Business, Arts, Workforce, & Aeronautical Services Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the Parks, Arts and Culture Committee of Denver City Council. Join us and the Parks, Arts and Culture Committee starting now.

Welcome to the Parks, Art, and Culture Committee of Denver City Council. It is Tuesday. I think this would be August 4th, 2026. And welcome. We've got a packed agenda. My name is Paul Cashman. I'm vice chair of the committee. Councilman Lewis will be here shortly and join us. But before we get into that packed agenda, I will go to my right since my right is to the left. And we'll start with council introductions.

Councilwoman Flor Alvarez with Lucky District 7. Good morning. Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Good morning. Chris Hines, Denver's Perfect 10. Ms. Sawyer, District 5.

Welcome, everybody. We have, let's see, two action items and then a briefing. And we'll go online.

Thank you Mr. Vice Chair, Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2. And could someone add me to the team's chat? If I'm not on this committee, so I'm not in the, I don't have the chat here.

Thank you. It is being done. Thank you, Councilman. Anybody else online?

That will do it.

Okay, the first item is an intergovernmental agreement with Community College of Denver for the first year of a three-year term to operate the theater at Loretto Heights. So I will welcome the team to the table.

Thank you.

And as they say, take it away.

Oh, thank you. And we'll sort of spread out here, but not to avoid you, but leave room for other council members if they join.

Thank you so much.

Great presentation is on this computer.

Do you want me to pop over there and run it? Yeah. Or you can, if it works. I don't know. Technology is not my thing.

Awesome. committee vice chair and members of the committee. So we are really thrilled to be here to talk about our operator. Oh, and I should introduce myself. I jumped right into it. I'm Gretchen Hollera. I'm the executive director of Denver Arts and Venues, and I'll have the team introduce themselves. Tariana Navasnieves, deputy executive director for Denver Arts and Venues.

Good morning, Barry Hubbard. I'm a dean at the Community College of Denver

Good morning, I'm Jenna Buehler working with Turner and Townsend Heery. I am the venue subject matter expert working with the City of Denver.

And then we also have Doug Smook in the audience who is the chair of the Denver Civic Arts Foundation, a long-standing partner of the city.

Rosemary Rodriguez with our Denver Civic Arts Foundation as well.

Thank you for being here to listen and support. So we are bringing you the Intergovernmental Agreement Ordinance for Loretto Heights with the Community College of Denver, who is also a governmental entity. So that's why the contract takes the form of an IGA. This is about the $60 million renovation of the Loretto Heights Theater, including now also a $19 million parking structure. So this is a project we've been hard at work on over the last couple of years, and we'll show you what some of that work has looked like. Just to remind you of what the theater is, it's 702 seats. It's a full renovation of the current theater on the historic Loretto Heights Education Campus. And it really, it's a wall-to-wall renovation. It will have the theater that you see. We have additional slides that show some of the community spaces if we flip forward. Really full use of the theater for community meeting space, for rehearsal space. I will note at this time we are not renovating the library, which is the adjacent building next door, and this project is entirely focused on the theater at this point. So how we got here from 2017 to 2028 you can see the steps that we've taken and it really is a blend of looking at what our construction needs are and what our operating needs are. This was a right not fast approach to the work and we engaged a lot of community and team members as you see this and Tariana is going to talk about some of the lots of engagement that we've done.

So this has been an engagement that has been long and deep. Since 2017, this is a visual of over 70 organizations and entities that we engaged, as well as originally in 2017, there was a key research study that asked the question, is this needed? If it's renovated, would people come? Would people use it? And the answer to this was yes, yes, and yes. And not surprising, cultural and community said we need performance space and we need it to be accessible. We also need community space for all of those meetings at a neighborhood level and beyond. And then what was interesting that kept coming up is the need for workforce. And this was again interesting that it was not just theater production, but also what does it take to run a theater? What does it take to run a venue? And that was something that kept coming up through our engagement and also because of what we're here to discuss today, at the beginning, the recommendation of who should operate this theater was a non-profit organization and that will become relevant in a little while.

So after the Keene Independent study, we started to really take a deep dive to say who should run the venue and how would those operations need to come into play. And so from those 70 organizations, we dove in with about 35 different organizations to get an idea through design as well as through the implementation of operations. What do they need? And through those conversations, we heard a lot about we need this in order to operate. The operator needs to provide this. But no one really came to the table with the capacity or the interest to be the operator. So then the city had us take a pretty wide net and look nationally. What's happening nationally? Is there perhaps a group that comes together that's two or three organizations who are the major operators? They all get along and they operate the venue. What we found nationally either is that had been tried and failed, it had never come together, we couldn't really find anything that could be taken here locally. Throughout this entire process, as we did look nationally, what we found out really truly is this need for workforce development, not just as technical theater production, but holistically across the entire venue operations, venue management, facility management really came into play as the most necessary need. So from there, we started to refine down as we look at the operations of the facility itself, what truly were the needs of an operator? And so we then looked at this in terms of finding the right partner.

Yeah, so this slide really shows how we are framing the agreement where at the top of the triangle, you see city ownership is maintained in the facility. And that's important to us as this, we don't often bring a new venue into Arts and Venues portfolio. It's been more than a decade since we've done this. Also, thanks to every council that referred the bond measures for Arise and Vibrant and voters for approving those. That's how we're able to fund this project. DAV is Denver Arts and Venues. DAV ownership is a really important piece of this. And also because of that DAV asset management you see on the lower left of the triangle where we have access to bond measures and long-time capital to keep the venue running well, what we are seeking is support and a partner on the daily operations where you see that question mark.

