City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, we have everybody. Let's get started. I'll call this regular meeting of the Steamboat Spring City Council to order. Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. Meeting number 2026-14. It is now 5:00 p.m. And Julie will turn it over to you for roll call. Steve Mine here. Gail Gary here. Ja Costa is absent. Um Dave Barnes here. Michael Pacino here. Amy Dibson here. Ryan Swinte here. Okay. And let's rise for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. Tonight is our work session and council will give direction to staff at work sessions for the presentation of action items at future regular council meetings. No motions will be considered. Public comment will be taken and email comments are encouraged at city council at steamboatspr.net or through the city website at steamboatpr.net. And we may also invite special guests and community partners to participate in the discussions. Tonight we have uh four top three topics on the agenda and then number four after those three we'll spend some time giving you a paid parking update from the meeting we had with SSRC yesterday and Dan needs a few minutes after that. So we'll close with Dan tonight. With that let's move to our first item which is the Steamboat Springs transit winter service options. Jonathan, good evening. Good evening. Jonathan Flint, transit manager for Steamboat Springs Transit. And want to start by just saying I really appreciate uh you all taking the time to meet with me and discuss transit options for the upcoming winter as we are getting ready here in another week to start our recruiting for winter drivers. So, just to give a little bit of background on who SST is or what we represent, first and foremost, we carry over a million passengers a year. Average somewhere around 1.1 million passengers. Travel over 620,000 miles. One of the great things that we have for our both our citizens and our guests is the free to rider local bus service. We do this all with 28 vehicles in our fleet. Some of the things that make us outstanding, one is the free local service. And this helps in in several

ways. First, I think it makes a great opportunity for people that are looking for an easy way to get around town. Helps both the residents and the visitors as well as SST uh because we're able to load on both doors. Really cuts down the time that we have to spend in bus stops. We have a fantastic staff. Um, one of the things I really wanted to point out is how much experience our drivers have. The 50 drivers we had over the winter brought us about a quarter million hours of experience with 10 over 10,000 and that is an unbelievable asset to have. Uh, moving to our green and hybrid fleet. Uh we've we found a lot of success with our hybrid electric uh fleet that's giving us the advantages of an electric a battery electric bus but the range and the reliability of a diesel bus and then our overall ridership performance carrying about 10 passengers more per bus per hour than the national average. Some of the other things that we consider to be outstanding. I appreciate all the work that was put into creating the long-term partnership with the ski area and this funding allows us to really do some long-term planning and that is essential for transit services. Also can't tell you how wonderful it has been having the housing both for our ability to recruit drivers. That's the first thing they always ask is what do you have for housing? And then secondly, it's been saving us a huge amount of money because we no longer have to rent uh outside properties and turn them around to our drivers. So that's been a huge help as well. And then the AA Valley Regional Transportation Authority has been stood up uh started first of

the year. We're working with the RTA um as they develop their service. And the thing that I'm looking forward to this is in three years we'll have transitioned over to the RTA and that'll allow us to really focus in on our local service and give us some additional assets that we can direct toward our local service. So just to go over our routes that we have, this is winter service. Our prim primary line is the red and green. It goes from the downtown up to the ski area through Central Park. From the ski area, it departs out to the condominiums, back up to the ski area, back downtown, and then out to West Steamboat. The blue and orange line copies the service between West Steamboat and the Gondola Transit Center. Then it serves the hotels and condominiums along Highway 40. Uh and then as it returns back up to the ski area, it follows the same route as the green so that we have that overlap and additional capacity for the last few stops. And then uh regional service that we have, we have three daily departures that go from Craig into Steamboat in the morning and then from uh Steamboat back to Craig in the afternoon. We also have one trip that goes in the opposite direction in the morning. steamboat to Craig and then we have a trip that goes from Craig to Steamboat in the afternoon as well. Uh some of the innovations that uh we're very proud of. First is the yellow zone. It's the microtransit uh point-to-point service in Oldtown Fairview uh the Hison area and then part of the Hilltop area. We are carrying approximately 100 passengers per day on that service. So it's it's been growing uh quite a bit. used used a lot by the

students here in town at the high school and up at the college. Um and then uh in the wintertime by locals who are riding that down to the main line to get up to the ski area. Uh got a couple of staff members who have done a fantastic job of recruiting. That's Darcy and Shane. We do a lot of really targeted recruiting to get an excellent group of drivers. try and get that all locked in by August of the year. Um that's when we've had um the best success. So again, having the housing has been uh wonderful for that. And we're really proud of the fact that we're one of the few transit agencies that is fully staffed year after year. And then we've got a real focus on multimodal with the bike racks on the bus. We keep those on year round. Um, and a lot of our stops are located near trails or the core trail trying to again improve that multimodal access. So, what are we planning for next uh winter? Really, we we aren't planning any changes from the service that we operated this past winter. First, we found it to be fairly successful. Um, so we'll make a few little minor tweaks as far as stop times and that kind of thing, but overall, uh, looking at keeping the same service. And there's a couple of reasons why we're looking at doing that. The first is that we've got a real challenge with our equipment. We've got six buses that are uh, beyond their manufacturers's recommended lifespan. uh it's getting harder and harder to find parts for them and um just more maintenance intensive for those vehicles. Uh absolutely sent out safe, they're good vehicles, they're still running uh well, but they're just more expensive to continue to to

operate. And then uh even though we've had a great success with hiring drivers, it is a challenge to uh get staff here in the resort areas. And then just the overall capital budget constraints as far as getting uh buses and new vehicles each uh hybrid bus is around 900 plus thousand. So there's just the capital budget constraints that we're looking at. So this slide here um want to go over this talks a little bit about our fleet and the age of our fleet. Um and so I'll just talk through some of the color codes. The purple vehicles are cutaways. Those are ones that have the van front and then the coach back. Those are not able to be refurbished. It's just kind of a one-time vehicle. We've got uh three of those. One, which is number 41. The the vehicle numbers are across the bottom. 41, even though it's way beyond its lifespan, it's our backup vehicle for paratransit. So, it's in in good shape, but it just doesn't travel that many miles uh in a year, but we want to have that reserve capacity in case we need it for our paratransit program. 46 is our primary paratransit vehicle. As you can see, it's uh reached the end of its its life. It's still in in really good shape, but it will need to be replaced. The next series of buses, we call them the 60 series. So, 61 2 3 4 5 and 66. Those are all of our diesel buses and the green bar indicates that they reached the end of their manufacturer's recommended life and then we have refurbish them. So we send those buses out. They are basically torn down to the frame and items are either

refurbished, replaced or um just cleaned and reinstalled. Uh and it gives us another about seven years for the vehicle life. It's a very cost-e effective way of getting a longer vehicle life um out of the the vehicles that we have. 70 series, so 71,2 and three are the first hybrids, the smaller ones, the 30-footers. Um as you can see, those have all been refurbished and one is reaching the end of its life as well. The yellow vehicles, the the yellow bars are actually vehicles that are being refurbished right now. Uh so they're up in Minnesota uh being worked on and they will be back to us by the start of the winter season. We have grants for buses 82 and 83 to send those out for refurbishment. Uh looking at next summer for that rest of the vehicles are within their original lifespan. Um, and the vehicles, the 550, 103, 5, 106, and 107. Those are all regional uh vehicles that will be moving out of our fleet. Um, as I said, we've got three years that we're working to provide service for the RTA and then they'll be taking over that service. This is just another representation talking about uh about mileage. The big thing to see here is our paratransit uh vehicles really don't have that many miles on them. So that's why we feel that it's it's safe even though uh they've expanded past their recommended lifespan. But you can see our 60 vehic uh 60 series vehicles are well over uh mileage with some of them at or above 800,000 miles. Uh and that's just traveling around steamboats. So quite a few miles on those vehicles.

So just to talk a little bit about our winter ridership. As you can see, this year was down. Um couple years ago was really the high water mark for recent service uh post pandemic. And what I want to show with this slide is we've got about 120,000 passenger capacity that we feel that we could comfortably uh serve because we have done that before. So just when we talk a little bit here in the future about some capacity issues, we do feel pretty comfortable about having another 120 passenger capacity, 120,000. Uh this is overall ridership by line and then cost by line. You can see by far the red, green, blue, orange are the most um or the lines with the highest ridership and then also the the highest cost. But you can see that overall the routes are pretty much in line with the costs that we have for operating service. So we feel like we're providing a pretty cost-effective uh service overall. So looking ahead, one of the the big things that is very helpful is the new uh SB230 funding. This is a state program that uses uh money from oil and gas to fund transit projects and it's actually split out into three aspects. the largest being for transit systems and then there's a smaller portion for rail and the smallest about the last 10% is for uh capital projects. So this has allowed us to do some things um that I'm really looking forward to. The first is that with the state budget uh and the the necessary cuts, there were some cuts

to faster funds and that was a program that uh provided about 132,000 for the regional uh system and that that helped us uh supplement the funding that we were using to provide that regional service. that was taken away, but we were allowed to use SB230 funding to uh supplement that and be able to continue that service. So, that was a big a big help to us. We've started a program this summer uh that is increasing the overall frequency and reliability of the service. So, last summer we were operating every 20 minutes and it was very hard to keep the buses on schedule. We were running right around 83% on time. This summer we have a 15minute frequency. So there's but bus through every stop every 15 minutes. And we've improved our on time performance to mid to high 90s. So uh that's really helping the customer make sure that um they're on time service is reliable and it gives a real convenient option. Then we've also increased our evening night service from 30 minute headway to 20 minute headway. And I think that's really important in that a 30 minute headway, especially in the evening, really only gathers your transit dependent passengers because that's a long time to wait between buses. Whereas a 20 minute is much more palatable. And so we anticipate seeing an increase in ridership especially once we get into the the heavy summer season. Um we are granted funding in 2027 for a new bus. Uh however, they are giving us this funding or the ability to

go out and purchase the bus this year because right now it's 24 months plus between the time you order a bus and the time it's delivered. So realizing that we wouldn't see the bus in 26, uh it'll probably be late 27, they've allowed us to move that that funding forward. So that's been a big help. And then one of the things I'm really excited about is expanding our microtransit into what I'm calling the copper zone that uh services copper ridge downhill west acres west in village kind of that portion um of the west side of the city limits. So uh already been talking to some microtransa providers just to go over some routes and and how most effectively to do that kind of service. Uh some other things that we're doing, we have uh been awarded a grant for an improved system that our customers can use. It's an app on the phone. We we do have that, but this will be a a much easier system to use. It's fully accessible. Um and what it does is it will allow the passenger to see when the bus is going to arrive. And one of the features we're working on as well is it will show the capacity of the bus. So, how full the bus is um so that people can make their their decisions based on that. Uh continuing our fleet refurbishment program, as I mentioned, we have two uh grants and are continuing to move forward with the grants for that. And then we've added a new fleet technician um to bring our staff up to four fleet technicians just to help keep the fleet going, especially with the aging uh vehicles that we have. So long-term uh some of the things that we're looking at the first is uh it is

absolutely essential we found that we must store the vehicles indoors. It uh greatly increases the battery life, the overall vehicle life and we feel on our campus that we have the footprint for eight additional storage uh garage spaces. um still have to do some testing, some working with the architect, but we believe that we do have the space for that. Uh also, as we move away from the regional service, the uh bay area that's currently taken up by regional vehicles will open up to local vehicles. However, our transit operations center is full to capacity. Um, and so we're working to look out into the future for what additional operational space we may need as the system grows and evolves. Uh we're again looking really looking forward to focusing on the local routes, rethinking routes, service models, technology, all the different tools that we can use to serve this growing community and have had a really good collaborative relationship with the RTA as it's been stood up and our focus is working with them um handinand to make sure that we provide the best service possible for the folks of the valley. So, that's a little bit about uh where we're at, what our plans are for the next year, and kind of our long range plans.

Okay. Thank you, Jonathan, and thank you for everything your team does for the community around um SST. It's truly awesome. Thanks. What questions do we have for Jonathan? Great. Thanks. No, somebody we're all just kind of being Do you have a an estimate of how many riders were left behind or Yeah. So,

last year might be a tough year to gauge. Yeah, we were busy on all three days of winter last year, but um what we did is we looked back actually uh to 2425 and um looked at how many passengers are left behind and we left behind 4,079 passengers over the winter season. Now, we carried um 3/4 of a million passengers. So that's less than a half a percent. But for all those people, um definitely don't want to be left behind. One of the challenges we do have though is that uh because we're a non-reservation system, in other words, you just show up to the bus stop and ride. It can be challenging if everybody wants to be to the mountain at 9:00 or everybody wants to be off the mountain at 3:30. So, um, we feel the fact that we're about a half a percent of passengers that were unable to get on the bus is a a a pretty good number. And we've also, as I mentioned with the routes, have tried to make them so that at the areas that we are leaving passengers behind, we have kind of double the coverage to try and take care of that. And can I just follow up on that in terms of is that specifically um is that the RTA I'm sorry regional transit that's leaving folks behind or where are the people being left behind or is that over in condo land? Um can you give us some any in insight into that? Yeah, with the the regional buses switching over to primarily using motor coaches or 57 passengers that has really decreased uh the number of passengers that have been left behind. So that's um that's a problem we feel like we have solved. The numbers that I gave are for local. Um, and the stops where we find that we're

leaving passengers behind in the condo area begins with Shadow Run, Herbage, um, Yampa View, basically the end of the the condo line. But again, they may be left behind with the green line, but the orange line is coming up just a few minutes after that. from the Gondola Transit Center. If it's going condobbound, we leave passengers behind at the gondola transit center.

Um, and then Ski Time Square and the Highark. Uh, because a lot of passengers rather than going up to the GTC, they'll cross the street and go to the Highark. And if the buses are full, uh, unfortunately we do leave people behind at that stop. Downtown bound again, it's the gondola transit center, Ski Time Square, and then Burgess Creek Road. Really beyond that stop headed downtown, uh especially as we get to Central Park, which is a very busy stop, but the number of people getting off and the number of people getting on is about the same. So, those are the locations. We're not really leaving passengers behind um with the exception of New Year's Eve. I was looking at that number, but overall we're not leaving passengers behind from the downtown area up to the mountain and a limited number from the mountain back downtown with the blue line and the red line operating on the same routes. That gives a bus about every seven to eight minutes between downtown and the mountain and the mountain and downtown.

Thank you. Bet. And to follow up, um, are you guys able to or do you have a a way to model what paid parking might do um to transit or what your anticipated excess capacity might look like on the weekends?

You know, it's it's one of those that um I'm waiting to to see. Um we have a lot of uh customers already that are utilizing the transit system uh to go to and from uh the ski area. But uh in looking over the numbers definitely the weekends are where we see the highest passenger ridership and um some of the higher numbers for the passengers left behind. Uh, as I as I showed in the slide, it looks like we have about 120,000 passenger additional capacity that we can comfortably handle. Um, so, you know, are there going to be some days where it could be a challenge? Absolutely. But it's it's kind of hard to say as we go into this um exactly what is going to to happen. Unfortunately, just with our vehicles, we're not really in a place where we can add additional service at this time. Great. Thanks.

Can you can you share a little bit about um whenever the RTA becomes truly functioning, what what is the what do you see as the impact to SST? Um

yeah, I think that um we will no longer have to staff the the drivers. um no longer have to take care of the regional transit facility in Craig um which is an excellent facility but there is a cost to maintaining it and it's tough as a satellite uh building whenever there is something um you know it's a a long time for our facilities to get out there and back. So I think those will be helpful. also uh removing the over the road coaches. They're outstanding vehicles, but they are different. And so having uh a much more similar uh fleet of all hybrid electric buses helps with overall maintenance uh training of our uh staff. There will also be some openings um in the storage that will allow us to store new vehicles or additional vehicles uh if we're expanding. So, I think that will be good. Um, and then looking forward to working with the RTA to see how the two systems can work together to help streamline the overall operations, make it easier for the customers to use.

