City Council - Regular Meeting

We're located in the Lewisville Center for the Arts, a historic schoolhouse in Memory Square Park

Good evening. It is July 21st. Recording in progress. 2026. This is a meeting of the City Council of the City of Louisville. And if we, would you do a roll call for us?

Council Member Fahey. Here. Council Member Dickinson.

Here.

Council Member Heffner.

Here.

Council Member Cooperman.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton. Here. Council Member Kern. Mayor Lay.

Here. If you'd rise as able and join with me in the Pledge of Allegiance, please. 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. Thank you. Do we have a motion for approval of tonight's agenda? So moved.

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Next item is public comments on items not on the agenda and items on the consent agenda. Are there folks lined up for that um how many right now just one okay if you would uh somebody who's here or on the line online okay if you would let us know your name and whether you are resident of louisville you get three minutes you don't have to take the whole time but uh fire away hi

Council, this is Tanya Summeru calling, Boothville resident, and I just want to say thank you so much for putting the the the fees on the consent agenda again, the fee refund program. We really appreciate that. I know that initially not everyone agreed to this, and it seems like the council has changed its mind, and that means a lot to the fire survivor residents in Louisville. And I also want to say thank you so much for City Manager Langley's leadership on the ODM IGA. I'm so pleased that you're passing that today. This is a really big deal. And the only problem with having it on the consent agenda is that we can't bang drums and horns to celebrate this milestone. So thank you so much. I also want to say, hopefully, I see that there's going to be two employees that are employed directly by the city of Louisville, and there's reasons for that. I understand. I hope that the supervision of those employees will go directly through the ODM and performance evaluations will go. Nobody should ever be working at the ODM that doesn't have the full faith of the leadership of the ODM. that will ensure accountability in that position, that we have the safety and we're getting all of the safety improvements that we're expecting out of this arrangement. And I just think people at the ODM are better to evaluate whether the people are performing in their jobs. So thank you so much, counsel. I yield.

Thank you, Tanya. Any others?

Nope.

All right. Next item is the consent agenda. Do we have a motion on the consent agenda?

So moved. Second.

Is it to prove the consent agenda? Okay. All right. Any comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Next is the council informational comments and committee reports. Do council members have any informational comments or committee reports tonight? Okay. Seeing none, city manager's report.

Thank you. A couple of items. This is our first meeting, I think, where I'm giving an update since the 4th of July. And I just want to acknowledge Brandy and the Cultural Services staff with the assistance of Pro Staff and Public Works and all of the other police department for a spectacular event. And then also recognizing American Legion Post 111 for their continued contribution towards that event. We have our budget retreat tomorrow afternoon from noon to 5. The meeting will be broadcast for anybody that would like to watch that. And then tomorrow night is the kickoff of our summer ward meetings, and we have Ward 2 at Relish at 6 p.m. Thank you.

Thank you. Starting our regular business items. A is Parks and Recreation Month Proclamation. And I'm going to ask Council Member Fahey to read that and make a motion.

Thank you, Mayor. Whereas parks, recreation, and open space are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the city of Louisville, and whereas parks, recreation, and open space promotes health and wellness, improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks and public lands, And whereas parks, recreation, and open space promotes time spent in nature, which positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and well-being and alleviating illnesses such as depression, attention deficit disorders, and Alzheimer's. And whereas parks, recreation, and open space encourages physical activities by providing space for popular sports, hiking trails, swimming pools, and many other activities designed to promote active lifestyles. And whereas parks, recreation, and open space is a leading provider of healthy meals, nutrition services, and education. And whereas parks, recreation, and open space programming and education activities such as out-of-school time programming, youth sports, and environmental educations are critical to childhood development, and whereas parks, recreation, and open space increases a community's economic prosperity, through increased property values expansion of the local tax base increased tourism attraction and retention of businesses and crime reduction and whereas parks recreation and open space is fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community and whereas Parks, recreation, and open space is essential and adaptable infrastructure that makes our communities resilient in the face of natural disasters and climate change. And whereas parks, open space, and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provide a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors. and whereas the United States House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month, and whereas the City of Louisville recognizes the benefits derived from Parks, Recreation, and Open Space resources. Now, therefore, we, City Council, do hereby proclaim and recognize July 26 as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Louisville, Colorado. dated this 21st day of July, 2026.

Would you like to make a motion?

Oops, I move to approve this resolution.

It's a proclamation.

A proclamation.

Okay, second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great, thank you. Next item is presentation of 2026 Colorado Lottery Starburst Award. And I think director.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. Thank you also for approving the proclamation and your continued support of the Parks, Rec, and Open Space Department. I'm honored tonight to introduce you to Adrian Varney and Matt Brody. Adrian is with the Colorado Lottery, and Matt is with the Great Outdoors Colorado to give a presentation for an award that we will be receiving this evening. So without further ado, I'll call Adrian up to give you a little background and history on the program.

I don't have a slide or anything.

There's a background slide.

Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much for having me. I love that proclamation. Happy Parks and Recreation Month to everybody in the room. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members, my name's Adrienne Varney. I'm the proceeds manager for the Colorado Lottery. What a great thing to walk into right after that proclamation. I'd say you took a bunch of the words out of my mouth when it comes to why I appreciate so much about what our Colorado Lottery is able to do for the state. We are the only lottery in the entire world that 100% of our proceeds go to protecting and enhancing our outdoor experiences in the state. It makes me so proud to work for this lottery. My background, just so you know, I used to work right next to Matt at GoCo. And before that, I worked for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. So my entire career has been about giving back to our outdoor experiences, natural resources, and our outdoor recreation in the state. Each year, now you guys are going to understand why I love my job so much, each year the Colorado Lottery celebrates some of the most inspiring projects funded in part or in full by lottery proceeds through our Starburst Awards. Across Colorado, there are hundreds of eligible projects every single year that are touched with lottery proceeds. And this year, only 18 are receiving recognition of the Starburst Awards. These projects recognize a select group of projects that demonstrate exceptional vision, community impact, and a lasting benefit to the people of Colorado. Now beginning also last year, we also introduced a new recognition. It's called the Spotlight Award. While the Starburst Awards celebrate outstanding lottery-funded projects, Spotlight Awards honor stories that represent something bigger than the project itself. They recognize projects that embody the resilience, innovation, and community spirit that define Colorado. Tonight, I'm honored, on behalf of the lottery, to recognize the rebuild to both the Enclave and Sunflower Parks after the Marshall Fire with this recognition. Parks, as your proclamation very well pointed out, are so much more than playgrounds and open spaces. We all remember our favorite parks growing up, our favorite experiences. They're where neighbors gather and where families create lasting memories. They're the places where so much of Colorado life happens. Oftentimes, it's an introduction to the outdoors for a lot of our younger generation. When the Marshall Fire devastated Louisville, rebuilding these parks became about so much more than restoring playgrounds and green spaces. For many families, the return of these parks was one of the first visible signs that their neighborhood was beginning to heal. These parks once again have become a place where children could play, where neighbors could reconnect, and community could begin creating new memories together. goosebumps. In many ways, that helped restore something that couldn't be built with bricks and concrete alone, and that was a sense of belonging. That's what makes this project so worthy of a spotlight award. While every Starburst Award celebrates an outstanding use of lottery proceeds, this project, these parks, remind us that lottery funding can also help communities respond, recover, and move forward after unimaginable challenges. Every lottery-funded project tells a different story. This one is a story of resilience. This one is a reminder that lottery proceeds don't just build parks. They help restore the places where Colorado life happens. So on behalf of the Colorado Lottery, it's my honor to present this 2026 Spotlight and Starburst Award to the City of Louisville for the rebuild of these parks. Congratulations, and thank you for showing all of Colorado what resilience looks like. I think we'd love to get a photo if you guys want to hop on down.

Absolutely. All of us should come down. Thanks.

So this one is a spotlight award. The difference is others from our awards nominate themselves for recognition. This one, we recognize on our own. They deserve a spotlight on their own. Can I have a fair? Are these?

Yeah. Thank you.

Can you guys both have grapes? I'll try one too.

Thank you guys.

Thank you much.

many of us were at that the dedication of both those parks and it really was an impressive day and I am hopefully speaking for everybody when I say that we really appreciate all of the collaboration that went on, but all of the heavy lifting that our parks and rec and open space did in that, and it's just great work. Something that's gonna be around for many generations, and I'm delighted. All right, next is resolution number 66, series 2026, a resolution approving a final planned unit development. Special review use to allow a helicopter pad and an associated development agreement for the development of a 371,600 square foot hospital building and a 62,000 square foot medical building on the approximately 39.9 acres located at 600 Rockcrest Drive. And this... 900 Rockhurst, right? Okay. This item is going to be continued to August 4th, 2027 at 6 p.m. Do we need a motion for that?

Yes, you do. Motion, second, and roll call, please.

I'm sorry, Mayor, that should be 2026. August 4th, 2026. Thank you.

So I'll move for continuance to August 4th, 2026 at 6 p.m. resolution number 66 series 2026. Second.

Do we have any discussion?

Let's get a roll call.

