City Council - workshop

Thank you. Thank you.

Councilor Azadi?

No.

Okay.

Councilor Haught? No. Councilor Brajas?

Thank you, Mayor. A few, it was a pretty busy week, but a few things that I want to highlight. I had a chance to visit this weekend with the low-cost pet vaccination clinic out at Westview with our animal control department and a few other groups worked together to give some low-cost vaccinations. Spay Today, I believe, is the name of the organization, the nonprofit that we partnered with, and they, really incredible, I got a chance to meet the CEO and, all right, the... group and they were just really happy to partner with our city they they have we have a six-month cycle that we uh go do it partner with them and we drew people from all across the i mean i say the state but at least the metro area we saw people from you know denver from thornton from north glenn from broomfield a lot from westminster as well so it was a a great time and lots of cool uh cats and dogs that were there they'd also do bunnies that group also does uh rabbits yeah And Councilor Johnson and I had a chance to go to Fire Station 2.

It was a back-to-school event where we had to get, not we, but the organizations gave some backpacks, had some cool treats. It was for the Hmong Colorado women put it on.

It was a great chance to be able to meet with folks who I don't normally get a chance to interact with, who the city doesn't normally have a chance to interact with, and I was grateful for our fire department for partnering with them, and I was really grateful for HMAC and Mung Colorado Women who invited us out for that event, and we had a chance to make some connections, and I encourage them to really reach out to anyone here at the city for continued partnership, and hopefully we have some more events and some more insight and programming that we can coordinate with them on.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Ireland. So it's my anniversary today, 42 years. Happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. You're out there. So this last week I was at a family reunion, 27 of us in my family now, and that's the first time we've been together for 10 years. So super fun. Didn't get to go to all the activities I liked in the city because of that, but know that I was there. And I did try to get on the RTD Connect meeting and somehow they lost my connection. So I asked for a summary, still waiting for that. So when I get it, I will let you know what the summary was with that. Anyway, that was my week and it was busy, but I'm glad others were able to attend some of these things that I wanted to.

Thank you. That's all. Councillor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. I just had a couple of notable events. The first one is the Inclusivity Board last Wednesday. They wrote us a letter in our packets related to some work that they're doing. And they continue to do really good work to make sure the city is inclusive. And I'm happy to just listen to their work and hear what they have to say. As a board of the city, Their volunteer service is really appreciated. We did an informational session on some of our PR and L and other communications tools as a city. I know that's a big topic for you. It's also a really big topic for all of us as we figure out how to better communicate with the residents and they had a lot of good ideas and we're talking about a lot of the work that they're doing to improve our communication. So it was great to hear from them. And then finally, I joined Councilor Bras at the HMAC event. And shout out to Fire Station 2, because they were gracious hosts after going on seven calls during that shift, beginning of that shift. So they were pretty worn out, but still really great hosts for that event.

Question for you, follow up on the Inclusivity Board. There is a concentrated group of residents that's been bringing, they want to bring forward an initiative for the sister cities. And I've talked to them months ago. I sent them to work with the Inclusivity Board and they want to meet with me again later this week, actually. How is that going? Is there any progress on that front?

Do you remember which city they were interested in? I do. Yes, so the Inclusivity Board wrote us a letter. It's actually in our mail packets tonight. There were two sister cities that they had proposed. One of them was from Nepal, it was Gurkha, and the other one was from Kenya. And they did research on why it was appropriate. And so I think it's going to be up for us to maybe staff and then talk to them about next steps about how you actually would establish such a relationship. but they did finish their recommendations in the packet.

That's exciting. I'm glad it's here. Okay, because I know there's folks eagerly awaiting. I've been getting requests for follow-ups. So, okay. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem. So last week I actually did a couple of things for Front Range Passenger Rail. I was presenting on the overview of what it is for a couple of groups actually in Broomfield. Happy to do that for Westminster as well. But it was helpful to kind of hear from people and just help them understand what is being brought with the 2029 service that doesn't require any money versus the full package, which will be voted on by the way, at the end of the month on the 28th. And then let's see, I'll be out of town for most of this week. but I'm gonna be on a panel as part of the Sustainable Transportation Summit on August, the morning of August 25th, and just providing a local perspective on just transit and the challenges that cities are having with being able to access it. funding that is variable slash not bad. So that's, I'm looking forward to doing that. And I know that Councilor Johnson is gonna be covering Dr. Cogg for me this week. So I greatly appreciate that, thank you.

Thank you. You reminded me, Devin is aware, I meant to bring this to you earlier, but I will also be out of town this coming week, but it doesn't miss any meetings because of our time. But August 26th to September 5th, I'll be out of town just for awareness. So I may move things. I went to the second half of that Hmong back to school bash and I heard all about how interactive you two were. So thank you for doing that. It was a lot of fun. Again, shout out to Fire Station Two. They did a great job hosting and our Hmong community. I'm so grateful for them. They reached out to us and they just asked to be more integrated with the city and the things that we do. you know, we said, of course. So I'm glad we could accommodate. It was a lot of fun. It was pouring. So I helped them move everything inside the fire station. That was great. I did attend that RTD Connect online. It was really just a webinar updating us on their budget. I was double booked as usual. This was during the workday. So I do look forward to the summer you get. But in general, it wasn't very much new information. It was, everything we've been hearing. And it was a one-way street. It wasn't room for discussion. attended the PRL comms meeting that we put together last week. So thank you staff for that. That was very helpful. I think that we're headed in the right direction, trying to focus our communication for better engagement with the community. We just always hear so often that folks, we do great events and people don't know about it. And so you are continuing to work on that and we know. So we're doing everything we can. I got, and I'm sure you're gonna cover this, but I got great feedback on the Hello Neighbor affordability series. So thank you staff and everyone who's been involved with that. It's going really well. I think that's it. City Manager. So wait, I apologize. I'm jumping ahead again because we go from report to report, but council future agenda items for counselors would like to propose. Councilor Hutt. Yes.

So this doesn't have to be anytime soon, just whenever it fits. But I... I feel the same way as I've been hearing from several residents and I heard from one this morning and I'm like, you know what? We have a city council meeting tonight about e-bikes. So these bikes are going by really fast. You know, people on a regular bicycle, if you're out on a walk, usually they'll say, you know, on your left, on your right, you can move out. These e-bikes come up so fast that by the time you hear them, they're already passing you. And they're going so fast that I really don't believe they belong on trails with regular bikes and people. I have not been hit, I've been nearly hit. And I know there are residents who have been hit. And so the resident this morning was asking me what ordinances we have in place or what ordinances we're looking at to deal with these. And I remember we talked about this, well, it was mentioned I think it was a couple of years ago, so I couldn't remember the details. I just remember it was complicated to deal with e-bikes because of the different types there are. And again, just whenever it fits into the schedule, if we could have a study session to learn about what we might be able to do as far as e-bikes because they are increasingly becoming more popular and increasingly becoming more of a nuisance. And there are, you know, when I was out walking this summer, there are kids as young as like 10, you know, driving these things that go so fast, it really makes me question if you should have a driver's license. You know, I mean, they're up there with like dirt bikes, some of these e-bikes. So I would like to see what we could possibly do, especially since they are increasingly becoming more popular.

Thank you. Something I think that's been on the radar a long time coming. Hearing a request for a study session discussion?

Yes, because I would like to know what our options might be. Thank you. And if we don't have options, what is preventing us from being able to do something?

Thank you. Quick poll here. Councillor Azadi?

Yes.

Thank you. Of course, yes. Thank you. Yes.

Totally. I know some cities are already trying to handle it, but yeah.

Right. There you have it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other items? Okay. Brilliant. City Manager?

Mayor, thank you. And then just building on that last discussion, every Monday, City Clerk is sending out to you the two weeks of the next draft agendas for you to look at. of one month forecast of agenda topics and a summary roll up of all the agenda items that you've requested here at this table as you just did. And so please, that's a tracking mechanism for you to see how those are doing. And we'll add Councilor Haught's to that list, which you will get next week. We'll show when it's scheduled. We will put that scheduled date on here. And in the meantime, it'll always show up on there. So feedback welcome. So please have a look at that. All right. Manager's report. Next slide, please. This is important to the local community in the area of Mandalay Middle School and Semper Elementary School. So city staff has been engaging with the local neighborhoods here for quite some time now in advance and now during construction of the city's new water supply line and this is a public service announcement to the whole community to please be aware that Wednesday is the first day back at school for these schools and 96th Avenue is closed for construction of that water supply line project with a rerouting in place for all traffic but particularly school traffic so non-school traffic we are asking please avoid the roads in the neighborhood here Old Wadsworth Pierce Street and 96th Avenue and let the school traffic be working its way through. There will be police presence on Wednesday as well as other city staff and then the city staff will stay on through the week to make sure that the new traffic patterns make sense to people and that the children are getting to and from school safely. So that's just a heads up to the community to please try and avoid that area if you're not taking your students to school or picking them up. All right and more information is available on the City website and that's a handy map to show the closed area in red and then the rerouting areas in green. Next slide please. All right this is an exciting update. Car Share service is now up and running in downtown Westminster. That's the very first fully electric vehicle there in the picture. So we've launched that program in our downtown parking garage in partnership with Colorado Car Share. So the program is part of our efforts to offer sustainable, affordable, multimodal transportation to our community. And for a limited time, Westminster residents can use promo code ALL CAPITALS WEST underscore EV and get a $50 credit for use of that car. So that's pretty exciting. And you actually go to the Car Share website to get that credit. So carshare.org. Next slide, please. All right, this is another exciting update, an announcement coming out very, very soon. So thank you to everybody who cast their vote for the new public art at our new municipal courthouse. We received more than 700 votes through the Our Westminster engagement portal or platform. as well as in-person engagement, including, as the Mayor mentioned, Hello Neighbor, our summer affordability tabling session. So voting for that public art is now concluded. The results have been tallied, and we will be able to announce the winning piece of artwork very, very soon. Next slide, please. of delivering on the community's priorities i want to give a highlight and a flag for tomorrow night tomorrow night is our monthly community update and that's with mayor carmelia members of city council and city manager tomorrow night is a focus on the city's action to date so it's a mid-year report on all the things that city has been doing to deliver on our community's priorities so these meetings as always are an opportunity to learn about city programs and initiatives share feedback and help shape Westminster's future. So tomorrow night's community update is back here at City Hall and that'll be 5.30 to 6.30 p.m. in our council chamber room. Light refreshments and snacks provided. So please come if you're wanting to hear a six-month roll-up of this year and how the city's been progressing to meet community priorities. Next slide, please. Thank you. Tonight's agenda, this is a study session tonight. We have four presentations this evening. The first one is an overview of proposed updates to the Westminster Municipal Code to modernize business tax administration. And second up will be a review of current noise regulations to provide direction on potential amendments to the Westminster Municipal Code. Both of these items had been planned for an earlier council meeting, but we were hit by a power failure that night, so we almost finished the current noise discussion. That's back tonight. And then we didn't get to the modernizing business tax administration, so that will be new tonight. The third item will be a follow-up on the 2027 and 2028 single-family residential water rates and the establishment of the Utility Portability Advisory Board. And then finally, a review by our Municipal Court Judge Jason Lontine on the Westminster Municipal Court and an overview of all court operations. And next up and finally in the evening will be the executive session and that will be to discuss strategy and progress on a proposed economic development agreement involving a restaurant prospect for Westminster. Next slide, please. This week, busy week. Tomorrow, as I mentioned, right here in City Council Chambers at City Hall, monthly community update starting at 5.30, running through to 6.30. So that's an in-person event, but you can also stream it online as well as watch it afterwards if you can't make it in person or in the live stream. On Wednesday, August 19th, a continuation as the Mayor mentioned of our Hello Neighbor Summer Affordability Series. So this is the fourth one and this one is at City Park Fitness Center and it will run from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and I can tell you that the feedback so far is really, really positive about these tabling events because we're moving to different locations at different times and we're really providing with City Councillors and members of City Council there at the tables the community is giving us really strong feedback on these so we'll do a roll-up report of all the things that we heard and learned for City Council right now just letting you know very popular and we're looking forward to the one on Wednesday right at City Park starting at 7 a.m. Next up on Wednesday the 19th is concerts in our downtown Westminster Central Park Plaza. That's a continuation of the series that begins at 5 30 and will run through till 7 30. And then I do want to note that the special permit and licensing board meeting has been cancelled for Wednesday night. So no meeting of the special permit and licensing board. On Saturday the 22nd, Kids Zone in downtown Westminster, right at Central Plaza also, and that will run from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. And then again on Sunday the 23rd, also downtown Westminster, Summer Yoga Series continues in Arostat Park, and that will be running from 9 a.m. till 10 a.m. Next slide, please. All right, for our next meeting of City Council, I have two slides. It has a lot on the agenda for that night, so that will be Monday, August 24th, beginning at 6.30 p.m. First will be a presentation, another one, Government Finance Officers Association Triple Crown Award. If I'm not mistaken, that will be the 42nd year that we receive one of those awards in the Triple Crown. So more details coming for your packet on that. I'll have on the city manager report, I'll be very happy to present back to you with all of your direction, the very first draft of the 2027 budget. So this incorporates all of council's direction, feedback we've received and direction to date. So that'll be the starting point now of turning that into the city's budget. um so we'll run through that uh on monday night and then outline the process to continue to evolve that budget to a final finally on consent there will be 12 items on consent agenda and that will include two second readings and then under new business we'll have a first reading councilor's bill 34 that will amend the westminster municipal code to exempt infant formula diapers and feminine hygiene products from the city's sales and use tax There will also be a first reading of Councilors Bill 35, amending the Westminster Municipal Code, providing for the declaration of fire restrictions in Westminster. Next slide, please. And then under Old Business, there will be a second reading of Councillor's Bill 33, and that's authorizing an intergovernmental agreement between the City and Adams 12 five-star schools. And then we do have one item as a post-meeting study session, and that will be an executive session to discuss a personnel matter, and that is the annual review for the presiding judge. Next slide, please. Finally, as always, contact us. Strive to use Access Westminster. That's an app or on our website. Phone us at 303-658-2400. Definitely check out our engagement portal and our new transparency portal if you have any questions about how the city is spending its taxpayers' money. That's all I have, Mayor.

Thank you so much. Questions? Councillor Zaddi.

Yes, so on August 4th, I attended the... National, not National Night Owl. That was also National Night Owl, but the Summer Affordability Series at the Front Range Library, the College Hill Library. And my question is, do you know the names, does anyone on staff know the names of the two folks from staff from the comms team? Because I want to give them a shout out. They are fantastic. I spent 90 minutes with them. They're just really good at interacting with residents. I wanted to shout them out. Do we know the names of those two? Sarah and Troy, I believe, are the ones who typically do it.

Is who this was? I think. Councilor, I'll confirm which two staff that you met with and were there that night, and I can get that back to all of city council. But thank you for that.

So if they're listening, great job. I think just keep doing what you're doing. I think they are really great staff members. And for National House, I was not here in the last week. The staff did a great job at National as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other thoughts? Councillor Brawhus.