Okay. Thank you.

Other questions for Jonathan? Just uh in relation to um buses in the GTC and the Sawtooth, you had mentioned that the potential for future purchases of six buses or such would be longer buses. Is that still the plan or it is kind of being driven by industry? Um that the there are really only three manufacturers of full-size transit vehicles in the United States. Um, and the customer base is really looking for the maximum number of people that they can put on a bus with a single driver. And for most transit systems in the United States, that's a 40ft bus. Um, and so one of the manufacturers is moving away uh completely from offering a 35- ft bus. They're not sure exactly when that's going to happen. It was supposed to happen this year. It may carry a little over into next year, but they are definitely planning on closing down the 35- foot operation. It's just not um something that is is manufactured or or makes sense for them to manufacture. The other two companies um one is a little bit quiet about what the future um they think that they're going to continue to make uh 35 buses 35 ft buses but they're not uh sure and the other one is is of a similar attitude. So I think it would be prudent to build assuming that that is coming uh in the future that um for example when we started SST back in ' 81 uh all the rage was 30-foot buses and now nobody builds a 30-foot bus and so I could really see that happening uh with the 35 ft. The

other thing that happens with this, and I apologize for getting into debus theory, um, but the goal is to have a single chassis for all the different varieties of buses. So, a battery electric, a hydrogen powered bus, a CNG bus, or a diesel-powered bus, all in the same chassis, just different fuel sources. One of the problems with the 35- ft bus is it just doesn't have the battery capacity for the battery electric buses. Um, and so by getting that extra 5 ft, although it doesn't seem like that much, it is giving them an increase in capacity of about 20% or so. And and that can be a huge thing. So, uh, also with the CNG and the hydrogen able to put larger tanks, uh, fuel tanks really doesn't make a difference for the diesel, but what they're finding is some real challenges with the 35- ft battery electric range.

So, moving forward, right now, we have one bus on order with that 230 and of the other six buses, have we capitalized anything? are we and are we do we have anything on the budget to buy new buses today?

So where we're at is we have received an award um for two purchases. Uh so two of the buses uh we have received a federal grant for replacing those buses. Then with the SB uh funding, we have an additional bus. And then from the funding that we're receiving from the agreement with SkiCore, that's giving us the capital ability to purchase a fourth bus. So, um, my goal is to order all four buses at the same time so they can be built one right after the other. It just really helps in the consistency. Um, so waiting for all those contracts to get put through, but we're looking at being able to do four of the seven buses this year and then we'll be pursuing grants uh and other opportunities for the remaining three.

So you say this year, but there's a how what's the uh build cycle on those? Uh 24 months. So they'll be ordered this year. Um but 24 months to uh get delivered. Also, sometimes um if you order a group together, especially a smaller group, um sometimes we can get that put in uh a little faster. They're typically dealing with orders of 200 300 buses at a time. And so, it's nice to have these little small projects as they make the the transition. Um we're not ordering 200 yet. Not yet. Hey, thank you. Other questions? I do jump in.

You okay? Hi Jonathan. Um, thanks for all you do. We love SST. Um, so thank you. I want to really dig into um microransit and the yellow line. So my understanding the yellow line right now does not go to the mountain. Is that right? Correct. Is it just a tamarack or? Yeah, it goes into the the hilltop tamarak. Um, also it it does go up uh Fish Creek Falls Road and also serves part of Amethyst. Okay. Um, and people love it.

People love it. I hear um from residents um the vehicles um for the yellow line. I heard you say you like to keep the vehicles um indoors. So, I'm assuming those are buses. Are the vehicles for the yellow kept in the parking lot at the transit center? How do you do that?

Yeah, there the two of the vehicles that we have are uh battery electric cars. Um and so we like to keep those indoors uh just so we can get the maximum charging uh for the warm warm battery cell. The other uh vehicle that they have, the minivan that you see running around is a hybrid electric uh vehicle. So, it is sometimes stored indoors just to melt the snow off. Uh but it can be parked outside. It is kept at our transit facility, though. Okay. And how do you staff um the for the drivers because I'm I know there's different qualifications. So, how do you staff?

Yeah. The way that that works is that the yellow zone vehicles personnel all operation is a contract service. So uh we are with Downtowner company is Steamboat Downtowner. It has just been recently purchased by VIA which is the largest microtransit provider in the states. And um so I work with VIA. It's a contract. We tell them the service area that we would like. They tell us the costs, the budgeting, how many vehicles they feel are necessary to provide the support. And one of the things we really look for is a fairly quick turnaround. So, I don't want people waiting more than 15 minutes. Um, it's going to happen,

but uh overall trying to get that 15minute window for them. So, we work with them, but then they do all the hiring and take care of the staff and and manage all of that. Then I meet with them um on a monthly basis to just go over what we're seeing, anything that they're seeing. Uh but it is contract outside service. Great. Okay. And then um one more question on the uh microtransit. Why do we not go up to the mountain? Is it more of a cost issue or budget?

Sure. It there's there's a couple aspects to it. Um, one is is the overall cost would be much higher. Um, I think that we would have to have quite a few more vehicles

uh to provide that service. Um, it's not necessarily as efficient because you're running a partially full or full vehicle up to the base area but running an empty vehicle downtown. Whereas the uh service that we provide now really brings people from those outline areas primarily residential uh lower density residential and brings them down to the main bus line that uh just maintains the efficiency up there. And one of the other things and we do get the requests and I understand it is um how about to the grocery stores and then to Walmart and then maybe go to Wild Horse. while you're over there, just go up to the ski area and while you're there, can you take me over? So, it's one of those things that can really expand. Uh, and I think where microtransit is the best tool is that going into the lower density where a fixed route really doesn't make a lot of sense and bringing them to the fixed route where the efficiency uh provides the lowest cost per passenger to get them to the final destination, be it the grocery store or the ski area. Thanks.

Do you have more questions? I I wanted to follow up on that from the perspective of again, you know, we've got the paid parking kind of looming over us. Um, and one of the things we hear repetitively from constituents as well is the der right in terms of transit with the hilltop area. So, it would be great to know. I mean, I don't know, you know, you talked a little bit about expansion. I mean, increased cost, but again, it's a fairly heavy residential area. Can you guess I mean if what would be the steps to looking at expanding the um whether it's a yellow zone or whether we give it another you know color in terms of um going into the hilltop area and

yeah the I've I've been in discussions with them the two areas that we're looking at uh and it's one of those things that that we found it's it's best to kind of slowly move into neighborhoods that appear to have a fairly high wrership potential. Um, so looking at the Blue Sage neighborhood up on the Hilltop area. Um, also, uh, some of the housing units that are, uh, still up in the Hilltop area, but toward the mountain mountain side. Um, and then the Brooklyn neighborhood as well. So, those are are some of the neighborhoods that we're looking at. Again, small expansion uh both from a cost standpoint and also um just looking at what we can anticipate for ridership. And you expand there, but does that start to cut into your 15minute wait time?

How long how quickly could you ramp something up like that? Uh we would be looking at doing that um in the upcoming budget discussion for uh potential service in the winter. Okay. And talking about the copper zone, I'm assuming that's kind of more worker focused, right? I mean, in terms of trying to get folks from the mainline to work or is it is it both? It'll be both ways.

Uh I think Weston Village, West Acres, that's um moving residents and and also on the other side of Highway 40 in the the Riverside area. Um, and then there's a lot of businesses up there. And one of the most common uh requests that we get for uh service is for people taking their car to automotive repair and needing to ride back down. Um, and then looking at, you know, uh, as I say, a lot of those businesses, but there are also residential pockets in there. One of the things that microransit is really a good tool for is sort of an exploration of there may be a call for a fixed route service up in that area. What you can do is provide it with microtransit. If microtransit is unable to handle the capacity then it may call for a fixed route service. But if it doesn't uh being a contract service, the nice thing is if it does not work out at all, the city has not expended any capital um or the the operational side. It's purely contract. Uh so we're able to be more flexible kind of on an annual basis with that kind of service.

Thank you. Mhm. Um, night service, where are we at with any complaints, successes, failures from this past year, although it was a low year, um, and it was always a question and we've had people show up wanting to expand that. How did this past season go?

This last year went, uh, we believe well. Um, we have noticed there are quite a few of the lift and Uber shuttles in the downtown area. We notice at night, um, we're concerned right now about expanding into the night service again with just the overall age of the fleet and being able to provide the service that is serving the most people. In other words, the daytime service. I would hate to lose vehicles where we could not provide the daytime service just because they're being run so many hours. Um I think as we look into the future and expansion um that is something that we'll definitely be looking at. Uh we used to provide service until approximately 3:00 in the morning. I think as um the business area grows both up in in the Ski Time Square area as well as downtown that there'll be a return call for for that service. But right now I I I really want to get our vehicles replaced. Then we can can look at that kind of thing. We did the expansion in the summer because that's not calling on any additional vehicles beyond the the group that we have that is well within their life.

Thank you. Anyone else have any questions? I I have one more. I'm sorry I forgot to ask this if this Go for it. Um Jonathan, remind me um the bus, which I'm now I'm trying to pull it up. That um is on the west side of town. Um I feel like in the summertime we stop at um the community center area and I I I understand why. I think because for the drivers to have breaks, is there still like a 20 minute though stop time there?

That is one of the things that we really wanted to get away from. It's really hard when you're riding in from the west end. You've ridden for three minutes and now you get to to enjoy the Yampa River for 20 minutes before the next bus goes. With the 15 minute frequency during the day and the 20-minute frequency at night, we're able to do direct transfers. So, you won't stay on the same bus, but you'll move to the next bus in line. The driver has gotten the break. They have been able to catch up on their time and you have a much shorter wait. Also, with the winter service having to bust a depart every 7 to 8 minutes, uh that has been eliminated. So, that's one of the things we've been really trying to focus on is the folks out west not having that long delay. Um, and also with the 15-minute service, we were putting what we call the West End bus to just try and help keep the buses as close to on schedule as possible. With this 15minute, we don't have to do that anymore. So, people traveling out west are not having to make a transfer at the Stockbridge to finish out. So, uh, we think that's been very successful.

Great. Thank you. Okay. And before we go to the uh general direction that you're after tonight, I just want to open it up to uh public comment. Is there anybody in the room who'd like to make a public comment tonight regarding um Winter Transit Service? Come on down, John. State your name and address, please. And you have three minutes.

Thank you. I'm John Thomasini and I live on Mark Twain Lane. And I just want to comment and applaud you on your research. Um, let's focus on the word green and let's focus on the word future and then focus on hydrogen because the fact that you're bringing hydrogen power into the public transit is very forward thinking. And that's what's coming and it's coming real fast and it's going to come into uh all of our lives in uh it will supersede electricity as far as powering vehicles and um I know this because I have contact with the people who are developing the energy storage for hydrogen and I'm telling you that they have very large contracts with BMW and Audi and that's where the engineering is going. So, I will leave it at that. I applaud you because I think you're you're very ahead of the game as far as your research and technology and what you're bringing into this community. Good for you.

Thank you, John. Is anyone anyone else in the audience or is anyone online? Please raise your hand if you'd like to make a public comment. Okay, seeing none, we will close public comment and bring it back to uh the general direction and the two questions that are on the agenda tonight. And I don't think we have um a um overhead of that, do we of the questions? No, the the uh the overall questions are do we do the main maintain the same service or do we look at um perhaps reducing some service through the budget process?

Okay, so let's take those. The first question was, does council uh support staff recommendation option one to operate the 2627 winter season at the same service levels as 2526 or should SST plan for potential service adjustments through the budget process? Option two, and if so, what criteria should guide any reductions? So let's start with um how we answer question one on the staff's recommendation around option one to operate the winter season at the same service levels as 25 26. I would go for an option three.

I know we're like I you go because I have a feeling we're on the same page. I I think at I mean at a minimum we maintain the service level we have today and I think again depending upon how the conversations go with skiore. I think we need to be flexible to be able to accommodate what we might need to do. That doesn't necessarily mean that the city's paying for it, but I think um you know, you know, as I say, potentially thinking about m we'll talk about this later, but whether it's micro transit, I mean, doing kind of what we what we can to um address that need. So, who would who pays for that?

I think that would be that's a discussion item. To cut to the chase on number four, was there conversations that they were going to be po paying more? Uh, I think we should talk about we're exploring a lot of different options. I really wouldn't want to get into that right this minute because it's it's kind of complicated. We'll talk about it later. I don't see a world where someone else is going to pay for this other than the taxpayer. So, I don't know where we're getting off saying we're going to expand service without expanding our revenue base.

Well, I would I would like to explore it. It's like the chicken or the egg. So, if if we don't ask staff to bring forward this information and what it would take, we then we don't know what to ask a resident or skiore. So, I I think it's worthwhile to have these conversations. See, one is even realistic. Two, what would that cost? And then the how. So,

we did that last year. Jonathan has that. I mean, the old adage is you can ask for a certain level of transit and Jonathan will tell you how much it'll cost or you can tell Jonathan how much money you have and he'll tell you what level of transit you'll get. But we had that he provided that analysis last year of to expand service and improve service we would need I forget the number but a certain number per year. We have all that information that was based that was what our ask was based on from last year. My recollection was that was based on actual buses. Is that right Jonathan?

Yeah. Um there's basically the way we do it is a cost per hour for operation and we do that cost per hour based on fixed route service.

Um and unfortunately with our current equipment situation, even if we wanted to expand service, it's not until we get those seven vehicles replaced and start to expand the fleet that we can look at expansion of service. Um and and we did look at some some microransit options as well. Uh but it starts to kind of roll exponentially as you you start to it's really not a great tool designed for kind of that base area service. It's more moving people to the main lines. And

so so what you're saying is that there really isn't a shortterm fix for capacity increases. Correct. And would Okay. And would you also how would you answer the question around keeping the service levels the same? The impact though to the budget. There will be additional funds required to maintain the same service levels next year versus this year.

Correct. There will be an increase in personnel costs. Um that that occurs on an annual basis with the the salary survey. I'm my assumption is there will be an increase in in personnel costs. Um also there's just an increase in cost of maintenance of vehicles and um we've got kind of a a two-parter with our our vehicle maintenance that is creating a challenge for us. The first is of the oldest vehicles, they just don't make parts or that many parts and so the few parts that they have are very expensive. Uh, you know, an example is a tie rod that we used to buy for $600 is now $3,800. Um, and so there's that aspect of it. And then for the newer buses, everything is computer controlled. Um, and it could be that my mechanics don't like me, which I can I can believe, but every time I What's wrong with the bus? The computer. What's wrong with that bus? The computer. What's wrong with that? Well, I got to re reformat the computer. So, um the technology is absolutely wonderful. Uh but it can be challenging to maintain and the computerized products are are more expensive. Um and so those are the costs that I I anticipate. Um also there's there's the fuel costs. I cannot tell you what what fuel is going to cost next year, but uh we use about 110 to 120,000 gallons of fuel a year. Um so there is a cost with that definitely

and I guess my question is specific to the microtransit. I mean where it seems like we have a little more flexibility um and you know and so on a contract basis, right? So, and I don't know what all is included or excluded from that contract price.

