City Council - Regular Meeting

I left you some. No.

No.

Me too.

OK, why are we so? We're on. I know we're on, but we're missing. Amy's there. Who are we missing? John? John. Okay, we're starting in 30 seconds. 30 seconds, please.

Not good. Not good.

35 still. John's here, right? Looks like his. Yeah. All right. Okay.

And teen or whatever you'd call it.

Facilities. Okay.

Facilities. I don't want to say that.

We, it is now 5 p.m. So we are going to get started with our agenda for our regular meeting number 202626, Tuesday, September 15th, 2026, 5 p.m. or 5.01 p.m. Can we do roll call, Julie, please?

Steve Muntean.

Here.

Gail Gary. Here. John Agosta.

Here.

Dave Barnes.

Here.

Michael Buccino.

Here.

Amy Dixon. Here. Brian Swintek.

Here. Okay, let's all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. We have a flag in the back and one up front. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. OK. Somewhat of a different, more complicated agenda tonight, so I just want to review that. We are going to be moving from our regular City of Steamboat meeting to our Steamboat Springs Redevelopment Authority meeting. as soon as I'm done with these introductory remarks. And at that time, we are going to discuss base area development, including an update on 2026 projects and preliminary 2027 budget recommendations as well as approving the minutes. When we are done with that, we are going to leave the SSRA meeting, transition back to our regular meeting for general public comment. So if there's anybody who wants to make general public comment, we will offer it at that time. Then we will go back to our SSRA meeting and go into executive session at that time. When we come out of executive session, we'll adjourn from the SSRA meeting, come back to our regular meeting, and go through our agenda. We will also offer a public comment when we come back into our regular meeting in case we missed anybody earlier. And then we will just follow the agenda for the regular meeting. I won't ask anyone to repeat that, but I hope it is somewhat clear. So with that in mind, what I would like to do is ask for a motion to adjourn from our regular meeting and reconvene as the Steamboat Springs Redevelopment Authority.

So moved.

Second. Okay, we have a motion from Councillor Geary, second from Councillor Puccino. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. We are now into our SSRA meeting and agenda. First item on the agenda is an update on the 2026 project activity plan for the Steamboat Springs Redevelopment Authority.

Gates. Thank you. Good afternoon. Gates Gooding. I'm the URA project manager. Before I jump into this, I wanted to just take a second and introduce Austin Beck, who's sitting right over here. He's a new civil engineer in the engineering department and is co-leading all of these projects with me for the URA. He's the city staff member. Welcome, Austin.

Yeah, you'll be seeing more of him in the future.

As a reminder, this is the 2026 approved project activity plan. We have six project activities with a total capital outlay of 3.15 million. My first update is on the GTC project, which remains paused. We have effectively not made any progress on the core project since the last SSRI meeting in May. At this point, any future progress is dependent on the SSRC city working group meetings, as you're all aware. But we are still making progress on the geothermal and consolidated shuttle studies, and so that's the rest of my update. First on the geothermal feasibility study, we are working through phase two of the study with completion expected in October. And this phase will include detailed engineering to around a 10% completion level, an engineer's cost estimate, and a detailed discussion of possible funding and procurement pathways. And as a reminder, this continues to be partially supported by a grant from the Colorado Energy Office. Alongside that core study, the Gray Edge Group supported staff to recently issue a request for information, an RFI, to over 40 firms in the geothermal space. We targeted a really wide range of folks. We were looking for answers on what our funding options are, different ownership structures, project execution and development, ongoing operation and management, and different approaches to procurement. We got over a dozen responses and from a very diverse representation of firms. This chart on the right is just a conceptual tool we've been using internally that maps financial capability versus implementation or development capability and you can see we got a fairly wide representation. If we take the responses together, what we've heard is a description of multiple execution scenarios that lie on this spectrum of risk and responsibility for the city. There are many other important variables in bringing this project to execution, but from the city's perspective, All the way down in the lower left, this could be a city project funded with city bonds operated by the city. And as you start moving up, maybe you have an authority or a special district where the city is still in charge of financing, but project development and then O&M are by third parties. You get into the center and there are different forms of public-private partnerships and further... Up to the right-hand side, you get into completely private projects, either through an energy as a service contract or a private utility. What we're hearing is that it's easier for the project to be feasible if we have more city involvement, but that obviously comes with more city risk. I mentioned that the study still has a month and a half or so. We're expecting it in October. But we are starting to get some preliminary results indications of what we might expect the study's gonna show. We anticipate that it will say that geothermal is technically feasible in this location for this application. That is still dependent on several important assumptions that we have to work through, but our expectation is it will be technically feasible. It will certainly deliver many of the environmental benefits that are promised. It's fundable if the ROI is there. And I know that sounds like a cheap statement, but what I mean by that is all of these financing firms are familiar with geothermal as a technology. They have looked at our specific district that we're proposing and they're comfortable with the profile, with the risk, with the technology. And so as long as the numbers are there, then we would have willing funding partners. We've also been talking to several of the large buildings in the base area who are our potential phase one off takers or customers for thermal energy. And they are, I won't say excited. They're open to the possibility of signing contracts for thermal energy. We need to prove the value proposition to them, which is that we have to deliver thermal energy on par with their current costs and successfully mitigate any risks that they perceive. But it does look like we could get there. This is still premature, but I wanted to seed a future conversation. And if you have any preliminary thoughts, questions, we can discuss them tonight. If the study does come back and show that geothermal is feasible under any of these scenarios, with the uncertainties facing the GTC project, should we continue pursuing the geothermal project now? once we're finished with phase two, or should we hold and wait until we have certainty with the GTC project? From my perspective today, many of these scenarios look like we could do the geothermal project even in the absence of a GTC project, but the GTC project certainly helps with with just the catalyst to get this thing through. So it's an important question. And then second, do you have preliminary thoughts on city involvement? And by preliminary, I mean, next time we meet probably, but in city involvement, financing, development, ownership, O&M, it's an open question. Moving to the coordinated shuttle study, which we're now calling coordinated. Farron Pierce recently delivered a draft shuttle operations toolkit, and this is a menu of operational coordination and policy strategies that together inform this coordinated system. They've been grouped into three phases according to how easy they are to implement and how well supported they were by our stakeholder shuttle group. Just to give you an example of what I'm referring to, phase one is gated GTC access, designated pickup and drop-off locations, curbside enforcement, driver training, shuttle registration, regular coordination meetings, data sharing, and monitoring. And it doesn't all have to be taken as a single chunk, but that's kind of a taste of what we're talking about. We could implement phase one prior to the reconstruction of the GTC. So here again, this effort could live on its own even if we never get around to doing the GTC. We still have to figure out system leadership, staff capacity for management and oversight, and where this entity might sit. Also, participation may be harder before we have that gate to compel shuttle registration. Right now, we're just approaching the shuttle community with all of the other benefits, of which there are many, but we don't have the stick to compel participation before we have the GTC. Right now, our plans are to reengage the stakeholders and talk about how we could establish the pilot phase of implementation as soon as we get this toolkit complete, and that will be shared in a future packet. My next update is on the Complete Streets 4B Phase 2 project, which has been under construction this summer. Native Excavating has completed the majority of construction with landscaping and light installation still remaining. But at this point, staff expects the project to be complete this fall. And last is the Mount Winter Road, Mount Winter Circle intersection and complete streets improvements project, where staff is pleased to announce that Kimley Horn has been selected to provide design and engineering services for the project. We have contracting underway and expect design will begin in October and carry us through all of 2027 ahead of a 2028 construction. And that is the end of the presentation.

Okay. Thank you, Gates. Do we have questions from council?

I have a question. Back to the consolidated shuttles. Remind me the benefits of that versus a... I should say, what are the terms now again in terms of...

Coordinated.

Coordinated versus consolidated. So again, just talk to me about the benefits of consolidated. No, coordinated versus consolidated. Thank you.

Yeah.

Another cup of coffee to get us through this evening.

We've been, so the study has been mainly focused on the GTC and that was the impetus for talking about this in the first place. And the issues are congestion, erratic behavior, no one knows where to expect their shuttle to be. It's, you know, it's a cluster for lack of a better explanation. And with coordination, you have, coordinated owners. So people know where they're supposed to go. They know when they're supposed to go. They know how long they're supposed to be there. The drivers are hopefully better trained and not breaking the rules for tips. All of those small benefits that add up over time. And it creates a platform on which we can address operations through the rest of the city as well. It's a question of whether the city has appetite to manage that though. And above all for the stakeholders themselves, for the operators, it's better guest experience.

But we're giving up a lot still by not moving forward with the consolidated. I mean, if I remember correctly, it was basically because there was some finding that we get some benefit with the coordinated, but we're certainly not getting shuttle off the road.

So we're still hoping that we'll see an improvement in efficiency. We haven't studied consolidation in depth because earlier in the study during the existing conditions and feasibility phases, we saw that coordination was all that we needed. Theoretically, if we did a top-down consolidation, then we could fill those shuttles higher than they are today. But there's a question of how much efficiency there actually is in the system and how many of those trips we could join into a single shuttle. So I'm not sure how much benefit we're actually missing. The issue that we also ran into is how do we compel participation in a consolidated system? And there have been a couple market-based attempts along the way that we have been supporting wholeheartedly, but it's a difficult project to consolidate shuttles.

All right, thank you. Well, I'm not in the same vein. I mean, thank you for bringing it up, because it was one of those questions during my time on the URAC when we were trying to go through the idea of a consolidated shuttle system that one of the big concerns and still to this day what I hear from is the service, the service to their specific guests for those hotels or condos, whatever you want to use it. And so when I'm looking at this and you may have hit some hesitation with some of those because this coordinated shuttle study, I was intrigued that I think your group may have, this has evolved into the coordinated When I read through this, to me, I like the idea of the gate and I like the idea of trying this right now because I think what I wrote down as my notes was that it's a good idea to do this coordinated shuttle now Because I think that in anything that we do, we start helping organize all the shuttles that are on the road. One of the concerns I also heard is that the shuttles can go, if Mount Warner didn't go all the way through, and they would have to make circles in both places, right? There was all this part of the coordinated or consolidated shuttle program that was spinning people out. To me, this is an easy way to kind of ease into helping our community kind of manage, again, more of the transportation. with doing the coordinated shuttle. And I don't know how quickly you can do it, but it also seems like to me, registering everybody to do what they're normally doing, but just put a gate up that they have to have a gate to get in and out. And it keeps some of the people from just dropping people off. Maybe that would be a way to start.

Yeah. There's still a question of whether it's even possible to put a gate out there ahead of the GTC project. That is a potential, but I agree that our early strategy is let's do something really easy without a lot of friction and start building those muscles so that we establish the basis on which to just this program into, into effect. And I w I did want to say also, we're going to do a deeper dive on the shuttle to the shuttle proposal when the shuttle toolkit is complete. But the thinking is that we have these phase one strategies and we implement those, and then we look and see what happens. And if we get enough of an improvement, then maybe we're done. But if we don't, then we have phase two and phase three, and these are progressively, uh, kind of more serious and restrictive. And I think we could get, if we went into these later phases, we probably would get most of the benefits of a consolidated program short of forcing guests from separate companies to ride in the same shuttle. But this is even like dispatching and timed entry and some of those more draconian measures.

When you talk about putting up a gate access system, How would you, you can do that in the current design?

We've looked in the VE plan, the minimum improvement required to put a gate in. And there's already a median there in Mount Warner Circle. And it may be possible without even adding pavement to put a gate and then restripe and give people a last minute turnaround. And we'd need signage as well. We haven't really studied it in depth. But as part of that VE process, we did look at gate alone on that south side.

Is that what you're talking about, Steve, or the existing plan that's there?

No, just if you implement this in advance of any other work up on the GTC, you could put a gate in your thinking with- He's questioning as is right now.

Yeah, well, and so that's on the south side. On the north side, it's a little more difficult. So we may have to, we haven't studied it in depth. Okay, okay.

So I would chime in that I would not be in favor of trying to band-aid it at this point and doing a gate. That makes no sense to me. And one thing that we have not addressed at URAC or at SSRA is... short-term parking so if you put a gate up on the south side that eliminates that and that is the biggest issue that we have not addressed and either ssra when it comes back has to say we we don't care we will not have short-term parking up there but we have not had that conversation so um i'm not in favor of joining the gate at this point i agree are you talking about parking or drop off Short-term parking drop-off. Yeah, it's called short-term. Yeah, buy whatever that is.

You can't lose that right now unless the whole thing's built in.

To be clear, it's not a proposal at this point. No, I know.

One other I think may be helpful for the rest of SSRA, and we talked about the roundabout at Mount Warner Road and Mount Warner Circle. I think this came up at URAC. Regardless of GTC, this is still needed. And that's why Iraq is still recommending it, correct?

Correct. Well, and on that, you have this for a later discussion, but $5 million of this is part of the $20 million from...

Yes.

That's where this is coming from as well. I had a question regarding the GTC feasibility, but I want to wait until anybody else has questions on the consolidated shuttles. I did.

Go ahead. Just help me refresh my memory. The word... we abandoned consolidated, we're going to coordinate it because there was no appetite for consolidated, correct?

And there was no specific need from a demand or from a capacity perspective in the future GTC. We saw that coordination alone would be enough to manage demand to stay within the future capacity that we have. So it looked very difficult and we also realized that it wasn't necessary.

Am I hearing that coordinated shuttles are also very difficult and not super popular?

It's a sliding scale. Again, there's kind of low-level implementation that we can just register the shuttles and start trainings and kind of communication, and then it goes all the way up the scale. There's 100 different strategies that we can impose that get harder along the way, but we can stay at the lower end of the scale if we get the results that we need.

What are the results we're trying to get?

Reduced congestion, better behavior, I mean, more orderly, coordinated, better guest experience where people know where to go. We don't have shuttles jockeying around each other, drivers misbehaving, all that kind of thing.

Do you think that's a product of the fact that we have multiple shuttles going and not the current design?

I mean, that's existing conditions, and it's not... it's not just at a specific stop. It's kind of an issue through the entire service area. Okay.

Thanks.

And then I think just to follow up on that, I mean, that's specific to the GTC and not necessarily addressing what we're seeing downtown.

Yeah. So the, again, the study has been focused on the GTC, but many of the coordination strategies would apply throughout the entire service area, which means downtown as well.

Mm-hmm.

You're saying the problem is outside of the GTC. It's everywhere.

I was asking if the evaluation considered the impact on downtown and eliminating traffic and some of the issues that we see with all of the shuttles downtown.

But you're saying the problems are outside of just the GTC. It's everywhere.

Yes, I mean, there's kind of two levels to this. One is the hard level of how much capacity do we have for shuttles? And that study has been focused at the GTC. But then when we start talking about coordinated behavior, You know, shuttles knowing where they're going, marked drop-off locations, some of those things could be everywhere in town. And so we don't have specific numbers or counts on what the capacity is of some stop downtown, partially because it's kind of organic and everywhere. But we know that these policies would apply there as well.

Just to be more direct, I'm trying to figure out, is this a problem only at the GTC or is it everywhere? And if it's a problem only at the GTC, do we need a coordinated shuttle? Do we even need to handle the shuttle problem if the design of the GTC is actually causing the problem rather than the shuttles themselves? That's what I'm trying to suss out.

I don't have a scientific criteria that I could present to you that demonstrates the problem outside of the GTC. It's more anecdotal reporting that we've heard from all over. Given the future design of the GTC, we need a coordinated system. Could we expand the number of births that we have? And yes, we could proceed without a coordinated system. Okay.

Counselor Pacino.

We need to talk about the geothermal. And first of all, I haven't seen everything on there, but it's encouraging to see your matrix where you have the dots where the four or five potential... are in that on its capabilities and financial capabilities. I'm glad you're looking through that filter. Explain to me where we are right now, and then is that part of phase two? And is engaging one of these 12 firms part of our direction that we're giving tonight, whether we put phase two on hold? Or are you going to move forward with selecting someone and getting some more of the study done? regardless of the decision on the other part?

So this is just an RFI and we've been very careful to say this is not a competitive procurement. Nothing that people say counts towards or against their case when we actually get around to doing a full RFQ or RFP. This is just an informal process where we're reaching out and people have been very generous to share their time and really put a lot of effort into these responses. I mean, 50 or 80 page responses we're getting. And so this is just informational. The only direction that we have so far is to finish the phase two feasibility study. And all of this information from this RFI and these different scenarios of how we could execute on the project will become part of that study. But then the question is, where do we go and when and under what assumptions?

Okay. So it's just, we have, we have a list of engaged individuals that may be interested in participating in a phase three.

Yeah. Well, yes. Or, and there's, depending on which direction we go, we could bring one of those development partners on immediately after the phase two. For some of the other ones, we would go through the remaining design phases with the engineering and then do a traditional bid and

Okay, I don't have any questions. I'm good. All right. Other questions? Okay.

Yeah, I guess I want a little bit more attention. Because you actually asked questions here. You were looking for some feedback about, you know, where to go with GDC here. And, well, with the geothermal, I'm sorry. It's difficult for me to separate GDC from geothermal. It was a couple years ago, it was when we talked about it, at least when I was thinking about the GDC and geothermal, it was for snowmelt. I think we've evolved that discussion to now provide the service um energy is a service well you're now district district geothermal system geothermal or the neighborhood buildings neighbors and and i support that um i'm just don't know how to get there and does that again hold up gdc discussions i'm trying to is there a way to do we do we have to keep them together or is there a way to separate those

Maybe that's the best. Both projects can exist without the other. At this point, we've seen that we can run the GTC snowmelt with electric boilers. It's no one's favorite option, but it meets all of the criteria that we have. And the geothermal project could also exist without the GTC. We could just take that snowmelt out of the district, and then we have these large resort buildings and some of the other existing snowmelt systems, and that could live on its own.

Okay. Okay. On that, in the URAC and the representation from the resort, if we had a successful GTC or geothermal system that we didn't have the GTC designed, but we go forward with the geothermal, was there conversation already with Ski Corps to be able to supply their current natural gas system with converting it to the geothermal? Yeah.

So the design of the system assumes that we're using the existing boilers in those buildings that would connect as peaking plants. And the idea would be that you take the peak day and you cover 50% of that peak day with peaking capacity from the natural gas boilers. And so on that peak day, 50% of your energy is natural gas. But if you look at energy use through the entire year, It's only 10% of your energy that's coming from natural gas. And in return, the system costs half as much as it would otherwise, which is it's basically the only viable path that we have from a financial perspective.

Love the engineering. Ski Corps talk about it. Are they willing to help make that move in one steamboat place and others?

Ski Corps has been very cooperative. They have their own energy as a service process underway. They're interested. I think we haven't gotten to that level of conversation yet.

Okay. As long as it's not a hard no, right?

It's not a hard no yet.

All that on, you said they have their own energy as a service program going on. So we're running a separate program separate from their program? Yep. So what is the benefit for the city to have its own energy as a service separate from Ski Corp?

