing?

Okay.

This is our legal representative. Laura Gardner. Oh, hi, Laura. Hi, how are you? It's been a while. As a legal representative for the DDA, I don't know that we can, without a vote, agree to do that. I think you could... I don't want to commit them to say yes or no, but I don't know that we'll have a difficulty with that.

Is it something when you come back tomorrow, you could let us know if they had voted?

She's saying. Okay.

Trevor Gloss from the City Attorney's Office, just for practical considerations for government and organizations, they would have to post it for open meetings laws and they wouldn't have time to go to place.

Okay.

Okay.

well i don't i don't think i'll have any more questions i'll just you know i'll make a statement and stop but go ahead ma'am if you had something else sure allison danielle i will say we have no plans to incur debt we have no plans to make any major spends i can assure you of that um I just, on behalf of the board, I can't make a decision for the entire board. That wouldn't be legal, I'm assuming. But yeah.

Thank you for that statement. That may be helpful. And so just for my colleagues, I mean, that's where I am is I don't wanna do this back to back. I don't wanna do it this fast. After hearing from our planning department, I don't see why we need to be in a rush to do this. After hearing from the vice chair, they're not intending to take on debt. I would say let's just go at a normal pace and actually wait till the gentleman returns to vote on it. That would be my recommendation to my colleagues.

Sure, we were hoping for 60 to 90 days from now to do that.

Okay, thank you for making your request clear.

Councilman Williams. I just wanted to make sure that I reiterated what Trevor said and make sure I got it correctly with everything that's been said here, which is essentially the plan of development doesn't link them to the incurrence of debt. So those two things are mutually exclusive. And I appreciate the fact that you are correct. That would need to go to a vote. It would need to be noticed. It does need to operate much in the same fashion. conversations have been had about how it moves forward it doesn't move forward how things would get paid for how consultants would get paid for so those conversations have been happening in the background and i just wanted to make everyone aware of some of the things that may or may not be on the table so just for the record okay that's that's it right trevor that's all you have

trevor glass of the city attorney's office i'm here primarily answer questions and educate about the law if there are any other questions please let me know i don't have anything additional to present on these items okay can i ask trevor one question we do this sometimes where we do a thumbs up or thumbs down we don't officially vote on something i'm getting the left right head nod is that a no

Correct, that's a no.

Okay, so I guess when this looks like this, we'll have to come back tomorrow for our regular session to make a decision, but... I think that's the path that looks and is magnanimous. I don't think we incur risk doing that. The Vice Chair has stated they have no plans to take on debt. So that's what I currently believe is the best thing for us to do. Again, this was passed by voters.

We're going to continue to push on this morning. I am going to take a 10 minute break before we go on to item 9A. All the other people waiting in lunch have been notified. But because we only have one more item, we're not going to break. okay we're back in session moving on tonight item 9a will the clerk please read item 9a and to the record review of concerns involving an elected official uh with the recent city audit good morning again natalie oh it is not morning anymore good afternoon natalie i think we're now at afternoon give me one second please

I have copies of the report. I know it was in your packet. Does anybody want physical copies while we go through this?

Okay. Okay.

I have them if you need them. All right. Oops. Oh, Emily, could you get me? I'm good. Sorry. Okay. We are here. We're here to talk about the review of concerns involving an elected official. I'm Natalie Lovell, City Auditor. Thank you for having me, President Crow-Iverson, pro temers, land members of City Council. This presentation will include the purpose and authority of this investigation, the allegations, the findings, the conclusions, and the recommendations. City Code Section 1.2703 states that I, as the city auditor, have to ensure public accountability. This is the section of the code that refers to the city auditor. The city auditor shall ensure that administrative officials are held publicly accountable for their use of public funds and other resources at their disposal. The city auditor shall investigate whether or not laws are being administered in the public interest, determined if there have been abuses of discretion, arbitrary actions, or errors of judgment, and shall encourage diligence on the part of the administrative officials. And I'd like to just take a few minutes to go over a few things, if you will, indulge me before we dive into the actual report. The purpose of the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline is to provide a confidential and accessible channel for employees, vendors, and other stakeholders, including citizens, to report suspected fraud, waste, and abuse without fear of retaliation. And I wanna take a few minutes to walk you through some starting points before we dig in to the report itself. This is a little different than maybe the reports you're accustomed to getting every month from my office. It's different in the sense that this is an actual investigation, not an audit. And what that means is that the report that you have in front of you does not have management responses or a formal recommendation that you might have been accustomed to seeing in the past. And that doesn't mean that it hasn't gone through a robust process in our office. It goes through much like the same process. We use a lot of the same techniques. You'll hear me talk about one of the techniques we use today. But it is different in the sense that it is an investigation. And so therefore, the report itself, much like, say, a human resources investigation of an employee, that investigation is completed and then it is given to the appropriate parties.

And in this case, that is a public report for us.

