Governance & Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee of Denver City Council. Thanks for joining us for the discussion. The Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee starts now.

Good morning, everyone. It is Tuesday, December 16. Happy holidays. I'm Amanda Sawyer. I have the honor of representing the residents of District 5 and also chairing this committee. We have a briefing today from our office of emergency management followed by an executive session. So before we get started, why don't we do a round

of introductions? Council Percham, I wanna start with you.

Wonderful. Good morning. Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Good morning, Darrell Watson, fine district nine.

Good morning. Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

District 7.

Good morning, Serana Gonzalez Gutierrez, one of

your council members at large.

Good morning. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

Alright. Thank you. So, Matt, you are are you doing our presentation for us?

I believe so.

Then come on up to

the table,

and we can get you all set up. At the computer at the end there. You can it should have your

Great old brainer.

Presentation pulled up. So you can just come and sit at the end, introduce yourself, run your slides, and you're good to go. I will say this is really good timing because Excel announced yesterday that they may be doing some power outages as a result of wind along the front range tomorrow, Wednesday, the seventeenth. And so what we're gonna talk about today is catastrophic risk overview with OEM, which is really interesting. Thanks for being here.

Happy to be here. Nice to see all of you. I think I know some of you more than others. I suspect I am probably the ED you see the least across city agencies or one of them. Maybe that's for good reason.

I was asked to come and give an overview and a presentation for you all, which I actually really appreciate because we don't often get on the radar, and there are some things that tend to get lost in the weeds, but I think it's important for all of you to know. So I'm gonna run through some of those today. Okay. So why are we thinking about catastrophic risks? And a lot of that comes down to that we focus a lot on the day to day for good reason and the concerns that we have of extreme cold weather and snowstorms and even things like flooding, cybersecurity,

all of

those things are very critical. But there are some low probability, high consequence hazards that we need to consider, and they tend to get pushed aside. And we tend to think that those things are just not gonna happen. And if I were to ask any of you in 2019 if we'd have the largest pandemic in a hundred years, the greatest social unrest since the late nineteen sixties, and the greatest flow of migrant newcomers into Denver that maybe we have seen 44,000 over a two year period, you probably would not have believed me, and yet all of those things occurred. And so I think it's important that we talk about some other potentialities.

We have seen specifically urban conflagration, so a large fire that takes off in an urban area, often wildfire induced, dam failure, and hazardous materials releases. These are all not only possible, but would be severe if not catastrophic. And some recent examples that were all over the news in the last few years that you may remember, so wanna just highlight these. One of the things also that I'll I'll point to is some of you may remember council member Ortega, former council member Ortega. Before her tenure ended, one of the things that she pushed was a rail hazmat bill.

And it commissioned a study that was done through some other city agencies and there were some recommendations in there. And many of those recommendations were extremely costly on the order of hundreds of millions even into the billions of dollars to try to implement. And one of the things that I said when this was up was that not my decision whether to make those investments. They don't seem economically feasible. However, there are other things we can do that are much more cost effective. And in the years since then, we have worked on some of those things and that's what I wanna talk to you about today. So I'll pause there. Any questions before we dive in?

I'll keep a list of questions so you dive in and then council members will ask at the end.

Alright. So let's start with the first one, the wildfire urban conflagration risk. I'm sure everybody is aware of the Marshall Fire that took place about four years ago. That was pretty close to the urban core, not not right up on the Denver border, but but close to it. One of the things that is with climate change and as we build out more closer in particular to open spaces, we have an increased risk here in Denver.

This map that you see here pulls on some of the burn probability, the wildfire risk from the state that they have provided to us. And you can see the darker colored reds on there mean the greater burn probability. And so the greatest risk from that perspective is out at the airport where we have a lot of open space in grassland into Green Valley Ranch, Montbello, and parts of Central Park. You can also see some areas in East Denver and Southwest Denver as well where there is some concern. But the greatest risk, if you wanna really pinpoint it down, is the arsenal.

It's the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge in that space where we literally have houses right across the street. If things are blowing, can blow into all of those houses that we need to be considerate of. Second one we wanna highlight is the Cherry Creek Dam. Now we have a number of dams in Denver, several of which are considered high risk. In particular, the one that we are focused on is Cherry Creek because of the age of the dam.

So Chatfield is a little bit newer. Bear Creek's a little newer. We have some other smaller ones within the city that are definitely risk as well. But when we're talking about catastrophic risk, where we would have significant loss of life and infrastructure damage, Cherry Creek in particular is the one that we most focus on. And what you're seeing in this picture here is the combined inundation areas if we were to have a catastrophic failure of both the Chatfield Dam as well as Cherry Creek.

So to the right there, obviously, is Cherry Creek in the path that flows and you see where they merge. But you see a significant swath of the city could have some level of water and damage if that were to fail. Again, extremely low probability by catastrophic consequences. And if you've ever been down to Castlewood Canyon State Park down in Douglas County and done that, you've seen some of the displays of the Castlewood Canyon Dam, which was the predecessor. And when that failed in, I believe, the early nineteen thirties, late nineteen twenties, it came through Denver and it was catastrophic even by the standards back then.

The

third scenario where we're sort of considering this is a hazardous materials release, and some of this is in line with former council member Ortega and what she was very concerned about. So this is some mapping that was done that highlights the rail corridors in particular because they carry the bulk and the group largest quantities of some of the hazardous materials. You can see those in the orange and yellow corridors there. But obviously, our interstates and some of the other worlds also carry some hazardous materials as well. Usually, the largest quantities that we see coming through Denver are things like ammonia, diesel fuel, chlorine.

There is some nuclear waste that comes through, typically from down in New Mexico and up into Washington State is the the corridor runs along I 25. But in terms of the largest quantities, it's the ones that you see there. So this is the one that I think is on everybody's radar currently. I threw this in just simply because the timing was right with this. And so one of the wildfire and consequently urban conflagration mitigation measures that came out of the Marshall Fire and is required by the Public Utilities Commission is for Xcel to have a plan to do a public safety power shutoff, and that is a proactive de energizing of lines to try to reduce the risk that in a high wind event where there's low humidity, it could spark a wildfire.

They de energize the lines in the event that the winds blow the the lines down, it does not spark a wildfire. Wildfire. Of course, the trade off to that is then you're de energizing power for, you know, potentially a very large swath of the city or other parts of the metro area, and then you have critical infrastructure. You have people that are medically vulnerable that rely on that energy that we have to take into consideration. And so that process, if you're following the news, is happening right now.

I will say that this is all managed by Excel. We are on calls daily with them. Our next update is at 1PM today, and we should have a better sense of whether or not any of the areas and you can see right now it's primarily just in Northwest, a little bit in West Denver that could be impacted by that shutoff. But a secondary component to that is, and this is the other part, is even if it is not if there are areas not in Denver with that, there's critical infrastructure that serves Denver. So some Denver water facilities, metro wastewater, other things like that that could impact Denver.

