City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey baby. Hey, hey, hey.

Oh, hey. Oh, oh wo. Hey. Hey. Hey. Ooh. Ooh. Unfortunately, I remember that day. Did that happen?

Yes, I was there. Yeah, he got in my car to help out. Really funny. All right, Sh. That's her old. Good evening and welcome to the April 20th, 2026 Westminster City Council study session. Thank you for joining us this evening. Please remember that our meetings are governed by the rules of decorum posted inside chamber doors. We ask all attendees to maintain a respectful environment. No disruptions, threats, or audible expressions of support or opposition are permitted. Signs and placards are prohibited and all attendees must remain seated in designated areas. City council reports. Councelor Rosati.

Yes. So, I'm a little star struck because I had a meeting in my office hours with Maria Gonzalez who is the founder of Adilante who's coming to Westminster. But we talked about all the various passions that we both have and the intersectionality of a lot of things whether it's food justice or child care or whatever. There's very exciting stuff coming to Westminster and I just um I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about Adelante. They're they're coming here May 4th. They're going to give a presentation to us on on May 4th, but it's very exciting the the opportunities that exist with providers and how they can train um new, you know, we have a childcare gap in pro providers. they can actually train a whole new army of them for us that can fill this gap that we have. So very exciting stuff.

Thank you. Is uh councelor hot joining us remotely or missing? They are not. They were not feeling well this evening and didn't feel up to joining them. Understood. Thank you so much. Councelor Brahas.

Thank you madam mayor. The uh it was a pleasure to attend the uh Blossom Commons affordable senior living groundbreaking. I think uh it kind of sets a great you know while it's our job is not done as a city in terms of ensuring that people can age in place and age in this city uh I think it it's a great first step particularly around the affordability uh and I am excited that this council is committed to continuing to engage in policy that could ensure uh all residents can kind of you know live thrive and you know live out their life here in Westminster. Uh the North Metro Arts Alliance meeting was also this past week. Uh that was really great. We we did it virtually, but it was a a great time. There was still um kind of record attendance, which was um really awesome for those who are excited about the arts in Westminster. I also had the chance to attend the Rooted in Hope uh fundraiser with uh the mayor and councelor Zati uh and a lot of other elected officials uh across the the county. And it was just a really great moment to see the community come together for food sovereignty and and uh find ways uh you know to to pull our resources to ensure that children specifically but every member of our community uh doesn't have to go without and I know that there's members of this council who have lived experience with that and and how incredible that that work is and so I'm grateful to be a continued partner in that kind of work and again to engage in policy that ensures uh that all people uh can find uh security and and sovereignty within food at large. And finally, uh the competition is fierce, but I am trying my best to to be first place on this council for Westy West restaurant week. Um and had a chance to visit two of our uh incredible partners who are engaging in that program and am excited to uh you know go to a few more uh restaurants and and take advantage of the killer deals uh for restaurant week. And I encourage any resident, anyone in the community who's listening to to come

out. I've also leveraged restaurant week to get my friends to come towards uh Westminster, which has been really really nice for me driving around. Yeah. Thank you. Good excuse. Yeah. Councelor Ireland. Thank you.

Um I I attended Colorado Religious Freedom Day down at the Capitol. Governor Polus gave a proclamation and it was nice to hear that everyone appreciates our country that we can worship how we're what we may. So, that was a nice proclamation. Um, I attended ad I mean AC rep this morning. Um, there's two bills that were interesting that our city might look into. One was SB26-0449 allowing people to put money aside and income tax rebate or fire mitigation or whatever else that might happen to your home. Um because we know that our homeowners insurance is skyhigh. So, they also have a bill HB26-155 that they want to increase our prop our um homeowners insurance by 0.5% to allow the government to have an enterprise fund to when we have these calamities to pay for them. So, there's two two avenues they're looking at. Um, also since we're talking with Excel tonight, they talked a lot about Excel, um, a bill to increase the amount of commissioners for Excel from 3 to 5. So, we can talk to them about that, but they're coming forward with that idea. So, those are the three things I talked a lot about today. Anyway, that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Councelor Johnson. Thank you, mayor. I um I was also really thrilled to attend with you and um Council Brahos to the um Blossom Commons senior affordable living groundbreaking project. And I wanted to say we appreciate former councils who and and our city staff who put that in place. I think Council Brahas and I were really fortunate to attend, but definitely understand that the leg work came far before us and and want to recognize all that great work that we now get to be a part of and continue. for our downtown. Um I also last Wednesday went as the liaison to the special permanent licensing board meeting where the uh liquor and cabernet license for um Red Lotus was approved by our SPLV board which is exciting as a new business downtown um and is one of those last final steps hopefully before it's open. So, we're um excited to see it open and um always appreciate all the members of the SPLB who do a really important work for our city and take time out of their evening to come and review the packets and and provide input on that. I um you know am competing with council braos to see who can uh win Westy restaurant week and also ate out several times um at some of our local businesses and and look forward to winning that competition. um and finally got to um join some really incredible people from around our community at the Port Forward um benefit and appreciate the city. I mean, they were very appreciative of the city sponsoring a part of that benefit. Um and it's, you know, really they highlighted the important work of rental and mortgage assistance for the city. Um, and you know, while they there, we have a city partner that we're working with, all of those nonprofits work together in Adams County, um, and here on our region to provide th that type of assistance and it was a really great opportunity to learn more about how that is better impacted in our community and a really great uh, nonprofit partner we have in in our area. So, was

appreciative of that.

Thank you so much, Mayor Pandera. Yeah. Um well, I was just going to say one thing regarding the down payment assistance. I mean, hopefully, I don't know how much uh money will be available through Prop 123 and Dola, but I know that they had um down payment assistance uh programs or at least the hope of that. So hopefully we can tap into whatever is available and that we aren't funding these things ourselves but working with partners and the state to leverage our funds. And I went to Dr. Cog last week, Denver Regional Council of Governments on Wednesday. one of the they did talk about um different grants that are available whether that's power ahead or through RTD and one that I was kind of curious about and it's really just a question for staff is the um partnership grants are coming up again and I know that some communities have taken advantage of these to u build out first and last mile services and so I'd be interested to know for us what does that look like in Westminster. I know we have via mobility which is that you know that kind of serves our disabled population but is there demand that isn't met through um Uber and Lyft and their programs. One of the things that at the same time um uh or the same evening our AAA agency was talking about how there's unmet demand for um their senior and disabled populations throughout the region. There's about a thousand rides a month that they're not able to provide just due to

not having the service capacity. And so I was interested in knowing a little bit better what our staff's thoughts are in terms of serving that gap, identifying that gap, seeing if there is some, you know, individual ride service need within Westminster as some folks are piloting around the region. And I'm sure that tees into our transportation um and mobility plan, but I don't, you know, I'd like to just kind of know what what does that address and then how does that relate to these other kind of non-reional transit options. So, and then you know if we're interested in looking at a partnership grant buttoning all that up and the other one of the other conversations that Dr. Cog was about the um RTD bill oh gosh I just worked I keep forgetting the actual title of it. Hold on. Um modernizing regional transportation district. And so this came up in terms of whether or not Dr. cause wanted to take a position on it and ultimately we did and there was some discussion about what cities were concerned about some folks were uh concerned that there weren't enough um uh voted positions sorry

elected

elected yeah sorry four hours of sleep this is what happened um and that was a concern for for some others were concerned over the four appointed positions and you know where from where were those um from where those were going to come. There was I think a consensus among the cities that they'd like to see whether it's two or four or whatever positions that Dr. Cog has the ability to actually appoint not just recommend to the um to the governor but to actually appoint positions. So that was conveyed. And then the other thing that was conveyed as part of an amend position was um the number of signatures that somebody would have to get in order to be able to run. So I think those were a couple of things that we had talked about as concerns when you were polling for you know your issues. Um so I wanted to let folks know about that. The other thing maybe of interest is that the Dr. Cog did vote to have Clear Creek and Gilton counties included in the um metropolitan metropolitan planning. Um what is that? Oh god, I'm so sorry. I should know this. Maybe it's organization. Um the MO and that's really just for transportation planning um in general. They are a part of other regional planning. They're part of Dr. cog for example, but not the transportation planning part of it. So, um, they were there and happy to be included now. So, I think that was all.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Well, that leads me into my notes then as well on the RTD bill. That's all I'm calling it. Uh, so um, Northwest Metro mayors and commissioners spent a good hour and a half today on that bill alone. And uh we discussed expanding the number of electeds from five to seven possibly um focusing on subregional committees and their effectiveness and the fact that the current subregional committees have not been effective and so how do we add to the scope of the bill um a way to make them more effective. Um and then and and that would help ensure that you know our voices are heard right and represented and not just Denvers. And uh we also talked about, you know, the the pay and whether or not they should be full-time, in which case hopefully they would have the ability and capacity to directly interact with the cities and communities that they're supposed to be representing. So, um those are some of the things we covered there. It's been a busy week. Um attended the Mile High Flood District meeting. Uh there we talked about the changing uh flood plane maps that are affecting parts of Westminster. So, just know that that is coming. And uh I've been asked to um help with the presentation that's happening with at the MAC. I was trying to look for when that is. I think it's April 29th. Uh I want to confirm that. But uh we will be having a presentation soon. Thank you. April 29th at the MAC. And for those of you that might uh live near that flood plane, uh I highly suggest attending that meeting to get your questions answered directly by folks at the Mile High Flood District. Um and of course I myself will be there with them. And uh we mentioned the Blossom Commons groundbreaking. That was very exciting. And just a real big thanks to all the many partners. I'm afraid I'll list them because I might miss somebody. But um really really big thanks especially to Dola and of course

Maria Damro who was a former city councelor here in Westminster. All the help that they did to make sure that we could have affordable senior housing here in Westminster. It's a huge win for us. So it's very exciting. Um I also attended the rooted rooted in hope uh fundraiser for uh raising dollars for students in need in Adams County and that was um successful as always. And then we also had the uh butterfly pavilion event that evening, spring into conservation. And um that was a beautifully attended, beautifully done event. The governor was there. Uh he ended up presenting some of the larger awards which is funny and it was just a great fun light-hearted event. Um but really emphasized uh the need for their work in our community around invertebrates and how they make up they are the largest biological like in mass of anything on the globe and how something so small is extremely important for our food sources. I like to emphasize that because you'll hear a lot about pollinators and invertebrates from me. So um and of course Westy restaurant week is ongoing right now. It started April 26th which was Friday. It will sorry it's going until April 26th. It started this past Friday and uh it's a lot of fun. So I hope that folks check it out. You can go to experiencewest.com to get a full list of all of the places that are participating and uh you'll see that the prices are 15 to 55 great menus. Our restaurants throughout the city. There's almost 40 restaurants participating and they've done a lot of work to put together specialized menus specifically for this event and it's the first time we've ever done this. And I'll tell you what, um, our neighboring cities are watching. I've had a lot of questions from our neighboring cities on how we got this done and they're excited and interested in possibly doing their own. And so just a big thank you to our economic development team for making this happen. Um, we're being innovative and setting a really great precedent. So

that's exciting. And of course, if you haven't caught it, there's been all sorts of new segments on Denver 9 and Denver 7 and a few more to come this week. So, that's exciting. Uh, Pour It Forward, that was a great event. Um, again, that was to benefit almost home, which does incredible work around um unhoused population prevention, which is extremely critical. Uh, we have to keep these organizations alive if we are going to prevent uh more unhoused, especially right now in in what could possibly be an economic downturn. And uh most importantly, I want to highlight that Earth Day is coming up Saturday, April 25th. It's my favorite holiday. It's very exciting. Please join us. We're going to be doing it in collaboration with Adams County. And that means every city within Adams County is going to be hosting their Earth celebration right here in Westminster with us. And so that's really, really cool. It's uh a really great partnership and we're really expanding what we're doing. And then just know that right now this week is uh the cleanups all around the city are happening. So if you want to register yourself or your team, go to the city website. You can easily register a cleanup anywhere around the city. Um and then of course we'll celebrate alto together this April the 25th. And please reach out if you have questions around Earth Day. Uh because I want to make sure everyone is successful. And of course it doesn't end on the 25th. If you want to have cleanups throughout the rest of the city, we will make it happen. I will go out there with you. We will have a great time with that. I'm set. Do you have a report?

I do, mayor. Thank you. Uh if I could have the first slide. I'm going to pull that up. Go right to the next one. Katherine, thank you.