Yeah, just on the affordability series, I'd be curious when we get the report back, obviously the content of the report is super important. The whole reason why we're tabling is around affordability, but I'd also like to know kind of some successes secrets to success maybe there was a they kind of did some of these tabling events for water affordability i believe um a couple months prior and i want to know you know like what was different this time was this more successful maybe some theories as to why as a council that's kind of i'm super interested in tabling having done it multiple times with the city and stuff um so i'm just curious in terms of best practices so that could maybe be an appendix to the report if possible i don't if we need council direction, I can pull, but it's just a request. Yeah.

Okay. Uh, Councillor Johnson,

I just had a question about the car sharing downtown. I'm really excited to hear about it and just wondering the access for our Eaton Street residents since they are kind of income challenged that, you know, whether or not there's any way that, I know you had the sort of upfront $50 gift card, which I think is a great way to at least get them, you know, something. But I was always, you know, hearing from residents that they have a challenge getting to a grocery store, for example, and they have to walk down to Walmart and like, how do they, you know, make it easier? And so I was just kind of curious if there's a way to provide or have them be able to access a car share like that more? I don't have the answer now. I just laying that out there.

Mayor Pro Temp, thank you for the question. I'll talk with the team about that and we'll see what options there are. I think we'll start first and see what the uptake is with the general population. And then that will help us understand if it's being underutilized especially, then we can start to look at different options around getting it more utilized?

Well, it's not more of a concern about it being utilized, but just having folks who don't have cars being able to afford utilizing it.

Yes. Just a question for clarity's sake. So are you just mentioning that there's like the cost of access is a limiting factor, like just being able to rent it out, the cost that it takes to rent it out is limiting and will kind of impact people in that area's ability to use it?

Yeah, I mean, I would love for when we do have affordable housing developments that there is maybe an access to a car share if it's in an area where... it's conducive to that, but you know, there's just challenges to when you locate affordable housing, it's just not always in the perfect location. I think downtown is as perfect as you can almost get, but the access to food is a little more challenging. So that's all just.

Sorry. And what is the cost to use for a rental?

I can get the details back on how the rate structure is formatted. I have actually Director Lindsay Kimball giving you some more information real time here. And Mayor Pro Tem, Director Kimball confirms that it's free for our affordable housing neighbors in Eaton Street and that they register ahead of time. We've already pre-worked with Eaton Street management for that. And it's either very free, sorry, it's free or very reduced cost. And so we can get more details back on this program to City Council, which will also... That's why I was asking because I heard it was free.

Oh, okay. I heard months ago. So this is going to be free. So I was like, wait, there's a cost to this now?

Okay. Well, thank you, Director Kim.

And it's also why we cited it right there at Eaton Street to appeal to the... community.

Thanks. Good job, Mayor Pertem for looking out and good job staff for being ahead of it. Thank you. I'll just say I talked to the car share folks at National Night Out and I was so excited about the program to learn about the program and to hear that they're coming to town. So that was really great. And the representative, she was wonderful. And so just oversharing again, Westminster, we now have ability to get around if you don't have a car and that is incredible. The town hall happening here tomorrow night in council chambers reminded me of the fact that I got an update today from UNE and Graystar on their ongoing relationship and that they would like to schedule a meeting soon that's bigger than they normally have and they'd like to host it in council chambers. And so I asked that they, you know, work with staff that that should be coming. However, if they're doing it in council chambers that council might want to attend more than one of us. So then it might need to be a publicly scheduled meeting. And so I let them know that too. So be on the lookout or if I can help connect, I can do that. And, uh, I think we're ready to move on. Okay. That brings us to this evening's presentation. City Manager, would you like to introduce our first guest?

Mr. Mayor, thank you. Mark Harrelson, I'll turn it straight over to you and you can begin our update presentation on Business Tax Administration. Excellent. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council. My name is Mark Harrelson. I'm the sales tax manager. I'm very excited to be here tonight. We have a very exciting proposal that we're looking forward to bringing to your attention. Just before I go forward, I'd like to mention I have 11 years of service here at the City of Westminster proudly serving in the tax team. Tax team is commonly in the background working alongside and with businesses to helping them file their taxes. So a lot of this has come from their input and it's been some time coming. So I'm very excited to bring this and thank you all for your time. So tonight we'll be talking about the proposed tax administration code updates and modernization efforts to the tax code. So currently today's tax code prescribes a paper era method for filing and communication. Everything that we send externally has to be sent by first class mail. And for the last 11 years, we've heard a pretty resounding, please do not send us anything in the mail. So that's been pretty overwhelming. And so that's something that the businesses have been asking us for for some time. Additionally, whenever we have the unfortunate case when we have a seizure of a business or a distraint and it does go to auction, we must post those at the county courthouses. Until recently, Jefferson and Adams County no longer offer that service anymore. So that is something that we would like to address. The result of all of this paper is very manual processing delay and of course avoidable costs. Looking at the 2025 tax year as our most current closed tax period, you can see that the City of Westminster received over 77,000 tax returns from all businesses doing business here. Just over 52% of those were filed directly with us through our tax system. Just over 41% of those came through the Colorado Department of Revenue sales and use tax system, which is an online platform hosted by the Department of Revenue. In short, the sales and use tax or such system is a way for businesses filing with multiple cities to file at one point, and then the Department of Revenue consolidates those and then sends those to the cities. And then that leaves just the leftover, just over 6% of returns come by means of paper, which go through our bank lockbox. There at the bottom, you'll see the paper processing mailing costs, an estimated $30,800 and 114 staff hours annually. So tonight we're very excited to bring a proposal forward to all of you that would authorize the finance director to specify the manner and form for filing returns, tax returns and payment. So this would allow for the city, the finance director to offer online filing of tax returns and payments as a requirement. Also additionally, going back to the distraint piece, we would like to propose that we update the distraint sale publication to means of a newspaper or the city's official website in lieu of the Adams County no longer being able to offer the service of posting those distraint sales. Additionally, bringing for clarification to a existing medical item exemption that would bring no tax policy change, just a clarification. And these changes would not require any additional, excuse me, any additional amendments. Further, we propose the online filing and payment of all city tax returns would be effective January 1st, 2027. This would be amended through published tax compliance guidance. That would be in the existing, businesses are already filing their return to the Westminster tax system and the sales and use tax system, the such system can continue to do so. Exceptions can be made by written statement to the finance director giving 30 days notice prior to the filing period if they intend to file by means alternatively other than online for their returns and or payment. And this will of course preserve access for taxpayers without internet connectivity. I mentioned this earlier, but here's a breakout of the cost savings, that $30,000. You can see here at a high level, roughly 4,900 paper returns come in. That's that 6% remaining that's filed through paper. The cost savings for the postage, 9,700 envelopes is approximately $7,800. Staff time savings of 114 hours resulting about $5,000. And of course the savings, and I put emphasis on this, the 22,520 sheets of paper that we mailed last year pursuant to our code as it currently sits with the paper error method. When looking at our peer jurisdictions, at least 12 self-collecting Colorado cities require online filing. I do wanna emphasize that 10 of those 12 require both online filing and online payment, which is what we're here to propose for you tonight. Our closest neighbors being Arvada and Lakewood already require online filing and online tax payment for their tax returns with similar exceptions that can be made with written statements to their finance director or chief financial officer. Also notably Colorado, the Department of Revenue will require electronic filing of all their sales tax returns effective January, 2028. And this will be done through a multi-phase process throughout 2027. So this is just a proposal for us to align ourself with the state of Colorado. So in closing tonight, we're here to ask for direction for staff to present an ordinance that would modernize notice filing publication requirements to authorize the finance director to specify filing manner and form for those tax returns and rather to return with the council's bill for consideration on first reading. Thank you all for your time.

Thank you so much. Councilor Hodge. Yes, I think this just makes sense between the environmental impact, the staff hours and how much money it costs. I think that this is exactly what we should be doing. And I appreciate that there are exceptions for people who need them. So yeah. Councilor Rosati.

I agree. I think it's great. I have a few questions. Did you say we're rolling out a multi-phase as well?

Thank you for the question. We have no plans in this proposal for a phased program besides just a communication outreach partner with the community services team.

So imagine that we'll have some businesses who may need more time to transition, who are not online savvy, etc. What's the plan for them?

Thank you again for the question. We have already been looking at the estimated 6% of businesses that still filed through paper. So we would, of course, do a targeted approach to them through means of phone calling, site visits. We've actually already began to have lunch. have meetings with businesses that have been doing business here in the city for numbers of years to get their input. And that was exactly what we heard back was, how are we gonna help the 6%? And it would be through a very targeted approach.

And what's the penalties for that? If they don't, if a business says, no, I'm not gonna do it. Are there penalties in this ordinance?

So it would be a policy statement that would be similar to a three strike program that would be attached to their accounts. So first time they would get a notice saying that we will accept it. Second time, second notice with a second notice. And then the third time would come with a third and final notice saying that we will accept it for the third and final time. But of course we would work with them. Do you mind if I expand?

You're welcome. Sorry, you saw me sitting there. You knew I would interrupt at some point. I knew it. Yes, sir. Matthew Munch, Assistant City Attorney. I just wanted to clarify that when he talks about these penalties for someone who essentially refuses, as you put it, to file online, do keep in mind there's always that out, that if somebody really just has some sort of... objection to this philosophically they do have the ability to continue to file by paper they simply have to let the finance director know that is not discretionary with the finance director we made sure to write it that way so that the finance director would not our finance director would not do this but that no future evil finance director would have the ability to discriminate against somebody without internet connectivity it is mandatory if the person asks or basically says i'm going to continue to file by paper they can do that we added that uh in a certain amount of faith that almost everyone, once they start doing this, is going to find it far more convenient. And there will be very, very few, if any, people who are continuing to file by paper. But if anybody chooses to do so, they don't even, all they have to do is give that 30 days notice. And there is no penalty. They're simply allowed to do it.

Oh, but what was the penalty? There's three notices, but then what?

Thank you, Councillor. There would be no penalty tangibly as far as financial. It would be a refusal to accept the tax return, but currently there's no proposal for a financial penalty.

Perfect. And last question. You said 77,000 returns are filed. How many do not, roughly on an average?

Who done filed? As far as how many of those are in like a collections scenario, out of those 77,000, it's a hard number to hit. Usually there's about 9% of the businesses wide out of roughly 14,000 businesses. So trying to do the math on that quickly.

So 9% of our businesses don't file or are in collections?

Filed regularly, yes. And that could be, again, that could be something, if I may, I'd like to explain what's included in that 9%. That could be, I would say that's predominantly at any number in time, that's a moving number. Predominantly it's people that have one month that maybe they miss that is a one phone call for us. They apologize, make the payment and get right back into good standing. So it's a revolving number. Cool, thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Ireland.

He had most of the questions answered. How are you, how do they, tell the finance director that they want to pay still with paper? What kind of contact do they need to make?

Certainly. Thank you, counselor, for the question. It can just be as simple as an email. They can write a letter, they can send an email, in some way communicate to us that they wish to file and or pay alternatively, any means.

and they should expect an answer in return, not just send it out there and hope that they don't get a notice. I mean, I want there to be some correspondence so they aren't just hanging in, because that does happen, especially for older people that have businesses. I can see my dad doing this, honestly, but they like the paper way. I'm sorry, but that's the way they are. So I just want to make sure that you know, they're well aware of the process of doing that.

Certainly. Thank you. Regarding the, I apologize, Councillor, I'm losing my train of thought. I'm so sorry. Can you ask that question one more time?

I just want to make sure they know the process if they want to be exempt and do it by paper and not just, you know, we have all these upset businesses and the, didn't know, you know, how to do the process, what they needed to do and that someone's responding to them when they send, I want to do it by paper and then they didn't hear anything and then they get in trouble because there was no answer back.

Yes. Thank you very much. Um, so yeah, so ideally, and again included in this proposal would be the shift from, from, um, first class mail to using the tax system to use and deliver electronic notices. So that would be something that we could easily do by means electronically. We could certainly send a reciprocating response back in the mail, letting them know that that was accepted and approved, which as Mr. Munch said those are more statements to state their intentions rather than a request because of course it will be granted every time.

Okay and another thing that kind of bothered me about this whole thing is the Finance Director has so much power and the City Council doesn't know if we change the system. I'm really not for that. I think the City Council, if we change what we agreed to here to something else, that we know?

Of course, Matthew Munchkin. we can obviously remove and make changes that city council wishes to see. I think when you look at the ordinance, you see what those places where we are giving discretion to the finance director. The main example here would be under Section 1A, which is modifying 417A. It talks about the manner and form for the filing of returns. This is literally, we're talking about what the form looks like, how it is that the finance director in the tax department is going to be receiving these things and communicating with the taxpayers. These are the sort of things, the sort of administrative minutiae that honestly they're doing right now anyways because the city council is not, it's just not practical for you to sit in judgment.

There's not any new technology that may come that we wouldn't know that we were doing?

No, but it would allow, for instance, as we've said, it would allow for us to avoid issues like we've dealt with in the past of a technology being so wildly out of date or just unavailable. Mr. Harrelson is understating it when he talks about what happened when we talked to the counties about posting that restraint notice. They had no idea what we were talking about. They had no bulletin board. They were flabbergasted to find out there was still a city that was relying on us, you know, riding up on our horse and nailing something to the courthouse wall. It would allow us to avoid... silliness like that in the future that we cannot predict now based on what new technology is going to follow on from email and these sorts of electronic communications. But what it doesn't do, if you look through, it doesn't change any of the rights or relationships that taxpayers have with their government. What taxes are owed, how the tax is determined, all of those things remain as written in ordinance and cannot be modified without either the city council or a vote of the people pursuant to a Tabor election. It's purely... the form, the methods of communicating these things, executing what the city council has put forth in ordinance.

Okay. I just don't want to hear from all these people that did paper that suddenly they didn't know that they had to do it electronically and they didn't know how to do it electronically. There's some of those too. Are we going to help them through the process to do it electronically? Each one of those 5,000 businesses may or may not know how.

as as we said i believe they have a they are planning a thorough communications process uh i don't know but i imagine if anyone came in you guys would show them how to use the system yes thank you very much uh counselor yes so i i forgot to mention we are going to have a dedicated service kiosk downstairs here at city hall uh that'll be available during

business hours the tax tap is here every day here at city hall present every single day and we we commonly get walk-ins that's we call them customers that walk in for our service that's why we're here every day we would of course be there and ready to help them navigate the system learn the system and of course use it as effectively as they can in fact if i may add we have found throughout the years. We went to this new system in 2020-2022, and the resounding success from the businesses has been heard to us, which is great. That's why we went to that system, because that's what the businesses wanted. They, over time, that is exponentially gained. I think at the time, I don't remember these numbers off the top of my head, but I think we were at 85% online, maybe 80% online filers, and that exponentially shot to 94%. Because what we found through phone calls, I think I might have mentioned this, but the tax division is almost entirely an external function. We work, again, with the businesses. Throughout phone calls, we will help navigate them through it and Nearly every time, by the end of the call, we hear, wow, this is so much easier than doing it through paper, which is why we'll have the dedicated service kiosk.