So it's of interest to us even beyond just if the footprint isn't within Denver. Okay. So one of the things that I advocated for a few years ago during the rail harassment study was focus on evacuation planning. And when I say evacuation, I'm not talking about a building, like you have a fire drill type of thing or even a few homes. I'm talking about a an entire neighborhood or large swaths of the city.

And so the circumstances under which we'd have to do something like that are pretty limited, but I just outlined three of them for you that we need to consider. And that's something that we've not had in the city and county of Denver. In my time here, I've been here in the city about eighteen years kind of working on this stuff. We've had evacuation plans when we hosted the Democratic National Convention in 2008 that was specifically focused on the downtown area. We've had ones for the Cherry Creek flood scenario I presented, but we haven't had something broader that sort of outlines how is it if we had to do entire neighborhoods.

What would that look like? We're obviously not in hurricane territory. We don't have a significant earthquake risk. Other areas that have to deal with this more often are much more versed. Nevertheless, I feel it's something that would be good for us to have and at least be able to practice if we needed to do something like that.

So that's something that we have taken on, and we've gotten support from the US Army Corps of Engineers and Persons Engineering to help us with some of the transportation modeling. As you can imagine, trying to move lots and lots of people out in an orderly fashion under a time constraint is very, very difficult. And so that's something where we need help because, again, we don't have the expertise in the city. This is not something that we do on a regular basis since we have to try to learn from others. Some of the key components of that plan that we're looking at is the decision making, which is obviously, again, much like the public safety shutoff that Excel is looking at to do something like this in and of itself, even if it's well intentioned, will have consequences.

So we wanna consider what those consequences would be. The egress route identification, whether it's better to use surface roads, interstates, that type of thing. What would be the methods? Not everybody has a car. Some people will need buses. Some people will need accessorides. Some people will need family members. Some people cannot evacuate. They have to stay where they are. All those are considerations we're looking at.

The alert and warning piece, how we notify people and communicate with them, and then the traffic control aspects. So we anticipate having our draft plan done early next year, and then we will hold a tabletop exercise at some point in mid twenty twenty six. The second main component that we've been working on is the alert and warning piece. And so, hopefully, all of you, you may have been slightly annoyed as most people are back in September when we tested the wireless emergency emergency alert and everybody's phones went off. I would apologize, but I won't.

We do that on purpose. We want people to know what they are, why we do it, how you get communicated with, and why it's important to keep those enabled. We also have the outdoor warning siren system. We test that, a live test every year in May, and we put out public information and awareness around why we do that as well. So we've been doing an education campaign, working with our partners at nine one one to make sure they're as first in the system because they're a twenty four seven shop.

OEM is not. To do that if we have to do something in really quick order. Also, doing some focus groups with older adults and, in particular, Spanish speaking communities on the alert messaging, making sure it's clear so we present some test messages and try to understand if it makes sense to people what we're asking them to do. Also, an evacuation area mapping tool, having that visual so people can see, don't go in this area, or if you are in this area, get out. And then the last piece is a memorandum of understanding with the state of Colorado for backup alerting in the event that either OEM or nine one one is not able to do it.

So I will pause there. Oh, I'm sorry. Last slide. The challenges piece of it. This is a little more broad. It's not necessarily specific to the hazards I've laid out, but these are some of the things more broadly that we have seen over the last five years that are significant challenges in the city. Transportation. We have seen repeatedly that RTD and DPS for various reasons are not always willing and able to offer up their buses or they can't offer up drivers. There's various constraints. There's all sorts of things with that.

And so the ability to potentially have contract bus service would be a good and useful on call resource. Facilities is always a challenge. I know we deal with this every single year with our cold weather sheltering and a lot of the other sheltering that the city does. That is also a challenge. It's more so if we're talking about entire neighborhoods where we have tens of thousands of people that are even if temporarily forced out of their homes.

Having enough facilities where we can send people to is a challenge. Staffing. I think one of the things that maybe was all on your docket last night was an on call staffing contract through human services and hosts. I will tell you that is, from my perspective, one of the single most important things we have done in the city in the last few years because we have seen every single time we have to do sheltering or emergencies, trying to pull city staff off of their day to day jobs away from their essential functions to help out with sheltering. It's a burden.

It's difficult, and it just takes resources from one area, puts it into another, and we lose something somewhere else. And so having an on call staffing contract, even if it's gonna require funding, we know all that, but at least having that as a tool in our bag is critical. The last piece I'll flag is the emergency procurement piece of it. I am very concerned that we do not have the way that our laws are written in the city, the ability if I need to do something very, very quickly and say, I'll give an example. The Surfside building collapse in Miami several years ago where they had the building collapse, you may have seen that on the news.

The tragedy that happened, the search and rescue that happened within forty eight hours, that building had to come down or itself was going to be a significant hazard to all the people around it. They needed a demolition contractor, like a $2,000,000 contract. We don't have current contracts in the city for that. Could I get that done in two days under our current processes? I don't see any way.

And further to that, despite all the craziness that's happening with FEMA and FEMA may not even exist, if we don't follow our city processes, we don't get reimbursed. And so we need to consider if there is a way in circumstances like that that we have to move quickly, how would we do it without breaking the law and without breaking the bank for the city and all the other services we have to provide? And that's what I have. Happy to take questions.

Fantastic. Well, we have a bunch of council members in the queue. I really appreciate this. We'll start with council member Flynn.

Thank you, madam chair. The wildfire Matt, thank you. The wildfire risk map I find intriguing as to how that's put together because some of the areas don't make sense. Let's start to start my own district. Four Logan National Cemetery, Four Logan Parade Ground. These are groomed areas. They're not they don't seem to have a lot of combustible dry, especially the cemetery. It's well well irrigated. I do agree though that Marston Reservoir is at a very low risk of wildfire because it's it's a reservoir. I'm curious why that's even on the list.

But then I look out at City Park. City Park and I don't know if that includes the zoo. I think it does that's 23rd Avenue. But Park Hill Golf Course is not on the list. Why is City Park a fire risk but Park Hill is not how does how does this get put together?

That came from data from the state of Colorado. Often, look at open space. I don't entirely know where they get their datasets and that's part of the statewide dataset. So this wasn't done specifically for us at our request. We just pulled that piece out.

And I had a briefing on this a while back, so I I understand that. Just find it obviously, the the Russian Reservoir is not gonna catch fire. So why is that even on the list? But my question then is, a number of my constituents have complained about the city's policy of not doing any mowing in natural park areas, naturalized areas. Even when they come up to a neighbor's a resident's backyard fence, we have six foot dried weeds.

And I had two seniors who lived next door on Amherst who backed up to Loretta Heights Park. And there were fires being set overnight in the natural area behind their homes. And it was frightening to them. They were in their late eighties, and they didn't know how to deal with this. And they were told, well, you can go out, and we'll let you mow a three foot area beyond your fence in the park, but no more. Is that a as an emergency management professional, what would what would be your advice to mitigate the risk of urban wildfire?