Yeah. And let me give you the example that we had between last year and our our microransit calendar runs from um December 1 through November 30. Um, and so looking at it this this past year as we went into the 25 contract, they told me that they were really not able to meet the um request and make sure that the service was provided within 15 minutes. So their suggestion was during the morning and afternoon rush to bring on a second car. So we put that into the contract. Service area didn't expand. We did a little expansion on on Amethyst, but uh overall service area didn't expand, but we did add that second vehicle during the peak times of winter operations. Um so what we would be looking at this upcoming year is again asking them, do you think you could serve these additional neighborhoods with the vehicles that you have or are you going to have to go from two vehicles? So last year it was one, this year it's two. would we have to go to three vehicles? Um, and part of the challenge that we would have with that as well is that we do provide the parking space for them. Our building is absolutely to capacity. We fill up all the parking spaces in the garage. We fill up the wash bay and we fill up the mechanic space and sometimes have to park a vehicle outside or a bus outside uh if it's it's just too packed. So, um, that would also be an issue that we'd have to look into is where can we store that vehicle because we have found the battery electric car is a great option for this particular route.

So, that's that's what I guess I'd like to explore as option three potentially. Would you like to share what option three is with clarity? Be specific. No, I think it's being prepared. I mean in terms of at least having some research done in terms of what it would cost what it would cost to expand kind of the microtransit and then I think the point would be based upon the information that you have where does that make the most sense right does it make the most sense from blue sage does it make to you know expand more in in terms of hilltop or uh maybe to take some pressure it sounds like not taking any pressure off over where the condo area is in ter but it's more feeding people into the main line

and What this does is it really helps with two things. Is we don't have to buy another bus or another car. We may have to contract

for a third vehicle and maybe hire you. That contract may increase a hund let's say $100,000 or $200,000. What you're here for tonight is to ask us what do you need to budget for as you go into the budget series up until October. And so we now started doing these early on as opposed to in August when it's too late. So going through that, I do agree with you that if we can investigate any type of increase in services, it would be for the citizens that live in a few of those areas and a microransit, if I'm throwing words in your mouth, would not be as big of a press for you to hire and to get infrastructure to be able to service. It would just be a budget on us to increase that budget. Is there am I seeing that right?

You are. Uh what I'm looking for really tonight the the most important aspect and I kind of told you what I want you to tell me which is we don't have the vehicles to really do any expansion. Do we want to look at reducing um as as we go out and try and fill the number of drivers that we need or do we plan on the fixed route? I will do research to to come up with some different options um for what Via Downtowner believes it will cost to do the um as I said in our discussions it's been the Blue Sage neighborhood and Brooklyn. Um but I I'm more than welcome to hear any additional ideas that you have.

Is that a heavy lift for you this year? Uh no. No. I mean, it seems like trying to find a bus or more buses or capacity. The biggest fear that I have is that we're going to have a bus break down in the winter and that's going to be your plan B that needs to figure out. Yeah. Welcome to my world. Yeah. Well, and so in that vein, the contract services is attractive to you or not or the micro and it's not your money, it's our money we're throwing at you. But my point is if you could do it, would you be liking it?

Yeah, I think contract service makes a lot of sense for microtransit. Uh there are some systems that use contract service for fixed route. I am not a big fan of that. Um primarily because you're typically bringing drivers in from outside the area and then operating the service and then you you trade them out. And there really is a benefit um to our our local drivers. They know the area, they know um places to go, where to go. And also um if we have more than three days of winter, uh it's really good to have the trained staff that is used to operating a vehicle of that size on the snow and ice.

Agreed. Okay.

So, but Jonathan, my understanding with the yellow line is we run into an issue with ADA compliance that once we roll it out, it is difficult to pull it back. Correct. It it can be challenging to do that in that uh it's not so much ADA as title six to make sure that you are serving all neighborhoods and it's it's not as much for the increase but it's for the decrease of service. When you reduce service, you have to make sure that you're not uh impacting any of the groups covered under Title Six disproportionately to other groups. The cost per rider is like three to four times that.

Yeah, it's in the right now it's it's double um with our fixed route with the higher ridership um than it was about three times. But but now with a little bit lower winter ridership um and frankly the higher ridership on the yellow zone um the two still it's double but they came closer. I just think this is super unwise. I mean, we have a session next with Kim on fiscal sustainability. We sat through the budget session in in the fall where we had no we were running a zero budget. I like where are we taking this money from? I get the desire for this, but it's not wise. I don't understand why we're looking to expand this service unless you're sitting up here saying I think we need to cut something and this is the something we should cut. I would I want to hear that.

I'm open to that by by all means. I mean I want the information to be able to make informed decisions in August and October. What what do you want to cut is my question because we it's easy to sit up here and say we want things but we don't have the funds. I don't know why we're expanding services. How many how many experts how many of you um support option one which is service levels at the same as they were for 25 or 26 just that piece of it option one if we're limiting ourselves to one and two.

Yeah. I just want to see where we are. Okay. So everybody supports option one. Now the question is how many would support and you're saying it wouldn't be a big lift take a lot of staff time and all that for you to investigate this um other um opportunity. Yeah. Specifically for the Blue Sage neighborhood and Brooklyn neighborhood. Okay. So the question is how many of you support at least doing the work to see what it would look like? Absolutely. This is why we are here to to to talk. We have citizens that are requesting us for I hope you guys don't personally budget this way. This is like so concerning. I don't know why we're going to budget here. This is what state government does. We aren't the state. We don't have the budget for it. We simply do not.

This is how government works. How are we to make a decision and allocate funds if we don't know what the cost is? And I hear people who live up on amethyst and it's going to get worse with the parking where they have their two kids in tow and they don't want to lug all their ski stuff down to catch the free bus. And so I think we should be looking at this for our community members. Are we going to do it? We're not making any We're not making any decisions here. We're just trying to get information to make wise decisions. Yes.

Just a quick question. And I just wanted to confirm because I when when President Gary was talking earlier about expanding, it sounded like you were desiring an expansion greater than just the Blue Sage and Brooklyn neighborhood, but you're you're what I'm hearing is we're only going to look at those two areas. That's my I'm not my friends over on Amethyst and Hilltop and are not going to they as councelor Dixon has said there's people clamoring for the the yellow service. So I mean if we have to compromise

micro Yeah. Thank you. If you just get the microransit, not just two neighborhoods, Tom, I don't think that's wise. Tell us what neighborhoods you think we could serve with a new contract with via or downtown and what that difference delta would cost. If it makes diff makes it, then we can make that budget decision down the road. I just want to be clear on what Jonathan's direction is because Jonathan's direction is to look at expanding microtransit in the Brooklyn neighborhoods and the blue stage neighborhoods. That's what he's going to bring back. Well, he also threw down Hilltop and some other areas. Are we are you saying we're not going to go to those? Trying to be clear on what the expectations are.

Can you be more clear on what areas microtransit would be positive to look through besides those two mentioned?

Yeah, the the area where and we work with the the drivers of microransit because they're kind of our our best source. Um I will also kind of on a side note um so I don't answer your question uh but I will bring in heat maps which they provide on a monthly basis that that shows um and without being too mean there there's a lot of people that want the service but the heat map shows maybe there's not a lot of people using the service in these neighborhoods. So that's how we make a lot of of those decisions. As far as additional service up in the Hilltop area, basically as you're coming down Hilltop, we serve the neighborhoods to the inside or to the Fris Creek uh side of that road. We would be looking at also expanding to the left. There's just a couple of housing developments in that area um that are mid probably mid density um that we have had some requests just that from Hilltop to go up to those neighborhoods. It's a fairly steep walk um to go up that that short distance. So, what I I'm uh imagining would be most ideal to bring back is what would be needed to serve um Blue Sage, what would be needed to serve Brooklyn? Is there any overlap there? And then what would be necessary to serve uh additional up in the Hilltop area? Can we do overlap? That kind of thing. Um, and I that's that's part of what we uh pay for the service is to help bring us that information.

Okay. Is that is that clear with everyone? Are we good with that? Jonathan, are we clear? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Two then. Yeah, please do that. Option one. Is that No, that's option option one. And then what you just said. So, what we're going to what I'm I'm taking away is that we're going to continue the same fixed route that we did last year. We're going to plan on the same yellow zone service with uh the cost factors for those three specific neighborhoods.

And Jonathan, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. What What do you think an order of magnitude is that we're talking about in terms of a cost increase? Um, I'm thinking probably around the 100,000, but where it it where it's going to be a little complicated is do they need to bring on that additional vehicle or can they serve that with the existing vehicles that they have? And that's what I really want to look into because from my perspective, um, speaking for what I believe is the customer's perspective, it's that quick turnaround that is is most important for the microtransit service. So, I really want to make sure that we aren't bumping out from a 15minute anticipated to a 20 25. Um, talking to some of these microtransit, they're looking at 30 to 45 minute turnaround. I don't think that's at all successful. I think it's got to be that that short trip.

Is that a 100,000 for the year? Uh, yeah. Most of the um in the summertime actually after school lets out both the college and and the high school the wrership will drop and so they will just use a single vehicle to provide service and then um one of the the people who's kind of in charge of the overall operations is on standby if suddenly they're getting a lot of requests he can come in and and provide that second vehicle. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you, Jonathan. John. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

We're going to move on to our second item, fiscal sustainability, city service levels. Kim Good evening, council. Kim Weber, finance director. Uh so tonight we're going to cover uh this is our second fiscal sustainability uh work session. Uh we had our first one in March and we talked a lot about uh this historical perspective of uh fiscal sustainability. We talked about a problem statement. We talked about our reliance on sales tax um and what came out of that. Um and over the years with fiscal sustainability, we've talked a lot about the revenue side of things. we haven't always talked about the expense side of things. And so tonight we're going to talk about um really how our service levels um how things have changed. And I kind of narrowed it down to about 15 years. It's not exact, but uh that was the time frame that we focused on. So just a reminder uh at the last uh council work session we agreed on a problem statea statement of our current level of services have outpaced our revenue. There was also a lot of discussion about diversification and should that be added to the problem statement and because there was so much discussion on it, I brought it back

around. Plus, um it is noted in our um strategic plan. It's noted in our uh Steambo Springs area plan. So, I just wanted to really bring it back around to make sure that um to see if you guys wanted to add that back in and then talk about what the next steps are. So, tonight's key topics are going to focus on um a sample of the service level increases over the 15 years. And it is kind of a big sample. And believe it or not, I actually paired this down from what I received from departments. But it's such a wide variety. I thought it was important to provide this information to council in the community. We're also going to talk about some of the unfunded needs and these are just really taken from the 2026 budget process of what we had to what departments brought to the table and then we had to cut back out. Um and then uh an important pillar of um fiscal sustainability is fiscal stewardship. So we're going to talk a little bit about what our ongoing efforts around fiscal stewardship are. So, we looked at this uh at the March work session as well, but we um there's really five purposes of fiscal sustainability and why it's important. And one is uh maintaining reliable services to the community, ensuring economic stability, uh long-term infrastructure planning, future generation responsibility, really managing that at this level and not uh shouldering it on our future generations. And then building public trust. So it's it's this is something I'm going to include in every presentation like just to remind us uh and the community why we're looking at fiscal sustainability. So to jump right into the details of

this work session um we're going to talk about service level increases and service level increases. This first one isn't really a service level but one thing that's really driving um our budget up is inflation. inflation has outpaced our revenue growth. And really the inflation that you see as CPI, you wouldn't think that it was, but so much of what we do is based more on a construction level uh inflation. So any of our infrastructure repair, infrastructure maintenance, capital projects, those costs aren't just going up the 3, four, 5% of CPI. they are double tripling um that and that is a lot of what we do. So that um has really driven costs up and then when we look at service level increases I tried to boil it down to four main areas and one is regulatory changes and that can be federal, state, local just really this the rules have changed and you need to change with the rules. So that's that's one area. um increased services to the community where you know just like what you just talked about um we need more growth in transit that that puts pressure the community would like additional needs or has additional needs for services community growth whether that's local or um visitor growth and then um changes to the community landscape. So we'll talk a little bit about all of each of those when we look about what the look at what the increase of services um how it impacts our departments. So the blue circles are more of our external facing departments fire parks and recck planning public works police. So when there's inter uh increased

service levels at that area it impacts those departments significantly. That in turn also impacts our internal services. So they might need more additional or additional employees that is uh human resources. We might have additional infrastructure needs. It might be additional insurance. Um all of it affects impacts finance. They might need more equipment that will impact impact fleet etc. So all the decisions made on the external facing um services then have an impact on the internal facing services. So let's talk about some of these and this gets into a lot of detail and I'll try not to go into each individual line. It was more gathering the information and giving it to you and then allowing you to ask questions if you have any. But when we look at the regulatory changes over the last uh 101 15 years um the ones that really jump out the digital accessibility has had a huge impact on um mainly personnel time. We have had uh contractors and additional costs there but it's affected everyone in the organization. Um cyber security has had a huge budgetary impact. um uh data privacy requirements. And then another one as you guys know that you see all the time is broadcasting meetings. You can go back, you can see all the city council meetings. It's expanded out to a lot of our other committees. Um now it's become more of a requirement than a nice to have. Uh which is and I want to make sure that um as I'm going through this I'm not I don't want it to sound like complaining or that it's a burden. It's just part I mean a lot of these things are great improvements. It's just part of uh what has increased over the years. So um

increased uh records request changes in financial reporting. Uh whenever we have a dedicated revenue source, it's helpful to have a dedicated revenue source. It also means more management of it. Um which impacts a couple of different departments. Um, and as I go through these also, some of these did come with dedicated revenue sources. So, I'm not saying all these came without revenue sources. It's just more how things have changed. So, some federal and state mandates, um, uh, increase uh, mandates for housing needs assessments, uh, zoning and development standards, uh, long-range community planning. Um, our CDL requirements have changed significantly, as have everyone's. um that really has impacted transit streets and then it's impacted the way parks and wreck operates some of their um programs. Uh regional requirements. So some of the regulatory requirements that have um happened region regionally uh the building code and permitting has impacted how our own departments do our capital projects. It's increased complexity. Um we have the climate action plan that has uh created the need for additional infrastructure or changes in infrastructure. Um added services to the community around this. Um we've changed the way we manage the Yampa River. Uh we talk about that a lot in this room and outside of this room. And then water conservation smart irrigation programs. So, a little bit more on uh regulatory uh the change uh with the short-term rental licensing program development like so we developed the program, we developed the regulations, the licensing, the enforcement education essentially created a whole another

division in in the planning department. And then aside from that, the short-term rental tax, um, so the tax licensing on the sales tax side, um, assessment, collection, enforcement, reporting, and then funds management, auditing, um, change the way finance um, operates, looking at services at the community level. So this is more about um, community desires, community needs. So um most of these on this uh slide are parks and wreck related house and hill hill ski area, ice arena, some other adult sports, some trails, some um weed management, and then um some of the internal services. These these actually benefit both um internal and um external customers, but the biggest impact was on internal services. So added city-owned infrastructure. There's a whole list there over the 15 years of of new infrastructure that we've added. Uh we also implemented specialized software. We've become very the whole world has become very reliant on software and in order to keep up um we have implemented software. Um and I tell people all the time we operate many different businesses. is the software that we use for the police department and the software we use for the golf course very different. You can't use we try to standardize some software but we've implemented a lot of um new programs which have been great. Um in this we've increased uh contracting by um a a huge amount. In 15 years ago we'd have 65 contracts in a year. This last year we had over 305 contracts. So that takes a