Great. I'm glad to hear that you're going to walk them through it. Thank you. And I would reiterate that if there is a taxpayer who has just been running a business in Westminster for 55 years and they don't want to learn some newfangled system and they want to keep doing it by writing, we have an avenue built into the law to allow them to do that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Brahas.

Thank you. I mean, I was going to ask, referencing your earlier comment about helping people, how you are constantly helping people and how that was going to continue. So it's great to hear that there's kind of a plan of action. And I just want to reiterate that we already have a lot of businesses asking us for this. So while we might be worried that this will get businesses angry, I think there's a lot of businesses who are kind of waiting for this sort of thing.

And I don't know if I can call it angry because I think there's grace in it, but this is a response to that desire. So I'm really grateful that this is how government works. There's a need. That need is expressed. The government then attempts to address that need.

So thank you for putting this forward, and thank you for thinking about how we're going to walk people through it and for how not to leave people behind as well. But this is literally all the concerns are addressed within this ordinance. So I'm really glad that you've had the foresight and the thought to put it through.

Thank you. Any other thoughts?

Great job.

All right. Brilliant. Thank you. Excellent presentation. Much appreciated. I want to make absolutely sure, double checking, do I hear any nays? All yeses. Thank you.

Mayor, can I also thank Mark for coming in? He was on an out-of-state vacation. Oh, my goodness. And when this was rescheduled, he came in to be here tonight. Oh, sir.

Thank you, Mark. You didn't have to do that.

You shouldn't have come back. You had to.

Well, you did well. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Have a good night.

Now go get some rest.

Go back to the airport and maybe you can catch the plane. Thank you.

Okay. Our next conversation we had two weeks ago when we had the power outage and that conversation was near completion. So we will revisit our presentation for the noise regulation ordinance and revisit that conversation. Provide any last final thoughts, questions, etc., And thank you. Welcome, Police Chief. And thank you, City Manager.

Mayor, thank you.

I believe Mr. Frankel is going to reintroduce the topic. Perfect. Glad to. Thank you, Mr. Andrews. As you mentioned, Mayor, tonight we're returning with Police Chief Norm Hobart, Police Legal Advisor Jenna Roth, and Assistant City Attorney Matt Munch. We're here to conclude the prior noise ordinance presentation that was interrupted by the power outage on August 3rd. to remind those listening in June staff had presented an ordinance for council to consider that would set decibel limits based upon the zoning and the time of day and so in the zoning would provide lower levels of noise being allowed in residential areas than in commercial or industrial areas of the city. And time of day meant lower decibel levels would be allowed at nighttime. The sound levels in excess of the limits would be evidence that noise is a violation and a public nuisance. And there are allowances for properly permitted construction projects, which may have noise levels up to the industrial zone limits. And also to remind, the ordinance would not apply to airplanes, railroads, or government entities. And any penalties that were resulting from this would be civil in nature, not criminal. Abatement of nuisances is already addressed in the municipal code and the proposal here would have noise related violations added to that list of violations that would be subject to abatement. And staff are here to answer any questions council may have and to take council's direction on next steps.

Thank you so much. Well summarized. Thank you. I don't suppose we have another presentation or if you have something to kick us off and if not, we can launch into questions. Welcome.

I apologize. I wasn't here last time, but I did watch the video until it cut out. So I know council got a very good start on that. I know there was a lot of discussion. We're here to field any additional questions or discussion that council may have.

Thank you.

Mayor, the only other thing I would add just kind of as a refresh from last time. Currently, the way we deal with things within the police department with the laws and the books are disturbing the peace, which is basically, and I will defer to the attorneys for the legal jargon, but if somebody's peace is disturbed, they can sign a complaint. They would need to appear in court on that piece of it as it relates to animal noise, barking dogs. We do have an ordinance with that that we do... Very similar. We have to go out and observe it. And then from there, the homeowner or the resident that's calling in about it can also record it, audio and video, as a piece of that for the court proceedings. So there are a couple other pieces already on the books that we deal with, but obviously seeking Council's direction if there are other things that Council wants us to consider for a new ordinance.

I apologize, that does remind me of another important point of clarification. I know there was a lot of discussion last time about vehicle noise and how the vehicle noise can be dealt with. Disturbing the peace, of course, is applicable. It's a statute of general application. Someone can disturb the peace anywhere that they go. Similarly, the noise violations by vehicles, there are provisions in our traffic code that talk specifically about vehicles making too much noise that could be cited under that. The ordinance that was previously proposed to city council is different. The decibel level ordinance is tied specifically to properties and property usage. It is not an ordinance that somebody could be cited for if they're on the public street or on the sidewalk. It is the liability that lies with the property owner. This is really a tool for when a neighbor or a business is generating an unreasonable amount of noise in violation of the code. It really wouldn't be practical to try to apply a decibel restriction on something like a public street for reasons that I believe the chief has gone into, not least of which is that five mile per hour technical limitation on getting a reliable read, let alone being in a public place with a decibel meter out in time and being able to determine which vehicle that noise came from. It's just not practical. The tools that the police department already has with regards to citations for specific vehicle noise and disturbing the peace are the tools to deal with excessive noise in a public place. So I just wanted to make that clear. I was reminded of that. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, well, I think we had a lot of our questions answered, but I will pause here for new questions. Oh, Councilor Johnson.

Well, I guess, you know, we don't have planning staff here, but one of the things that's always been interesting to me is how we deal with noise from a planning and land use perspective. Because I understand that this is... a kind of retroactive approach to land use that is creating noise unexpectedly or outside of the traditional planning sense. But there's also one of the things that we've tried to grapple with is trains making noise. We know trains make noise and we know where the trains are. They have to stay on the tracks. Airplanes making noise. We know where the airplanes are because they have to land at the airport. And so for me, I'm trying to grapple with this question from a land use perspective and how do you mitigate it? But I don't know if we have, I don't think we have any of the land use staff here. So maybe our Mayor Pro Tem, if she remembers, can educate us. But other than that, I'm not sure.

Yes. I think I might be able to help. So the approval criteria for PDPs and ODPs contemplate whether proposed land uses are compatible with adjacent uses. I think that evidence of noise or some kind of incompatibility could certainly be discussed at the time that a proposal is considered for a PDP or an ODP. So I think that is a fair criteria to consider when a development proposal is introduced. But it's not explicit. So we could consider it, but it's not explicit. I think it's one of the criteria that we have in the municipal code. Yeah, that can be considered. And if it's important, can be the basis for action. Absolutely. Okay.

Any other thoughts? Mayor Pro Tem. I was just going to say, I mean, are you thinking,

I mean, it is something to think about for land use, but I think for what we're trying to achieve here is more of a spot use or an instance of noise creation that might be outside of the bounds of what a typical use on that site would be.

I don't know, I'm trying to. There's the possibility I might be able to be helpful here. We'll see. So I think the confusion is between sort of prescriptive zoning and then after the fact enforcement. So this is not the sort of thing where this would come up in the course of a zoning application. I may have caused this confusion because I referred to zoning and that's because the decibel level set for each type of use is reference to the zoning district. This is a convenient way to determine to allow there to be different levels of noise as you would expect in a light industrial zone versus an agricultural zone versus a residential zone and the different ways you would expect those to be at different times of day. However, it's not written such that it would impose these decibel levels or require it as a condition of submission of a zoning application or a land use application at the front end. Instead, if in the course of living your life and doing your business on that property, you make a level of noise that is inconsistent with your zoning district, under this ordinance as written, then there could be a civil citation or an abatement. Did that answer the question?

Yeah, it does. Thank you. I mean, it's not really a question. It's more of a philosophy, but how do we approach this topic, whether it's like reviewing noise as a nuisance or reviewing noise as a pollutant, right? Because we deal with noise as a pollutant on the front end, trying to prevent it from ever happening or mitigating its effects. Whereas the ordinance that we propose, I think it's fair to say is dealing with as a nuisance on the back end, where it has already occurred And it is already, and now we're trying to penalize because of the impact it's having on neighbors. But that's different. I think it's a more philosophical approach to noise in our city.

Councillor Brawhouse.

Thank you. I'm curious about, and this is a question from the chief, and you can feel free to kind of reference other violations that aren't noise.

But let's just say I have, you know, I don't even know the right language. Decimeter, is that the, or decibel reader meter. And so I, you know, like my neighbor is belting Broadway and it's above the, you know, the accepted level.

And I like take a pic, I document, maybe I take a picture of the noise or the meter, of the reading of the meter. Would this, you know, like if someone came and graffitied my house and I recorded them doing it, that would be evidence. Would this then be evidence for that? Because I know that sometimes we get kind of complaints. We're saying, look at the noise level that I'm recording. Would that be, like, you know, and I'm pointing it at the party that's happening next door. How, in terms of function, with the way the ordinance is written, how would enforcement work on that? Would it have to be observed by the kind of citing officer or... i i mean i it's it's a not that i just think we should be cognizant because that's often how we get the reports and then a police officer shows up their decibel reader is different they don't write a citation then we're getting i thought you had an ordinance and now this is you know so i'm curious if you could walk me through what that looks like i apologize sir i know that was directed specifically and explicitly to the chief but i'm going to please yeah that would be a situation you would um

your hypothetical person would be disappointed, I'm afraid. When the police are gathering evidence, they have an obligation to do it within certain evidentiary standards and reviewable standards. without presuming any bad intentions on the part of the resident, the police simply can't put themselves in a position where they have to go to court with a machine that they have not calibrated, a machine that they cannot rely on its reliability. They have to use their own equipment because they know that their own decimal meter is calibrated, is neutral. Their decimal meter doesn't care whether this neighbor and I got into an argument over the raspberry bushes the last week. Mm-hmm. we just can't be, or the police officer, excuse me, just can't be certain of the reliability of that decibel meter. Even your bathroom scale has to be calibrated for all sorts of reasons. And for that reason, the police would have to, now that could be evidence that the police could consider when determining whether to show up and take their own reading, but that would not be good enough. The police would have to get a decibel reading with their own equipment that they are certain has been calibrated properly.

Okay. And is that language clear in the ordinance? Because I think the question we would get from residents is then saying,

you know, it's against municipal code to have a noise over this level as opposed to officer or, you know, a reading is taken at this level.

Like that language is, because the violation would have occurred even if the police officer wasn't there to kind of gauge that. I'm not trying to give us like, I haven't taken zero law school. I'm not trying to offer legal advice here. I'm just curious if like, as we're kind of diving into this, making sure that we kind of have our expectations under particularly when it comes to because I mean we've all gotten emails about with decibel readings on them and so just I think people there's maybe an expectation that people like see them this is now evidence that we should shut down these things or we should kick these people out of the city or whatever it is and that's just not the case right and It's fine. I just want to make sure that I can cite the code or the ordinance.

It is, but it is in a little bit of a circuitous manner. Okay. When we wrote this ordinance, we didn't want to have a gigantic textbook. So it was written to essentially say that unless we define a term otherwise, the definitions will be the same as used in the state statute equivalent. Okay. because this particular ordinance, as we discussed previously, is somewhat constrained by the state statute. We cannot really depart too much from the state and what the state tells us we can do. So we adopted essentially the definitions used in state statute. If you consult the definitions and requirements in state statute for the decimal meter, I don't know if it goes so far. It would take me longer than you want to sit here for me to verify whether or not it says it must be the police's decimal meter, but it does have very tight specifications for how that decimal meter is to be calibrated and checked. And functionally, that means it's really only going to be a police decimal meter that is going to be... useful as evidence. Even on top of that, even if we hadn't said it, it is sort of a general principle of law enforcement, and I'm not going to look outside to the judge who's waiting there. I doubt the judge would accept as competent evidence some neighbor's death will be that they got off Amazon. He would want the police report. Okay, I'm done. Thank you. Thanks, ma'am.

Thank you so much. Counselor Ha. Yeah, I just want to make sure I remember correctly that this ordinance doesn't cover auto...

It, in theory, could cover auto noise if that auto noise was generated from private property by the property owner. So, for instance, if I were idling a motorcycle, I use motorcycle simply because my Subaru Crosstrek cannot possibly generate that noise, but if I were in my driveway idling a motorcycle extremely loud, exceeding the decimal meter, then yes, in theory, I could get a citation for exceeding this noise, but the citation would not be for the vehicle. It would be for My property was violating the noise ordinance, and I, as property owner, could be cited for that. The second that motorcycle pulls out of my driveway and is on the public road, it's not that they can't be cited. It's that they have to be cited under a different statute.

Okay, so what if they're doing that right now? Do you have anything? Would you use disturbing the peace, for example?

I could use disturbing the peace, and there is an argument made that disturbing the peace might actually be a more effective way of enforcement.

Okay, so in my opinion, this does not cover anything that we're not already covering. We can't do anything about airplanes because if we could, we would have done it already. We can't do anything about trains. Maybe there's something we can do about vehicles. I don't know, but this isn't the ordinance for that. So for the noise that people are complaining about, this is to me redundant. We already have something in place. We don't need a decibel meter to know when noise is obnoxious. And so to me, this is just another ordinance that covers what our ordinances already cover. If we're gonna have a noise ordinance, I would like to see it attacking the issues that our current ordinances don't. For me, this is redundant and I feel like it's not needed. I understand.

Thank you. Councillor Johnson. Hold on, I'm sorry, actually. I'm gonna make sure that I speak and then we'll go back around. Is there anyone else that didn't get a chance?

Okay.

Thank you, Councillor Allen. Okay, sorry about that, Councillor Johnson. So seeing as the information on the cars, you know, that it can't be used that way, that we can't hold a decibel reader and measure when the cars go by, you know, One of the very last few things that the ordinance could do, it can't do. So it makes a lot of it, a lot of the point go away other than for single property sites. And then also seeing as it cannot offer a secondary offense when it comes to fireworks, as I was led to understand initially, let's say fireworks are going off. we had a conversation, we've had the conversation two or three times now, and I've had different, somewhat different answers. So I wanna make sure that I'm clear on this. But the last thing I believe I heard is that if fireworks go off, we would cite them for something else, which is just because the fireworks are illegal. but not fine them as well for the noise violation as a penalty. Is that correct?

It's the same answer as the vehicle. In theory, if fireworks were going off on private property, and you can narrow it down to private property, some fireworks, that's possible, some It's not. If I'm in my driveway setting off loud fireworks, in theory, I could be cited not only for the fireworks violation, but also for exceeding the noise if my fireworks are loud enough to exceed the decibel level. If I walk out into the cul-de-sac or the public street and do the same thing, I could still be cited for the fireworks, but it's no longer, because this is tied to property use and the liability being on the property owner, it's the same situation as with the motorcycle.