Um okay. So, uh, by way of city update, I want to, uh, give a, um, an announcement and a confirmation that this upcoming Wednesday, April 22nd, right at the MAC, uh, we have an affordability town hall. So, city council is welcoming the community, uh, to join city council. Um, and actually, we're it's a twoin one night. Uh, we're going to start with a birthday celebration for Westminster. It's our 115th birthday and I'll give a teaser that we will have a speciallymade birthday cake by our very own suites of inspiration located in historic Westminster. And uh that will be how we start the evening together. So the community is welcome to join in our birthday party for our own city. Uh and then uh that will be at 5:30 and then right at 6:00 we will begin uh the actual uh town hall uh on uh affordability. um learn how Westminster is investing in its future through our uh four key focus areas: accountability, affordability, opportunity, and connectivities. And you can learn more about this uh town, upcoming town hall on Wednesday by visiting westminster co.gov. Um and uh check out more if you're interested in coming. I would encourage it if you have any input you want to provide to your city council. We will also have uh the city's leadership team there uh to assist uh and uh help uh our community provide input for us. Right. So that's at the MAC uh begins the birthday parties at 5:30. The town hall begins at 6:00 and will run till 8:00 p.m. And for those who don't know, that's at 3295 West 72nd Avenue. Next slide, please. I want to uh highlight that the city's drought watch did go into effect last week, April 15th. And I want to thank our residents uh for already starting um and taking very seriously a red reduction in outdoor water use. And again, our request uh is for our uh

residents to go voluntarily to uh watering no more than 3 days a week between um 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m. So when it's cooler in the evening hours and morning um and then to limit it to three or less days per week. So uh we are getting a great response from our community. So thank you. Please keep it up and we will continue to monitor how Stanley Lake water levels are doing as well as our snow packs in the mountains. Uh for more information uh including water conservation resources, you can visit westminsterco.gov/droughout. Next slide, please. Uh mayor has talked about this. I want to highlight it's not too late to get in on the great global cleanup in Westminster. So it started on the 19th and runs right through till uh the 25th this coming Saturday. If you haven't yet um signed up to uh do a cleanup in Westminster in one of either your neighborhood or join another team in a different neighborhood, u you can go right to our website, westminsterco.gov. You'll find a link uh it's a very easy online application form uh name um and size of your group. And then there's an interactive map that shows you which areas of the city have not yet been signed up. They are filling up um but it's not too late. So uh it's fully supported. um you'll have all the resources that you need when you show up and uh the cleanup um um will happen um wherever you pick. So um and then the wrap-up of that is on Saturday. So if I could have the next slide. Mayor also uh described this. This is the Earth Day celebration and marks the last day of the uh global cleanup week. And this as the mayor mentioned is in partnership with Adams County that includes North Glenn, Brighton, Thornton, and Commerce City. So, we're going to welcome all our neighbors from those cities and the county to join us right at City Park from 10:00 a.m. to 100 p.m. And I want to thank our fine and talented folks at City Park Recreation Center and our parks, recreation, and libraries department for hosting all of our neighbors this year. Um, you can do a number of things. Uh, Adams County is

going to be there um providing some pretty cool things to do. Test driving an electric vehicle. You can also recycle used batteries and electronics. Uh there's a website that Adams County has up at adamscount.gov/earthday and you can find out if you have questions like I did what exactly kind of uh exact kind of batteries will be accepted. So that's all listed the kinds of electronics you can bring. You can receive free vouchers to trade in your gas powered lawnmowers uh for electric versions. Actually lawn equipment. Um now that is a that is a limited number. So first come first serve on those. So, if you really want to get a voucher, that's $100 to $200 off of an electric version. Um, and also we'll have fun activities. So, I do encourage folks to show up for Earth Day right at City Park Recreation Center Saturday starting at 10:00 and that will run through 1:00. Also included will be a lunchon for the volunteers. So, lunch provided for volunteers. Um, so show up and um and have some uh lunch with fellow volunteers. Next slide, please. On tonight's agenda, it is a short agenda this evening. Uh we will start with our uh friends from Excel Energy providing an update on electrical infrastructure and capacity planning. Then we'll move into the 2026 Westminster Bian by biianial thank you community survey overview and finally you have one executive session uh tonight and that's reviewing process discussion and goal setting for the city manager. Next slide please. This week as I mentioned Wednesday uh actually is a busy night for us. Uh uh the 22nd is the city's birthday party at the MAC at 5:30 and then affordability town hall beginning at 6:00 p.m. Also uh is the downtown activation series event called Earth Day Mini Terra Plant Giveaway that actually runs from noon uh on Wednesday through till 9:00 p.m. at uh our very own Inks and Drinks at 8920 Westminster Boulevard in downtown Westminster. So make sure you get in on that if you're interested.

And also there is a historic landmark board meeting uh that night 7 to 8:30 p.m. right at city hall. That's also a hybrid meeting for convenience. Next slide please. Uh this week on Saturday uh three things happening. We've already talked about the last one on the list on this slide which is Earth Day celebration and great global cleanup. Um, and also Saturday we are providing our fire department is providing another free car seat clinic that will run from 8:30 to noon uh at fire station 2 9150 Lowel. And so just uh that's by appointment only because it sometimes gets pretty busy. But if you have a car seat uh or need to get one installed, our fire department professionals will help you do that um and get that installed correctly. And then uh also on Saturday, April 25th is the art and authors showcase. This is uh uh put on by our parks, recreation, and libraries department. Um this is a pretty cool event that's also at the MAC this time and that's 9:00 am to 3 pm. So uh you can check that out on our website under our events page. Um and that's a pretty uh cool opportunity to uh meet local authors and artists with some of their offerings. Next slide, please. At our next meeting of city council, that's a regular meeting of council. That's Monday, April 27th. So, next Monday, that will start at 7:00 p.m. Um, the premeating at 6:30. We have five presentations that night. Those are proclamations. Uh, mental health awareness month, 2026 small business week, Earth Day, so that's an after the-act proclamation. Um, uh, locking that in. Also, sexual assault awareness month, as well as neurodeiversity celebration month. Uh, in the city manager report, I'll have two items for you in your information uh, packet. 2025 sustainability plan report. So that's a report out on all of our sustainability efforts and measurements in 2025 and then uh the official city positions on the Colorado General Assembly's proposed legislation. Next slide, please. Thank

you. Uh also on consent that night will be eight items including two second readings and then two items of old business. Second reading of councelor's bill 16 approving an economic development agreement with the origin hotel in downtown Westminster. And second reading of counselor's bill 17 repealing the concept plan review process. Next slide. As always, uh please use access westminster. Uh that's at westminsterco.govaccess westminster. Um and um you can also get the app for that and phone us during office hours 3036582400 or after hours. you could use that number and get a AI assistance. Um, and then website westminsterco.gov. We keep that up to date. Uh, current events, special events, um, drought information, anything that you would need from your city. And then finally, uh, if you're curious uh, or interested in where our tax revenue goes, you can find that at our transparency portal at westminsterco.gov/903transparency. That's all I have for Mayor.

Thank you. Questions or comments on the manager's report? Councelor Brahas.

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, and thank you, city manager, for that. So, it's not specifically in this report, but I wanted to ask for an update maybe on the next city manager report um on the uh the construction the road construction on l uh right by the uplands uh development between like 84th and 88th or 80th and 88th has widened the road, but there's multiple layers of road paint that uh is confusing some drivers uh and it's uh just causing, you know, I've got a lot of complaints from residents, but even personally going down that road, you know, I find myself kind of having to second guess where I'm going. So, if we could get some either attention to that or some sort of update on the plan around that, I think that would be uh beneficial to the community.

Thank you. Mayor, may I ask for So, counselor, to clarify, uh overlapping older markings with newer markings.

I mean, a little bit. Yeah, sometimes there just absent markings too. I mean like there's space for two almost two and a half lanes but like and then there's space for like one lane on another side for other you know so I think people are it's particularly around the intersection on lull and and 88th there is no clear markings to indicate like a turn only lane a straight lane uh or if there's space for a right l right turn lane uh so there's but there's space for all three potentially uh I think uh some some clarification via road paint would be really helpful for safety uh but also just if there I I understand that the the plan is eventually that'll just get a big rework and redone once it's finished, but it's we're a long way out from that. So, I think some intermittent attention to that would be helpful.

Thank you. Thank you. Other questions, comments? Okay. I just want to say that was a really great photo you had of the last birthday celebration 100 year. We all I saw Senator Faith Winter in there, a few other former um leads of the city. So, that was really great. I don't suppose we'll have a lot of original residents at our 115th birthday party, will we? Maybe not this time. Maybe not this time. Maybe not this one. All right, that brings us to this evening's presentation. City Manager, would you like to introduce the first presentation?

Thank you, Mayor. Uh, up first is Excel Energy providing an update on electrical infrastructure and capacity planning and our staff uh member Heather Coninberg um will be introducing our guest from Excel. Thank thank you for joining us this evening. Thank you so much Jody Mayor Mayor Pro Tim city council. Um just I'm Heather Krenterberg real estate development manager for the city. Want to introduce a team here from Excel who will be presenting tonight. Um sitting next to me Michael Pascuchi is that how you say it? Yeah.

Wonderful. Okay. Uh regional vice president regulatory policy and Tyler Bryant um area manager West Denver metro community and local government affairs. And of course, we've got Lindsay Kimell, director of community services here. And then Faith Ryan, who's our energy policy analyst at the city. So, uh, staff of course and, um, the folks at ASEL are available for questions after the presentation. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for the invite. Um, Heather, my name is Tyler Bryant. I'm the area manager at Excel Energy. Um I served the city of Westminster and other county other municipalities in Jefferson, Clear Creek, Gilpin, El Paso, Elbert and Lincoln counties. Um joining me today is Mike. Um he is our new head of our new regional vice president of regulatory at Excel Energy. So he does a lot with the PUC um at the policy level. Um let's see. So, I'm here today to provide an overview of how Excel Energy's powering Colorado with a snapshot, comparing today's energy mix with our 2030 goals and our wildfire mitigation plan with key 2025 metrics to reduce the risk on our system. I'll then discuss how we provide electric service to the city of Westminster. Uh our approved plans to expand our distribution capacity and solutions to catch up and stay ahead of capacity constraint issues impacting the system today. All right, leading the clan energy transition. As you may know, um we're the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 1.6 million electric and 1.4 million natural gas customers. In 2018, we were the first energy company to announce our commitment to reach net zero by 2050 and reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2030. As of last year 2025, we've achieved nearly 46% carbon reduction since 2005 levels and expect to reach over 88% carbon reductions by 2030. That is a significant achievement. I love talking about it and um you know there's a lot more to go towards our 2050 net zero goals as well. Um, we do remain committed to decommissioning our two remaining coal plants by the end of 2030 while ensuring our system remains safe,

affordable, and reliable. About affordability. The way Coloradoatans and the rest of the nation are using energy is changing. As virtually every aspect of our customers lives is being electrified in new ways, we've been able to keep pace with this growth providing electric generation, transmission, distribution system to Coloradoatans. We have done so by providing critical service for among the lowest price anywhere in the country. Doing this well into the future while meeting clean energy aspirations of Colorado is not a guarantee. By continuing to invest in our electric system, we believe we will meet the growing needs of our customers and keep the state on pace to meet its clean energy goals. We recognize energy bills can be a challenge, especially as cost of living continues to increase, but we work hard to keep costs low for our customers, leading to average electric bills that are currently 37% below the national average and 27% below the state average. Over the past 10 years, our rates have been well below inflation. Moving to wildfire, the city of Westminster has not been included in the PSPS while the city is mainly in our tier one lower risk tier. The city was initially scoped in our forecasts in the December 17th PSPS event. I personally was in touch with most of you just making you aware um of the plans and eventually the city was descoped um from the risk. With more severe weather and drier conditions, wildfires are now a year-round threat in many areas even where they weren't common before. Everyone shares a responsibility for wildfire safety and we aim to prevent wildfires associated with our equipment. In fact, you may have heard today that we are monitoring for the potential PSPS

in western Colorado. The storm will move into the front range on Thursday, but we're not confident in the models for a PSPS at this point. I'll certainly be in touch with everybody if the weather forecasts change. PSPS events are new for Coloradoatans and we are working hard to ensure we capture and incorporate community feedback into our plans and communications. If you ever have any communications or suggestions for our wildfire mitigation plan, please reach out to me and I'm happy to set something up with our team. Uh or you can ask Mike here who is probably working on the next wildfire mitigation plan. So, how Westminster is served. The reason we're here today is to discuss our plans to address capacity concerns in Westminster Station and our future plans. Westminster station area is served primarily by three substations around Westminster as you can see by the black little squares. We got the Westminster station area with the yellow circle. Um from these substations, feeders branch out to serve customers, homes, and businesses. Federal Heights is what we call bar one at the top right. Seer is over to the left that serves a lot of the power down on the west side of Westminster station. And from the south you have the Arvvada substation which serves um up to the north. Each of these substations and their feeders are at maximum capacity. Our challenges of catching up to and staying ahead of growth requires massive investments, regulatory approval, and how our planners evaluate and forecast growth. There's a larger story here. We've been preparing for significant electric growth with how we can improve our own capabilities to evaluate growth in real time and