lot of finance time, legal time, and to do all these um expanded uh services, we need the equipment. So we've increased the fleet services as well from 162 pieces of equipment to 238 now. So some additional ones from a community perspective is um transparency, communications. We didn't have a communications division 15 years ago. We've actually created a a separate department that focuses on communications. Everyone did a little bit of their own. Um so that that's been great. We've increased that. Um and then some of the commitments that we've uh committed to around housing, long range planning, historic preservation. Um that's impacted the city codes. Um so has the climate action plan. Um, and then we've talked a lot about storm water management. We continue to talk a lot about storm water management and we've uh bumped that up uh as well. And because of um some of the events in uh the nation and locally, we've uh switched our special events uh to having more police presence. we did have community service officer presence and we still do but it's uh we've uh switched it to a lot more police staffing at those a good example that um talking to the street superintendent of doesn't feel like we've had a ton of uh population growth in the community but to 15 years ago to run a loader or a grater um in one route took about eight hours. We haven't increased a ton of lane miles, but that that same route takes about 12

hours. So, it's a uh 50% increase because of traffic, uh snow storage, um just true density in those areas. Um it just it takes longer, which means you need more employees, more um more equipment. So um really coming up with matrix to say well this is what the population growth is um doesn't always tell the whole picture. So um because of the lack of snow storage we've increased we haul a lot more snow off of side streets off of Lincoln Avenue that's increased significantly. Uh we've increased uh bike lanes uh street crossing. So those all those lines are all painted by hand. Um and then transit writership which is great. Uh talking with the police department, it's not so much number of calls as it is type of calls um and type of crimes. The they're more violent, they're more complicated, the investigations take a lot longer. Um and then uh the required training and the technology that they use has changed a lot over the years. Um and then to to kind of finish off the the growth aspect, um we have been talking a lot about parkland acquisition uh to uh address some of the growing demands and higher uh fire EMS calls, concurrent calls, um more use of our facilities. So the last part that is probably a little harder to kind of really understand is the change in landscape. Um it's not really ch increase in people it's really change in what the needs are. uh as I talked about earlier the technology reliance and that is um

everchanging as you guys know um the facility complexities um everything is automated uh the HVAC systems the needs for the ADA the gener generator backup requirements etc um going along with the CDL um requirements additional training requirements are needed Um we've talked a lot about the wildfire risk and um how that's changed that's changed over the last um 10 to 15 years. Um and then just the um the evolving complexity and increased expectations from the community as we talked about last time. So that's kind of how we've been in the past, what what has happened over the last 15 years. So really an important part is what aren't we doing? We talked a little bit about that last time. What um should we be doing? What would we be doing if we had additional revenue? So I started with capital. These are all things that actually were on the funding list that got that didn't get funded. Um and part of that is just not new things. It's just taking care of what we have. And um as you saw in the operational assessment from SGR, that was one thing we should be addressing is our own deferred capital maintenance. So things like the stables restroom and the um the jump repair, public works, just little things, not little things, big things, garage doors, uh building efficiency measures. So based on our facilities conditions index in zero to two years, things that we've already put off and things that need to be done within the next two years, we have $3.5 million of

unfunded needs. Three to five years, we have $8.5 million of unfunded needs. And our facilities uh maintenance uh manager gave me this great quote, deferred maintenance is essentially growth without a plan. So, I have to give Eric credit for that.

So, some more examples. I'm not going to read all these to you. These were on your CIP list of things that quote unquote fell below the line. Um, all important things that we need that we don't have funding for. Some more stuff. Um this is more um we did a uh space needs analysis and based on uh the conditions of the facilities the space needed uh these were the top priorities um that came across that also are currently unfunded. So talking a little bit about service levels versus capital. Um here are some of the service levels that we had to we've unfunded throughout the years in specifically in 2026. Um we've talked about transit, storm water, uh some maintenance. Most of the departments more didn't cut a full full services. They're really good about cutting back um things that maybe people won't notice until down the line, but that's where our deferred maintenance comes in. So like the bottom one, parks and wreck annual repair and maintenance, cut back a little at a time, but then it sometimes rear its head in the future and we want to get away from that. Um we are uh served by people. And so these are the the positions that were requested but unfunded uh in the 2026 budget. And you can see the variety of departments uh important services that were not funded. So the another really important pillar to our fiscal sustainability is fiscal

stewardship. So, um, because I had so many words on the other ones, I tried to put this in a little bit more colorful. Um, so what are we focusing on? We need to focus on what the most important thing is. And that really goes into two different areas. Return on investment. So, if we're going to add a a service, we need to be looking at what the return on investment is. We need to be looking at cost recovery in areas where cost recovery is possible. We need to be looking at revenue diversification. We really need to be evaluating our the programs, the things that we currently do. Are there things that we're currently doing that we no longer need to do? Um and then fiscal accountability. We've been working on these items. Um standardizing our accounting structure in order to give better public reports. Um be able to review things across departments in a standardized um way. strengthening our budget controls. We're working on that. Um, and not doing as many supplemental budgets, not doing mid-year program changes. Uh, looking at safety goals, preventative maintenance funding, purchasing card policies. Um, and then looking at our credit card software and new software in general. Um there's a lot of things that in the department is like hey if I had this new software it would really make my life easier but sometimes that comes with a high cost either an overhead cost or a direct cost. So we're uh put in additional evaluations for those. So those are just a few of the things. So three areas to focus on the capital funding challenges, the general fund which is more of our services challenges and then our uh fiscal stewardship. Those are three areas that as we move

into fiscal sustainability that we need to uh focus on. So tonight um want to reook at the problem statement, see if you want to make any changes on that. see what questions you have on our service levels and then uh what additional information you need uh what the next uh steps would be. Staff's recommendation would be that we take this information back and then now take the other side of the equation and come back with uh funding strategies for city council to review. Okay. Thank you, Kim.

Welcome. Before we um answer these questions, do we have any other questions for Kim from her presentation? You just said that's a good job. No question. Oh, come on, Amy. All right. Okay. Kim, is it um my understanding is that um a large portion of general funds is fungeible and can be moved around. Is that

I would I would agree with that. Um just like your last discussion on um transit, we're probably we're likely going to be reducing sales tax in 2027. Um is going to probably be the projection you just essentially gave direction to keep services levels the same which is going to increase transit cost. Therefore, we will be putting pressure on somewhere else which sales tax is not dedicated funding to any specific um program. So, yes, it is funible. Okay. Okay. I'm going to stop there and let someone else ask. Okay.

Question. Well, I mean, you you you laid it out very clear that we know that as a city government, we don't have to do anything and that costs are going to increase just because of the nature of the services just like my business when I have to buy a new computer or a delivery van or something. So, inherently, we know that those are good. I appreciate you pointing them out. I don't really have any questions. I think it was a good presentation, but it really framed our conversation today. Uh I don't have any questions because it's very clear where we need to go. Okay, Gail, you have a question?

I I guess yes. um from the perspective of just um you know having been up here for a little while feel com kind of feel compelled to point out and I think you acknowledge this but I want to make sure that everybody up here understands it as well as the community understands it that a lot of the things that we've talked about in ter terms of increased service levels um right various things like that we uh you know in particular like tubing at Allison Hill the intention there was that it was a revenue venue generator. So I was a little you know I don't want that to come across from this perspect from the perspective that that isn't you know is an I mean an increased cost right um so I think there's there were a lot of things in this list that gave me a little bit of pause in terms of how they could be interpreted and Dan I don't know I know that we're getting a lot of um coror requests but I know that we can at least recover some of those costs right so to the extent that we say we've got 130% increase, you know, or or maybe set another way, I don't know what our limitations are in terms of recovering those costs. I mean, and kind of the same thing with some of the additional regulatory things or or some of the other additional things that we um you know, talk about. We certainly are talking about storm water, right? I mean, again, that's potentially something that's going to self-fund itself. Um, you know, when we talk about water conservation and smart irrigation program, you know, we're not looking at the life cycle costs on these things. Um, so I just that's as I say I just feel compelled to point out that don't take this list as all re you know all cost drivers right I mean there are some instances like the tubing operations unless you're going to tell me we're not making money on those even though the intent was

I we're not there yet I will say is that fair we should be close right we're supposed to be three years but but so again right I your point taken.

Okay, thank you. I would I would say we haven't maybe been the best in capturing what all the costs would be in some of those things such as um I'll just use short-term rental tax fund just because that is something I um we didn't build into the or the um ordinance managing those funds creating we we had a very different view on what that was going to look like. Um, so we don't always take into account how it impacts the city as a whole, how it impacts the legal department or HR or even planning. And so yes, I and I I acknowledge some of these do have revenue sources. It was more to talk just about how things have changed over the years. And going forward, we need to think about that every time we make a decision. What is the ROI? Um, and maybe that not everything is going to have an ROI like monetary ROI and then how are we going to fund that? Where is that going to come from?

So, yeah, absolutely. There there were some revenue increases. Yeah, thank you. Sorry, I'm like totally butting heads with you tonight, but I would like to point out like I don't know if that's necessarily

accurate. uh we aren't running a business and none of the things that we're doing truly have a real ROI. If they do, that's great, but that's a byproduct. Like as a government, we are deciding to offer a community benefit and it is up to the community we who we represent. We think that these are things that we want. We want to offer tubing at House Hill to drive people to go and use House Hill. We want to offer House Hill increased like trails and things like that. I I don't I don't think I think it's disingenuous to say, well, we're doing these things to try to mitigate cost when really these are just things that as a community we value and we want. And I I worry that if we phrase it in that way of like, well, we have an ROI and that's not accurate. That totally cuts out any legs from our argument saying we need additional funding cuz the community wants to build a certain kind of community. We aren't a business. we aren't making money to fund these things and we need more money to fund the things that this community wants. If we want additional yellow lines, let's all chip in and pay for it. Like, I'm not against that. I just worry about speaking about like, well, that's not really fair and these aren't total cost drivers. It's like, well, then why would we go to the why would we go to the citizens and ask for additional funding?

And um I don't know that we disagree, but I think let's hold that for the discussion. I mean I don't know unless you want to have this discussion now in ter want me to rebut or you want to wait and have more questions. Well let's let's council president Montine let's go through the questions and then we'll come back to this. Okay. Yeah.

I have one question which I don't even know if you can answer because I don't know if if if I can answer it for anything except what do you see do you see AI as an opportunity to increase our productivity and in a sense maybe even lower our costs? I see AI as a tool that we can use that can be really great and I see a lot of challenges as a government organization and as any organization but particularly a government organization on information and um that we will have to manage it closely but I I I see it as a tool that we can use to maybe help with transpar parency and reporting, but it's going to need to be monitored closely. So, I don't I don't actually see it as a tool that's going to increase productivity so much that we will be decreasing costs in a significant manner.

Okay. Maybe increasing service levels, but Okay. Thank you. Other questions for Kim? I just have one followup on to um Gail's question about the revenue, the short-term rental. Um so I'm hearing that the dollars were bringing in from the tax are not covering all of our costs to operate it. Correct. Is there a way for um that to come back to council to use more of those dollars to cover city expenses? Go ahead, Dan.

Don't you have the to raise the fees? So um so the short-term rental tax licensing and the or short sorry short-term rental licensing is separate from the tax. The licensing we it covers the costs of licensing and enforcement. So that does cover those costs that cover the cost of additional planning employees. um it's on the short-term rental tax fund where we're looking at the deed restriction programs and the the loans or and the managing the funds and the managing the collection of the funds. That is that's where the significant time has been that's not covered.

So is the question can we use short-term rental funds to offset those costs? Mhm. So, you you are authorized to spend short-term rental funds for purposes that are incidental to the statutory purpose. So, um there has to be a pretty close connection to an employees job duties and the short-term rental purposes. But yes, if you can make that connection, then then we can do that. Um and so, you know, I think there are some limits as to what employees and what tasks would be appropriate, but but yes, with that qualification, you can do that. Any other questions for Kim? Okay. Um, are we going to public comment? Yes.

Okay. I was going to ask um I think Kim the next steps um funding strategies to council. I think I think Tom, we should probably talk about our conversation and then have a conversation with council. Um, so at our last uh March meeting for fiscal sustainability, I had brought up that I wanted to ask the parks and commission um to help look at if council was ever to explore some type of property tax, some sort of revenue um that could help fund parks and wreck. Well, what what are options? You already like what would be our options? So we wouldn't sit up here and spin for meeting after meeting after meeting. Um we could be presented with potential options. Um we all majority agreed to it. I can't remember but majority agreed to um direct parks and rack commission to um start that work. Tom and I met two weeks ago and I'll turn it over to you. Do you like

our our conversation centered around um trying to make sure that um that we don't have disparit groups looking at um at different funding sources and trying to keep council focused um on on the on this this task which is fiscal sustainability. Um, the Parks and Recck Commission is a volunteer group of folks that um may or may not have any expertise in in funding parks and wreck services. Um, they certainly don't have any funding to put towards a consultant to help. Um and uh one of the things that tends to happen in in those circumstances is that the parks and rec commission will then talk to parks and recck staff and say can you provide some services and some help in collecting data. They don't have any experience in doing that. So then they go to Kim and immediately we are now sucked into this vortex of staff is now working on a parks and rec district. Um, so I was just having a conversation uh with councelor Dixon just about um bringing this back to a conversation with council to say listen we need to be really focused and intentional in the in the effort that we're u making towards this fiscal sustainability. If council wants to look at a fiscal, if council wants to look at a parks and rec district, then we need to direct staff to do that so that we can do it in an appropriate way and and have it sort of have that work done in a consistent manner. Um my worry is that um you know, with all due respect to the parks and rec commission, I have nothing against them. That's just that is not necessarily their expertise. Um and I just want to make sure that we do this in in a very effective and intentional manner. That was the the basis of that conversation.

Okay. Um before we get into this, I'm just going to ask, is there anybody in the room who'd like to make a public comment regarding fiscal sustainability? If so, come on down and state your name and address and you have three minutes, sir.

Hey you guys, Ben Baron here. uh 2685 Iris Lane and I just wanted to come reintroduce myself. I am the uh chair of the parks and wreck commission and um I wanted to be here tonight as you guys are talking about fiscal sust sustainability and I've been on the commission now for I think almost 5 years and um really just taken in um loved it being a part and really taking in how this operates and I think I just wanted to stand here in front of you and say as we're talking about fiscal sustainability um we've really identified having some kind of alternative funding source for parks and wreck as a huge need. Um, we've been talking about I've been on the land acquisition team. You know, there's a lot of land that we're going to have the opportunity to acquire over the years, but we don't have a way to do it. Um, and kind of seeing how that's operated over the last couple years. Um, I'm concerned we're going to miss out on opportunities um, to be able to grow and expand that. And I think uh we think there's community appetite behind this. This is why a lot of people live in this town. We happen to live in a town that owns and operates a ski resort, which is really unique. And I think when we talk about fiscal sustainability and opening up budget for other things as well. Um you know, we would love to see if there's community appetite behind this. uh we suspect there is and um understand all those comments, but really we're a dedicated group that really wants to help you and be a tool for all of you and are really passionate about all of this as you are. Um so just wanted to say I appreciate everything you're doing and like use us as a resource. We are super passionate about this and um you know have taken a lot of time to think through and observe and watch how things are operating and

feel like this is something worth talking about um and I think it lines up perfectly with what we're talking about tonight. So appreciate you guys. Thank you Ben.

Thank you. Anybody else in the audience want to make a public comment? Seeing none. Anybody online? Please raise your hand if you'd like to make a public comment. Don't see anyone online. So, we will close public comment, bring it back to council to address and and I don't know, Kim, if you want to put up that slide just since you do have it, we can put it up there and also you might have a chance to rebut as well if you're interested. Um, so let's see what we got here. Okay. So, first question was, do you still agree with the problem statement? Our current level of services have outplaced outpaced our revenue or would you like to look at another option like our services have outgrown our revenue and we lack diversified income to sustain them? Not everyone at once here. Doesn't this just Isn't this just saying sales tax is on the table and sales tax is not on the table?