You'll also note that it's very different in that I have no opinions, meaning I have not stated anything is right or wrong or good or bad. Now I do have some conclusions in here that deal with controls or lack of controls. I think that's perfectly within the alignment of the city auditor to look at risks and controls as we identified some of the items in this report. I've also been asked, why am I reporting to council? And this was my recommendation to the audit committee. One, it was consistent with what we did with the last report and consistent with that public report. What I shared with you all is when we do investigations in our office, those reports go to human resources and they go to legal. And those are the people who then draw conclusions on good, bad, right, wrong. In this particular case, because it's an elected official, the human resources and legal team reports up through that administrative chain of command. And as a result, we felt, like I felt like, that the elected official, or if it was any one of you elected officials, reports would be made public so that the citizens are made aware. Now, I will also point out to you that we are governed by the Institute of Internal Auditors, and those standards say that if there was an issue with a board member who oversees the auditor's office, let's say something came up, we would then discuss that with the president of the board. Now, they don't envision entirely every scenario. In this case, they did not envision a city auditor reporting to a council with an elected mayor who's not part of that board. But much is the same. If it was the council president who there was issues with, we would bring it to the whole board. So that's what drove a lot of my decision to come to you all as a board. I report to you all as a board, not individually. And so that's part of the reason why I'm also here is to get that in front I'd like to address a few things. And before I begin discussing the investigation, I'd like to briefly discuss some questions that have been raised regarding my office's priorities. The Office of the City Auditor has two distinct responsibilities. The first is executing the annual risk-based audit plan approved by city council. The second is administering the city's fraud, waste, and abuse hotline and evaluating allegations that fall within our authority. When credible allegations are received through the hotline, the office has an obligation to evaluate them using established investigative procedures. That responsibility exists regardless of who is involved. The office cannot determine whether to investigate based on the position of the individual involved or whether the matter may be controversial. Doing so would undermine the independence of the office and the public's confidence in the hotline process. Like all of our office work, investigations are managed alongside our audit responsibilities and are incorporated into our overall workload planning. The office remains committed to executing the approved audit plan while fulfilling all of its charter and governance responsibilities. The integrity of the hotline depends on applying the same process to every credible allegation, regardless of who is involved. Choosing not to investigate because someone is an elected official, executive, manager, or employee would undermine public confidence in the process. Investigations are one of the office's core responsibilities and are managed alongside our audit work. Like any organization, we continually balance multiple work streams while adjusting our priorities throughout the year. And we account for our work in the audit plan. We charge our hours, and I did some quick math this afternoon between my first presentation with you on the audit plan. We accounted for in our annual audit plan for 26, 150 audit hours. we to date have charged 263 hours that's about 175 percent increase but you may recall that we also maintain that 1 500 hours of unassigned audit work for this such purpose and using the billable rate in our office this year that equates to about 36 820 dollars total to administer the entire fraud waste and abuse hotline for the city that's about 1.5 percent of our total budget this year And I will point out that we're getting ready to do our quarterly semiannual, excuse me, semiannual fraud report. Our audit reports are up about 25, 25 investigations or reports this quarter, the last six months. Sorry, the last six months were up about 25 over what we were the last period to date. My priority is fulfilling all responsibilities entrusted to the office. That includes executing the approved audit plan, administering the fraud, waste and abuse hotline, providing independent oversight and continually approving the office's effectiveness and transparency. So our office's responsibility is not to determine who should be or who should not be investigated, nor avoid difficult work. We consistently apply our processes independently, evaluate facts and provide objective information. With that, if there's any questions, you'll pause me when I'm ready? Okay. Let's jump in then. And I'm going to have the report. I've got some basics and fundamentals on the slides, but I've got the report here and I'm going to be walking through the report with you just like I did with our audit committee. So I apologize if it takes too long. Let me know if I need to speed up if I'm not giving this the time. I feel it needs the time to go through it. So for purposes of the city's personnel policies that apply to employees, elected officials are not considered city employees. And the hotline report contained three actionable allegations reported to us through two hotline reports. The first one is the use of city staff to supervise the elected officials' children during work hours and at official city events. The second was personal use of a city-owned vehicle, including out-of-city travel. And three is policy adjustments intended to justify prior conduct. We performed the following work. We reviewed telematics data from January 24th, 2024 through June 7th. Councilman Donelson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. And if you could go back one slide, Natalie, I just want to make this clear for citizens. These aren't your allegations. These are the allegations of the hotline caller, writer, however the information got to you. And then you are obligated to investigate them. Is that right?

That's correct. So these are the allegations contained in the two hotline reports that we received, and these are my summary of what those contained.

Okay, thank you.

And yes, I believe, I feel that I'm obligated to review them as the administrator of the Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Hotline.

Right, thank you.

Could I, Madam President? I just want to make sure I understood what I heard. You said two separate reports. Were they alleging essentially the same things or did the two reports allege different things or can you disclose that?