Tear down all the greenery. It's all No. I'm I'm I'm being a little flip, but I'm also being serious. This is the balance and this is the challenge, is that trying to have more greenery, obviously, in terms of the climate and the overall effort there, that's that's well intentioned and is good with that. If it dries out, if it's not maintained, to your point, if things turn dry, it becomes a fire risk Yeah. To do that. So there's a balance there. I don't necessarily have the answer on those competing interests to say which which is more important. But if you have green and it dries out, it becomes a fire risk.

Right. When the Marshall Fire hit and in the aftermath, there was a published map of the footprint of where all the fire damage occurred and how it fanned out from where ignited at Highway 93. And I took that footprint and I lifted it off the map. Three days before the Marshall Fire down in South Jeffco by the Hawk Back on c four seventy, there was a fire along the Hawk Back between the highway and the and the and the Hawk Hawk Back. And I superimposed the ignition point on that site.

And if if those high winds, a 100 miles an hour at the Marshall Fire, had occurred three days earlier, it would have come very close to Southwest Denver, believe it or not, and it stretched all the way almost to the Platte River. It would have wiped down most of South JEFCO instead of Superior and Lewisville and and those other areas in Boulder County. So it's kind of frightening. So that's why I'm I'm really mixed on our policy of not keeping dried grasses cut. Can you do an executive order or something?

Think that's an honor

for the mayor.

Council member Flynn, we've got ten minutes left and four other council members

I wanted to highlight that.

Yeah. No. My residents are very concerned about that out in Lowry as well. Great. I've got you in the queue. Let's go to council pro tem Romero Campbell.

Oh, I'm next. Oh, thank you. And thank you, madam chair. Thank you for the presentation. I just wanted to follow-up. And I think maybe some of these would be offline conversations as well. It represents Southeast Denver. District 4, the Cherry Creek is right there and the entire map that you show goes right through the entire district and through my house. So when you say that it's at a high risk now, is there a current plan? Is there an evacuation plan?

What can we do in Southeast Denver to think about it? Like, I've always known that we live in a flood plain, but it sounds like you're heightened concerned about the end of life for the Cherry Creek or did I mishear that?

So couple points of clarification. In terms of the evacuation piece of it, that's what we're working on. That's part of that plan that we are developing, so that is all underway. In terms of for the dam itself, each high hazard dam in the state is required to have an emergency action plan that the dam owner puts together. In particular, Cherry Creek, which is operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, has a very sophisticated one because it is managed by them.

And they have to update it annually, and they have all the notifications and the alert levels and all those things. So all of that part exists. To your point about when we talk about floodplain, typically, the floodplain is not that is not the same as a dam failure inundation. So when we say hundred year or five hundred year floodplain, that is just, hey, it's 2013 and we have the big heavy rains again and it's just naturally falling from the sky and where does it flood based on the hydrology. That's what that is.

Mapping and the flooding, the inundation based on a dam failure is very different. It is much more catastrophic and widespread with that. And so what that map assumes is truly that there is an over topping of the dam and because of the age of the dam, that dam in particular, more than some of the others with it, it is at a higher risk should it over top than to have a complete catastrophic failure in a completely empties. So that's where sort of the concern is coming from.

Okay. I'm trying to figure out and maybe we just can follow-up and we can go have a deeper conversation. So I'm hearing be concerned, but not as concerned, but it is a concerning dam.

If if you're asking me how concerned should you be?

Yeah. Scale of one to 10.

1% likelihood, 100% catastrophic. So very very low likelihood I would not be concerned.

Okay. Great. That's what I needed to hear.

But if I'm not concerned who in the city is, that's my job.

So

Fair. Fair. Back to councilman Flynn's question about some of the areas. One that I would highlight for you in Southeast Denver is the Highline Canal. And so you.

And so there are it is an area that just kind of runs through residential and does have a lot of fallen trees, a lot of dry area. It goes around Bible Park, which is highlighted in there, but I just would put that on your radar because if there were I hadn't thought about it, but if there were a fire, it would just it would have a nice snake like 10 miles right through Southeast Denver that it would go through. So just to I'm sure it's on your radar. Right?

The High Line Canal, not for wildfire, for flooding. Yes.

Yeah. Well, and since it's no longer, I'll put you in touch with the Highline Conservancy. Okay. It would be a nice conversation to maybe think a little bit more about that.

And then Alright. Last one.

That's it. Oh, I know we've got other people. I'll connect with you offline. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, madam chair.

Great. Council member Watson.

Thank you, committee chair. Matt, thank you for information. My one question is specific to your coordination with community planning and development for high density large developments like River Mile, Ball Arena. What discussions are you having as it pertains to rail? Are there discussions that when we have development adjacent to rail that may be carrying toxic stuff that council member Ortega was warning us about. What are your discussions with the city agencies as we do these master plan communities building new cities in our city directly adjacent to rail?

So the answer is we have conversations and we have a a forum quarterly. We do a hazard mitigation working group that looks across citywide agencies on some of these things where there is a nexus and overlap with that. I think what you often see is the exact issue we brought up of balancing, okay, our our climate needs with our hazard mitigation needs. Same thing here of density and the need for housing and the need for development and economic development with the risk. And how significant to the point that was raised earlier? Pretty low risk. And so is it okay to build things in close proximity? Yeah. There's a risk. And the closer you get, the greater the risk.

But at some point, you can't avoid all hazards. And so where that balance is, that's our discussion. But, yes, we have those conversations with CPD. Thanks for the work

that you do. I think my office is gonna reach out to you. I wanna have a a deeper sense of the lessons learned from our our the work that council member Ortega did and seeing what things we should be maybe diving a little bit deeper on. Thank you, committee chair.

Great. Thank you. Council member Cashman.

Thank you, ma'am. My concern, Matt, with fire that unlikely, that 1%, is on a day like we're supposed to have on Wednesday. Mhmm. Any house anywhere in the city in my district catches fire, and all of a sudden that 1% happens. Mhmm.

You know, so I don't think about grass fire. I just think about house catches fire that normally, you know, our wonderful fire department would deal with and but in this case, it gets it gets ahead. And in my district, I have so many where houses are 10 feet apart. Mhmm. You know, block after block after block after block. So that's just where my mind goes. The other question I had was on the cell phone alert that you did Mhmm. Does that hit a 100% of cell phones?

Nothing hits a 100%.

Yeah. Well, I mean, what your best

estimate Oh, it's it's above 95% for that. So any cell phone that's been made in the last eight to ten years is enabled with it. Oh, really? Oh, yes. And and they also can do you can select if English, Spanish. It doesn't do other languages. It's a federally managed program. Sure. Sure. We don't have control over it, but it will do English and Spanish with the alerts. The bigger challenge is people don't want their Amber alerts and they don't want these other things that they didn't sign up for. So they go in their settings and they turn it off and then they forget about it. That's the challenge. That's the biggest challenge.

And do any guesses to what percentage of phones are turning off the the alerts?