Yeah, probably. Okay. So, I would say other option I would support. I think if we were to go I would say that it would I would recommend us being very strategic if we were to go for a sales tax to increase sales tax. I would like it to be a very strong case to the public and and is it clear and I again maybe I'm getting hung up on this I mean it's our co it's not only our services but it's the cost of services right I mean it's the inflation it's the increased operational cost so I don't I don't I feel like we should say our co you know our cost of services includes all this

or somehow get that concept in This goes back to the dialogue that we had. It is our level of service. Well, it's both, right? This is what drives the expense. It's not the expense is driving the level of service.

I I guess I would say that our I mean our um whether we increase our level of service or not, the costs inflation are increasing the costs. I mean, as we've said that, right, we stayed with our budget at um and we know as we just talked about with transit that whether we increase transit or not, the cost of transit is going to potentially go up. So, what we're looking at is either staying with the current level of um transit with an increased cost or if we want to stay the same with our cost and we've got to reduce the service. So, I know we're trying to move forward on these questions, but I feel like this goes back to our original debate, and I I would go rather than get into semantics, what is the reservation with just admitting we like to have these services rather than defending it as if, oh, it's not the level of services, it's that the costs have just gone out of control. Why are why are we uncomfortable just saying we like an amenity rich town?

Thank you. I I think it's both. My question to you is why are we uncomfortable with just saying we're an amenity rich town?

Would you guys would you guys be okay? I I took a different tack at this saying it it's really our current service demand. It's not our service levels or costs. It's the demand for the services that we have in the community. You can get into, you know, anything else you want. But my take on this was, and I'm not trying to sell this, but I'm just trying to answer this a little bit. Our current service demand has outpaced our primary revenue source, sales tax, necessitating a more diversified revenue strategy to ensure long-term viability. I don't see there's any way that that if we look at revenue and sales tax, it just say, well, you want to increase revenue, increase sales tax. That is not a viable strategy today unless it's really targeted and specific and has, you know, really good research against it. But if we don't diversify our revenue with our service demands continuing to increase, we have no long-term viability. We just are going to continue to increase your list of unfunded capital projects as well as unfunded maintenance of existing facilities and everything else. I mean,

I I I to President Gary's point, I I do think it's both the demand and the cost of services. Um they're they have both increased and that they're as Kim described, they're both contributing to this problem. So if you want to if you want to recognize both you could say the cost of services and the service demand has increased because it is both. Y it is. But if demand decreases then the costs are still increasing. Right.

Well, not maybe not absolutely depending on how far they decline. But anyway, I mean our so to just poke a hole in that though, this is my problem. We are going to need to go to the voters for this. If we highlight the fact that costs and levels of service have increased, the natural response is well then cut the level of services. The cost per service has increased and therefore let's reduce our services so we can cover them. And my personal position is I like an amen and I'll say I I like an amenity rich community and I would be happy to pay more to keep and maintain and grow these amenities. And that's where I am I am getting lost because we have to go to the voters and we need to be honest with the voters. We saw that with Brown Ranch. When we're not honest, it does not land. So Oh, and I to I totally 100% agree with that. But I also think it's the voters's choice, right? I mean, from the perspective of I'm not sure that everybody in our community wants an amenity rich community. There's a lot of people that want to go back to the way it was. And kind of to your honesty and transparency point, that's why I wanted to point out right from a historical perspective and not to go to diver divert our conversation any but when we talk about the tubing operations at Allison Hill that was sold as a revenue generator. So, it's about being honest and transparent. And back to our comment about we need to put all of this out there and then we need to do some polling so that we get public input. We use this uh farmers market this summer to say, "Okay, do you want to increase um sales tax or property tax or do you want to um what what what service would you would like to cut, right? Or what do we not believe that we need?" So, I mean, it's so that we we need to be clear about what the choices are and ask the community to weigh in is my perspective.

I think the community sees this. So I think so one we could never go to the voters and say we're going to increase do a property tax or sales tax for general. I mean that would be a terrible idea. So this is more about being really strategic um and targeted with this. And I think our public comment Ben talked about people are already talking about parks and wreck. I mean, for crying out loud, we miss out on an amazing property because we didn't have the funds. We have to have our public citizens raise money to keep a park open space. We have to have public citizens raise money for a much needed second sheet of ice. Like, I could go on and on. I'm not going to, but I think people do see that there is a demand and they can get behind some tax increase. What that is, we have to still come up with, but I think people see it.

Comments from down at this end of the DAS. I think the statement is fine. I think it's I think we're splitting hairs on that. I'd rather get to the uh funding sources. Well, I guess back to the the statement though, it really is sales tax or no sales tax. So, that's a question I'd love to hear you guys weigh in on. I I I'm not sure I I follow that.

The first thing, do you agree with the problem statement? Our current level has outpaced our revenue versus we need to diversify it. All of our money is coming from sales tax. So to boil it down, are we going to look at everything including sales tax or are we going to look at everything except sales tax? Okay, because Okay, because I was I mean certainly one of the potentials is a property tax with some sort of sales tax um rebate for locals. So that's that's what I don't So that's what I was wanting clarification on the sales tax. No sales tax increase sales tax. Option one, we could increase sales tax. If we picked problem statement two, we're saying we will not be increasing sales tax.

I don't read that in option two. Well, our income isn't diversified. So, how would we diversify it if we were to increase sales tax? But if everything comes from sales tax, how do you diversify if you increase sales tax? It's hard to see increasing sale. It's hard to see increasing It's increasing and white like fragment. If you if you increase sales tax um we haven't diversified undiversified. Yeah, he's just male or further non-diversified if you do that. All right, fiscal conservatives, let's hear it. Dave, Michael, I want to hear your opinions

that I wrote.

Oh, Brian, you you you summarized exactly the two statements. One is related to you know we're here this topic of this conversation is fiscal sustainability. The first one is do we increase sales tax base to do this or current level services have outpaced our revenue. What of our revenues and what would we do? So you simplified it. I think both of those statements are sufficient. um our services have outgrown the revenue and we lack diversified income which means as we have in this conversation number two in that is more the conversation we're having today. So it's it's more of the option to include diversification is why we're talking about this on the agenda. What we're specifically need to give direction to is what are we going to focus on? So this whole conversation of going through and and looking at our service levels and understanding that is for ourselves to fully understand, you know, what we're looking at. And I think all of us are in these conversations weekly, I don't want to say daily, but weekly with our constituents about how we I mean, this is this has been for six years on council. It's all we've talked about. It's been the common denominator that we've talked about, you know, and I think in the last election cycle, um, the word property tax came up more than once and no one had the political will in the previous three decades to even address it. And yet this last election cycle said we should look at a property tax. Great. So, in my opinion right now, where should we tell our staff to focus on a diversified property tax as one strategy? If we were going to do a property tax, where would it go? Let's give them that direction. We still have the storm water utility and there's also some other funding sources that may come in front of us. But at this point, these

are the ones that allow our general fund to be fungeible because then we can if there was a property tax that went to just parks and reccks commission, think of what else we can do. What I would like to get to, Kim, and this is the question that I had as we gone through this whole process is when do we get to have enough money that we put money in the reserve every year? Because, and it's a rhetorical question,

we put four million in the reserve last year. That's only because we budgeted for 4 million and it didn't come through. My point is is that when we're doing a 3% increase or in this case a 1% decrease in our next year's budget, at what point does the city of Steamboat Springs have enough money to do all the things that the community wants us to do? Thank you very much for the uh the the the services demand and our capital expenditures to where we grow our reserves like any business or your home when you have to do stuff you put money away. Wait. So, but you know, and you spoke feedback, if we get back to the problem statement, what is your stance? Like, what is your opinion on these two problem statements? Which would you support?

What would I support? I would support having staff go look at a parks and w of these two statement problem statements. We are selecting a problem statement whether we want to refine it or not. They're highlighted in red up there. Those two I don't care. They're both the same in my You're both fine with them. You're these are splitting hairs, so you're not going to get a lot out of me on that one. Okay, Dave, what's your opinion? Either one or some form of both Gails and Steve statements combined. I mean, so you guys are fine both looking at a sales tax in addition to any other funding sources. I think we already are. Okay, great.

I mean, reduction of sales tax and increase in property tax. What does that look like? So, you're going to tell me to put it in a sentence. Pick it. I don't care. So, how do which one do you prefer, Brian? I think the second one I think the second one is the problem. So, I would agree with the refined one where we lack diversified income to sustain them. Amy You were saying the second one you had a problem with, but then I just heard you say

the first one is basically saying the size of our pie is not big enough. The second one is saying the size of our pie is not big enough and the slices are poorly shaped. I think it's a the two problems are the problem. So those are both the issues. So I think as a solid problem statea state statement to drive the next steps that second one better caps cap captures the actual problem statement. You agree with that? I agree with that. Yeah. I mean I think the only modification I would make is the cost of services and ser you know and service demand have outgrown our revenue demand.

Okay. But the bottom line we're saying is that the that that sales tax is not the panacea here. Right. Are we okay with that, Kim? Got it. Okay, good. Next steps. Moving fast. Request staff to bring back funding strategies to city council. Can you say a few more words about what that looks like?

Yeah, if there are specific things, I've heard parks and rec district. I've heard property tax. I've heard sales tax. um just in your discussion so far, I think staff would kind of like the opportunity to um come back with what that might look like um to give you some ideas on instead of just throwing out everything, maybe come back with some ideas and then then if there's something missing, you can give direction on that. Unless there's something like you're like, I want to see this. Um and then also how the fire district consolidation might work as a part of this, how the storm water um fee might work as a part of this or not a part of this. Um come back with that and we'll open it up to

that information. I mean those two components and others storm water three components are intertwined right now in the fiscal sustainability conversation. What kind of heavy lift are we actually then setting what are you setting ourselves up for with that? I mean, because that to me is what I need is to understand how the fire district and potential property tax for both of those things and how that all fits together. Is that something that you guys can actually accomplish and we can move forward on or what's that going to do to our staff? The direction you gave regarding the fire district consolidation was to work with the fire oversight committee and have them start to um look at the feasibility of that. That's going to be a pretty heavy lift. Um and we're probably going to come back to you and request funding split with the district on figure out how we pay for that analysis. Um because we need to do a full feasibility study. That's the direction we got

for a possible 2027 ballot. Correct. For possible 27 ballot. Yes. Um, so I think doing that and looking I mean we can bring back sort of the pros and cons of a parks and recck district. That's probably not a heavy lift just in terms of saying here are the pros and cons of that. Um, and you then could compare and contrast that to the fire district consolidation. Um, but to to ask to go do sort of a full analysis of a parks and recck district, that's a heavy lift. So I think at some point you're going to have to decide one or the other, not both. I would also like to know um sort of how the inclusionary zoning fee and low tax might also because that goes into the

linkage the linkage fee. Yeah, linkage fee and then also the year act suns setting how that's going to affect budgets in two years. Um because it's that's part that's part of the strategy. a lot of of what we're talking about and a lot of money that's coming back to us or with the potential, right? Could be. And I guess I just wanted to follow up on the comment about the storm water utility. I thought we had made a decision as a council to move forward with that. You did. You did. You provided direction to move forward with that. Okay. So, so again though, when we talk about that, that's more what the impact will be on the budget.

Yeah. And phase two million phase two is sort of the public outreach effort that they're moving towards. They're getting close to hiring a consultant on that. I I think you as a council I think you need to consider the ramifications of moving with a storm water utility if you wanted to pursue a property tax either for a fire district consolidation or a parks and wreck um district and asking the voters to a fund the fee particularly for the commercial properties. to get hit the hardest with storm water fee, particularly the larger commercial properties, would that potentially impact their sentiment for a property tax? And if the answer is yes, I think you might want to consider whether that's the right strategy at this time, depending on what direction you or what decision you make with respect to a fire district consolidation.

Park and rec district. I just have to say I'm somewhat frustrated um by the fire district conversation. Um I completely support it, but I feel like it's hijacking all of our other conversations. Um I I do, Tom. I feel like it is like we agree to move forward with the storm water and continue that work and now I'm hearing, oh, that might impact the fire district. We agree to have parks and wreck look at options. We keep saying district. They are looking at options. Will a district be one of them? Possibly. But now I'm hearing, oh no, because it's possibly going to impact the fire district. So I'm just a tad bit frustrated by this um conversation.

Let me just clarify my comments. I I I'm not suggesting that you not look at a parking wreck because it could infect the fire district. I'm saying you just you probably can't do both. So, you need to decide one or the other. It's all about timing.

And I'm saying what you need to take to the voters is a long-term strategy cuz what the la what's happened in the last few years is we've thrown a bunch of stuff on the wall and said here's a here's your menu of choices. Vacancy tax, lift tax, sales tax, property tax, and the the sentiment has been well, let's do that. Um, and what I think we need to do this time to do it effectively is really come up with a long-term strategy three to four, five years out, what are we going to do as a community from a fiscal sustainability standpoint and be very intentional about that. If you decide that the storm water utility is the highest priority, I think that's the fine fine decision. I just think you need to fully understand what the ramifications of that to all your other decisions that you're trying to make. So, let's put it all on the table. Say, here's our strategy and how do we move forward with all of these things? The sun setting of of the URRA, the whatever decision you make if there's a property tax, the storm water utility, all of these are related and and the voters are very very smart in terms of what they're going to be paying. And so we need to be very clear and transparent um with them about what's coming. And I I just think that's why I say that. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying be very clear on the decision you make and how it impacts other decisions.

We're not even we're not even taking into account that when we talk about sales tax that an RTA vote is going to be coming in the next whatever one to two years and that's probably going to be a sales tax increase. It has to be a sales tax increase. Well, it has to be. Yes. Okay, it has to be a sales tax increase. And so we have to throw that in there

and all these things. In fact, when we when we're meeting with the commissioners next time, one of the things we're talking about is all the different things that are sitting there out there possibly on the ballot in 26 and 27. And it's a list that is it needs to be prioritized. It needs to be strategically thought out because you you can't do it all. Um and and you really have to do it right and you have to have great polling as well with ballot language in there so that people can understand is this a tax increase or what is this? I mean I I agree we need to have an overall strategy around this. Um and uh we're kind of you know the RTA is on its own. they're going to they're going to do their thing. And so we we just got to be cognizant of that before we jump out there and say, "Okay, you're going to take a sales tax and we're going to throw a property tax question out there at the same time."

Well, I think that one of the things you're going to find, and you did bring it up, is like the U the URA, right? So, we know with the URRA sunsetting in 2029, is that going to generate any money for the city of Steamboat Springs when all those come back to something? Is it like 500,000 or 200,000 around to two million?

So we have two to two million dollars and that's without any property tax because all of the development from the URAK, the increase in the revenues uh to pay for the improvements were because it would spur development. Again, we've got some sales tax from it, but there's a lot of property tax that's been left on the table. Okay, we're going to get $2 million with that. I mean, so I think that we need to look at our budget, Kim, for all these things and say, if we do this and this, how is that going to work?

I don't know how else to do this, Tom, but to include all these variables in the next work session because there's too many moving parts to just say, let's just focus on a parks and wreck. We just cannot do that. No one's asking to do that, though. And what do we direct?

I'm just saying we have talked about this ever since I've been on council and we can never and ever since you two have been on and we circle we circle we circle. All I'm asking is that I'm not even asking whether it's a property tax, a sales tax. What we should be doing is if we do move forward with a fire district that will free out $4 million. We can't go to voters without a plan for that $4 million. So, I am not suggesting we say we put parks and wreck on the ballot as well. I'm suggesting we have options to say whether it's parks and wreck or whether it's transportation or pick your pet project. I don't care. But something to tell voters we're free up for a million and we're going to dedicate it to X.