Councilmember Cooperman.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton? Yes. Council Member Kern? Yes. Council Member Fahey? Yes. Council Member Dickinson?

Yes.

Council Member Huffner?

Yes.

Mayor Lay?

Yes. All right, so we'll look forward to hearing that on August 4th. Next is ordinance number 1935, series 2026, an ordinance proving Centennial Valley General Development Plan amendment for lot A of the Centennial Valley Business Park, filing number 8, final plat. This is a first reading to set the public hearing. First readings, we... We'll listen to the staff presentation, and then Council will ask questions about the measure. There may be an amendment that might be requested or further information. There won't be any public comment on this. And then Council, if it chooses, will send this on to... second reading, which will be a public hearing that we will set. So we have a staff report tonight.

Yes. So Jeff Hurt with Community Development. So this is a first reading request for a general development plan to the Centennial Valley General Development Plan addressing a 2.8 acre site to allow permanently affordable multi-family housing on this site at a density up to 37 dwelling units per acre and establishing building heights up to 45 feet tall, which would enable a building up to four stories. So getting into some of the nuance of the request, I'm happy to circle back to this. First, to clarify what this action does is it addresses really the zoning for the site. So this isn't about approving a site plan or elevations or anything. This is about what are the allowed uses on the site, how tall can buildings be, and what can the residential density be. Any future sort of site planning activities would be through a subsequent process, a PUD with public hearings. So that's the decision for you tonight. One important note on the GDP amendment is that it is specifically for permanently affordable multifamily residential. So not just any type of residential has to be deed restricted. And there's a note on the GDP addressing that. So that means that any future applicant whether that's Coble who currently owns it or another applicant would be subject to the requirement that only deed restricted affordable would be allowed on this site. And the city is the applicant on this proposal, which is a unique condition that I'll get into a little bit. Bit of background, again, it's governed by the Centennial Valley GDP that establishes the zoning. Currently only commercial uses are allowed on this property, hence the need for the GDP amendment to allow residential. In terms of the surrounding land uses, it's a mix of vacant and commercial office uses currently. Certainly well positioned for residential, at least from staff's perspective, in terms of being served by transit and transportation and other services nearby. This is just a visual. I know you can't see it. Just to give you the scale of the Centennial Valley GDP, I think it's about 900 acres. So it's a very large area. This covers sort of a blanket zoning overlay. And so the site is sort of in the southwest area of the GDP. And some background, this is sort of the broader context here that we felt was important to dive into a little bit. So there is actually a proposal and discussions underway between staff and Coble, who own multiple properties in this area, to look at a broader GDP amendment to allow residential in other areas outside of just this site. And so this map up here, I know it's hard to read, but highlights those areas that are under consideration. So the site's in pink. are the areas where staff are working with COBOL for a future, and we think near-term, GDP amendment to allow residential on those sites as well, whereas only commercial is currently allowed. And so there's this broader context. Ideally, of course, we would have brought this all together as one GDP amendment for you. There's a timing issue that I'll get into with that. One other important factor, just for context, again, this is not the decision before you tonight. This is just context as far as the broader area. But those discussions on those other sites have all been basically for projects that are consistent with the comprehensive plan related to building heights and densities. So in other words, all of these sort of subject properties that we've been talking to COBOL about, we've been talking about three-story buildings most, potentially even two-story buildings in some areas. That's just context. More to come on that. An important nuance within this broader context as well is that this site, if it were approved for a GDP amendment for 100% permanently affordable deed-restricted housing, our inclusionary housing ordinance allows off-site residential units to count to satisfy an individual project's inclusionary housing requirements. Our ordinance says if you build new residential, you have to set aside 12% of the units as permanently affordable onsite or pay a fee in lieu. Our ordinance says that you can, through an alternative agreement, you can use offsite units to be credited toward your units. And that's what this is being kind of positioned for. And what's reflected in the GDP is that this site, so if there's 100 units on this site, those units can be credited toward the inclusionary requirements on those peripheral sites. So this is context again, so you can see the bigger picture. Again, we would have brought this all to you as one package ideally, but there is a time constraint for this specific site. The city is actually partnering with COBOL for low-income housing tax credits. The application is due very, very soon, and so that's why we're moving this one forward ahead of this broader context. Happy to talk more about that. We did, if you recall, back on June 2nd, share a concept plan with council that showed the specific concept and the GDP amendment. And so that was non-binding feedback. That was a discussion, but there were no major issues identified at that time and general support for moving this forward. Planning Commission did have a public hearing on this item on June 11th and received unanimous recommendation of approval with no conditions. So the specific proposal that this GDP would enable, and again, this is not, the decision is not for this specific program or development, but what this would enable is a proposed 100 unit permanently affordable project with a mix of unit types. with the units being affordable to households earning between 30% and 80% area median income with an average of 60% area median income that aligns with the low-income housing tax credit application. And one space per parking unit is proposed. This is all subject to change, but this is the proposal on the table currently that this would enable. So as far as why the city is the applicant, which is a unique situation in this case, there's clear policy alignment to do exactly this in a specific set of policies and even in the council work plan that the city could and should act as the applicant or co-applicant for projects like this. So the city is technically the applicant, and we as a city are also supporting a couple different sort of funding applications from COBOL, one being the low-income housing tax credit application, And also a land banking grant through Proposition 123 funds. The city is also supporting that application as well as part of this overall package. So that kind of leads itself to why the city is the applicant in this case. And a reminder that any future site planning would be through a separate process in this as well. In terms of the analysis of the GDP amendment itself, there's a number of comp plan and housing plan policies that certainly support the request. I'm happy to get into those in more detail. Related to building height specifically, we talked about this back in June at the concept plan hearing, but as a reminder, the comprehensive plan does call for a maximum of three-story building heights in this area, but there is very deliberate flexibility in there to go above that if a project is providing sort of exceptional community benefits, such as affordable housing. So from staff's perspective, we see the consistency with the comp plan for up to a four-story building because it's 100% affordable. Related to building heights, COBOL did provide some visuals of what it would look like from sort of looking west toward Davidson Mesa. This first set of images is kind of hard to see. I'll probably skip to the second one. So if you're standing on Centennial Parkway looking west, this image or the image on the bottom right shows what a four-story building would look like from that vantage point related to the current conditions. Also related to building heights, again, the surrounding area is a mix of vacant and developed property, commercial and office. Looking to the immediate south, the maximum building height is 35 feet and two stories. However, on the same block and just south of this property, the building height allowance is 46 feet, so that would be slightly higher, actually, than what is being proposed here. Even though it's a three-story building, commercial buildings have taller floor plates, but 46 feet is currently allowed and built on the subject block. So also related to analysis, you all are aware of our Proposition 123 commitment, which is to build 77 new affordable units by the end of this year. I'm happy to talk about the status of that and what's going on with that. So this would essentially satisfy that with one project eventually if it were built with a 100-unit project. We're also working with COBOL and our public work staff on a traffic impact study for the broader area. So I mentioned the broader residential development proposal. There's a traffic study currently under review that's evaluating residential in all those sites and including this site in terms of traffic impacts. And the preliminary findings that we're confident in are that new residential actually generates fewer trips than if it were to build out as office or commercial during like peak hours particularly. So that concludes the presentation. Staff recommends approval of the ordinance and for it to advance to public hearing and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Council members, questions? Council Member Kern.

Great. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation of bringing it to us. This is a great project. I do have two questions. One, just a point of clarification. I know it was just a concept plan that came to us, but the concept plan had indicated it would be because of the slope of the property, it would be three to four stories versus it's just a four story at the highest point. Is that still an accurate representation of their intention?

That is what is in that specific concept. What's in the GDP amendment doesn't differentiate, you know, four-story versus three-story. It basically would allow four-story on the whole site.

I guess it's just the height limit. So it wouldn't be able to be 45 on the high side. It's the average, the way we'd normally do residential type of determinations for height?

Yeah, it would say buildings can be up to 45 feet in height. It wouldn't say this part of the building has to be lower or higher. It would just kind of be a blanket cap.

Okay. Yeah. And then with the traffic study, are we, and I know I brought this up during the concept plan, but is there some way for us to ensure, since we're adding residential, especially where this is going to have limited parking and the idea would be it makes it accessible for public, close by public transit, are we looking at requiring or somehow putting in this the requirement for a sidewalk? Currently there is no sidewalk on the street that connects I think it's, what, Century with Dillon?

It's not proposed to be part of this GDP amendment. We typically wouldn't get that granular with a GDP amendment, but that certainly would be addressed at the PUD stage when they come forward, yeah.

Okay. So are there sidewalk requirements when residential construction occurs versus commercial where it's not required?

I'm not sure, actually.

We don't have separate requirements between residential and commercial, but when new developments come in, that's part of our development review process to look where new pedestrian connections and sidewalks are needed, and so that gets flushed out during the PUD site development plan process.

Thank you very much.

Other questions? Council Member Cooperman? No.

Early on in the presentation, you had a slide stating that there is a provision in the GDP amendment requiring that the residential be deed restricted affordable. I'm wondering, is it more specific than that? For instance, does it say anything about the AMI levels or anything else beyond just that it's deed restricted affordable housing?