There is potentially a world where they would see that they wanted to do a geothermal district system and it would be in their interest to connect the same buildings that we're targeting. And in that case, we could just let them do it and the outcome would be the same. There's also multiple scenarios where they may prefer to focus on their own portfolio. And we have some representatives here that could speak to this if you'd like, but If they only want to focus on their own portfolio, then maybe the public perspective helps broaden the scope of the project. Again, we haven't gotten to this point yet where everything has crystallized and proven itself feasible and where we've decided to negotiate any of these details.

I'm not clear on why we would be running two programs in this early stage.

I don't think we know that yet.

We, so we had started our geothermal study and then learned that Altera on a portfolio level was interested in looking at similar energy services. And it just so happened that Steamboat was the test case for that. And so we had two similar, but not completely overlapping studies looking at the same place at the same time.

That should give us some good info.

Okay. Could we get someone from the resort to explain the why? I'm still not, we keep repeating the situation, but could we just get a little more context? Why are we running two parallel studies?

Counselors, Michael Anne Lamott, Director of Development and Treated Initiatives for Ski Corps. Okay, so let me just break this down for you. The Altera-led study for infrastructure as a service has been kind of rolled out as more of a portfolio-wide goal. And we actually kicked off our study through an RFP prior to receiving the grant to study geothermal specifically for the GTC. The way that we have approached our study is technology agnostic. So it doesn't have to be geothermal. It can be one of several tools in the toolbox to deliver energy or district energy system. So we started with a more broad kind of scope of work, whereas the Colorado Energy Funded Study is looking at geothermal. Specifically, that's what GrayEdge specializes in. To your point, Councilor Buccino, we actually will end up with, you know, having lots of minds on this matter. But as Gates said, there's a lot of dynamics that still need to be worked out relative to which one has the highest performing, which one's most feasible, which one is most implementable from a land cost, all of those different perspectives.

So can I just reiterate to make sure I'm understanding? Your focus was district energy. Our focus was geothermal, and that's why these are happening separately, correct? Yeah. All right, thanks.

Thank you. Any other questions on this particular presentation?

I would just say on the question number two, it seems really early to be.

Well, let's hold on answering the questions for a minute. Any other questions for Gates before we get into responding to that?

So the question you had regarding kind of the cost of the geothermal, are you considering the operational costs? Because we know the long-term operational costs are significantly lower. And is this complicated by the way that the capital versus ongoing operational costs are separated out in terms of the agreement?

Our modeling includes all of that. We were just discussing this the other day, excuse me, and the spark gap, as they call it here in Northwestern Colorado, which is the difference in cost to go from natural gas to electric is uncommonly high. We've all heard how it's two and a half or three times more expensive. And so even if you use a third of the energy as you're using with natural gas, you're still paying the same amount. And that's the issue that we need to actually save money so that we can pay all this infrastructure back. And with electricity so expensive, it's difficult.

Mm-hmm. But there are a couple of things at play, right?

I mean, in terms of we know natural gas prices are going to go up, and we also have the ruling from the PUC that basically... And so one strategy is maybe we wait a year or two and see if natural gas prices go up or actually do become erratic, and that might help us make the sell.

And then with this PUC ruling as well, correct?

And we need to see if that withstands litigation.

Mm-hmm. Okay, thank you.

I just, before I turn this over, I want to underline that I put this up here not to have too much of an in-depth conversation tonight. This is just, again, seeding your minds for a future conversation when we know that this is feasible. I might come back and say the numbers aren't there. There's no conversation to have. So I just want to make sure that everybody understands that. Thank you, Gates.

I have a quick question to SkiCorp. Are we future-proofing the Sockman, the $500 million investment? And I know that they're using electric snow melt, but are we protecting ourselves in the future to move over to an energy-as-a-service solution? Yeah.

The Stockman is fully engineered from a MEP perspective at this point, but one of the benefits and rationale for why Steamboat was one of the starter resorts chosen for this portfolio initiative is because of the development that we have coming online. So the idea is that when we bring on this new vertical development, we will be able to do so in a more responsible way for energy transition.

Okay. Before we I have a question.

Yes. On the one slide, we're saying that the talks on GTC are stalling my iPad just froze the conversations between whoever and whoever can we get a project is dependent on developments from SSRC work city working group meetings. Can we get an update on what's happened over the last four months?

Yep, so in May, I came in and presented on behalf of the steering committee and presented that our budgets were above where they needed to be. And SSRC had said at the time that they did not have additional capital to fund that overage. And the direction that we heard from SSRA was to get that back in the box, get it back within $50 million. And we left the meeting Before we could schedule another steering committee meeting, there was some turnover at SSRC and we lost two thirds of the steering committee. And then this new process started materializing this working group and it was decided to postpone or forestall any new steering committee meetings or reseating the steering committee from SSRC side in anticipation that this process would take the reins. So that's all of it. I've been feeling, you know, out of the loop this summer.

Do you mind clarifying what do you say this process would take the reins? What do you mean?

So there's a new series of, should I explain this or do you?

Yeah, so... I think about two or three months ago, we started what is called the SSRC City Working Group, which is really myself, council members, Gary and Muntean, with representatives from Ski Corps to start talking about not only GTC, but the Meadows and just sort of plans, sort of taking a step back and looking at it more at a 30,000 foot level and saying, okay, we have stalled. This project is clearly too expensive. And we're looking at it in isolation when we are working on probably several projects over the next several years. perhaps we should take a step back and look at everything more holistically and see if there's a path forward working on all these projects. So that's kind of where we are. Until we can sort of identify a path forward, we don't want to spend too much time on the GTC.

Okay, so this is the new, the agreement, the partnership we have with the resort where we are having continued conversations with them and partnership with them. That's what this is. And this is all part of that conversation. Is that correct, President Monti?

It was formed out of the parking MOU, I think.

Yeah, like that. Yes. This is that enhanced collaboration.

You are correct. And I think I did mention it last Tuesday briefly that we had a meeting the prior week and we're on a cadence of every two weeks. And that we will, and we have executive session tonight to talk some more about this.

That makes sense. I just didn't realize this GTC was part of that. Okay. So thanks.

Appreciate it. Before we just finish up on this, I do want to open it up. If there's anybody in the room who wants to make a public comment on this particular subject, if so, you may come down and state your name, address, and you have three minutes. Okay. Seeing none, I'll check online. Please raise your hand if you'd like to make a public comment regarding SSRA. Seeing none, we'll close public comment and just bring it back to those two, and they were up there a second ago.

President Muntean? Yes. Before you get into the conversation, I might just have you remind the general public of what your schedule is tonight. You've had several folks come in.

I was going to do that after this because I think we've got a lot of people here And we're doing the SSRA first tonight. I mentioned this at the beginning, but most of you weren't here. And I know most of you are here for the public meeting, I mean, the regular meeting. So it's 20 of six right now. And after this, we're going into executive session. And then we're gonna come back and have our regular meeting. So I would anticipate the regular meetings going to start at seven-ish.

Seven, yeah.

somewhere around there. So, and then we will go through that agenda.

What he's saying is we don't have chips and salsa, so you may wanna go get something to eat and come back.

So if you're here, we're gonna finish up on the 2027 budget around this, and then we're going to have an executive session, which is scheduled for about 45 minutes. So somewhere between probably 6.45 and seven o'clock, we'll be going through the regular agenda, which includes, and we will have another public comment section at the regular agenda, and then we will go through the various topics on the agenda where you can also make public comment. if you like.

Yes. We are going to allow general public comment at 6 o'clock regardless. Is that right? You know how we always take public comment? Yeah. Well, we will now given where we are. Yeah.

Okay. Because we'll be done. Yep. So sorry for any confusion with that. With that in mind, these two questions here are really just financially feasibility can be achieved. I again would say that our discussions later tonight or after this meeting and executive session will have a lot of weight on some of these questions and they are really interdependent on what we're going to be talking about around the PIA and whatnot. So unless somebody wants to spend time right now answering this or giving their opinion on this, I would suggest we wait. Is everybody okay with that?

Yep, President Menteen, one comment that I would like to get out of this tonight, maybe after executive session, what is the role of URAC? I mean, it's unfair right now for those members to show up to these meetings and there is no conversation on their largest project, the GTC. And so some of this stuff, I feel like we could do via email. And so I don't wanna waste folks' times. I wanna make sure our expectations are clear for those people who are volunteering

Good question. We'll address that. Gates, do you want to go over the second part of this, your 2027 budget recommendation?

Yep. Okay. I have URAC's draft 2027 budget recommendation to share with you tonight. This includes five project activities with a total new capital outlay of just over $1 million. Okay. Before we go through that, the projected 2026 and 27 URA revenues and expenses, property tax is going to grow from 4.35 million this year to 4.85 million in 2027. That's an 11.5% increase, and it's because of new construction. That is a preliminary certification, and that number might change a little bit, but we expect that to go up quite a bit. Sales tax, on the other hand, we're projecting will stay equal at $2.2 million. And this is down quite substantially from our initial forecast for 2026, and that just reflects the poor year. Hopefully that'll be higher, but we want to take a conservative approach. Interest income grows a little bit to $615,000 because our bank account is getting larger. Total income goes from $7.25 million to $7.66, which is a 6% increase. And operating expenses rise from $635 to $701,000. Speaking of URAC, URAC is continuing with a conservative budgeting approach. And The financial forecasts that I just shared are subject to uncertainty growing as we get further into the future. There are still a number of project activities to address. And over the next several months, URAC is going to be engaging in an effort to budget for all of the remaining eligible, worthwhile project activities to understand whether we can fit everything in the budget as property tax continues to grow, or if there are still some trade-offs involved. And we'll bring that conversation back to SSRA. Our current snapshot is an expectation of approximately 35 million remaining in funds to spend on capital activities. And 20 million of that will be for the Gondola Transit Center. And that leaves approximately 15 million. These numbers are constantly changing. The first budget item is GTC. We are proposing an allowance of $500,000, and that's just to support future design phases if they come or other project needs as they may arise, and we'll revisit this in a second. The Mount Warner Road and Mount Warner Circle intersection and complete streets improvements project doesn't need any new budget for 2027. We will roll over our design budget that was already appropriated for 2026. And that will carry us through 2027. And then we'll talk about construction budgeting late next fall. This rendering here on the right is from Kimley Horn. They make it look like the project's already complete. but we have some pretty snazzy rendering in-house as well as you can see This is complete street segment 1B, which is a new project. It's a missing sidewalk segment behind Walmart. It's a fairly high priority missing segment. We are proposing a 2027 budget of 425,000, and that is 75,000 to complete design and 350,000 for construction. We already have 30% design complete on this project. And so there's a chance that we could really get on this early and get to construction by late summer or fall. And then finally, URAC recommends continuing to fund the Developer Partnership Planning Program and the Spare Parts Program. So a couple of topics for discussion here. The first is whether you support including a budget allowance for the GTC project, given that it's uncertain when or if it's going to be constructed and we don't have specific needs currently that would call for this budget. Does, and just generally, do you approve of your acts recommended 2027 project activity plan, or would you like to make modifications?

Okay, thank you, Gates. Do we have any questions on Gates' 2027 budget? Councillor Swintek?

Yeah, why are we only spending a million dollars?

Because even though the budget for 2026 was 3 million, 1.6 of that was for design on the Mount Werner Mount Werner roundabout. And so all of that's going to be carried over. So we're going to have that design project, which is heavy. We're going to have another design project for that sidewalk. And then the GTC is where most of our money should be going and we can't spend it. We don't have any construction scheduled for next year, except for potentially that small sidewalk.

What other projects are remaining? Is this list active, like accurate?

Yes. So there are more projects remaining than have warrants for execution. And what I mean by that is Mount Warner Circle and Burgess Creek and Mount Warner Circle and Eagle Ridge are both named project activities, but there's just no reason to make an improvement there because they're functioning fine as is. But we have multiple sidewalk segments remaining. We have promenade extensions. There's the roundabout at the bottom of the Highway 40 off ramp on the south side there. And a couple others, but those are really the remaining ones that I think would stand up to scrutiny. But we only have staff capacity to take on so many separate design projects at the same time.

Is there enough to take on one or two more?

I don't know. Matt, what? My boss says he doesn't think so. More capacity.

Can I chime in and add to Councilman Spintak? I'm going to beat this horse that I don't know why we're not doing a study or something on for, you know, where I'm going to say Mount Warner, Highway 40. Like, I don't get it. And I don't know if SSRA needs to direct staff to look at that. I drive that almost every day. And does anyone else get off? Probably not. You do. I mean... Someone almost got hit by, they were on their bike and a car almost hit them because the car's looking this way. The bike path runs right through the crosswalk, but you can't see to get out with your car unless you pull forward. And with the new hotel, I just, I don't get why we're not studying it. We have funds. I'm not asking for a roundabout. I understand maybe there are other options, but I am just perplexed.

We actually already have 30% design for that for a roundabout. It used to be on the city CIP list. And there was an arrangement where funding was going to be split, but then it got removed from the city CIP list. So it got... kind of deprioritized on the URA side, just in case that split funding might come back. But like I said, we do have SD in place. It does not necessarily meet the warrants where it would be a high priority for improvement. But after we do this exercise and see what our remaining budget is. And if we can afford to do everything effectively, then we can just start ticking these off. We're already doing one roundabout design right now. We had decided that the Mount Warner, Mount Warner roundabout was higher priority. So that's why we're doing that one first.

I know your act decided it was higher priority, correct?

Correct.

Yeah. Can I add on to that?

Yes, I'm not dumb, but yes, you may.

To add on to that, if you look forward and where they are with paid parking and trying to push everyone to the metals lot, that's going to put more traffic instinctively on Mount Warner Road and going through that intersection of Highway 40 and Mount Warner Road because now traffic is being forced to move through that grid. And so I concur that that is... You know, it's a challenge today, but it's going to become a problem that we need to address.

And in the long-term plans, weren't there conversations around having the Meadows parking lot redeveloped, redesigned, however you want to say it, and J.D. Hayes? Is that the right road? Was it actually going to be closed or that you could actually not take a left-hand turn onto Highway 40?

That's correct. But that's coordination with CDOT, and I'm not exactly sure.

I'm okay. Sorry. It's like fine. My point being is that all those cars now, it's actually not safe. It's not a great setup. So I get why CDOT is probably like, stop that. But it's going to force all of those cars now... to Mount Werner and 40 to get on the highway there. So, like, this is a problem. People may say it's not a problem today. It will be a problem in that we're not talking about it when we have funds for it. That's all I'm saying.

Would it be fair to say that we have, as of 2030, $15 million of unallocated capital?

If we don't go over budget on the GTC, yes. And again, subject to the uncertainty of our revenue forecast.

Sure, it could go up or down, but it's a significant amount of money.

We have a lot of money to spend on projects. That we, undefined projects. Well, we have a list and we just need to reprioritize and narrow down to which ones we actually want to tackle. Okay. which ones are still valid.

And you're saying that you're waiting to do that because of- We're doing that now.

Oh, in terms of, we can't just take down a half a dozen projects in one year. We need to prioritize and be strategic about it.

Is that another way of saying that as of 2030, that 15 million would be spent, will be spent?

We could get as close as we could. I'm just saying. I'm hearing loud and clear that you all have this burning a hole in your pocket and we will try and make sure that we're diligent about keeping the pipeline of projects full.

say it's burning a hole. I am just worried that the prioritization is missing a really important intersection that maybe it's not rated today as a problem. It is a problem and it will continue to become a problem. You go to Vail or Edwards and they have roundabouts Everywhere. Everywhere you get off the highway, it is a roundabout. So again, I'm not saying it has to be a roundabout. I'm not the road expert. I'm saying something has to be done. So either SSRA today has to ask staff to direct some funds to look at that.

Amy, tell me, I mean, just for a couple minutes, I know we've got a long meeting, but how did the meetings go when you were at the URAC? You were there. They didn't want to fund it.

Yeah. No. No. Okay.

If they got a little harder direction from us, they may want to fund it. Or we could just direct staff to fund it.

We don't need them, you're right.

You also have a new UREC, right? Yeah.

I'd like to propose that we ask them to come back to fund the Highway 40 piece. My issue, and I also will say, I appreciate it was a joke, but I will repeat the same thing I said last year. I... I have a sinking suspicion that this is a way to stall, to prevent, to get certain things out of the GTC that certain groups want. And this is a way to hedge against it. And I feel strongly that this is only incentivizing that behavior. And our best bet is to spend these funds to force those parties to come together, collaborate, and compromise to get something built. And that's my concern is like, I want to spend this money and ideally if we get down to only 20, I'm going to sit up here and I'm going to push to start spending that 20 and say, we're not getting the GTC because you guys couldn't come to the table. So I feel strongly like I want to put something else on this so we spend that down. If we were standing up here saying that there was progress on GTC, I wouldn't be saying this and I'd be very comfortable saying we should be keeping the 15 through 2030. But I don't see good faith effort in trying to make progress elsewhere where we really need it. So that's why I would encourage council to direct that we need whatever you'd call it, the 40 thing on this list to get it started. Roundabout.

Whatever the design is.

Yeah.

That the expert would recommend. Perfect. Yes.

So this would be, just to be clear, a second roundabout design project in 2027 and a second roundabout potentially to construct in 2028. Okay. Let's get the ball, the train leaving the station. Okay. We may have to look at bringing additional capacity on just to put that out there.

Well, maybe you all can talk with Tom about it. And again, I am not saying roundabout. You are the experts. And so what long-term would be most appropriate for that intersection? So if it's some other redesign, I don't care. If it's a roundabout, great. So I'm not saying it has to be a roundabout. I'm just saying we've got to look at it because it will become a problem. And when these dollars goes away, it's going to sit on our CIP

it's only sales tax revenue to fund that we know how that plays out it doesn't but i think gates the the other thing is you have a list of potential projects up here right and i think you you just need to within you know, your timeframe, come back with what does that look like moving forward between now and 2030? And if we put in something at 40 there, whatever that is, what does that look like? And then how much of that $15 million have we roughly allocated because of that? Because we, you know, we have to be prepared to spend the money. And if we're not going to spend it one way, we should spend it another way, assuming that we have viable projects to implement. And it sounds like we do. We do. Have viable projects.

Could we simply prioritize it to be the next in line rather than mandating that he take it on right now?

That's been what's been said. That's the problem. Since I've been on council, we have this list. It's prioritized. It's caught in process. Like I... It's death by committee. There's no progress. I've said it every time you're in front of us. There is no progress. Nothing happens. We have these same meetings every time. Have you seen anything build out of this?

We have up until the GTC. Which was four years ago. It has been a challenge.

The city moves faster than this.

We can go. Are there any other questions or comments at this point? right let's open it up one more time is there anybody in the audience who'd like to make a public comment regarding the discussion on the 2027 budget please come down state your name and address anybody online please raise your hand who do we have chris chris are you there chris can you unmute state your name and address and you have three minutes i just unmuted Okay, go ahead, Chris.