I'll generally just answer it if that's okay. They had some overlap and then some had independent components of it. So this is the summary of all of it together.

Thank you. Yes.

The work that we performed, we reviewed telematics data from January 24th, 2024 through June 7th, 2026. We reviewed mileage logs and IRS imputed calculations, calendar entries for comparison with vehicle activity, staff interviews were conducted between April 15th and June 11th, 2026, and applicable administrative regulations, including a new policy enacted on May 7th, 2026 was reviewed. A total of seven interviews were conducted, as I said, between April 15th and June 11th. All seven acknowledged awareness of the elected official bringing their children to work. And what we got from those interviews were some key themes that I have here. The staff felt implicitly obligated to supervise or monitor the children and did not feel positioned to decline the request. the supervision of children required staff to pause or delay their regular work tasks, and multiple employees described these occurrences as recurring or often coinciding with school breaks and holidays. And we have provided two specific examples. The first one is the city event in July 2025, in which a staff member was left to watch the children in a construction trailer for the duration of the event, preventing the staff member from performing their core duties. The value of the time dedicated to watching the children is approximately $380. And I'll pause there and just editorialize if you don't mind. I know that some of you may be familiar with financial audits. In the case of fraud, waste, and abuse, there is no materiality. We don't pause and say it's only a dollar. We look at it from a different lens of was there fraud, waste, and abuse. And so we don't necessarily look at the dollar amounts. That's helpful to frame what occurred, but there is no dollar level like you would see in a financial statement audit of materiality.

if that makes sense.

The second example is a staff member reported supervising the elected officials' children after work hours. The first instance was voluntary. However, the staff member later felt an expectation to continue. No compensation was provided for this time. staff reported additional instances of supervising the elected officials children on multiple occasions over several years however there were no formal records nothing was formally tracked for these instances and so overall the the staff time involved could not be quantified natalie in these particular interviews can you just clarify where these children were

were taken care of? Was it at the offices? Was it at events? Was it at the residence? Where were all of these babysitting activities happening?

Sure. Generally speaking, at all of those locations you mentioned. It was at residences, at city administration, and at city events that would be off of the city administration building can you clarify the residents was it the staff's residence or was it the elected officials residence i do not have that information specifically but there's at least some information that happened at the elected officials residence thank you okay i'll move on to the next one which is personal use of a vehicle And this is outside of city limits. We reviewed the telematics data from 2024 through 2026, and three instances were identified. The first one occurred on Saturday, November 16th, 2024 to Denver, Colorado for 143 miles. Saturday, October 25th, 2025, Monument, Colorado, 44 miles. And then again, March 20th through 2025, 2026, Tecresta Butte, Ouray, Almonte, for a total of 794 miles. The elected official has reimbursed the city for $276.95 for 382 of those miles related to the Crested Butte-Uray-Almont trip, but approximately $298 short. So I arrived at that by doing the computation. So the way imputed income is calculated is they take the mileage times the IRS rate in effect at the time, and then that is what the imputed income is based off. So we took the 794 miles by the IRS rate in effect at the time, it would have been $575, just subtracting the 575, the 276 from the 575, that's how we get the 298 that were short. Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Real quick, just, I mean, you may have covered this, I may have missed it. How do you determine personal use of driving a monument just because it's on a Saturday or is there, there was no scheduled event or how did you determine that?

So in this particular case, and there are other trips outside of, you know, in this area, we compared the travel through the calendars that were supplied to us from the administration. And in this particular case, we did meet with the elected official, shared that information. They did not say that this was not personal travel, but I can also tell you the destination is you know consistent with personal travel thank you Okay, moving on. So the total imputed income for all three trips should have been $425 higher than was reported. So really that's the difference of the 298 that was short on the Almonte, Ouray, Crested Butte trip, plus the other two trips to Denver and Monument. So underreported personal use results in lower tax obligation. And I'll just pause here and say, Although the elected official reimbursed the city for that personal trip for Crested Butte, Ouray, and Almonte, the way it's normally calculated is this is imputed income. And I think it's important to explain that to you all here. Imputed income is simply as if he got, if the elected official was paid a salary. So then there's taxes paid on that imputed income. This is not saying that there should be an additional 425 in reimbursement. That is something that the elected official could choose to do, but the way we're looking at it is the way it's always calculated, and that is imputed income. So it's not really a reimbursement, it is income that the taxes are paid on. All right, then we will jump into personal travel inside of city limits and our review of available telematics data for January 24th through June 30th, 24 compared to personal use mileage reports for the same period. What we identified, and I'll pause here and say, this is how, this is the methodology we use. And this is where I started by saying our audits look a lot like investigations. We use a lot of the same techniques. In this case, what we utilized is what's called stop and go auditing. That means that we start with the data and we said, okay, this is how many miles were listed as personal travel. And we started working backwards to see if we could identify that there was personal use beyond what was recorded. So in this particular case, we identified 200 miles of commuting between the residence and the city administration building. That's pretty standard and typical for the process today. And then we looked at high frequency stops. That's the quickest, easiest way to get through some of this data. And what we found was 335 miles across 55 stops at these high frequency areas destinations. That's two schools, a dry cleaner, and a shopping center. And I just wanna clarify that 335 miles is from point A to that high frequency destination, a school, a dry cleaner or shopping center, and then either from that spot to the next place. So it's difficult to identify, had you not had that stop where the elected official would have gone, but it's 335 miles of personal use to go to those stops. And then an additional 155 miles of additional personal use. This is where we stopped. At this point, what we identified is that the processes, the controls that are in place aimed at identifying personal use were not effective. And I'll talk about that when I get to my conclusion. But that's the purpose of stop and go auditing is we go until we can identify. So that's why we didn't continue looking beyond June 30th. We were simply, you know, had identified already that there was reason to believe there was additional personal use beyond what was being reported and the controls were not sufficient. I give you some examples. Tuesday, January 30th to a medical appointment, 28 miles. Saturday, April 20th, a shopping center, two miles. Sunday, May 12th, 2024, a shopping center, eight miles. And so what we identified is there were 384 miles reported by the elected official as personal use. So you can see I started at the 384. took out the $200 that I could account for, got to the $335, found an additional $155. So approximately 306 additional personal use miles should have been reported with an imputed income value of $205. Okay, moving on.