It doesn't call for specific AMI levels, but it does say deed restricted, permanently affordable. I believe in compliance with our inclusionary housing ordinance. So it provides some flexibility, but we're actually about to update our IHO soon, so yeah.

Okay, that's helpful. And then I just want to be clear on this point. So what's in the GDP amendment at the moment it doesn't have any kind of guarantees or anything about these units necessarily qualifying as, or sorry, let me put it, as meeting the requirements of inclusionary housing ordinance for other residential development. I mean, I understand that that's allowed by our code, but like, is there anything in the GDP amendment itself which addresses that point?

There is, yeah. There's a note on the actual GDP, which admittedly is buried, but in the application attachment, the GDP itself, that's referenced in the ordinance, has a note. So it's note two that is a pretty long note that explicitly spells out, explicitly enables it to be credited toward underdevelopment within the GDP.

Okay. And I assume it would the way it would work is like, you know, if you if they build 100 units, right, that would just go towards, you know, 12% of how many units are maybe built somewhere else, right? It's not like they would, this would cover more units than we would normally allow through our inclusionary housing ordinance.

Yeah, and to be clear, we fully expect to have an agreement. Once this broader GDP amendment comes forward, which should be near term, we fully expect there to be an affordable housing agreement of some kind that addresses each of the sites and how each of them comply individually. But to your point, yes, the idea is whether it's on one site or spread across all the sites, it would basically be satisfying that 12% requirement requirement. which we've done the calculations is more than enough based on what's proposed in terms of units, yeah.

Okay, that's very helpful too. So just one last question. Would it be possible to have in this amendment a requirement for all electric construction?

It's something that we could certainly discuss. I think that would definitely be inconsistent with sort of the level that this particular GDP is at, but it's something that we'd be open to. I'm not sure if others have comments on that. It's a very granular, specific thing.

Yeah, I guess my initial thought is that that's not related to zoning, and that would be more appropriate to look at when the PUD comes through. I mean, right now you're just addressing the zoning.

Right. Yeah. No, I certainly understand that point. I'm just, like, as an example, if I remember correctly, the Red Tail Ridge, well, actually, I don't know. I feel like at one point there was a GDP amendment for Red Tail Ridge, which included some kind of commitment to certain building standards.

Yeah. So, you know, at the risk of getting outside of the boundaries of the topic tonight, the GDP amendment for Redtail Ridge is what went to a referendum vote. and never became effective.

Yeah, I understand that. But just as an illustration of whether or not something is allowed or possible.

There were subsequent land use plans, though, for Red Tail Ridge.

And I would say that the applicant offered to do that as part of the GDP amendment. It wasn't a city or staff requirement in order to meet a city code or policy. It's just something that they had offered with that GDP amendment.

Yeah, that's true.

I would also add, I mean, I think from our staff's perspective, we want to evaluate impacts on the affordability in terms of sort of the analysis and the pro forma that would be important to look at.

Sure. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? Yes. Council Member Dickinson.

I appreciate it. I think I'm pretty satisfied with my two major issues were... The note that says that this has to be affordable housing, because my concern is I make a GDP amendment, and for whatever unforeseen reason this doesn't come to fruition, they sell it, the next person comes in and they just have 45 feet, 37 units. But what I'm hearing from you clearly is there is a tie so that you only get that 45 feet and you only get that 37 units per acre if it's affordable.

Correct. Yeah, it's pretty front and center on the actual GDP itself.

As long as you're confident in that, I'm confident in that. And the second one is the credit. And it sounds like, again, it's very like I think I think this is. My question is, this seems very fortunate in what we typically get is the reverse is, hey, I'm gonna build 100 units. I'll build 12 somewhere else to offset what I'm supposed to have built here. I promise I'll do that. And here we're getting the affordable housing first. And then that credit will apply to future projects, which in the moment, my understanding, will probably feel disappointed that a project's coming through and not adding more affordable housing because it already did. And that's the design of this, and that's the percentages already worked out. You guys understand, I think I have clarity on that, that those are my two major concerns, that somehow, like, yeah, they can build...

10 000 units and they just get credited but there's an equation and this is just a pre-emptive credit if you will they are already building it and it gets counted towards what they're going to do yeah that's right it's it's a unique situation and the sequencing is unique and also once we see that broader gdp amendment and you start to see the fine print and all the agreements that go with that that will sort of close the loop and kind of tie everything together in terms of the timing and everything and how it all works together

So, yeah, to be clear, if they built 1,000 units elsewhere, they would need 120 of them to be affordable, so this wouldn't finish it. They would need to do 20 somewhere else. They would get credits up to that, and then, oh, you've run out of credits, and then we would then apply our rule to the next development.

Yeah, right. If they can't get to the 12% somehow, then you have to get to the 12%. I feel great about it.

Thank you. Yes, Council Member Fahey.

I just have one question on the quality of the construction. If it's going to be all affordable, are they allowed to do what would be considered a lesser quality level construction than typically?

No, our ordinance does explicitly sort of prohibit that and say that they need to be comparable and sort of like for like as relates to a number of things, quality being one of them. So that would be something we need to enforce at sort of PUD stage and the next stages.

I mean, all of the units in the affordable will be comparable, but will it be comparable to another unit or another development that is not all affordable?

So I think the, so what we're envisioning here and what the note says on the GDP is that we'll have an alternative agreement. So our inclusionary housing ordinance has a provision for alternative agreements. And so all of these things need to get worked out with the next GDP amendment. So there is more flexibility. I think, again, what we think is coming with the next GDP amendment, which is not part of what you're deciding on this evening, is that there's going to be a mix of unit types uh... pretty significantly and this is going to be a multi-family project so i think uh... that needs to be discussed when we get into that alternative agreement that uh... you know it and we don't really define quality they're supposed to be like units So I think in anticipation of the future GDP amendment, there's going to be a mix of multifamily, you know, potentially, we don't know, but there could be a mix of multifamily, single family attached and so forth. But this would be all multifamily counting towards all of those different unit types. But I think with the alternative agreement, we're looking at the benefit of getting all of these units up front. Potentially you know we there could be an excess of units and so forth that council needs to consider in that alternative agreement There's flexibility there, but again if there's single-family attached units Or different types of units this won't be a like-for-like in that situation to answer your question more directly Other questions

I've got a couple questions. One is just to follow up a minute on a question Councilmember Dickinson asked. The Planning Commission raised a question about how the numbers were going to be applied in the event of, well, with the additional kind of residential units that are likely to go up in other parcels. I don't have their discussion in front of me, but do you think that based on, you know, what you've described to us that you've covered that concern adequately?

Yeah, I think, you know, their comment and, you know, concern might actually be too strong of a word, I guess, in my opinion, but their comment was sort of ensuring that there's clarity of how this can be credited, which in response to Planning Commission comments, the note on the GDP was actually refined and expanded upon to further clarify that. And we also think that the subsequent GDP amendment is also the opportunity to, and the agreements that go with that are the opportunity to further clarify it. So it's really about just making sure it's clear where those credits can go.

Fair enough. The other is just, I wanted to ask a question about, we You know, we're very interested in Prop 123 funds to the extent they're still alive out there, which we don't know for sure exactly how that's going to work. These units count toward our obligation, do they not?

They would, yeah, yeah. 77 is our obligation, so 100 will obviously address that, but not within the timeline of our reporting, but for the next... subsequent three-year commitment. Tell me what you mean by that. Yeah, sorry to create confusion. So our commitment, we do our commitments on three-year cycles for Prop 123. That commitment is about to, the word doesn't expire, but it needs to be re-upped at the end of this year. And so the next, we'll re-up our commitment for the next three years until 29. And so the 100 units or whatever it is Would go into that next three-year cycle and we expect that the 77 unit total it would be similar to 77 units when we do that Commitment filing does that mean we're behind? Based on where we are currently We have not built 77 affordable housing units in the three-year period, and so we're working with the state. There's a fair amount of flexibility there in terms of what's called a good faith waiver, demonstrating that we're working toward this goal, which we are. So we're confident that we can re-up that commitment. But either way, it would count. It would definitely help, yeah.

Any other questions? All right. Is there any other information that we need on second reading? I don't hear any amendments that people are proposing or thinking about. Do we have a motion?

I'll move that ordinance number 1935 series 2026 pass on first reading and the public hearing be set for Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 6 p.m. Second.

Okay. Any comments? This is an ordinance, so let's take a roll call vote.

Council Member Fahey. Yes. Council Member Hefner.

Yes.

Council Member Kern. Yes. Council Member Dickinson.

Yes.

Mayor Lay.

Yes.

Council Member Cooperman.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamlington. Yes.