Understood, thank you. So I think that takes out a lot of the teeth that it was initially hoping to do. I still believe that You know, unfortunately, I agree with the majority of everything Councilor Haas said and that we've all already said is that it doesn't cover all the major things. It does provide a tool. It gives folks something. And I'll say, at least in my neighborhood, I can point to the driveway where the fireworks are happening, you know, and if I can get a video of them and you can get them with that as well, because from what I've seen, nothing seems to work like that. So I still think that it has use there. And I still think it has use when it comes to our ongoing issues around properties that are continuing to have multiple issues, but noise being one of them, the goal is to give residents a tool. I think it is frustrating I think for all of us that the ordinance can't do more but it's helpful to have gone through so many conversations because I feel like I have been in hours of them trying to understand what it can and can't do and so thank you for digging and trying to figure out I know that it took clarity I know it took time and so we went down a road of oh maybe it can do all of these things and that is just not the case so Ultimately, I understand where it sounds like the majority of council's headed because it can't do a lot of what I would hope it do. Personally, I still think it's useful. I wanna be able to give residents something after all of their months of frustration. And I feel like it would give them something to, hopefully stop after the second, third time offense, you know? I'm telling you, nothing hits like a fine. But anyway, those are my thoughts. Councillor Johnson, did you want to go again?

Sure, I had a question and then a suggestion for direction, but... My question is, I assume that this is a strict liability. So if Councilor Baraha shows up in my driveway and revs his Harley, I am responsible as the landowner for that use on my land if I'm allowing him to do that. Is that correct?

It is not strict liability. Not the way that, as you know, you need to really have your... your T's crossed and your I's dotted for strict liability, and even then you're going to face a very skeptical judge. Again, I'm trying very hard not to look out to the waiting room. It does impose liability on the property owner, as do most. We have things all throughout our code that act in a similar way, that it is the property owner's responsibility to maintain control of their property. And property owners bear responsibility and civil responsibility for any number of things that the property can do. and cannot do. That is a different thing than necessarily being strict liability. I would also point out this is not a criminal violation of any sort. But the property owner does have, it imposes liability on the property owner to maintain control of their property.

So then my suggestion for a direction on this because i also think that noise is a problem and i think that we hear about it as a problem and i think it's something that should be addressed is um and maybe this is kind of looking to the city manager um and obviously at the will of council, but to look at options that look at maybe a proactive approach to preventing noise pollution in the city. That includes bringing in planning staff and some of our other city departments beyond enforcement to potentially examine, like other cities have done, strategies, a playbook for preventing noise pollution in the long term. and something that's a deliverable to say, you know, going forward, we want to potentially explicitly add, not just that it's, you know, in our PDP ODP plan that it matches neighboring land uses, but explicitly that including things like noise. and the noise pollution that it may cause in bringing in our traffic department to include in our review study how traffic will generate not only speed but also noise and kind of the way we plan that and come up with a proposal that allows us to try to prevent the noise pollution from occurring as a potential deliverable for people who are rightfully frustrated with the noise of the city because ultimately it's those long straight roads that allow drag racing, right? It's the proximity to highways and trains and airports that have allowed or have caused I think a lot of the noise problems. And maybe that's a productive way to get at what we are hearing as a council and also get a deliverable where people will want one rather than a deliverable that doesn't address the problem that we're hearing.

To clarify your ask, are you asking for, it sounds like a task force of city staff?

The clarity might be to ask the city manager to just ask staff if there are possibilities or recommendations in our traffic, our planning commission, and then potentially bring back a study session on noise that is outside of the proposed ordinance. but it includes, it could very well include our chief and our city attorney's office, but maybe other folks about broader ideas around noise pollution prevention rather than a noise nuisance abatement.

Understood. Thank you. Before I go around, because that would definitely be an over three hour ask there. So before I go around and pull that, I just want to get your thoughts, city manager, I guess on timeline or feasibility or anything.

Mayor, thank you for the question, Councillor Johnston. Thank you for putting that forward. I would want to talk with staff first to understand what that would entail. Perhaps a starting point is to poll Council to see if that's a majority direction to do that work. I think we could add it to the list of City Council requested items and then we could report back to you. We could start with something like in a study session format of the question.

Well, and that's why I wanted to get your feedback first is do you need any asks right now of council to hone in that scope? Because that's a pretty broad, um, broad ask.

I mean one of the difficulties with scope is I'm not an expert on this but I know we have like this does you know we have city staff who probably have dealt with residents complaining about this not just our police officers but PR and L staff you know we have really great experts in our planning who I know deal with construction and noise and who know what other municipalities have done. We have staff in all kinds of places who probably have thoughts. And so the scope is really difficult to address because I don't want to shut out a department from having ideas about how to prevent noise pollution because there are so many departments. So I would actually rather defer to our city manager around like which departments need to be like asking the question of them and then letting him determine which departments need to be at the table based on their responses. Because we may have really creative ideas around noise pollution abatement that come from somewhere, you know, maybe David has something in IT that we don't want to shut out of that conversation. I just want it to be a little bit more broad than strictly enforcing an ordinance that as we've covered, I think is mostly already enforceable in other means.

Thank you. Okay, Mayor Pro Tem.

I'm okay with what we have. It's not perfect, but the things that we're trying to get to like fireworks and car noise is difficult at best to catch. And so I'm not sure how much the prevention component will work with the struggle that we already have with people doing fireworks and racing their cars. I mean, I'm open to ways to sort of divert people from actually doing those behaviors. but I don't know if it's noise related. Um, and construction, I feel like we have, um, some guard rails around that. Um, and then development, we kind of do that more as a geographic zoning approach. So I know, I know that I love that there would be some elixir to, um, having bad behavior and disruptive noisy behavior caught, but I don't, I don't know if we can, if we're going to solve it this way. I do like the idea of doing something preventative, but it may be, like I said, something different than noise per se. Councilor Brawhouse.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Councilor Johnson for the idea. Um, Two thoughts. One, you know, I kind of at least agree with the broad scope because I think there might be like a staff member who's listening to this meeting right now who isn't in any of our conversations but has an idea or has a thought, you know, and I would just, the expertise of diversity, I think, is something that we can lean on. I would push back a little bit, Mayor Pro Tem, just on some of the design pieces. Like, I do think, like, there's a certain bit of permissiveness that has created an ecosystem in design for some of these behaviors to be exacerbated, particularly around maybe road racing and things like that. And so I think there should be something that we do, whether it's, okay, hey, for every street plan, like we don't know that, I don't know this, but every street plan now needs an X, Y, and Z around terms or narrowing or something that would kind of physically impede. I don't know. That's one random thought that deserves much more time than just this discussion, I guess. So I would be reluctant to kind of just wholesale, like I get the kind of the grand scale of this, which is my second point. But all that's to say, I do think that we should potentially pursue at least some conversations with some experts who might have some thoughtful ideas and I would push a little bit more to kind of get some of those thoughts out there. With that said, how big these issues tend to be, I mean, we're seeing so many issues. We've talked multiple times about a variety of issues that really are federal and state kind of level issues.

And you know like we're leaning when we talk about this step this ordinance.

We're going into state statute to kind of Dig into the language and usage I do wonder if and we don't have a pot will we have some policy folks here, but I'm not calling them up here, but just to kind of a request to you know our lobbyists To have some I you know, I think that this is maybe something that we can crystallize and codify for our lobbyists specifically to kind of ask for advocacy at a state and federal level on whatever solutions might look like that we as a city want to push for but I think it's an opportunity you know I don't want to just say this is really big and then leave it at that I think because it's so big we need the bigger guns and so I think our policy and department would be helpful

Thank you so much. And I think we need to go around then if we're going to comment.

Sorry, Councilor Haum. Yeah, well, we're still in discussion. I just want to say anytime that we can do something preventative, I think that that's best. And so I definitely, if there are ways we can prevent the issue, I think that's good. Thank you. Councilor Rosati.

Yeah, so I think Councilor Johnson is spot on here in the direction, right, of our need for, you know, I've mentioned this before, of a plan. You know, we have plans for everything. We have a tree plan. We have a mobility plan. We have a lot of plans. These are formalized documents, long-range planning documents that's cross-departmental by nature, cross-functional by nature, holistic by nature, where I think this is one of those issues, not just noise, but also for speed. I think we need a speed plan specifically. And to that point about our federal lobbyists, that plan could include advocacy, a formalized position or messaging that we want our federal lobbyists to then take forward for planes and trains, et cetera. But a plan is definitely needed in some way, a formal plan. I'm also perfectly fine with this ordinance too, but that's definitely the better solution is a plan.

Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and take a couple different polls. And I heard a separate ask, which I was going to propose myself as well. So I'm just clarifying it. There's the one ask that Councilor Johnson proposed, which is a discussion on mitigating noise, and then a specific study session around speeding. I'm gonna propose that we need that. I think I heard Councilor Zotty mentioned that, but we'll go around and talk about that. But first, we're gonna address what we've been talking about this evening and for the last several nights, and that is whether or not we'd like to pursue this as well. And so let's do one quick poll to make up our minds about whether we would like to have this tool, and then we'll discuss the noise discussion on mitigation, and then a discussion specifically on speeding. When you say this tool, you mean the ordinance? The noise ordinance, yes. Thank you. Councillor Azadi, noise ordinance.

Like I've said in the past, I don't really have a position on this. I'd rather hear all of you guys first.

This is the time for a poll. Yes, no?

I'll go last.

Councillor Haas? No. Councillor Abrahaas? Yes. Okay. Councillor Johnson. No. No.

Okay.

I'm a yes. And Councillor Azadi.

No.

Okay, so that is not going through. So thank you for all of your time. I know you've spent an inordinate amount of time on this. So it is deeply appreciated for exploring this.

We don't have ego in this game. We bring them up and if they're not what you want, we take them right back down.

Yeah, it's something I've heard from the community for a long time, but I think it's very clear we need to figure out a much bigger plan to tackle this. Okay, noise discussion in general. for mitigating around the city? Councilor Azadi.

You said the discussion is for the plan idea or to discuss to have a plan?

For the plan.

The plan, yes.

Yes.

Yes.

No, I'm fine with a speeding plan, but I don't think the noise plan is what I'm looking for.

Okay, thank you. Councilor, yes. Mayor Pro Tem.

I don't, yeah, I'm not sure we need a noise plan other than, but it could be a strategy. I just don't, like a robust plan versus maybe a strategy document that we adopt that could provide some policy direction for us when we make considerations about design or, you know, other things. So I don't know if it needs to be like, maybe staff could define what exactly. They would suggest. I'm all for strategy and policies.

Okay. I'm gonna take that as half a vote. And we're gonna move ahead. So I'll say yes, because I would like us to see something done here. I do think that our ask is going to be quite costly for the city in terms of time, staff, as well as true mitigation is going to be, I mean, we can hardly afford the transit measures that we've tried to fit into our current policy as it is. So I think that whatever was brought back, we're not likely going to be able to pursue. And so I just wanna be very careful about pursuing and needless roads, but overwhelmingly council has asked that we at least have this discussion. And then speeding, Council Rosati.

Yes.

That should be brought up during council requests for future agenda items, because we're not discussing speeding right now, we're discussing noise.

I appreciate that. That is technically not true. We have always allowed for side, well, not even side, this is relevant to the conversation. Okay, I will be double checking that. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for keeping the meeting sharp. Councilor Brahaus?

Yeah.

Thank you. Yes. Councillor Ireland, you said yes already. Thank you. Councillor Johnson. Yes. Thank you.

And Mayor Pro Tem. Again, if it needs to be a speed plan or, you know, in terms of what actually Councillor Haught had brought up earlier today regarding speed with respect to other types of vehicles, you know, maybe there's some crossover there. So the danger of people doing the racing is not only, or the impact is not only the sound that we hear, but it's also the danger of the speeding. So that's right.

That's what I'm talking about, the speed racing.

Correct.

And that is also, yes.

And that is also to clarify what I'm talking about. So that would be a conversation honed in for not just noise, but how do we address speeding in the city safety and otherwise?

Yeah. I mean, I feel like I would love for council to chew on all of these things and maybe come back with a, um, an approach to what they've heard tonight with respect to like, what is the scope of that speed? Um, studies slash plan or what have you, because it could or may or may not want to include some of our other types of vehicles in the city.

Can you, I'm not sure I understand. The bikes. Oh, the e-bikes. E-bikes. I believe that would be a separate conversation. We need, an e-bike ordinance would be completely separate from speed racing in the city.

Okay, I'm sorry. We do so many studies and plans and I'm trying to help us get to a level of priority and I'm trying to also think about how do we, are there some levels of crossover with certain elements that we're having staff analyze or address? Because, you know, you mentioned earlier, like, are we able to afford a noise plan? And I'm hoping that we can have staff examine what we've been talking about and come up with some reasonable approaches. I do worry about just having one thing after another, and there's never time to tackle everything.

Well, and if I can clarify further, this is not an urgent priority. We have a lot of urgent priorities. This has been a priority for me since I got into office to address, and we finally have the ability to get it on the calendar.

Yeah, I agree. And we've all been concerned about the racing for a long, long time. So, yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Well, I'm not sure if that counts. But regardless, we have five yeses. And that was for speeding. So it sounds like two study sessions just around citywide noise mitigation. And I understand if you might want to come back with some stuff in your scope.

Maybe I could do one tonight at least. So on the speed plan, I heard many talk about speed racing versus speeding.

Right, speed racing.

Can I, can I, is it both or is it focused on speed racing? Speed racing is what we hear the most about.

That is Councillor Ireland's opinion. That is also my opinion. That is the speed racing. I'll let Councillor Zotty clarify.

I actually hear most about speeding, not speed racing personally, but... I'm good either way. I think speed racing, but we could, we should do both because speeding is what I hear the most about.

And so is the ask that these need to be separated?

No, I can, we can, we can work on bringing speeding and also speed racing back together. Um, So we can bring, we can group that as a report back. The reason I was asking that is I'm also starting to think of the players from the staff team that would be putting this together. And I think police will be a key player in this. And then on the noise one, sorry to go back one poll on noise. I think what I heard was to come back for a broader discussion in a study session on noise pollution prevention and abatement. and that would include whatever it includes. It might link to our sustainability plan, it might link to land use evaluation and criteria and those sorts of things. And also road design, I think I heard, right? How does our integration between transportation and land use play? So we can come back on those. I think what we'll try to do is have maybe a lot less staff work and versus scoping exercise in the study session and we'll lead that scoping exercise of understanding what council is really after and we can feed that with data and ideas and then we can hone in.

On what we can actually tackle.

Yeah. And so maybe lessons learned from our noise discussion, right? Hone in earlier on the scope and what is the desire to, what is the problem we're trying to solve? And then staff can take that and get much more focused on what council's expectations are.

Agreed.

Thank you. Councilor Zotti. Can I ask one question around the, so our liquor license board, the criteria that they use and the rules, do we set that or is that, That's state statute? I think it's both.

Both are involved.

So can a noise pollution policy, for example, that we come up with impact liquor license board criteria for renewals of licenses?