I trust that you'll stop me if I do.

Okay, now we're here at the third allegation, and that is the review of the administrative regulation governing personal use of city-owned vehicles and whether or not that was used to justify prior behavior. And so, i want to set some guidelines here the new administrative regulation governing personal use was effective on may 7th 2026 it was adopted in response to a prior report issued by the office of the city auditor and in determining whether that policy was developed to justify prior conduct we did not feel was appropriate under the fraud waste and abuse hotline That's for you all, the public council, to decide whether or not that policy meets what is intended. However, what we did do then at that point is following the implementation of the policy's effective deadline, review the telematics data. So that policy went into effect May 7th, And we looked through the latest personal use mileage report ending May 30th. And that's considered the second quarter. I know it's throwing a few people off, but these quarterly reports run December, January, and February. And then the second quarter one is March, April, Yes, March, April, and May. And so even though the report talks about a second quarter report, it's ended May 31st. So we simply looked between May 7th and May 31st, and we identified approximately 60 miles of personal use, primarily on weekends, which were not included in the personal use report. for the related reimbursement calculations. And examples include May 9th to a shopping center, 17 miles. Wednesday, May 13th, a shopping center, a medical appointment, four miles. Sunday, May 17th, shopping centers, eight miles. Friday, May 22nd, shopping centers, 16 miles. And let me see. Let me just review my notes here, make sure I didn't miss anything.

Councilman Risley.

Thanks, Madam President. Just before you move on, Natalie, I just want to make sure I understand what you are saying or what you just said here with this relative to the administrative regulation. So if I understood correctly, after this administrative regulation was put into place, this elected official did not meet the expectations or the requirements set forth in that regulation? Did I understand that correctly?

That's correct. So the way we looked at it, I requested the second quarter right before this report was issued on June 9th, that was the draft. with that request came the request to identify any additional personal use, and the official draft did not include any of this additional travel. So we used the same methodology that we did in the first go-round. In addition to these 60 miles, there's personal use between the residents and the city administration. In addition to that, that's this additional 60 miles. So yes, what we're finding is continued personal use. of the vehicle that was not reported.

So that's like me saying at home, we're not going to eat vanilla ice cream anymore, and then I go out and buy a tub of vanilla ice cream and continue to eat vanilla ice cream. Okay, thanks. And for the record, no offense to vanilla ice cream.

For the record, I haven't had breakfast or lunch yet, so I'm hungry, so you're making me hungry. Okay, so here we are at the conclusions, and I want to draw your attention to where we started. This is different than an audit. This is an investigation. It's simply a report. And what you will find in my conclusions is no determination, no opinion on right or wrong, good or bad. It is simply the facts. And so I will also say that because of our work in looking through the records, I have made some recommendations around controls. And that is within the purview of the city auditor who looks at risks. and controls to make sure that processes are working effectively. So with that in mind, let's jump into the conclusions. The Telematics data showed personal travel both inside and outside of city limits that was not reflected in the mileage used to determine the imputed income or reimbursement amounts. And so my recommendation, and again, this is where it's different than an audit, there is no management response. I don't have the administration confirming that they will do or take any actions on this, but they will, what I've suggested is they strengthen controls around the reporting and reconciliation of personal use, specifically through the routine use of telematics data, and we believe that that would greatly improve the accuracy of mileage classification. and then in terms of staff supervision of children the review identified multiple instances in which the city staff supervised the elected officials children during work hours or official events without records of these occurrences we were unable to identify the total impact but my recommendation here is that establishing clear guidance regarding staff interaction with the elected officials family members may help prevent confusion and and perhaps consider adopting a policy for elected officials that is similar to the city's visitors in the workplace policy for employees. Whoops, I went the wrong direction. And I would be remiss in not always advertising our Fraud, Waste and Abuse Hotline Report. So for those that are watching, this is why we exist. It's a fundamental task that we do. So I want everybody to know that they can continue reporting to the Fraud, Waste and Abuse Hotline and we will look at them as we need. With that, I'll take any questions that you have. Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President. Just a brief question. In the seven interviews that you had noted with staff or any time afterwards, was there any indication that staff members have been retaliated for sharing their experiences with the auditor's office?