meet future growth. To achieve this, this PUC recently approved our 25-29 distribution system plan. It authorized nearly $4.9 billion statewide distribution investments to proactively address the reliability, electrification, and capacity constraints. For context, we anticipate needing up to 108 upgraded substation transformer banks, 35 new substations, 300 new feeders, 154 capacity projects for a total of 3.1 gawatts of new capacity. For context, that's about 31% growth from our current 10 to 11 gawatt system serving a peak load. And we want to get there in 5 years. Of these projects, our teams believe Jefferson County, including Westminster, will need probably 12 substation transformer banks, five new substations, 50 distribution feeders, and 31 new capacity projects. Of course, this is a moving target and could change with growth. A key factor is the scale and timing of capital investment. To keep customer bills affordable, we must carefully prioritize projects and spend our dollars wisely, investing in projects where development is most likely over those that are conceptual. We're also constrained by the sheer volume of work underway today. There's a practical limit to how quickly projects could be executed while maintaining its safety and reliability for all customers. Many projects require switching and temporary deenergization of equipment to ensure crews can work safely while keeping as many people energized as possible. These activities are often limited to off- peak seasons, typically outside the summer months, which further narrows the availability of construction windows. Together, all these factors create new challenges, but they also underscore the importance

of thoughtful planning, strategic investment, and collaboration to continue delivering safe, reliable service as our communities grow. The approved DSP plan, the distribution system plan, gives our planners the tools and fundings to move from reactive repairs to proactive growth growthbased system design. Before the DSP, our planners used historical load, long-term demographic data, and developer service applications. In other words, we didn't really have the tools to evaluate growth in real time. and the growth which came to the Westminster station area in the 2020s which impacts our ability to serve today. Also important to note is a big key theme of the distribution system plan is how we operate the plant is before the distribution system plan we typically ran our equipment feeders and substations above their rated capacity. This approach worked when growth was predictable at about 2% year-over-year, but it's currently capping out our systems capacity in the area without building new infrastructure. This also shortens the life cycle of all of our equipment, which could potentially put customers at risk of an unplanned outage if an underground wire fails. Today, as I mentioned earlier, we're seeing historic electric system growth, comparable to the rise of the air conditioner. In extreme scenarios, we estimate peak demand could triple or quadruple by 2050 by some scenarios pushing equipment built 50 years ago beyond well beyond its system design limits. This growth is also as we learned co difficult and hard to pre predict. Also want to make a caveat here that this was pulled from a white study about a year year and a half ago. So, some of this has been updated as the PUC and

Excel Energy's regulatory teams evaluate, forecast, and growth. To catch up and get ahead of growth, our teams adopted more sophisticated capacity planning by preparing for a range of futures, focusing on where growth is actually happening, and making flexible datadriven investments that can adapt as conditions evolve. If you bear with me here, we get into a little bit of the specifics of what planners do. Planners evaluate for multiple scenarios, baseline, high growth, low growth scenarios to understand the timing and magnitude of growth to avoid over or underbuilding the system. They incorporate and update model assumptions like population housing growth, commercial and industrial development, transportation, and building electrification. What's the known large load? energy efficiency, distributed energy resources like rooftop solar and batteries, location specific planning at hyper local levels. Instead of the higher level system level, our teams are looking to ensure investments are targeted and cost effective. They're they're evaluating load at substations, feeders, and the transmission level. They're identifying localized constraints and aligning infrastructure investments with actual development patterns. continuous monitoring and adjustment, track and adjust according to actual growth versus the forecasts and incorporate new customer commitments and development data in our models. They also look at weather. This is especially as we're getting hotter. This has been a tough season. Um that's certainly something we look at as we look at new growth in the area to evaluate what sort of capacity we have available today. So today in the Westminster station area, we find ourselves in the position of planning for growth which came in

2016 when the city invested nearly $80 million following the construction of the RTD line in addition to today's historic growth. While we do have a new capacity feeder project under construction today, we're working closely with the city to explore whether we can create capacity through energy efficiency savings, non wilds or nonwires alternative projects like batteries. Our teams are also good news I told Heather last week. Our teams are also moving forward to acquire a new substation site to serve this area. The Berkeley substation initially expected in 2032. We're also accelerating the substations in service date to potentially being in 2029. It's big news and that's not very much time to build an entire new substation. There's a few interim solutions as well. The new feeder project I mentioned, working closely again with the city, we accelerated plans to build the new feeder. It's about 108 watts running from the ser substation, it's northwest towards Westminster station to accommodate over capacity concerns for the local system. The feeder was initially scheduled to be in service by 2025. The rightway permit approvals with the city of federal heights and security easements from local property owners delayed the projects in service date to the end of this year. The feeder does have about 2 megawatts available left, roughly the size of a few small um all electric apartment buildings. While we can't disclose the projects that were already approved for service, we do know of a few number of smaller projects that will likely be approved for capacity on this feeder and probably cap that feeder out. It's my understanding that the city of Westminster recently approved all permits for this project and construction is underway. Um

construction will work from the south in Westminster up towards Federal Heights to the north. More good news from last week. Our engineers let me know that capacity is changing in real time. While that feeder only has about 2 megawws available for new projects in the Westminster station area, there are other projects on other feeders in the peripheral areas that have that will potentially be cancelled, freeing up needed capacity here. So, I don't know what that means for projects just yet, but there's a lot of good conversations happening to make sure we're very aware of the city's needs in a short amount of time. Another in a room solution. Both the city and Excel have existing energy efficiency programs available to meaningfully create capacity through savings. It's possible to cut enough existing loan to accommodate new development. However, customer adoption is not guaranteed. These programs often require customers to invest and install highly efficient systems. But we continue to be engaged with the city and our internal teams to see how we can target these customers, residential, commercial, along our constraint feeders to provide additional blue capacity. We're also rapidly bringing online new pilot programs, the nonwire wires alternatives, which would install batteries to support highly constrained local grids. Thanks to the recently approved DSP, our engineering teams are working with the city to understand how the city of Westminster may qualify for some of these programs. And related to that, I understand council discussed the cloud break development. And it's my understanding that they may have plans to pursue some of that funding as part of their non wild wires alternative program. Um, and the Berkeley substation and then we'll get to questions.

The Berkeley substations construction is a long-term solution for capacity constraints in Westminster. Excel Energy. The city and local development community have been proactively working together to identify and evaluate sites which might make sense for this substation. As I mentioned earlier, we are moving to acquire a piece of property with the developer. Um the site would then go through design and en environmental studies before construction and we will need the city's support to expedite approvals through the permitting and approval process. Current currently our engineering teams are considering adding transformers to build new feeders at the Arvvada Federal Heights and SER substations through 27 and 29. That's a lot. Before I open the conversation to answer your questions with Mike, I want to sincerely thank the folks at the city who have been engaged in advocating very well for the city amid our capacity challenges and for the developer community who are also navigating these challenges firsthand. Just as I have been with your team, um our goal to be is to be transparent about the challenges and the path forward. So with that, um I'm glad to take your questions.

Thank you. Okay, council councelor Zotti. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Tyler. And thank you, uh, forget sorry your name, Mike Pascu.

Thank you, Mike, for being here. Um, it's been many years of the relationship between the city and Excel, as you know, lots of um bad stories, right? Um we've had many projects that have been that have failed because we approved the project and then Excel can't provide the the energy. So, I'm grateful for your proactivity in coming. You know, I think we first met last summer in the economic development Jeffco and you were really enthusiastic of trying to fix this relationship because it's been a very a very um tense and nerve-wracking relationship with Excel and Westminster. uh we've had developers who have not come here just because of the stories that they've heard right that you won't be able to provide the energy so it's really important that we have this conversation now the first I have I have four questions the first one is linked to pricing so you so in one of your first slides you mentioned that electric bills are 37% below national average uh do you know what the average is in Westminster that you charge

what the average bill customer bill is or what every every customer resident residential customer for example across the state pays the same rate if they're an electric customer um the average bill for a city of Westminster customer I don't know the average bill um for an XL Energy electric customer in Colorado is about $90 to $95 a month

I can just tell that is very expensive and it keeps going up and our residents are they complain to us very frequently about how their bills are continuously going up and it's not volume it's it's rates so I don't know what's happening with the rate if it's supposed to be one rate for the whole state if if that's what you're saying but there's something going on with the bills and it's it's very tenuous for our residents the second question is wildfire mitigation Have you given any thought to so when you had the the uh what did you call it the PS PSPS

the PSPS I love the communication aspect I think it was a lot of communication but the issue is you shut down many parts of the city and the time period that you shut it down were so the question is were were there credits given to those customers for the for when you shut down the So during a PSPS event when power is turned off, the customer obviously isn't consuming anything. So there's no charge for that. Um but there's no process right now by which a customer is say refunded or provided a rebate or anything like that for um the hardship that you endure during it. Um, so there isn't a a process by which if you lost power for 6 hours, you could submit a claim or or something like that for for reimbursement.

I would highly encourage you to look into that because it there was a lot of heartache that that that caused and there was a hardship element not having power for several days and then providing the customer nothing for that. especially when there was no fire that actually you know it was preventative but I feel like there should be a balance there of some kind of hardship for residents because that was really tough. Yeah, the commission later this year will be opening up uh rulemaking. Um they do commission has its set of rules. They go through an open rule making process by which they um will engage participants in that process. And I'm more than certain that that's going to be one of the discussions of um how if and how you address that. right now it's been um kind of a policy for as far back as I can remember now that that's not um it's not reimbursed just as a a matter of process but given to your point the expansion of this I know the commission's talked about it and looked at it and I expect it'll be something that continues to get some discussion through that rulemaking process of one how do you do it how do you submit for it um if you submit for How do you reimburse for it? Um

and and when is that happening?

That rule making will happen um I think it will open up later this spring summer. Um and it will run probably for the better part of the next I'll say 6 to 12 months. Um they can take some time because the commission will promate first they'll do some information gathering then they'll promate rules. Um there will be rounds of revisions to those rules where different parties can submit their comments. commission will then re uh revise the rules based upon the comments they receive and then if they approve to put those rules into effect um people can then respond to the rules that they put into effect. Now the the challenge that you're going to have is we're approaching summer now and if you're going to expand this now before coming up with a plan there's going to be much much bigger blowback from the public if there's have these these PSPS if they continue and you just shut down power for multiple days without any hardship credit you know that's going to be I could foresee a big problem especially if we've have we've had no winter. So, it's going to be a very, very hot summer and there's going to be a lot of these events and that could cause chaos throughout the city. You

mind if I jump in here? So, some of the communities I work in are high wildfire risk areas throughout Jeffco. Um, I was on site for Golden. I went to our Red Cross centers when we activated up in Blackhawk and in Evergreen. So a lot of the communities I speak with a lot of their concerns are what are from businesses from you know if they lose food and that we can't reimburse them if they're a restaurant it's very hard to schedule around a PSPS and then say if you know we're able the storm changes and we're able to keep people energized for another hour or so that good intention drives even more confusion which makes it a very difficult communication scenario. I think part of what people are looking at is and I think the PUC probably as well is in the next wildfire mitigation plan which we'll probably propose and we're I'm sure drafting now based on all this feedback we're getting from all the PSPS's events that we're having is a lot of that's probably going to expand into how do we keep customers energized throughout an event and I think that's where probably we're going to look at more customer focused products and rebates for maybe it's a backup battery. Um that sort of like individual uh kind of solution because right now this current wildfire mitigation plan it was big that drove up rates to your earlier point about $10 a month. That's part of what's driving bills. Um a lot of that goal was really to rebuild the system in the highest risk areas of two and three in the foothills and in the mountains as quickly as humanly possible. We're talking new poles, new electric equipment that's all wildfire rated. Um so that when weather when weather events occur, they can withstand um storms, they're less likely to be included in a PSPS. And part of the goal is to see what we can underground and sectionalized through more electric

equipment to keep less people impacted. Um, again, it's an ongoing it's a struggle just to communicate how much is involved. Um, but the teams have done extraordinary work in updating the system in the highest risk areas. And I I'd imagine because there have been no fires, um, I would like to say that those new poles and wires are probably better able to withstand when debris flies into them in high speeds um, to avoid creating a spark. And again, the PSPS is a last resort. It's not something we want to use. Um hopefully as the system is upgraded in the future, um we use that even less and less, but really it it is truly a weather event. And the goal of a PSPs is to be a last resort to prevent a fire that cannot be fought.