There's already something written into the criteria right now about one of the conditions of a liquor license and one of the things that could be considered in renewals is excessive

noise i apologize i don't have the language in front of me directly despite the fact that my colleague general roth sent it to me uh earlier today um but i do know that it is there so it's it's already built into the liquor licensing process and how are they measuring that i do not know sir so the reason why i ask is so so the rodeo complaints that we all have been hearing about um one of the paths that the citizens are asking about is the liquor license renewal of not just that business, but in general, what are the criteria? And I don't know if they know that noise is already in there.

I am not trying, I think it'll be quicker for me to try to call up the language from my phone than to have you wait for me to turn my computer back on.

It's just listed as undue noise. Do you want to introduce yourself? I'm sorry. Yes, Jenna Roth, police legal advisor. Thank you, council. It's just in the ordinance as undue noise is one thing in the liquor licensing that can be considered. It doesn't define what undue noise is. So there's not a decibel or there's not a, we have to have X amount of complaints. It's just undue noise is a consideration.

Do we set that?

Do we set the... Can we change that as a council? That is in the municipal code, yes. So keeping it at undue noise allows a little bit more flexibility in what does that mean. It's more obviously subjective standard than if we did a more strict to be more objective, so.

Okay. And I'm saying that because if anyone's listening of the whole situation, us denying the noise ordinance tonight it's actually not the lever that they should be wanting to pull right i think the lever is a whole different is this piece they're talking about liquor licenses and if we want to change anything as a council it would have to be there not the decibel reading so i wanted them to be clear that this isn't a backtrack we're moving forward in a different way that's more effective thank you council

Okay, seeing no more thoughts and questions, thank you both so much. Thank you, Mr. Munch. Your time is much appreciated. I think we can move on to our next presentation. We are requesting a break, so let's show up in five minutes. How's that for you? All right.

Thank you.

Yes. Yes. It was off topic.

Thank you, Councillor.

All right. Welcome. We are now moving on to our final presentation on utility rates and water affordability.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and Councillors. City Manager Chris Lindsay, joined by Interim Public Works and Utilities Director Andrea Song. Good evening. We're here to follow up on the presentation we gave two weeks ago where council asked for some alternative options around single family residential water rate options along with initial framework for utility affordability advisory board. So we're gonna jump right into that this evening. What we heard two weeks ago was support for the transition from the Water Task Force to a Utility Affordability Advisory Board, support for the proposed multifamily water rates and structure for 2027 and 28, requests for additional options for single family residential water rates, support for the proposed sewer rates, and support for the proposed stormwater management fees, excuse me. Like I mentioned, we're going to focus on those single-family water rates and the Utility Affordability Advisory Board. I'm going to let Andrea kick this off.

Sure. Like we presented last time, water rates, We're undergoing a cost-to-service study, and we want to make sure City of Westminster has a resilient water system. And so, you know, that covers our drinking water treatment plants and includes repairs and replacement of water mains in our treatment infrastructure. What we look at is that we have the revenue and our monthly fee charge is set adequately so that we can sustain our five-year defined plan for the water utility. So the operations and maintenance, that's replacement of valves, it's staffing, it's chemicals at the treatment plant, upkeep of pumps. basic maintenance, electrical bill, and then our debt service, that's on current bonds, what we have to repay, and then our capital improvement plan. Now we're definitely gonna cover the O&M and the debt service and current bonds. I just wanted to point out that when we talk about making a reduction, it's to our capital improvement plan. And that is what the task force, when they agreed to their decision, really went with a decision to have a 0% reduction in capital improvement plan. And I just wanna mention in this capital improvement plan what staff go through to develop this. We have a comprehensive, we have an asset management system which identifies the age of our equipment and we look and we prioritize, you know, we don't take on everything and we also are constantly value engineering. So, for instance, like we have a 72nd to 80th Lowell Boulevard line. It's from 1955. It's cast iron, 16-inch. You know, it's been identified as a top priority line to replace. That's on the list. or even Sheridan Boulevard from 92nd to 120th. We had a significant break with some businesses. You might have heard about it on 93rd, but we noticed that the taps on the side of the pipe, the pipe itself was in good condition. So we're actually reevaluating that and making sure that we're gonna use a pipe diver equipment to do some deeper assessment and inspection so that maybe we are just replacing those connections and can get a lot more life out of the pipe. I think you saw real quick with the, I'm not gonna go to every project, but the Northwest, repair and rehabilitation project that for membranes, we did a membrane autopsy and what normally manufacturers have for 8 to 10 years, we've extended and can go 10 to 14 years. So we are constantly looking on that, but for those projects, I just want to say one last thing that what the task force really didn't want to see was us kicking the can down the road. Because oftentimes, I mean, there's been a few times like the 2008 financial disaster when costs actually went down. But more times than not, when you go to replace it a couple of years from now, it's more expensive. So we're also trying to balance everything in this. So I just want to bring that up.

I also wanted to raise a little bit of what the Water Task Force presented in their final report. So the request we had from Council was around modifying the Tier 2 rate to match the Tier 1 rate, and this was an item of discussion with the Water Task Force. around going from actually three tiers to four tiers. And what they recommended was recalibrating the single family residential rate structure by modifying it from three to four tiers to support essential indoor water use affordability and to incorporate a conservation pricing signal. I felt it was worth raising that back up from what that water task force reported back to city council and staff. What the Water Task Force recommended around the single-family residential water rate was, again, the four tiers, the lowest tier being from 0 to 4,000 gallons, and then a set of rates associated with each of those four tiers for the single-family residential class. Again, this is the recommendation from the Water Task Force.

I guess just to say that that zero to 4,000 was that average winter consumption. That's what they felt was the definition of affordability is that indoor use. And that's where 50% of single family homes fell.

so the request to um to align the tier one and tier two to the same rate um this is uh this would be that rate structural rate structure excuse me you'll see 416 uh is in the 2027 option a for both tier one and tier two um So as directed by City Council, we went back and took a look at this and I think much to the surprise of the staff, this had a lower impact than we were expecting. So this scenario resulted in an impact and a reduction of approximately $250,000 per year, which in the long run reduces the capital improvement program by that amount annually. Knowing that this was a concern for the Water Task Force, we took a look at an option B to maintain the overall revenue coming from the single-family residential class of customers. What this does is take option A, so it keeps 416 for Tier 1 and Tier 2, and then it bumped up Tier 3 and Tier 4 just slightly. to maintain overall revenue across the system. Since I know that was hard to remember as we were going through, we put together all of those options on the same slide here. And I actually think why don't we stop at this point in time and talk about the single family residential water rate option and direction from city council.

Okay, could you maybe, there's a lot of numbers here. So while I find my place, could you maybe, I know you just walked through it, but let us know what the first columns are, the second columns, and then identify the ask and we'll go from there.

Yeah, so there's three big groupings of columns across the top. So the first group is the Water Task Force single family proposed rate. So you see the 2027, the 2028, and then the dollar change, and that's comparing it to the existing rate that's on the left. The second grouping of option A for single-family residential keeps 416 at Tier 1 and matches that with 416 at Tier 2. Option B on the right-hand side keeps 416 under Tier 2 and then adjusts Tier 3 and Tier 4, increases those to maintain overall revenue from the single-family class for the water fund. So you'll see instead of 834, to 1087, option B.

Thank you so much. Okay, I think before I can go ahead and poll, we might have to answer some questions. So council, Mayor Pro Tem.

How does this rate with our neighbors in terms of $9, you know, for 8,000 and up. We cut out one of the tiers that we used to have, because we used to cut off at 20, I think. And I think I mentioned this last time, do we put a tier back in? And does that help us not have to pay $9 a gallon for if you're over 8,000? I'm seeing my water bill before my eyes grow. So I'm just wanting to know how we compare and also if there's like another solution, I'm not overly in love with this one.

So counselor, we can certainly bring back comparisons and we could bring back additional options changing the, I think what you're suggesting is changing tier two 4,000 to 8,000 gallons to 4,000 to 20,000 gallons. I think that's what I heard.

I'm not gonna give you the, I would want staff to say where's the right mark, but I don't know. I'm not overly in love with the solution. So I'd rather us have like different numbers. for each tier as was originally proposed. I don't like having to make it up on the back end with even higher rates. Okay.

So changing the range of the tiers is going to cause, I think, more significant work than just being able to come back in a couple of weeks and present these. I think if there's a direction from the City Council to look at changing the range of those tiers, I think that's something that we could bring back with the Utility Affordability Advisory Board and do some work there because that's gonna take a good bit of input and some technical work.

Can you clarify what you're at?

Hold on one second, counselor. We've got a few folks in line ahead of you.

I'm just clarifying what you're asking for.

Well, at first it was more how do we compare it? I know we don't like to compare ourselves to other communities, but the same is kind of high. So for just even over 8,000. So I was trying to get a gauge of where we're sitting. Particularly because the difference between tiers two and three is $5 practically.

So I don't have the comparisons offhand. Do you have anything relevant? No, we'll get back to you with that.

Thank you. Councilor Ireland.

I'm sure you don't want to hear from me, but this is why I wanted to stay with what we had and just raise it four and a half percent like we were we promised two years ago. We had three tiers. In 2021, I sent you this graph. This is from January 2026, our water rates. People are going to be upset if this is what we do. We're going to be back to square one water warrior time because In 2021, when people were mad, 1,000 to 4,000 gallons was $3.96. 1,000 to 20,000 was $8.15. And over 20,000 was $12.68. We're almost there to that level. And we were told that four and a half percent would get us where we need to go to pay for the water treatment plant. We are not gonna pay for the water treatment plant with indoor use. The rates will just go higher for indoor if that's what we're planning. Because we have to pay for all of this infrastructure and it's not paid for just by indoor use. And if it is, the rates will be way higher than they are. We're talking about, You're always mad about people using water, but that's what pays for your plant. And I'm sure this year, since it was so dry, that we are bringing in more money than we expected, but we also have a drought to worry about. And this task force that we're paying 35,000, I found out it was 35,000, is not gonna tell us what to do in a drought. It's going to have to be our... employees of the city that know what they're doing. And maybe we'll only be able to do indoor use. And it's gonna be very expensive to do that. Because we have a very expensive water treatment plant to pay for. So telling people they're water abusers, they're paying for the plant. It'd be different if we didn't have an expensive plant, but we do. And we have to pay for it. So the only rational way to do this, and I didn't think we needed a task force, I think this was an agenda to get the multifamily pricing down. And who knows if those people even get a break because their landlords may take the money, the extra money. So I am not gonna prove anything unless it's what we had with the 4.5% increase across the board. And if you come back to me and tell me we can't do that, that's because we gave the multifamily $1.75 per thousand off. That's why it's not adding up.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Barajas.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm curious, you know, to staff about a few things.

I know there was a delay in the water treatment facility. I'm curious how that delay factored into either increased or decreased costs for the water treatment plant and kind of any sort of delays, again, that would kind of push back that and then increase the cost for our taxpayers because, you know, We just want to continue delaying these conversations. And I'm also curious about, I guess that's the first question.

I can maybe wait for my others until... Councillor, may I clarify? So when you say delay, are you talking about when Water 2025 was stopped?

Yeah, Water 2025. We should have a plant already that was kind of built and in function and already kind of gone through That's not the case.

So I can answer that question. So I, based on City Council direction at the time, put a stop work on the Water 2025 project and we reimagined it from the ground up and we ended up reducing the cost of the water treatment facility by $100 million with that effort. And so this is a reduced cost facility from what was originally conceived back then. So even with cost escalations and the team has put immense down pressure on the cost of construction for the facility, we are on schedule and on budget with that reduced cost water facility.

So this is even less expensive than it would have been? Correct. $100 million less. Okay. And in terms of I guess I'm trying to figure out, you know, there's obviously a pretty large disparity. We're talking about single-family residential water usage, so I want to just focus on this because that's what staff is kind of asking for direction on right now.

You know, I would agree that a large task for the task force is to really narrow down some of these ranges And the tiers, you know, I think just looking at it, it's obvious, like, that there's large chunks.

And, you know, I know there was some logic, and I'd be curious to kind of see if that logic still stands up.

Because essentially what I'm seeing with plan A or B is we're just reducing it back to three tiers, right? Tier one and tier two are the same. And so I know there was logic to kind of push for that four tiers, and I think we're just... kind of resetting it.

So I am kind of of the opinion of maybe like more leaning towards just neither option A or option B, just kind of sticking with the original task force recommendation, especially because, you know, I think the task force recommended it. I think staff would also recommend, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, you know, would you recommend a zero, like should we increase the, I don't know what the right language is, that $250,000, like I don't want to call it a deficit. Is it a deficit? Whatever we would call it.

Yeah, it's a reduction. A you wouldn't have the negative $250,000. I mean, you'd want to put it through your capital improvement projects.

Okay. So, like, the task force says it, but our expert employees also say we shouldn't have a reduction as well. Okay. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much. Councilor Haught. Yeah. Um...

I see Mayor Pro Tem's point about having another option because zero to 4,000, you know, the 4,000 gallon difference, four to eight, that's a 4,000 gallon difference. And then we go from eight to 40, that's a 32 gallon difference. And so even if... it was like 8,000 to 20 and 20 to 40, even that like 20 to 40 is a 20,000 gallon difference. I mean, I just, we go such a huge jump, not just in costs, but also in, I mean, our ranges are 4,000 and then just jumped to 32,000 gallons. And that Is there a reason? I mean, it doesn't really make sense.

Thank you. Now I'm tracking the question a little bit better. So the usage of Tier 1 and Tier 2 is significantly more than usage that gets into Tier 3 or Tier 4. So that's why the ranges become larger. Do you have... Do you have any more to add on that?

I mean, just everybody rolls through Tier 1 and then so everybody sees that savings and they use more and they go through Tier 2 and then if they use more beyond that. But Tier 3 and Tier 4 are primarily irrigation. So essential winter use is definitely Tier 1. Tier 2, I think, when I'm talking to Trebek who's looking at a lot of the consumption around 6,000 is maybe like a threshold you get into more of the irrigation. But that was that conservation nod of Tier 3 and 4 were primarily irrigation.

The number I was looking for, 80% of water usage in single-family residential is in Tier 1 and Tier 2.

Okay, that was my next question. So you just answered my next question of how many people actually... get to the 8,000 level.

Yeah, and it's about 25 to 30% in Tier 2.

Okay, so even if we do have this huge jump, most people aren't going to see it. It is going to impact families in a positive way because most families never even get to 8,000 is what I'm hearing. That's correct.

Okay, all right, all right.