From there, the question was for that daily operator, what are the different models nationally that could work here? And so we started here. As you see on the screen, there's five that were really studied in depth. A nonprofit operator, typically established 501c3 locally, who has the opportunity to do additional fundraising to support operations and programming, has the depth and the knowledge to be a programmer. But what we found is that there wasn't necessarily a nonprofit here that could do that as well as hit this workforce training and curriculum basis. The other option that the city knows well is a city run model, where the city would take this on. Lots of strength and opportunity there, but differences throughout the years with consistency, and again, not necessarily educators in building a workforce training program, so that question remained. We touched on the collaborative of organizations and continued to dig into that and work through that. And then we came to this institutional and educational partner. What was important here as we studied this model is not just to say who's doing this on their own campuses with their own facilities, but who potentially is doing this without their own facilities or really truly looking at technical training programs at the root of what they're doing that were matching other pieces within this. This became and continued to be the focus as we got through these pieces. We did also look at a commercial operator, another model that Denver knows well. This really focuses on revenue generation and frequency of use over education, community access, and affordability. So while that is a possible route, we really leaned into the institutional and the educational partner. We're going to be the best fit to really hit the mission for Loretto Heights with community access, equity, and education, and really thinking about that. From there, the city started to ask the questions, well, then who would this partner look like? What are these sort of characteristics of an institutional and educational partner that would fit what we needed to take care of for Loretto Heights? So here you have four criteria, and this really guided our next steps. So the biggest piece here is this idea of civic ownership that is focused on community growth. And then continuing to think about the talent pool, the workforce training, not only having people come into the venue, but also empowering the community surrounding Loretto Heights, finding something within the cultural sector that's really reflecting the neighborhood and a partner who could do that. This leads into the fourth criteria of how does this allow Denver to be positioned as a national leader? When we did all of the research, we weren't finding anyone that was doing exactly this. And so leaning into this as a criteria, finding a partner who could also help put Denver on the map to say, this is something that this industry nationally needs. This is what we need here in Denver. And this is what we did. Come look and watch and grow within this. That then led us to where we are today in the operator. So Tariana, I'll toss it to you.

So we are just thrilled that the partner that really came to be the one that met every single criteria point, as well as was the ideal partner to ensure that all the project goals are met. And those include equity, access, and also honoring not just the historic legacy of the theater, but the educational legacy. Welcome, Councilwoman. Good to see everyone. So you just got here just in time for our sharing of our excitement about the partnership between the city and the Community College of Denver, which is really at the heart of it is community benefit, is workforce bringing excellence in education, And we as partners, we know how to run venues. And what's also key is that they actually stepped forward and said, we want to support a future workforce. We can develop a curriculum in a way that has not been done before. And they need a theater to do that. So Loretto becomes, in a way, like we keep using like a teaching hospital. It becomes a laboratory for teaching the next generation. So pass it to our partner, Barry, to talk about CCD.

Sure. Well, as the college was exploring this, it became pretty evident quickly about the alignment between the purpose and the mission of the college and what this project was doing. We are an equity-driven institution. We have a diverse student population. We are a minority-majority college. We're a Hispanic-serving institution as well. Our student population mirrors that of the surrounding community of Laredo Heights. In terms of access, we are an open access institution, so we have a 100% acceptance rate. We're also very affordable. We have probably the lowest tuition in the area as compared to some of our colleagues. And 70% of our students who graduate do so without any debt, which I think is pretty impressive. CCD also has a very long history of workforce development programming, so I think we fit that very well, right? This partnership, we can create that strategic pipeline for the workforce. Or if students wanna move on into a bachelor's degree, we have those pathways as well. We have created a brand new degree, as was mentioned, and this is a little unique. We have a technical theater program. We have a black box theater. It's kind of smaller. We will often partner with MSU and UCD to use their facilities. They have kind of a little larger, but like on this scale, it's very unique. So that really required a new degree for that. So this degree brings together technical theater, hospitality, and business. And often you'll see this in standalone degrees, but to really marry all of those is a little unique and very exciting. We're going to design the curriculum to where the students get hands-on immersive learning experiences, so that way they are earning credit through that work-based learning, and they're earning money too. They'll be part-time employees of the theater, so it's very exciting. So upon graduation, they're not only going to have a degree, they'll also have two years of solid work experience in a professional theater. All that, I think that CCD is uniquely positioned to help fulfill what's needed for the project, serve the community, and of course our students.

All right, so how does our agreement work? So I have a couple of slides on that, and hopefully you have had a chance to see it. If you have questions about it, please reach out. I mentioned before that Arts and Venues retains full ownership of the facility and oversees the long-term capital improvements. And we will do that capital planning hand-in-hand with Community College of Denver. But they really will take on the day-to-day operations and the staffing and the booking and running the theater. So we hand that over to them. One thing that's true about most of the work that happens at arts and venues is that we make a net investment in many of our facilities. So the same is true here, which means essentially that this is not meant to be a revenue generating opportunity. There will be revenue from onsite food and beverage and events and from some commercial productions. But at the end of the day, the college will propose what a season and a budget year looks like and the city holds approval rights for that because arts and venues will stand in and support the operations. What we are putting in the 2027 budget is 2.5 million to support this theater and in partnership with the college. That is on the low end of the pro formas and the financials that Jenna helped us run. And that is we are able to lower that amount because of the partnership with the college and what they bring in terms of their own staffing and all the behind the scenes degree work. so we are really see this as a win-win for the city that we are able to operate the theater in an affordable way that we can absorb that we gain the workforce benefit and that we gain this community benefit that we've been talking about that we will end the presentation with too um And how do we guarantee that we have that community benefit that we've been seeking is through a balanced booking strategy. So we really focused on three types of programming with the cultural sector, with the community, and some commercial work. At the same time, we wanted to provide flexibility to let the seasons emerge as they emerge and that different opportunities come forward in each season. So this is really, as long as the college is hitting within these ranges, they have a little freedom to be able to curate and book and manage the theaters to this, which really prioritizes what we have heard from the cultural sector and many of those organizations that you saw on the slide. Tariana presented, takes between 60 and 88% of the time of the theater overall, because there are multiple spaces in the theater that could be operating at the same time. But we'll be looking to them to use the theater to support our cultural sector, to support community between 19 and 30% of the overall use, and then commercial at the low end between 5 and 17%. Two things to note. Jenna has helped us. It was really important to have a third party expert to do some of this modeling with us on what typical theater operations look like. So these are supported through pro formas and financial analysis to show that this is both best practice for how theaters are used and also it supports ongoing financials and it looks and feels like the mission. The commercial piece is really important. So when it goes up to that 17%, that actually gives students that experience to work on commercial productions, and they get to graduate with their two-year degree with that experience. So we see that as not really, it's a helpful contributor to the bottom line for revenue, but it's also really important for the students to have some of that work. But you can see that our priorities are reflected here in the cultural sector and the community, which is similar to how we use our other assets at arts and venues.