Okay. And um the next question is linked to the growth. So you're at capacity in Westminster, right? Is what you I think those are the words you used. We're looking at the Westminster station area just in that area. I think so. But a lot of the areas throughout even the federal heights um towards Aurora there's a lot of areas that are pretty tight on capacity and that's driven not just so I know there are lots of growth assumptions is it mainly population growth or is it more electricity usage per user so people using more what's the biggest driver

so I would say in trying to understand this from our engineers me I am not an engineer I'm trying to understand why has happened and how we got here. Um, a lot of this started, a lot of this happened, a lot of things changed during CO as we all know, but also electricity demand as well. People weren't coming into the office as often, so they're using a lot more electricity at home. Things haven't quite shifted back and more people have EVs. That's a major load. So, when a new development comes in and they're like, "Hey, we want a bunch of electric chargers." That's a big factor on load. And so um yeah, a lot of EVs um how people use electricity more distributed than centralized what it used to be. Um and our how we operate the system. So that overrated strategy was great for keeping bills low, but it wasn't great for when we hit the cap when everybody moved. We hit the cap. city had significant growth in the Westminster station area and all those feeders because we aren't able to incrementally accommodate new growth. The goal is to derate all those feeders that are at maybe 100 110% bring them all down to 80% with new infrastructure so that as new developments come online we're not doing this.

Does that help? Yeah. So we have a few development projects. One one of them was the uh what was it called? The independent senior living from last year. I know they had some issues with it with you guys be regarding the amount of energy that they were looking. So we approved the project but then they ran into issues with the amount of energy that they were proposing to use versus what you're able to provide. Where where did you land on that? I don't have information on that. I'm happy to follow up.

I think that's important because because I think that could kill that project if you guys never reached an agreement because they needed it for a particular the way the project was designed. They needed that amount of power. So I'm curious but not just for them but in in general we have projects. Are you able to tell us whether you are a whether these projects will be energized? The you know we have existing ones that we approved that are going through their process and then we'll have new ones. Is this plan saying that we should rest okay that they'll all be energized or are you saying without doing this it's a tossup for what we currently are proving? So, I think we're talking about the Ericson Senior Living facility and it's further up north. Um, so our teams currently do have a plan and so after the city, just in general, after the city approves a project,

we work very closely with their developers typically for a situation like Ericson development, they submitted an enormous amount of load that we would typically see for an industrial size facility. Um, so I mean that's where it's, you know, their engineers may be a little more conservative about, you know, here's what we think we need for electrical load at peak times. And then kind of we'll try to evaluate that and base that off our own reality and what we see with other compared projects. Um, and then we'll meet somewhere where we both think, okay, this is where we think we're going to have how much load we're actually going to have, what you're actually going to use. because typically you don't meet what exactly you know it could be hacked for it depends on the development um but that development also is going to be phased and I think we have plans different feeders to come in um to serve each of those developments so the teams are working on it we know it's a very high priority I've met with the Ericson team um so we are focused on making sure that's energized it's a big project for the city we're aware of that they also had a lot bringing it back to the EV conversation They also had a significant number of EV chargers they wanted. I think part of that discussion was say, hey, could we as we build the infrastructure to meet your new load perhaps we could push that down to, you know, a different phase just so we more able to bring housing online over time.

And to my other question, are you able to meet our projects that we have this next couple years or or is it a toss up until all these things are done? I would say it depends on the projects that come to fruition, but it's also complicated. There are also other projects that are going to be cancelled that we think are going to be canceled have a high likelihood in the peripheral, which means we might have capacity for some of these other developments like Northgate. Another part of that to add to the complication is that the energy efficiency is an important part of this conversation. A lot of developers come in with say Northgate. I think they estimated about six megawatts needing six megawatts or so. That's quite a bit. Our teams typically again pretty skeptical once they submit all the engineering designs. We'll try to pair that down to see what it's most likely they're they need to use by construction. Um and so I looped in that developer directly in with our one of our new products. It's for, you know, 10,000 plus square foot developments to get that conver the energy efficiency conversation going early. Um, there are things we can do. There's a program team that helps developers if they get looped in early to try to achieve deeper energy efficiency so that we can lower the megawatts they need to get on the system. So, that paired with potentially a battery project. Um, we're trying to do everything we can to bring them on. Now, our engineer feels good about that due to the other canceled projects. So, that with energy efficiency, we're hopeful for that project. Um, but the longer term interim solutions that will require new construction, new feeders, um, hopefully a battery, again, we're just really thinking outside the box here.

So, it sounds like substation is, but the substation is the goal here. It sounds like you're saying it's a tossup. I don't think it's a tossup. I think it's well if if all those things toss up meaning it's not the it's not definite it's not 100% if these things don't happen that developer only submitted their um I asked them to submit their design plans just last week so our team still needs to get into designing understanding what else is available now

and if I might add thank you so much counselor um we are really working closely with Excel to Tyler's point um on every project that we're aware of in that area um and we've been doing that now for um a bit of time leading up to um the construction of the feeder line project that's currently going on. So that was a huge success. Um however, two two things there. One, it's first come first serve and um anyone along the feeder line can tap into it. So there was never a guarantee that you know the users or the developers of Westminster Station would be able to access it. Uh but it's it's going to it's going to provide some level of of of supply in that area. Um but due to the fact that it's first come first serve, it's really a also a um economic issue, right? And so um there's some other constraints in the Westminster Station area, including low rent rates, things like that that are um contributing to the low slower than desired time frame for developments to come online. So, that's part of this piece, but we've also proactively shared maps of projects that we're aware of in the Westminster Station area that um either were delayed, you know, over the past few years because of lack of uh supply or are sort of sitting on the sidelines but waiting and wanting to move forward. Um projects that we've brought to you uh a few different times um to uh bring agreements. um they are kind of waiting out a little bit of the market conditions and the supply issues as well. So, we're trying to be as proactive as possible as we can um with partners. Um I would say um the the current folks here at Excel that we are working with it's night and day compared to even two years ago um in terms of our ability to share information and and work collabor collaboratively together and plan for the future which is I think one of the um issues that was occurring

unfortunately for a number of years that helped get us to this place. So thank you for that. It has been night and day. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Um before moving on, this is somewhat unorthodox in the middle of a presentation, but I'm going to call a five. Um I've underestimated an injury that I need to attend to. And we'll come back in five minutes and we'll continue this because this is an important conversation.

Thank you. Oh, around. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Okay, 7:45 we're coming back from recess. Thank you so much for that. Appreciate that. Um, I'm going to move along. I think we had further comments that we may come back to, but I'm going to move ahead. Councelor Baras.

Uh, thank you, Mayor. Uh, thank you for the presentation. Uh I just want to start off with just highlighting some uh some positives that I want to celebrate. I think the community also appreciates this work. Uh even in the midst of the criticism, you know, the move towards net zero, particularly with that really aggressive number, I think is something to celebrate. Uh you know, we're kind of halfway there now. And I and I think it's an ambitious goal, though I'm I'm really hopeful that we can continue pushing towards uh that 88% by 20 uh 2030. I think that's that would be a remarkable thing to celebrate. uh certainly as policy makers but also as as an institution from Excel. So, thank you for that. Also, um really this attention to resiliency. A couple of my follow-up questions will be about that, but I just I I wanted to note my appreciation and I think our community's appreciation for um at least the the goal of resiliency uh within our power grid. So, thank you for for noting that in the presentation. Um, some of these, you know, I I I appreciate councelor's comments and and I I certainly echo a lot of them, particularly around the affordability aspect. Uh, so I I I won't rehash those, but I do want to ask if in terms of uh PSPS impacts, do you know of any way any sort of grants available for residents or even municipalities to um and maybe not a process to find these grants I think would be more helpful than specific grant names in the moment. Uh but what I'm thinking of are people to be able to uh attain you know grab generators for emergency medical purposes. I know there is like some programs but like um for medical purposes particularly for the refrigeration of medicines as well um I think uh if we could highlight those in this meeting for anyone who's paying attention uh particularly where those resources can be found on your on your on your website uh that would be helpful but also kind of bigger for us as municipalities you know as we engage with the bigger

reality of PSPS shutdowns and uh you know how we serve our community with some of our essential resources. You know, we want to make sure that our public safety building is continually running and we have those, you know, infrastructure pieces, but there's also other kind of greater needs that I know our staff is constantly advocating for. So, I think it'd be helpful to know kind of both levels like what can residents do individually to prepare for these uh particularly for for urgent and emergent needs and then how uh are we as cities able to partner with you and kind of attend to those infrastructure needs? Uh you know, I know and again just maybe for for residents, you know, this is something that we went to DC for to ask kind of like for more infrastructure resiliency around this. we went lobbying and asking our federal delegation for this kind of money, but there's lots of avenue for revenue streams. I think that's something that this council is constantly looking at. So, that was a lot of I can kind of condense that if need to, but uh those are that's kind of my first landing point.

Um I'll start off and then if you got something to add. Um I would say residents should if they have a medical device and they are registered um through us. Um there are two programs available but really the point of medical programs. Um one provides a special rate for uh customers with electric medical products and the other um provides program.

So it's metal rate. Either way, the point is through the wildfire mitigation plan for the purposes of wildfire and resiliency. If you are approved under either of those two programs, you can also apply for the home battery rebate program available under the wildfire mitigation plan. What that does is it can provide funding for a home electric battery. Um it's about I want to say $2 million in terms of budget, so it's not enormous. It's a pilot program. Um, so if you do have again electric medical equipment, okay,

go to our website or wildfire mitigation page. There is a ton of information there about how we operate the system, but also that battery program as well. Highly encourage residents to take a look at that. Okay. So, it sounds like they should even if maybe that grant or that $2 million dries up, they still should be registering with their electrical medical devices because it it gives them a kind of a different You said rate. Is that clear?

Clear. one of the programs does. The other program, I think, I can't even remember exactly what that does. I'm happy to follow up with you on that. Um, but either way, another benefit for registering for those programs is that it makes sure that you get an early notification in the event of a PSPS. Most communities get notified around 48 hours. That's when you'll get an email from me letting you know uh that you are in scope. At the 72-hour mark, 3 days ahead, that's when critical customers um will be notified. medical device customers will be notified to make plans.

Great. Thank you. Um so the next uh kind of question focus on resiliency. Um you mentioned maybe uh kind of more secure poles uh pole line, you know, poles for and attachments so that these lines wouldn't be so easily maybe snapped or sparked uh in these high event uh wind storms and potentially even burying lines. It sounds like that's something that you kind of mentioned. Is there is there a comprehensive plan that uh residents can look at to kind of keep tabs on uh these changes? Is there is the goal to like I guess have a finished plan where we're saying this is now a resilient network. I would say the first so the the wildfire mitigation plan is what residents should take a look at. It is enormous. There is a lot in there. But the goal is really to rebuild the entire poles and wires that they see up in high-risisk areas across Colorado. Um I don't know. The vision is to reduce wildfire risk from starting an ignition from our equipment during high wildfire risk weather.

Okay, that is the vision. That's the goal. So we try to break out each risk area into different tools. And so one of those tools is a PSPs again last resort. There are other operational safety settings. We are all in them I think today. So that just basically means if something touches a line and trips it, it stays off until a lineman can visually inspect and make sure it's safe to re-energize it to make sure there's just no damage to it so that we're not, you know, unintentionally sparking the line by trying to re-energize it.

Great. Um, I think that's like reassuring to hear and I think like the attention to that. I I wonder you you mentioned this too and I think this is a really great point to highlight is in this design trying to make sure that the if the PSPS is necessary it's not impacting so many people. So like you know you're you're ensuring that okay if this line isn't necessarily critical to like this entire city's worth of of of energy. On that note, I'm looking at the uh Westminster uh sorry the how Westminster station is serviced uh slide particularly around those kind of uh substations. Can you tell me if so let's just say this Berkeley station is built out and then so the feeder lines I guess I'm just kind of wondering how in stone these feeder lines are so you know if now we're kind of providing energy to this whole southern area uh through this substation and it lowers the the load on these other substation and these feeder lines will other you other people being serviced by these existing feeder lines up north maybe or out west. I imagine you mentioned they'll have more kind of capacity on that load, but will people will other developments be able to kind of tap into that and will that energy kind of be able to be directed elsewhere or is it less fluid than that?

So the feeder once a substation is built then you have 12 to 15 feeders that can extend from that.

Okay. Um so really the system is designed like I mean the feeders look like a plate of spaghetti with all the wildfire exercises we do. Um it really depends on the community's growth undergrounding summer overhead um based on phases of growth of different communities. Um, so it get again it gets pretty complicated but yes it will benefit everybody not just Westminster but it means we could also shift some load from other high-capacity areas maybe say further west in Arvvada or further east. So it benefits everybody when we start adding infrastructure to make sure everybody can start adding um new developments. I appreciate that it helps us be good neighbors with our neighbors and we're not necessarily fighting for uh the scraps of energy uh with

there are benefits of being very close to a substation too. So greater reliability. So you guys do benefit if it's in your backyard. Okay, that's good to hear. And then the final note um kind of doubling back to resiliency is um if obviously don't share like you know confidential information but just kind of resiliency in terms of like uh the federal look at uh energy infrastructure as a national security commodity and if you know at least maybe in general speaks and not necessarily telling us the individual pieces but if that is something that you're focused on and um ways that we can kind of be assured that you're attending to that.