I I really don't know that, but that's part of the education we do is telling people, this is how you turn them on and you should turn them on.

Yeah. Thanks for worrying about all this stuff. Yeah. You know, 1% to me That's big. Is bigger than I'd like it to

be. Mhmm.

You know, that's that's in the realistic range. So I really do appreciate and I've had the opportunity to be in the OEM when stuff was happening and watching the coordination of agencies and taking it deadly serious. I appreciate that. Thank you, madam chair.

Great. Thank you. Councilman of the address.

Thank you. I have some questions just, obviously, the derailing the rail goes through my district very significantly, and I am familiar with the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio incident. And so I'm curious if we've studied that and what we've learned from that, especially around the alerts and residents not being told about the severity of the situation. Because when we get locked I mean, I grew up at post Columbine. So we get lockdowns. We get alerts. We get all the things. And you do become desensitized. So when do residents know this is a bigger deal? And how are we going to make sure that people are getting excluded? And how do we find out from the rail? How is the rail letting us know within a timely manner? Because I know that's historically been a problem as well.

Yeah. That that is one of the biggest, the notification change in the rail companies ensuring that they notify us. And in fact, there is not, to my knowledge, there is not a legal mandate for them to notify locals. Their legal mandate is to notify the state of Colorado first, and then the state of Colorado has to turn around and notify us. So that's one challenge that we have seen with that.

I I think you you bring up a good point and a lot of these are the dilemmas of how do you say to people, we know you've gotten alerts in the past, but no, really, this one's really important and you need to listen. That's that's the challenge with that of where's the balance of sort of the crying wolf and and trying to get there. I I don't have a great answer to that. We try to do, as I said, annually, we try to do a test and to make people aware, but we don't try to do overkill where they become so desensitized to it where they turn things off. And so that's the balance that we're we're trying to find.

I think as a resident, it's just confusing like when did the sirens go off, when do I get an alert, which one's more important, And maybe having something that explains that even for new residents and I don't know if everybody does like the first Wednesday where they do the alert. I do I mean, I haven't heard in a while. Do we still do that?

I believe oh, in terms of the siren test with that?

Yeah.

Second Wednesday of the month at 11AM. We actually moved away from doing a live one every month. We can do just a rotate only to ensure they're functioning to move it to for exactly the point you raised, once a year, do a lot of publicity, but not do it every month where people are like, oh, it's just the siren test and they disregard it. That was part of that effort is to not do it so often that they tune it out.

And why don't we do that with these alerts the cell phone? Because to me that feels more real than just a ping on my phone. Sorry. And then I'll be done. Thank you.

What we do so that we we do a live test of the the cell phone alerts once a year. We do that in September.

I mean, when there's an incident?

It depends on what the incident is. So for example, Denver 911 actually is using wireless emergency alerts now when they have scenarios such as lockdowns and barricaded suspects. They are starting to use that that WIA alert.

And the other one is for only weather?

For the sirens? Yeah. For that, we can use that for weather related events, but we don't use it for things like lockdown or things like that. Part of the reason is that when people hear the sirens, your action should be

Go to the basement.

Get in your house and take shelter. If you have a scenario where you want people to evacuate, you may not wanna sound the sirens. So part of it is we can't communicate written information via the sirens. So often, we'll use them in tandem.

Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Well, we have an executive session. So but before we get into that, I wanna just thank you so much. I will say I lived through September 11 in Washington, DC, 09/11/2001. And I watched the 1% happen in real time and felt the fear. And, you know, in DC, there's only a few exits Yeah. Right, off over bridges.

And so the transportation piece, I know this is something councilwoman Gilmore is very concerned about as well because her district is right next to the arsenal, and really, Penny Boulevard is the only way out. And so if there's updated information or plans that we can share with our community I know the Lowry community is very concerned about the open space right across the street from their homes. We've already seen parties happen there and where firecrackers have started fires. You know, it's it's concerning to our residents. So even though it is a 1% chance of happening, which feels so small and unrealistic, I think as much as we can help you share out the information for what the plans are, how things are addressed, we're here to do that because it is something that our constituents are really concerned about.

So thanks for your time.

Thank

you. Yeah. Absolutely. So we have an executive session. I'm about to read the language. But before we do that, I wanna just flag for everyone. After executive session, I will come back and adjourn the meeting. But there are a few items on consent that have not been called off that will just move forward. So with that, hold please. I have to put on my have put on my reading glasses, you guys.

I know. That's why I want

you A 100%. I will now entertain a motion to move us into

executive session pursuant to DRMC two dash 34 a three and seven for the purpose of discussing ongoing litigation in which the city is a party and privileged advice related thereto. Two thirds vote of members present is required to enter into executive session. May I have a motion?

So moved. Second.

Great. Seeing no objection objection, we are in executive session. We're still on the air. Yeah.

Completed in August. Took four years to build and lots of artisans who made the Florentine arches and the decorative wrought iron panels on all our open balconies and the mosaic floors that used to be throughout the hotel. All kinds of craftsman from all around the world contributed to this building and that's why it took a while to create.

It's hard to find a mistake in some of the stuff that they've done, like the stonework. And the stained glass was just an integral part of it.

I just don't think they're the craftsman and skilled laborers to construct a building like this today.

Upon the 7th Floor Level, in between the arched windows are medallions, and within those medallions are carvings of Colorado mammals, 26 of them. There are deer, and elk, and mountain lions, and bears, and bison, and rabbits, and sheep, and all kinds of things. They were done by an artist named James White house, and we call them the brown silent guests. The most original part of the hotel is obviously the atrium lobby. As people come in, immediately, their eyes are drawn up 100 feet to that stained glass skylight.

It's just absolutely stunning. 1892, that was unprecedented, and it became known as the interior space because of the natural light that comes through the skylight.

The skylight is suspended between the 8th And 9th Floors and is not actually on the roof. A transparent gabled window above allows in natural light while protecting the skylight from weather. Stained glass has been a Watkins family tradition for over two centuries.

My grandfather and great grandfather put it in and my dad and I worked on it and then I I've been working on it since. I was involved pretty much from the time I was seven till now, it's sixty five years. It's really pretty amazing how high quality things they turned out. That's what amazes me. There wasn't any clinkers in there that turned out junk. It was all top quality stuff.

Henry Brown spared no expense to ornament his 400 room hotel with the finest materials and furnishings.

The onyx that adorns the lobby and the 2nd Floor onyx room, it's very rare and was mined in the city of Torreon, Mexico. You just simply cannot get this stone anymore, so it's very unique to the Brown Palace.

The china from Royal Dalton and Black Knight and Limoges, all the silver pieces were custom made by Reed and Barton. The finest linens, the finest lace curtains, just top drawer throughout.

We generated our own electricity. We made our own ice. We had our own well water. It was just almost like itself.

Every suite of rooms from the beginning had hot and cold running water, flush toilet, shower baths. All these factors combined, from the moment we opened, we were considered by many one of the three best hotels in the nation at the time, right up there with the original Waldorf in New York City and the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago.