Thank you. Councillor Zaddi.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, staff, for bringing this back. I've dug into this even on my vacation, by the way. I dug into, because my main question last time was, is the discount for Tier 1 going to apply for larger families, right? And from talking with staff and looking into this, I actually think the original, so the proposed Water Task Force rate, is likely, so it has to be likely because we don't actually have the data. So there is no demographic data on family size that staff has that can actually answer this question. However, what we do know is that 50% of single family households utilize 4,000. So that's why you have that tier one for essential indoor needs. That's what we know for sure. And my question was, is there a piece of tier two that could be larger families' indoor needs? The answer is likely not, because we don't know. But what we do know is that tier two consumption is driven by outdoor irrigation. and it becomes significant above 6,000. So if there was any tier reform, if you want to call it that, in the future, I would say it needs to be zero to six for tier one, because after 6,000 is what we know to be for irrigation. To staff's point, 80%. I mean, that's why it's structured this way, because most of the people will be flowing through one and two, not three and four. But for the, I've heard some requests for like, you know, these are too high. It's helpful, again, once again, to take a step back into the context that we're in, right? You've heard, so we've had 15, actually, since March. 15 water main breaks since March. We have in Semper a water treatment plant that was built in the 60s. That's why we have a new plant. It wasn't because we needed a new project for fun or a hobby. It's because if we didn't start this new plant, we could be a Semper in a Flint, Michigan situation where people won't have clean water. That's why that project was so important. And from a water rate standpoint, we can't compare ourselves to other cities. We know this. We have a very complex, unique system. Every city has their own unique system and comparing rates across cities, has been done for 10 to 15 years in all the various water rate wars and so forth, but it's always been wrong because it's not how you compare. You have to look at your system over years and you have to assess your constituency. So the population of Westminster, where are they at now? And when I look at where they're at now, many say the system is affordable, many say it's not affordable. So as a policymaker, it's up to me and all of us at this table to say, is the system, the water rate structure that we have equitable for everyone involved? And I think this setup with what we did with multifamily rates, bringing that down, that brings affordability finally to a whole group of people that have never had it. By having tier one, which is the most essential need lowered for the first time ever in the history of the city, by the way, it's the first time we've lowered it directly. It's responsive to where people are at now. And we need to be a responsive government. asking for a 4.5% raise in the context of inflationary pressures and unaffordable lives from all of our residents is not responsible. And I think the responsible thing to do here is to lower the rates as we have it, as the Water Task Force went into eight meetings, 100 hours, right? They looked into the whole system, they looked into the numbers, the past, the future, we need to trust the community and trust what we know the system to be, and that's why I think changing this or rejecting this would be very not aligned with where we're at as a city. So thank you, staff, and I would go with the proposed rates.

Thank you. Before we go back around, Councillor Johnson, did you have any thoughts?

I'm good with the Water Task Force proposed rates or Structure B.

Okay. So, I'll make my comments. I too am in favor of going with the proposed rates that the task force set forth. I am not comfortable with reducing our overall revenue, especially in times when the budget is so tight. I don't think we should be reducing by $250,000. It's just not the smart thing to do. I do appreciate council's push to see if we can do even more for our community. That's what we should be doing. So thank you. And I think that we have the solution in front of us with all the work, to Councillor Zaddi's point just now, that the water task put forth. They did the work, staff backed it, and so I'm really strongly comfortable with that. Right now, if we're not comfortable on doing another poll until we have more questions resolved, did we have more? Okay, final questions, and then we'll go back to do a poll. Councillor Ireland, real quick.

Well, I just want to clarify, in 2021, it was 1,000 to 6,000 gallons in Tier 1, and it was 396. In 2022, we went to 1,000 to 8,000 gallons in Tier 1, and it was 357. So we did have a significant decrease in water rates in between 21 and 22. And Tier 2 was... 7,000 to 20,000 gallons and it was at 815 in 2021. It went to 652 for 9,000 to 40,000 gallons. And tier three in 2021 was 1,288 for over 21,000 gallons. It went to over 41,815. So it was a significant decrease after the Water Warriors actually, no one was elected that was on that city council again. They raised the water rates 30% over, I mean 70% for some people over three years, so 2018 to 2021. So I would suggest that you guys do not go up down that path again. And I am for keeping what we have at four and a half percent increase.

And I don't know what you do with your multifamily, because that should have been a four and a half percent increase across the board too.

And that's all I'm agreeing to, because that's what the people expect.

Councilor Brahus?

Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor. And it seems like we're hitting a lot of those numbers. I mean, with... 80% of people seeing a significantly lower rate. I mean, like, yes, that's what's exactly happening. So I'm glad that that's happening. Just, Councilor Zotti made a mention of kind of...

the kind of unique city to city payment structure.

And I'm curious, I learned recently that the way that we apply for our debt, our debt rating, I think, or something, our agency rating, does that look into kind of our billing practices and does that impact then overall costs for these projects that we then get debt for?

So certainly one of the factors that the rating agencies look into is financial stability of our utility. And within that, one of the things they look at is, are you doing regular rate increases? And that's a sign to creditors that we're a stable organization to lend money to, that we'll repay that because of the history that we have. So that leads to a higher credit rating, certainly lower rates on our debt.

Yes, you're correct. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. To give that kind of clarity, I didn't know how it tied together.

Thank you. We have 10. Are we getting feedback now? Last chance before we take a poll on this one. Yes.

Yeah, I feel like the proposed rates from the Water Task Force are the best place to land.

Thanks. Thank you. Okay, let's do a quick poll. I'm just gonna go straight down and just do one at a time. So we'll start with the Water Task Force recommendation. Council Rosati? Yes. Haught? Yes. Council Brawhouse? Yes. No. Councillor Johnson? Yes. Yes. Okay. I don't think we need to go through any of the other options. Thank you so much. Do you have more of this presentation? We do have more.

Okay. So part two of the presentation this evening is follow-up around the Utility Affordability Advisory Board proposal.

Yes, so we wanted to propose a framework that the City Council action was to create a board and following Westminster Municipal Code and appoint members. So we would, because there was so many hours, hundreds of hours, and it would be nice to maintain the task force composition and members just with their knowledge, any amount that that took, if they're willing. If it's following the municipal code with boards, so we're saying it's a board, they do have to be resident members and they do have to be qualified and ready to vote. So they've had to have lived there for at least a year. If they are not members like we had on our previous board of the two, whereas a property owner and housing, they can be advisors to this board and serve in that capacity. And then we looked at our schedules and if they were willing to commit we'd be I'm fine to have a meeting beginning in October and we would staff would facilitate these meetings. It's a slower paced and it would be more focused initially on sewer and water. I didn't storm water. So, um, there is a lot more nuances in the water modeling and that rough tell us, but they, they also did that in that fee for the cost of service study, but we, we could facilitate it certainly with all our staff expertise. So that would be the plan. And that's what the utility advisory board with the affordability advisory board would serve is provide regular input on water, sewer and stormwater financial planning. And then we'd be having a chance to review the cost of service study and just our proposed utility rates and fees. This is another with, it was mentioned during the task force to go through water budget-based billing. It's what Boulder, Town of Castle Rock has, Thornton has. So maybe with those large families and I won't go into too much detail, but you could actually have individual budgets and it looks at family size and it looks at yard size. It gets more of a sense of indoor use, outdoor use and just see the pros and cons of that. or do we continue in our tier system? We can continue, some of the discussion happened today on the rate structures, including single family, residential, multifamily, those tier amounts, and non-residential. We can offer guidance on long-term system resiliency as we face this drought, whether it's a drought tier in our investment priorities. And then just supporting public understanding of utility operations, trade-offs and constraints. A lot of this cost of service is a real balancing act. You make one change, it changes somewhere else. And then just another thing that was added on is continue to understand and support energy efficiency and utilization of city facilities could be added on to this affordability advisory board as well.

So that's the end of our presentation. Since we already did feedback on item number one, you could stop here and take item feedback on that initial framework for Utility Affordability Advisory Board so staff could move forward and bring that back for council action.

Thank you so much. Questions and comments? Councillor Zaddi.

Thank you. Just to clarify, Again, I think clarified last time. I want to just clarify again because there was some confusion, not from council, but from one of us around two of the members of the task force. Can you please explain the value? So it's Dana and Craig. They are the two non-residents, but why did we have them on? So first of all, seven, the actual community members, they were all from and live in Westminster. Only two of them, and they were intentionally for two important reasons.

So one of them was from the Foothills Regional Housing, Dana, and she, Section 8 Housing, when you talk about affordability, and she has... wide knowledge of that and provided a lot of good feedback. Craig Russell, he was a property owner, although he lives outside the city, he owns rental property in the city and could weigh in on some of that multifamily. So they really added a depth and a perspective to the entire conversation on making sure we hear every voice in our community as well.

so i asked that because i think it will it's important to keep their voices on the advisory capacity like you mentioned not as official members since to align with our other boards and commissions um so i would be supportive of all of that thanks thank you counselor brahas uh thank you mayor and thanks counselor zadi that's kind of the comment that i was thinking through my thought was

If it's easy, sure. I think that's fine.

There is, because these are public meetings and these are agendas, like for, like it's, you can go to an advisory board meeting that we, they're calendared and people can show up to just witness. There's also like a public comment period. I don't know how organized that is for each individual board, but there's opportunities for people outside the city to kind of be present in general. If there's interest, if there's non-resident or non-qualified or people that don't meet the qualifications to be on the board, I think advisor is a good solution. If there's not really that much interest, I think we can still kind of satisfy that occasional interest with that public comment kind of moment. So I would say maybe if there's very specific requests, sure, for advisory, but we don't need to necessarily do like a search for that again.

Okay, Councillor Ireland. I'm glad to hear that we're not going to spend $35,000. I'm glad it wasn't $250,000, but still $35,000. We just tried to save $30,000 on people filing their taxes, so it'd be great to save the $35,000 for something like people's water bills. I am not for advisory committee people that are outside the city. I'm only for... people that are residents. So that's my feedback on it. I will approve it if they're just residents, but not people outside the city. We have people that own apartments in our city that could be on this board. If we don't, then we have an issue that we're giving apartments to outside the state, outside the city developer.

Okay, anyone else?

I'm good with the structure. I appreciate especially the guidance on investments and how to weigh priorities.

And I'm really grateful for all of the energy that went into this. And thank you again, Councilor Zaddi for asking for this to happen. I think that this was successful and now we can roll it out into something larger. And that's really exciting because there are all these other questions that came about that we still have to solution for. So I'm really excited about it. I am curious about the activity timeframe. Are they going to be active year round or just during the budget cycle? It sounds like you're starting early.

I think we have enough topics that this could be a monthly year round. Yeah. And certainly we'll get into a cadence, right, of getting back into setting the next round of utility rates.

Right. Okay. And then as far as the membership, you know, it said that we suggest that we hold on to the folks we have. I assume that after that we would maintain the regulations we have for the rest of our boards and committees so that it would rotate eventually?

Yes.

Okay.

One question on that. We had backups, not backups, but the folks who were not chosen when we made the appointments, they were all pretty passionate to join. So if there's like an alternate system, you know, when we can't go to a meeting, we have alternates as liaisons. Maybe you want to consider some kind of alternate with those people who didn't make it.

That's a good suggestion. Thank you. And then finally, as far as the council is on, are we keeping those the same as well?

I think that's up to council's direction. Yes.