Yeah. Um yeah, if you can add. Yes, that is always a concern. Um part of that, especially for substations, is building walls. Some communities have rules against how high we can build walls or fences. Um we're absolutely open to accommodating, but we typically want, I think, 10 ft or so around substations to protect that infrastructure because that is a serious risk. Um that's when the FBI gets involved. Um and nobody wants that. So Mike, do you have anything? Yeah, I was just going to say a lot of what you said, I mean, it has the level of attention all the way up to our senior executives. Um, I've received emails from our CEO asking questions about cyber security and grid security information in the DSP and the commission's decisions around it. So, it is um a high priority thing. Um, as as you know, um there's regular communication. We have um infrastructure security and cyber security teams that are in contact with Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and others all the time about um threat analysis, about risk mitigation and analysis. Um it's it's one of those everpresent concerns that people have that you hope nothing ever comes of, but you always want to be prepared for it.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councelor Ireland.

Thank you for coming. Um, so I have a few questions. So are you having more is it these substations and our energy that we need? Is it more of a infrastructure problem or do we just not have enough energy in the state because of the type of energy that the state is mandating? um green energy, not so much oil, natural gas, coal. Is that causing um problems to our energy needs? Like we have so many needs. Is that not keeping up these green energy that the state is pushing? Is that one of your problems besides infrastructure that we do not have enough energy?

Um thank you, counselor. I think I can talk about this one um because it's really the question you're asking a broader kind of integrated system plan question. Um from a local distribution reliability, the reliability on a feeder reliability your home that's not a function of we don't have enough energy to serve you. We're not turning off customers. Um what you might hear is a rolling brown out or blackout. That sort of thing isn't happening on the system. Um so if it's local impact it's generally going to be more of local infrastructure. Um a lot of our system those uh that infrastructure can last between 30 40 50 60 even 70 years and in some cases we're just reaching that point where either it was built years ago and it's reaching the end of its life. So reliability is um is declining and you need to replace parts, swap them out as you do with anything as it gets older. or it was designed for a time when it was a much smaller community or much smaller load on there. As Tyler was saying, you know, you you built it up to 110% of its capacity. So now you've kind of oversized uh or your your systems exceeded what it was designed to do and so you need to upgrade it. So on a distribution level, it really I think is the infrastructure portion of either it needs to be upgraded or it needs to be um replaced because it's aging. The on the broader question to is this a because we have more wind and solar. No, again it's not um a challenge of wind and solar. Um really what we've seen that's challenging us from a a broader bulk system is again growth on the system. Um and timing of when all types of resources have come online. Um, as Colorado has grown very rapidly, especially within our service territory areas, we've needed more and more power to match that and kind of coming out of COVID and with the

explosion of need across the country, we've seen delays in a lot of projects. Um, not unique to a wind or solar or even gas projects. All of them have experienced this because hyperinflation in the market, it's hard to get um the equipment you need. It's hard to get it on time. It's hard to get it for the price you thought you were going to pay 2, 3, 4 years ago. Um, and so as projects have been delayed, there has been, if you've heard about it, increasing concerns about resource adequacy. Do we just have enough resources to do that? Um, and we've managed through all that. Um, we've been partnering with, excuse me, with different state agencies and with the commission to find solutions to that. So sort of short answer is infrastructure need is there um to maintain reliability for customers both at the local distribution level but in the broader bulk system and but otherwise no it's not a function of if we just had coal we wouldn't have any sort of reliability problems either. Um wind and solar the way we optimize it the way we model and design it is designed to be inherently more reliable. Um it's just a matter of when your assumptions that go into your modeling and reality don't always line up. You've got to take um contingency steps to plan for those things. And it's stuff that we regularly plan for and work with the PUC and state agencies and and others to to mitigate.

Okay. Um well, I've heard that like the wind situation that that takes a lot of power lines to get it to where it needs to go. So that's infrastructure is increasing with that type of power because it's got to go farther. It's farther out. So is that part of the equation that makes infrastructure cost more because it has to come from farther away?

Not necessarily. Um the the kind of question you have is in the parts of the state where wind and solar are really the best. They are tend to be more remote. eastern plains, southern Colorado. Um, so yes, you will need some transmission development to get it to your major load center, which is essentially the Denver metro area. Um, now the difference is the price that you're going to build something for closer to load is also going to be more expensive to build it if it's feasible to build it there. U, for example, you're probably not building a 600 megawatt wind farm in Westminster. you might be able to get some large um solar facilities in and around the area. Um but you're going to be paying a higher premium to build a new generation facility in an urban area because there's just higher demand for that land. And you'll still need to build transmission within that system. It's not if we just locate the power plant very close to the load, it easily connects and it's no problem. You'll still need to build transmission and upgrade your transmission system to do it. So really the way that we try to plan is for what's the lowest cost solution all in try to look at and identify what's the cheapest we can get generation for and how can we design a transmission system that both delivers that in a reliable way but is kind of the most efficient. That's an ongoing and evolving process. It's not one that anyone has really figured out to date. Um but we try to get better at that every step of the way. um in solving for that.

So I know you have a huge rebate program especially for um heat pumps. How is that paid for? Is that the existing customers bills go up that do not have heat pumps? Yeah. So um we all

that's how you get people to use less electricity is to get heat pumps. So the heat pump the heat pump policies are a combination of both energy efficiency and um I'll say carbon reduction or decarbonization on the system. Um we have a broad swath of programs or programs. Some are focused on energy efficiency some are focused on decarbonization. Um some are focused on energy assistance for customers. And so kind of across the board, there's those different things. When we have a rebate program that encourages a customer to purchase and install a heat pump, um there's kind of two goals there. Is one, you may be changing fuels, um which is a state policy that we're, you know, helping implement. Um, but two, you may already have a heat pump or if you are switching, we want you to choose the most efficient heat pump so that you're not you're not going an inefficient way that drives up costs for everyone because now we need to build more infrastructure and because you're not then going to have something that's less efficient, drives up your own bill. As far as the recovery question goes, yes, you're right. It is socialized amongst all of our customers. So, um, we have a budget that the commission approves that we operate within and those costs are recovered by a line item on your bill. Um, and that rider kind of recovers the cost of those programs.

And how much is that cost for the bill extra? Um, I don't know what the specific rate is. Um, but that's something we could we could look at and see what the what the charge is. It it is volutric, so it depends customer to customer. Um, if you're a higher energy user, you're paying more for that. If you're a lower energy user, you're paying less for that. Okay. You mentioned this rule making process. How do people submit? Who gets to submit those comments and how do they do it?

Um, the rule making co proc rule making process is not one of the more exciting processes, I'll say. Um, anyone that wants to submit a comment though can go on to the PUC's website. um they have a link to um can't remember if it it's like how to engage or how to submit a comment but there's a process to give you some directions there uh but you can go on to the website you can submit a comment the if you don't know the proceeding specifically cuz again that's a more of you got to be involved to know is it 26R or 26V or or something like that but you can submit and if you provide the information about what your I think they allow you to to make note of what it is that you want to comment on. Commission does a very good job of then redirecting those to the appropriate places. So if you're following along with a rule making, you can submit public comment. You can do the same thing in any one of our proceedings. um a customer can go on and submit a comment to the PUC that um they're supportive, not supportive, indifferent to, have an idea for and the commission tends to I think look at a lot of those comments um and people do reference them in in the litigation aspects of those proceedings. So, how do you how is Excel going to meet the demand in the next 10 to 20 years based on what you're doing now? Do you think we need to build um nuclear power plants? What are you thinking you're going to do?

Uh you have a great question there. Um it's kind of the the billion dollar question with everything right now. Our perspective on energy right now is really all of all of the above. We're not prioritizing or excluding anything. I'll say with the exception of coal. I don't think we our resource plans don't accept or solicit for new coal projects. But we're really trying to keep an open mind to there's got to be lots of different solutions to this problem. If we want to stay on track for a 2050 decarbonization, first we've got to make it to 2030, 2040. Um there's going to be a need for natural gas in the future. There just isn't that dispatchable kind of by dispatchable I mean able to call on it when you need it and ramp it when you need it. Um so wind and solar can ramp very quickly up and down. Um and sometimes it can be within minutes and so you need some flexible resources in there whether it's batteries or natural gas that can kind of smooth some of that out. Um, wind and solar are going to be a part of the solution. Batteries will be a part of the solution. New technologies, whether it's nuclear, geothermal, something somebody hasn't, you know, commercialized yet. Um, all those are going to be tools that we need in our toolbox, including, you know, customer flexibility and demand response programs. Um, it's going to be really an all the above solution if we want to get there. There's not one simple, um, if we just do X, the problem solved. Great. So, one more question. You you you were talking about um Westminster Station, but what about other parts of our city? Because I've heard like the Orchard area has a shortage of energy or or the projects that have been approved there. So, have you looked at other projects or is it just the station and the Ericson project or is there other projects?

Those are some of the larger developments that we are aware of. There might be other projects that our team that just are in the process. Well, we have fire stations we want to build, right? They take energy. So, are all that been looked at? It it dep our team starts to look at it once they the city or um you know developers submit um for evaluation through our builder's call line. Then our engineering team gets involved to figure out how we can back in and engineer capacity to serve. And that could

if you wait till you get a plan instead of being proactive and looking like our 2040 plan, this is what everything is laid out as and we're going to need energy here if this is approved. We don't do that. We wait until it's approved and then we try to find the energy. That's not necess So part of earlier what I was discussing was how much more sophisticated our planners are can be now because we have a lot more information available and so they have the existing system today and then they get a request and that's really the first kind of hey we're serious about building something here versus if we start getting too far in advance with a lot of capacity checks that takes a lot of our team's time when a project may just go away tomorrow. We're having that discussion with a lot of the big um developers today um for you know other big capacity.

I know a lot of them go away though because they don't have the power. So that is that that's what we would like to avoid. That's what I'm trying to solve for. That's what we want solved too. Hear you loud and clear.

Thank you. Well, I believe if I may, I apologize. I'm not sure um but something changed more recently, I think, in terms of our ability to collaborate um in a stronger way in terms of future planning. So, to your point, counselor, um I do and I don't want to speak on behalf of Excel, but I think even a few years ago, um there were some constraints in our Excel's ability, I think, on the the PUC's process or something, um that really made it a little bit more difficult. um that has changed and I think to your point Tyler I think that um Excel's planners are much more proactive but that's been I think a fairly recent change of events.

So you would suggest a developer come to Excel first to say do I do you have enough energy before I take this to city council? That's one step they could do and then we could I can have those conversations with them. We can do an expedited capacity check. It's more of like a paper napkin scratch without doing all the engineering work that way we'd normally get if we get their, you know, full engineering designs. That sounds like a plan. So, we don't have these things. People are wondering when is it coming? We've already approved it. There are ideas. We don't have the energy for it.

And there are future ideas too, right? We're trying to become much more transparent. you know what is available without needing to go to Tyler. And so eventually we're going to build a map um for developers where they can see it's like a heat map to see like what areas geographic areas you know really kind of have capacity but again you know maybe check with us first before you just start you know ripping up shovels. I like the heat map. I do. Thank you. It's not very good yet needs a lot of love. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Councelor Johnson. Did you have anything? No, I'm good. I think the rest of the counselors covered it well. Okay. April.

Yes. Um had a few questions. Um so thank you for your presentation and trying to enhance what you've been doing um in terms of collaboration with the with city staff. Um I um you know with respect to capacity checks you know back my day jobs is long range planning and it's been frustrating uh working here in Colorado because there's not the ability or hasn't been the ability to check long range plans like our comp plan you know against the utility availability. it's kind of goes into a black box and Excel doesn't really respond back to say this, you know, we have constraints here or not. And so just listening to your responses to councelor Ireland and to Miss Croninberg, it's kind of it's nice to hear that you're advancing the planning. It sounds like there's a ways to go. Um it's sometimes like working just so you know from a staff point of view it's often like working with in with a black box and the communication between different departments in Excel isn't the greatest. So the more you can facilitate the connectivity within your organization as well as the communication outwardly just encourage that. Um so I had a question about the current rates. um you said that they're 37% below the national average. I'm hearing that they're likely to increase um soon. So, I mean, it's nice to point out that they're low now, but what are your thoughts about um where the rates are going to be going over the next 10 years?

I'll talk um maybe the electric rate case and then maybe some of the long term like what expected things. Is that right?

Sure. Okay. Um so, the electric rate case is probably the most recent item. Um it's been in the news a little bit. Um we filed for an electric freight case where to recover on costs that we spent um on our electric and our gas side. Um a lot of what happens kind of it's more like kind of like a credit card. The PC gives us a credit card and we are supposed to maintain the system you know a certain you know use this much money to maintain the system but then unexpected things like storms come through. we have to place a lot of poles, a lot of wires, damage transformers, staff time. Um, so we go up on our credit card and then we have to go to the PUC and say, "Hey, we need to recover. Here's how much extra we spent above the budget. Um, we need to recover this." And then we would ask for a certain rate and the PUC evaluates studies and then provides decision on that. Um, that is the most that's the most recent news for both the gas system and the electric system. Um, interesting news is electric rate cases um are probably going to end up going away with the distribution system plan. Part of that is um the distribution cost will be folded into a line item so it's a little bit more transparent and clear about what you pay on your bill. And so I think about 80% of those costs that you normally see in our electric rate case will be on your line item instead. so that you don't have this every couple years Excel files a new rate increase um so that's going to be moving away the gas system will stay in a rate case um framework right um but again really a lot of those costs are because we've had you know storms do come through things do need to be fixed on the system that go above than what we anticipated and that's usually what drives like the short-term rates that you see but there are other drivers for rates as well that are well beyond our control.