But the magnificence of the fireproof hotel did not protect it from a fire sale. A year after construction was completed, the Silver Panic of eighteen ninety three wiped out many of Colorado's fortunes, including Henry Brown's.

Because of the crash, Henry was forced to mortgage the hotel for fraction of its value. And before he was able to lie that mortgage back, it was bought by Winfield Scott Stratton, who made his millions in Cripple Creek gold in the eighteen nineties. Winfield Scott Stratton, after he bought the hotel in 1900, invited Henry to keep his office here and to even live in the hotel if he chose.

Just six years after selling his prized palace, Henry passed away at the age of 85 in nineteen o six. His body would lie in state in Colorado's capital on the very land he had donated. He was buried in Denver's Fairmont Cemetery alongside his family and near his chief architect, Frank Edbrooke. In 1922, Charles Boettcher purchased the Brown Palace, ushering in a new era of family ownership that lasted nearly sixty years. A German immigrant, Boettcher had built his family's fortune through multiple business enterprises becoming a leading industrialist.

Management of the hotel fell to Charles' son Claude who went by CK.

CK Boettcher basically piloted the hotel throughout the great depression, world war two, and right into the nineteen fifties. And a lot of the physical changes that happened to the hotel happened under his reign as owner. One of the big ones was the change of the grand entrance from the Broadway side of the building over to the Tremont side because of heavy traffic. So they closed that entrance in 1935, but I think it's a shame because now when people come in the Tremont side, they sort of feel like they're coming in the back door, and they are. To get through the Great Depression, the Boettcher family decided to convert the top two floors, eight and nine, into private residential apartments.

In 1937, they were called the skyline apartments, very prestigious, very pricey address. But the steady income from those permanent residents allowed the hotel part to continue operating without sacrificing any elegance or excellence.

In keeping with the fashion trends of the nineteen thirties, the apartments were remodeled in an art deco style. The nautical theme for the ship tavern, formerly a tea room at the Brown, was inspired by CK Boettcher's collection of model clipper ships. Boettcher's most dramatic renovation idea, turning the Brown Palace into a 26 story hotel, never materialized.

As early as the nineteen twenties, plans were drawn up to close off the atrium and erect a tower on top of the Brown. But because of events like the Great Depression, World War two, there just simply wasn't men, money, material to pull that off, thankfully. I don't know if the Brown Palace would be in business right now if that addition was added because it just would have taken away the character of the open atrium.

So instead of closing off the atrium lobby at the 3rd Floor and building a 19 story tower up the center, someone suggested building across Tremont Street. So our tower annex over there was built and opened in 1959 as the Brown Palace West. There's actually a service tunnel under Tremont Street that connects both of these buildings, and all of our housekeeping staff goes back and forth.

Decades earlier, there was a service tunnel of a different kind. Across the street from the high society brown was a house of ill repute. The Navarre, also designed by Frank Edbrooke, was originally built as a boarding school. But around 1900, the building was lost in a poker game to gamblers who named it after Henry of Navarre, a French king devoted to decadent living.

Not a welcome neighbor by the venerable Brown, but this was the case all the way from 1900 clear into the nineteen thirties, possibly forties, depending on who you wanna believe. And during this period, the two buildings were connected with a tunnel that ran under Tremont Street. It was actually a coal tunnel between the basement furnaces.

According to legend, the Coal Tunnel doubled as a secret passageway to the neighboring brothel.

From the beginning, we have attracted heads of state and royalty and celebrities, the social elite, the business and political movers and shakers. Some of our early guest registers actually have the signatures of people like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Queen Maria of Romania, Charles Lindbergh. One of the Brown Palace's boasts is that every president beginning with Teddy Roosevelt in nineteen o five has visited the hotel with two exceptions, Calvin Coolidge and Barack Obama, who I always say has no excuse. And of all those presidents, Eisenhower spent by far the most time here because his wife, Mamie, was a Denver girl. She grew up here.

So all during Eisenhower's administration, they would often stay here at the Brown Palace, and the hotel became known as the Western White House.

Even presidential visits could not compare with the fanfare that accompanied the world's most famous rock band.

In August 1964, the Beatles stayed here when they played up at Red Rocks for $6.60 a ticket and did not sell out.

The Brown Palace didn't want them staying here because they were the mop tops from Liverpool. They had this long hair, and Denver was pretty conservative town at the time.

When they were expected, the block was encircled by five to 6,000 screaming teenagers. The poor Beatles had to be smuggled into the employee entrance and up a service elevator straight to their suite. We do still have a Beatles suite. It's been done in kind of nineteen sixties style decor. All the prints replaced with album covers and posters, but the coolest thing in that suite is a jukebox that plays everything the Beatles ever recorded. More than 225 songs, you don't even have to put a dime in it.

The hotel is both a reflection of the changing cultures it has survived, as well as the originator of some of Denver's more elite traditions.

When you come through the doors of the Barone Palace, you are leaving a modern western city, and you are entering another time and place where you have elegance and you have beauty and you have refined customs of afternoon tea. And it's just a magical place like nothing else in Downtown Denver. The Brown Palace tradition that launches the holiday season for the hotel is our champagne cascade. All the furniture is cleared out of our atrium lobby, and they build a pyramid out of 6,000 champagne glasses. It's almost two stories high when it's finished.

A master swordsman who knows the lost art of sabering a bottle of champagne takes an antique sword, and he knows right where to hit the bottle at the throat so that the cork pops up, you don't lose all the champagne. He does this with four magnums of Muay Shandan, poise it in the top glass, it cascades down through the others. And even with four magnums, it never gets anywhere near the bottom of that pyramid. Since 1955, the biggest party that we host every year here at the Brown Palace is the Denver Debutante Ball. In fact, the Debutante Ball are joint owners with the Brown Palace of our huge 25 foot by 25 foot LED chandelier suspended right in the middle of the atrium.

It's spectacular. The debutantes come down our grand staircase in gorgeous white dresses, and then they have the first waltz with their fathers in the atrium lobby. The most unique tradition that we have here at the Brown Palace happens every year in January at the end of the National Western Stock Show. We exhibit the Grand Champion Steer. This silly tradition goes all the way back to 1945.

Two Hereford bulls auctioned that year for a record shattering $50,000 each. It made national news. Tradition was born. It's important to preserve old places like the Brown Palace because they're not just old. They are storied. They are iconic. Represents a time in the past when important architecture added to the beauty and the character of a city.

The changes that it made in the nineteen twenties and the thirties to now, we always wanna preserve the DNA, but certainly we need to be up with the technology.

Like any grand lady of a certain age, there are problems with leaky plumbing and internal temperature control and deteriorating appearance.

The Brown Palace has undergone many incarnations over the decades. An extensive renovation in 1995 revitalized the Victorian era in many guest rooms. The decors of Ellington's, the atrium lobby, and Churchill's bar were also transformed while maintaining their historical imprint.