And here coming full circle when we even go back to 2017 and all of this time of engagement is the project goals were really centering community benefit and access and this project goals that you see here were informed by The community were informed by the cultural organizations and this partnership with Community College of Denver really meets all of the project goals, really centered in equity and access, demonstrating that thriving communities such as South Denver and the Laredo neighbors have access to this cultural gem. And what I think really lovely is we're not just preserving a physical asset, the historic theater, but we are actually preserving and celebrating and bringing back to life that educational legacy. Loretto opened as an educational institution recognized nationally. And we hear again and again how many people in Denver either went through Loretto in terms of their schooling or had their graduation at Loretto or performed at Loretto. And it's great to see that now many of them are either we're at the groundbreaking really rooting for this and looking forward to it, but it's going back to that educational goal. So the partnership allows us to meet every goal. And next, here we are. with you today and serendipity of or this is really meant to be because tomorrow the board of Community College of Denver is meeting and that's really a formal embracement of this partnership and then we go through the of course City Council formal approval process and then we After this partnership is formal and official, hopefully, then CCD really starts planning for opening day. We are on track in terms of construction to opening the doors in 2028 and we'll be ready then. So we'll have about 18 months which is really standard to get ready for our first season. Thank you. Any questions? Here we are.

Thank you all so much for the presentation. I'd like to welcome myself to the meeting. Go to him. Gonzales Gutierrez as well to the meeting. We have one person in the queue thus far, but if others want to get into the queue, please do let me know. Councilman Flynn, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the presentation to the Arts and Venues team. The one thing that I think Tariana ended on the presentation with, I think is the most important in the community, and that is the legacy of Loretto Heights performing arts curriculum. As Tariana noted, it was nationally recognized and a number of people who went on to the industry in careers is pretty well known. That's one of the things that I like about this arrangement. It continues the very purpose for which the Mae Bonfils Stanton estate endowed the construction of the theater back in 62, 63. so that this could be a place of learning, not just a place of performing where people come and watch something, but it's where the people who put on the production are getting the skills to go out into the industry and build their careers. So that's a really good full circle closure to what we once thought was the endangered status of this building when the college closed back in 2017. I do have one question for maybe for CCD or for Denver Arts and Venues. Is there an opportunity, and if there is, what does that opportunity look like for the stagehand union, IATSE, to have any sort of hands-on or involvement in any of this? Is there an opening for IATSE to be involved?

If it's okay, I'll take one because we briefed IATSE leadership last week and they were thrilled about this agreement. They reminded us that so many of their members either taught or have learned in the past at Loretto Heights. So we are going to connect them with the Community College of Denver so they can talk about what partnership looks like. We may have mentioned to Bryant, the president of IATSE, that being adjunct faculty, he could have a lot to share with these students. But as the college and IATSE talk through operations, those are steps to come over the next 18 months. But they did, if you see them at the Monday meeting, they indicated they want to come and show their support for this agreement.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Gretchen. I really appreciate that. Thank you. That's all, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate your questions.

Councilwoman Alvidrez. Thank you. Thank you for the work on this. Very exciting. Especially, I did go to CCD for a while, so I wish this would have been available at that time. But I'm really grateful that it could be for this generation. One thing that I don't understand is $2.5 million, that's not enough money to run a theater. How is that going to be sustainable?

Yeah, that is the net at the end of the we estimate and by we, I mean, Jenna numbers for this. That's why she's here. But that is her estimate of what we think an initial year looks like. We also know that we will have a partial year. So we have a little flexibility on what that amount would be. and really we're going to learn as we go so we have set up the contract so that we can time the budget conversations with the college to time with the city's budget conversations and then if we need to talk with them about scaling down or scaling up to make this affordable for the city to be able to stand in as that net investment partner will be able to do that so that was our best estimate based on the performance to cover what exactly to cover the gap for our revenue and expense at the end of the season. So some of the revenue side will come from food and beverage and events. Some of that will come from commercial operators that could come in in that last percentage range. A lot of the costs come in for just the operations of the theater and the utilities and the day-to-day. So we think that's the net cost that the city would need to add to the budget And then we will negotiate that every year with Community College of Denver. And we'll learn as we go. But that's our starting assumption. We feel that it's big enough that we have some room to work in. But that number could and will change as we come forward with subsequent budgets for city council to take a look at.

And are those monies coming from a special revenue fund or the general fund?

It's all from Arts and Venues Special Revenue Fund that we use to operate all of our venues.

Yeah. I'm not excited about negotiating another contract every single year when we're already negotiating so many contracts. So I'll just say that. And then as far as the college, how will the college be putting in funds for this as well?

Yeah, I mean, most of ours is an in-kind contribution, because we will be everything from HR to payroll, my involvement, adjunct faculty as well. I'm an education director too, so we do have a contribution. And then I think, as we were saying earlier, that helps to bring down the cost some.

So the theater will be used by students? Yes. OK. And the budget negotiation, we actually have someone at Arts and Venues who half of their job will be to sit with the team at the Community College of Denver so that we are trying to co-create that with them and set those early year expectations. So I hope it is not a contract debate. We hold those rights in this IGA pretty clearly and can help coach and co-program as needed, especially in the early years with our partner. But they're going to bring some expertise that we just don't have with their past workforce development. And as they hire on to staff, those staff positions will be part of this budget of the expense side. And then we'll look at the revenue and then we will forecast where we end. And we do that with all of our venues.

How is the special revenue fund doing? I know a lot of our revenue sources are flat. Is the special revenue fund going up, staying flat? Where are your projections for 27?

Yeah, we are going to be talking with you about that as part of the 2027 budget process. So we are experiencing what most arts organizations are experiencing, which is rising costs. that we see the revenue coming in to help address that, but it drives our overall budget up that balances revenue and expense. So we will bring you a balanced budget for that, but our base budget is increasing as we derive more revenue and we experience all the additional costs that other venues have.

So then if you're having a new expense of 2.5 million, you have to be taking that from somewhere. Where are those cuts coming from if you don't have a growing budget?

It isn't cuts. We are able to absorb that within our current operating based on our revenue projections, and we will share that.

okay yeah thank you thank you committee chair thank you um councilman cashman you're next oh yeah thank you madam chair um thanks for the presentation congratulations on this uh milestone uh it's it's been a long time coming i especially want to congratulate my partner councilman flynn this is The whole deal at Loretta Heights has really been a kind of a legacy effort for him over the time I think he's been on council. So really glad to see this at this point. So I don't want to go too far in the details, but you did put a chart up. I think it said 60% of the time would be for CCD, 30% maybe for nonprofits and 10% commercial. And what I'm wondering is when you look at one of my favorite organizations, the Levitt Foundation, do they fit into the nonprofit world, commercial? Because it's kind of like a hybrid there.

Yeah, the college actually has a defined set of days in the agreement that they can use, as does the city, for at-cost use of the theater, which leaves most of the calendar year. That top category is for cultural users, which are those nonprofits. That's 60 to, I think, 88%. Great.

Terrific. Thank you so much. That's all I've got.