Yeah. And I think otherwise it's not going to pass, right? I mean, I think building on that, you're exactly right. I mean, basically taking a look. Okay, if we move forward with the fire district, that's four million, right? I mean, if we, you know, potentially with the URA, that's 2 million. Um, with storm water, what we decide that's like two or four million, maybe 2.5 kind of. So, kind of the same thing in terms of looking at if we move forward with those, what's the revenue that comes back to the market? Parks and wreck, right? That's 10 million. I mean, if you did, if you tried to offload that, right, from a a different funding source, isn't that where we're sitting about with parks and wreck in terms of our budget? Investigate these in Right. And understand we may not need to be doing anything, we need to look at these things collectively.

Right. And and I would just put in the the argument too that if we really are cons considering looking at a property tax, I think we have to acknowledge that there are people, you know, that there are people in this community that are absolutely struggling. There are, you know, older couples that are on fixed incomes. So that's why I would strongly advocate that we would at least need to look at some sort of rebate um for in some capacity uh for our you know for the locals because you know we are making it harder and harder for people in this community who um aren't as fortunate to stay here.

Yes. And I think a rebate is a good solution to at least look at to because I'm not going to let those few people dictate us putting a property tax on the ballot. I'm sorry. The property values increased. There's other options. Okay. A rebate though is is I don't even know if that's not the strategic focus here at all. This is on the storm water taxes because unlike all the other things, this is something we can implement without a vote. And I think when people open up that bill in November or December and the chances of us passing anything substantial after that, especially with the the commercial folks that are going to bear the brunt of that storm water tax,

not a tax. I think I think they're they would just kill kill any other tax. Where do you think we are right now? Uh, I think they're from the solution. From your standpoint, do you have what you need to come back with funding strategies to city council? I think um unless there's other specific items, the thought was to really pull all of these different pieces together and put it in one presentation to talk about what we have um on the horizon and what that can mean and what other options are. Okay. And would that would that also include um projections around revenue streams and all that?

For example, if we were for example, what I would look for from you was that if if we and on part of those criterias that you're doing, we we would do a parks and wreck division, it would be based upon what our current parks and wreck is using out of the general fund. Right. If it's $7 million, then we know that that $7 million could eventually come out uh and into a property tax that would pay for it, for example. The question is then, what do we do with the other $7 million that we have extra? Do we give that back uh with a lower sales tax or do we keep it and do something with it?

These are decisions that we'll talk about. These are decisions, but I would I would need to know that if we're going to have some funible money in the general fund because there was a parks and wreck district, what would we do with that extra money in the horizon?

I think that's the whole point of talking about what we are not funding right now. um is to be able to answer that to the community of if we do a fire district and we um have general fund, how we're going to spend it. That is absolutely crucial if we even go there. It's a you know, we're we're a long ways from that. But um that is absolutely but I would go back to Councelor Dixon's comment the last time. If you're going to increase revenue just to then decrease it somewhere else, do you want to go through that exercise? So,

yeah, that that's up to council. Net zero very helpful.

Just pose a question to get a pulse before we ask staff. Is there still and I would call it enthusiastic political will from the five of you to pursue this? Not. And I and the reason why is the hairs in the back of my neck are standing up, councelor Vino, because you are starting to backwalk the strong rhetoric about a property tax by talking about a refund or a reduction on sales tax and other things like that. And this reminds me very much of a few years ago. And when we sat in that room during council, our goal setting, I had a bird that like I don't think we are willing to do this. So, I just want to take a pulse check that the five of you guys are still emphatic, all five, about aggressively pursuing the increase of revenue cuz if not, like we really are just going to be wasting staff's time by doing these exercises and then at the 11th hour backing out. I mean, I'll caveat that by saying that I do think it is dependent upon us doing coming up with a list, getting um some input from council in terms of whatever the three or the four options are and then absolutely doing some polling into the community in terms of what's the level of support. I mean, so that I mean, I think that is one of the things that we missed last time is is not the is the community is really really truly the community engagement and the community input. Um, and getting that, you know, information however however we can in terms of what this community will support. And if and one of the one of those things that are in that polling is a simple question about do you support the concept of living within your means or not? And I want to know that answer as well. And and Kim, you could also include in that horizon

discussion um any of our debt service that's going to be paid off in the um in whatever we owe on buildings and such. I know some of those were what are they coops that we have that we can I don't know if they sunset in the next three to five years or maybe they're 15 years out that would be part of this conversation too. Okay because that could be four or $500,000 a year that goes back into the general fund.

Ryan, to answer your question, I would say that um yes, I'm in support of moving forward with some sort of diversification. It has to be what the public wants. And speaking to what Mellin was presenting here, it also is about what we can sell, right? And and whether it is parks and wrecks or whether it is fire district, what's popular and what people will vote for. Um there's a million ways to skin the cat and to transfer the money once there's funds released from general fund. If the fire district doesn't go, maybe a parks of Rex goes and then some of that money that's there has to go to the fire district to fund, you know, additional EMS services. So the the million ways to skin the cat, but it has to be with voter approval. That's why I don't like the storm water tax tax.

Got it.

Okay. So we have we do have to give direction for parks and w because at our last meeting we gave them direction to move forward. I still think they should move forward but with working with staff on timing because if we come this work at some point has to happen. So, if we move forward with the parks and recck district on the ballot, for example, we need to have a plan with where is that 4 million going to go and if we don't have options in front of us, how do we make that decision? So, I would like parks and wreck to still continue this work, but whether they have to pause it for now when it makes more sense. But we need that info and maybe John maybe um transportation I like again but we need options.

What does Parks and Rec Commission have to do with this? They were the ones um that really were um enthusiastic about looking at options for increased revenue for a parks and wreck and where whether they come back and say, "Oh, you have an option of it could be a district and that's what that would look like." And I'm sure we would still have to have more questions and conversation or they may say, "Or we look at funding just capital projects." I I don't know. But they would come back with um options, stuff that we don't have the luxury of having detailed conversations around that at our meetings. Is it a reasonable expectation to to ask parks and recck commission um not parks and recck staff or somehow I mean in terms of what work can parks and recck actually do, right? I mean in terms of looking to see what are the options out there, you know, trying to relieve the effort on staff.

Yeah. Staff. Yes. I mean staff has to Tom said staff has to be engaged. So that's clear on expectations. If if council wants us to look at a parks and wreck funding source be it a district or a tax or whatever it might be then I think it should be done in house. Um I mean we can we will certainly confer with parks and recck commission as their your advisory body. Um but ultimately it's going to come to staff anyway. So let's just be clear on expectation. Why are we Why are we um singling out Parks and Wreck here? Kim is going to look at according to what what's on here, bring back funding strategies. Parks and Wreck is a potential funding strategy.

Well, and well, hold on. Let me finish this. We are not in the position to go to the voters this November on any of this stuff. So I think if we get Kim's funding strategy piece done, that is the next priority and then from there we can look at okay based on that how much staff time do we want to spend on that versus something else. That's what I would recommend. Yeah. But and I would and Steve what what I'd saying though is that what what you just stated what I don't want to see is a grocery list that I've seen six years ago. okay,

that have all these different fiscal opportunities. I want to be real and I want to stay specific. We've tossed in this council a parks and wreck district from the parks and recck commission and ourselves and many citizens that I've talked to have a pallet for a parks and wreck district because it relates to property tax to the parks themselves. If there's other specifics besides the storm water utility, the fire and URA and some other things like that, I would limit that because I don't want them to keep coming back with this grocery list that we keep saying no to. Okay. Be specific and say we let's do parks and rec.

Kim, what is the list that you have right now that you would come back on and then we need to move on soon hopefully?

Uh long-term funding strategy. Um like really three to four years out past that. um revenue stream projections. Um I would probably the the word district takes on a whole new level that takes on who has assets, who has I would go to dedicated funding sources for capital or deferred maintenance or parks and wreck operations or parks and wreck capital or transit. Um, so I would keep the the governance out of the conversation because that is that's what the fire district is looking at and that's a that's a whole new level. So, but I think we could talk about dedicated funding sources for and that goes back to what the the citizens will pass. So, we could break down you could do a dedicated funding source for this or you could do a dedicated funding source and here are some of the grocery list options and I'll try to narrow that down. So, that's where I'm at. And then I'll spend some time with Tom like thinking through it clear I what I heard was dedicated funding source for parks and wreck, fire district consolidation, storm water utility, sunsetting of URRA. Um, and that's what we'll look at. And within that are options for dedicated funds. So if you do a property tax for fire district or parks and wreck that frees up general fund, where would that money go? And we can be clear on that.

And the linkage fee has to go to housing. So we're not going to consider that. Is that fair?

Unless we're directed to do others. I think that's a pretty that's pretty clear direction that we're we are moving forward for affordable housing on that one. To clarify, we as a council are agreeing that the two areas we're looking to increase funding are parks and wreck and the fire district basically correct cuz that's I I just want to point out I know you're trying to move on but there's I don't know how else to say this other than the people on this side of the table don't want to make a specific decision and we are asking staff to make the decision for us. But that isn't staff's job. The staff's job isn't to say, "Well, I don't want to give them a laundry list because that's really what they should give us, and then we decide what we want on it." We're telling staff they should then call that laundry list on our behalf and make our lives easier so we have a menu to pick, but we need to be the ones who say what specifically we want them to investigate. So, we're asking for something impossible and we're going to do the same thing that every other council has done, and it's not going to be successful. So, we need to agree as a group of six tonight what specific things we want to fund or what information we need to make that decision of what we want to fund and then direct staff to give us the detail on that.

Yeah. And we haven't come to that conclusion yet. Sure. Well, I'm obviously advocating for our parks and wreck. Um the parks and recck commission I I do feel very strongly they need to be involved. They want to be involved. They are our community members. they are the ones out there also talking. Um so I I am advocating for that because I think that would um sit well with our community members parks and wreck and well depending on the fire district. I mean well that's one of the paths is funding parks and wreck is like you're you're

if you could wave a wand you would be focused purely on parks and wreck right now. That's what you're saying. And the fire I think the fire district has a component as well because it could free up. Yeah. All right. We've already talked about those two. They're they're two that have been discussed most. I'm okay with that. But I think what I hear councelor Swank asking too is is there general support for a property tax that is not dedicated? No. No. Well, no. You mean like a general fund? A mill levy has to be designated for a specific uh project to get it through this community or program.

I mean, okay, if we think we know that, I mean, I would be willing to I would be willing I would be willing general fund. Okay. Well, there's political will to go with a vacancy tax. So, is this does this council want to pursue a vacancy tax? I mean, in terms of reviewing where we landed when we last spoke about it, which was really the um reasoning given for not moving forward was the implementation and the concerns about implementation, but we know from general political polling that this community supports a vacancy tax. So, I would love for us to knock down by the state. It's very complicated. No, it was not knocked down.

Okay, guys, guys, guys. We have all the information on a vacancy tax. Kim provided us with all the information. It was a little bit different, right? I mean, in the sense of the vacancy tax was there majority who want to pursue a vacancy. Yeah, I think that's the question. But there's not a majority and and and the legislation. We still have the authority. All about leverage and bonds or I mean are we thinking too small with just a mil levy tax?

It's just it's it's ongoing debt a isn't that a typical government strategy. Listen, don't we have I'm trying I'm trying to understand this discussion because it seems to me like I and you brought up Mellin and I remember when Mellin came and gave us that presentation and it showed from whatever town they were talking about um you know all the different potential taxes, all the different things that could be funded, all the different polling that was done to say what isn't that really what we want to do is understand what the community has appetite for here And you know, not what we have an appetite for, it's what the community has the appetite for.

Keep jelling into your report for us. Well, I mean, what they do it is it's parks and wreck and fire. I mean, we know that like we know that. We've talked about those two and we we know that there's incremental revenue coming from the sun setting of the URA, right? We know that. So, what else do you want?

Well, here's where I'm coming from. I mean, so again, I think what one of the other things is all of the other and and I'm, you know, a little surprised these words are coming out of my mouth. Um, is that most of the other communities already have property taxes, right? So, this is incremental funding when you're looking at whether it's parks and wreck or whether you're looking at the fire district, right? I mean, that's incre that's incremental. We we don't have a property tax. So that's and again I would be comfortable pursuing a property tax if in fact we give a rebate to um locals for what their uh for the sales tax contribution. I don't think any commercial operator is going to think it's incremental tax. Well that's not about I mean well right

your point is the point is this I think that you're fine if we can add that component to the options of a refund. Please Dan work with the lead. Why wouldn't we put that in the polling? The polling will tell us the value of that. That's but why I feel like that's such a specific detail. I don't feel like we're at that point in the process. It is very specific polling

like because what that's about a mechanic of how we're implementing this. I think we first are starting at high level. What areas do we want to fund and then we're going to go to c we're going to go to staff and they will come back with all right if you want to fund parks and wreck these are your options. if you want to fund fire, these are your options. Then we would whittle that down and then we're talking about the implementation. And I totally agree. I think that's a conversation we should have. But I think that's at a that's down once we pick the path. I agree.

I think it's a short-sighted I mean I mean you know I mean in terms of if we really want a sustainable diversified funding source and particularly with what's happening in our community and the property values and which is why I lean toward the vacancy tax. Yes, it's a great point. We should look at it down the road when we get in the details. It's not a specific point that we need to have them focused on right now. It's part of the implementation. I totally agree. What I hear you saying is we would move forward with a property tax, but it's dedicated funding.

Yes. But but what you're talking about is a a credit. So, let's say that we agree, all right, we're going to pursue a property tax for parks and wreck. I would assume that before we put it on the ballot, we would have a discussion about where you would raise this point. Okay, well, there are people who cannot afford this. How do we implement a sales tax rebate program? And then the seven of us would discuss that and that would be part of what would go on the ballot. Yeah. No, I was I don't think that's a conversation for this point in the process. No, I was advocating a general property tax, not dedicated.

Okay. Right. I think what we're I think what we're looking at is if we had a property tax for a fire consolidation, let's just say, and it was and we got back 4 million, $3 million a year, right? For that, we would never be able to sell that unless we knew what we were doing with the3 to4 million. What how are we going to spend that money? What are we going to do with it? into a a parks and reced dedicated maybe that's what we're saying is that other or maybe part of it is a rebate I don't know but I think we're getting ahead of ourselves in front of our skis

so back to the areas of focus for staff beyond fire and parks and wreck are there any other areas that we are we think would be politically sellable to the community that are worth exploring like I would for example I don't think that transit is one we should pursue. I personally would love it. I think that's like a council. I see the value of it but I think that would be hard to sell. I think parks and wreck would be easy to sell. I think fire would be easy to sell especially to businesses like in you mean well or capital projects. I mean we could look at a specific funding for capital projects. Do you think that that that's a physical tangible thing? We could say this is funding that is literally going to building things that you see. I mean, we could explore that. One thing that uh other communities have done, kind of going back to what councelor Barnes was saying, um is to do campaigns on the capital projects and say and issue uh general obligation bonds that are then supported by a property tax mill levy and say, "We're going to do this $4 million of either infrastructure improvements or whatever those capital projects are. issue $4 million of bonds for that year. Or maybe it's over time and you have a property tax that then sunsets in 20 years and it is going to build this and it is going to build this and it's going to take care of this whatever that may be and it might be over time like over a period of time. Oh, and parks and rack. Thinking about repairing Howison Hill, thinking about Bear River, thinking about the boat launching ramp, thinking about Slate Creek Park, thinking about a bond that might be palatable to people doing something like that.

Yep. We're thinking bigger because we might not have a shot to do in incrementally over time and that would require again more polling. I would support ex asking staff to explore that as a third area of exploration. the bond. So, do you think the next work session should be that we come up with the list of items we want to do in polling?