Yeah. And so I think to your to your more longer range question, um rates, we've done some forecasting of rates. We do expect them to go up um over a 5 to 10 15 year period. Um it's usually right around the rate of inflation, somewhere between about 2 to 3% a year. What it really depends on is what the growth of Colorado continues to look like. Um, and I'll say is Colorado are are on our system are we seeing growth on the system? Um, primarily are we seeing growth from larger customers? The more growth we have on the system, the more we're able to spread out all of the different investment costs and we actually our modeling shows that it will be lower rate growth if the system is growing. um and that large customers actually can have the ability of bringing our rates down, not up, relative to um non-C customer growth. I don't mean rates going down as in your rate will decline over time. I don't think we're forecasting that with the investments we need to make. Uh but about that kind of 2 to 3% range. Um compound annual growth rate over a 5 10 15 year period. Um that still keeps us below the national average. It keeps our share of wallet. Um, that was a number I was looking to double check on. Still keeps your share of wallet in about the 1 to 2% range. Um, which is what our target is. We want to stay at or below about a 2% range share of wallet. Um, so that are you feeling increase year-over-year? Yes. Everything kind of increases year-over-year with inflation and things like that, but we want to keep it at that steady growth rate, not have big spikes in in rate growth or things like that. So constantly looking at ways to manage that through how do we optimize system planning? How do we um think about everything holistically so that we're making the most efficient investments? How do we maintain rates that encourage economic growth and that

don't um price new businesses out of coming to Colorado that provide taxes to your communities, jobs to communities, and can help keep rates stable. Um but also how do we make sure that if you are looking to support electriation of vehicles or um home heating, how do you keep those rates affordable again for customers so that they are enticed to do those sorts of things? Um with respect to the improvements that you're looking to do in Westminster Station, are the developers going to have to pay for those or is Excel paying?

So typically growth does pay its own way. So if the developer needs a new feeder, they usually pay for the extension and then we have some sort of like um it's a construction credit. Um basically it's betterment for the system that we justify. Um there's a formula for that for the for for example the new feeder we're building to the Westminster station area. We're paying for that. No developers paying for that. But again the purpose isn't to create new capacity. It's to reduce over capacity on the entire system. So we're paying for that. Okay, that makes sense. Um, I'm curious to know how you are integrating alternative energy solutions, you know, like cloudbreak for example or other options that might be available like in Westminster Station if we had a project utilizing more solar or something like that. um how are you encouraging integrating that or are you into your planning for these areas? A lot of it my experience has been a lot of working with the city understanding what kind of projects are coming into play. U for example one of our neighbors to the west they're building a new water treatment facility and I just kind of aligning the stars here trying to understand what might be available under the clean heat program which is where we're shifting a lot of you know decarbonization goals from natural gas to all electric options. we might have rebates or products available um that the city may not just know about and it just takes having conversations and discussions to make sure that we're at least try to make sure that we're able to provide whatever we have um to help those decisions to decarbonize. Um um so that's the clean e plan. There's also the distribution system plan. There's a number of other products which I think cloud break I mentioned is um planning to apply for

for battery storage. um those a lot of this is very new and it's becoming very available now. And again, it's part of that creative mix, the innovative mix for how we can kind of create capacity on the system to make it reliable, clean, affordable, um without needing to build new wires, um new power plants, more traditional um electric generation.

I'm glad to hear trying to be nimble with that. Um uh let's see. And the I guess the last question I have is um with respect to the distribution plan that was just approved by the PUC, how does that relate to um our overall somewhat related to councelor Ireland's question. Um I've heard in the past I've talked to Excel representatives and they've said no, we don't have the power infrastructure that we need right now to meet where the state wants to go. And so there's a bit of a a misalignment maybe in how quick the state's wanting to move to electrification versus um Excel's ability to just sort of catch up with all of the distribution and um energy creation. So um curious to know what this current distribution plan is doing is you know I'm sure that's not the the full needed elixir. It's a just a portion. Is that fair? So I think the distribution plan really focuses on the poles and wires that go to your home, right? And that is an enormous of investment. There is some aging infrastructure out there that needs to get replaced so that we can accommodate rooftop solar, EVs, all the things. I think what you're asking for is, you know, is the state moving too quickly?

And I think what you might find, please gut check me here, um, is, you know, we're trying to accommodate. We have our own clean energy goals. They are ambitious. they require a lot of change and a lot of investments. Um, we can do that. We can meet those goals and keep bills affordable. We just want to make sure that everything stays reliable at the same time. So, again, we want to make sure at this point there we don't have a very great way of meeting the 2050 net zero goal. So, we're going to be 88% how do we get from 88 to 100 by 2050? There's still plenty of time out thereation and we got to allow for space for things to innovate because right now, you know, if we try to just renewable our way out of a tube deep carbonization, there could be risks where, you know, there may not be enough batteries, enough wind or solar. And if you're cutting gas out of the question, that's a very important technology to make sure that there are days when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. batteries only produce four hours of generation. They're good backup plants. They they're not coal plants. They start up like that and you can move power. You could put them strategically around the grid statewide. So, um there's still a good case for natural gas in today's portfolio mix. Um anything I may have missed? No, the only thing I was going to add kind of we we've all talked around the the thought a few times is there's no all right, we did the distribution system plan, we're done now. We did the wildfire management plan, we're done now. They're all going to be continuous iterations. I think what we're doing a better job both within the company and externally at doing is making those prospective looking. um the distribution system plan for example you know we had talked about I think early on you kind of looked at historically what was historic growth

what was it okay where do I think I'm going to need it next or I know in this person's 5-year plan they want to do this big thing have become a little bit more dynamic so with new tools we are able to become a little bit more dynamic or able to plan ahead that's one of the things that I think as Tyler was saying it's really helpful to know ahead of time whether it's with a community or with a developer What are you thinking 3, 5, 10 years from now? Because the cycle of a regulatory filing by itself is about 12 to 18 months from the time you start developing it to the time you get approval on it. Then you've got 3 to 5 years to implement that plan. And so if you're coming to tell me, well, hey, in 2028 I want to do this. We've already missed that boat. We want to know now what is your plan for 2030 so we can get ahead of that. And that's kind of the same at the bulk system at the the overarching system is we're not looking for we've we've solved how do you solve or we've planned for how do you serve power in 2028 2029 2030. Um maybe you need some contingencies and some backups in there. We've kind of solved that aspect of it and planned for it already. Now we're looking at what are you doing in 2030, 2031, 2032. Um so it's going to be continue to be iterative. It's going to continue to develop and as the system gets more dynamic with whether it's um electric vehicles or smart thermostats, heat pumps, whatever it is, the programs and the way that we manage it has to change as well. Then it was just a thing you when you were mentioning earlier um we have the aggregated virtual power plant program. Um, it's a standard offer program where developers can come and say, "Look, I've got people who want to put batteries, rooftop solar, and smart thermostats in. And if I put all these things in, I can allow you to control 25 megawatts of power. Um, on a system of

6 7 8,000 megawatts, it doesn't sound like a lot, but on a local distribution level or when combined with several other programs, it's pretty meaningful for day-to-day operations. So, um, a lot of background there on the planning process, but just kind of how it's kind of an iterative ongoing process every step.

So, can I just clarify? So, you it it sounds like we've had to reach out to Excel to um facilitate these types of conversations. Um, you just talked about, well, if we knew what the cities are doing, we could plan better. Um, obviously, you know, where the state is pushing all the cities. Um, but what is do you have a plan to actually more holistically and consistently um get your get the information you need from the cities and not make us have to, you know, chase you down?

So, like I mentioned earlier with the planning process, there is a ton I started riddling off a ton of different ways they're changing their how they produce and evaluate um capacity on the system. Part of that is, you know, just working with Heather is, you know, what is the city's growth plan? You know, is there a redevelopment plan? Where are you guys really thinking of investing? That's good data we can use to think long term. There may not be a development there yet, but that's good information for us to have on hand to be aware of. And so again, that good dialogue, good process of where the city is thinking, how fast are they moving. Some cities have more um intense clean energy goals than others and that all plays a factor into what kind of capacity you might have today and tomorrow.

That didn't quite answer my question about you know how are you being proactive with cities to understand that and and to know because again like we had to come to you when we hit a problem we didn't even know we had. So, you know, to Mike's point of, you know, you want to be responsive and know what's happening, but are you structured? Are you working to actually build the communication pathways for that and structure for that?

I think we're getting better at doing it. I won't say we're great or perfect or anything like that. Um, there's always room for improvement. Um, I report to the president of PiSco, Robert Kenny, and he always tells me feedback is a gift. We should always be looking to get feedback. Um, so I think that's one of the things we can get better at communicating. Um, I'll put Tyler up as Tyler's obviously one of the key pieces of that is as Tyler's interacting with you all, we're interacting with Tyler. Um, it allows us to exchange that information. There's other ways I think that we can um, work better together with some of our communities, whether it's I think we have programs like Partners in Energy. Um there were some energy energy futures or there were a couple other programs where you know they were structured to sit down with a community and say okay what's your plan? What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? And that information I think can help bring that back. And so there are things that I don't know specifically if Westminster is doing those things if we've worked with Westminster to do that but um I think we can always look into those things as well. I'm signing Tyler up for a lot here as we talk.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you both uh for coming here because as we're going around these comments and questions, we keep saying that, you know, we need to be interacting more and your willingness to do that is really helpful um because we have a lot of plans for the city and we're going to need your partnership to make it happen. So, thank you. Um, would you just walk through, it was mentioned several different times, but would you walk through for listeners and for council the PSPS program, what to expect from start to finish and what that looks like?

So, I can maybe explain the communications playbook. It's basically a framework for how the company um communicates to all of our stakeholders and customers um 72 hours outside of an event. So 247 we have a staff of six to eight meteorologists uh on site that are constantly evaluating um weather forecasts from our own local weather stations um to try to understand what weather will do to our system and how to reduce that risk. And so the 72-hour communication mark, if we see something is coming, a storm, we're anticipating um that storm will exceed the three criteria for wildfire, which is high winds, um 99 percentile of winds in that local area, um fuel um fuel dryness essentially with the grasses, what kind of fuel you have near you in that area, and then also for relative humidity as well. So, we're looking for three criteria to kind of determine whether PSPS is necessary or maybe it's just the safety settings. If all three are met, communications go out 72 hours in advance, I believe, to uh critical infrastructure to county OEMs or city OEMs if you have one. um and customers who rely on medical devices if they're registered with us 48 hours. If we're still feeling confident that this is going to happen, the models becoming more confident in a storm exceeding those three criteria, we escalate communications to the public through mass media, social media. Um if you're within the team at that point start scoping out where at PSPS where we might have to deenergize our lines. Um and then you can start getting text messages I think at 48 hours out. Um automate phone calls. So we do emails um

you get emails from me. Um and then our again our OEM teams they are constantly updating the OEMs throughout I mean maybe once twice a day. Um and then 24 hours in advance you get another round of all of those communications and then at that point we're trying to update hey are we you know is this going to happen at this point where typically what we've seen from our last two years of doing PSPS is a scope tends to start large and then get much smaller um just because we know exactly where the wind event is probably going to be and we can only make that call based on a lot of the technologies we've been adding from the wildfire mitigation plan. So the local um weather stations in different valleys and mountains. Now we have really hyper localal data and we can use those pano AI cameras to kind of our team will actually go in there and look at the fuels on the ground to start figuring out well the grass is really dry here. This is much higher risk. So our teams there's a multiple layers of teams where you get the weather data um the risk evaluation team. Um, you've got your own wildfire operations team that knows, you know, how much of that part of the system has been upgraded. Have you guys done vegetation management recently or not? You know, how much risk is on the system? So, you've got a whole backend of people um helping justify what we're telling customers at each of the 72 48 24 and then go mark. And then what we found is, you know, you got a lot of public goodwill. Everybody's, you know, trusts Excel to make these decisions until restoration. And that's where it gets very complicated and hard to communicate, frankly. Um, we have a lot of people out there. It's tough. We have to wait. Restoration takes place after the wind of it has moved on. So, an evaluation has to happen where meteorologists say, "Okay,

the fire risk has is below in all three of those criteria where crews can now go out. Crews can't go out in the middle of the night. You can't fly helicopters to inspect for damage. You can't fly drones. The wind's still blowing. Um, we try to do everything we can at night to drive around and maybe see and mark on a map, you know, what we see, trees in the line, what have you." Um, but restoration takes a lot of time, especially in the mountains if there's a lot of trees in the area like Evergreen, North Boulder. Um, a lot of damage could happen where it's just not, you know, we just got to pull the line, put it back on the pole. Poles could be snapped in half. Transformers could be completely destroyed. I mean, we have to get new equipment. We have to get it there. We have to get rid of the old pole, the old equipment, reinstall a new pole, and hang new equipment. And a lot of that takes time. vegetation management's involved. Um so that's where customers start to feel um get to become very upset with us rightfully so. It's hard to communicate to those customers what we're our crews are seeing on the ground. They're focused on doing that job. They're not posting on Instagram what they're seeing. It's hard for us to kind of communicate. We're trying to solve for that. We're trying to improve our communications, our outage map, how we communicate in every part of that conversation. uh but it's always going to be something we are going to have to improve on.