Chris Paoli, 55 Missouri Avenue. I just was going to make a comment that I see you guys all talking about the GTC. I just would love it if you guys would actually get realistic and change this stupid electric heat thing and actually let us move forward with the project. So while you guys talk about trying to negotiate with whoever it is, the ski area or whatever other party, I just would love to see the project happen.

But it's not going to happen if we have ridiculous, unrealistic policies. So that's all I got to say.

All right, Chris. Thank you. Anybody else online? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, we'll close off public comment. And the last thing in this 2027 recommended budget was including a budget allowance for the GTC project. And again, I think I would give the same response to what we had before regarding our discussions at executive session tonight. Is everybody okay with that? Is that a yes?

Yeah, so what did we decide, or did we direct staff, sorry, to look at Highway 40 and Mount Werner? Did we direct staff?

I heard three city council members, but I think what we need to do is why don't we bring back sort of what it would take from both a capacity and a cost standpoint to sort of progress the design and then potentially construction in 28. I think it would be difficult to do two roundabout constructions in the same year. So we may just need to discuss how we progress that one with the other projects. So we can bring that back to you and give you a little more information on that.

Does that mean we have to have a separate... Sorry. I would be a thumbs up for that, too, in terms of feasibility. Yes. Timing, though, does that mean we have to have a separate SSRA meeting, though, for us to discuss this? Is that a question for you, Sam?

Yeah, probably.

Okay, so... President Mateen, I expect it to be an SSRA agenda item.

And that will be at the October 20th, whenever the SSR meeting is.

Yes. And I'm just going to ask, I'd like to ask Gates to address the public comment. And again, because we just in terms of specifically the holdup for or what is delaying the GTC.

We have an alternative snowmelt solution that we could use. It's much more expensive, but it works in electric boilers.

But it's back to the design. I mean, what's the holdup?

Snowmelt is not the holdup. The holdup is the partnership. It's funding scope. It's a lot of things.

Compromise. Exactly.

In the past it was snowmelt, but now we're, we have bigger fish.

Great, thank you. Okay. Thanks, Gates. Thank you, Gates.

And Matt, thank you. Appreciate you.

With that, we'll move to the last item on that agenda, which is the approval of the minutes from the last meeting. Has anybody have any comments or questions on those? If not, I'll ask for a motion to approve those minutes.

Motion to approve our regular minutes from our meeting on June 2nd. Second.

Okay, we have motion from Councilor Gary, second by Councilor Dixon. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion to approve the minutes passes 7-0. Okay, we are going to take a motion to adjourn from our SSRA meeting and move back to our regular meeting. Can I have a motion for that, please?

So moved or second.

Okay, we have a motion from Councilor Barnes, second by Councilor Gary. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Okay, we're back to our regular meeting. And since it is six o'clock, we're going to open this up to public comment to anyone in the room who has a public comment on any topic not on the agenda for tonight. If so, come on down. Thank you. And state your name and address. And you have up to three minutes, please.

Good evening, everyone. Emily Kelly, Ethos Legal Services, 235th Street. I'm an attorney. I'm a business owner.

Can you just move that mic down just a little bit for you? That would be perfect.

This is designed for unsized people. Okay. Again, Emily Kelly, Ethos Legal Services, 235th Street. I'm an attorney in town. I'm a business owner. I'm a mom of four, including two preschoolers. And while I wasn't born here, I did graduate high school here, so I'm pretty sure that almost makes me a local. I wanted to spend my three minutes here to discuss the child care crisis that is plaguing our county. The pilot posted an article yesterday that discussed the closure of Holy Name Preschool. Meg Franges of First Impressions and Thrive by Five is quoted in that article as saying, quote, Routt County has lost 151 early childhood spots in the past three years, on top of the 269 spots the county is already short. In those three years, six early childhood centers have shut their doors. As a local attorney and mom, I'm trying to help other organizations open childcare centers in town to address this problem, and the red tape is shocking. Not only is rent really expensive, but the zoning constraints are downright disheartening. I have a client who found multiple spaces only to find out that she would need to get a conditional use permit rather than go the use by right process, which adds months to the opening of a facility, not to mention expense. The crisis is now. It's imminent. My four-year-old was one of the 40 kids that attended Holy Name Preschool prior to the changes they made over the summer. my other preschooler, was scheduled to start August 17th. The pilot article said yesterday that there were currently 11 families and all found childcare. That doesn't take into the consideration the 40 plus that were there prior. My children are on multiple wait lists for full-time care. I am personally familiar with other kids that are as well. Many of the families that were displaced because of Holy Name and Young Tracks prior are piecemealing together care plans I've personally witnessed moms in tears because they don't know how to juggle work that keeps food on their table and childcare. I had a center accept our four-year-old part-time, but not our three-year-old, so that didn't work. Then I had another preschool accept our three-year-old full-time, but not the four-year-old. Long story short, here's my request. Consider eliminating as much of the red tape as possible. Grant childcare facilities emergency status for conditional use permits pending licensing approval so that they can go into spaces not necessarily zoned per se for childcare facilities, but logic and reason would indicate that it is a suitable spot. Help with exemptions for things like 1,500 square feet of designated outdoor space, especially if it's across from a park. How about let's look again at special toilets? Well, obviously operators need to be background checked and facilities need to be safe. There are a lot of requirements that are just downright silly. Allow home daycare facilities more than four kids to one adult. If there are more than one adult in that facility, meet with parents and providers and let's brainstorm on how to solve this problem. I beg that you take this issue seriously. Let's look at Lettuce Patch and Vale Valley that just opened last week. Megan Lukens was there. This is a bigger problem and it needs long-term solutions. But for today, let's eliminate as much red tape as possible so we can have solutions for tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to make public comment tonight on a subject not on the agenda? Come on down.

Good evening. My name is Bob Kusman. I live in the Steamboat Springs Area Fire Protection District and own property in the city. I think that qualifies me to speak. I'm here because I'm concerned about initiatives underway that individually and certainly collectively will make it considerably less affordable to live in our community. The largest of these is a 20% tax increase that is being considered by this august body and the Fire Protection District Board. for a fire tax, and the district and the city has already spent a quarter of a million dollars on a consultant taxed with passing this initiative. not to just consult and say, yeah, maybe you should think about a fire tax. This consultant has been paid to take this all the way to the ballot box and advise you and the district on how to pass this tax. My request here tonight is that instead of spending taxpayer dollars up front, involve citizens, taxpayers up front to collectively come up with an initiative or initiatives that will have a chance of passing at the ballot box. A 20% property tax increase, I don't care how good this consultant is, isn't gonna pass. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Bob.

Is there anyone else in the audience? Come on down.

Yeah, Eric Rentschler, 1595 Red Hawk Court. And this is a letter, kind of an expanded view of a version of a letter I wrote to the paper. I read the recent City Corner article regarding the challenge of funding the community with considerable interest. I appreciated the city's willingness to discuss its financial outlook, but the article raised more questions than it answers. The article suggests that growth has created financial challenges, yet growth also generates additional tax revenue. If revenue has increased alongside growth, taxpayers deserve a clear explanation of why those additional revenues have not kept pace with spending. Similarly, inflation is cited as a contributing factor. Inflation has affected everyone, including taxpayers. However, I doubt many residents would object if the city's budget had simply grown in line with inflation. The concern is that spending has grown far beyond that. The article also points to reliance on sales tax as a structural weakness, yet sales tax revenues are inherently cyclical, particularly in a tourism-based economy. That reality should have been anticipated through prudent fiscal planning and the maintenance of adequate reserves. If that planning occurred, what specifically went wrong? One lesson from the COVID year should be that temporary revenue surges should not be used to justify permanent spending commitments. Governments at every level have made that mistake only to later seek higher tax revenues and fees when revenues normalize. The city should demonstrate that it has learned from past experience rather than asking taxpayers to fill another budget gap. The suggestion of introducing a city property tax is particularly concerning. Many residents have little confidence that any new property tax would be accompanied by a meaningful reduction in sales taxes. Without a legally binding commitment to offset one with the other, many will reasonably conclude that the result will simply be a higher overall tax burden. The timing could hardly be worse. Property owners have recently experienced one of the largest year over year property tax increases in state history, following years of increases that have consistently outpaced inflation. Whether those taxes currently flow to the city is beside the point. Taxpayers evaluate their total tax burden not which government entity gets which dollar. On top of that, residents are now being told to expect a tax from the transportation authority. The discussion of future capital investment also overlooks recent spending decisions that were entirely within the city's control. Large-scale projects such as the new city hall and fire station significantly increased commitments. Before asking for additional revenue, the city should first explain how those decisions will fit the long-term strategy that is described as thoughtful planning. And perhaps the most striking contradiction is the emphasis on sustainability. I guess I'm out of time. Oh, well. Thank you. Thank you, Eric.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Thanks. Yeah.

Okay. Is there anyone else? Come on down, Kurt.

For the record, I'm Kurt Weiss. I live at 940 Crawford. I own property in the city and I own property in the county. First of all, I'd like to say thank you for serving. This can't be fun. At least I don't think it is. I hope you've all had the opportunity to read the letter that you received from Bob Weiss and Kurt Weiss, unrelated parties, regarding fire district, regarding the stormwater utility district, and regarding housing linkage. that also came with over 100 signatures of business and residential people in town. If you looked at some of those signatures, they were hard to read, but I think we had a pretty good cross-section of the community. It wasn't one corner. So, over the past... Hang on a second here. The city, I'm gonna go back to the lady that was just here, the attorney. You've spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants to get your own way of where you wanna go. without bringing the general public along to help. You claim this, you claim that. Brown Ranch was probably the best example of that, but we'll leave it at that. The very residents, that you seem to all think you're helping every time you add fees. And red tape, red tape was a great conversation here too. It's harder and harder and harder to do business. You have $50 million in your Airbnb fund now. You spent 20 of it, so far this year, but it's money, more money out of the community, and this money gets passed down. I hope you understand that. Whoever's paying it is gonna pass it down on a triple net lease, whatever. The... The city of Steamburg Springs needs to do, figure out ways to streamline. You've hired literally hundreds of people. It's way above any of the Losing my train of thought here. It's way above inflation. So tonight, I'm just asking you to start to realize that we can't live in socialism in a way where nobody can live here. People are leaving Steamboat because they can't afford it. Businesses are leaving Colorado because they can't afford it. It has nothing to do maybe with you, but it's all there at the end of the day. So let's live within our budgets and try to steamline the system you have. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, Kurt. Thank you, Kurt.

Good evening. Evening, Kelly Phillips, 62 East Logan. I had a nice presentation that I just kind of just folded up over there as I was listening to the comments. You know, I moved here 32 years ago, worked offshore, had kids, decided that I wanted to spend more time with my kids, so I bought a business in Steamboat. If I'd have known what I was getting into eight, nine years ago, you know, I might have thought a little differently about that. I've been in here before talking to you guys about overhead, you know, local businesses. I've heard a lot of things from the people that have been up here. Reaching out to the community, talking to the business owners in town. I talk to, with the business that I have, I talk to a lot of business owners in town. And just so you guys know, if you're not aware, we had a really crappy winter this last year and it affected my business horrendously, right? Looking at it and talking to business owners I deal with in town, Napa. I was talking to Dave Antonio the other day, and I was like, everybody has cars. All cars break. It doesn't matter if you have snow or don't have snow. He was telling me how far off he was this winter. So we're looking at what we had as a historically bad winter. And as I see it as a business owner, last time I was in here and I complained about this, Brian said, well, you just got to figure out some way to make more money, right? I don't like to gouge. I'm part of this community and I like serving this community. And one of the biggest things about owning my business is the people that I didn't know in this town that I've gotten to know. And it's an amazing town. But what we're doing is we're just ripping the guts out of the business community. My shop, I work on small margins. I do what I can and I try not to price gouge. And that's what me as a local businessman in town, what I try to do, right? And you're kind of forcing our hands. This stormwater utility is just killing me. I don't even, I can't even find out a number of what it's going to cost me between a parking lot, the building. I'm at 20,000 square feet or over. And I can't even find a number that I can put into my, monthly bills that that's going to add on to. And then you've got the fire consolidation bill levies. My county tax bill for my building went up $2,000 last year from the year before. And no one at the courthouse could even tell me why. He said, well, look at the mill levies you paid last year and what you're paying this year, and that'll tell you where you're at. All I'm saying is from my point of view and from a lot of other business owners in town, big and small, is we're just getting choked out. so i really want you to go home think about this if you own a business in town i know you know what i'm talking about so we have to do this smart or else we're just going to choke the business community out of this out of this community and they're going to move to craig they're going to move out in the county and we're just going to push everybody out so i just want you to think about that thank you thank you kelly all right come on down ed

Good evening, Ed MacArthur, 816 Spring Hill Road. I don't think I'll repeat all the same things that I've heard so far, but I would like to suggest, I know you've got two fees and a tax coming up, the linkage, stormwater, and also this fire situation. In the 47 years that I've lived here, I think we've had four or five different Blue Ribbon committees that have been citizen communities that have looked at the city's expenses, looked at the revenues, come back with suggestions. I think there's a lot of smart people, and I think you're all part of that, but I believe you could get you some help in deciding how much you ought to be spending. I was kind of interested in the fact that you were just... telling somebody that they needed to find a way to spend $20 million when you're kind of come out with fees to take away from workers and everybody else who lives here. I know it's a different bucket of money. But if you can afford to build a roundabout on Highway 40, I think you can look at some of your other expenses to figure out in total what you really need here. And I would really encourage you to think about a citizens community that took a look at this. I've employed a lot of people in this town. Every time you put one of these fees in, it has an impact on me, but it's a minimal impact on me that it has. But it has a huge impact on all my employees that live here and work here. Stormwater fees on people that own houses here. And this fire fee, you know, I think all of you know that it was only about six years ago that you tried this behind-the-back thing to get revenue last time. And I'm very disappointed that this is back. It soundly got defeated before. And now you spent $250,000 on a consultant to figure out a way to get around the public who has to vote on this. I think that's bad management. And I would encourage you to think of another way to go about doing this. Involve the community. Half this town doesn't know these fees are coming. And I firmly believe you're headed down the road to do this very quickly. And I know I've heard that this is just kind of in the making. I've also heard there's $500,000 in consultants that have been spent. That's not of kind of in the making. So please consider the constituency here, bring the community in to give you a hand with this stuff. Everybody needs more money, I get that. But let's not kick all the middle-class people out of here, because eventually they're the ones that are going to hit with this tax. The rich people, they'll leave with their feet when you charge them too much money, and maybe that's what you're trying to do. But the other people got to stay here, and they're stuck with these fees. So please consider that before you go any further with this.

Thank you. Thank you, Ed. Hey, is there anyone else?

Good evening. Ty Lockhart, 920 Crawford. A little different take on more of a specific item. on property taxes. Due to the Gallagher movement that's been on books for a number of years, if you have a house and it's appraised at X number of dollars, your property tax on that, let's say, is $1,000. If the same valuation is on a commercial, the commercial person is paying $4,100. In other words, four times the rate that a residential property owner does. I'm concerned about the city's myriad ways and proposals of raising fees and taxes. You know, the three big ones. I won't go through those. When somebody talks about raising property taxes, the usual naive response is, well, the landlord will just pass it on to the tenant. Right. Landlords responsible for the space. The tenant, businesses are not getting rich in Steamboat. It's a tough market. The state of Colorado is putting all kinds of new rules on small businesses that you're probably not aware of. But for the city to add more property taxes, more fees, really is difficult. So tenants can only afford so much. If they have to pay more property taxes, they may have to go out of business. So what's the landlord going to do? He's going to look at his building and say, well, should I sell the building or should I raise the rent? You know, it's a toss-up. So let's say I decide to raise the rent. Based upon when he bought it, if he bought it yesterday, he paid a lot more than if he did 10 years ago. But it reaches a point where mom and pop businesses will not be able to afford the rent. So what's going to happen? We're going to see more Lulemons, more Lucchesis, maybe Gucci, maybe a Prada. It goes on and on because prices of buildings go up. Mom and pops can't afford to rent. National tenants can't afford to come because they can write off the rent for advertising. Excuse me. So higher property taxes will lead to a negative effect on the merchants in downtown Steamboat. I hope that's not what you all want. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ty. All right. Colin, come on down.

Hi there.

Colin Kelly, 235th Street. So, obviously, continuing the bandwagon here, you know, fees and surcharges are just taxes by another name. And I think if we're being intellectually honest about this, it's just a way to bypass TABOR. And I think that that, frankly, is unconstitutional, but... That's a conversation for another day. As Ty was saying, Gallagher, triple net leases, what have you, commercial property is taxed at an absolutely outrageous rate that no one seems to understand unless they own commercial property. It's kind of like payroll tax with employees. They don't realize that the employer is matching all those withholding taxes. The average customer out there, when they walk into your business, your retail store, whatever it is, they don't understand that we're taxed four times higher than than your residents. Our company employs over 150 people. We're expanding. We're growing. We're going to be over 200 within the next 18 months. But if these taxes and fees and, you know, what these covert taxes you're talking about passing, we will probably cease development. And I know a lot of other developers are going to cease as well. We pay over $140K, and that's a cocktail napkin math. I think it's actually higher than that. I shot way to the under just on our commercial taxes in Steamboat. And we collect a million dollars in sales tax for you to spend. And the notion that costs are not going to go up or that the price of a cheeseburger isn't going to go to $30, some places it's already there, is asinine. You cannot pass these kinds of fees and not expect them through, like I said, property tax and triple net leases. All of those fees are going to get passed along. And it's not going to affect the people who live at Alpine Mountain Ranch or Catamount. people who are gonna move here for discovery. This is gonna affect our blue collar workers and the people who live in Hayden and Milner. It's not just the people who live here. This is the people who also work here, come here. The linkage fee that you're proposing is short math on the presentation that's gonna be given later tonight will cost our Westside grocery store we intend to build this spring over 269,000 if the calculus that's in that presentation were to hold true. Two hundred and sixty nine thousand that's over and above the permits and all the other fees that were into that project. Don't get me started on the other red tape we're having to deal with that but two hundred sixty nine K and linkage there's a strong likelihood that we will not build that project. And if it goes through, I don't know what the, your stuff does not define the projects that are already in the pipeline. I don't know if those are going to be hit or not. But the Latigo on 12th Street that I was before you, you know, several times this year over, that won't happen either. There's no world where there's enough margin in either of these jobs to make those two projects financially viable. So if you pass this stuff, I'm just one. There's 12 more behind me that aren't going to build also. And I really hope you get to know that.

Thanks. Thank you, Colin. Anyone else want to come on down?