Very good. I look forward to that coming back to Council on the 4th of August. Next is Ordinance Number 1928, Series 2026. An ordinance extending the city's 0.125% historical preservation sales tax for an additional 10-year period, expanding the purposes for which the historic preservation sales and use tax may be spent to include city programs and capital projects to promote and preserve the city's history and cultural heritage, increasing the portion of such tax allocated to the Louisville Museum campus from 20% to 30% and providing for the submission of this ordinance to a vote of the city's registered electors at the November 3rd, 2026 special election. This is a second reading. And it's an ordinance, so we're going to have two rounds of public comment. But this is the public hearing, and I'll open that right now and ask for the staff presentation.

you need not merely a member city council robs care community development director for the city of the making the staff presentation uh... little background on the our historic preservation sales tax uh... the we have a one-eighth percent tax uh... sales tax that has been used for the last almost twenty years uh... as an incentive to preserve historic character of lewisville we have a uh... you know, a very robust historic preservation program where we provide a lot of incentives. And that started in 2008 with ballot issue 2A. And it was a 10-year program that was renewed for an additional 10 years in 2017. And it is set to expire in 2028. So city council has given direction to draft this ballot language and ordinance changes to extend the tax for an additional 10 years and make some other changes to the ordinance. We also have a historic preservation use tax that was adopted in 2010. It's also a one-eighth percent tax that we collect on building permits and other goods. This does not have an expiration date, so that doesn't need to be extended, but this ordinance would make some changes to the allocation of that as well. There was a historic preservation task task force that you all know about. They came together to make some recommendations to city council on the ballot language. Here's a summary of their recommendations. They were recommending putting it on the ballot this year. you know, if it doesn't go this year, it could go in the subsequent two years, but right now we're proposing that it goes on this November's ballot. They recommended the same percentage of tax. Some fundamental changes to the tax is they made a recommendation that the museum allocation, so just for background, The first 10 years of the tax, there was no funding allocation to the museum. The second 10-year cycle that we're in now, there was 20% provided to the museum for operations. The task force is recommending that that go up to between 30% and 40%. and that there'd be additional language in the ballot language to add flexibility on the use of those funds to support and promote the history and cultural resources of the city. They also confirmed that their recommendation was to extend it for another 10-year period. So city council has presented the task force recommendations, gave staff direction to follow that recommendation, as far as the percentage of the tax, the 10-year term, and then to increase the allocation from 20% to 30% for museum, and then include that additional language where the money could be used for additional promotion of cultural resources and the history of the city. That could include capital funding for the museum as well. for example. So what is before you this evening is the ballot language and the ordinance. And so it reflects everything that I've talked about, keeping the same percentage, extending for 10 years. It would change the allocation from 20% to 30% for the museum. The new tax would start in January 1st, 2029, but if this were to pass, the allocation of the museum would start immediately January 1st, 2027, as well as the ability for that more flexible spending, which is written into the ballot language. There's also a provision in there for any of that additional flexible spending that that would go to the Historic Preservation Commission for review and recommendation for City Council and then City Council would of course decide on that additional flexible funding. Here's the ballot language. There was one change in the language between first and second reading, which I've underlined here to provide some additional clarity. So it used to say consistent with, and we've changed it to as established by, as it references back to the previous ballot languages. So we talked at first reading that this is building off the previous ballot initiatives, and so there was authorizing language of what we could spend the tax money on, and so this ballot language would build upon that, allowing that additional flexibility as well as the change in allocation to the museum. For fiscal impact, we're anticipating the cost to put this on the ballot to be over $32,000. The $32,000 is what we spent on the last initiative that we had on the county ballot. So we'll probably exceed that just based on the ballot length. As far as the sales tax extension, we're currently receiving about $900,000 annually with 20% going to the museum. The ballot language, as we discussed at first reading, notes up to $1.5 million annually. It's important to make sure that we're not over, sorry, underestimating that amount. due to Tabor and refund issues with that. So we were recommending the 1.5 million annually in the ballot question in order to have a lot of buffer depending on how much tax we collect in the first year of the ballot initiative. So if this ordinance passes tonight, that will put us in line to coordinate with Boulder County on the upcoming November ballot. and staff's recommending approval of the ordinance on second reading to refer the question to registered electors on the November 3rd, 2026 special election.

Thank you very much. First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to both staff for working on this, to council for putting together the language of the ballot measure, because that's really complicated, far more complicated in many ways than it maybe should be. But it is. And I appreciate the care that's gone into that. And the members of the task force, which included council member Fahey and me, but also included a lot of members of the community and it was a terrific group, great discussion, compressed because of the time pressure to make sure we got on the ballot because we decided that that's what we wanted to recommend and the council wants to do that. So first of all, is there any question that council members have about what's been done given our last direction that we've given. Council Member Koopman.

First, just kind of a question as a reminder for also what we're gonna talk about after this. So we're setting the ballot language now. Do we also set some kind of title for this or is that set some other way? I just can't remember. so the um setting the vital ballot language and the ballot title means the same thing so this is what will appear what is in the ordinance in all caps is what will appear on the ballot okay perfect um and then my other question is actually just for my fellow council members last tuesday we talked about you know whether we thought there was an inconsistency in the language between Sort of the first half, which references the previous two ballot issues and then the new language. And I'm wondering if anyone still feels that there's any inconsistency there or if we're satisfied with that language.

I raised the issue last time. I'm satisfied that it's covered.

Yes, Council Member Dickinson. Yeah, I mean, my only concern in a question is we have to say that Louisville taxes will be increased by $1.5 million, even though they will absolutely not be increased by $1.5 million. That is not accurate. We have to say something that is inaccurate in order to be lawful.

I think there's two parts to your question. The first is Tabor requires specific language for these ballot issues, and it requires that the city word it exactly how it's worded. It sounds like maybe the second question is about the 1.5 million number, and that is an estimate. Since this tax is ending, it is considered limited. an extension or new tax dollars that would come to the city that wouldn't otherwise come if this ballot issue is not approved. And as Director Zuccaro stated, that 1.5 million, you don't want to underestimate that number because if the city underestimates it, it's not just a refund, but you have to ratchet down the tax to proportionally to account for that over collection.

And the concern is not so much 2029, but 2038, right? Because as it maybe escalates over time, just sales tax goes up. It might be 900K tomorrow, but it might be 1.3 million or 1.6 million. And so that's why we're trying to shoot above the current amount.

Well, the 1.5 million is just for the first fiscal year that this tax extension will be in effect. So we're not worried about 2020.

Okay. So why so much higher than what we typically get?

So I think there's a lot of discussion and, in fact, discussion at first reading about if we wanted to ratchet down that number. And I think the idea is that it might be more palatable to the voters if you go lower. So I think you could certainly put a different number in there if council desired, if you felt like that could impact the palatability to the voters. We were recommending this as staff just to have ample buffer. And we think this provides that.

It does.

Yes.

Yes. And I'll just add, you know, the city has faced this dilemma previously.

Yeah, under passgate.

Right. And the city had to go back to the voters to keep not only the amount that was collected beyond the projection, but also to keep the tax rate that the voters had already approved. So that's what we're trying to avoid here.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, let's take our first round of public comment if we have do we have public comment? Let me just introduce that again State your name and whether you're a Louisville resident you're limited to three minutes unless you have You're speaking on behalf of more than one person and that person needs to be identified and agreed to that If If you have SUBMITTED WRITTEN COMMENTS, KNOW THAT COUNCIL READS THOSE CAREFULLY. WE'VE GOTTEN MANY WRITTEN COMMENTS ON QUITE A NUMBER OF THINGS TONIGHT, AND WE KNOW THAT PEOPLE SPEND A LOT OF TIME AND YOU DON'T GET EXTRA POINTS FOR TALKING OR NOT TALKING. YOU CAN ADD STUFF TO YOUR COMMENTS, BUT I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T PLANNING TO SPEAK BUT HAVE SUBMITTED COMMENTS KNOW THAT WE'RE CONSIDERING THEM VERY CAREFULLY.

um when we take our first public comment first up is tiffany boyd followed by matt jones

Hello, good evening. My name is Tiffany Boyd. I'm a resident of Lewisville. And just three quick things on the historic preservation tax. It's a fun full circle moment for me because when I taught fourth grade at LES, we did a debate with my students on 2A and whether or not Two-way was a good idea for voters, and we did a whole thing on the history of the grain elevator and inhabitants of that land before the grain elevator was built. So it was a whole unit on Colorado history and civic engagement and should we vote yes or no. So kind of fun that it's coming back to the voters. Second thing is I know that it said a percentage of 30 or 40 percent to go to the museum. I would just ask, I know there's a lot of people on the task force that want it even higher than that, so if you're considering changing that tonight, I would encourage you to go 40 or 50 percent to the museum. It's difficult for the museum to carry out the programming that they want to do, and this is an excellent opportunity to increase that. Third, I really like the language that's built in around the flexibility on the spending for the city. Having been involved in the bag tax, it's really nice that the bag tax has some flexibility around its sustainability kind of spread that it can help. So I think... Two things that our city is constantly working on is equity, DEI, and sustainability. And I think this tax post, not now, but post after it passes, has some potential to really address both of those things. We have an opportunity to have some more affordable housing in our old town area using this tax, perhaps, and also thinking about, you know, those of us have been watching the fairly well-to-do people in Old Town who have access this money to redo their homes. There's an opportunity here to partner with sustainability and some of the incentives around electrification. Many of these rebuilds for historic preservation have been kind of scraped and saved a wall kind of a thing and started over so there's been complete ground zero HVAC infrastructure so it's a great opportunity to really partner with all these incentives for electrification and I know there's no language in here that people are required to but I think it's a great opportunity on the re-upping of this to think about how we can broaden implementation of it. So, thanks.