We will continue to monitor that.

Thank you.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you, President Karabasan. Can you go back to your conclusions slide, please?

Wherever it disappeared.

It's like second to last, potentially last.

Emily Drive, otherwise we'll both be. Thank you.

Yes, go ahead. So I have a question. We're getting to this stage Does policy differentiate administration versus council, or could policy cover anything that is a policy? And I'll just tell you from my perspective, it seemed like with the first audit report, the conclusion was really the administration needs to do something. But Was that intentional to really put it in the administration's court? Or could it have been more broad that basically something should be done? Or are you picking this methodology and these specific words for a reason? Or are you viewing this particular policy as broader, meaning it could be either one of the branches of government?

I think I had a lesson learned from my first report when I said write a policy through the administration. What I failed to see was that there was an opportunity to approach this through the code of ethics. So I think you're seeing that my response is a little more broad and less directed specifically at any one group. But I would default to the attorneys to say whether or not administrative policies could govern council. I'm kind of out of my wheelhouse there, but that's why you're seeing a more generic recommendation here for policies.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President. So to that last point about the opportunity for Council to do something legislatively, maybe in addition to or instead of an administrative regulation, as you may know, there's an ordinance that's going to be discussed tomorrow at the regular meeting. And in that ordinance, one of the things that's being changed is the definition of resources of the city. And so I might turn to the attorney and just ask, In your interpretation of that definition, do the resources of the city include things like city staff being used to babysit elected officials, children in these various modes that the auditor has identified?

Madam President, through you, Stephanie Boster, city attorney, my office has interpreted it in that way.

So should city council choose to act on this ordinance tomorrow and in coming weeks, there would be a mechanism by which even things that weren't maybe contemplated when this was originally drafted that could be perhaps captured or addressed, is that?

Madam President, through you to President Pro Tem Risley, yes, that's possible.

Thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Can I add to that? Like, I guess there's some confusion around dogs, particularly dogs that are service dogs, because just trying to understand, like, I mean, they almost, service dogs almost become humans, and they're vital to their participant, and it's a tougher conversation, but they're still like children, and staff could be obligated to take care of a dog. Council, we have known that to happen. So if we do create something, how would you interpret service animals?

Madam President, Stephanie Boster, through you too, Councilmember Lineweber. I'd really have to look at that. I agree with you, it could get complicated. Service animals are different than your regular pet dog. So I would have to do a little bit of legal research. But I agree with you, it certainly creates a gray area.

Well, that's why I brought it up. It just kind of triggered something in my head to think of, well, should we think more expansively than just kids? That clearly is an area that might be considered.

Councilman Hingham, online.

Thank you. A couple of things I'm trying to understand with the policy. Is the mayor allowed to keep the car assigned to him at his home?

I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer that question. Maybe the chief of staff?

Yes.

Okay, so he can leave from his home to go to any city business necessary.

correct yeah correct me chief but yes i mean i that's the intent of the original use guidelines was that the elected official would have their vehicle and then wherever their first place of work would be okay is what's recorded as their original imputed income okay so i'm trying to understand like and without looking at this whole log um i would assume that whether it be on the weekend or the evening or weekday or whenever

the mayor is using the vehicle may again stop by somewhere on his way home or on his way from one event to the next to take care of an errand. When you investigated this mileage, did you go into that level of detail to find was this just a trip to a shopping center and back in where he did his own personal business in the city vehicle or was he on his way to a neighborhood meeting and stopped at a safe way on the way home?

Sure, I think what you're talking about is incidental use, and that's consistent with what we looked at. Largely, we tried to identify, now you would have to dump all of the data into a GPS model and have it map where you were stopping in the course. I leave City Hall and I'm walking to the utility board meeting and I stop at the cookie store on the way is a little different than going, you know, two or three more miles out of the way. But to the extent that we could identify personal use that was clearly personal use, not just incidental of stopping to and from, we did. But I will also say that this isn't about good or bad and or right or wrong. What we're simply looking for, at least what I was looking for, was personal use that was not being captured. And again, I'll draw your, you know,