I don't see it on there, but I think it's something for brief discussion. I'm comfortable with keeping the assignments we have, but I think that should be addressed before we have to bring it back around the table. Any other thoughts on this? Yeah. Okay. I see a lot of nodding heads. Okay, with that, I don't see any other questions. I think we're comfortable. Thank you. Brilliant. Great job. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you. All right. That brings us to our municipal court overview. And we will welcome the judge. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council. Good evening, Mayor Fertem, Council. My name is Jason Lontine. I'm the presiding municipal court judge. And then I'm here tonight to give an overview of municipal court operations and programs. And really the instigating purpose behind all of this was also to give an update to Council, but to provide some general information to the public as part of our effort to increase transparency for anybody watching or that pulls up the video to get a better understanding of our municipal court, what it is that we do, and the types of programs that we have available for the community. So just to start off again, my name is Jason Lontine. I'm the presiding judge for the city, and I'm assisted by our associate judge, Rebecca Wattata. I've been with the city now for nine and a half years. Judge Wattata joined us five years ago. We're both very involved with the municipal law community, particularly the judicial community. I sit as the current president of the Colorado Municipal Judges Association, and Judge Batata is our current board secretary. And we both believe that that sort of engagement is very important, particularly in municipal courts where we are invested in the community, but also we're well connected into the state level, which as I know much of council is aware, often gives direction to municipal courts and having a voice in that arena is very important to make sure that the programs that we put forward and the way that our council and city and the requirements that we have are able to be met. And a big part of that is making sure that we have a voice at the state level in being engaged there. And both Judge Ruttata and I are very involved in those areas. In terms of what we do at the municipal court, really you can break it down into two categories of types of cases that we handle. We handle criminal violations and we handle civil violations or civil ordinance matters. On the criminal side of things, there's various categories within there that we handle. And I'll talk about our domestic violence fast track more in detail later on. But we handle domestic violence cases. And important to note that the cases that we handle at the municipal court are the essential equivalent to state court misdemeanor or petty offenses. So we don't handle felony-level matters at the municipal court. So our domestic violence cases consist of common charges would be criminal mischief, damage to property, assault or battery, harassment, both physical and through telephonic means or repeated communications, things of that nature that are done in the context of a domestic violence relationship. We handle other Victims' Rights Act crimes, so not just domestic violence, but anything that falls under the Victim Rights Act. So that can include, again, non-domestic violence battery, non-domestic violence assault, violations of a protection order, and charges along those lines. We also handle animal abuse charges and criminal animal offenses. So that can be things like possession of a vicious animal that's caused death or serious bodily injury to a death of an animal or serious bodily injury to a person. criminal traffic offenses, so street racing, speeding 40 or more over the limit and charges along those lines, and then non-VRA crimes, so non-victim rights act crimes. That includes theft, shoplifting, criminal mischief, trespass, and a number of other charges. The other category of matters that we handle are civil infractions or violations of the civil code. And so that includes tickets that people might receive in our parks for park violations under Title 13, open space violations, things that they may be cited as Stanley Lake by a ranger. That can include being on Stanley Lake without a personal flotation device or trespassing after hours. fishing violations, things like that that are handled in the municipal court as well. And then the civil animal violations. So there was discussion earlier about noise ordinances, barking dogs would fall into that category, as would dog at large and other animal related offenses that don't have a criminal penalty. Civil traffic as well. So that's speeding up to 24 miles an hour. Those are civil infractions as opposed to criminal infractions. And then code enforcement and abatement. So that would be enforcement of the fire code, the building code, property standards, and then abatement of those issues can be brought to the court as well. So if someone has non-conforming property, There can be a complaint filed in the Municipal Court with a request to have permission for that to be declared a nuisance and then abated and that's an action that's taken into the Municipal Court. We also have a category of cases called motor vehicle closures, which are relatively recent. And that was a tool that city council brought into effect a few years ago to, in part, address the street racing issue. And what that allows is for law enforcement, if they aren't able to contact a vehicle, say, during a street race, for safety reasons or otherwise, but they're able to identify the vehicle by make, model, license number, that sort of thing. They can mark that down and if that vehicle is later seen parked somewhere or out and about and the officer can stop that vehicle safely, there's a process by which that vehicle is essentially abated or closed taken into custody by the officer. And then there's a civil proceeding to determine what should happen to that vehicle if it's declared a public nuisance and that it's being used for illegal activity. So that's another category of cases that we handle. You'll hear often municipal courts described as quality of life courts, and that's because the vast majority of what we do is addressing not only what happens in the community, the offense itself, but also the underlying circumstances that led to that offense. As I said, we don't handle felonies or not handling bank robberies and things like that. We're handling the day-to-day situations that really impact the well-being of our community and the quality of life of our residents. All of this takes place at the municipal courthouse, and that's where various departments and administrative units of the court reside. have a list here of the different departments that are within the municipal court starting with court administration and court administration takes care of all of the court administration so everything from how cases are filed into the municipal court the processing of those docketing processing and receipt of motions and service of orders, all of the behind-the-scenes things that make a court run, as well as what you see in court. So clerks that are to the left of the judge, processing court dates, case resolutions, and bailiffs that are helping individuals as they process out with their paperwork. And the court team consists of our court administrator, deputy court administrator, our court operations supervisor, which is a recently repurposed position. It was our second deputy court administrator that was repurposed into a process improvement role. And we were very happy to have an internal candidate and an internal promotion fill that position from one of our internal candidates. court clerks. And her focus is really on evaluating our procedures, updating processes, and looking for ways that we can be more efficient. We have a lead court clerk and 10 court clerks that are working all towards universal cross training. So there are some court clerks that specialize in what we call back of house activities. So that might be organizing our in custody dockets for the afternoon, processing warrants, processing out orders, receiving motions. And then there's the front of house clerks that are courtroom trained. So they'll handle things like jury trials and those sort of proceedings handle the day-to-day operations within the courtroom. We also have our court resource navigator who serves as our wellness court case manager as well. Within the courthouse we also have a probation department and currently we have one probation officer and one probation officer slash supervisor and we're in the process of recruiting for the second probation officer position that is open due to a recent vacancy. We have two full-time court marshals. Those are police department employees, sworn post-certified officers that conduct a lot of our transports, courtroom safety, warrant checks. And if there's the need for remand, they also have arrest authority and can process those individuals. We have three part-time court security officers, two of which are former Westminster Police Department officers, one of which is a former court security officer, similar to what's in the front here at City Hall, that are Police Department employees, but are not post-certified or have retired their post-certification. And they handle primarily courtroom security. Prosecutors in the court, we have one lead and three city prosecutors, assistant city prosecutors based at the court for a total of about 50 years of experience. We're very... lucky both on our public defender side and on our city attorney side that we have very highly experienced attorneys. And that's not always the case in municipal courts. But I think that that means that the individuals that come into our court receive a very high quality of both representation and those victims and members of the community that are having their interests presented by the city prosecutors, or also having attorneys with significant experience presenting their cases. In 2022, we started a new program with the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel for our public defender services, and that's been something that I've been particularly proud of. It wasn't always the case. There were many years where the city contracted with either individual attorneys or with individual law firms. And over the past several years, there's been concern raised at the state level about what does that mean when you contract with a private firm in that way? Are there potential incentives to not put in as much time per case if you're on a flat fee type of billing arrangement in order to essentially. collect more per hour than you could otherwise. We recognized some of that concern and when the legislature opened up the ability for municipalities to contract with OADC, we reached out to them and we were the first municipality to directly contract with OADC for all of our public defender services. Subsequent to that, there's been several other jurisdictions that have followed suit either completely or for conflict counsel and things like that. Currently we have 14 public defenders that are contracted through the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel to pick up our cases. And January to June of this year, we appointed the public defender on 259 cases. And the public defender also handles all of our in-custody first appearances, our 48-hour bond hearings. And they've represented 331 individuals through in-custody representation as well. So it's a very robust program and we are seeing it utilized very well. We follow the state guidelines when it comes to appointment of the public defender so it's for individuals who are indigent based off of Chief Justice Directive 0404 which is updated generally annually based off of indigency guidelines. We also house the victim advocates at the court. We have three victim advocates that assist the city prosecutors as well as the court in abiding by the Victim Rights Act. So making sure the victim's input is incorporated, it's brought to the court's attention if there are victims that want to be heard. And everyone has an opportunity to present their thoughts to the court. And the victim advocates are instrumental in that. And then, of course, the replacement courthouse project, if anyone is in that area of Federal and 36 that's hard to miss on that northern park, just where the parking lot of the courthouse used to be, is the replacement courthouse project. Our current building was built in the 60s, designed in the 50s, built in the 60s, never designed to be a courthouse. As council's aware, multiple separate buildings that were infilled, renovated over decades, and ultimately lacking in several areas to include ADA accommodations, safety features, and just modern amenities in the office complex. So the new building is going to be much safer, much more accessible, much more welcoming and comfortable both for members of the community as well as the individuals that work there. We had a jury trial. last week or maybe it was the week before now. And it was fun to have that conversation with the jurors and invite them back that if they are serving on a jury next year, they get called in, they're going to be having a very different experience than they did this year in terms of the amenities and the services that they'll have available. Quick overview of some court statistics. In 2025, we had 18,507 visitors into the courthouse. So to put that in perspective, that would be filling city council chambers there to capacity about 170 times. So a lot of people coming through the courthouse in a given year. In terms of our cases, last year we had 1,698 ordinance violations of which 223 were domestic violence. And we tend to range somewhere around that 220 range to just over 300 depending on the year of domestic violence cases. About 7,200 traffic, so a total of just shy of 8,900 cases were processed in the court last year. And to give a sense of our probation department, they currently have just over 1,000 active cases. 175 of those are domestic violence. And then at any given time, somewhere between 300 and 370 of their cases are supervised probation, 700 unsupervised or deferred judgments that they're checking in on. As of last count, there were 136 non-English speaking probation clients. Our probation supervisor is Spanish speaking, so that's been a huge benefit and enabled her to connect very well with her clients. All of our probation officers also meet with their clients regularly. They average about eight client visits per day. And that's on top of all their administrative duties. They're following up on treatment reports, evaluations. They're part of the... domestic violence offender management board multidisciplinary team for their domestic violence clients and ensuring that their treatment is ordered appropriately and moving forward. So they are very busy. They do a lot of great work and the numbers, I think, help reflect that. I'll highlight some of our programs and services that we offer here. And these are really unique to the municipal court and something that I think the public really would benefit from knowing and understanding and one of the really great things about municipal courts is our ability to be flexible. We're at the local community level and so we see what's happening in the community and we can react to it in ways that the state courts just simply can't. Fact of the matter is, if you are a district court judge or a county court judge, you're part of a much larger state system. There's different regulations and processes that you need to follow. And it's much more difficult to come up with new programs and move pilot projects forward on your own. And that's a really great benefit to being a municipal court. I'll start with our wellness court, which is really our flagship program. Currently we have 13 active participants, so this has actually been up, should be updated since I put this slide together with another awaiting entry into the program. So we're hopeful to be in that 13 to 14 active participant range here again pretty soon. We've had 11 total graduates and hoping again, we're expecting more before the end of this year. And really, the Wellness Court came about because we recognized there was a need amongst a certain population that we see quite frequently. Those individuals that are high risk, high need, we see them cycling through the system very frequently and had a desire to develop an evidence-based approach to try to stop that cycle of recidivism. In 2023, we received a grant that allowed us to hire our current case manager. And subsequent to that grant, that was about a two-year grant, and now the funding for her position was taken over by opioid settlement funds. So we're still making use of external resources to move a lot of this program forward. The wellness court team was built after we had our navigator on board, and we meet biweekly. There's a lot of communication that happens in between about the participants, but we meet biweekly all together, and that consists of the judge, the navigator, clinician, a police department co-responder, prosecutor, public defender, and probation officer. We meet every other week before the Wellness Court docket, discuss all of the participants, where they're at, who's getting an incentive that week, who might be sanctioned because their conduct didn't live up to the expectations and what they had indicated that they would do over the last couple of weeks, and whether there's phase advancements or other issues that need to be addressed. I think something that really sets our program apart is how engaged we've been with All Rise. And if you're not familiar, All Rise is the national organization for treatment courts. It sets the best practice standards. It is a highly recognized organization. It has conferences each year that host thousands and thousands of people from courts all across the country. And they're the leader of providing training Courts of all sizes for for adult treatment court programming and we've been involved in a lot of their trainings to include Procedural tune-up earlier this year were signed up for their incentives and sanctions program this fall which will be additional resource and learning more about the best approach to utilizing incentives and sanctions for behavior modification and And we're currently part of the Communities of Practice program, which is really exciting. And what that is, there were 10 courts selected from across the country to participate in this. And the goal is to identify best practices that are then going to be distributed out more broadly across the country for utilization by other courts. So it's pretty great that the Westminster Municipal Court here is being looked at as the kind of program that is setting the standard to the point where the national organization is looking at the work we're doing and seeing how that can be incorporated into their broader best practices. I'll give just one quick anecdote, and some council may have heard this or maybe even been present at the graduation, but I think it's a really poignant example of how these programs can be successful. And we had one individual that came to the program unhoused, living in her truck, using meth essentially daily, had lost custody of her children, kind of was on and off of our radar, would participate, fall off, participate, fall off. But through continued work with her, building rapport and trust, and especially the work of our navigator, she began to really engage with the program. And over the course of progressing through the different phases, became sober, established stable housing, became employed, ultimately was able to get her children back. And now she runs our peer support and recovery group after every wellness court docket. And it's really just been an incredible experience to watch her grow from really difficult times to now being someone that is helping lift up other people in our program. She's just been an absolute rock star. And those are the kind of successes that you can have. Now, not everyone follows that same trajectory, of course. There are some people that aren't in the right state of change to successfully complete the program, but it can be very powerful for those that are ready to make that commitment. In addition, we have the resource navigator. So again, our wellness court navigator also acts as our resource navigator in general for the court. And now that number is closer to 450 individuals and families served. And who they are, it's anyone that's been charged with a municipal ordinance violation that has need of services, needing to be connected to, whether it's community-based resources, food banks, understanding what might be available. help filling out an application for Medicaid, any of those sort of things, basic need items, even if it's just you haven't had a meal and a few canned goods would make a big difference. We keep a small pantry of items like that. It's also a really timely resource. It's every day that someone comes into court and we're handling their case, and it's just apparent. Maybe it's a low-value theft, or maybe it's even a traffic case. Someone comes in on a speeding, and it's apparent that they are just in a hard spot. It's great to be able to say, you know, You mentioned that these were food items that you had taken. Tell me a little bit more about what's going on in your life while I was just evicted or whatever the situation may be. And it's great to be able to offer, hey, we have a resource navigator here at the court. Would it be helpful to just sit down with her right now and have a conversation, maybe get connected to something? More often than not, they're very grateful for that opportunity. And if Hannah's available, she'll come right in the courtroom, meet with them for a few minutes while their paperwork's getting put together. And if she's not available, we'll take a referral and she'll reach directly out. It's a great resource. Again, at no cost, juveniles, their families, adults, anyone that's in the court with a case can access those services. We are also just starting an adult diversion program. And our first session is going to be at the end of this month. And what we really realized was that we had a bit of a gap. We had the wellness court program, which was for our high risk, high needs individuals. It's intensive case management. You're coming to court at least for the first few phases every other week. You have treatment. You're doing, everyone does random UAs. It's a very involved program. on the other hand there were individuals that come in that haven't reached that level of need and we want to try to intervene before they get there and so the concept was doing a quick one-time intervention that was focused on connecting individuals to resources both through the resource navigator as well as community reach for mental health substance abuse services and getting people connected there so What's happening now is if the prosecutors come across a case when they're meeting with somebody on their first appearance and it's a low-value theft, trespass, similar type charges, they can offer for them to participate in the adult diversion program. It's held monthly, and it consists of a presentation and a meeting with the navigator. And we partnered with Community Reach, who is going to have a clinician there that's going to present on the type of resources that are available through Community Reach. Some basic decision making, skill building, psychosocial education. It's also being held on the same day and around the same time as the Irving Street Library Resource Fair, so individuals can go right from meeting with the navigator to the Irving Street Resource Fair and get further connected if desired. If they complete the adult diversion program, their case is dismissed and sealed without a further court appearance. I talked a little bit about our domestic violence fast track program and this is just a little bit more information on that program. We're one of a few municipalities, as I said, that handle domestic violence cases and I think it is a huge resource for the community. beyond saving individuals the drive or public transportation out to Brighton or Golden in order to have the case heard. It can be done right here at our municipal court. For victims, we've plugged that into Google Maps and it can be anywhere from a two to six hour round trip on public transportation, depending on where you are in Westminster and either to Golden or to Brighton. And that's true for victims, witnesses, anyone that might be involved in one of these cases versus being here in a much more central location. We also have three dedicated victim advocates that meet with every single individual that's charged with, or excuse me, that is the victim or survivor of a domestic violence or victim rights act crime. And they do a lot of great work and a lot of meetings with those individuals. I just had a few statistics here. So in 2025, Our victim advocates met with and served 473 victims of municipal ordinance violations, and that included just shy of 2,000, 1,953 individual contacts. So that's meeting with a victim for the first time or a survivor for the first time after an incident's happened, keeping them apprised of the status of the case, being with them if they are needing to testify as a support, connecting them to any number of those services that are listed up there, victim compensation, COVA, Servizos de la Raza, any of the programs that are out there and available to help individuals that have found themselves the victim of a crime. In addition, and finally, we have our financial assistance programs. Our goal is to balance accountability, but at the same time, we don't want the financial aspect of things to become an undue hardship on the people in our court. So we work really hard to create alternatives that are fair and equitable for individuals that are appearing in the municipal court. To that end, we have applied and through our navigator, really, I'll give her the credit here, received the RTD Transportation Grant again in 2026. And so far to date, now we've been able to provide over 425 trips through RTD to get to and from court appearances and other needs. That helps reduce failures to appear, which means people aren't getting arrested on warrants and they're able to move their cases forward. We have the Rehabilitation and Assistance Support Program, which provides financial vouchers to individuals to complete their court-ordered requirements. And that's not just probation. That can be someone that needs to take a substance abuse class but doesn't have the $75 or $50 to pay for that class. If they financially qualify, they can receive RASP funding. And to date, or excuse me, that was 2025. I think our numbers are actually higher this year. $25,350 in redeemed vouchers and over 500 individuals have been served since that program was started. And then this past year, we started universal community service, which is without needing to prove income or any sort of financial eligibility, anyone can ask to do community service through any nonprofit organization in lieu of payment of fines and costs. And that offsets at the rate of $20 an hour, which last year equated to just over 2,000 hours, the equivalent of a full-time employee working all year long, returning those volunteer hours to the community, which wrote off just over $31,000 of court expenses. So those are some of the financial programs that we have. I also recently updated our fine and fees, or excuse me, our fees presiding order and removed some costs that had been there for a long time that I felt were overly burdensome that included payment plan fees, so there's no longer a charge if you need to set up a payment plan, no charge for that. And likewise, no further failure to appear charges. There used to be a charge that would be added if someone failed to appear and the court issued a warrant. I vacated that Because again, I didn't find it was serving a valuable purpose and it tended just to increase balances. And most of the time for folks that are failing to appear, adding a charge to their case isn't creating any sort of incentive or better outcome. So that is a focus of our court. We don't want to overly burden individuals with court costs, fines, fees, things of that nature. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that council may have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll start with, so council has the honor of hearing these numbers from you and getting these updates on the programs that you provide and all the work that you and your staff do. And we ask that you should present so that the public can hear it. So thank you for doing so. I'm glad you're here and this is extremely informative and I'm really proud to stand by the work you're doing. So now we can all hear it from you. Councilor Azadi.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, thank you for that. I think this is really important. And to have these every once in a while will be nice for the public because you do a lot of work there and the visibility is not always there. So thanks for that. I have several questions. I'll try to limit them as much as I can. On the financial assistance programs, so you mentioned the universal community service, 31,000 was waived in waived fees. What's the total, what percentage of fines is that 31K, like on an annual basis, or is that 31 total since the beginning of the year?