Good evening, Bob. I'm Bob Weiss. I used to do this every other week for 30 years, and I haven't been here since before COVID. Glad to be back. Welcome back. Okay. So we submitted a letter in July. I think they're curtsied 80 signatures. I don't think there were quite that many, quite a few less than that. And the genesis of that letter was, you know, we kept reading about some of the fees and changes you were proposing that would result in more taxes locally. And specifically, those were the linkage fees. the stormwater fee and the fire district inclusion, which would not be a city property tax, but a district's property tax in the fire department would be offloaded to the rural fire protection district. And we thought, we probably ought to comment on this. So we put together that letter. It was easy to get signatures. I was surprised. You know, I thought there would be, people would be more reluctant to sign. Sometimes people are worried about having their name on something. You know, they'll be, not that you'd retaliate, but that they'll be unpopular with other people in town because they've said things that were, you know, more controversial, but it was pretty easy to get the signatures. And the city council president and Mr. Leeson were very cordial, agreed to meet with us. We met, we talked to this over a little bit, Kurt and I, and I made a request. And the request was, give us some time to come talk to you about ways to that this process cannot become adversarial, but instead more cooperative and collaborative. And I think there are ways to do that. If this is going in the direction that it's going today, I think it's going to be a more difficult situation because I've looked at every one of the consultant contracts you have. I've looked at the contracts you have with consultants. I did an open records request. I got the budgets and the expenditures for this stuff. And although I know no final decisions have been made and the council president and manager told us that repeatedly, when you read those consultant proposals, These are from highly compensated national consultants whose job it is to get these things approved. That's why they're hired. And when you read the proposals, that's exactly what's going on. So can I just finish up? It'll take me two minutes, 30 seconds. Our request is that you... direct city manager to schedule this for a 15 or 20 minute presentation that we can make and make a proposal to you for a collaborative, cooperative way to move forward so this doesn't become an adversarial thing where we have a bunch of elections and not a good solution, and everybody spends a bunch of money, and it doesn't work out the way we'd like it to. And that's what's happened before, but we think there's a possibility of a better solution. So if you could give us 15 minutes to talk to you about that, not in three-minute increments, but in a more rational presentation, we'd really appreciate that. and we're available in October and beginning of November, and we'd love to do it. So if you can direct the manager to do that, we'd be thrilled. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bob.

All right. Anyone else in the audience want to make public comment tonight on anything not on the agenda? Seeing none, is there anyone online? Please raise your hand. OK, seeing none, we'll close public comment. And there was a lot discussed there. And I don't want to speak for everyone, so you can all speak up too. But I do want to respond to a couple of things. And child care also, I think we need to respond to. But regarding everyone else. First of all, we did a study. What was it, Tom, with AGR or ARG? SGR. SGR. I always get that acronym wrong. To look at how effective we are and efficient we are at spending your dollars. Are we good financial stewards of your money? And we can share that results with you. We'd be glad to do that. And it basically came back and compared us to a lot of other mountain resorts and whatnot. And I think it's fair to say that we scored very well, very highly in those results, that we are good stewards of the finances that you give to us to spend wisely. Second of all, we're not adding hundreds of employees. I don't know where that has come from. But I think one of the things that everyone in the room should be aware of is that on October 6th, we'll be in this room from 8 o'clock in the morning till 4 o'clock in the afternoon, going over the budget for next year. And you should come and, or at the very least, read through the packet, which will take you some time by the way, and look at the challenges that we are facing in just putting together a budget next year that doesn't cut services substantially. So come to that meeting or at least read the materials and get updated on all of that. I think it's very important. Nobody is sitting here trying to, raise taxes or raise fees for the sake of that. It's looking at ways that we can afford to provide the essential services that this community wants. And they've told us they wanted and that they need. And so I urge you to do that. And I think it's just behooves all of us to realize that we try very hard to maintain this financial stewardship at an extremely high level and not waste this community's money at all. And when we talk about inflation and all of that, I think we all should probably realize that even though the inflation rate says it's 3, 3.5 percent or whatever it is, I guarantee it's a lot higher than that. If you go anywhere in this town to buy stuff or if you go online to buy stuff or if you go down to Denver to buy, go anywhere. It's a lot higher than that. And so our actual rate of what our costs are, our expenses are, are a lot higher. And sales tax has not kept up in the last two years. Sales tax was down almost 6% preliminarily for July. And so these are challenging times for us, for all of us. And we don't take that challenge lightly at all. So anybody else have anything to say regarding this?

Can I just chime in? With regards... This is collaborative what we do in here, especially around these topics. I don't think 15 minutes is necessary. What I would love, because what we're talking about really is we need to cut our spending. That's the reality. We have to cut what we are spending. I would love to hear recommendations. So we need to raise a stormwater utility fee. Why do we need to do that? We need to fund an ability to maintain our stormwater system, protect the health of the river. Okay, well, where would you cut the budget to cover that cost? Or what areas would you cut? Like, that's really what I would love to hear. What are those solutions that you have? Rather than saying we shouldn't do this, help us. Because that's the kind of thing that we're looking for up here in that public comment. So that would be my only request.

Mm-hmm.

I was just going to ask Tom, I think it might be beneficial to the entire community for you really to just highlight where we are with stormwater as well as the plan in terms of the status of the fire consolidation.

Sure. With respect to the stormwater utility, we have kind of it's two phases. We did the preliminary feasibility study that sort of did an analysis of the impervious service that we have in the city, what potential revenue and associated fees would generate and compare that to our expenses on an annual basis to keep up with our mandated MS4 permit with the state. And so that was sort of the first analysis that's available. We can share that with anybody that has that, that wants to see that information. It's even on our website. The next phase was really kind of a public outreach and education and sort of taking that to the next step so we can start to gain feedback from the public about that as well as try to educate and do some community engagement about the need for that. So that was going to take place over the whole next year. The City Council directed us to look at potential implementation towards the end of 27 With respect to the fire district consolidation we have direction from City Council to evaluate the potential of a fire district inclusion with the Steamboat Springs Fire Protection District. So we have gone under contract with the district, 50-50, to hire Raftelis, which is a nationally known firm that does... that has a true understanding of fire districts and how they operate and the inclusion process. A significant portion of that contract is a financial and operational analysis of our existing conditions to understand are we spending the money appropriately? Are we sized correctly? And if we don't do a district, what are the projections for future costs? Because part of our analysis for the fire department is, we have these costs, about $8 million now that it costs the city to run the fire district. The projections are, that that's going to go up to 12 or 13 million in the next five or six years so these are costs that we're going to occur the community is going to occur no matter what whether it's a property tax or whether it is some sort of tax the city has to generate that that revenue because that's in a very very expensive operation and will continue to be an expensive operation as the community grows so that part of that analysis is looking at that both existing and future funding and what it's going to take to fund that operation. And then there is a portion of that contract that looks at trying to do public outreach and education about the need for that. And then ultimately put it on the ballot in 27 for a vote. So that will take place. Both of those will take place over the next year.

And then we're also opposed to have a vote on inclusionary zoning tonight.

Well, the linkage, you're looking at your final recommendation. We haven't set a date for the adoption of the linkage fee, but that would be coming in the next few months.

I would like to invite or explore the opportunity to invite the business community to come and present for 15 minutes. I think they're offering help. I think we'd be crazy not to pick them up on it.

Hmm. I agree. I think we need to have as much input from the community on any of our decisions that we have. I'm a citizen like you guys. I just got elected. You guys didn't run. We still need help. I still need help to understand your perspective. If you have another way of doing something, after you understand what we have to go through and the filter we look through things, yeah, we can have a conversation and you can help out because we need that. You have to understand the filter that we're looking through. and everything else. It's not as easy as you guys make it sound.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I would make that point, right? I mean, I think what has gotten lost here is why we're doing these things. It's not about fiscal sustainability. It's about the health of the Amper River. It's about making sure that our community is protected from flooding. I mean, that's, you know, the purpose of the stormwater utility. And it's also in terms of from a fire district consolidation. It's also who wants to be that third call that doesn't get the fire or EMS to show up because we don't have the adequate equipment. So to Councilor Pacino's point, we do need to have a conversation in terms of understanding the problems that we're trying to solve in addition to having some creative thinking. I would absolutely be open to a meeting, but not having maybe a special meeting where we sit down at a table, we Zoom, make it a public meeting, but I would be a little worried about adding that to the agenda just from the perspective of the precedent that's set. How do we, you know,

Big enough that we could have a special meeting like a town hall we did with the flock cameras.

Right.

We may get people out here. And honestly, that was a very healthy conversation that we had.

Agreed. So I would be more open to that. I think the timeframe for that, you know, we have the budget coming up on October 6th. I think it would be important for everybody to understand what the challenges are in that budget. And then I would support having a special meeting public meeting, Zoom meeting that anybody could attend online or in person. So maybe we could do that.

May I just push back? I could call anybody and have a general conversation about how everyone hates taxes. And that's my worry is like... selfishly, that meeting's going to be a waste of time if it's just a room of people saying, I don't like paying taxes. What I would really love is, once again, for people to come and explain, cut the budget here. So I guess I don't really want to participate unless it's constructive. I understand that coming at it from the point of view of, We need to expand services, therefore we need to run revenue or increase revenue. There's a group who doesn't like that. I respect that. But then please come and say where we need to cut the budget. And I have never, honestly, in my three years, I've never had that conversation with anyone who comes to me to talk about this. I just am told that the taxes are too high and I don't want to pay those. And that's not helpful for me as an elected official. So I just want to push back on that of like, I don't really want to sit in a town hall and be yelled at about taxes. I don't need that. It's not constructive. That's really what it is. It's just not constructive.

No. And what I heard from several of the public commenters tonight was that they did have other ideas.

Great. So as long as it is a constructive, like specific recommendations, budgets, cut this, this, this, this, like I would love to hear that. Give me other ideas. I'm open to that.

So I'll agree with Councilor Swintzak there. We basically, you know, you're paying for a service. And we have a lot of amenities in this town and that the community wants. And so it comes down to which services do we not want to fund going forward? Is how I see that. And I did not hear a single... person talked to us today about what services they want to cut. I did hear, I want less taxes. I don't want you, or I want you to not raise my taxes. But we have a bunch of services that the community say they also want. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. You're not going to walk in and say, oh, give me that cheeseburger, but I'm going to give you $10 for it. You know, everything costs money. And so I look at this as a select group of people in the community that have a voice, but all I'm hearing is no more taxes. How do you balance it? You know, we need to balance the budget.

have a we have a budget retreat go through the the line items there tell us what you want us to cut like to push back on that a little bit because i think you guys are missing some of the point of what they're saying is people are hanging on by a thread and you don't want to talk to them you just want to say it's not their job to tell us how to balance the budget of the city You know, that's our job. And, you know, we have to look out. We have to listen to the people that are coming forward. They're coming forward with their time, coming here to talk to us and offer help or at least explore opportunities. I think to just say, no, we don't want your help. We're going to go forward with our stormwater, which, by the way, was a revenue diversification. It was never about the health of the Yampa River. I sat in a budget meeting last year before I was elected, and it was brought up as revenue diversification. It was not brought up about the health of the upper river. We're selling it that way.

This is devolving, but I just want to push back a little bit. It is not about I don't want to hear from people. I just had coffee this past week with a business owner who's struggling. It's not about that. I'm keenly aware of how difficult it is for an everyday person to live here or for anybody to live here and make it happen. That is not what we're saying. I want to make that very clear.

Okay. And I think what we're all saying is that we're in agreement to having a meeting with the community. And if it's a meeting that we are all focused on the challenges we face and coming up with the solutions and having creative ideas on how we can do that.

And President Montino, what I would suggest is that I'd be happy to meet with one or two council members and Kim with that group ahead of time, just to understand what suggestions they have sort of just to help them present something to you that is really productive ahead of time. And then we can report back on what would be good timing with that.

So we'll take this offline and move this forward. Okay, gentlemen and ladies. Thank you. Okay.

Child care.

Yeah, I am going. That's where I'm going. Who would like to kick off? We had a long discussion on child care, what, six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, whatever it was. And now we see that with the closing of Holy Name, the situation has become a lot more dire for people. So Who has some, yes.

I'd just like to state that there were, Emily Kelly mentioned several sort of restrictions on childcare. Many of those probably come from the state. We don't have any control over those. We do have control over zoning. I did have a conversation with Colin about this a couple of weeks ago about the fact that at least in one location, I don't know if it's in all locations, but in one location that they were looking at The childcare is a conditional use, which does require a fair amount of time, goes to planning commission. I haven't had a chance to talk to Dan because he was out of town, but there was this suggestion that we somehow make this an emergency and sort of bypass the zoning. I don't even know if that's allowed, but that was the suggestion that was made again tonight. something that we talked about. I do think it's an urgent need. There's no question about it. And I do believe that these uses have to be evaluated given the surrounding uses and potential impacts, not only on the surrounding uses, but on the childcare itself. So I think that's an important step to take, but I don't know from Dan's perspective, from a legal standpoint, if there's a way to sort of circumvent, if you will, an emergency status of a conditional use.

You would need an ordinance.

So that takes two readings, correct?

Well, and I would just say too, let's make sure that we're coordinating with first impressions because it's a broader problem than just space, right? I mean, in the sense of it's also about the childcare providers and the first impressions and the Thrive by Five have a very focused effort right now. So making sure that they're being coordinated, all of those efforts are being coordinated, I think is critical in the sense of everybody moving down the same path, right? As opposed to trying to...

solve this one off. And it is a bigger question. I think we have a crisis at this point. Hold on. Okay. We, this, this council solves the Casey's pond really quickly. And we were able to coalesce and help solve an immediate crisis. We have a crisis with Holy Name closing down and all this childcare that's losing. We have community members that need to know that we're gonna do what we can do to help get some in-home care, some other people that may be wanting to open this up. If the city is a roadblock that we can, and I'm gonna say the word circumvent, by putting them in the front of the line, that's the minimum that we can do right now as a council. Now, we're not saying bypass any regulations. We're not saying ignore regulations. All we're saying is that from a land use perspective, we have control to take care of this next week. We don't have to wait 30 days or 90 days. There are things that we can do. Now, from the long term, working with Meg and the First Impressions, we're going to continue working with them. But all I've heard from them is they're in a crisis mode. There's people that can get facilities right now that if we just get the city out of the way, or at least expedite the process, It would help the circumstance right now. And that's where I think we need to focus on not the long term.

Right, I 100% concur with that. I'm just saying that it's, yeah, I agree. If the city and any of our rules are in the way, that's great. But you also have to have the child care providers. You also have to have, is it, like, how many sinks per infant? I mean, so there's a, and that's not something that the city controls, so.

Correct. How quickly could we, Tom, look at, our regulations and whatnot to see if there's any... Obviously, we might need an ordinance, but we could do that. How long would it... I mean, what would it take to look at it to see if there's ways we could alleviate some restrictions?

I don't know. I'd need to sit down with Dan and Rebecca just to sort of see where that is, but we could... If it requires an emergency ordinance to change the zoning designation, we could do that pretty quickly.

Or at least we're just asking to approve the conditional request. We don't have to change the rules. We just need to... If it's a conditional use, we can get together and say, yeah, let's do this next week. Well, I...

I would also say that it does need to be evaluated. We need to look at it. We don't want to just rubber stamp it and say yes, because I do think there are potential impacts to the childcare itself. It's not just surrounding uses. It's the use that's going in there too that we need to evaluate. So I think that we can get back to you and let you know what the timing is and what would be necessary.

Yes. I just got to have a question. So it seems like we missed an opportunity with Young Tracks when they had their problems and they shut down. And now it looks like Holy Name had 11 kids and they have a capacity for 40. Why aren't we looking at maybe helping or propping up Holy Name to avoid that rather than trying to rezone? And when I say we shouldn't do the rezoning, I'm saying it seems like if you want to... do a Casey's Pond-style rescue, it's helping to prop up Holy Name and some facet, if it's possible.

I think Casey's Pond would use short-term rentals. Dan, will you please remind us? And that was very specific for housing for their employees. That's how it worked.

I'm not trying to use money, y'all. I'm just trying to use that as a perspective that we got together really fast to solve something.

Can I finish? But you keep saying Casey's Pond. The only way we were able to do that was through short-term rental dollars, correct? Yeah.

We use short-term rental funds to... I guess my question is also pointed to the public.

I just want to say, I don't think Casey's pond is a good example if you're going to talk about finance.

Well, it's a possible idea, right, from the perspective of short-term rental monies to supplement the housing for the child care providers because that's my understanding, right, is one of the major issues is they're not getting paid enough.

Not tonight. It's a long conversation. Not tonight.

With all due respect, just to go back to Counselor Vicino's thing, I don't understand the process aspect. From an uninitiated person, I would just like Google, like control F the CDC, and then I come back with a piece of paper. Can you just teach me, help me learn these things?

Rebecca Bessie, planning director. So to amend the community development code, the process would be that we would take a draft to planning commission for public hearing. They would make a recommendation and it would come to city council for two readings of an ordinance. That's the typical process. I'd have to defer to Dan. If there was some way we could do that via emergency ordinance, I think it would probably be more like an ordinance that would exempt daycares from zoning approval or something like that. I did wanna note, I think it was about Two years ago, we did amend our code where we took out all specific use standards for all childcare centers. That includes the daycare homes, which are allowed by right in all districts, small centers, which are 15 or less, Those are uses by right in all zone districts, except I think CS where it is still conditional. So we could make that a use by right. And then large childcare centers are 16 or more. And those I think are conditional use in most all districts. So we could change that to a use by right, but we have already taken out all local standards and just completely defer to the state licensing process in terms of sinks and toilets and play space and that kind of thing. I did speak with Ms. Kelly out back while you were all chatting, and it does sound like there may be some, through her conversations with the state, some opportunity for local communities to provide some sort of or action of support that potentially could assist the state in relaxing some of their standards, but I don't know much about that. Her and I are gonna chat more about that, and I need to do some digging into that more, because that's something that I'm not familiar with on how we as a local community could impact the state licensing requirements.

So do we have a path forward here coming out?

Sounds like we've got some opportunities and we can, if we need to take a step of some sort of ordinance to relax our standards, we'll bring it back to you as quickly as we can.

And thank you very much. And thank you very much for giving some clarity in this. And I hope that helps Brian explain the process. I think what we were trying to do is that we've heard that there is kind of an urgency in this because of Holy Name closing down in October, losing a lot of places for kids. And there may be some people in the wings. And whatever, if you can work with them and find out whatever, Tom, you guys, that we need to do from a city level, whatever. We're not going to disregard any regulations. We're not going to worry about, I mean, some of those things I agree, but what we can do within our control to help our community get some childcare, that's all I ask. I mean, and not do it in three months, but like, let's see what we can do. Maybe pull something off the top of your desk and put that on top of it to help us figure this out. We only have a short time before it affects a lot of families. And if we can try to accomplish something, that would be great. I don't know if you agree.