Two presidential suites were added with our last major redecoration of the top two floors in 2000, and the designers at that time selected two presidents from very different periods of Western history. One and my favorite in the hall hotel is the Teddy Roosevelt Suite, and that's done in Edwardian style nineteen teens, lots of dark wood paneling and wilderness and wildlife touches because he was a hunter and a conservationist. And the other is the Reagan Suite, and that's done in California ranch style with mission style doors, wall treated to look like stucco.

One of the big preservation projects that we just finished was a refurbishing of the outside of the facade of the building. That was a three year project, one side of the building per year.

180 tons of Utah sandstone was used during the restoration of the hotel's windowsills and exterior walls. Historical photos and construction drawings helped specialists ensure the existing facade would remain supported during the replacement. Over the years, Colorado's winters had taken a toll on the brown's sandstone exterior.

Sandstone is a really foolish material to use in this climate because after a few cycles of freeze and thaw, gets very unstable, brittle, breaks apart, and over the decades, we've lost quite a bit of elaborate raised stone trim that used to decorate the outside and has not been replaced.

The hotel's silent guests in sandstone carvings were not repaired during the restoration project.

Unfortunately, some of those are so badly deteriorated now, you can't even be sure what animal they are. So I hope before too much longer, there'll be some money for some artistic restoration, and we can bring them back to their former glory.

One of the artistic carvings includes a bas relief of Henry Brown himself, ever watching over the hotel that bears his name.

The value of historical architecture is it's a touchstone to the past. You're not just reading about it, you are surrounded by it. To stand on an atrium balcony where Margaret Brown may have stood after the Titanic disaster, to stand in front of the palace arms and take in the view of the atrium lobby that president Taft stood in awe of when he arrived, That's the sort of thing that brings it to life. The legacy of the Brown Palace is that it has always represented the very best that the city has to offer. And this has always been the place where deals have been negotiated, where milestones have been marked, where anniversaries and achievements have been celebrated.

Things were built differently, things were built right, things were built to last. Sometimes I think we've lost a bit of that.

The stained glass is just part of that orchestra that Edward put together when he designed that building. I feel really proud that people can enjoy things that I've made. And I think my dad did and I know my grandfather Frank did.

I think the Brown Palace is a place for an experience. In fact, I got married here in 2001. The place is near and dear to my heart.

It's the repository of generations of memories, And I think you feel that when you come inside, not only what has gone in the past, but you are somewhat inspired to add your own contribution to the memories and the wonderful things that have happened here.

Good evening, Denver. Hello. Good evening. Thank you all so much for being here. We are so excited for this historic evening. I'm gonna give you a brief one minute history lesson on Denver that you're gonna be proud of to tell your friends, which is, did you know that Denver invented the Christmas light? Yes. This is actually this is actually true. We had a city electrician. His name was John Malpide in 1919, and you had regular white lights around the city.

And he had the idea for Christmas season to put bulbs that were red and green over the lights. 1919, he started that idea. And then in 1932, came up with the idea to take all of those lights and string them across city hall. So here we are almost a hundred years later, honoring the tradition of an amazing, innovative Denver City employee who said, I have a great idea, and now the rest of the world has Christmas lights. So we are delighted about this tradition.

In fact, there's an article today as Denver as the capital Christmas city of the world. So you picked the right place to be to celebrate the start of the season. And so we all wanna say a couple of thank yous. The big thank you I have is to our friends at Xcel and Robert Kenny, who I'm going bring up here in just a minute. But thank you so much to Xcel for making this possible. I want you to know that the the light show begins tonight. So we'll turn on the lights. The light show will begin tonight. And then at 05:45 and 06:45, it will run all the way through January 25. And so we invite you to come downtown, bring friends, bring neighbors, come see the light show, go out to dinner, catch a show at the Performing Arts Complex, catch a game with the nuggets or the Avs.

There is plenty of amazing things to do. Catch a wonderful restaurant, but this is a great time of year to be in downtown, be celebrating the holidays, and celebrating your hometown that invented the Christmas light. So I just wanna thank you all for being a part of this. Thank you for joining this wonderful tradition. I wanna bring up my friend and colleague and our great ally from Excel, Robert Kenny. Robert, come on up to the stage. Big round of applause for Robert. Good

to see you. Mister mayor, thank you very much. Welcome, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here with you. On behalf of Xcel Energy, I'm so proud to be here with you to celebrate Light the Lights. The holiday lights, as we know, were invented here and it's such a special tradition in Downtown Denver and we love to gather to kick off the holiday season. From lighting the lights to supporting the parade of lights to lighting the mile high tree, Xcel Energy is proud to brighten and power your holidays. We know that traditions like these are very important for a thriving city, and it's our pleasure, privilege, and honor to be a part of that. Thank you all for being here, and happy holidays to you

all. Are you ready? Can we get some young people to come help us lift this giant light switch? Come on up. Everybody come up. Are you ready? Now now get on up here. Get close. What we're gonna do, we're gonna say three, two, one, go. And on go, you had to lift this switch up. You ready? Come on over into the sideway. Are you ready? Two, one, go.

Hello. My name is Kevin Riggs. I'm with Rocky Mountain National Park. I'm part of the fire program here. I run a small group of firefighters.

We call ourselves module three two, and we're a suppression module that has a type six fire engine. We are responsible for initial attack, which is any new fires inside the park as well as the big ones as well. Currently, we are, on the Deer Mountain fuels project site. We refer to these as hazardous fuels reduction projects. When we are not fighting fires, we are working on preventing the next one from becoming large and hard to suppress.

So we're out here cutting a lot of material, dead trees, as well as some of the living trees to thin out the area so when a fire does occur that it will be less intense, safer for the firefighters, and less likely to leave the park into the neighboring community of Estes Park. So when we complete these piles, later, possibly the the next winter or two winters afterwards when they have time to dry out, We will burn them when there is a lot of snow on the ground, and, it eliminates all the hazardous fuels or the heavy fuel loading that we see in our forests. So, when fires become large and hard to maintain and control, it is largely due to, the heavy fuel loading. And, that's what we're trying to do is reduce the amount of fuels out here. So when there's lots of heavy fuels, the logs, in the area, the fires will burn more intense and last a lot longer and a higher potential for to kill the trees and have the fires move fast through the living, through the canopies of the timber.

So this is a diverse stand we have here with a lot of different species. We have, aspen, quaking aspen, populus tremuloides. We have Douglas fir right here, Pseudotsuga minzicii, as well as lodgepole and ponderosa pine and limber pine. We we'll see represented all throughout us. Some are maybe more difficult to sorry.

Cause issues when fighting fires than the others, but we're not really doing a whole lot of, preferential of one species over the others with a few exceptions of the aspen and limber pine. They could all cause issues with fighting fires, especially the pine trees which can torch and cause running crown fires. That's one of the main things we're doing out here is increasing the spacing between the trees, So if they are to catch on fire, it won't burn the next tree over.

Could you maybe explain a

little bit, like, what do you

mean by crown fire?