I to be considered, right? Right. I mean, I think that again, we're looking for the list that we've kind of put out here, but then exactly that bring it back to council for I think further deliberation in terms of potentially what three we want to pull or whatever that is. With somebody like Mellin, it would Yes. Yeah. We'll need to decide when we bring a consultant in for that. Yeah.

What's the timing on the next steps? cuz I worry that yeah I just 2027 we'll be here like that and if if we move forward with the fire district we have to have a plan for the other four million so what's the timing for us for cam staff to come back it's um currently on the July work session is that enough Kim I think it is okay have we reached so it sounds like parks and racks sorry because we have a parks and recck commissioner with us tonight. It sounds like that their work is on hold until July until um staff comes back and we talked more um about I think that makes sense.

Okay. Are you okay with that? I I think it makes sense. I mean, yeah. Are we good? Yes. Is that a yes? Yep. You good, Kim? Yep. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Thanks, Kim. your expertise, skills. All right, I think we need a break. Yeah, 10 minutes. Come on. 10 minutes. You're talking about like the time value of money. 7:43. We'll talk about your your array and those dollars money source is going away. It's 2 million. It's not going to be two million.

I think it's time, isn't it? Yeah. All right, we're going to move on. Number three. Yes, let's do it. Local market. Local marketing district expansion update. Dan Foot's gonna kick this off. How about that? Special guest star. Dan Foot, let's go. Slow down. Slow down. There we go. All right. Who wants to talk about local marketing districts? I do. I do.

Um, all right. So, just I'm not going to spend too much time on this slide. I think you all have a general idea of what a local marketing district is, but if you really want to drill down, um, feel free to ask questions. A local marketing district is a uh special taxing district that's created um pursuant to state statute. Um they are formed uh they start with a petition from the property owners in the district. Uh it requires voter approval. Um and if a voters approve formation um the voters can also be asked to approve the imposition of a lodging tax and um those tax revenues are limited to specific purposes that are authorized by the statute. Um local marketing districts can be formed by a single local government like a city or they can be formed by multiple local governments. Um the boundaries of a local marketing district have to be within the local government or local governments that form it. So um a city district has to be in the city boundaries. Um but if you had a combination of local governments and the boundaries could be larger. Um the uh local marketing districts are governed by a board and that board uh could be like um the URRA where it uh it's board formed by the um by the members of the local body that created it or um it can be a board that is uh appointed by that governing body. And finally, regardless of how the board is composed, the local government retains control, a great deal of control over the local marketing district through the annual approval of its operating plan. So, this is the basic sort of generic rules. Um, I'm going to move on to this slide, which is um relates to the the Steamboat Springs Local Marketing District, which was created back in 2004. Um and at the same time that it was created uh the voters approved a 2%

lodging tax uh which is the uh main source of LMD revenue right now. Um there was a period of time for 5 years in which the city collected a one quarter cent sales tax. Uh that was from 2012 to 2016. Um that tax was not uh renewed by the voters um in 2016. So it is lapsed and um the local marketing district no longer receives it. Uh the approved purposes for the Steamboat Springs local marketing district are the organization promotion, marketing and management of public events um activities in support in support of business recruitment, management and development, including uh the air program at AA Valley Regional Airport um and coordinating tourism promotion activities. Um I do not know what city resident who purchases pass eligible for reat is doing in there. This was I think this was a reused deck. So forget disregard that. Um these three approved purposes basically track the statutory language from 2004. Um the uh the air program language is underlined because that's where the money is actually going. Um and that is uh pursuant to um agreements with the ski uh the Steamboat Ski and Resort Corporation. Um there's also a 2011 intergovernmental intergovernmental agreement um that the city has with the local marketing district. Um that at one point related uh to the air program when the city was contributing sales tax uh to the local marketing district. Um those provisions have been amended out of the agreement. Um it does it does have some uh governance provisions um requirements for bylaws and reporting and so forth for the for the local marketing district. So that is basically where we are now with the local marketing district. Um the reason this

is coming to you tonight is there are a couple of ideas um that have been uh the subject of discussions regarding potential changes to how the marketing district operates and is formed. And the first one of those is the potential for expanding the district. And uh the motivation for for expansion is that there are a number of hotel and lodging properties that have been developed since 2004 that are outside the boundaries of the district. And so um those hotel and lodging properties do not collect the lodging tax and remit it to the local marketing district. if they were to be included um finance uh finance finance director is estimating that the revenues from those properties would be about $900,000 annually. So that's a you know would be a pretty significant increase in um the revenues of the district. There is a provision in the statute um that governs the expansion of an existing district. Uh it requires the consent of each property owner whose property would be included in the district. So that effectively gives these property owners a veto over expansion. Um which makes expansion unlikely. Um there is another path and that would be to just go through the process of creating a new district which would require another petition and another election and so basically that because of the election and the petition you need you need half the people in the district to agree. Um so you know there is still a substantial process to go through but it eliminates the individual property owner veto um over the expansion process. Um the second potential change in how the district operates is in the use of district funds. Um and there are a couple of pieces to this. First is that the legislature has added two new um uses

for local marketing district funds that are that are permitted. So the three original purposes from 2004 have now been supplemented by these two additional which is which are tourism related workforce housing and child care and uh facilitating and enhancing the visitor experience. Um if council wanted to expand the district's powers um it would require council action basically to uh change the organizing documents for the district to add those to add those um approved uses of funds. The um the second potential change to discuss is that um the current district reserves are approximately $6 million which uh I think there is general agreement is is a higher level of reserves that is require than is required for the district to continue to operate uh the way it has been. So there have been some discussions as to uh should should some of those funds be used for another purpose instead of just sitting in reserves. Um that that that could involve any of the other three purposes that are already approved. It could involve the two new that have been authorized by the legislature. Um, and then one specific proposal that has been discussed and um actually is in redline form in an amendment to the uh to the IGA is a uh three-year commitment to reimburse the city uh 75% of the city's funding for the for the chamber. Um, and I if if there was a desire to move in that direction, that would be implemented with an amendment to the IG. So the the questions for you to answer tonight would be are you interested in exploring the expansion of the district to capture the you know to capture taxes from um lodging properties that have de developed outside of the district. Um, is council interested in exploring the repurposing of excess reserve funds,

which could be the chamber proposal that has um been discussed and that is furthest down the road, or you know, any of those other options I I described and and if so, what would what would those other options be um for you? So, that is it for my presentation.

Okay. Thank you, Dan. Questions for Dan? I would I would say a couple can I make a couple quick comments because I was on the LMD board for five years. Um, and you might ask, well, how did this fund get up to $6 million? And what's happened over the uh last 5 years or so is that Southwest Airlines has come into um a Valley Regional Airport and as a result um competition has gotten a lot more fierce in that period of time and at the same time um gasoline prices have gone down significantly. Not in the last couple months obviously the jet fuel

yeah it went down significantly. So what happens is that when load factors are high and competition brings down prices and load factors are high and gasoline prices are low the minimum revenue guarantees that we have to pay these airlines um aren't met. So we don't have to pay it. So they go into reserve and that's what's happened the last few years. That's how we got to 6 million. Now you can look to the future and you can say well all of a sudden gas prices have you know gone up 50% or whatever. So it could be a problem going forward but uh the feeling is that there's um that a good reserve um might be somewhere around $4.5 million. So we're talking about a million half dollars right now over it. The reason for a three-year commitment um in that one proposal uh for the chamber was that we wanted just to see how this would work. put it in for three years, see how the how the um uh projections went, the reserves went, but the commitment would be for three years no matter what. So, if you figured that that was 7 um 700,000, what was it? 750. 7

or I think it was 750.

750, I think it was. And 75% of um you know, 750 is let's just call it a half a million dollars. It's a little more than that. So it's a half a million dollars a year for three years is the commitment or a million5 would um be funded to the chamber. So we would in essence as a result of that um free up a million5 in the general fund to be used at our discretion. So that's that's kind of how that works. As far as the expansion is concerned, um, you know, it was just when it was originally passed, it was really just at the base area of the mountain. In fact, where I I live off Steamboat Boulevard is a LMD district because back then it was it was supposed to be hotels and whatnot and condos, but that never happened obviously. So now that $900,000 again um if if we collect that $900,000 a year then you can see what that can do to that reserve too and the opportunities there. So we looked at this as a chamber thing. Originally um it was in the in the language that obviously stewardship and tourism and all that fit into the language but even more so today it was around the fact that you know who knows what's going on with the weather with the fire and everything else with tourism sales tax revenue and everything else. So um that would be go a long way to to helping us do that. I think the other thing about expanding the district is that we set it up in a way that said if the voters voted no on expanding the LMD district, it would just go back to the current district. So, it wasn't like if they voted no, all of a sudden the LMD is history and we've lost, you know, the ability to fund the airlines. So, it was set up in a way that or would be set up

in a way that hey, if people didn't vote for it, then we would just go back to the old. And um you know, the bottom line is this 900,000 or these hotels and and whatnot that have the exemption now have a 2% advantage over everybody else because they don't pay that 2%. So, I just wanted to throw out a couple of of of um those things um just for context. So

I have a question. So why wouldn't we keep our investment in the chamber and then increase the funding by 500 to get the chamber to a level that's normal at other resorts for those three years to see what is the effect of that and is it beneficial because it's almost a good test and it's a worthwhile conversation for that council at the time to talk about

increased funding for marketing in town. I think I mean I don't um at all disagree with that. I think the way it was looked at the time was that um if if the chamber was funded like $500,000, right, came back to us. That money is free for us to do what we want with, we could certainly reinvest it in the chamber. Um but that is up to us. You're saying you could actually set it up in a way that it would automatically go that direction. Um but uh again I don't necessarily see any any issue with that. I think the the freedom we have is to determine what to do with that money at this point.

Currently the proposal on the table in the red line is um that they would reimburse us 75% of the past year's budget. So let's say in 2025 we gave them 750,000. as we move forward in 2026, they're gonna put in their budget line item 75% expense to pay us back from last year's budget. So, as we move forward as a council, we're still going to put a budget amount in and in the back of our mind for three years, we're going to get back filled 75% of it. So, if we make those choices, we may have that data point to help us make those increases decisions.

Got it. And the reason it was three years was for that just that to see what we could do and um where it would end up. Um but that commitment is there no matter what the reserve goes down too. That commitment is there for the three years. Dan, would you remind me what the boundary is for the the current boundary for the LMD?

I don't. It's I don't know what it is. It's Steamboat. It's Steamboat Boulevard from the water treatment plant all the way then down to the roundabout and then all the way up around the mountain there. Uh for example, the residence in next to Safeway is not in the LMD district. Nothing west of there of really Steamboat Boulevard is in the LMD district. Hotels along 40 coming in. Yeah, those are in the LMD district. Yeah, but I don't know how far it goes that way. I I mean, if you come down Steamboat Boulevard, it certainly doesn't go to the west side of that. So, what's the 900,000 based on?

It's based on the number of hotels like the residents in the two Marriott properties which are right on the edge there and outside and a number of other uh lodging properties. Kim could tell you more about that. She's done the estimate on that. Kim, is downtown included in the LMD?

No. town is included along Lincoln Avenue. Um Kim Weber, finance director. So to come up with the 900,000, so we have the 1% accommodation tax that's citywide. And so I took what the taxable sales are based on what we collect with the 1% accommodation tax. Took the taxable sales based on what we collect for the local marketing district. It's about 30% higher for the accommodation tax. So, it includes all your short-term rental um that are outside of the LMD, uh the additional um additional hotels. And so, right now, the LMD collects about $3.3 million in the 2% lodging tax. So, it' be about a 30% increase, is the 900,000, a little less than that.

Would this increase the 20.4% that the short-term rentals are paying now? Um I think the 20.4 includes the 2%. If you calculate it out, so some are at um the 18.4. Interesting. Thank you.

Um they the local marketing district collected uh 3.269 million in 2025. Sorry. 3 point. Yeah, right about $3.3 million in 2025.

Um, yeah. I Why are we saying 4 million in reserves? I don't um I haven't seen their financials, but that still seems um high. Well, and we had that conversation as well. because I brought it up succinctly yesterday and um it it is close to 200% of a one-year use

and um we felt that you know trying to find the right number that the floor of the reserve is is is not really at this point. I mean, we do need to have something, but what we agreed to or at least talked about was um let's get something at, you know, let's start with a floor and in three years we could see if we need to lower it or or have to go up. And the reason that was brought to us by the board, um was basically with the unknowns moving forward with the MRGS, there's some airlines that aren't getting it because they're not they're not they don't want it. They're like, and there's other ones that have bought into the program because of it. And if all of a sudden one of them decides that they do want the MRG, that could that could take in one year $2 million. So if you drop the reserve down too much, there was a little risk. And we said, well, let's just see how this goes for three years and then really tweak it and evaluate it based upon that.

Is that right, Steve? Is that how

I Yeah. And there's other things going on right now given the conditions in the world and what is going to happen here in terms of load factors and as we already mentioned the price of um gas air fuel. So there's all of those things in there. But I think there's a agreement that um after that threeyear time frame, you know, we certainly got to look at it and see if if that still makes sense or not. They have to budget to cap every year. So they budget to spend to cap and um Okay. I don't know. This is never the way I've done reserves, but you would you could would you not look at like a percentage? So, it actually would it can probably maybe not like that because it would fluctuate, but then you wouldn't say you wouldn't have like a hard limit of two or four million. It's based on a percentage. So, it does fluctuate. Um

Well, and it was because of that uncertainty. Yeah. that we said let's just you know three years we can manage it but

let's let's just kind of really re-evaluate it in three years. So, you know, what we're looking at is the opportunity to at least in that first line there to fund 75% or to Brian's point, we could do it differently um and fund more but and um bring back to uh the city over 1.5 million in those three years. And if we expand and get another $900,000 that um obviously after 3 years that will have an impact as well. So what are you looking for? Just a thumbs up tonight?

Well, if if there's no discussion I I just you know I think we should move forward with both of these things. Um Montine, do you want to take public comment? Yes, I do. We haven't yet. But I don't know if we've asked have had the discussion or ask enough questions yet, have we? Is there any more questions for Dan? I think and again I'm just sorry so I'm clear. So the vote is of the people or the Yes. So this would be something that would go to the ballot in in the boundaries just to expand the boundaries would go to ballot.

Well so if creating a new district so you would have an election to form the district and then you'd have to reapprove the tax as well. So it would be a formation and tax question uh of the electors in the boundaries of the proposed district which could be could be the city boundaries or it could be a variation on what we have today which is this kind of weird little gerrymander thing. And the second question was really the 75% is part of an IGA agreement that we have between SSRC and the LMD board and the city.

Uh no, it's just the city and the LMD uh those two government entities. U and that would be the documents that would be amended to implement the the the chamber proposal. I think it's also important to to note that if you did want to expand the LMD, the thought was that if you went to the voters and they voted it down, then the status quo would remain, the existing LMD would remain as is. So there's very little political risk um in asking for an expansion. And again to the extent that if you were to expand or go to either any of the other three potential funding options that's backed part discussed during the IGA that's part of the IGA process. So you know to the extent that there were the organization promotion marketing activities in support of the business recruitment I mean the expansion that was allowed by the legislature.

Right. So if there were to be an expansion and the the voters approved it, the existing I the existing LMD would be dissolved and all of its agreements would also terminate. So, okay, we you you would have an LMD that would need to create a new IGA with the city and then whatever, you know, whatever the appropriate terms are um could govern uh the use of LMD funds or and it's not there's no real requirement that there be an IGA. um the uh the use of the funds could be implemented um either through you know council selection of board members or andor the approval of the operating um operating plan.