We're good. Is there something, I'm kind of confused here. Sorry to keep this going, but in terms of, I understand there's ordinances we have and there's code that we have that may be creating some challenges. I actually asked Meg of First Impressions that almost exact same question that Emily asked us for. And Meg's comment, my interpretation of what Meg came back to me was the issues are not about the code and the ordinances. They're there for a reason, and she strongly supported them being there. Because I was looking also about, is there certain things that we could be lax on? But that said, if there are things that we can do, awesome. Is there other things that we can do outside of changing code? Like, can we shore up some of these businesses with some of our short-term rentals or other resources of funding? I think that is where I see an opportunity, but I certainly would like to make sure that I'm hearing two different things, and what is the right answer? And since I'm hearing two different things, I don't know which one to believe. So I think we have a path. We're going to look at the ordinances and the code, if there's anything that we can do. But is there something that we can do financially to shore up these childcare centers and infant care centers?

I think we need to understand the specific issue at Holy Name. And to the extent that we do make the analogy to Casey's Pond, if there is some way to come in with money for housing, You know, that's certainly something to explore.

We have 40 licensed spots with a place that's already approved, conditioned. I mean, if you want the fastest way to help the child care, it exists.

Okay. Well, we have two things we're looking at then. What we can do from a zoning ordinance standpoint and what we can do potentially from a financial quick standpoint. Okay, good. It's 7 o'clock, and we were going to move back into executive session, but I think given the people in the audience and some who've been here quite a while, I know you have two gates, Michael, but I think what we're going to do is take a 10-minute break, and then we're going to come back and jump into the community reports and go through that, and then the consent agenda, which is pretty short, and... and then we would end the motions and resolutions and then break into executive session. So I hope you're okay with that.

We're going to finish the regular session and then come back to you.

Well, yeah, we'll see what time it is and see if we can go all the way back to the very beginning. We also have a proclamation and a couple other things to do. So let's see how it goes. But we will come back and do the chamber. destination stewardship proposal, the linkage recommendations, and then we'll go into the consent agenda in about 10 minutes then. Thank you for your patience.

Thanks all.

Check one, two. Check one, two. You're done. Hey, what did you get here?

Oh, I've been here the whole time.

You have? All right, everyone, 30 seconds, please.

My water and my cookies.

Please start without me. What? Please start without me. I was chatting.

No, hold it.

Okay, we are going to move on and we're going to kind of skip around to community reports. And we have two tonight. And the first one is Miss Laura sword and the chamber destination stewardship proposal. So would you like to come down and share your screen and do all that good stuff?

I just want to clarify, we are going to go back to council updates later.

Well, yes, we'll see what time it is. But if you have something really important, we will definitely.

I do have something we need to talk about.

Okay. Good idea.

Okay, good evening council. I am Laura Sword, Senior Director of Communications and Marketing at the Steamboat Springs Chamber. And I'm gonna talk to you tonight about 2026, kind of where we've been and then give you a proposal for our 2027 destination stewardship efforts. So 2027 will be the third year of our Destination Stewardship Action Plan. And this plan was developed to really create this kind of shared community understanding of what destination stewardship is and how it works to balance the different priorities in our community, including resident quality of life, as well as our visitor economy and that experience of the visitor. So in various times we have emphasized So two or three or one of the different pieces of this horseshoe graphic I have here. And I really want to talk tonight about how we're going to leverage those different pieces to address our community needs at this moment. So before we do that, we're gonna look back a little bit because I think we need to look at where we've been to see where we should be going. So every year the Colorado Tourism Office works with Dean Runyon and Associates to develop these economic impact reports of tourism. And this is from 2000 or 25 because it takes a while to get all the county's info and then pull everything together. But the thing to note here is that you can see the big spike there in 2019, you can see that dip, and then you see some serious growth, and then we see a flattening of that curve. And not only this year did we see the flattening of the curve, but we actually see decreases in all of these metrics that we look at. Direct spending, direct employment, direct earnings, and direct tax receipts. So this shouldn't be surprising to anyone, but it is a really interesting way to look at where we have been and where we probably will continue to go. unless we make some changes. And in case you're wondering if this is happening all over the place, it's not. When we look at how Route County compares with some of the other counties in the state, we're kind of in that neutral zone, either slightly down or neutral. A lot of our mountain counterparts are actually, they did see growth. Some did not, but most of them did. So we're not consistent across the entire state in terms of what this landscape has looked like. So to look at 2026, I want to do a real quick recap of some of our efforts this year. And when we look at lodging occupancy, this chart shows paid and unpaid stays for May through September, mostly projection for the rest of September. So we started off really strong in May. June also was strong. July, as we know, started to, it actually started off strong with 4th of July, and then it started slowing down. August was down a bit. September is looking pretty good. So these are the past three years, blue being this year, red last year, and then the yellow the prior year. In terms of visitor spending, we can see from May through August 31st, 60% of our restaurant spend is from visitors, visitors being people who've come from 50 miles or more away, and $70 per spend. So we also see over 50% of those receipts come from visitors at retail. So this is extremely impactful, the money that they bring in just during this summer time period. So when we look at some wins that we saw this year, May and June were strong, as I mentioned. So sales tax increase and occupancy growth, which those kind of go hand in hand. We've talked recently about, I have talked about the length of stay decreasing. This year we saw some stabilization in that and even some growth between May And August, about like 10 to 15% growth in that number, which is definitely improvement. Again, strong September bookings, plus 9% year over year. Some of that is Labor Day being in September this year further. But also we've had some great events, some conferences, things that really helped move that needle. New Visit Steamboat Springs branding. I shared that with you the last time I was here in front of council. And that's been really well received and really helps us set this foundation for where we can go with our branding and our messaging in the next couple of years. Also this year, we put a lot of new effort into paid search. I'll talk a bit more about this. This is a really interesting topic right now and something that is moving very quickly. So we decided to start investing more in this. We saw really good returns on those efforts. That's bringing people to our website to give them all the relevant information. And finally, return to deeper promotion in our select national markets. So when there are a lot of different indicators we can look at for success for this campaign, really what I determined to look at was how many people actually came and stayed this summer in these markets. So when I look at guest nights, Houston and Chicago were both up year-over-year, Dallas was down slightly. And I definitely wanted to mention what we consider a win is using these visitor funds, these accommodation tax and the SDR collections that our visitors have brought in outside money into our community and have helped pay for some of these resident amenities, things that our community is enjoying. So like Whistler Park, that Slate Creek, the home-based program, the Stockbridge, all of those things are help paid for by visitor dollars. And I wanna make sure that's always a top of mind. That's how those programs are meant to be used. And we're being able to see the use of those funds as designed. So, yeah, we had some wins, but we also had a lot of challenges this year. We saw the July sales tax final numbers today. July was down. July was a challenge. As I mentioned, it started off strong with the 4th of July, but then as soon as those wildfires started, we saw our cancellations increase for lodging. We also did not see those kind of last-minute cancellations. kind of quick lodging reservations that we normally see in the summertime, that just flattened out. River closures and drought is another impactful element. When we look at the impacts to all our recreation outfitters, fishing, rafting, tubing, all of these businesses were impacted. And frankly, for some families, those are reasons to just not come. When we look at marketing tech changes, the pace at which AI is changing everything, but specifically for me to talk about travel, looking how visitors look for their next destination, it's so quick, it's really hard to keep track. So it's been a very interesting kind of way to look at Where we are right now in AI search and how is that changing what we're doing? How do we need to grow to catch up with that? I saw a report recently that most destination marketing organizations are about two years behind the pace at which AI is moving in travel research. So we have the deck stack against us in that one. Competitive landscape, and when I mention this, it's not just all our other mountain towns. In the winter, that's more the case. In the summer, the competitive landscape is much broader than that. We could even look at, in this case, the Pacific Northwest. We could look at beach towns. It's so much broader and so many more destinations are putting more effort into their bringing and attracting visitors than we are even at the state level. The state of Colorado's budget has grown stagnant and was even a little bit lower this year. And that's something that we need to pay attention to that trickles down to us as well. And then dated budget. And I'm going to get into a little bit more on that one in just a minute. I'm gonna breeze through these real quick because I've showed these to you before, but just always on messaging that we always provide consistent year round messaging with some of these platforms. This is how we showed up in our paid media efforts this year. We took a break in July. I will mention that more in a minute and that was really to conserve budget. These are some of the campaigns we had at a national, a regional and a local level. We also added in some responsive messaging. We stopped all kind of promotional messaging during the fires and really our mission was to direct visitors to the correct resources. Here is some of our creative. Everyone loved this one. Rodeo is very popular right now. We've added in right now we have a fall campaign going. Okay, so what I really want to talk about is 2027. We have a unique opportunity here. Everything that I've been hearing tonight is we need more funds. We need more revenue. And tourism is a tried and true way to bring in more revenue to our community. And we have come with a unique proposal to do that without adding to the city's expenses. So the first thing we want to do, drive high value visitation. and these are the horseshoes, bringing economic impact while protecting the place. Grow community trust, we're gonna do another resident sentiment survey in 2027. Expand the reach with the local marketing district partnership, and we'll go into that a bit in a minute, and then adapt to this rapidly evolving technology and visitor behavior. So our proposal for 2027 is 1,225,000. It includes all of these elements that we have done in the past, deepening in some of most of these buckets. The rationale, the biggest thing I'll just mention here is that settling in that 2026 demand, all indicators show that's going to continue. So we also need to maintain this long-term brand awareness, this turning on, turning off of marketing to conserve our budget. It's just not as effective. We need to have a longer lead, longer pipeline. And then the other thing is just really widespread costs, and we need to recognize the value that the tourism industry is to our community and our economy, and really do that justice, all those business owners, those employees who rely on us to support them. And my note is we've been under-investing in our efforts for many years, and it honestly is beginning to show. So this has been a 10-year look at our contract amount for the destination marketing, destination stewardship efforts. And as you can see, 2026 is the same as it was in 2016. And for us to accomplish what we think we need to accomplish to meet the needs of our community, this is not going to work. It's not enough to be effective. So new this year, we have a partnership that we're proposing the LMD has agreed to use up to 75% of the city's contribution. So the city's investment flat at 700,000, what it was last year, and then we layer in this local marketing district contribution of 525,000 to get us to 1.225. When I layer that LMD on, suddenly we have a lot more resources to do the work that we think needs to be done to meet these needs. So when we look at term look, and it's kind of like diversifying your portfolio and getting quick wins, medium wins, long-term wins. And the first thing we do is increase our media budget, including shoulder season, mid-season, increasing those summer flight marketing now that we have that LMD partnership, and then medium term, SEO, GEO, that's even a new term that's generative engine optimization. So that's looking at AI. How can we work better to be able to get all of those search results to our website instead of just being answered by AI? And then long term, we really need to look back at Industry shows, increasing our PR efforts, we haven't had PR efforts really to any significant degree in years. And then international efforts, that is the thing that is going to help us the most in the long term. Bringing people from further away is lower impact in that they stay longer, they spend more money when they are here, they're very high value guests, and we have done little in that market in a long time, it's time we step back into that. So what the budget looks like, we're proposing, I've mentioned the 2026 budget on the left so that you can kind of see where these growth buckets occur, and then 2027 there on the right. So really the biggest changes are within website, email, research, media buy. Those are the places I really want to go a lot deeper to be able to make these impactful changes. I also added down the bottom some more public relations as I mentioned. I think this will be crucial to really helping us reach a new consumer and go deeper in those markets that we have been in this year. So that is what I have for you tonight. I know that was a really quick overview, but there's a lot of information in here, and I'm happy to answer any questions. I really just want to express, oh, I think I was just kicked off to Zoom, so that's good timing. So just express, as we're hearing the need for more revenue without creating more expenses, this is the best way as a community we can do this. And Investing more in our destination marketing is the best way to do it to create the quickest short-term gains, medium and long-term gains that will help meet these goals. So I encourage you to really consider what the city should be investing in this effort and I will be happy to answer any questions that you have.

Okay. Thank you, Laura. And I just want to say before we ask Laura some questions is we're not here tonight to finalize a chamber budget. We are here tonight to ask questions to inform us better for our October 6th budget meeting. Okay. So just so everybody understands that. So what questions do we have for Laura? Counselor Agosta.

All right. Well, thank you for doing this. You guys have a tough, tough job of promoting. I mean, we, we, I mean, we live on sales tax dollars. You hear it over and over again, and we're short on that, and we are not bringing people into a steamboat as diligently as possible. And I say you have a tough problem because, yeah, you have things like wildfires are keeping people away, and the droughts are keeping people away. But we also have things like we no longer have 4th of July fireworks. And I understand why. We don't, I mean, economically, I mean, from an environmental side, that's something that we cannot do. But that is a void. Locals used to stay here on 4th of July weekends for the fireworks. And so that's a void that's tough to fill. It doesn't matter how many search sites Paid searches you do, if you don't have the events, people aren't going to find them. So the fireworks, the Wine Food Fest comes and goes, and we're struggling. That's struggling. We not only have Balloon Fest. I mean, that's what people thought of Steamboat, is the Balloon Festival. That's another void. Tour de Steamboat finally came back, but we were missing that for years. We almost killed Steamboat Gravel. I mean, finally we got it back in here, but that was, you know, another void. The concerts kind of, you know, we aren't as consistent there. The outdoor summer concerts. And, you know, we can go on and on. Five years ago, the number of events that we actually had in this town that we could attract people to was significantly bigger than it is today. So, I think, I have a general feeling, even without the fireworks, we would have been seeing a downturn because we don't have that summer identity, that activities that we used to have. And so, On my side, yes, we need that marketing, that branding, but we also need to shore up these activities that are signature to Steamboat that we have lost. And we need those and we are going to continue to struggle because paid content, paid, you know, PAID ADVERTISING IS NOT GOING TO GET TO WHERE WE NEED TO GO WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE THE ACTIVITIES TO LIVE THERE. SO WHERE I'M SITTING IS I WANT TO SEE A PORTION OF THIS BUDGET GO TO, YOU KNOW, CREATING, SHORING UP, IDENTIFYING, YOU KNOW, WHAT ARE THOSE NEW ACTIVITIES OF THOSE VOIDS THAT WILL ATTRACT PEOPLE TO STEAMBOAT? BECAUSE WE ARE 50% TOURISM. No question. You know, so where I want to see is we need something to, to bring, you know, bring to, bring people to Steamboat. And, and,

The Chamber isn't an event planning organization. Their mission, they're an advocacy organization.

Laura, thank you for your presentation. And Councillor Augusto is making a good point. And I asked Cara when she was running executive director before, is that as we lose the Mustang Roundup, and as we lose the old antique cars, as we lose some of these signature events, It's twofold, and I would, I mean, have you, is it, where is it to find those events, and is it just so hard to make a profit on them, like the balloon rodeo? I know that Karen Buve finally tried to take over it and try to do it herself, and it was just overwhelming, but it was a money loss. Like, you know, it doesn't make any money like the... Marathon. Is there some areas that you guys have identified that have you backfilled any of those events that you can since you've been on the chamber? Yeah, Sarah can.

Well, and I'll just start by saying we agree. And events provide predictable visitation. And we have seen that. We have seen that work with, for example, Steamboat Gravel. We see that with this past weekend. There were bike races. There were the October West was happening. And that's what brings that energy and vibrancy and people from out of town. So yes, there has been an evolution. I'll let Sarah speak to that.

Thank you, Sarah.

It's funny that events are back. So 2018, I think we stood up here and got hammered. And city council said, we do not want any more events, no more events, get out of the event business. We don't want any of this.

Triple crown was a lot of that.

Triple crown was some of that, but so was hotter balloon rodeo. All of these things that now we're looking back on and being so nostalgic about, we were getting just hammered on. So the problem with events like Hot Air Balloon Rodeo, Ed was in here earlier, he was kind enough to let us use his property when we were the producer of Hot Air Balloon Rodeo. We heard from the community, we don't want you in events, we don't want this happening, so we kind of passed it off to another organization. We built a lot since Hot Air Balloon Rodeo was here and now we don't really have spaces for them to land. So it is a very expensive event to produce mostly because of the lodging, but we agree that events are this predictable sort of way that we can say, hey, we know that Every year is the marathon. We know that's gonna be busy. We know Steamboat Gravel's gonna be here. I don't know that we necessarily need to be the production, but we can certainly be the convener. Events want to come here. Laura and I have had conversations with Iron Man, with all sorts of outside event producers that would be interested in coming to Steamboat to produce if that is something that the community wants and would be willing to support.

Is there a way for you to market to that clientele? I mean, you're spending a lot of money on social and Houston and Dallas and, you know, digital media.

A way to market for us to say, hey, bring your event here.

Yes, bring your event to us. Like heavily spend some of this money on that. How could you?

I don't know that we need to spend this money. We would need additional money because these big events have multi-year contracts. So a lot of them say, we will come into your community. We're going to produce an event that has a $20 million return, but we want a guaranteed $300,000 for five years. So that's how a lot of these big events work. And, you know, fortunately, Steamboat's not a super hard sell. People want to come here if we have the resources to kind of fund these events. That's how Pro Challenge worked. That's how kind of these big event production companies work.

Okay. Thank you.

And I'll just close and hand it over to my other counselors with the comment of, I understand the chamber is not an event coordination, but it's really tough to basically advertise and promote something when you don't have much there. We've lost things that we need to figure out. And I don't know what the right organization is, but we've lost a number of activities and we have some voids that we need to fill. And so how do we fill them?

I mean, I think we're worth marketing, but hey... Yes, we are. Can I ask a couple of questions?

Yes.

I'm just curious, on the budget increases, I'm looking at year-over-year change for these, and I just wanted to pull out some of them that have huge jumps just to, like, why? Why do you think that that's a place that we really want to increase? So one of them would be, like, the media buy. I know you touched on that in your presentation. Visitor center increased by 25%. Website and email almost doubles. And then... you already touched on PR. So I guess those four, do you want me to relist them?

No, so, okay, I'll start with website and email. One of my points earlier that I didn't necessarily call out was updating our website. Our website's over almost 10 years old, and with the pace at which not only technology is changing, but also visitor behavior and how people are searching and how people are planning vacations, our website needs to be updated. And I've been proposing that for a couple of years, we just haven't had the funds to do it. So that would be a big chunk of that increase is updating our website. And email is fine. It's mostly just the website portion. Visitor center, honestly, that's just kind of keeping up with visitor center trends. And a lot of these, too, have been just the fact that we've been underinvesting for years. It's time to start getting back to a more modern system with some of these platforms. So visitor center website. Research is another one. we have so much research or we could get so much research at our disposal. The key is knowing what to do with it and how to best use it. And there are lots of resources out there who could help us better utilize that research that takes more funds. So that is what I've included in there as well. Was there another bucket you had a question on?

And what's the benefit of having extra $200 in the media buy? It was like $50 before, and now it's $250.

Yeah, so that is going deeper in these markets. So not just our national markets, but also our front-range market, because they serve different purposes. So going much deeper, the budget we had this year was very surface level, and it was very short. So we need to extend that window that we can advertise. And I mentioned, too, we took... July basically off to save budget. And that really hurt us, I think, for our fall campaign because we stopped and then had to start again. And so being able to have that consistency is really important. So going deeper and wider is really where that money is going to be spent.