Thank you so much. Council President Ramona Campbell.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for the presentation. I agree. Very exciting that it's all coming together. The educational aspect of it, can you talk a little bit more about, I think about CCD and I think about the concurrent enrollment with Denver Public Schools. Can you talk a little bit more about what that relationship is going to look like and opportunities for DPS students to have opportunities in this realm, you know, in the Loretto Heights area and surrounding?

Yeah, we've not had formal conversations given kind of our timeline with all of this. We definitely welcome that just as we do in other areas of the college. We see great potential. Part of this, just the scale of what we're doing is, I wouldn't say unprecedented, but it's a little uncommon in terms of the level of just immersion that's gonna be happening. We're not looking at performance, this will be behind the scenes. workforce training, that's the focus of it. So no, I mean, we would certainly welcome that. I think we'll probably need to get our feet first, but we welcome any of those conversations of how we can partner with them to include DPS and their students.

I think about the workforce pipeline that you mentioned and young people in multiple post-secondary pathways, right? And so the behind the scenes, all of the operations, I could see that being so appealing and just a really interesting and neat pathway for young people. So I just look forward to seeing what happens, certifications. I know that you said you had a new degree, but will there also be other certifications that are embedded on what you're thinking or

We looked at associations that had that. A lot of them, and that's where this is just kind of unique, rest at like the bachelor level or after 10 years of experience to sit for some of them. There are some lower level ones that we aligned our curriculum to, which of course align to what the needs of the theater are. Yes, but I also think a lot of the ones that are nationally desired, sought after, are really at the bachelor's level. So I think this two-year degree kind of helps to fill in a gap somewhat, you know, with that. But we're all about, you know, if there is an industry cert that is a value, you know, because there are some that are out there that sure you can... you can get and put on your resume, but is it recognized in the profession? So we are open to those, but really the two-year degree that we are creating, it really is unique. So again, I think we were kind of filling in a gap there with that.

For sure. And then just finally, and I know you're going to meet with the Board of Trustees. I would be interested in kind of the follow up that kind of like how are you measuring the success and those pathways and just what kind of, I don't know, evaluation that's being incorporated into the whole process. so that we can look at, you know, this is a wonderful partnership. This would be, you know, great for community and also have some real outcome data that we can look at for what those successes have been.

Yeah, and we do that on our side a lot too. What is the student success, completion, job, you know, placement rates too. So we would definitely continue to do that with this program too. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. All right, I have three more folks in the queue. Councilman Hines, I'm so sorry.

I forget who I am. Thank you, Committee Chair. Thank you for the briefing. This is a terrible idea. It's something I hope no one says because it's a great idea. I do have two things. IATSE, you were talking about college credit. Could IATSE have used these as apprenticeship programs or these students that are training, can they also be apprentices through IATSE or any of the 217 apprenticeship programs qualified by the state?

You're ahead of us. Sorry. Those are some of the operational questions we're going to tackle if we have your permission to proceed in the next 18 months.

Okay. And then I was going to say, we do have a process to award credit for workforce experience to credit for prior learning. So if a student is somewhere else, doesn't have to be at that venue. Definitely, we could use those experiences as long as they're aligning. And we do this already with the outcomes of the course to be able to award college credit for that. We're very open, very open to that.

Second and last question. The conversation about the city's contribution, the 2.5 million, and the percentage of market rate performances, 10%, I could see that that might be a lever or there might be the consideration that you might want to adjust those. Is that in contract? I guess I'm a little concerned about turning this into a full market rate thing and then not having any city contribution.

Yeah, that's why we put a governor on that range. And that's the idea of the ranges to allow some flexibility, but to guarantee that our priorities stay with what this theater is intended to do for communities and why voters approve this in the bond measure, which is for our cultural, which really needs access to additional spaces in our community that has shared even at the groundbreaking that they don't have meeting space. And Councilman Flynn has shared some of that with us. So it's a natural governor on that tendency.

We certainly have venues like Red Rocks and the Performing Arts Complex that really help drive the rest of the economy regarding the special revenue fund. I'd love to have them continue to be the driver and not turn this into a profit center.

Yeah, that's intentional in those ranges. I will say that the places we see revenue is in touring Broadway and at Red Rocks. And then without those revenue drivers, we would not be able to support all of the infrastructure and the partnerships we have at the Performing Arts Complex or other venues. So that's the full circle special revenue fund.

The Lion King. Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks. Just two quick things, because I know we've got a couple other things we've got to do today in here. This is fantastic. Congratulations. Super excited about it. Colorado Mesa. My kids are looking at colleges right now. So Colorado Mesa has a program where they... work with apprenticeships to do college credit that also can count for apprenticeships. So you may want to talk to someone there about how that works when you finally get into it. There are some other models, a lot of them around hoteling and hotel training, workforce training. Michigan State has a really good one. There's one at the National Western Center. I actually think we should do that with the hotel we're going to build at the National Western Center. But they're in Colorado. There are a couple of really great Colorado Mesa's program is totally unique. There's almost nothing like it in the country. So worth talking to someone there as you get into this. You are going to have a more than full time job. Do we run it, creating an entire curriculum and running, um, the education piece of this. So who is going to actually manage the venue? Like how is that going to work? And is that, um, set out in the contract?

Yeah. So it is, we have an estimate of the positions that we think are staffing the venue. They will primarily be hired and managed through the college with the day-to-day operations. For arts, and then I'll hand off to Barry, but for arts and venues, we will have a director of place-based partnerships to help oversee the contract and sit with that team about half of their time, along with other responsibilities. Yeah, right. Gretchen, I have a facility manager there, but they will have the venue director.

Okay. So I don't mean to interrupt, but we're running out of time. So I just like you, you already mentioned that. And I think that that's great, but that is a contract administrator and like city partner that is not a manager of the facility. And that's my concern, because that's not an education job, and that's not arts and venues job. So who's managing the facility?

It is in the IJ, I think 11 to 12 positions. So there will be a venue director, we'll have a technical director, there will be a full-time professional staff.

And they'll be hired as an employee of the college?

Correct, correct.

Okay, and is that a position that has been hired by the college before?

Like a venue director over? No, not at that level. We have faculty or we have folks that will help out with our theater program. But again, the uniqueness of this is the scale and that it is a professional theater. So in our partnership with the DAV too, we will be advised and we'll have folks We're crafting JDs as well with their guidance on that. So who we will be hiring will bring that professional experience to run the day-to-day for us. And then I'll also have an education director to help with the curriculum and manage all of the work-based learning experiences that the students would have.