Thank you. I think explaining the process so that our listeners can understand what's happening is very helpful at least to understand. Um so thank you and thank you for continually trying to improve that communication program. Uh is there someone on your team that can answer questions about the outages especially as you mentioned earlier businesses. You know we get a lot of those headed our way at the city and we answer the best we can. Um, is there someone who is available to do that in relating to a specific outage that's coming up?

We have people on hand who could manage a lot of their requests whether it's from the city itself. That's usually me. Customer care typically handles a lot of folks individuals um meters. Um, but if there is, you know, an important conversation that needs to happen and customers don't feel like they're getting an answer, the city is can always forward a quest to me and I can try to run it down for you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Um, okay. We mentioned that overall, um, there's a plan to rebuild the poles and wires, I guess, around Colorado, right? And that we're doing that work for risk mitigation and to upgrade the infrastructure, etc. Where does our city fall on the map, I guess, or priority level of that kind of work?

I think it depends. For the wildfire work, you guys are in a lower risk tier. So they're for the wildfire rebuild um they're really focusing on trying to get that done in the level two and three. So really across Colorado I think for the distribution system plan that's a separate filing. It's more for advancing bringing more electricity to the system more innovative tech. Um that is where probably we're seeing a lot of work being done. I think there's probably a lot of folks um who might have an outage. It might be a planned outage. um pole replacements, we're upgrading wire. A lot of that's happening right now everywhere at the same time. It doesn't have to do with anything about wildfire. It's just we're taking steps to make sure we can upgrade the system to allow for enough electricity to flow to customers homes and back to us.

Thank you. I just want to speak about South Westminster because there are a lot of poles right now up in that area and I'm hoping that we see some sort of plan around what that ETA looks like, you know, to help. I mean, it helps with home values, it helps with aesthetics, it helps with other things, too, and just overall quality of life. And we're trying to make a concentrated effort um to really focus our investment into that area and making sure that they see the value and they're not ignored in the overall plans. Go ahead. Follow up. Are you asking about undergrounding? Yes.

So, undergrounding lines, the city does have with our franchise a 1% undergrounding fund. We could use you if you would like could use those funds for undergrounding projects and that's where typically we can do that. For right now, a lot of the undergrounding comes from new development where they pay for that. Um and a lot of more wildfire risk reduction. So they're trying to evaluate what you know hospitals are connected to, sheriff's offices, jails, um critical infrastructure for wildfire, try to manage who what lines we could underground and keep them energized throughout a PSPS. Um but for more likely less risk areas, it's more likely going to be um using city funds, where's growth occurring, that sort of thing.

Thank you for that. Um, and then I just wanted to bring up uh we talked a little bit about solar and there's been so many great programs. So, thank you for helping make it easier for residents to do those switches. What is our plan, if any, on working with HOAs? Because that's kind of an impossibility for residents to get solar if they're part of an HOA, let's say, of a townhouse of a condominium, etc. Is there some way that we can start working or discussing that with the state where we can build or create incentives to work with HOAs so that they can go either all at once or at least one at a time for each resident? I just want to any thoughts on that?

That's a really good point. I can't think of anything at the top of my head for what we can do. There might be other conversations going on maybe at the state level. Um, but I'd imagine if an HOA or community wanted and wanted more information about rooftop solar, if it's a good option for them, that's something we would more than happy to speak with them with our rooftop solar engineering team. Um, but in terms of, you know, allowing for that. That's not something that we can do.

Thank you. And I'll just continue to bring this up in almost every discussion is just when we get to the topic of HOAs, whether it's water or we're talking about electricity or whatever it is, there's a barrier, right? And suddenly those residents, you don't know where to go. And so it's just a constant. So I just want to raise that. Yes, director. Thank you, mayor. I'd like to um have Ryan come up and speak to that question. Actually, she's got a program for that. Sorry, we'll switch around.

Uh hi, thank you, mayor, for that question. My name is Faith Ryan and I am an energy policy analyst for the city. Um, so I can't say if this is specifically with HOAs, but I can say that we do have a switch together program with the city that uh residents can do solar panel and heat pump group buy and it's a co-op program and participants will typically see a 20 to 25% in cost savings compared to the open uh market with this bulk purchase model. And in the past five years, we've had about 700 uh Westminster residents participate in it. So, we can get more information for you if it's like working with HOAs or what specific residents are participating, but this is an option that can help reduce that solar cost and make it easier for them to buy.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Um okay. Well, with that, um I'll just say thank you and thank you for the cons the ongoing effort. Right. This takes a lot of time to try to meet those overall goals. Just a thank you to Excel. I was um a part of those initial discussions for the 2050 climate action plan for Colorado and at the time a lot of the commentary was that this wasn't possible, right? And I think that now we're seeing it is possible at least to your point to the 88%. Right. Which is more than folks ever imagined and as you said, we're going to continue to innovate and um I appreciate that the work is there. Excel is putting the concerted effort to help the state in those goals and then of course help our community with our goals. So, uh, thank you. Did we have more questions from council?

I just wanted to say I live in an HOA and they cannot prevent you from putting solar panels. It's a state law. So, anyone out there that's in the HOA, you can put solar panels. Your HOA cannot stop you. Mine can. Well, they're not supposed to be able to. So, I would take it to task because and the most a HOA can charge you now is $500 for anything you do in an HOA. They don't have much teeth anymore. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Did you Was that it? Did you finish? I don't want to interrupt you. Oh, that's fine. I I lost my thoughts.

No, just uh just I think what uh maybe the mayor and and some other residents might have um you know, is if they have ownership in some place with a shared roof. Yeah. And so like the way that they can kind of advocate for change within their HOA um I think would be helpful as well. So even if there is kind of a you know a writer some sort of piece that kind of overrides um that would be maybe helpful to particular I mean it's helpful to know this and to advocate for our residents on that end and for those who don't have direct control um that would be helpful as well. Thank you all for kind of that insight. Councelor Zotti.

And just to add to that too, 65% of Westminster is HOA. So at some point you will need to I don't know state policy needs to change. Something needs to there that the mayor is correct where there is a barrier and we can only do so much in the rest of the city. But 65% of us is untouchable from us, right? So, if you can figure out from a policy standpoint what to do about cracking into that, that's important. And I I had a comment. So, and this is not a hill that I'm willing to die on, but it's just a idea. Um, in 2022, city council tied all development to our water supply. And the reason why we did that is because water is a finite resource and we wanted to be responsible stewards of our finite resource. To me it feels very um analogous that energy is a finite resource. And yes there are plans you know these these plans are very good by the way. I'm I'm glad to see them. Um, but without 100% certainty, we might want to look at our comprehensive plan, the 2040 comprehensive plan, and tying development to energy as a finite resource, similar to what we did with water somehow. So, I don't know if you guys are down with that or not, but it's just something to think about. It's it feels right that we should probably and it gets to that point of mayor prom's u the comp plan proactiveness right building it into our comp plan as a finite resource basically assumes the worst case which is which is probably what we should be assuming if all this stuff works out it's great but if it doesn't it's really bad right so we should always assume plan for the worst Um, so that's just something to think

about. I don't know what you guys think about that. Thank you. And, uh, city manager, I see you taking some notes, but you know, we could bring that up, of course, maybe in a future policy discussion, but what is the feasibility of something like that before we go further? U, mayor, thank you for the confidence in me to be able to answer that question on the fly. Um I will have to get I'll have to uh get our staff uh subject matter experts to start to look into that and advise and we could bring that back at a more wholesome uh discussion in a future meeting. Okay. Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. Great suggestion. Okay, any further questions at this time for the presenters? Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Uh city manager, would you please introduce the next presentation?

Thank you, mayor. I would like to invite Sarah Steel of our communications team to come up and uh first thank Sarah. Uh much of what you saw in my presentation earlier uh this evening as compliments of Sarah and her work. Um councelor Zadi commented on the uh new business cards that you've all received tonight. That's also Sarah's work. And uh Sarah is now going to walk through um for you a very short presentation on Westminster's community survey, which is a pie uh annual survey. Um and then turn it over to you for discussion and direction as to this year's survey. Sarah, watch that mic too. You want to turn that.

Perfect. Welcome. Thank you all. Uh it's great to see you, mayor, mayor, council. It's fun to be on this side of things. You usually see me at community engagement events. Um I'm a part of the communications team. So this community uh survey process lives within our office and it is something that I think our whole team looks forward to every two years. Um we have hard copies of the survey if anyone needs it. We can pass them around. Um, as Jody mentioned, I have like four very quick short slides. Uh, and then I'm here to listen as you guys deliberate on it. The hope is that I get any feedback that you want so I can make changes and we can administer this survey this summer. So, it is a bianual survey. We do it every two years. Um, our last one is in 2024 and we have been doing this since 1992. So, it's a fantastic resource that we have at the city to get a comprehensive view of how residents view our services, how are they satisfied, overall quality of life. Um, we use a market research and statistics firm to help us with this. We are not statistitians. So, we hire statistitians to help us out. Uh ETC is our uh firm that we have a long-standing contract with and they are phenomenal. They're leaders in the industry. I believe the agenda memo talked about the different cities that they've worked with over 40. Um they work with a lot of our neighbors and they help us administer a statistically significant survey which is key. Uh our next one is scheduled to be this year. Uh so a snapshot from 2024

uh Westminster rated 83 83% as an excellent or good place to live which with ETC being a large national research agency they're able to do these benchmark studies that compare us to the mountain region as well as the general US and we're scoring about 34 points higher than the national average for how we rate as a place to live. Uh overall in the results in 2024, Westminster performed well in key areas such as PRL and our emergency services. Our opportunities to improve included traffic flow, street maintenance, code enforcement, um and increasing public safety efforts. And one of the things I love about this survey is that those opportunities for improvement is where a lot of motivation, inspiration for 3 came from also. So there's direct tiein to how we organize and orient oursel as staff. Another thing that we took from the 2024 survey is we also asked things like residents, how do you get information from the city? Where do you learn about things happening in the city? We were able to take that data and those results to help inform how we did our 2025 website remodel as well as our 2025 um revamp of Access Westminster with our new program that we're using and with how uh residents are engaging and how they want to be engaged. We're also working on building a resident engagement platform that will be released this year. So, lots of good things come out of this survey. uh etc. every time we get ready to do this survey, they provide us with some recommendations which I greatly appreciate. Uh their big recommendation is little to no changes to the survey. It helps maintain trend line data

year-over-year. The more we change survey wording, the harder it is to pull correlation year-over-year. Uh they also recommend maintaining the surveys length, if not shortening it. They're saying it's hard to get surveys that are longer than what you have in front of you to get survey samples back, making it hard to meet statistical significance. We were able to reach statistical significance of 2024. We had about 945 surveys returned to us and 900 was our uh stat threshold. Uh ETC also recommends translating the service the survey into multiple languages. A few years ago, council directed us to translate into Spanish, which has been wonderful. Working with etc., they're now seeing more um cities have a line or two at the bottom that says, "If you need this uh survey in insert language, we can provide it to you." So, the two that we're hoping to translate and have available is Mung and Vietnamese because they meet some of our language thresholds in the city. Um, this is something that staff has already proactively thought about and accommodated within the contract. So, with that said, I'm here to listen and take in any feedback that you have, let you all deliberate, and we would love to move forward with this survey this year. Thank you, uh, Mayor Prom.

Um, thank you, Sarah. This is always an exciting thing to be able to hear from the community. Um so uh a couple of things. The overall survey we benchmark against other communities, right? So a lot of these questions are have been the same for a really long time and they are utilized um and worded to compare to other cities. Is that right? Yes.