And then this- What type of meeting are you talking about?

So mostly for the campaigns, it's digital media. So we did digital media, search engine optimization, obviously, and then like social media, digital ads, and some out of home in cities like Chicago.

Billboards?

Yes.

And then this doesn't include any hiring, right? Like this, you're not adding headcount?

The only thing it adds, correct. It does not add headcount. It just is in that research bucket, accounts for a contractor to help us with research.

Got it.

Thanks.

Laura, can you, on page eight there, which is the spend, May-August spend, That $70 and $101 that restaurants and retail, do you know how that compares with our other mountain towns in terms of?

That I don't have, no. In this platform, I don't have access to other areas.

Okay. Do you have access to, the number I'd like to see is you have 60% of restaurant spend from visitors, $70. I'd like to see the total dollars spent. in restaurants from visitors and trend that over time as well? Because this is saying $70 per, but we don't know if that's 10% down in terms of overall absolute dollars or 10% up or what it is. Can we get those kind of numbers, just a total retail spend, total restaurant spend, all those kind of numbers?

I could look into what that would look like. With the current platform, we have no, but I could do some other research and see if we could access that.

And my final question is a visitor $70 or at a restaurant is a visitor defined as one person.

It would be the bill. So whatever that total bill is, so we don't know if that's one person, three people or whatever. Yeah, it's because it's done by credit card transaction. Okay. Yeah. And that includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. So of course, dinner would be a higher spend and lunch lower.

It would be interesting on that vein to get that data, Steve, because I think how would that, it would be interesting to see in relation to how much money would be spent in giving the chamber. So when you look at that one graph that has the different bars from 2016 to today and $700,000, Is there any relation to the amount of that money? Is that same line that we're going to see from the dollars spent in restaurants and other places in retail? Is there a correlation?

I think there's definitely a correlation and you can see that in the county spend numbers. So when you look at when our budget was reduced and then we introduced STR taxes and all of these kind of changes, when you look at that countywide chart, that's when we start to level off a bit. And now we are actually going down. And based on what we know from tax collections thus far in 26, I imagine it would kind of follow that same trend. So I don't have an exact dollar-to-dollar correlation, but just looking at those different graphs, yes, I would say you can see that there is a connection there.

Yeah, something outside of natural disasters, you know, like not having snow year, when you see the dollars amount go up in 2019 and then all of a sudden drop down in 2021. Yeah. you know, how did that affect the amount of money we gave the chamber? Because I think that there's a direct correlation to giving you guys more money to getting back on par.

Yeah, and you can also see 2025 was not a disastrous weather year until, in fact, our December bookings in 2025 were actually pretty good. Things didn't start to really go negative until in 2026. So now we're already seeing those negative, the downturn in 25, and then we'll see 26 as well.

Pray for snow.

Laura, I have a question. So I don't get where the $700,000 goes. I know you're saying media and social media. And we talked about this at council in July. when we had the fires up on Rabbiters and Sagecoach. And I said, what are we doing to make sure people know Steamboat is open? And this is just a constructive criticism. What I saw in the chamber was on Instagram showing, oh, we have a fire And then that was it. And so I'm just, I think that was a missed opportunity for a pivot to really market how Steamboat is. We are open for business. And what I saw was, you know, marketing for very specific businesses. So I just, how are those, how is that $700,000 spent?

I would like to address that specifically because it's a good question. Yeah. So our strategy during those fires is this, to go quiet at first because we didn't know what was happening, right? When there's an emerging emergency and you don't know what's happening, I don't want to come out and say, steamboat is open, everyone come, and then the fire comes into town and we have to shut down. So we definitely were waiting to see what happened. And our main priority was directing visitors, that's what we used our tools to, visitor center especially, to the correct resources. Once the fires, we felt that we got word from, the incident managers and people in charge that things were out of the woods, so to speak, in town, then we got back to saying, okay, steamboat is open, come in, here are pictures of what it's like right now. So that was our strategy there. In terms of where does that whole budget go, I mean, that's why I lay it out like that so you can see. A lot of that is account management, and that's the work that I do day to day, and Kenzie, who's in the audience here. I mean, we pay for the visitor center. We staff the visitor center. Yes, we have a media campaign. We do a visitor's guide. It is a very comprehensive program that's much more than just media, but that is a portion of it. So a destination organization is not like an advertising agency where we just do a couple things. We have an entire program that works to bring the visitor and take care of the visitor while they're here.

Okay, thanks, Laura. I appreciate that. And my last question is, I heard you say you really want to get the international traveler license. Yes. Good luck. Unless we're going to market Lake Ontario and not Lake of America or whatever. I mean, like the Canadian tourism is down almost 60%. And so where we are as a country right now, is that worth the money to try to market internationally?

I believe that it is, and I'll tell you why. Colorado is seen by our international markets that we're looking at as a friendlier state to visit than other states. So we have that part of our reputation that is working for us. Yes, Canadian visitation is down, but it's not as down as it is in other places. Mexican visitation is actually up over prior years. Other countries are flat. Some are down. So I work closely with the state tourism office to know what they're doing so that we can leverage the work they're already doing. And also international is a long game. So it's not something I'm trying to get a bunch of Canadians to come, you know, this fall. That's building relationships over years. And when our climate does change, and it will, our political climate will change as it does, then we will be in the position to welcome those people here.

Perfect, yeah, and like open arms to all of our international travelers. I love them, want them here, but I just see what's happening. But yeah, thanks, I appreciate that response.

Quick question, is the additional LMD funding, this is temporary, right, right now?

It's a three-year agreement.

Three years, okay.

Okay, any other questions? Okay, thanks, Laura. Thank you. And we'll also open it up to public comment. Does anybody want to make a public comment regarding this topic? Kathy, come on down. State your name and address, and you have three minutes.

Good evening. Kathy Elliott, 1870 Timothy Drive. I am the current chamber board president and the B2B marketing manager representing 50-plus stores for Christie Sports that are located throughout Colorado, Montana, the Pacific Northwest, and Utah. I am here tonight to urge your full financial support for the Steamboat Chamber's summer promotion funding. This past year has brought clear economic challenges. Following a low snowfall winter season and lagging summer visitation, it is more apparent than ever that our local economy, our local community alone cannot sustain Steamboat's business during the warmer summer months. We rely heavily on summer visitors to keep our doors open, our staff employed, and our business viable. Furthermore, because of last winter's low snow, we know we will have to fight twice as hard to battle beach destinations in Europe just to win back our winter business. Right now, Steamboat is falling behind other mountain communities that are aggressively marketing themselves. We are not just competing with our neighbors in Colorado, we are fighting for market share against highly aggressive summer destinations across the country. To stay in the game, the Chamber needs the resources to act. Their website must be modernized, and they desperately need funding for key data support to track and target the right travelers. We must increase this funding simply to remain competitive. Investing in the Chamber's summer promotional budget isn't just a benefit for visitors, it is a direct investment in the survival and stability of local businesses like ours. Please approve this funding request. Thank you for your time and your dedication to our community. And on the international standpoint, real quick, we have locations in the Vail Valley and Aspen. And they have huge support from the South Americans, Europe, and the Australian markets. And they average a 10 or more nights stay per visit. 10 or more nights. That's more sales tax revenue for our city. Thank you.

Thank you, Kathy. Appreciate it. You're coming from Australia. You better stay 10 nights.

Long weekend. Hello, everybody. My name is Josh Miller, 40207 Lindsay Drive. I'm the chair of the Lodging Association, and we just actually had our quarterly meeting today. And before I get started, I actually wanted to thank Councilman Augusta. We agree with you 100% on the special events, and I think the lodging community would be open to figuring out a way to help fund some of these special events going forward. As a sales tax-based economy, government economy, this is a situation where you have to spend money to make money, right? If we invest in our future as a tourism destination, we have the opportunity to bring in more sales tax dollars that helps fund all the projects and all the things that we're looking forward to moving forward with here. One of the things that we've faced over the last couple of years is Steamboat has come across as not being very pro-tourism. And I think this is an opportunity for us to show that we really are opening our doors and welcoming tourism to our community. So I strongly want you to know, I want you to know that the Lodging Association strongly would like to see you move forward with approval of this budget, along with the LMD contribution. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Come on down, Bob.

Bob Milne, 2350 Clubhouse Drive. I'm here as a member of the public, but also as the chair of the local marketing district. If we didn't think, and I know a lot of you were involved in our negotiations and discussions, if we didn't think that investing in summer marketing was important, you wouldn't have seen us included in our operating plan. And more importantly, I think as we all saw with the change in the agreement with the Steamboat Ski Resort Corporation, LMD is now funding 100% of the guarantees for summer, which is why we agreed to contribute up to 75% of the money that you all approve for the summer chambers. So I think that that's what I wanted to make clear is that we really feel as an organization, a local marketing district, that this is money well spent and invested. And then the last thing I'll say is that now is the time to do it while you've got the chamber leadership that you do. We all know that, you know, when you have organizations and you have strong leadership, good things can happen. So I'm very much in support of this. Thank you. Thanks, Bob.

Okay, is there anyone else in the room who would like to make public comment? And we have John. You're online. John, you want to... Unmute, state your name and address, and you have three minutes, please.

Yes, hello, everyone. First off, thank you, counsel, for your service. I know it's a lot of work. I've thought about doing it many times, but thank you. I wasn't planning on actually commenting on this one and it's been interesting hearing the comments earlier. We have businesses that are struggling and we've kind of turned off the marketing valves like pushing our tourism away. Marketing is one of the number one pieces that brings and fills those gaps. We really need to look at each one of our weekends or weeks or periods or times where do we have lower sales tax revenue generation? And analyze that. And let's put money behind it. Let's bring other events in to fill those gaps, to raise those up, to create consistency. It helps our housing, not just on our workforce housing, but our short-term, right? So if you have more short-term rental revenue, then you've got more money from our STR tax. And so let's go fill those gaps. Let's put money behind it. Let's not worry about international or national politics from each individual's perspective. Let's work on marketing properly. It's a business because this is where our funding comes from. Let's raise it up and let's work on it now in particular more than ever before because it has gone down and let's not overdo it in our peak areas where we already have it. Let's focus on the areas that are lower. Let's bring in larger events and let's turn this on. Let's turn it on in the gap periods. And now is more important than ever, I believe, especially after hearing all the comments from other local businesses and talking to people in town. But the additional fees that are coming, we need to create more revenue. So now's the time. Please proceed forward with such. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, John. So anybody else online, please raise your hand. Larry, you want to unmute Larry and you have three minutes. You're still muted, Larry.

Sign language? If you right-click on him, you could unmute him.

No, we don't hear you.

You're still listening as mute.

No. No. Bottom right-hand corner. Or left-hand.

I don't know. What's he on, a phone? Larry, we're going to have to let you go if we can see you. Oops. Well, let's try one more thing. No. Okay. All right. Is there anyone else online? Not seeing anyone and no one in the room. We'll close public comment. And thank you, Laura, for your presentation.

Can I make a final comment? Yes. Yeah. So we've heard a number of people from the community and in terms of local businesses talk about, you know, the lack of activities or basically not lack of activities that we need to fill some of those voids. You know, and I talked to a number of other, you know, business owners and they, you know, say the same thing. What do we do about that? I mean, where do we, you know, what's the process? That's really a bummer.

Larry's on.

I couldn't unmute and they couldn't hear me. Larry, we do hear you.

Now it's working.

Be careful what you say now, Larry. Okay. Well, isn't that the way technology is? Well, then let me just hop in here. Can I still have a couple of minutes?

Yes. Go ahead, Larry. Okay. I'm sorry.

So I think everybody's made the case pretty well for the investment.

Just state your name and address, Larry, first, please.

Sure. Larry Mishaw, 40528 Steamboat Drive, a 40-year resident of Steamboat. I think everybody's made the case pretty well. I just want to add a couple of things and put some perspectives. A lot of the communities we're competing with have two to five million dollars to work with while we're dealing with been dealing with five to seven hundred thousand. And a lot of that's because they've funded their marketing through accommodations taxes. We've chosen to put nine percent in an STR tax, two percent for LMD, another percent for accommodations tax. None of that going to attract visitors. So that's really partly why we're at such a big disadvantage. And the other thing that maybe isn't seen, if you look at our level of occupancy against other communities, it doesn't look as far off. But when you subtract the paid lodging from the unpaid lodging, which the chamber started doing, you see how much lower our paid lodging is. So all of our owners stay in our condominiums and they do come and spend money, but they're not spending lodging money driving the STR tax to support affordable housing, not driving money to support the LMD. or the accommodations tax. So all of those things really add into, we really need to double down and get into this and not for tonight, but for another day, we need to also look at bringing down that 9% so that we can be more competitive attracting visitors here. Thanks. And I apologize for my technical difficulties. Thank you, Larry.

Okay. Councilor Agosta, you want to finish your thought?

Yeah, so basically what is the process? And if we decide that we do want to focus on bringing, filling these voids that have opened up, how do we fill those up? I mean, is there any interest in this council in working on that? And or what is that process? I don't know what that process looks like, but basically it seems like somebody needs to be, some organization needs to be promoting or trying to attract events into the area. But that bringing in events brings in tax dollars, brings in sales tax. So what is that process? I don't know what it looks like.

Well, the Chamber's the group to do it. That's why we're here to talk about it.

Okay. But I just heard the Chamber is not...

We're paying them to do marketing for the city of Steamboat Springs. This is where we're trying to figure out how much we give them to do the marketing. There's not another group that we're looking at to try to fill these voids of these places. They're the ones that's tasked with this. So that shouldn't be unclear.

The distinction that then probably needs to be made is that the chamber is out of the production of these events.

Yes.

So now the Chamber can be a resource to hire production companies to run events here. And you heard Sarah say, well, they may want five-year commitment at X amount of money to do it. But it's not that the Chamber isn't involved. It's just that they're not in the production side like they used to be.

I think it's more than that. I think it's being able to thank you for bringing it up. Because I think that if we... if we implore the chamber to say, listen, if you went and found a five-year commitment like a winter wonder grass that was going to bring in revenue for a period of time and they wanted that kind of commitment, that would be a different kind of agreement we can do on a supplemental to assist them and or, I mean, that's a whole different picture. I think what we're looking for is just find, be open to find someone, right? right? We can find them. If you came to us with a proposal that says, Hey, I've got someone that wants to do this for 10 years and it's this long. And we all like, okay, as long as it's not triple crown, you know what I mean? I mean, something like that would be like, wow, what could we do? We gave money to triple crown to encourage them to come in an ongoing process. So it's not inconceivable to do that. We just need to give them the reins to do that. They were hit in the head back in 2021, 22 and 23, because they, Remember how busy it was, how the traffic was. And the city council at that time said, don't spend any more money marketing because our citizens said, stop the brutal marketing. So the city council reacted. And now what was told then was like, if you do that, it's going to be harder to catch up. And this has kind of put us possibly where we are. I can't say it's 100% of it because we've had a couple of weird years, but I think that let's give them the reins to move forward.

Okay, so does this council then, are we suggesting or recommending to the chamber that we are open to looking at events and that we don't want to close this town down from any more events? In fact, we'd like to be open to exploring some events in the future.

I would be curious to understand what you learned from the public outreach that you did in terms of the community's appetite for more events. And I don't know if that's a conversation for tonight or as we think about that, right? I think we need the input and that you all have gotten in terms of where you think there's community support for moving forward would be my suggestion.

I think council, I think that this warrants a larger conversation for sure. I don't think we can have it tonight, but this is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately because from a staff perspective, we have a hard time managing a lot of these events. It requires a significant amount of staff resources and time. And we're, we're, every weekend trying to balance resources with all these different events. I've also talked to folks in the community that put on events that say we're leaving a lot of money on the table and that we should be actually receiving a lot more revenue from some of these events like other communities do. I've thought that we need some sort of special event commission or special event committee to help us with these decisions. And so I think it warrants a larger conversation. Not only do we need more events, but how do we manage the events that we have, nevermind adding significant more events. So I think we can talk about maybe that's a future work session discussion or put it on your retreat, but I do think it warrants a conversation. Okay.

Good. And not only how many, but what type of event. Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it is definitely the type of events. But if you also look at, you know, we grow this community to like 30,000 in peak wintertime seasons. And we don't come close to that in the summer events. Yeah.

What is our goal right now for this session to wrap this up?

We're wrapping it up. Unless you have any other questions, I hope everybody is informed.

I give one piece of its general just thoughts. Okay. I'm not... This is great. Very excited, very supportive. I just want to provide a piece of thought that you can put thought into. I appreciate the interest. I'm going to take a step back. I see this as a three-year test case. I would love for this to be a raging success. And after the three years... The LMD, let's say they renew this and then it's encouraging to the council to say, why don't we also increase our budget that we're giving to you? And so I would just like to see what is the best, where can we put the most money towards the most effective things? And I appreciate like the website, it needs to be revamped. Like some of these things almost just look at it and say, can we not invest extra in some of these things and can we put even more towards the things that will really drive the needle? And I appreciate, I understand why you did all these because you're a destination management organization, but I was thinking of it from what's the tangible thing that a council is going to see? In my mind, it's like advertising. Can you put more awareness out there, get more people to come here so in three years you can point to numbers and say, look at what we did with this, and then after those three years you can make these decisions deferred investments. So that's just do what you want with it. But that was just kind of my thinking is like, I would love for this to be a raging success and optimize the spend.

Hey, good point. Thank you.

So Tom, do you have this item on your list?

I put it on my list and we will talk about it soon. Okay.

Thank you again. We're going to move on.

Next item on our list is the linkage program. Final recommendations, Rebecca.

Thank you all. Thanks.

Yeah. Thank you.