Okay, because I think that the challenge of uniqueness is that there are gaps we don't know about, but I can see this coming from a mile away. You have to have a venue director who has experience running venues, and I haven't heard anyone say that until just now. So I just want to make sure that that is written into the contract as a requirement.

Yeah, we do have that and the job descriptions. And the reason I point out this liaison position is we also have a deep bench of subject matter expertise at arts and venues that will lean in, especially in the early first couple of years. But we will partner with them to make sure a venue director comes in with other experience. And it's not an educator becoming a venue director, I think is your concern.

That is definitely my concern. Yeah, we will be on top of it. Okay. I really appreciate that. Thanks.

Thanks. real quick list kind of adjacent to this discussion I'm not sure that I was actually aware that CCD had that hundred percent acceptance rate and it just brings to mind we've got so many wonderful secondary institutions in Denver it would be great to have a series at one of our committees I'd like to hear from Regis and like to hear from DU and CU and you know, the whole group on how they're doing and what they're doing as far as educating our kids. So that's all. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for the presentation. This is an action item. So if we could have a motion and a second. I'm learning who's on this committee. So, Amanda, you said.

Yeah, I'm now on this committee.

Followed by Councilman Hines.

All right. There we go.

Do we need a roll call vote?

No.

Good to go, thank you so much. All right, so our next presentation is the funding agreement with the Colorado Symphony, so we can switch out the deck as well as presenters.

Here.

Who's seconding? You're like, next. I'll tell them if we didn't get it right.

Melissa tells me these things. And then if you can introduce yourselves, reintroduce yourself.

I will start this time with introducing myself. Thank you. I'm Gretchen Holler. I'm the executive director of Denver Arts and Venues. And we go down in order.

I'm Johnny Wachter, the president and CEO of the Colorado Symphony.

I'm Julie DeWitty. I'm the chief philanthropy officer with the Colorado Symphony. Jen Morris, I'm the chief of staff for Denver Arts and Venues.

All right, we're here to talk about another agreement. This is a funding agreement between Arts and Venues and the Symphony, which is really the final step in putting together a capital stack and a set of funds for the full renovation of Fetcher Concert Hall. And this has not happened, we haven't had a renovation of this size in the facility. since its construction in 1978. And I do like to say when you're in the building and certain parts of it, it feels like 1978. So we are overdue for a wall-to-wall renovation. What this agreement does is really put that final piece of funding in that we need to get to $120 million total project. We'll go through what those other funding sources are. But this allows the symphony to use naming rights to help deliver $15 million to the project. And Daniel has the next couple of slides talking about the symphony.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Gretchen. Thank you so much for having us this morning. The Colorado Symphony being the major tenant of Gretchen Concert Hall with over 80 musicians on staff from over 12 different countries. We perform significant amount of concerts, education programs, so over 150 of them every year. And of the 300,000 to 340,000 people that we reach every year, over 200,000 of them are served through programs at Berger Concert Hall. If I step a little bit back from those facts, why we matter, we think that our art form really inspires and unites humanity for live symphonic music performances. So we are a curator of an art form, not only on classical music, but also with very innovative programs and far beyond that, we really generate accessibility. We think that Bertram Concert Hall as a community connector is programmed with the Corrado Symphony to create a sense of belonging. We educate in Bertram Concert Hall and create lasting memories through live symphonic music. A few aspects I would like to highlight in terms of education, accessibility, and economic impact on the next slide. About two-thirds of our programs are free or at discounted rates. And for example, very tangibly, we bring about 41,000 students into Virtual Concert Hall through our education programs. These are youth concerts, these are programs like Mini Musica, and over 5,000 of them from DPS. So education and accessibility are very important initiatives beyond being one of the nationally watched symphony orchestras for innovative and inclusive programming. And from an economic impact perspective, because we talk about a significant investment in the renovation of this beautiful hall, which has been America's first in-the-round symphonic venue. We wanted to understand what is the impact, economic impact of the Corrado Symphony in this hall, and we conducted an economic impact study. Again, this is the economic impact in Berkshire Concert Hall near the Colorado Symphony, but as you see here, with about a $25 million operating budget that we have annually, our economic impact downtown is more than double, with almost $60 million. And that's because we bring people downtown, they park, they eat, they drink, they stay in hotels, and this is really driving relevant economic impact. And another very relevant number is about $2.1 million annual state and local tax revenue. So that's in a nutshell kind of what we do and how we do and why we matter to the community as a connector and why this upcoming renovation is such an important initiative because it's the Colorado Symphony's home.