minds back to the fact that we don't look for whether it's a dollar or a hundred dollars or ten thousand dollars we look for whether or not there were control deficiencies and we were able to find those well i can understand you're wanting to have a clearer policy and that you're not looking for good or bad or right or wrong but it strikes me that it would be near to impossible to figure out what's into incidental and what's personal based on the mayor's calendar But again, that's, as you said, that's for council to decide on that and the public. The other thing I would mention is that I understand that when the vice president was in town, that the mayor's wife and his children were sought to be kind of, if you will, ambassadors to the second family who was in town. And that there are times when having the mayor's family with him is truly a part of city business. So I, I just want to understand how, how that is handled in this judgments in these judgments that we're making. And I would also, at some point, I don't know, I can't read the monitor and I don't know if the chief of staff has asked to be acknowledged, but I would be interested in hearing the chief of staff as well at whatever point that is available. And I am, I'M SITTING AT A GATE RIGHT NOW AND I DON'T KNOW WHICH LONGER I'M GOING TO HAVE CONNECTION. SO I WOULD MAKE ALL OF THOSE REQUESTS. I'M GOING TO PUT MYSELF ON MUTE NOW. THANK YOU.

IS THAT A QUESTION FOR THE CHIEF OF STAFF TO ADDRESS?

JUST TRYING TO BE RESPECTFUL OF THE CHAIR'S ROLE HERE. As was pointed out, we did not get this in advance for an opportunity for a management response. We will review this and get back. We should get that done within the month. I'm hoping to get it done sooner than that.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. But first, Natalie, thanks for being here this afternoon. How long ago was this released, your report?

Oh boy, I'd have to look at my calendar here. I believe it was last, let's see, we had audit committee on June 18th, I believe, and we would release it on Friday, June 26th. So that would have been two weeks and a day.

All right, so it's been two weeks and a day that everybody's been able to read the report. I did have some interesting comments about service dogs, but I think I'm gonna hold them. and uh... You know, the one thing I'll just say this is service dogs are required by that individual. You know, they have a medical diagnosis or they've been, so they're supposed to have the service dog with them. That's different than if I bring my kids here to City Hall and ask a subordinate, someone who works for me in theory to watch my kids who aren't necessarily supposed to be here. Just to go back over this, I mean, I think the big, you can't talk about, well, is this right or wrong? You're just reporting facts. To me, someone in a position of authority who brings their kids to work and then asks others who work for them or work for somebody that works for them to watch the kids is, I'll say abusing their authority. It's putting people under pressure to do something. In what you have written here in the interviews, you interviewed seven staff. All seven acknowledge awareness of the elected officials. well, the mayor bringing his children to work on or city events. All but one described instances in which they supervise the elected officials' children. So there's six different city staff right there. Staff felt, key themes, staff felt implicitly obligated to supervise or monitor the children and did not feel positioned to decline the request. So that goes to the ideas like, well, it's no big deal. They could have just said no. What they have reported is that they felt obligated and that they couldn't say no. It required them to pause or delay their regular work tasks. So they're on the clock, we are paying them as taxpayers to do certain functions. somebody's getting paid pretty well because further down, a city event in July 2025 during which a staff member was left to watch the children in a construction trailer for the duration of the event, preventing the staff member from performing their core duties. The value of that time, this one incident, to watching the children is approximately $380. So this isn't insignificant, it's not like, you know, it happened once, what's the big deal? Which I do hear that out there from some people. But this is significant from a couple levels. The financial side and just the fairness to employees. Multiple employees describe these occurrences as recurring and often coinciding. And it's gone on for several years. That's in here too as a fact. The staff reports that. And so I'll leave that one there. It's just, to me, it's just clearly wrong to do this when you are the boss, when you are in charge to bring kids and then say, hey, would you watch them? The person you're asking is not on equal footing with you and it's not right. And then personal use of a city-owned vehicle. You have looked at mileage over multiple slices, multiple periods of time, different days. Have there been any instances where the mayor over-reported his personal use?

the the two slices that you reference is we looked at the entire population for out of state travel out of city travel and so we found those three instances and the other slice that you mentioned was january 24th 2024 through june 30th we were able to use that stop and go audit technique to basically walk backwards and say yes, we found additional use, therefore the control is not working. Beyond those two slices, we have not gone any further to look. So it's possible, I suppose, but what we found in the two areas that we looked at was that it was underreported.

Yeah, the trend is, or everything you looked at, it's underreported, which is to the benefit of the person reporting because they either have to reimburse the city less or their income, their imputed income is less. And that is significant. If it was just poor record keeping, that's one thing, right? And I made errors where I paid the city too much and I made errors where I paid the city too little. That's... It's another one, it's always I'm reimbursing the city less, or I'm underestimating my income. You're not saying any of this, you're just reporting facts. I'm pointing it out, and it would be, well, I think it would be appropriate, well, I'll stop there. And so we can go into all the details and then people's eyes kind of gloss over and they can't follow it and they think it's picky. The big picture though is that the mayor has used a city vehicle, he keeps the city vehicle and uses it. Previous mayors had used their own vehicle and then they were reimbursed for city use, for the mileage they use on their official functions. The current mayor is doing it the opposite way. He's using a city vehicle and then in theory paying us back for his personal use or imputed income. But the mistakes, are always made to his benefit. He's always underestimating how much he should pay back or underestimating his income. And so, this is just wrong. It shouldn't happen. Leaders should lead by example. They should not, then blame the person who's charged with investigating it for abusing their position. So for me, it's disappointing, it's embarrassing. I feel sorry for citizens who pay taxes and have to take care of their own childcare and don't get a city vehicle like this to use. That's all I have to say.