Good evening, Council. Rebecca Besse, Planning Director. Let me just get my... Pull my presentation up. I did send out an updated presentation late this afternoon, just so you would all have that in hand. And I know we're running... Well behind schedule, so I'll try to move through this fairly quickly, because you've seen some of these slides before. Just as a quick reminder, this staff has worked on this to, because council set a direct goal to develop and adopt an inclusionary zoning and or linkage program, and it also directly relates to strategic initiative 1.4 in our newly adopted strategic plan. A linkage program is primarily a fee program. It differs from inclusionary zoning. It is often called a linkage fee or an affordable housing impact fee, and it is a fee to fund affordable housing and directly related capital costs. It can apply to both residential and non-residential development, and it can also be structured to require onsite units if desired. So this is a new slide, it wasn't included in your packet, but I just wanted to briefly discuss what is an impact fee. In sort of a nutshell, it's a fee imposed on development to offset projected impact, the projected impact of that development. The city has statutory authority through the state to impose impact fees. These kinds of fees must be legislatively adopted. That means that they have to be adopted by ordinance by council. This is not a kind of a fee that could be imposed by our city manager. The state requires, the statute requires that an impact fee address impacts that are quantified, and that is really the purpose of the NEXUS study that we commissioned and have included in your packet. So we have to quantify the impacts of different types of development in this case. Housing impacts is what we're quantifying. And when we... When we apply an impact fee, that fee has to be proportionate to the impact of a specific development. So that's why you see the fee is calculated on a per square foot or a per hotel room basis is to address that proportionality. And then lastly, revenue from impact fees are restricted to capital expenditures. Unless anyone objects, I'm gonna skip over this slide. We've gone over this a couple of times now, and I think you all understand how an impact fee is calculated, and this is also in your packet. So the recommendations that staff and consultants have worked on present a program for your consideration that would apply to both residential and non-residential development. It would apply to all new development and additions. It would exempt deed restricted affordable and workforce housing, and we would allocate 3% of the fee to cover our administrative costs. I'm gonna skip over this slide as well. Again, it's in your packet. This is a summary of the different land uses, the maximum defensible fee provided in the NEXUS study, as well as the recommended fee. But we'll go over this through the rest of the presentation. so last month i uh presented a number of program attributes really just all the different policy choices that council can weigh in on to to shape this program there was consensus on a couple of items so i think we had reached general consensus on the exemptions as well as the phasing phased implementation but there was a number of items with regard to the applicability and the mitigation rates that I think there was a lot of discussion and questions on, and we hadn't reached consensus. So I'm gonna try to focus on those tonight, those undecided items. Throughout the presentation, you'll see staff's recommendation is noted with that orange star icon. Just to sort of recap the exemptions that I think council had given a general thumbs up to where for deed restricted affordable housing and workforce units would not be subject to the impact fee, as well as that phased implementation, it would be phased in over three years. So at the beginning of year four would be 100% or the full fee would be imposed. we're recommending that fees be paid at building permit and that any vested project be exempt. Meaning by vested project, we mean any project that has gotten their development plan approved prior to adoption of the linkage fee. So the rest of the presentation is gonna focus on these items, the applicability and the mitigation rates. I combined the discussion with regard to land uses and geography because I realized that the last presentation that was really hard for us all to separate and think about as two separate items. So I've combined those and I'm going to be presenting four alternatives that I heard from you all and then two alternatives with regard to additions. So option one for land use and geography, option one continues to be staff's recommendation. This is based on the consultant's recommendation as well. And I have provided in your packet tonight an updated memo from our consultants that provides some additional information for you all to consider in terms of how they arrived at their recommendation. So option one is to apply the fee to residential citywide. and apply it to non-residential land uses only in the mountain area. There's a sort of a 1B option that I've kind of included this option on each of these slides with regard to the hospital and healthcare uses, because I think Councilor Dixon had brought that up at the last meeting that that would be something that she would like you all to consider. So that's your option one. Again, option 1A would be staff's recommendation. In terms of the mountain area boundary, we are recommending that we utilize the STR overlay zone or that green zone that centers around the resort that's illustrated here on the slide. So you can see it does capture some of the commercial along Highway 40 near the Mount Werner intersection as well as the commercial around the base area. Option two would be to, again, apply residential citywide, also apply non-residential citywide, but with a lower mitigation rate outside of that mountain area. That was something that a number of you mentioned last meeting. And then again, there's the sort of option to be that would eliminate the hospital and healthcare uses. Option three, slight variation here, would be residential citywide, non-residential in the mountain area, as well as the full US 40 corridor. So that's primarily gonna capture most of our commercial zoning in the city. I would say there are two areas that that would exclude. That would be non-residential zoning up Elk River Road, as well as some of the non-residential zoning along 13th Street. Generally speaking, that would likely capture most of the commercial zoning in the city with the exception of those two general areas. And the suggestion there again would be a lower mitigation rate outside of the mountain area. And then the last option presented tonight would be residential citywide and hotels citywide and have this program not, or this fee not apply to any of those other uses at any location or geography within the city. In terms of development types, specifically new development and additions, option A on this slide is what we presented last time as the staff recommendation, and that was to apply the fee to all new development and all substantial additions. And we were proposing to define a substantial addition as anything that was a 50% or more net increase to the existing gross floor area. We heard a lot of concern from council that that didn't feel equitable. And so we gave that some more thought and worked with EPS, our consultants, to come up with option B, and this would be staff's recommendation tonight, would be that it would apply to all all new development, and we would treat residential additions a little bit differently than non-residential additions. So in the residential setting, it would apply to all additions, but we would have an exemption for the first 650 square feet. That is our maximum size currently for a secondary dwelling unit, and that's how we landed on that 650 square feet. So you would... It wouldn't have to be an ADU, but any residential addition, the first 650 square feet would not be charged the fee. Anything above 650 square feet, the fee would apply. In the non-residential setting, we would stick with that substantial addition. So anything that increased the gross floor area by 50% or more would pay the fee. And just to be clear on that, it's not just the square footage that gets you over the 50%. It would be the whole addition if it met that definition of substantial addition. This is just, again, you've seen this table before. This is a summary of the maximum fees, the suggested mitigation rate by land use. The fee that we're proposing is that fifth row or fifth column over. So I just want to be really clear, I've received some comments where there's some confusion about what the fee is. The third column is the maximum fee that you could charge based on the Nexus study. What we're recommending is that fifth column over, which is much lower by that mitigation rate. And then lastly, based on the consultant's analysis, an estimated percent increase in development costs So I believe based on our discussion in August, there was general consensus on the 25% mitigation rate for residential citywide that would result in a $12.70 fee per square foot of new residential space. For non-residential, again, staff's recommending this would only apply in the mountain area and we have not made any changes to the recommended fee structure for those non-residential uses. If council was leaning towards any of the options that looked at other geographies with a lower mitigation rate, we'd have to fill this table in and decide at what lower mitigation rate we wanted that to apply. You've seen this slide before. These are five real world permit examples within the last couple of years. It illustrates all of the fees that are paid at building permit. So this slide excludes building use and excise taxes. you can see what those permits paid for their plan review and building permit fees their plant investment fee and then that last column is what we calculated the linkage fee would have been on those projects if it would have applied And then I added this slide because I think it's helpful information for you all to know. These are those same examples illustrates the city use tax deposit that has been paid, the excise tax as well as the county use tax on those five example permits. Just make a note that use tax is a deposit paid at time of permit. There's a reconciliation that's required prior to CO. So sometimes those numbers go up or down depending on that reconciliation process.

That slide doesn't include the linkage fee.

The linkage fee is here on this slide. It's the same example. So I just added an additional table that included the taxes.

Yep.

So I don't have one that shows them all on one slide. And I am happy to answer any questions that you have.

Okay. Thank you, Rebecca. Questions? Council?

I had one question back on kind of the development type and specifically exempting the 650 square feet. So that's replacing the exemption for a deed restriction or would it be in addition to?

It would be in addition to. So the general broad exemption would be any deed restricted affordable or workforce housing, but we would craft the ordinance so that the fee would only apply to residential additions above the 650 square feet. Okay. So yes, that would be an additional exemption. Okay, thank you.

Did you give consideration for childcare or daycare exemption at all?

um i had not but that's that's something that we could look at yep okay that's a good question um can you go over somebody go over the the hotel per room fee Um, I, I know that you, in one of these documents, you say that's described, you haven't found it. Um, can you describe what, how'd you come up with that per room B, you know, uh, for hotels?

Yeah. So I think you'll see that in the Nexus study, the, the Employee generation analysis that was done for hotels is typically done on a per room basis rather than a per square foot basis. So it's a different unit of measure because typically hotels, the numbers of employees that they generate is based on the number of rooms rather than the square footage of the structure itself.

It seems like with that per room, and again, it sticks out because it's $15,000 from everyone else, right? It seems unequally expensive. It's not fair in relation to that when I just, as a layman looking at it, looking at your building permit where you get, you know, $45,000 for a single-family home, eddy line unit, multifamily, $63,000, a hotel at $3 million. Are we trying to stop hotels from being built in this hotel, in this town? No.

Are you asking?

I am asking you.

No, and I would say absolutely not. There's no intention. In fact, the intention of this program, the reason why... Let me pull up... Let me go back a couple slides. So when we look at this... slide right here, you see the recommended mitigation rate. So for hotels, what is being recommended is that we're only mitigating the impacts of that hotel use at 20%. So you can see residentials at 25%, retails at 10, offices at 10. So hotels generate a lot of employees and they're generally lower paid So the gap between what those employees can afford and the cost of housing in our community is pretty wide. And if you look over at that increase in development costs, you may remember when EPS presented a couple of times, they made the case that you really want to keep that within, I think, you know, 5% to 7%. otherwise you're gonna impair the market such that the development will slow or it won't happen. So we're trying to develop a program that have mitigation rates and fees that are set at a level that the market can absorb. So absolutely not, it's not staff's intention whatsoever to discourage any of these land uses through this program.

would hope not um in the other thing that cut me off um is is in and i understand we have a consultant who's made some suggestions that we can or cannot follow but i'm really having a hard time having any zoning inclusionary zoning uh or fees on any single family home A multifamily home, I think, is what was in the past. Correct me if I'm not wrong, when we had an inclusionary zoning up to 2015, 16, or 17, when it was disbanded, or at least the moratorium was finally lifted completely. Did we have single-family homes in that inclusionary zoning back the city had on its books years ago?

We did. So just to be clear, linkage is different than inclusionary zoning, but the inclusionary zoning program that we had did apply to single family, but there was like a minimum of three. I shouldn't say that. I don't remember exactly what the minimum was. So if you did a subdivision of single family homes, that exceeded a certain number of lots, then yes, the inclusionary zoning applied. If the lots were already in existence, then that didn't apply because it was based on the subdivision. It was based on when you were creating new lots is how that applied. And that makes more sense too. I believe that there was a threshold for multiple family as well, but I can't speak to the specifics.

So then going on the linkage fee, this is where it changes because now we're including them, every home into this category.

That is correct.

Great. Yeah. $12. You guys, because I'm not supporting the single family home at this point, but I can be convinced otherwise. Just give me some insight.

An impact fee on 1,700 square foot house would be $27,000.

Because they had to keep you from building it?

I mean, if you're on a budget, that's an appliance package.

Well, you could also deed restrict it, right? I mean, I think there are various different options, and I think we need to stay high level in terms of what are we trying to do here, right? We know that these buildings, whether it's a home or whether it's a hotel, has an impact on our community. And so, you know, from my perspective, this is about making an investment in our workforce, right?

I'm not going to go high level. I'm going to go into detail because I think that we can't put a regulation on our community without going into detail. So high level does not work for me. Well, I mean, I agree more specifically and say, what are we really doing to our community and how it's going to impact, not just pay blanket, make it everyone do it. That's the, I'm not going to do that.

Are we in the discussion?

I was just going to ask that liberation phase. We're in the questioning phase only. Thank you. Any other questions for Rebecca? There might be.

Just one quick question, Rebecca. I'm looking through the study. I know we looked at other communities that have done linkage, both residential, commercial. Some have done one or the other. And actually, a handful have done both. When we look at, well, I guess the impact is different based on the community, the formula, I'm guessing. So I guess my question really is, can we compare what we're proposing to what Crested Butte has done, Telluride, Mountain Village, Avon, Breckenridge, because those are all communities that have done residential and commercial. So we look at the square like this, but it's probably not apples to apples, though. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. So I think it's helpful to look at peer communities always. But I do think, so the study that we did, it was using local market data, local construction costs. So it is intended to fit our local context. You know, how different are we from some of the other peer communities I can't really speak to. So I don't think it's,

i i think it's always helpful to look to other peer communities but i you know we do have to try to rely on the nexus study and the analysis that was done yeah thank you any other questions so we you sent me that um paid from the last of what was at the july meeting just showing that the estimate of revenue based on the 25 mitigation rate was 3 million 440 000 And I was using a single-family house that's 2,700 square feet and a duplex at 2,000. Do we know what the average single-family house that's square footage has been that we've built in the last 10 years here or the last two years? That seems pretty light for what we see driving around town, what's being built. So I'm just wondering if those estimates are accurate. low and that and that that number doesn't include these one-off hotel every couple years doesn't include a multi-family that comes through so those estimates of revenue could be quite a bit higher they could be um i think the consultants did acknowledge

You know, that's why they looked at a 10-year period of time because you have to try to balance out sort of those peaks and valleys in development and in the fee that would be collected. I don't know that I... I don't know that we have sort of an analysis or data that I would be able to recite to you on what the average home size is that we have seen. Certainly we see some larger homes. I think the examples we provided I think that 3,500 square foot home was a sunlight neighborhood home. So I think that's probably a pretty typical home size up there. The 7,800 square foot home, I want to say, was maybe on Burgess Creek or something like that or something up near the base.

What I was saying in his projections, they used 2,700 square feet as their norm over the 10-year period. It just seems like a lower number than...

It could be lower and we could have, you know, I'm sure that over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, we've seen some changes as well. So I don't, I apologize. I don't have, I don't know what our current average sort of home size is.

The question I have Rebecca on this last chart, 19 page 19, that one. No, not that one. The whatever. Yeah. Yeah. If I look at that, no, the one you had up before. Okay. Yeah. If I look at a single-family home at $45,000, that home is $2.6 million, and that's less than a third of the $8.1 million home. Yet, when you come over to the amount they're paying, so in other words, the 7.8 is three times as big, or excuse me, over $2. So I think I know what you're saying. 2.6 million to 8.1 million. There's a three times as great there. Yep. Yet the affordable housing impact fee, 45 to 100, is barely over two times as great. So it seems that the higher valued home is getting a lower percentage rate.

Well, because, and the reason for that is because the employment generation is based on square footage. It's not based on the value. So that 7,800 square foot home at 8.1 million probably has a lot nicer appliances and light fixtures and flooring, countertops, all of those things. So that's going to increase the value of that home, but it's not necessarily going to impact the employment generation of that unit.

So the actual assessed value of the home is not that important.

That is correct. I put that on there just because I think there was, during one of the earlier conversations, a discussion about potentially exempting anything under 3,000 square feet or something like that. And I wanted to demonstrate to you all that right now, a 3,500 square foot house is $2.6 million. So it's not really what we're thinking about in terms of like a local workforce sort of affordable price point.

Okay. Any more questions, or are we?

Just to get this correct, so it's the 45 plus the 29 plus the 16, and then the next slide.

That's correct. Those are all the taxes that get paid at time of building permit in the prior slide were the fees.

Plus another $100,000.

I'm sorry, plus another $100,000? Oh, adding, yes, yep.

Okay.

Do we know on a comparison of all those fees combined how we could stack up to our peer communities? Not just on a linkage fee, but in totality.

I don't know that, no.

Just trying to figure out if we are pricing ourself out of the market in totality.

Good to know. Are the consultants online? consultants online?

They are not here tonight, no.

Okay. Let's hear if there's any public comment. Is there anybody in the audience who'd like to make public comment? Please come down. State your name, address, and you have three minutes.

Trace Adams, 29455 Lang Diamond Trail. I'll be short and sweet with this. I can't stress this enough. Don't do this. Take this into longer consideration. I looked at some of the comments and saw that there was a correction on the $52 million at the end of this year. We'll already have it. I think it's around 30, low 30s. Figure out how to manage that money currently. I mean, we have a lot of things. Brown Ranch was donated six years ago and still is. figuring it out. Yampa Valley Housing Authority has had its struggles. I think that there's a big part of this community that needs to understand that we need to figure out what we have right now before just always thinking tax, tax, tax, and add these fees. And doing this to the mountain, to me, is an essentially destroyed development at the mountain. I mean, right now, we're finally getting some momentum. The Stockman, it's great. It's the first five-star. It's exciting again. I grew up here, going to ski racing every day and going to practice on Mount Warner. The tugboat, the mother's cafe, the movie theater, there was so much vibrance up on the mountain. Interwest destroyed the whole thing in 2006 when these fees were also implemented. And these then were taken again because they were destroyed, I think, after the recession. And they've only accumulated like $323,000. What's the backup plan here? Do we want to put this in? What's our backup plan to take it away if it becomes an issue? the tugboat lot right now is going to be developed eventually, but is it going to be developed if this is put in place? Like just give us a chance to get the mountain, give the mountain, give this community like a development chance to get things going again before we tax it, before we scare away developers, because this scares away development and we're not overdeveloped right now. We're just getting momentum. We just got a new hotel. I had, you know, AA wouldn't aid at the Spring Hill Suites restaurant tonight. And it's like a new spot, a new vibrance, a nice lobby. Oh, wow, like we can get something going here. And before we stop another hotel from coming in, let's really evaluate this. If you're very much for it, just... Pause and take a deep breath. Let's take our time here because I plead with you, it will kill development. Let's not just target the mountain. Let's get the tugboat lot developed. Let's get CD. Let's get the NOL. Let's look at what we can do. The GTC, there's so many things to sort out. Let's work on those and then come back to this. Thank you. Thank you, Trace.

Anybody else in the audience would like to make a public comment? Okay, if not, we'll go online. We have John Saunders. John, you want to unmute, state your name and address, and you have three minutes, please. Go ahead, John. Can you hear and see me now?

I can hear you and see you. All right, wonderful. I'm going to take a similar stance to Trace there. Step back for a second. Please step back. The number of times fees and taxes have come up in today's meeting is just, it's unfortunate, truly. This is an egregious overstep. There's a reason that inclusionary zoning was removed. And we hire a consultant to go figure out the other ways that we can generate revenue, but we haven't even allowed the revenue generation we've already created to work its path. And we have vacancy in town. It's already done its job. And you need to actually see today's data. not data from the past, not data from a consultant that has not even interviewed the local population, truly, especially the owners and the developers. And I know this because they haven't interviewed me or all the other people that are local developers for which this actually impacts. And so let's just think about this. We're going to go and tax a project that's going to create jobs. We're going to go and tax it so that because it's going to hurt our community, we're going to go tax, we're going to stop a project that's going to create jobs. Meanwhile, in Denver, they're paying you to go and create something that's going to create jobs. Are you kidding me? So Bob Cousin, love you. I haven't seen you in a while. That man took me out to lunch and he talked to me about, pay attention to the front range because what's on the front range, it's going to come here. And it's usually an 18 month lag. So pay attention to what's going on in the front range. They are subsidizing businesses to come in to create jobs. And we are talking about taxing, And you can not call it a tax if you don't want to. That's the whole legal perspective that's going to come in here. But we're going to fee the crap out of everybody? Really? We're going to go and fee a 10%? 10% more? Really? To a hotel? 10%? 10% is the variance to make sense or not sense to even do a project. And that is absolutely ridiculous. It is so ridiculous. Stop right now. At least table this as soon as you can. Table, table, table. This is not the right time. It is not the right thing. And I promise you, I'm on the pulse of everything that's going on in this town. And I'm on the developer side. And I have been working on so much workforce housing. I am a non-subsidized developer. And I changed one of my developments away from workforce housing because there's vacancy in town. There's vacancy in deed-restricted workforce housing that I created and sold. And so I switched it to a hotel. Now, all of a sudden, this is going to affect the ability to create a hotel. But we need hotels. Hotels actually reduce the amount of short-term rentals. So we're going to go and tax these guys that we should have more hotels. And we have so much short-term rental because we took so many hotels out of the market. Sorry, but we did. And so this is just so stupid. We need to table it absolutely as soon as possible. Seriously. And this is recommendation from the staff to staff. Let's go and analyze the, no offense to everybody, especially Rebecca. What is your experience in the public sector, especially in the public sector that is here? What is it? And this is a recommendation. And how old is the information that we have from the surveys? And the surveys are the consultant. Like, it's old news, guys. Let's get to the new news. Stop this. Table this. Listen to the people that are here that are in the middle of it that are doing it, that are developing it. Okay? And we need to listen now. And I understand that we're out of time. And I appreciate you guys' time. I do. I really do. Let's not hear anymore. I don't know that. Thank you.