All right, I've got some slides on the project. So 120 million is the same project that we were talking about during the vibrant bond process and in those committees. It really is the base minimum to get to all four walls of the building and all of the system resets that you see here. Starting from the bottom, the things we've been talking about for the last year, upgraded HVAC, fire life safety upgrades, more energy efficiency in the building is an important piece of this. some of the deep accessibility needs that we can change in the building. We actually will go from 2,600 seats to around 2,000 seats. That's gonna help us with providing more accessible seating, looking at our acoustics, and having a new education center. So a lot of the programming that the Symphony does, this provides a dedicated space for some of that to occur inside of the building. And this really does allow us to set the stage for the next decade or more so that we can continue to think about additional phases but without a large enough project to really reset systems that's i think why this project has been on hold for such a long time we had to get enough of a project out the door we are actually doing the electrical switch gear replacement this summer so you see the symphony out of the hall that is because we did not have the replacement parts now that our I will say this out loud now that we've successfully reset the electrical switch here, but that was a concern that we wouldn't have been able to repair that system because it had been there for such a long time. So we are successful in that, but that piece went first. Onto funding, the capital stack, just a big thanks to city council and voters for approving and voting for the Vibrant Denver Bond Project, a program that included $20 million for this project. We did have some prior appropriations knowing for the past 15 to 20 years that we needed to do a large project in this building. 2008 was when I was in the city's budget office, so this project's been on my mind for a while. 2024, we were able to set aside an FDA tax appropriation. We're talking now about the $15 million from the Symphony, which really allows us to not use additional taxpayer funds, so it's a really important component of this. And then Arts and Venues has between a $40 to $50 million capital program every year to take care of the venues in our portfolio. How we were able to move some funds through a progressive couple of years. You'll see us move this project into the first three years of our six-year plan. And we were able to defer some projects without an impact on fire life safety or patron experience. You should not notice that some of these projects have been pushed back a year or two to prioritize Boettcher, but we do have some renovations. As an example, at our 1245 Champa administrative building, that's actually also the offices of the symphony and Denver Arts and Venue offices, we do have needs there, but we can defer them without much of an impact. We have some wireless upgrades, some door upgrades. We have some service improvements at Red Rocks that were easy to deprioritize while we are also focused on our backstage project there also through the bond program. So I want to thank Jen Morris and our capital team for helping us figure out how to get to a total of $120 million to get this project launched. Next, you can see the timeline. So we are working currently in 2026 with Dottie and the bond team on the RFP for design. That's active right now. We've had lots of interest in that. What we are building towards is that yellow bar, which is when we will be planned to be closed for construction. So that's from June of 28 to August of 29. That's a 15-month period. That matters a lot because it limits the symphony's time out of the hall to a single season. And Daniel will talk later on in the presentation about how they are going to use that time. But we've gotten good response on that so far from the contracting community, and we expect that to continue. That's really our must-have, that and acoustic specialties coming into these teams. And that sets us up coming back in for a first performance after the end of substantial completion in September. And Daniel will talk about that in a moment too. I will do a few more details on the proposed funding agreement, which is in its essence, it's a transaction of naming rights for funding, but these are the details that are important. They will contribute not less than 15 million to the city on or before February 1st, 2029. which is what we estimate to be about five months before substantial completion of the project. So we are allowing them as much time as possible to be able to do the fundraising, and that fits into when we will need to be making final payments. The Boettcher, I wanna thank the Boettcher Foundation. They have been a tremendous partner to both the city and the symphony in this. And as you know, it is currently, that building is currently named the Boettcher Concert Hall. They brought us the idea that they could move that name into the interior concert hall to allow the city and symphony to be able to rename and fundraise on the outside of the building. So that's a right that the Betcher Foundation has held from a 1977 ordinance. And their cooperation in this really helps unlock some of these additional funds that we want to bring to the project. Anything more than $15 million from the sale of naming rights, knowing that the symphony will also have other fundraising as you have philanthropic... work going on. Julie has other work to do besides running this capital campaign. But anything more from the sale of naming rights, the agreement has come back into the renovation project and to the building. So we know we will have more work that we want to do. So if there is success in that, we would be thrilled. The naming rights will be sold to philanthropic donors and follow all of the city's rules around tobacco, liquor, marijuana, or adult industries. So those are not allowed. You will not see the name of a corporation here. You will see an individual name or a family name. What we are proposing is that the arts and venues team knit together with the symphony. So our agreement proposes that arts and venues be allowed to approve the naming rights, both the major components and the minor components that the symphony brings through. They will be doing vetting on their end. With their donor base, we will be doing vetting on our end. This mimics what the National Western Center used successfully for their fundraising campaign. So that's the model that we are bringing forward to propose. And we are hopeful that is as successful as that model was. We will also limit naming rights to a maximum of 25 years. So there will not be perpetual rights. And that allows us to bring this tool back into play when we know we're going to have additional needs for the building and additional renovation, which we always do. The Symphony will bring forward to us their fundraising plan. They will share and get approval for all of the collateral that they use, because it's also the city's brand for the arts complex that is part of this. And they will do quarterly reporting so that we can track and make sure that the fundraising is going to be delivered on or before February 1st, 2029. Just the next slide, I've got two more slides. One is an example of the assets that can be named. So we do think there could be additional assets that could be named here, but these are ones we know with certainty will be part of $120 million project. Just pointing out the Symphony Center name on the top left side. That's that large gift opportunity that I mentioned. I also like to point out the seats and the seating sections because that becomes a more community engagement focused, lower dollar value. It's usually $10. I've seen it at the end of a capital campaign. Obviously, the Symphony needs to share their campaign with us, but that's something that even long-time government employees like myself can participate in. I think that's something that's open for community, and it really engages a lot of people at the end of the campaign before. before reopening, but really a lot of opportunity here and the symphony has done research on this from other venues that they have performed in and toured. So they helped us develop this list. Next steps, we're here. presenting to you, but we will have other agreements coming forward. So I just want to remind everyone here that we will see that design, that architect contract come through via DOTI and the bond program. then that'll be followed by a general contractor agreement that comes through for the construction. And also, the Symphony and the City will continue work on an operating agreement. We do have operating agreements with all of our resident company partners. Our current agreement will expire before the hall is complete, so we will be working on putting a new one in place and bringing that forward to City Council. And it really governs just the operational needs, the rent, payments, things like that for the Symphony to be the primary tenant in the building. And then I mentioned the $15 million commitment and the deadline and construction period of 15 months. So I'll hand off to Daniel to talk about what they do on tour.

Thank you, Gretchen, for outlining this plan. Again, thanks for the partnership to you and your team to approach to renovate what's the home of the Corrado Symphony, to keep it open, to keep it safe, to enhance it acoustically. So I'll quickly take you on a time travel to September 2029. Gretchen just mentioned, imagine you're in a new seat in Berger Hall. Maybe it's going to be your seat. So, and we want to come together as a community to celebrate two things. Number one, that together we have renovated what has been America's first in-the-round symphonic venue, and we've done that in full and complete and in time, which is very important to the Colorado Symphony, and I'll talk about it in a moment. But we come together as a community to celebrate that we have renovated and upgraded this important community connector. And second, I like the idea it's going to be a celebration about the Colorado Symphony also. Why? Because we have turned the necessity of being out of our home for 15 months, which is one season, really into an opportunity to get out into our communities. Today, many of you have been in Berkshire Concert Hall. We depend on you making the way to come to see us. During that time, obviously, we're out of our home, so we want to get out to see our communities in Denver, around Denver, in Colorado, and that's an opportunity that we're approaching. So that's why I'm very happy that a team member like Julie sits here as well, because not only is she going to help that we're going to fulfill our commitment to bring $15 million to the renovation, We will also raise additional money that allows us to turn this opportunity really into community connection and really show that we are a servant to our communities because we're getting out to play music, which, by the way, we also have to do to earn revenue. It's half of our operating budget. But also we're getting out to educate and to connect to communities who probably don't come downtown, who probably have never been to the symphony. So we come to see them. the huge opportunity that we see that we want to approach in a little bit of a scary time, which is why I really appreciate not only the approach to do that, because keeping it open, keeping it safe is very important, but also to enhance it acoustically and for us to operate during that time to have a reliable plan. So we're fully committed. Representing the Colorado Symphony today, I have the support of the board. So, we've checked the boxes on our side. So, I really hope that we get your support for this very important undertaking of a wonderful city asset, which has been America's first in-round symphonic venue and the home of the Colorado Symphony as a servant to the community. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for the presentation. So, we're a bit short on time. And so, one person in the queue, if we can keep it. So, one question. I'd appreciate it. Councilwoman Alvarez.