Thanks, Tiff.

Next up is Matt Jones, followed by Katherine Smith.

Matt Jones, Louis Phil. Councilmember Dickinson, you can thank Doug Bruce for that ballad language. He's the guy that has all these great ideas for us. And also the need to put a number on how much it brings in. You can thank Doug Bruce for that, too. You may remember voting twice on a marijuana measure because legislative council didn't do the estimate quite right and the legislators referred it. And we had to redo a whole another state initiative. So anyway, that's why it's that way. To the tax, I think it's good. I always thought it was a good idea to do this tax. I think there's mission creep going on myself. It only brings in $900,000. I saw a teardown the other day. I looked at the little sales brochure, $2.3 million. $900,000 didn't buy you much. And when you look at the number of teardowns that are still going on, we're not incentivizing it enough. And now we're moving more money to the museum. I love the museum and providing more flexibility. But what this was intended to and what the compromise was in 2008 was to have it save buildings in Louisville. And it's kind of doing that. And so I saw a wall left up in front of a house the other day. It's good. It's better than tearing the whole thing down. But this program needs to be incentivized more and be more aggressive, subsidizing people to do the right thing, in my opinion. So I support the tax bill. No more, let's stop the mission creep. And the other thing in that 2008 compromise, as I recall, was that they were going to have a conversation on changing land use requirements to protect houses. And I don't think that ever happened. Only the tax did. And it's only kind of working. From my estimation, it's not working very well because I see too many teardowns. And yes, people got to willingly do it. But if you incentivize it more, you'll get more results. And it's only $900,000. So I would like to see all the money go into that and not other things. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Matt.

Next up is Catherine Smith.

Hi, I'm Katherine Smith. I'm also a Louisville resident. I am a person who grew up in the East where there are a lot more historic buildings, a lot of older buildings. And I love that Louisville has an active program to preserve its history. And I think that in time, what you're doing through this tax will be something that will be very valued by members of the community. As a result of living where I lived when I was a kid, I played in a kitchen that was a slave kitchen and part of the Underground Railroad. And that just always brought history alive to me and I think also made me interested in archaeology. But so I think it's a good program. I support it. One of the things that is important to me, and the council talked some time back about how best to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. And instead of having a specific person who focuses, we now have just an obligation spread throughout the city staff to consider that and I would have been much happier if there had been expressed language in this that recognize that there is has been a historical inequity in how the program has been applied and then has been more available to people of higher incomes. I think that we should think seriously and creatively about how to use the program to help people in all economic strata in the city. And I echo the comments from Matt that I hate to see the mission creep into the museum at the expense of the original goal, which really was historic preservation. And I echo Tiffany's comments about the importance of sustainability and directing this program towards those kinds of efforts. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Catherine. Anyone else? All right. Let's take it back to Council for Council discussion.

Is there any discussion?

Yeah. Council Member Dickinson.

Yeah, thanks. I'm a huge fan of the HPC and the tax, especially as the owner of the old Louisville Hospital. Before I was on council, it was kind of my introduction to the city. I was going through the process of landmarking that building. building and home and coming to HPC and so it's an incredible program and very unique throughout the country and I'm glad that we're continuing it, attempting to continue it and I'm glad our voters have supported it so strongly over the years, you know, twice and I assume a third time. I am, you know, Similarly, a little bit to some of the speakers, concern about the ambiguity. It's really nice. It's really nice to have ambiguity because it allows for some flexibility and you're not so handcuffed in what you can do with the money. I think that's great. And then it also concerns me that six years from now when potentially none of us are on council anymore that it isn't being used the way we intended it to. And so I think there is, you know, I don't think there's an issue with the ballot language as it is, but I would like to sort of mark right now at this moment that I would hope that there's If this ballot measure passes, that this isn't the last time council is potentially addressing the uses of this fund. Clearly, the HPC needs to weigh in heavily. And I get that there's protections that this can come back to any fund. It comes to us or the next council to decide whether that's a good use of the fund. But I'm concerned that... whatever's asked for is what is given as opposed to being strategic about how we want that money spent. So we're being strategic and saying we want 30% to go to the museum. That's very clear. But the other programs and capital projects are not clear as to how that might be used. And so I'm not concerned today. I'm not concerned with the ballot. I just really want to get it on the record that I want us to engage with this post-election, if it passes, you know, some sort of strategic vision of how these funds are spent, because I would be very upset to find out that 200K is being used to incentivize or help, you know, preserve homes and 700K is being put towards the museum and programming other I think that would not be what the voters are voting for. And they don't have an alternative, right? They don't get to vote for three options of this ballot. So that's the real power we have as a council is how we write the ballot. And so we're writing it a little bit with some ambiguity, which, again, I'll just restate, I think is positive, but I think there are potential for negatives. So I support it as it's written today, and I'd like to engage it again in the future.

Thank you. Yes.

Thank you. So I have a comment and then just a clarifying question for staff. You know, I too feel comfortable with the ballot language. I think we had extensive discussions not too long ago debating some of the really important items that were brought up by members of the public just now. One of which I just want to clarify, because I think it's outside the scope of the ballot issue tonight, but it's still a very important topic, which is how the funds can be spent and the program is administered. And I believe late last year we approved a resolution in an attempt to try and make this program more equitable, including the matching for the grants. We don't need to go into the details, but Director Zuccaro, I'm hoping you can just briefly highlight what that was.

Yeah, so we periodically update the incentive funding by resolution. HPC usually works on that pretty extensively and presents something to council regularly. So December of last year was the last time we updated the incentive funding. We increased the incentives pretty significantly. We did put in a provision for income-qualified households that have an additional option to get funding for historic preservation work.

Thank you very much. That's all, Mr. Mayor.

Anyone else? Okay. I have... maybe one couple of comments. One in response to Council Member Dickinson's quite eloquent description of some of the concerns going forward on the task force. There was a tendency of a lot of folks there to want to get into and dig into the details about what's going to be spent on what if it goes to the museum. And that was understandable. And we had to sort of steer a bit clearer of that because it really wasn't within our scope. charge by the council to get into that that said I think that it is a very good idea to revisit and and evaluate at some point how we do allocate those funds and and spend those monies and There's absolutely nothing preventing us from doing that. If we want to put that on the work plan for next year, we can do that if we need to. And I know that the director of Cultural Affairs is ready, willing, and able to explain some of this, and so is, you know, works really carefully with the Director of Community Development on these things. There's a lot of coordination and discussion, so I think that's a topic that'll be really I think the only other thing I'd point out is just a difficulty. Louisville, as many of you know, is a victim of its own success if success is measured by the increase in housing values. And when people come in and they have a house that isn't landmarked and they want to scrape it, we have a few options available to us. But this program is incredibly important to try to, as I think Matt Jones put it, incentivize people to do the right thing. But those people who are buying in typically have a lot of money. It's a challenge, historically or otherwise. If that is a big chunk of what the program is about, and it is recognized that that's a big part of what the program is about, then the money and incentives are going to go to people who have more money, because otherwise they wouldn't have any incentive to do something different. And so it's always a bit troubling. I think the nice thing about the flexibility on the museum piece and the intention of the task force was to try to be able to really explain and and benefit provide a real solid incredibly strong community benefit to people who aren't necessarily the owners of that house or those buildings to be able to use that for kids and other folks who regardless of their income and so forth. So anyway, I wanted to echo that, because these points I think are really important, and I think we need to keep them in mind. But the task at hand is whether we're going to approve this language and send it to the voters. So we need a second round of public comment, I believe, unless you have a question or a comment. All right. Back to council, anything further? Or can we get, let me see. Oh, I'm gonna close the public hearing before the motion this time.

Can I move that we pass ordinance number 1928 series 2026? Second. Okay, any discussion?

Let's take a roll call vote, please.

Councilwoman Kern. Yes, Mayor Light.

Yes.

Councilmember Cooperman?

Yes.

Councilmember Dickinson?

Yes.

Councilmember Fahey?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamlington? Yes. Councilmember Heffner?

Yes.

Thanks to all who had anything to do with this. Thanks to the public who showed up tonight. The comments that have been made and the task force and Staff and thank you to my fellow council members. So let's move on to the proposed charter amendment ordinances This is on as a package for second reading and the public hearing it was advertised the city of Louisville website dated July 15th I Can address one issue, but why don't we get the staff report and then we can move forward.