Yeah. So there's multiple types of crown fire, but the main one we're con concerned about is a running crown fire where the fire leaves the forest floor and on the ground and climbs up into the trees. And then with some wind or possibly slope, it can just move through the canopies of the trees unlike a ground fire where it's just burning underneath the trees. Those are very difficult to control and are very hazardous to, the firefighters attempting to control it, and also it'll move a lot faster and be a threat to the communities nearby. Well, you know, these trees evolved with fire, and you can see a lot of these tree species have, you know, evolved with different methods of living with fire.

Some of them have actually evolved in order to die by fire as part of the life cycle. So it is a natural phenomenon. So but we're just trying to bring it back a little bit closer to the natural state where the fires are a little more frequent and less intense. So that's why I care about it. Well, you know, firefighters, I wouldn't consider us all scientists, you know, but a lot of us, we do consider ourselves students of fire.

And and, I learned about this when I was, going to college here in Colorado and, was studying natural resource management and took some courses that, you know, fire is a part of natural resource management. And I was fascinated as well as other students in the program, were doing it as a summer job. And, it sounded like a lot of fun, and I did it for a few summers. And here I am twenty some years later. And it's officially a career, I believe, at this point.

My name is Alex Lorenz. I'm a forestry technician here at Rocky Mountain National Park. It's my second year on the suppression module, and, two years ago here, I started as a conservation corps member. So definitely, think the best way to get involved with this is to work on a conservation corps crew. Most national parks have them.

Lots of like, I think national forests might also, but lots of opportunities to do really cool work like trails work, sometimes wildfire, hazardous fuels treatment work like we're doing here. And, yeah, really, really cool stuff, and it's a great, entry opportunity to get into wildfire. So the day to day is very different, depending on if we're on a fire or if we're waiting to hopefully go to a fire sometime soon. So when we're here at the park, a lot of what we're doing is, concerns this hazardous fuels treatment project. So we're here, cutting and stacking material like the one you see behind me.

I don't if you can see that in the shot. And then other one of our primary job functions also is to go around the country and fight wildfires. And so our day to day really depends on whether we're going to a fire or here at the park working. We are we have a a region that con contains most of Colorado and some other corners of the surrounding states, where we are available to go to fires any day. And then also, we can go, available nationally to respond to wildfires on a national level, but that's a more infrequent occurrence.

I haven't been doing this job all that long, so I haven't had a ton of fire experience. But definitely, the coolest for me was a fire in Zion National Park last year, and we were one of the IA resources on that fire and got to take the fire from first call all the way to the end. We were the last people there, it was really cool seeing the whole life cycle of how wildfire response occurs. In addition to, fuels, as you just mentioned, probably the biggest thing that impacts fire size is wind and overall weather. Wind really has the capacity to drive fire behavior and is one of the biggest things that people look out for.

Getting to travel to some really cool places with really cool people and do really cool stuff, and you never really know what the next day is gonna look like.

Hi. I'm Ethan Daley. I'm the engine captain and assistant crew lead for Module 32, which is the fire suppression module and fuels module for Rocky Mountain National Park. Yeah. So here in the park, we have three separate crews. We've got the Alpine Hotshots. So they're a type one, IHC they call them, or hotshot crews. They're hand crew. There's our crew, which is a fire suppression module and fuels module. And then there's the fire effects crew, which you'll probably talk to Chris in a little bit too.

I actually have a degree in social work, so social sciences. But I got into firefighting via AmeriCorps. I'd never heard of fire. I grew up in Michigan, where it's there's not as many fires as they have out west. And one of my friends had done it, and I said, wow, it seems like a cool job, and it is. It's a lot of fun. So I did that nine years ago. It was my first year in fire, and yeah, worked for the Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife, all beginning with AmeriCorps. So we do have volunteers come out and help us. So I have the pile behind me here.

It was built by volunteers actually, or they helped build it. Obviously the volunteers aren't running chainsaws and and that stuff, so we come out and we'll cut. But a lot of the work is making these big piles, and the more people we have, the more you know, the easier the work is for us. So we have groups of volunteers from the Rocky Mountain Conservancy, and just from the local community come out sometimes and help us. So we yeah.

It's a big help to us whenever we can get a group to come out. You know, and just making sure that your own homes are taken care of as far as fuel mitigation reduction around them, because it makes our job during wildfires, so much easier when people are actually taking care of the fire risk around their homes. So the National Park Service, as well as the US Fish and Wildlife, the Forest Service, they all the public land agencies manage fuels in the same way pretty much. It takes a lot of funding and a lot of planning to do these projects, but they're being done all across the West and all across the country really. There's a lot more time and funding being put into it now because the the need's greater.

There hasn't been natural fire in these ecosystems for a long time. So there's a lot more fuel, you know, buildup and, you know, more need for this fuel reduction. So there's a lot more of these projects coming up, but they've been being done for years and years throughout all these different agencies across The US. It's really hard work. We are gone for two weeks at a time when we're on wildfires, and you don't get to shower, and you have to sleep on the ground.

But we get to camp out, and we have a lot of fun. And, know, it's a good experience, but it is a hard job. I get to light stuff on fire and get paid for it. You know, to put out fires, a lot of times we use burnout operations, and we light fires in front of the oncoming wildfire, or to treat fuels. That's another way of treating fuels is to burn them.

So yeah, getting to light fires in the forest is pretty cool in a controlled way. The way you fight a wildfire is if a fire is coming towards you, you try to get rid of one of three things, either fuels, oxygen, or as heat sources. So we do that by spraying water to get rid of oxygen, the heat, or getting rid of fuels, so we'll cut, similar to what we're doing back here, and we'll dig line, and then what we do is we light a fire along the line that we dug, the trench that we dug, and that makes a big area of burned material that when the fire does come and hit that area of burned material, there's nothing left to burn, and it goes out. So it's going to burn anyway. We might as well do it while we can do it safely and on our own terms, and then when the fire comes, it hits a burned area and it goes out.

Cool. Yeah.

Anything else you wanna add?

It's a really fun job. The park service is a fun place to work, so yeah. That's it. Cool.

So we're constantly battling trash, sediment, and debris. It looks like it has some heavy sediment and buildup in it. They're invasive, and they create a issue for the rest of the plants. We're currently gonna inspect it with our camera and see what we got going on.

Finding the balance between safety and impact is hard.

That's what we do. This is the dirty part of PWQ. My name is Jesse Aveda. I'm the t m two here over at Permanent Water Quality. We're out here basically removing any trash or debris that's left behind by the public, weed whipping and identifying and mitigating invasive species of weeds.

And they're invasive, and they create a issue for the rest of the plant, so it's good to spray them, identify them, remove them. The debris and pollutants from roads and runoff obviously leach down into the waterways and could be horrible for the environment causing erosion, plant decay, vegetation removal. Control measure is something that will capture sediment and debris and remove it from entering our waterways. We're here in Sedalia expecting a culvert with our Q's camera, so we're gonna go inspect it and see what the issue is. But that's it.