Great. My question is, where are you going to be during this time? Because it could be a loss of revenue to the city if you're outside of the city of Denver. And then how will you be uplifting the organizations that count on this space for events like Latin Beats?

Yeah. So, to the first part of your question, we have hired a gentleman who is on our payroll since June, and he has the job to identify all those relevant options that we have in your districts, in the community around Denver, in the SCFD counties, but also in Colorado to do that. And we will have very detailed answers about those venue options in the next six to nine months, because then we will have to plan that season, 2028-29. And that will include partner organizations like the Mexican Culture Center with who we perform Latin beats. We perform MLK every year, so we want to continue that. So we're in conversations with various venues right now, and it's going to be important that we kind of gain those feasibilities and commitments in the next, I would say, six to nine months.

Great. I appreciate that, Commander. Thank you. Thank you, Commander.

Thank you so much. Uh, Council President? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm trying to decide which one, which one question I'm going to ask. Um, can you just speak a little bit more about the naming rights? I have my, you know, fundraising nonprofit brain on of, okay, you have the naming rights. Who's the final decision maker on the names that are put into the locations and like, how does that, how does that work?

yeah so the proposal is for council to allow denver arts and venues to work on both the major and the minor rights and to have arts and venues approve minor rights would always stay with arts and venues and so but city council would delegate that to arts and venues the way that you did during the national western center fundraising campaign so i just want to be very uh explicit about that. The development of who those folks are come from the capital campaign that Julie will oversee starting, I'm speaking for you to go fast, but starting from that known donor base and those community connections that they've been cultivating for decades. And they will bring those names forward. Similar to what happened on National Western then before in this proposal, if arts and venues were to be able to approve it, we would also do vetting, which is what happened on the National Western Center project that we would look at background and make sure that we had names that we think fit with the city and certainly all of the rules of naming rights would be the same.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilman Hines.

Thank you. As this is in District 10, I just want to say I'm really excited to have the first major renovation, even first minor renovation since 1978 for the venue. I'm going to be sad to lose you to other places outside District 10. We want to come back. Yeah, so happy to welcome you back as the renovations are complete. So just I'm very much in support. Thank you.

So this is an action item. So I need a motion and a second. Sawyer and Hines.

I see you both first.

Thank you so much for the presentation. With that, we have a third presentation, so if you all might come up. Thank you. You're sticking with it?

Thank you very much.

We really appreciate your support. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Did you purchase that chair?

All right, this presentation is not me, but I will introduce myself.

I'm Gretchen Holler, the Executive Director of Arts & Venues. Tariana Navas Nieves, Deputy Executive Director for Denver Arts & Venues.

I'm Susie Q. Smith, and I'm the Chair of the Denver Cultural Council.

And I want to acknowledge and welcome Dana Manuthani with SDFD. Thanks for joining us today. Hello, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Okay, so quickly Denver arts and venues, the role we play with regards to we are a partner of in overseeing the work of the Denver county cultural council and to give you next slide please. You've got the slide clicker right there. I can do that since I'm not. So as a quick reminder, and I know you're very familiar with this, but just one penny of every $10 of sales and use tax is collected and goes to SCFD, and then SCFD distributes in three tiers, tier one, tier two, and tier three. Tier one is, of course, by statute, is the five big metro organizations, Denver Art Museum, Botanic Gardens, Denver Zoo, the Denver Center Performing Arts, which is the DCPA, and can I miss you? Nature and science, Sue? Then they received 64%. Then tier two organizations received 22% of the funds, and those are regional organizations like the Children's Museum and the Butterfly Pavilion. They have a qualifying income, also paid attendance, and then free days. That's how they become part of the Tier 2. And then that's also that formula is by statute. And then Tier 3 organizations, which is the organizations that were directly connected through the council, receive 14%. And then each county has a council, so a body that makes approval recommendations, approved recommendations for those eligible organizations and then they share with their own councils and then it goes to the SCFD board for approval. And just to give you a sense of just the growth back in 1988, 14 million Dollars were distributed to about 134 organizations today. We have about 300 organizations and close to about 80Million dollars that is distributed. So it's obviously a big engine and a lot of other cities and states are. really jealous of this funding source and reach out to us to NSCFD to say, how did we do that? So the Cultural Council in Denver is an 11-body member. Three of them represent Visit Denver, Denver Public School, and Denver Arts and Venues. Like I said, three of those are appointed by those bodies and city council, and we're very proud that we have a diverse council that really reflects the diversity of our city, representation from our BIPOC community, disability community, LGBTQIA2S plus community, so it's really following the statute and that requirement that it represents our different counties. This is more just to give you some insight of the number of organizations and very clearly that are physically in your council districts. That doesn't mean that these are the only organizations that serve and support your district, but that are physically there. There are many organizations that are outside of the district that support All Denver, and as a reminder, for organizations to receive funding in Denver, the majority of their activities must take place in Denver. So there are organizations that are not specifically physically in Denver, but the majority of their activities are in Denver. And statute for tier ones, for example, those organizations do not change. In tier two and tier three, in a way, that's an open eligibility process. So organizations, new nonprofits that have been in business for over five years then can go through that eligibility process. And this reflects that these are the latest organizations that have become part of tier three in Denver. And you are very familiar with many of them and you know they've been working as nonprofits for a long time. So they need that kind of runway then to become eligible. And here in Denver, there are two ways that distribute funds. One is general operating support, which is actually very unique and important when you think about funding models. Most of the funding, and this is not just here but nationally, goes to projects. So that general operating support is critical for organizations. And then in Denver, there are discretionary grants. Generally, 5% of what's collected is designated as discretionary funding, and discretionary is the key word, meaning that at every funding cycle, the council may decide to either use that at their discretion or include it in the general operating support, which is what you will see. And now I'll pass it to my partner here that will talk about the funding recommendations for this year.