I just have clarification for the chief of staff. So this report was posted on the city website two weeks and a day ago, which was then posted on many media sites, which then the mayor himself did respond to. Were you not aware that he knew about this audit?

I'm just checking, I don't see an email. I just asked Natalie if it had been sent, but I do not check all of the websites. There are other things that I'm working on a regular basis. So I was not aware of the specific wording of this till it was posted for the agenda.

Which was last week.

Which was last Thursday or Friday. I forget the exact day it was posted.

So it wasn't, you just got, you didn't just get this as you stated, you've had this for a week.

I got it last week.

So it really would be nice for the citizens to be able to hear what the administration office does plan to do because May 7th you presented an ordinance that clearly has gaps in it. Do you have plans to tighten up those gaps to that ordinance?

I think looking, I think one of the suggestions that I see here is to use telematics data and as opposed to memory or calendar, and that is something that we are working on, yes.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. I had one final comment. I'm trying to remember what that final comment was. And I'll hold, because I don't recall what it was.

I don't see any other questions or comments. Thank you. We will move on to council member reports and open discussion. If there are any council members who have anything to report out. Council McDonelson.

Yeah, if I could, it is going to go back to the city auditor and this investigation and I will say I find it disappointing that the mayor has stated that perhaps a city auditor is spending her time on this when she should really be spending it on something else. Well, the only reason she spends her time on this is because she's received verifiable allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse. So she doesn't get a choice. But if his actions did not warrant those tips and did not result in findings which are concerning, she wouldn't spend time on this. And it would be nicer for her and it would be nicer for us if her time was spent on other topics. You know, again, it's disappointing that the city auditor is spending time on the mayor.

but it is proper that she's doing it councilman casey yeah just two quick updates because i know we're heading to lunch uh on saturday evening june 27th i went to ride along with officer cohen of colorado springs police department's falcon division to see police operations firsthand i was really impressed with officer cohen's professionalism and courtesy with everyone he interacted with me his fellow officers and residents we engaged with He took the time to explain police procedures and processes at each step, and he answered my numerous questions over the five-hour ride-along, which was invaluable to me. And second one, I hosted a town hall for District 2 on June 30th, 2026 at Fire Station 19. We had about 40 people in attendance, in addition to city staff. Public Works CSPD Utilities and I presented and answered questions. I appreciate Council President Kriverson and Chief of Staff Wayne Williams attending. My next town hall is October 14th at Library 21C. Thank you.

Councilman Rainey.

It's not, it's not, I'll go after Roland.