Found our problem. The issue with it today is there's a lot of heavy sediment and trash built up. If it doesn't function properly, we get a lot of buildup and then eventually overflow, which cause flooding and a lot of damage to vehicles where they're sliding out or wrecking. So the main idea is to remove sediment and this soggy stuff, let it dry. Eventually, once it dries, we'll come back and remove it.

So we want it to look like this. As you can see, it's a lot of trash, and it's unfortunate. It's sad to see. You look at stuff like this, you know, every single one of us throws a piece out. We're causing damage to our waterways. That's what VWQ is focusing on. How do we mitigate this issue? How do we stop this issue from happening over and over repeatedly? And this isn't just the only one. You know? There's 421 control measures throughout the state that we focus on, frustrating, but we're here to do it. We're here to keep Colorado beautiful.

We go to extreme measures to to try to reduce that impact to the environment and still provide the safety to the motoring public. For example, in our plows, we use technology that measures what we're putting out. What I find most rewarding about my job is seeing the impact of what we do in a positive way. And so taking a control measure or roadside vegetation that's weedy and overgrown and then putting it back to more natural appearance, and then waterways, seeing the sediment removed, litter debris, and seeing that clean water come out the backside of that outlet structure.

Most people don't know what we're doing every day and the impact that we're having, but that's okay. We'll keep doing it.

Working for CDOT as a highway worker, CDOT is one of the first emergency responders that need to be on scene, be it to close the road or to find out what does law enforcement need to know. Being available to respond to emergency in a timely manner is extremely important. But the unfortunate things about the mountain towns is that it is very expensive to live out here.

When people think of CDOT, they think of roads, maybe bridges, but CDOT's property management team are really the unsung heroes behind what makes all of our crews tick. From demolition to design to construction, CDOT property management manages all buildings and rest areas statewide, keeping them up and running, keeping them in good condition, and then replacing them when it's time to replace them.

Our property management division does more than what you might think. We have an environmental program that does a lot to support the roadways themselves. We have a design and construction group which builds all of of our maintenance sites, our office buildings, and then we have a real estate and asset management group that generates revenue through leases and property sales. A lot of our most critical transportation corridors are in some of the most expensive places to live in Colorado. We've really determined that building our own housing is really the only solution to to that problem.

Fair Play was our first workforce housing development that we did as a agency, and it allowed for people to live in a challenging housing market and serve critical corridors for us, including 285 and Highway 9.

We also have been able to make strategic partnerships to make housing developments that serve not CDOT but others in the community to make those great places to live and work. Frisco, the Colorado Department of Transportation, and the Department of Local Affairs have all worked together to build 22 units on this site. It's a mixture of two bedroom, one bedroom studio units, all priced in order to be able to house CDOT workforce, state workforce, and locals that's gonna benefit everybody from the state on dam.

I'm one of the first tenants that will be here at the Granite Park affordable housing. I'm very fortunate to be able to bring my family into a great town like this where we have world class skiing, great restaurants. There's a lake out here. And being able to live in these towns close to work through affordable housing is really beneficial to get out on the road and respond to emergencies.

A project like this is so important to have Colorado Department of Transportation workforce living, working, and being able to operate out of Frisco.

Colorado is a great place to live, and by supporting our maintainers, it improves the experience for anyone who's using our roads.

You can just see a turnaround in morale with the staff to live in the area where they work, to invest in a community and be a part of that community. And I'm very hopeful that we can continue to provide that service across the state for employees for generations to come.

The purpose of our traffic control is to keep the road workers safe.

The traffic doesn't stop. There's no break. You can't walk across the lanes.

Everything out there is unpredictable. You don't know if someone's on their phone or not paying attention or watching. I mean, we're just out there trying to do our jobs, make it safer for people.

Recently, there was a tragedy that involved two CDOT employees. It made people realize just how dangerous our jobs could be instead of people coming in traffic control class. This is just a box I have to check. This is really pertinent information to help you be safe.

So we're doing a traffic control technician training endorsement. It's a full day training here. In a live active situation, you wanna make sure that everybody participating is trained and know what they're doing. And so this training is gonna make sure we're all ready to direct traffic and be able to take care of ourselves and our coworkers, our friends, and be able

to see our families.

Tonight we got a t l three smart cushion that we're replacing. We've been in the metro area. There's lanes that we can't close down during the daytime. So we have to come in at nighttime and be able to actually shut a lane down with the high volume that we have in the metro area. The preliminary process is getting all the guys ready, letting them know where they're gonna be, what they're doing, what equipment we need, any hazard that might be on the job site.

Then we'll start setting the traffic control, so our crew will go out, start dropping signs on the highway. All of our cones and everything are clean, they're reflective. That way people see them and know they have to steer out of the way. We're on a 55 mile an hour highway, so we want people to know in advance that, hey, we're out here, we're on the road, we're trying to get something done to make it safer for them, and then we want to be safe ourselves. Most of the training here is actually on the job. I have

multiple trucks that are gonna be staged. The attenuator has a scorpion on it and that's what actually protects us if somebody's gonna actually run into our job site and hit that. So that's the most important piece of equipment on our job site.

At the end of the day, everybody should be able to go home. And so would you not wanna slow down and would you not wanna protect them?

We're all a CDOT family, so we want everyone to go home to their actual families, but be safe and work well together while they're here as well.

Well, we actually have CDOT values here, and safety is the first one. And the most important part of our job is the traffic control.

Hey. I'm Megan. I own Canada Botica here in Denver, Colorado. I love my job. What don't I love? When people think it's okay to drive high. It puts lives at risk, and it's a really bad look for the culture we love. As we know, cannabis these days comes in many forms. Any form and any amount can impair your ability to drive. It's just not worth the risk. I wanna wanna keep my customers, my friends, and my community safe. It's your job. It's my job. It's our job. People, please don't drive high.

A civil rights victory from 1930 Colorado. Also, keeping a city beautiful, behind the scenes at a holiday tradition, and making learning more fun. We'll take a look at some enduring stories on this edition of Connected Colorado. Hello, everyone. I'm Gary Shapiro.

Shapiro. Speaking of enduring, how about 100,000,000 year old dinosaur tracks? We're at Dinosaur Ridge just West of Denver, and we're gonna learn more about this fascinating place coming up in just a bit. But first, back in 1939, Maddie Lyle, a black woman from Fort Collins, was denied access to the state theater. She sued the theater and she won. That was a rarity back then. Recently, Maddie's granddaughter visited Fort Collins to learn about her grandmother's legacy.

Hi. I'm Mariam Bizdek, historic preservation manager for the city of Fort Collins. Here in our downtown, we walk past buildings all the time that contain hidden stories from our community's past.

Were you going for a walk anytime?

Actually tell me about six, baby. Oh.

All right. I see that we're back on air, but I don't see anything on the screen. Are we good to go? Okay. Great. Thank you so much. We're back from executive session, and we're adjourned. Have a great day.