Okay. because I'm just I'm wanting to make sure we understand like the baseline of why we try and keep the questions the same for the most part. I will say I mean councelor Zadi um probably remember when we were kind of structuring this in 2024 there's more of a focus in our strategic plan on services and um so I am just wondering if there's some reflection of our strategic plan in some of the even the demographic portion of the questions or because the only the couple things that kind of stand out to me are trying to understand um levels of housing stability and that's not really something that we capture in any of the questions like their personal housing stability. Um so I'd love to be able to, you know, capture that somewhere. Um, and then possibly access to services that support them being able to stay in their homes or being able to access key services. And finally, um, well, two other things. um we may want to and I don't want to add a bunch of questions so you know maybe there's some way to capture this some you know and just slightly modifying some of these but um you know senior uh the senior experiences we have you know or maybe that's a you know you can always say hey that would be better as a separate survey so um and then finally um transit access and wrership needs I think that would be lovely to be able to understand a little bit her.

Okay, that's all. Councelor Zi. Yes, thank you. Uh the only Well, there's a couple things. Are the other communities this long? So, neighbors, do we like what's our matter? How long are they for example? I will have to get back to you on that one

because it feels it still feels long. I don't I know we say it every year, but it's still long. But if if 900 something people are filling it out and that's important to explain to people as well if you can explain that 95 is is statistically significant because it sounds low to everyone but there's do you have an explanation for public for that I am not a statistician but there is a good reason and I I've heard it I just don't remember it myself it helps with like

statistical significance That's yes, you can draw correlations within a margin of error error within a certain population.

Just for anyone listening and the one thing and no surprise, but I still feel we need a affordability question directly. I don't know what that could look like. It could just be one overall affordability. How do you feel that how affordable is the city? But that is um the one glaring thing that I think is missing and would align with the strategic plan, the new strategic plan. So besides that, the only other thing I saw was the social media. And number six,

you might want to split that out because uh not everyone would use Facebook, but they'll use Instagram. Not everyone will use Instagram, but they'll use something else. maybe itemize the big ones to find out where they actually are if if we can if there's a correlation with which specifically on social media they actually are. But thank you. Okay. Uh councelor Ireland.

So I was looking at the quality of life questions as a place to retire as a place to visit. We were kind of on the lower side of that but we're not sure why. That's my question. Why Dylan doesn't anyone want to visit? Why don't they want to retire here? That's those questions I have and I don't know how we get the answers, but it would be nice at least to have a comment section or something where they could say why they it's not a good place to visit or it's not a good place to retire. Okay. Councelor Brahos.

Yeah. kind of echoing council Ireland's point less I mean maybe a comment section I almost wonder if there's like an opportunity for us to want to dig into a question or two and then you know the my sorry my brain is fried like the moderators of this survey can like reach back out you know I know there's a level of anonymity to this but just hey you answered this and council's very curious about this here's an opportunity for you to provide like the why there uh which would kind of offer kind of a workaround to length and we'd get less feedback of course but at least it would kind of get us to kind of where we need to go on those two issues

because I a part of me is thinking like you know as I communicate with with residents I could share some of this data and say like where do you see yourself you know agreeing with and can you offer insight even though you might not have been the survey participant uh you know so that's kind of one option since this is kind of a so these are kind of thoughts that I had around that thought. I I do agree with with Mayor Prom on terms of transit. I I I am kind of curious. I don't want to add and I'm not maybe suggesting that this is my first time looking at the survey as a policy maker. So, I I'm very timid in terms of of adjusting what's what's been working particularly around these statistical trends that we want to to to track. But but that specifically is especially around connectivity um because I see that as kind of something that's that's kind of standing out for me.

My big question Sarah to you is is you know love that significant number of 900. I'm glad we hit it. How can and I'm not thinking on staff necessarily for this but just council specifically ways that we can ensure even if it is just like sitting with people as they do this survey uh to like spend time with them and you know like if there's an opportunity for us to do like a palooa but a survey pulooa or a something like that where where council is able to really engage to like shoot past that statistical significant point and um you know I'm not I'd love a thousand honestly but uh I don't know That's kind of you and if you have comment on that please, but that's just kind of my thought.

It so the the catch-up is it's a randomized survey. So the biggest thing that we see as people receive it and might think it's junk mail even though we'll be co-branded. It'll have uh usually a letter from the mayor in multiple languages and we try to make it seem official. I think everyone's a little skeptical these days on the things that get in the mail. So when we um launch the survey, we try and do social media saying like, "Hey, you're going to get this in your mailbox. Hey, keep your eyes peeled for this." The more reinforcement we can get from council on that, the more people will realize that they can trust something like that.

I'm pretty sure I did fill this out because councelor Zotti mentioned it like to his community and I was like, "Oh, this is great. Let me fill it out." But um yeah, so my data is in there, which is fun to think of, but yeah, sorry. Well, it but because it's they randomize who gets it. Not everyone gets it, right? So, you can't just and you can't invite people to take it because then you have self selection bias. So, you have to make sure it's only the people that you know get it that you want. So, you want to raise the profile, but you can't just invite everyone to city hall and take a survey because yeah, you'll get selection bias. I do a lot of these. Yeah. And may I also add uh to be for clarification that we wouldn't recommend that counselors help constituents fill out the survey. Oh god. No. Need help. It's something they have to do on their own or not do it at all.

Yeah. But that idea was great though. Like maybe Westy fest, right? I don't know. Gify it. I think it's gets biased. So if you're helping them, is that still some selection? Yeah, some election. Never mind. They pull your number from the lottery and then and then you get a survey. I mean, not actually like that, but that's kind of how it works. Is it computerenerated? how they randomize. I'm sure there's plenty of algorithms. So, the price of it, how is that compared to the two years ago? How much is it going up to do the survey? From my understanding, it's still within the same contract. So, there's been no cost change since we last signed the contract. Um,

you know, me and the cost. So, all right. Thank All right, counselor.

Thank you, mayor. I think a lot of the suggestions were good. I took the assignment as cut because I think the survey is really long and one of the areas that I think we could explore cutting is related to the municipal court services because that's a really unique area where it doesn't touch a lot of residents and I know we're also looking at exploring already our own internal process that surveys participants you know defendants prosecutors other people that interact and I so I'm not sure we get a whole so when I read the 2024 survey Okay. Not a whole lot of people had feelings and it was also the lowest on what people cared about and that's I think just a factor of it doesn't necessarily impact a lot of residents daily life in terms of their individual interaction. So I thought the data was not super useful. Most people didn't seem to care and given our exploration of what I hope we're going to stand up which is actually survey of municipal participants. I think that's an area that I would suggest cutting given the fact that the data is not very useful to us.

Thank you. Do we have a overwhelming majority? Sounds like one, two, three. Okay, that's perfect. That's a majority right there. So, that's an area we can cut. Thank you. I cut my thing. So, I'm done. Anything else, folks? See, we think we can cut. Oh, no. I was trying to add mine. Um, so while we kind of mull that question, can I ask a procedural question?

Will there be a moment where we discuss the results themselves? I know that's not the ask right now, but are we I I I know we have the results in front of us and sort of residents on the agenda, but this is not the time to make commentary on it. I didn't know if we were going to have that chance or I'll ask staff that. So for 2024 results, uh ETC came in December and presented okay those results. So for this 2026 survey, if we get it launched this year, they should come probably in the fall again to do a recap of the results for you. Thank you.

Okay, with that, I'll have ahead a cut uh question. Um because we have this code enforcement services section and it's talking about cleanup of trash and you know maintenance of residential property and like sometimes that's that's kind of hard to ascertain you know is it your neighbor is it the the city. Um, and we to in in section 22, we have a couple of line items that are, you know, talking about poor maintenance, um, poor condition of properties, and I'm just wondering if it's a little bit repetitive and can we get, um, some of the same info?

ETC did say that question 22 felt mostly captured through all the other questions, so it's okay to cut. Okay. on from their perspective. Um because you're right, you from exactly like what you pulled from question 19 to question 22, there's pretty substantial correlation between the two. Okay. I mean, as long as we're capturing, you know, because yeah, we have public safety. I don't know about taxes being too high. Um

seems like 22 to me is better than 19, but traffic because we I mean it is there's a lot in there that's repetitive because we have the neighborhood streets and public you know traffic safety and that's we have that in section 17 we have stuff in 12 we have stuff in 10 um the one that they signaled was not covered is uh like part five of 22 the high cost of housing and if council did have interest in doing some housing questions that could yeah

that I could get into you know if how close have you been to not being able to stay in your home what about the cost of housing that kind of thing I would be interested in I mean and that goes to councelor Zott's comment on like affordability at large potentially too if that's a section itself I'm interested in this conversation you know Mhm.

Okay. So, it looks like possibly noodling there. I'll add So, I'm going to echo I was also going to mention transit and writership. Um, I'd love to see a question somewhere and maybe it can go under the bundle of if we can keep it as concise as possible. To what degree, if at all, are the following a problem? Maybe it fits into that if we cut out the rest except for homes and affordability. Um, just I mean obviously you'll decide how it should best be done, but it'd be nice to not build. Um, and I agree with the affordability. I just had a comment about the survey at all and whether there is room for this. I've talked a lot to our city manager about the fact that our communications to the public wherever possible. Almost all of them, in my opinion, should be educational in some form. Um, the majority of our residents do not know what council does. They don't know what their mayor does and they don't know why it's important that they vote for us or when we meet or when city hall is, etc. at, you know, we can go on. And um, if I picked somebody off the street when I say hello, you know, they have no clue, right, whether what is within our scope of control. And so to that end perhaps before going into this survey they might be surprised to learn exa for example within the questions like oh they deal with this and not the state or the federal government. Could there be a link at the very top of this paragraph that led to somewhere that just had a scope and maybe it's a page that already exists, but just something that describes, you know, um this is a bannual survey for your city by the way or not by the way, but you know, your city council is responsible for housing, retail, stop lights, road conditions, infrastructure. Uh, and that is why we like to take a pulse every two years to figure out how happy you are. Just an idea. Is that something feasible?

I can ask etc. There's also typically a cover letter that goes out under your signature that generally communicates that. So, I think we can work to align that language as well and potentially link there. Yeah. Too that that's within our our scope of what's on there. Thank you. wherever possible that we can convey that and I'm talking about that for everything we do town halls postcards if we can have a link that says this is from your city here's why and what who we are you know thank you other thoughts councelor zadi

I agree with 19 cutting it because really number 17 is what we're what I I guess that's what matters to us as council right is Number 17, how they feel about that. Number 19 is what we're doing about it. I guess it's confusing what 19 really is asking. Is it be it feels duplicative to 17? It's private property. So we have rights of way and how those are managed and enforced. And then there's Oh, 19 property. Yeah. 19 is private enforcement of it and people are kind of

we got low scorers. Yeah, people get Yeah. Yeah. I'm not think I I just think it's a little more repetitive. We've improved from two years ago or still people are upset. I want to keep that one. That's a good point since we did go low that we should see if we help make a difference. Well, so 22 does have some repetitiveness in it. So maybe there's some clean cleaning up of that one. The transit point, I would like to know how if they use it, that's a question. So they use transit, how often, like once a year, once a month, you know,

would you use it if it were available? Use it. It was closer to you kind of thing. Or if you could call a ride, right? Okay. Okay. Any other thoughts? Okay. I feel like we weren't too specific on what to cut on 22. Do you need more direction there, or are you able to kind of go through and find some that are somewhat redundant? For 22, are you hoping to change the question to be focused on affordability as a whole? What if it's like if you want to keep Yeah, I'll say my personal It seems to me that it can be one of the questions, you know, because we've got a group of questions here and hopefully we can cut out some of the redundant ones.

Mayor Pam, what are your thoughts? Well, I mean, I know we have this quality of life thing, but to councelor Ireland's point, it's very vague. Um, it's not bad to know, and these are probably like really basic things that we should keep. Um, but maybe 22 could be morphed into that question of whether it's affordability or just like living in Westminster. Um, and there's it's tackling affordability, it's tackling your experience, um, your access to transit.

Yeah, those five things, how did these contribute to how you feel about retiring here or visiting here? the homeless bothering you, the lack of transportation, the whatever. That's what I'm Is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Well, to change 22, so it's more like what is your lived experience in Westminster? And um so we, you know, take out some of the repetitive stuff that's in there and kind of fold in transit, affordability, and the home, like being able to stay in your home, unless that last one should belong in the demographic section. Didn't there used to be a writing section or is that a different survey? There's there's still there is. Okay. So, they can write their stuff. Any other questions for us? I think we're good.

Okay. Any final thoughts? Okay. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great night. Thanks, sir. Thank you all. Okay. This concludes the portion of our public meeting or the entirety of our public meeting. Uh, city attorney, would you please read the title of the executive session into the record and then we will pull city council to see if we are willing to go into exact session.

Thank you, mayor. The executive session that's proposed tonight is to discuss a personnel matter. the review process discussion or excuse me, a review of the process, no, the review process discussion, excuse me, and goal setting for the city manager pursuant to Westminster Municipal Code section 1113C1 and Colorado Revised Statute 246424F1. Thank you. We'll go around the broom. Councelor Zi. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Um with that uh the time is now 9:12 and our study session is adjourned. Thank you.