Thank you, Mayor, Members of Council. Jenny Klein, City Clerk. A little bit different process tonight, if you don't mind. I would like to do the staff report for all of them, then do comments and questions and such. The purpose is to provide, to have you provide direction to staff on potential 2026 ballot questions related to the Louisville Home Rule Charter. These are just some past discussions. The most recently was last week. You passed on first reading the six proposed charter amendments before you this evening. Just a reminder of the timeline for us to participate in the November 3rd election, which would be a special election for Louisville. As mentioned, we're proposing to coordinate with Boulder County on the election. Just for those of you that weren't here last time, there was a question from the June 16th meeting about the number of ballot questions from the state and the county. As of July 15th, there will be seven state ballot measures, six are initiated, one is referred. There is one additional measure in signature review, and then there are 21 petitions authorized to circulate. I am not anticipating that there will be any other state measures on the ballot. Boulder County possibly has two questions, increasing the number of commissioners from three to five. Um, and they had a deadline of July 16th to submit that petition and then a childcare district, they're actually having a public hearing on that later this week. Um, so this is just a quick background of, um, the Home Rule Charter, the most recent amendments were done in 2009. For a couple of the proposed charter amendments, I did survey other municipalities to see what they do. That includes Superior, Fruita, Frederick, Firestone, Durango, Golden, Johnstown, Montrose, Evans, Fountain, Lafayette, Wheatridge, Erie, Broomfield, Longmont, Boulder, and Fort Collins. These were chosen either because they are similar in size because they're in our vicinity or because we use them during the comp plan process. So those three charter amendments that I used these municipalities for were timing of when elected officials take office initiative and referendum signature requirements and meeting locations. So first up for tonight is executive session authorized topics. This proposed ballot amendment would expand the topics for executive sessions to those currently permitted under the charter. After discussion and questions by council last week, We do have a second reading amendment, which is in blue. It's an addition, which includes for boards and commissions, task forces and committees to convene executive sessions pursuant to the Colorado Open Meetings Law in accordance with procedures and subject to limitations established by ordinance. So it's a little bit of a change from what you saw in the beginning The next proposed amendment would be The date in which mayor and council members take office Currently the Charter states that those members take office the first regular meeting following their election this could potentially cause a problem. As I mentioned at the last meeting, we saw it very clearly with the primary for the Republican candidate for governor, where when polls closed on election night, one candidate was up. By the time the cure and UOCAVA ballots came in, the other candidate had actually won. But it does take that time for the election to be certified before the true winner was known. And we don't have any suggested amendments to that proposed ballot title for this evening. So the recommendation would be for the mayor and council members to take off as the first meeting following certification. of the election. The next proposed amendment is to increase initiative and referendum signature requirements. Currently, it's 5 percent of the voters for an initiative, 2.5 percent for a referendum. The average of surveyed municipalities is 10 percent for an initiative and 8.5 percent for a referendum. This would increase What we require slightly, but not up to the average. So for an initiative, it would go from 5% to 7.5%. And for referendums, it would go from 2.5% to 5%. The next one is meeting locations. This was an ask by council. Currently, the charter does not allow meetings of public bodies to be held in anything but a public building, which can cause problems. It means, like in Superior's case, they had to come here for a meeting. You couldn't go there. There is a slight We have a recommendation for the Second Amendment Readings Night, which is in blue, which is provided all meeting locations shall be accessible to all members of the public. That was to address a concern that we heard last week. Next is review and comment period. This would require petitioners to attend a session with the city manager and applicable staff concerning a proposed initiative as to form or contents. This would be a public meeting, so anyone would be able to attend. It's to give information. The petitioners would be... are not required in any way to amend, modify or otherwise alter their proposed measure. They could do so based on input or they could submit exactly what they've written to me. And then the last proposed amendment is to update and clarify terminology, replace references in the charter of citizen with resident, city offices to city clerk's office and website, and a second reading amendment. We also found the word television, or actually our city attorney found the word television, so we would like to replace that with virtually since Most people probably watch virtually now instead of television. And I am available for any questions. We do recommend if you do want to add these to the ballot, we do recommend considering prioritizing executive session, taking office, and the signature requirements. You may choose to proceed with all of them, or you may delay for future ballots.

Thanks for the presentation.

Mayor, I just have one follow-up comment. I just wanted to point out that before adopting the ordinance updating outdated terminology on first reading, the City Council did adopt that with the amendment to replace resident with members of the public.

That's correct.

So that's shown in both versions as adopted on first reading and proposed second amendment version.

I want to just make a comment at the outset of this, that we had a very small council last week of just barely the quorum of four. And we did have a bit of discussion, or arguably discussion that might have gone beyond questions for staff. I think we were within the rules relating to first reading, but I think in the exercise of caution in putting these together, that it may be the better part of discretion to treat tonight as first reading and to set a public hearing for the second reading next week. Because I think that will, to the extent that there have been questions raised about first reading, there's nothing wrong with making sure that we're, you know, not Not susceptible to having something challenged later if indeed we do approve these so I'm going to move to Actually, let me take a short, let me ask a question of the city attorney about, because I think you're aware of the issue that I'm discussing because you heard the discussion last week.

Yes, I am aware. From a legal standpoint, I disagree that there was any impropriety on first reading. First reading adoption was effective. If the council's desire is to sort of reset the process, then my recommendation is that you take up each measure one by one and... adopt on first reading. And if you want to be cognizant of asking only questions and not rhetorical questions that people could argue really constituted some sort of discussion, I would recommend that you do that. It's not required from a legal standpoint. And I guess I would urge counsel to consider the fact that your agenda tonight informed the public that you were going to take public comment. on these ordinances. And of course, if you're putting everything back to a first reading, that's not how it was listed on the agenda. And people were not informed that that is what would be happening tonight. So please take that into consideration.

And I appreciate that. And lest I be misunderstood as saying that we made it mistake last week in the way we handled things. Not saying that. It's just a question of whether we want to take another run at it. I think you're right that it does raise complications in terms of what we've put on the agenda and how we move through this. If there is, for the people who were here last week, if there's any concern about our comments and so forth in that first reading, raise them. I'm perfectly willing to go forward because I don't think there was a violation of any procedural rule either, but I wanted to raise it just in case somebody was interested in pursuing that. Yeah.

As someone who was present last week for the discussion, I think it went well. It was thoroughly discussed and voted on to proceed to second reading. I'm wondering if we postpone it for another week, how will that impact the time frame of getting it on the ballot?

We would still be within the timeframe that I could get it on the ballot. If you go beyond that, they would have to become emergency ordinances. But if you go to the 28th, there would still be time.

Thanks. Council Member Kern, did you have a comment?

No.

No. I'M NOT SEEING A LOT OF ENERGY AROUND THIS. AND, I MEAN, I THINK WE DID FINE LAST WEEK. AND I THINK WE SHOULD, AND I REST ON OUR CITY ATTORNEY'S OPINION HERE. YEAH. COUNCILMEMBER COOPERMAN.

YEAH.

I WAS AT THE MEETING LAST WEEK. I don't know. I didn't think that our hearing differed substantially from what we have done on first readings in the recent past. So while I appreciate the concern that was raised by a resident, I think it's okay to go ahead with what is on the agenda tonight.

Fair enough. with that in mind. Again, this is an ordinance, so we're gonna, I guess we will go through, bear with me for just a minute. Why don't we go through each, hold on for just a second, just a second. Yeah. There'll be two rounds of public comment. So we've had the staff presentation. Does Council don't have any questions for staff about these? Yeah. Because we'll go to public comment if not.

I do actually. I have a question for Ordinance 1932. That's the one concerning the location of our meetings. And I just wanted to, I was reading through it and I was trying to get just a point of clarity since the... The ballot measure will read, sorry about this, allowing cities, public bodies to hold public meetings in locations other than public building and public facilities. Are we limiting the language of public buildings and public facility because that's how it read before and it was meant to, the interpretation of that is in a city of Louisville owned public building, that's correct?

Yeah, I'll take this question. Yes, that is correct. We had done some legal research previously when the question came up of what does it mean that we're restricted to having meetings only in public buildings and public facilities and how that term is used throughout the state statutes relating to municipalities. We determined that it was limiting and it applied to buildings and facilities owned by the city of Louisville.

So I guess my question is, is there a way to create that clarity for the voter?

So I suppose drafting ballot titles is an art and not a science. And certainly, if there's a better way to state that, We're open to any suggestions. We do try to be concise in how we word ballot questions so that, you know, we don't lose the voter with lengthy questions. But your input and revisions here are welcomed.

I'll save my next for comment. That was my only question.

Okay. Any other questions? Yeah. Council Member Cooper.

First, I have a question about the executive session ballot question. So if the state legislature changes the state's rules about executive sessions and suppose that our voters adopted this ballot issue, what would happen?

the city would comply with whatever those future changes would be in the open meetings law.

Okay, thank you. Another question on the same, well, sure, another question on the same topic. So right now our charter lets boards and commissions hold executive sessions only for pending litigation. If with the second reading language that we have in there, first of all, would that right to hold an executive session for pending litigation for boards and commissions, would that go away if that language were adopted?

Yes. So it would no longer that language would no longer be in the charter with the number of questions that we had on first reading about, you know, what does this mean to boards and commissions and which boards and commissions need to utilize which. topics for executive sessions. We saw that there probably was a need for council to dig into this a little bit deeper and personalize it, if you will, for each of the boards and commissions. But yeah, that language that's currently in the charter about pending litigation would go away. So in your ordinance that you would adopt in the future, you would need to authorize that for the boards and commissions that you think need to have that.

Okay. And so as a second part of that question or a follow-up, You know, I assume that the Charter Commission put that language in there for some reason. And so I'm just wondering, like, is there, while we could always put it back by ordinance, is there a concern about maybe for some period of time, a board or commission not having the power to have an executive session on pending litigation?