Thank you, Madam President. Just a couple of few items. I know we've been on a long break, so I just wanted to just re-highlight the fact that a couple of council members did attend the Colorado Municipal League Conference up north. I know for myself, this is the second year attending. Some great engagements up there, and I've made this very known to our city clerk, who we've had great conversations about, and chief of staff, and the mayor directly. I think we need to have a bigger presence at CML. We can't be the second largest city in the state and have the smallest presentation of personnel and or presentations like other cities do. But I'm glad we did have a few folks there this year. Also held a small business forum, a lot of small business owners in the Colorado Springs area really voiced a lot of concerns about getting support from the city. Great turnout, had about 35 plus different businesses. that came and shared their comments. We did recently reply back to a lot of the Q&A along with some resources and it was requested by several members in the forum that we go ahead and try to make that a recurring meeting And then hopefully that evolves into something. So very excited to see that many business owners coming and voicing their concerns about whether it's tax incentives or just getting generalized support grants funding from the city. Also, most recently myself, council member Donaldson, council member Hengem, and council member Williams. We all attended the visit and tour of Cheyenne Mountain. So great visit, great eye opening. opportunity to see the mission out there. So many thanks to the military, civilians, contractors that are doing great work for us in Cheyenne Mountain, especially for national security. But one of the things that was mentioned during that tour, and I definitely plan on leaning into this, is there are serious concerns about wage gaps and comparing wages that we have here in Colorado Springs versus what is up in Denver and some of the Northern areas. And why is that of concern is because we can't grab the talent that we need to maintain manning and manpower up there. So that's something I think we need to lean into and see what more we can do to help those folks up there. and then of course this past weekend um we had the uh pikes pika bus rodeo parade uh that was great uh once again thanks to everyone who was able to pull all the resources together something that was on the verge of being canceled it ended up happening so what a great opportunity for our community to continue to celebrate our western heritage and of course this week kicking off the rodeo. So hopefully we get great participation out there, a lot of folks attending. So once again, I just really wanted to highlight, it was great seeing the community come together and see that parade happen. We can never forget to definitely celebrate our Western heritage. That's all I have.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President. A few things. One is I was up at CML along with Councilman Rainey, and I want to thank you, Madam President, for basically canceling our meeting or normal work and regular sessions because they conflicted with CML and there were you know a couple of rumors out there oh they cancelled council meetings because they didn't want to hear about a certain topic that's not true it was I asked for that a long time ago because I haven't gone in the past because it almost always conflicts with our council dates And so I don't know if we can just shift to the right next year, but if we want more representation, I agree with Councilman Rainey. We should have a good turnout up there. It is a good conference. So, thanks for that. A few other things, just a few days ago, I attended a retirement sort of an appreciation event for Troy Stover and Jesse Kimber. I wanna thank them for their many years of work for the city, and that was a good event. It's been a long time since we were here last. About just shortly after our last meetings, there was Colorado Springs Fire Department graduation. We graduated new firemen, and I think there was maybe a woman in there. So... Thanks to them for what they're signing up to do for our city. I had the privilege of reading a Women's Veterans Day proclamation to some women veterans at the VA Center. It just happened to be held there. I took a tour of the Republic. public services recycling center with Councilwoman Gold and Hengem, and that is actually worth doing. I would recommend going down there. It's more interesting than you would think. They use robotics to pull out certain kinds of metals. It's really kind of fascinating. Actually, those robotics pull out plastics and they can tell which color the plastics are, like your little water bottles and stuff that we all like to drink out of and throw in the trash. Do it, go check that out. And last but certainly not least, One alibi there. The tour of Cheyenne Mountain was excellent. I want to thank the folks up there and CSU for setting that up. And the reason we did it is to see what role CSU has in infrastructure at Cheyenne Mountain. And I won't discuss it because it's all secret, but I won't discuss it. But finally, last and absolutely not least, is I was invited to be the speaker at the Latino Luncheon last week. I have a certificate of appreciation they presented to me. Very nice, it was a lot of fun talking to the folks down there. You might say, why the heck is Dave Donaldson speaking at the Latino Luncheon? Well, I don't tell you guys everything about me, right? But here is a picture of my great-great-grandfather, who was born in Valencia, Spain, in 1830, and then sailed to Puerto Rico, to Ponce, Puerto Rico, shortly after that. His name is Eduardo Canessa. My, his son was born and raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico. My grandfather was born there and then moved to the United States. And so there's a little Latino connection right here in District 1. Not many know about that. I think the gentleman in the hat didn't even know that. So there, that's all I have for today. We do all know now. Okay.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I'm just gonna bring up, we have a council at large town hall coming that is sponsored or run by Braver Angels. It's going to be on July 27th, and this is a little bit different than a normal town hall because we have actually a facilitator, this group called Braver Angels, which has really been good. We had one last month, and it went over really, really well. The venue was small, so we had to limit the size, so we had sign-ups. We're doing the same for this. Library 21C also has so much capacity, and so we may reach that capacity, but it is much larger than what we had with the YMCA. But people that want to participate can go online and why it's important is because we're trying to, there's a lot of conversation we can have and we're trying to focus the conversation in on certain topics. And so the way we determine those topics is as you register, you are asked to voice what you would like to discuss. And so that's the way the citizens can engage on their particular topic that they wanna kind of talk about. and Braver Angels then takes that data and they kind of go through it and we actually look and see and we kind of determine here are the key issues that our citizens want to talk about because we have a two hour block and the one challenge at 21C is that the library closes at seven and so we're gonna need to, we have to end the meeting at seven. So we won't have extra time to kind of go over. So that's gonna be one of the restrictions about that. But I encourage people that wanna participate to do that. I will give a caveat out there that because of the nature of the data centers, that's a conversation that we're not going to be able to participate in because it's an active quasi-judicial status. So it's just, we are asked to be judges and not really be swayed. So because of that issue, that would be a topic that will not be addressed at this town hall. So anyway, I just wanted to give everyone an update. It's a little bit different than how other town halls are because we do the signup process and that we actually use another organization to kind of help with the facilitation of the conversation, which is really good. So unless one of my fellow at-large council members want to add to that, that's all I've got.

Councilman Williams. Thank you, President Garo-Iverson. Just real quick, Chief of Staff Williams and I attended the inaugural Cybersecurity First Friday Community Day, which was last Friday. And they had about 300 participants. And it was really nice to meet people up and down the Front Range who engage in that space and to really put them all together. So excited for all of that. obviously council member rainey went first so he stole a little thunder about the parade and the rodeo but please do your best to come out for that and just in the spirit of being good neighbors i think the county fair is happening this week as well so if you can't get enough in colorado springs you can head on out to the county fair thank you

And that is the end of council member reports. And that is the end of our council work session meetings. We are adjourned.