No, I believe that was in 2025. It was 31,286 in waived fines and costs. I don't have the percentage of that. In all fairness, it is a low percentage of individuals that ultimately take us up on that offer. But I find that it is generally the individuals that would have a true financial hardship if they were to need to pay their court costs or fines that opt for community service. We also see individuals that just philosophically prefer not to pay money to the city or to the court and would prefer to do community service. And so they're more than welcome to take advantage of that option as well.

Cool. Yeah. For the basic needs, so the resource navigation, there's a basic needs bucket. Do you have any budget needs there? Is that enough? What's the budget on that right now? And do you need more?

I don't have that specific budget number off the top of my head. We are allocated some funds for the Wellness Corps program, and that comes out of the funds that we have through the opioid settlement. And so the navigator is able to, through that, purchases some basic needs items and keeps those on hand. I would need to talk to our navigator and see if there's any gaps that she's seeing in terms of items that she would like to have on hand but hasn't been because of financial reasons. I haven't heard that, but I'll follow up with her, and if I do... hear anything, I'll follow up, Counselor.

Yeah, just to make sure that you aren't on an annual basis running out, right, of basic resources and not having any recourse. So that'd be great if you can find out. On the adult diversion, I love that. Can you please send us an email follow-up thorough of more details of that so I can share that with the community? I think that's really important. 20 in 2022 i think we had a mental health panel that i hope you remember that jody on the diets brought in mental health specialists and we never did anything with that we never followed up with it so i love hearing about this adult diversion because it's kind of it jolted that memory of wait we didn't really do anything with after that panel right and these specialists gave all these recommendations of what we could do as a city from a strategy standpoint can you just include in your email just what where you're looking and what if you have a strategy around adult diversion and how you know the impacts you're looking for the outcomes you're looking for that would be helpful as well sure um Can you go back to the slide with the Lawness Court graduate? I was at that one, the bottom left in the audience. So my question you actually answered partially in your presentation. You mentioned one of the success stories. My question was gonna be, do we follow up with all of these graduates and how often does that happen?

We do. So participants can elect to stay in contact with when when someone graduates the wellness court program their case is dismissed and so their record is sealed but if they wish they can voluntarily maintain contact with our navigator and our navigator usually will start off every week to every other week checking in seeing how things are going and then that gradually tails off over time But I have been really surprised at how much and how often individuals have stayed engaged. We've had people that graduated. Last year, just a few weeks ago, I looked out the door and saw someone walking by and waving in the courtroom, and they were just swimming by to check in and see how things were going with the wellness court docket. So we do. We're tracking recidivism numbers and tracking that on an annual basis to see how folks are doing and if there's been any... additional charges that would be just relevant to thinking about the program and how we can have more effective interventions. So we do. And one of the things that we're looking at through especially the communities of practice is what sort of tail on these programs is most effective. But short answer to your question, yes, we do maintain contact and follow-up. If an individual said they did not want that, then we wouldn't, but that hasn't happened yet.

So District Attorney Brian Mason presented to us on the Adams County diversion facility or, you know, he has this plan. How will this program interact with that Adams County diversion program when that launches?

Is this the juvenile diversion program, YouthLink? So we have a juvenile diversion program for substance related offenses. So I'll take a step back. Prior to the link closing in Adams County, we were developing a pretty robust program with them, and they were a hub of information. So what would happen was a juvenile might get a citation and would be offered diversion. They would go to the link. The link would be keeping track of who was there for diversion and they would know, well, maybe this juvenile actually had diversion from Westminster, but two months before they got diversion in North Glen and two months before that they got it in commerce city. And so they would communicate out and we would have regular meetings. Um, and what would happen is the juvenile would go there, they'd go through an assessment and then, um, there'd be recommendations made and that would ultimately resolve their, their case. When the link, um, ceased operating, that took away that resource for us. On the Adams County side, if a juvenile is cited with a substance-related offense and they're offered diversion, they complete a substance abuse education class, and that satisfies the diversion requirement. On the Jefferson County side, because the JAC still exists, they go to the JAC, complete an assessment and a needs assessment, and get connected to resources. And if they do that, their case is dismissed. To answer your question, I had a meeting with the new executive director of YouthLink probably a month ago or so now, and had that discussion about what's the future look like for municipal courts. The impression that I received is that they are very interested in a future where there can be juvenile programming around diversion for municipal courts, but that they, as a new organization, don't have that capacity now. And it's something that is not likely in the short to midterm.

Okay. And the success story that you told in the wellness court, Do you work with comms to, like, can we get stuff like that out to the public? Yes. I think that's one of those feel-good stories that we need to have more of.

We had the great write-up in the Westy for, I believe, the graduate that you saw. And I do reach out to comms every time we have a graduation. But I'll double down. I can double down on those efforts and make sure that we get as much of that positive news out as we can.

And my last comment was just would like to see more from the associate judge if we can bring her and present. I don't know if she wants more face time with us, but that would be cool. I don't think we've had her come in. I don't think so. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you.

Okay. Counselor Brajas.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Judge, for presenting to us. I just had two kind of requests. The first, you know, I'm a big fan of the diversion program, you know, the adult diversion program. The way you, my understanding of your presentation of it is like this kind of is a wider net for some of the support. i i believe that and i could be wrong here but from my limited understanding and research into um kind of these justice programs this is like evidence-based like best practice around certain things and so i'm not necessarily asking like oh how effective is this for like westminster like that's just a lot of data that we would need to spend a lot of money to track but if you do ever in a lot of the organizations that you're part of see something whether it's like a seminar or an academic article, that would be helpful for us. I mean, feel free to just kind of share. And especially if you can highlight and tie it back to existing programs that we're doing. Like, hey, look, this new research out of Arizona State University says something, and this is exactly what we already do. It's kind of just helpful to know. And the second one, I mentioned this in our...

my onboarding orientation presentation that I had a chance to see a few months ago. But could you go back to like the, I think it's the financial slide with the RTD grant. So I think it's really helpful

When we think through and we advocate for lines that are being cut or not cut, this is something that I think we should really be taking into consideration. So people who are able to access this grant to use it so that they don't get no shows, I forget what the- Failure to appear. Failure to appear, thank you. I don't necessarily want to try to drive an added task for staff or something, but I think it'd be helpful to kind of try to glean a little bit of information like, hey, the 31 is actually super useful for this 90% of the grant pay. So that way we know, OK, this is it. And it probably ties into the most active RTD lines anyway. But I just feel like there's a little bit of data there that might be helpful for us to gather. just in general, just another piece of information for us to have. And I just wanted to highlight it for us to kind of think through. And you can respond to that. That doesn't really require one, but thank you.

No, I agree. I mean, they're the main lines, certainly, that I know are utilized up and down Federal, up and down Sheridan, you know, being the big ones. But I would be equally curious to know what the utilization is based off of the various lines.

Thank you. Councillor Arland.

So I want to talk a little about the public defenders. You said there was 14 of them and are they contracted by the hour or how do we pay them?

So the way that it works is we contract with the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel and Perhaps that wasn't Artfully worded. We don't contract with the individual attorneys We contract with the office of alternate defense counsel and then the office of alternate defense counsel assigns attorneys to take our cases They then bill Office of Alternate Defense Counsel, who pays them, and then we maintain a retainer with the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel, OADC. So we have a contract with OADC.

So we pay them by the hour? Correct. They bill by the hour. And how many hours do they usually spend on these 331 people here?

I would have to get back to you with an average. So the hourly rate, it was just adjusted. It's right around $100 an hour for public defender time. And it can vary. There is a upper limit on how much they can bill on municipal court cases. I could probably find that here in just a few moments. But the Chief Justice Directive 0404 puts a cap on how much they can bill, depending on whether the case is resolved with a plea, whether it goes to trial, if there's an appeal. So attorneys can't just continue to run the clock, they'll hit that upper limit. In addition, OADC does audits and they oversee their attorneys to ensure that, you know, if an attorney comes in, meets with their client once and the case resolves at a first appearance and the attorney bills 15 hours for that, that's going to get flagged and addressed.

All right, thank you for that information. Good job.

Anyone else? Councillor Haag? Yeah, I don't have any questions. I always think you're doing a fabulous job. And so thank you for everything you're doing for us and our residents, especially for our residents who are... I guess what I appreciate so much about you and how you run the court is it's not... You're not there to just be punitive. You're not there to just... I mean, you're there to help people and actually rehabilitate. And I think a lot of people are really focused on punishment when really rehabilitation is the best. And if we're able to help people who can't feed their kids because they came for a traffic stop, I mean, that's amazing. I was already impressed by our wellness court, but I didn't know. I didn't know that. And if I had heard it, I didn't realize it. I didn't realize we did all that. And even the RTD Transportation Grant, it's huge. And the Universal Community Service, I mean, I can't imagine what a relief. I mean, they're still held responsible, but it must be a relief to somebody who can't afford the fine. So I just think that we are doing really amazing things. Well, you are doing really amazing things today. I don't even have words. I just think, Yeah, you really see everybody who comes through the courtroom as a human being. You don't just look at them as criminals. I like how you try to get to the root as to why they made the choices they made. Because sometimes it is somebody's position. Sometimes if somebody wasn't in the position they are in, they wouldn't make those choices. And so I really appreciate that you really see everybody who comes in as a person and does everything you can to help them in their situation and really focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment. I just, I can't say enough good things. I so appreciate you.

Thank you. And again, I think that's part of the beauty of the municipal court system is you can have that individualized approach that just isn't, feasible in larger criminal justice realms.

Councillor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation, Judge. One of the things I'm really interested in is our juveniles that are pushed through our court, especially juvenile referrals that come from our schools, because there's a lot. The data that we got was from two school years ago, the 24-25 school year. I guess that's two and a half now. There were about 300 referrals. And to me, what was interesting is they were broken down to basically two categories. Disposition by guilty. or dismissed. So they were either prosecuted or dismissed. I think there were maybe eight that got diversion. And I'm curious, is that a reflection of the fact that all of these juvenile cases are non-jailable and so disposition by guilty usually creates diversion-like sentencing? Or is it that we haven't invested the resources in diversion programs for juveniles?

It's probably a bit of both in the sense that when we had the link, we were doing a lot of work with the link and trying to build out a much more robust program. And we were working with the city attorneys around what sort of charges could we maybe even expand that into. fights at school, disorderly conducts, things like that. When we lost the link, we lost a big resource for Adams County juveniles. So some of it is the loss of those resources. The other is that just by their nature, juvenile matters are much different than adult cases. And part of that is that they're not jailable. And that was removed from the code as well. So it's not even, there used to be an outside potential of up to 48 hours of detention for a probation violation or a contempt of court. That's been removed from the code. And the fact of the matter was there wasn't anywhere that the city had contracted or otherwise to have a detention if that were the case. The other is that, to your point, Take the DA's office, for example. They have their diversion program. When a juvenile participates in the DA diversion program, they have to admit culpability for what happened. So for all intents and purposes, they're pleading guilty. They're admitting to the underlying conduct. And then they may need to do an evaluation, engage in substance abuse treatment, if that's the relevant piece, or mental health evaluation, follow through with those sort of resources. That's essentially what's happening in our court. So if a juvenile pleads guilty and they're placed on probation, a lot of times by the time they're getting a probationary sentence, it's because maybe they've gone through diversion that was not effective and they came back with another substance-related charge and maybe there was another intervention and that didn't work. And so now it's a probationary sentence, complete a substance abuse evaluation and follow through with whatever those recommended treatment options may be. And the reason I say that juvenile cases, regardless of whether they plead guilty or not, are very much like diversion is because at the end of the case, regardless of whether a juvenile pled guilty or received a deferred judgment, once they complete their probation terms, the record is expunged. So it's the same outcome as if a case were dismissed and expunged. if they were to enter a guilty plea at the end of their terms, the case is expunged. And so there are Differences and similarities. I mean, through the DA's office, it's the diversion office that handles those. So juveniles are meeting with, I don't know what their exact title, the diversion officers, say, for the requirements there. In our court, they're meeting with our probation officers that are handling the juvenile requirements. cases and processing them through. So I think the answer to your question is a bit of both in the sense that we lost some important resources on the Adams County side particularly. And the other side is that we approach these cases from a rehabilitative posture. And at the end, the juveniles are having their records expunged. We used to be, and I was on the North Metro Juvenile Diversion Board, was in place for many, many years. And we did end, I think, end of 24, beginning of 25. And the reason for that was the board had come to the conclusion that a lot of the reasons that existed had been met in the sense that juveniles were no longer getting criminal justice histories for their municipal cases that were kind of dogging them into adulthood. Their cases were getting expunged. There was no more punitive sanctions in the sense of detention. And frankly, the whole approach is much more restorative and rehabilitative. We had some juvenile cases today, and I'm having conversations with these young people about... decisions around who they surround themselves with and positive peer groups the reality of car insurance hikes if you're speeding too much and those sort of things and so it's really much more of a teaching opportunity but I'm probably going on more than I need to here, but I would like to see more resources and I hope that in the time to come YouthLink is successful and is able to grow into that area. But I'm certainly open to other discussions and alternatives and in ways that we can serve the young people that come to our court.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Excellent presentation. This is very informative and it's everything our community needs to know. So appreciate you. Thank you very much. See you next week. Thank you. All right. We have reason for executive session. City attorney, would you please read the title into the record?

Thank you, Mayor. Tonight's agenda does include an executive session to discuss strategy and progress on a proposed economic development agreement involving a restaurant prospect in which the disclosure of information such as financial data or proposed incentives would, if made public, seriously jeopardize the city's ability to secure the prospect. This could be convened pursuant to Colorado Revised Statute 246-402-4E1 and Westminster Municipal Code 111, 3, C, 4, and 7.

Thank you. We'll now go around the room and state your name and that you're willing to go into executive session.

Yes.

Name as well, right?

Once we begin the executive session recording.

All right, the agenda got me lost. Thank you.

We can state names for the recording, the executive session recording, but for now, I think just polling your colleagues as to entering the exec session is all we really need. Yes.

Thank you.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. All right. Thank you so much. And we will now wait for our city clerk.

And Mayor, I think this might conclude the open portion of tonight's study session.

Thank you. And the time is now 9.50. And we will now conclude tonight's session for the day. We are now adjourned.