Okay, we're going to go to Bill online. Bill, can you unmute? State your name and address, please, and you have three minutes.

I think if I'm muted.

You're unmuted. We can hear you.

Bill Jamison, Burgess Creek Road. Well, I don't think I have a dog in this fight, but I've got a few comments. Why are you trying to discourage residential homes, particularly single-family residential homes? I mean, that's what you want to build. You want to build single-family homes. You want to make them affordable, not affordable housing, but affordable for the non-people that can't qualify. I think you've got this all wrong. Instead of putting a 25% mitigation rate on single family homes, you ought to put a 0% on it or at most a 10% like some of these other categories because you're gonna end up with hotels and affordable housing and nothing in between. And this town can't be all affordable housing. by your definition of what affordable is, an AMI of under 120%. So that's the first point that's wrong with this proposal. The second one is, what makes the mountain area so special that they get hit with commercial fees, linkage fees? but the rest of the commercial in the city doesn't. And the mountain area boundary makes zero sense. That green zone, how much of that green zone is zoned for non-residential uses? Most of that area doesn't have commercial. I don't see any commercial up Burgess Creek Road. I don't see a lot of that green area with any commercial in it. So what do you think you're gonna get in a large area of that mountain area boundary that meets your definition of commercial? That's illusionary at best. So rather than come up with some arbitrary, mountain area boundary, if you want commercial subject to a linkage fee, it should be citywide, period. You think residential should be citywide. What makes the employees outside the mountain area, quote unquote, have any more or less impact than those in the mountain area. This thing isn't ready for prime time. I'm sorry. Have a good evening. Thank you, Bill.

Thanks, Bill.

Okay, I think we have someone else that says iPhone. Is there anyone who has their hand up? Yes. Could you unmute and state your name and address, please?

Yep, this is Chris Paoli, 55 Missouri Avenue. And I think this is a pretty, actually a very ironic meeting that you're talking about lower sales tax and lower revenues. And obviously at the same, and now we're gonna go and we're gonna put big fees on things that actually produce sales tax and revenues for our community. My question, and I always hear the cities love studies. So my question is, how much money do we have sitting in our current tax or our current fund for short-term rent for... Workforce housing. We've been collecting all this money. And then what's the current vacancies and how do you reconcile that with what's currently being built? There's two big projects being built right now. So I think we've oversupplied that market pretty heavily. And I would love to see a study... comparing the ongoing annual revenues for the 180-room hotel that was just built, sales tax, fees that go for housing and lodging, and all the taxes that come out of the restaurants that are there, and all the money that those people spend when they come here, versus a one-time fee that potentially shuts down a project. So there's a massive consequence for shutting down good, positive development. And I'd love to see someone actually do an analysis on that. And then on the residential side, you know, this fee seems like not a big deal, but I don't know if everybody realizes we just changed our building code. And the new building code has a new fight rating in it. So, you know, that's, you know, $25,000 or $100,000 here. It's another $100,000 there. These things all add up. And, you know, it just drives up the cost of our community. So anyway, I'd love to see somebody do some real math with some real studies on the impacts of not getting a hotel. Because I'd rather get an ongoing revenue stream versus a one-time fee.

That's it. Okay. Thank you, Chris.

Okay.

One more.

Okay. We have one more person online. Roger, you want to unmute and you have three minutes.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Roger Gregory, 1770 Natchez Way, also the owner and the developer of the Central Park Hotel at 1750 Central Park Drive. And I absolutely echo the comments of the folks that have spoken earlier. When we look at the fine, well, I'm going to speak for the non-residential part of this linkage fee. And business owners, and you have heard it throughout this meeting, I mean, this meeting has been a great macrocosm of the complexities and issues that business owners face in Steamboat. Business owners are making decisions based on financial terms. And we're talking about adding, if you look back on your pages 20 and 21 in the report, of adding 5% and 6% of the cost to the project's It's not feasible to do a lot of these projects. I added up the cost of our project that are on pages 20 and 21. It's over $5 million in fees if you throw in this new $3 million fee. And as a developer that develops in multiple different cities, the fees of Steamboat are already more expensive. You can argue, yes, it's somewhat justified because you get higher hotel rents. That is true. But they do not offset the total cost of these fees that we are paying. And to pay $16,000 a room or convert that to a per square foot price, you are going to kill future hotel development. I want to comment in my last 90 seconds in the very last sentence of the report. I re-listened to the August 8th meeting. I read this entire report today. Please go and look at the very last sentence. It says that hotels are distinctively tourist-based. That is an absolute false statement. From April through November, hotels in Steamboat, Monday through Friday, are filled with service providers coming to Steamboat to provide services to our city. Our largest single hotel a group that stayed at the hotel in July were government workers. They were here, they're firefighters. One of the companies that's at our hotel every single week is an energy company that is in town doing their trade, providing their services or providing to every single, most houses and almost every business in town. Hotels in non-winter months are filled with non-tourists. who are coming here for many different reasons, traveling nurses, traveling doctors. It is just more complex than it seems. Let's just throw a tax on because hotels can afford it. It's all tourist. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Roger.

Thank you. Okay. I don't see anyone else online and no one in attendance who wants to make a public comment. So we will close public comment. Bring it back, Rebecca. So what you're looking for tonight is some direction around the options that you provided.

Can I just chime in while it's sitting during the public comment? I just want to address the comments that were directed at staff and specifically at our planning director. That's not fair. I appreciate the frustration and the passion and thank you for joining. but your frustration should be focused on it. If it's focused on any person, it should be on council. This is part of our council goals. It is under diverse housing, and we had said we wanted to develop and adopt an inclusionary zoning and linkage program. It's a messy process. We're figuring it out. We're talking about it now. But I just want to say, like, staff is doing a great job, and they are doing their job, and our planning director is not here. You're not doing anything wrong. Like, eh. You're the good person, so thank you. And please direct your frustration to us at Council, not staff. Thank you, Council. Thanks for pointing that out. For saying.

Thank you, Councilor Swindek. President Montini, to answer your question, I am looking for direction. So as Councilor Swindek just noted, it is Council's goal to adopt a linkage program. So to do that, we need to draft an ordinance. I'm looking for some general consensus from council in terms of what parameters we draft into that ordinance. That ordinance will have to go through public hearings, several readings of that ordinance. So, but you know, rather than staff throwing together an ordinance, and then you sort of ripping it apart at first reading. We'd like to get some consensus or direction from you all on what you'd like to see in that first draft.

OK. So should we go back to where you have your stars in terms of the various points that you want us to weigh in on? That's right. Starting on slide seven. Seven. Eight.

I mean, do we need to go through them one at a time versus I think each, you know, kind of know which each of us are leaning towards and what they are.

I mean, I also, I don't want to throw a wrench in this, but like, I do have a lot of reservations and like part of the conversation that counselor Buccino and counselor Gary started on. So I don't know if, when is the time for that general dialogue of like,

I'm not ready for even an ordinance to give you a direction until we kind of hash out a few more things. I don't think it's ready for prime time. Looking through the Nexus study on page 34 of their document, it says, you know, by land use, employees by income range, and total employees, hotels lodging has 15. And I look at restaurants and bars that have 28 employees. And then when you use this Nexus study, because you've used the Nexus study and pointed out many times that that's the reference. And so I'm wondering how does, in hospital care, healthcare has 128, right? Because that's a hospital, has a lot more employees to run it. So when a hospital comes in, the impact would be huge. But if you're looking at 50 rooms at a hotel at 15 employees, how do you get to $3 million? I mean, if they have 150 employees, I just think it's still a little skewed. And the residential component, I still, from a linkage fee, I just am not going to support. I'm not sold. Sell me on it. Someone sell me on it.

Do you want to answer the question? I mean, I think it goes back to the wages, right? I mean, that's one of the distinctions as well. It's not just about how many employees are needed, but it's also about the gap, right, that is created in terms of the wages that are paid and the inability to afford employees

Table 25, non-residential and rental construction gap, 50 rooms, 15 employees. When you're talking about a restaurant of 5,000 square feet, it's 28 employees. So the gap is much more impactful having to build a restaurant with employees to run it than a 50-room hotel. and yet we're charging them 16,000. And listen, I know we're trying to, here, bottom line is, we wanna have money so we can do something for our housing issues in town, okay? I have a hard time when we have 13 to $15 million a year coming to our short-term rental. So this linkage fee is something that's gonna be on the books in perpetuity. Whereas the short-term rental tax has a seven-year or 17-year sunset. So there is some motivation for me to prove one, but I'm not sold on the way that this one's written. And part of it is looking at their nexus study. I'm not buying it. So help me sell me on it.

So if I can answer the question, I'm not gonna sell you on it. I'm gonna try to address the question. So I think if you look at this slide, the thing to remember is, so the next study does the analysis to establish that maximum fee. So that is when you're looking at the total number of employees generated by square foot or per room for a hotel, looking at what they generally get paid and what that gap is and what they can afford. The gap between what they can afford at that wage rate and what the cost of housing is in our community so that as Counselor Gary mentioned that is one aspect of that how you land on these different fees The next is that suggested mitigation rate, so you'll see if you look at the restaurant The consultants recommendation is that we only try to mitigate that employment generation in that gap at 3%. We're only trying to mitigate 3% of it. And even at that 3% suggested mitigation rate, it's impacting the cost, the development cost of that restaurant at 6.5%. So the mitigation rates are set so that we're trying to keep that increase on development costs manageable to the development because we don't want to impair the market. We don't want to stop development. So the difference there is yes, the retail or the restaurant generates generally more employees But we can't mitigate that gap and that employment generation at the same rate that we can a hotel. So you can see there the hotels at the 20% mitigation rate, recommended mitigation rate, that's the highest of the non-residential uses. That, based on the consultant's analysis, increased development costs by about 4.1%. This is a policy choice of council. Mitigation rates are a policy choice. you can take those up or down. But we aren't trying to mitigate 100% of the impact. So that next study evaluates 100% of the impact. And then we have to, based on what it costs to develop and the goal to not impair the market, land on a suggested mitigation rate and a reduced fee. So there's sort of two factors there.

Yeah, I mean, this is absolutely not offsetting 100% of the impact, right? I mean, this is a balance. And so back to the question of, you know, what do we get? We get affordable, we get workforce housing. And I did a little bit of research, right, in terms of looking at some of our peer communities and specifically the peer communities who already have the real estate transfer tax, right? We know we missed out on that. which has been a significant impact to our community. But like you look at Aspen, they've got inclusionary zoning, they've got linkage fee, they've got an SDR tax, they've got sales tax that go to housing, and they have 70% of their homes are deed restricted, right? Breckenridge, inclusionary zoning, commercial linkage, STR fees, 73% of their homes. Crested Butte, inclusionary zoning, commercial linkage, STR tax, 46%. Vail, commercial linkage, inclusionary zoning, 45%, right? Winter Park, commercial linkage, property tax, 35% of their homes are deed restricted. It works. We, it does not, I mean, these communities haven't had their development impaired. So we know, again, it's a balance in the sense of. Middle class, though? Well.

Good question.

Breckenridge, certainly.

In the city? Do they? I mean, I don't know.

Aspen, certainly.

There's like 5,000 people that live there.

No, well, in Aspen, right, we know. I mean, so again, 70% of their homes are deed restricted.

Middle class in Aspen?

Yes.

Not unless they're living in a deed-restricted house.

No, that's the point, right? This is what gets us.

You live in a deed-restricted or you don't live in town.

No, I mean 70% of the homes in Aspen are deed-restricted. And this is what we get. We get workforce housing.

If you have, you're incentivizing more deed restriction in Aspen and these other places than we are.

Well, again, I think if we would have taken these measures earlier, we would have, we have 8%, maybe we're at 12% now, and these are all 2023 numbers.

Can I just ask a question? How much money is in the SDR fund right now, Kim? $38 million?

Good evening, Council. Kim Weber, Finance Director. It's projected at $33 million to end the year if no further appropriations are made.

So I guess my question is, hearing what we're hearing tonight and hearing about the vacancies, I was hoping Ed McArthur was going to speak to the slowdown that he's seeing. Todd Carr is seeing building permits getting tabled and pulled. Developers are seeing things slowing down. So we don't want to be on the wrong side of this curve. And going after this, this is, I mean, adding the fees onto a 1,700 square foot house, not a 3,000 square foot house, is pretty egregious. Curbing development that's going to come in, as Mr. Paoli says, that's going to have reoccurring revenue all the time is pretty egregious when you're going to add these things all up. I'm just asking the question, do we need more dedicated funds to affordable housing? Knowing what we know, I mean, we've seen the great work of the donor and what he's done in our town. We see vacancies in some of our housing authority projects. Do we need these dedicated funds for affordable housing at a time when the economy is slowing down? That's my question.

It is the reason why they put a moratorium on it in 2013, 14, 15, and kept pushing it 16.

I understand when we looked at this, it was a year ago. I mean, it was a much different economy. And, you know, we just raised interest rates today, 25 bps. Fed went up. Markets rates are going up.

Yes, the way I look at this is, the way I look at this is, There is more, some more, you know, people are identifying as more vacancies, but there's more vacancies at a fairly, still a very high price. So in general, it's still about the cost of housing and the ability for our workers to afford, reasonably afford a place to sleep, a pillow to sleep on that does not take up 50% of- Define market rent.

Market rent becomes market rent when it gets rented. Right. So the market's going to come down because people that own these buildings have to rent them, and you have to give it a little time to adjust.

And their value over the past four years have doubled. The value of that real estate has doubled over the past four years. So it's vacant. Oh. It's worth zero if it's vacant. And so there's a lot more houses for sale out there. We see a lot more houses for sale. But do you look at the prices of those houses that are for sale? Are they coming down in price? Yes, because a lot of people are still chasing that high value. And would it be hurtful for real estate to drop 10%? It may not be. You know, make things more affordable.

We're not making things more affordable. If I'm going to build a single family home or someone buys a piece of dirt, let's say it's a carpenter that works for me. and he wants to buy a house and build it, it's going to cost him more. He may not be able to build it because of a single family home linkage fee.

You're talking about all those people who are coming in and buying market rate houses for $2.5 million. I mean, what's... That's what you're talking about?

Or are you talking about a single home? Let's make some exclusions then.

Oh, we did. 1,700 square foot home. I did restrict it to workforce. I don't pay the fee. Yeah, I mean. 650 addition, right? We don't pay the fee.

What about the guy who just wants to build his house and live in it and have appreciation and not have a deep restriction?

I'm sorry, the guy or gal that would like to build their house. So this is a case where you are talking about people who are not living paycheck to paycheck. They're not living at a 40% AMI.

How do you linkage fee the difference between someone who does and doesn't? someone who does make $200,000 a year and someone who doesn't. How does that make a difference on the linkage fee if someone's buying a house? I don't see the nexus in that.

Well, the whole purpose of the linkage fee is basically to bring affordable housing. And so if somebody can afford that $2 million house, then they obviously don't need, they're already in affordability. They're in affordability for their family. We're talking about the affordability of your family who cannot afford to even pay the rent of a place.

Somebody who makes $200,000 is not building a home.

Allowing people to live in this community and work in this community and not live paycheck to paycheck.

I get that. I mean, I get it. My question is, when we had the linkage fee before, Rebecca... that was on in 2000 and we stopped using it, why didn't we, it wasn't called a linkage fee, it was inclusionary zoning. How was that different than what we're doing now? And I apologize for elementary.

That's okay. So inclusionary zoning is what we had previously that you're referring to that was suspended for a number of years and then ultimately repealed. I actually think we had a linkage fee originally. And it was quickly repealed. So I just want to be clear about that. But what you're referring to is our inclusionary zoning ordinance. And it only applied to residential. It didn't apply to non-residential. And it basically said when you build a certain number of units, there was like a sliding scale based on the size and type of unit. that a certain percentage of those units had to be affordable. And they had to be affordable, meaning they had to meet that 120% AMI price point. We had a fee in lieu, so a developer could opt to pay a fee, an equivalent fee. There was a formula that calculated that fee in lieu of providing those units on site.

But that worked, and not to cut you off, but because we used some of that money, that Ralph money, to pay for the lot, we gave a half a million dollars for them to buy Angler's 400 from that fund that was generated when they put money, fee and lieu, into a bucket. But keep going.

I do believe, yes, that money went into the community housing fund, and I do believe that that was used. some of the housing authorities projects. So it was different. This is different. This is intended to address the impacts of the employment generation of those land uses. It's a different kind of a program than an inclusionary zoning program. And I also just wanted to clarify, the proposed exemptions would include a workforce deed restriction. So it doesn't have to be an income restriction. It doesn't have to be an appreciation cap restriction. It could simply be our workforce deed restriction, which means that the occupant has to be a local worker, someone who's employed here locally in Rowe County.

Thank you. Without a deed restriction. Without a deed restriction.

No, it would be a deed restriction, but it would be a workforce deed restriction. We don't have to include an appreciation cap or an income cap, no.

Okay. My question for you is, and we've got to get moving here, but is just when I look at the cost in Steamboat versus the cost of our... mountain competitors if you will and i know we have str and accommodations and lmd and sales to and all that it never counts to around 20 somewhere around there do we have any idea what all the taxes that we have on a hotel or on a 3 500 square foot home 7 000 square foot home all this stuff when you add up everything with the linkage fee do we have the ability to understand how we compare to these other mountain resort towns? Because I'm concerned if we end up way above everybody else on that, and we're at the higher end on the tax side of things, is that an easy number to get a hold of?

Well, I think that's what Councillor Barnes was asking for. So I can try to do some research on that. I think we can probably reach out to some communities, research their fees and taxes paid at building permit. You're also asking for an analysis of like sales tax, lodging tax. I think we have that analysis, that piece of it we have.

For all the competitors, I think I just don't have this piece when you put on the linkage fee to say, what is it? You know, how do we really sit versus everyone else? And the other question I have for you is just simply this. Why do you think our deed restrictions is so far behind everybody else?

Well, because we repealed our inclusionary zoning ordinance years ago. So a lot of existing restrictions. So let's stop there.

So basically, that was 2016, 13. I don't know what it was. Probably 2016.