So we found this year and last year that what we would normally use as discretionary funds, we found as the organizations continue to grow, we have newly eligible organizations each year, and the funding is not keeping up with it, right? So we're finding more and more organizations in greater need and fewer resources to distribute. So we've used the discretionary funds to also support general operating. And so that's what has been the large amount of the community need. So all of the council members are given a very specific rubric to evaluate the organizations. And they submit reports and proposals for us each year. So we spend quite a lot of time reviewing those. And we have a very specific rubric and metric in which we, so we can be consistent amongst ourselves. We've also, there were things that we were doing in Denver County, and Denver County is unique in the general operating support. Each county does it a little bit differently. But we decided to unify this rubric so that it was uniform across a lot of the counties. And of course, many of the organizations serve in multiple counties, right? They might be based in one, serving in another, and that's not at all uncommon. So we wanted to give them like, help them to understand what we're all kind of evaluating. So all of the districts now, all of the counties are now using the same rubric to evaluate organizations. And so it's organization mission and objectives, operations and strategy, equity, diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility, financial responsibility, and impact on county residents. And again, in Denver, at least 51% of the programming has to take place in Denver for you to be eligible for Denver County funding. Total funding allocation for Denver was 3.693 million. Again, 5% of that typically does go to the discretionary fund, but because of organizational need, we had all of it go directly into GOS. The top scores, so we, again, as we evaluate, the top scores were generally between 80 and 89.8, but the average score was about 73.2 across the organizations. There were 24 tier three organizations scored above 80. 100 organizations applied for funding in Denver. However, three organizations were not eligible because they didn't do 51% of their program in Denver. So we evaluated 97. And again, we see that number growing each year. So we had 97 organizations. The largest grant was a little over 60, almost 69,000. Smallest grant was $263.96. So we see quite a large variety of organizations within the tier threes, right? Many of them are organizations that are completely volunteer run with very, very small budgets. And then of course, you know, then there are the larger organizations. I think the largest organization that we funded this year, that received the largest grant was Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, right? So it's a larger example of the tier threes. And then the smallest organization was Colorado Cello Summit. at $263. So there's, again, a huge range that we look at. But we evaluate them collectively. So in Denver, we look at all of the large organizations together, and then we go by budget size so that we're able to evaluate them. Some organizations have a full development director. Some have, again, totally volunteer run. So we're making sure that we're not comparing one to another. But we're still using the same metrics. So top 10 scoring organizations, Colorado Dragon Boat, Warm Cookies of the Revolution, New Dance Theater, also known as Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Su Teatro, Access Gallery, Central, Culture Mecano, City Park Jazz, Environmental Learning for Kids, Artistico, and Biennial of the Americas. And finally, here's a high-level overview of kind of what we've seen in funding trends since 2021. So, of course, we've seen a lot of things. There were a lot of things happening during COVID, right, to come in through for emergency funding. We see the shifts that organizations need to. And then, of course, we've seen so many changes in national funding models. And so a lot of the organizations that were receiving NEA funds are not anymore. So we're doing as much as we can to support general operating budgets. But you can see basically the trends. The general operating support distribution grew from 2.3 million in 2021 to 3.8 in 2023. Again, and then it dipped to 3.5 in 2025 and then back up to 3.7 in 2026. And what we're, again, we are seeing these trends. The need grows higher. The organization's base grows every year. And so what we're seeing is smaller grants being made and more of them.

I think that's it. Thank you so much. All right, one question for folks, and I got you too. Councilwoman Alvedrez, you're first in the queue. Oh, they answered it.

Oh, okay.

Beautiful. Councilman Hines.

Thank you. You talked about NEA. I noticed you have EDIA explicitly in your list. I hear that the airport is talking about how they have to kind of redo how they consider funding. I think that would include SEFT, but it does not.

We're exempt because there's no federal funding. The SCFD does not receive any federal funds, so we're not to those statutes.

So NEA goes directly to the organizations, and you go directly to the organizations, and there's no pass-through?

Yes, and then through the state, it goes to organizations. Got it. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the presentation. You had said that more grants out to a lower dollar amount. What do the grantees feel? How do they feel about that? I mean, it's hard to run an organization. Every dollar matters. Every dollar counts. Have you found... there's a trade-off there as well.

Oh, for certain. They're heartbroken, right? Yeah. And one thing that's very, very unique about SCFD is that we actually invite the organizations to be present when we discuss their applications. So they actually can sit in and are encouraged to sit in while we discuss. And what we've communicated again and again, they know that we're in, this is the position that we're in, that the grants are going to be smaller and they just have to be. And it's not because we don't love them and it's not because we don't think they're doing amazing work, but there are more of them and there's less money. And so we communicate that at every single meeting, and we talk pretty in-depth about what things we value, what we're seeing in their applications, and so they're able to understand that you can score very, very well. Again, some of these organizations, we love them, we rank them higher than everything, and we still know it's being funded 100%. And so they all know that you can't be reliant. And that's one of the things when we look at financial responsibility, if they're over-reliant on a single grant opportunity, then that makes the organization unstable. And so we make sure that we rank it more highly if they have a diverse source of revenue, because we need it. They all need it. Because none of this is guaranteed, as we especially have seen across all of the nonprofit and arts organizations for the last several years.

I know this is one question, but I think that's tough. when you receive fewer grant dollars, but still have the same grant requirements, I would definitely have a, I don't know where to go with that on your end. And I'm sure you guys, I'm sure you all can figure that out. But it's also, if you're receiving grant dollars and still have that same reporting requirement, especially for the smaller organizations, there is a burden. And so just, I would just keep that in mind. And I agree. It's like you love the organizations. You want to be able to fund them, but you also want to be able to be substantial in what that funding is.

So thank you for your work. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much, Councilwoman Sawyer.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks, you guys. Wanted to just ask about the SCFD because aren't you guys coming up for renewal? The authorization. The authorization.

28 is the vote, and then it's on since 2030. So SCFD is in... Full, you know, full engagement process. 2028 and 2030? Sunsets. It would come into play. Whatever is the outcome is of the vote, then we'll become active in 2030.

So the one we have now goes through 2030, but we'll vote on the new in 2028. Reauthorization project is deeply underway. Dana could speak more to it specifically. But there are many, many community meetings being had.

Today is the end of a seven county listening tour. The last session is online. I think it's concurrent with this meeting, but then that information is synthesized and then the SCFD team comes back with some of those next steps.

Okay, can I ask one more question?

It's a clarifying question.

So does that, I guess I want to just make sure, and I know Councilman Torres has been very active in this, so I can go ask her too, but since I have you here. Does that mean that there will be language that city council will be asked to refer to the ballot for 2028? Or is this, does it go through the state and get done at the state level?

It is at the state level. Okay. The process of engagement and input is absolutely open and I think last time we were here on a CFD, their presentation, they definitely invited any input and any engagement that council would would be interested in. So, okay, great.

Thanks.

Thank you. Those are all the folks that are in the queue, so I guess I could have let you ask two questions. So my apologies. We don't have any, this is not action item, it's just an update or a briefing. We have nothing on consent. And so with that, we are adjourned. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.