So I guess I'm just getting a little confused on the sequencing in the sense that I think before us right is whether or not to expand the LMD but it seems like there are already conversations going on about changing what's being funded. I think there's two separate things going on here. Um the one is the the utilizing LMD reserves, okay, outside of the airlines,

okay? And so that's one issue and that's something that um the LMD board is is agreed on and committed to and and I would characterize that as more of a um near-term initiative whereas the expansion I mean we could conceivably get it on the ballot in November but I think that really if you are interested in expansion we're talking about a November 27 election. So that's a a much, you know, longer term project. I mean, new LMD is formed, then does that three-year agreement go away as well? That would have to be replaced with a new agreement with the new LMD?

Yeah. Presumably. And this is part of the reason that we think it November 27 is is when this election could take place because if there's to be the formation of a new LMD, you know, SSRC is going to need to be involved and the LMD board is going to need to be involved and you know, everyone is going to need to be um in agreement on on what is going to happen after the new LMD is formed and how these agreements are uh repopulated or re um uh readopted. Yeah. Is that all worth the 900 grand? Yes.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Does the LMD What are they getting now, Kim? 3.2.

So, you add 900,000 to that. That's what 25% almost, right? I think the point was that there's um some hotels in the city that get a 2% I mean they're not paying it and yet idea about paying for the air travel was for all the lodging and the chamber is the right nexus that falls within the ballot language from their attorney and the board. So this was a very easy transition as the um reserve started to get to as the reserve starts to get larger. It's like, okay, we got to do something with that. And that's where this came conversation started. The expansion is just, oh, and by the way, we really should consider that, but that's a little bit heavier lift.

Well, we expand the LMD to include like all of Highway 40, even Yep. city limits. Or maybe not past, you know, where the workforce hotels are. There's a Conano Lodge that may be going up. Maybe that we got to figure that out. And that's that's part of the who knows. Mhm. But based upon just the 1% lodging that's being paid now, the 2% and then the where the 2% would go toward, she's just using back of the ma napkin math to come up with about $900,000 difference. And that's if you included all the ones paying that two that 1%. All right. So, where we at, Stephen?

We're going to take public comment if we're done with questions. Is there anyone in the room or anyone online, please raise your hand who'd like to make a public comment? Hearing none, we'll close public comment and bring it back here for further discussion. Well, I will start. I mean, this has been a interesting aspect. I was only asked to join this LMD discussion in the past six months. Um, and to me sitting with the board of the LMD, Steve, thanks for being on it for five years prior. Um, this was kind of a low fruit on the tree when it came to chamber funding. Constantly, um, arguing where the money should come from with the chamber and then tasking the chamber constantly about finding their own dedicated funding source, you know, do a B, a bid or something. And all of a sudden the airport, the LMD fund said, "Well, we could use some of this money for that as well." And we're like, "Uh oh, well, why didn't you tell me that sooner, you know, and it was only because the reserve wasn't as large as it was." So, as this thing is start to work at it, um to me, it was just low fruit in the trees. So, I would encourage us all to move forward with that. The expansion I think is a little bit uh I think we should investigate it and uh move forward. I don't know what's the harm in doing it with like if we expand it or if not status quo it's a win-win either way or win or winner either way.

It's no risk. It's no risk. Thank you.

Would chamber be directed on how to use that money whether it be for offseason, shoulder season, summer? Yes, there is actually specifics in the IGA that's currently in there I think a lot with the chamber this funds being specifically for and there was a whole list of them. Kim has those there's like 10 of them but um or at least their budget. So when we pay when we give the 700 let's just $700,000 to the chamber that's based on a contract for services. We approve their and we approve their budget for us of the money that now they get another x amount of dollars four five 6800 in member fees right so they can use that member fee that chamber could be doing things but specifically this money has to go to you know building the community building or the uh tourism

stewardship stewardship things like that that are in the ballot language of the LMD. So we have the confidence that that is falling in that um understanding of what the chamber is spending the money on falls within that. Now that's why we didn't do 100%. Or at least hopefully we did 75% to kind of give us a little bit of flexibility there. So do you guys need anything from us or are we good to move forward? Yeah. Thank you,

Brian. I I don't know if I I I want to do the the remap for sure. I think we need to incorporate. Um I'm just getting hung up on um what I'm hearing is that to use the freed up dollars for chamber. That's where I'm struggling. No, help me understand what you're saying. No, that's that's a future conversation. I asked why we aren't doing that and that's just a future conversation of No, we're not deciding that. We were deciding.

Yeah, I know. What was your Well, you're talking about No, let's be let's let's be Yeah, let's be totally clear about this. If if the chamber has 750,000 and then the LMD says, "We're going to give you 75% of that." And let's just say that's $550,000, right? That's $550. And let's say the chamber uh for next year, let's just say it's $800,000. So that leaves $250,000 that we are on the hook for. Okay? So we save the $550, we're on for 250. Brian was suggesting the other way to look at it was just take the 550 and give it to the chamber in addition to what we already give. I just asked why we weren't doing that, but that's a discussion for later date.

Budget time when we talk about what do we do with that? That's the although I mean again just to be clear, right? I mean when we if I'm understanding this correctly, right, given the 2022 legislature, it has expanded what these monies could be used for. So that could be part of this current conversation, right? in the sense of um in addition to or ra um you could also use it for housing, child care, facility and enhancing the visitor experience, tourist information centers. I would I would argue that that's a budget decision as well, what to do with that money.

Well, that so that um that's an L & D budget decision. So you have the power to expand the L & D's authority to use funds for that purpose. But whether the LMD board wants to do that is that's an unknown. What we do know is that they are willing to um I mean the IGA to send money to the city to reimburse for the chamber. So we know that that is one proposal that the L & D board is on that L & D board agrees with. Um, but I'm assuming no conversation has gone there's not been any conversation beyond the 500,000 for the chamber.

Right. So this this universe of other possibilities is unexplored and um that would that would take some time and we don't know where they are on that. And that's why I would think that that $550,000 that we get back in the general fund we will talk about in October.

Yeah. And and honestly, I I kind of new information, but using the the LMD fund for something else. That's a conversation we totally can have. But again, we we're working with the board. We're like, hey, for three years with, you know, a lot of these unknowns. Let's try it because they've just used the money to go to air. So now we're like, hey, we could use it for something else. But we thought for a three-year window, we could all be patient and see how it rolls. And and I would say that this proposal gives the council a lot of flexibility because um this money that would come to the city as the chamber reimbursement could be used for whatever purpose the city council thinks is appropriate. Hey, we we don't have to use it for just marketing. We could spend it on

to really give in the hard cell. We we get it. Okay. So, um, we need to give direction, Dan, on or just give, uh, if we want. Yeah. What I'm what I'm hearing is a consensus that staff should continue to, um, work with the with the chamber board on the chamber, sorry, the LMD board on the uh, amendment to the IG and that would be brought to you um, soon. Cool. And and I guess I would just say if if we are looking at the expansion, I do think we would want to maybe take a more holistic approach in terms of looking at what all is allowed in terms of funding.

Sure. So again, expansion Well, couldn't that be part of the ballot language? Well, yeah. So expansion is is when we say expansion, really the procedure would be creating a new LMD and so everything is on the table at that point. Yeah. Okay. That's different. So we're okay. Yes. Okay, thank you everyone. Let's move on to um a paid parking update. Let the drums roll. Is it John Snder? Come on, John.

No shooting the messenger tonight. Anyway, um I did write up a little something from that. Uh we met the city SSRC met yesterday to discuss the upcoming paid parking program. Um, I think we all agree on a couple points and Gail can correct me if I'm wrong or Tom or whatever that lowering congestion, congestion, carbon emissions, vehicle miles traveled, all are potential benefits of the program, but we also agree that mitigating as much of the potential negative impacts is also very important. We also know that we can't address 100% of every potential impact or accurately project the future. So, we will need to learn over time and adjust accordingly as things develop. That being said, our 1-hour discussion led to the following actions and next steps. Uh, number one, um, we have are close to, I think, a tenative agreement to utilize the Haymaker parking lot. And I say tenative at this point because there's some things that have to be done as a free parking uh, targeted to those locals coming from the south of town. SSRC has agreed to provide that shuttle service for free, no charge. We still need to work out the details, which we will do next Monday, May 18th. We have set up another meeting next Monday. So, uh there is a sense of urgency here. We're not just kicking this can down the road. So, that one um is moving along. Secondly, we're going to investigate the use of both the Stockbridge lot for those west of town and some potential options in downtown. I don't want to get into specifics now because they really um haven't been uh totally vetted yet to have locals park close to an SST bus stop to get over to the mountain. Again, we're vetting these options currently

for further discussion next Monday. Third, SSRC has agreed to proide provide uh free signage of no charge to business owners who have parking lots at around the base of the mountain. different sign signage which will hopefully increase compliance to parking restriction, reduce unauthorized skier parking which could negatively affect businesses. So they will provide those signs to businesses. Number four, a and this is one that um really is requiring a lot of work between now and next Monday. SSRC is open to exploring quantifying the cost of additional ridership to SST caused by paid parking based on coming up with a sound quantifiable process to do that. SSRC and the city would discuss options to offset that cost. So that's a fancy way of saying we don't know for sure how we can quantify the impact on SST of additional ridership. So in order for SSRC to support that we have to have a formula that makes sense. So we're going to try to come up with this formula by next Monday to have further discussions about what that offset would look like. Um again work is proceeding across all these areas will be the basis for our next meeting on Monday. Um we both realize we need to move forward with a sense of urgency on this and uh are trying to use a collaborative approach. Um we will provide another update at next Tuesday's council meeting since we're meeting on Monday so that we can update you on Tuesday. Um if you have some constructive feedback, questions or suggestions, they're always welcome. Dale,

I I mean I think I think councelor Montene did a great job in terms of kind of explaining where we are. Um I think that was you know playing into the formula cost in terms of the increased cost to SST also is quantifying kind of who's being left behind today and where they're being left behind today. Um and I and you know again also I do think as we talked tonight you know whether microransit is you know a potential answer as well. Um those are things that are being discussed. These agreements are you making are they short-term long-term? One year at a time how's that looking?

Have haven't even gotten there. Well I mean so kind Yeah. No. Well, I think I think that's right. I mean, I think the whole issue here, I mean, it's it's um is, you know, focusing on what is the purpose and, you know, what are the expected outcomes and acknowledge that it's um going to be a pro, you know, it's going to have you're going to have to adjust, right? So, good point. We haven't talked about three years, five years permanent. No, we're I mean, you know, the assumptions that both of us make on this are probably not going to be 100% accurate.

Um, so we need a little bit of information um to do that, but I think it is an iterative process right now and just trying to see what we can do to mitigate as many different things as we possibly can.

I appreciate leaving the conversation open, but I would like just short-term resolutions at this point. It did come up in in the URAC interviews where SkiCore was volunteering to um shuttle other businesses employees from our city lots to the mountain. And I, you know, I'm just wondering if those are if those are legit conversations that they have the right to be doing that. We've okayed that. That's just collaboration. just just interesting that they're could be taking taking credit for the big salad or whatever.

Well, we can certainly um chat about that on Monday as well. That was something that came up. Yeah. No, that's right. Exactly. Specifically to Emerald and so I think that we need a little clarity, Tom, in terms of Emerald and I think we decided it's Riverview, right? the end of Walton Road in terms of those have been dedicated through it was it the PIA or was it through the 2.75 million in terms of allowing SkiCore to use those two properties for employee parking? Those are separate agreements that were called for in the um in the contribution agreement

and it and they are specific to SkiCore employees. So if they wanted to um allow other business employees to park there, we would have to amend those and it would Okay. So we should ask that they couldn't signal out just one business up there, right? No gondola pub and grill all those employees to park over at the hay maker and then they'll shuttle them in because that's kind of the example they're throwing. what happens to all the people that work at gondola square and those business employees where they get to start paying for parking. So I could see where that conversation needs to be vetted still

and that's I mean I think one of the things we asked for is again you know SkiCore has said that they've collected you know data and you know have based their decision upon some of the the information that they've collected and so one of the things that was asked for is okay if we do look at haymaker I mean how many people would really utilize that do we have a sense of whether or not there would that would actually you know potentially be a solution that would be acceptable well probably a lot because those signs will definitely deter everyone from parking in places they shouldn't waiting on that patiently

on that signs on the signs comment you kind of got me like okay that's something until you said for businesses no I meant for park like for example if you had um a city market or you had the Marriott two hotels right there that I'm just talking about um you know preventing customers from frequenting you know retailers or whatever. If you're talking about people who have a home on Steamboat Boulevard and somebody's going to park in their front yard. Is that what you're talking about? I'm talk Okay. I'm going to I'm talking about my friends in Shadow Run. Okay. That's what I'm talking about. So,

and all the folks that have the means to have increase their HOA to put up their little gates for their parking lots, right? Yeah. Good for them. Okay. So, not all people have those means to do that. So, signage propon all of it. Every every one of those over there. Yeah. People park there all the time. That's good feedback. Yeah. because I and I said business owners from retailers, but I I I'm not even sure that it was excluding that, but that was where my head went. I'm glad you brought that up. We'll bring that up on Monday.

Right. We don't want a third party company like exists at YBHA properties that goes around and puts boots on people's cars and compounds our problems. No, no, no, no. So, that's where we are. Um again, um if you have any other thoughts, send an email or whatever or give a phone call. seriously any constructive feedback because you know we're seeing what what we can uh work out here. So, well, thank you guys. Yeah, being so diligent these next couple of Mondays. I really appreciate you representing us.

Can I ask Tom a question um to ask for staff? A year or I can't remember a year ago, Ski Corps came back to us and asked for a variant for the wayfinding around the mountain area. I don't expect staff to remember offh hand, but if you could ask staff to go back and look at that um because um the variance was to allow them to not replace their current signs because they kept saying, "Oh, we've got the GTC coming. We don't want to put money into the new signs until we have this plan. And I keep meaning to try to find that meeting. And when did that variance expire? Like should they be coming back to us at this point? Um

they had some wayf finding requirements as part of the wild blue gondola development agreement. And so um there was some question about timing. Um they I know they have submitted um their proposal to us and we're reviewing that for um their electronic messaging signs. Yes. Yep. I think there's at least two maybe three of them. Okay. At least two. Um and they've identified the location and they're moving forward with that. But I I can I will follow up with you and get you the details.

Well, I would love for um these two to have that info because I don't I mean with this change in the paid parking sorry my back's to you. Sorry. Um, I don't think I have much more patience on delaying any type of electronic wayfinding um, until we have the GTC figured out. I think this paid parking has elevated that concern now. Thank you. Any other thoughts at this point? Okay. If not, I'm gonna turn it over to Dan, who has something to say.

Earlier this afternoon, I received a complaint uh that was filed in district court by Tumbleweed Steamboat LLC, and they are challenging the um denial of the waiver uh at the hearing on April 14. Um they're also challenging the constitutionality of the local sourcing requirement. Um the reason I'm bringing this up is they have asked me to uh accept service. Um, ordinarily they'd have to go hire a sheriff or somebody to bring the paper to city hall. Uh, we routinely, you know, agree to wave that process, but I do like to advise you of it before we do that. If anybody has a problem with it, we can discuss it next week. If not, I'll just go ahead and do it um tomorrow. Thanks. Thank you. Everybody good with that? Okay.

All right. Thank you. Any other final thoughts tonight? If not, I'll ask for a motion for adjournment. So moved. Second. Okay. Motion by councelor Lino, second by councel Gary. All in favor say I. We are adjourned. Have a