Well, I anticipate if this is approved, this ballot question is approved by the voters, that the council will enact an ordinance to implement it soon thereafter. I can tell you that in my time with the city, I don't recall any board or commission meeting an executive session for the purpose of pending litigation. That's not to say we wouldn't have the need immediately after the election, but I think that it would be in the council's interest to act with due haste to implement the voters' desire if they approve this.

Right. Okay. Okay. I think that's my only question at the moment. Questions?

Okay. Any other questions? All right. Let's go to public comment if there is any.

Mayor, if I may, you do have six separate ordinances, and my recommendation would be that you take them in turn and open a public hearing for each and take public comment on each. Correct. Okay, and just to clarify for the record, it's public hearing on ordinance number 1929?

Series 20... 2026? 2026. Bear with me for just a second.

The agenda item F1.

Yeah. So, to start over, open the public hearing on ordinance number 1929 series 2026 which is yeah that's that's it and that is the one on executive session so We've already had staff presentation and now we can take public comment on that if there is any. We will take public comment on each one of these six separately. So don't feel the need to discuss in your public comment one to come because we're only discussing one at a time. Do we have any public comment on the first?

I need to ask a clarifying question. Catherine, were there only certain ones you wanted to comment on?

Well, it wasn't clear to me that I needed to identify the ones I wanted to comment on, so I didn't. This is one of the ones I wanted to comment on. Do you wish me to introduce myself every single time into the record? Please. Okay. I'm Katherine Smith. I'm a Louisville resident. I have a short comment on executive sessions, which is that it is apparent to me that there is not a very pressing need that our boards and commissions in general have this authority. would feel more, I don't feel comfortable as a citizen saying kind of do whatever you want without having some feel for what it is you think you're doing. And so I would either like to see it specified or withdrawn. Thank you.

Okay, any other public comments? Thank you, Catherine. All right.

Yeah, I support this one I was hoping before we go item by item I wanted to just briefly discuss if anybody has feelings about adopting all of these some of these none of these uh... in in terms i think we had a staff recommendation on priorities and just as we're going through one by one it'd be helpful for me to understand whether there's an interest in moving forward all all of them are some subset people can state their thoughts on that i think uh... since we're taking one at a time uh... and we can take them in a different order than we're taking them but i'm not sure Well, just in terms of if we're taking them one at a time and there's a feeling like we really only want to have three, I think that will shape the discussion as to how we consider each one.

I guess I'm uncomfortable with if folks have thoughts about this, it's fine. I'm uncomfortable taking a straw poll when we're doing one, we're doing an ordinance on each one.

I'm not asking for a straw poll of any kind. Pardon me? Is everybody on board with doing all of them? I think I am, but I just want to check because if there are folks who think it's going to be ballot clutter or so on, that would be good to identify early.

Yeah, I mean, does anybody want to entertain the possibility of just simply yanking one of them right now without, no? Okay. Okay.

That was my only question for the group.

Okay. Any other council discussion about this? Okay. Second round of public comment on Ordinance Number 1929, Series 2026. Okay. Why don't we come back to Council comments? Yes. Council Member Heffner.

I move that Ordinance Number 1929 Series 2026 pass with the second reading amendments in the packet.

Second. Discussion. I think it is worth describing a little more detail from my perspective why This is important for me. I appreciate, one, the Charter Commission establishing a rigorous and specific set of exceptions. to public discussion of certain topics. But I think there has been a couple of situations where we, in my view, suffered from not being able to get legal counsel that we needed to protect our citizens and to protect the public fisc and ended up needing to get input from counsel in the middle of a meeting with opposing counsel there on a matter of great importance. And it was, to me as a practicing lawyer, horrifying. Because I felt like we were, that exception or the limitation on just being able to talk about pending litigation and not more broadly, like the state statute allows, was gonna be a problem. And where it came up, I'll explain at least one instance where it came up, was when we were discussing the metro district. we had to make a decision about whether to approve initially it's a complicated very complicated kind of situation with a metro district out on Redtail Ridge many you know some years ago and there were questions about kind of what what the legal standards were going to be and how to view them. And it was really difficult and it was awkward in trying to get what I believe was, I think our current city attorney was involved in those discussions in the middle of, it was incredibly awkward. And I don't know whether Metro District Council was involved in those too, but all of this happened in view of the adverse party. And it was just really challenging. And I felt like we didn't need to go through that. So this is one that I was hoping at some point would get changed. And so that's the primary issue. And there have been others, too. But that was one that was really pointed to me. And I really felt it was a disservice to the public. And others may have their own reasons for this. I think that kind of covers, hopefully, the reasons. It's really important to protect our citizens when there's a need to answer a legal question on behalf of the city. And that discussion... is the privilege is very important and we can come back and we discuss absolutely as much as we possibly can because that's our role to do it publicly. But getting legal advice as a body is really important to protecting our citizens. So that's my take on this one. ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE?

ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTHING ELSE? ANYTH so that not to make it more challenging to acquire property. They could have the conversation in private without potential property owners knowing and then maybe even changing prices and things like that. So I just, I was one of the council members who was concerned with changing prices the allowance of boards and commissions to me for anything other than pending litigation, but that was a really reasonable and current use case for us needing to make this change. And I for one appreciated that example being given to us because I hadn't really thought about the implications or the possible implications of not having those conversations in private. So I would add that, thank you.

Council Member Dickens.

Yeah, I mean, the only thing that came up for me and I'm happy about is, you know, the boards and committee, you know, it's very clear what council can go to executive session for. It's set by the state and the boards and commissions are a little bit, with this, like it's unknown, right? But we had to pass an ordinance for each or all. And what I've been, you know, what I understand is we would be passing ordinances, allowing executive sessions for particular boards for particular reasons. And there'll be a public process for that. So it's not like a willy nilly, like, oh, actually, Yeah, you can go into executive session for that today. It'd be like, oh, that's something you need to go. You think you need to. Well, we need to actually pass an ordinance that allows for that. So I think there's lots of steps that protect us from just having these boards meeting in private for no reason. So I feel really good about this one because it is important to be able to have some private conversations when appropriate. And I think this is a good step forward in that.

To that point, one check on this particular provision is all executive sessions is you have to have a supermajority, two-thirds, of the actual group we have to have five members of City Council be voting in favor of an executive session if we have five people who happen to be at that meeting where we're considering whether to go into executive session and one says no there's no executive session and it's a high bar it's it prevents I think you know a simple majority even but certainly one or two people from wanting to to abuse that um and i don't think we i think that's something important for the public to know too but anyway any any other comments before we vote uh on that yeah uh thank you um

I guess my main concern when I think about this particular potential amendment, it seems like our charter commission more than 20 years ago was very surgical about sort of what they wanted to allow our council to discuss in executive session. They were, I don't know, you know, they were maybe putting forward their best guess about what would be the best options. And, you know, I think in some ways it's served us pretty well. I don't disagree though that there have been occasions where it probably would have served us better to have other things we could discuss in executive session. So, you know, I feel like we're, in this instance, we're not being particularly surgical. We're just saying, okay, we're just going to take what the state does. When I look at that long list about what you can discuss, what the state allows you to discuss, you know, there are a number of things there which I can't ever imagine coming up for a city. But I could be wrong, of course. And so I don't know, it just feels like there was a little bit more thought that went into when the charter was first set up compared to the process we've had now. So that's one little concern for me. And I think it's related to my other concern, which I voiced before, which is just about transparency. Again, I mean, I think the Charter Commission decided that they wanted transparency about other things that the state would authorize for executive session, but they decided not to authorize. And, you know, I think if we can do things transparently in the public's view, that's generally better. So I have a little bit of concern here. I'm actually not sure where I'm going to come down, but I wanted to just express that.

Yes.

I just want to address, and I don't know if this is part of your concern, Council Member Cooperman, but under the state open meetings law, just as under our charter, no decisions may be made in executive sessions. So to the extent that the formation of public policy is something that is required to be done in public, that still will happen.

I think what ends up being, for me, this is the way I think about it, that when you're seeking legal advice, you're seeking information that counsel has a special experience, expertise. dealing with the legal rights of the city uh... and you take that information in executive session if five people agreed to go into executive session for that purpose and get that information and if there's a decision to be made as the city attorney says we we make it uh... afterward and You know, that I think is a very good check. And it has to be. And to your point about, well, that's enough. I've spoken enough. Yes, Meir Pertan.

Thank you. For me, this one is pretty simple. I mean, I agree there was a very surgical approach, however many years ago. We now have lived experiences where we say, hey, maybe we should reevaluate it. We're not changing it tonight. We're sending it to the voters to say, this is our lived experience. This is what we propose be the changes so we can continue to do our job effectively representing you all. and then let them decide if this is too far, too broad of a stroke and they want to go back to surgical or they say, yeah, let's align with the state. So I think let the people decide what they want their local government to look like. We're just putting it out there for them to vote. It's pretty simple for me.

Anything else? Yeah. Council Member Dickinson.

Just because as mentioned now, I'll sort of make that blanket statement on the rest of them as well, Council Member Hamilton, that I think we have an incredibly important job to come up with the language that goes on the ballot because they don't get to pick and choose between different options, right? So we only give them one option and the other option is the status quo. But with that said, I agree with you entirely that these decisions are, as we talk about, direct democracy. We are putting it to the voters to vote directly on whether they like or dislike this. And so if we've made a mistake or we've gone too far in any of the ones we talk about later tonight, so I won't repeat myself later, that's the whole point is it's going to the voters and they get to decide how far we've gotten. So I appreciate you saying on this one and I have just said it on every other one. Well put. All right.

Ready for a roll call vote? All right. Please.

Council Member Dickinson?

Yes.

Council Member Fahey? Yes. Council Member Heffner?

Yes.

Council Member Kern? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton? Yes. Mayor Lay?

Yes.

Council Member Cooperman?

Yes. All right. Let's... Ordinance number 1930, series 2036, ordinance amends the term to the date on which the mayor and council members of the office followed the election in providing for the submission of the ordinance for the registered electors.

We have 26 special questions. We've had... already in its application. Are there any questions the council has relating to that? Then let's take a comment. Do we have a comment on that particular ?

Nope.

No.

Let's bring back to council. Are there any comments? Yes.

Or do we want to go ahead and move that ordinance number 1930 series 2026 pass? Second.

Any other comments? Yes. Council Member Cooperman.

As we've discussed this particular one, including last Tuesday, I've raised a couple of issues and some of those issues have been raised first by residents in particular in terms of timing of budget adoption and possibly having a lame duck on the council. I think those are interesting things to discuss but I think it's more important that we make sure that we seat someone who actually won the election. So I think We could discuss those issues some other time if we'd like to, but I think it's more important that we make sure that the person who is seated is actually certified as the winner.

Second. Any other comments? All right. Should we take a roll call?

Council Member Kern. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Hamlington. Yes. Council Member Dickinson.

Yes.

Council Member Cooperman.

Yes.

Mayor Lay.

Yes.

Council Member Fahey. Yes. Council Member Hefner.

Yes.

Next.

Next item is ordinance number 1931, series 2026, an ordinance amending city charter, changing the number of signatures required for initiatives and referendums, and providing for the submission of the ordinance to vote of the registered electors at the November 3rd, 2026 special election. We've already had a staff presentation on this. And are there questions that council members have for staff? All right. Any public comment?

Yes. First up is Tiffany Boyd, followed by Matt Jones.

Good evening, Tiffany Boyd, Lewisville resident. I disagree with this one, 1931, increasing the percentages. I believe it discourages citizens' initiatives, discourages youth participation. It's gatekeeping of our democratic process. It's opposite of encouraging citizens to have an opportunity to improve, question, and change the way our local government runs. And there's no need on this issue to align with our neighbors. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Matt Jones, followed by Catherine Smith.

Matt Jones, Louisville. So I watched the previous meetings online that you had on this, and a number of you said that you were for this, referring it to the people. And I'm trusting that you have an open mind after public comment that you may not have that same opinion after we're done. My mother, my very wise mother, used to say to me, you know Matt, just because everybody else does something doesn't mean it's a good idea. And then she'd do this, my dad did this to me too, you have a higher standard. Louisville has a higher standard. That's what the Charter Commission said. I remember, I followed it closely, I checked in with Melanie Muckle who was on the Charter Commission about this, and they set this signature level low on purpose. Because power comes from the people, the citizens, and you see that in the Charter. The Charter also assures the right to the citizens to vote on important matters. The Commission has sought to include in the Charter important protections for the citizens. In the state constitution that sets all this up and allows cities to do this work, it says all political power is vested in and derived from the people. The charter commission thought that was critical. That's why they set the level low. Other places at the initiative level, at the same level, it feels the same way. Superior, Erie, Boulder, state of Colorado, they're all in the same range. Even though they may use voters, if you do the math, it's the same 5% basically. So they made this happen on purpose, please don't change it. Secondly, you're really, because you need to collect a lot more signatures than you need because they get disqualified, usually the numbers double. You're increasing this from 1600 to 2400. And the thing that gets me most, and it's frustrating, In this country, there are attacks on voting rights in this midterm election. Ballot access, issues around that are part of it. This initiative, if referred, would actively make it harder, put up barriers for citizen voter access. I don't want to be part of that. I hope you don't either. because we have a huge problem in this country and unfortunately because of the timing we seem to be playing into it and finally this idea of saying i'm just sending this to the voters to decide you could vote no by saying i'm going to send it to voters you say i'm fine with it you're basically a four and so you before increasing barriers to voter access by referring this. I ask you to vote no. It's a bad idea. If you really want to talk about this, you should form a group. It's too important to just push through tonight.

Thank you, Matt.

Next up is Catherine Smith, followed by Cindy Bedell.

Hello, I'm Katherine Smith. I'm a Louisville resident and I am here tonight to talk about democracy, direct democracy, the traditions of our country and the importance of those traditions. I think that you should be mindful of the context that we are in, the times that we are in, and the ways in which this will unintentionally reverberate throughout our community. Regarding the specifics of the proposal, I do think that it is misleading to put a chart in that shows the change in the number of votes that you're proposing to collect while ignoring the fact that some of these jurisdictions allow for electronic signature collection. And so there is a difference between just raising the number and requiring people to stand out on street corners and collect signatures or go door to door and raising the signature requirement and at the same time allowing for electronic signature collection. And you would not stand alone were you to adopt electronic signature collection. This is being done in other Colorado cities. I do think the point that the number that you are raising the signature requirement by understates the actual increment by which you are raising the signature requirement because of the signatures that will be thrown out after the city clerk reviews all of the signatures that are submitted. So that I think you should be mindful of the fact that you're making a far bigger change than your stated change. I have no further comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Catherine.

Next up is Cindy Bedell, followed by Tanya Samarote.

Hi, I'm Cindy Bedell. I'm in Ward 2, Louisville, and I want to speak on Ordinance 1931. So why now, 25 years after our 2001 Home Rule Charter was adopted, do we want to change the number of signatures required for initiatives and referendums? Making it harder for citizens to participate in direct democracy is a bad look. It looks like voter suppression to give more power to elected representatives and staff and less to citizens to directly participate. So I'd like to just read you some highlights from our 2001 city charter preparatory synopsis. The members of the home rule charter wrote, The commission members have sought to prepare a charter which provides for an open government in which every member of the community has an opportunity to participate and which holds the city's elected and appointed officials to the highest ethical standards. The charter also assures the right of the citizens to vote on important matters. Therefore, the commission has sought to include in the charter important protections for the citizens. The government is formed by the citizens, and the citizens have the right to control the government through their elected representatives or, when appropriate, by direct democracy. So I wanna just go on record, I oppose this ballot question. And on a different topic, I just wanna comment, I was watching the YouTube City Council before I came over, and I noticed there were no closed captions on it. So I would just recommend if that is an ongoing problem to put captions on for our hearing impaired members of the community to provide universal access. So maybe it was a one-off, but just a comment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cindy.

Next up is Tanya Samaru, followed by Tamara Krantz.

Hi, Council. I'm Tanya Summeru, Louisville resident, and I would like to say I really enjoy the comments right now that we're receiving here about our democracy, from people claiming to support direct democracy. I think it's it's really great that they're asking you not to put the signature requirements to voters to take that decision away. So they're saying, why would you change this since the original charter was drafted? And I'll tell you why. Because it only took 800 signatures about to put 300 and 301 on the ballot in the last election, which completely pitted the community against itself and led to a lot of stress and loss at a landslide. Eight hundred signatures caused chaos in the community, people fighting to save affordable housing. And it ended up losing by a landslide. Why? Because 800 signatures is not a lot and it's not enough. The initiatives were deceptive and probably not enforceable, but would have tied the city and developers up in years of expensive litigation. The people who brought them forward claimed they were just nice residents with good intentions. But we don't need this kind of armchair policy when we have counsel, so many boards and commissions, and confidence that we have an exceptional amount of process in Louisville and places where the public gets to provide input. We don't need people coming up with complete new policies that were never discussed in an open meeting and throwing them on the ballot by approaching people in front of the rec center saying, do you support affordable housing? Sign here. So people who bring referendums forward, especially at referendums and initiatives, need to meet a higher bar. Like, they need to go out and get more signatures, explain to voters what they're doing, and get a consensus and prove that the thing has any chance of passing. Any chance of passing. Do you know, I saw this happen when Maxine Most was recalled. My neighbors went and gathered signatures and talked to people door to door, and they recalled Maxine Most. And, you know, there are places for this. This is a failsafe on democracy, this direct democracy. And it's important to have, but should rarely need to be used, you know. It makes sense that there should be a higher bar. And I'm going to ask you, council, not only to put this on the ballot, but I think you should be raising the signature minimums to 10 percent, which would be 1,600 votes, 1,620, according to the number of registered voters there are right now. That feels—if you're going to throw chaos and try to completely change city policy with a popular initiative, I think you should have to work a little harder knocking on doors to bring it forward and prove that people want it. and not put the whole city through this for something that's just a harebrained idea. And what happened is people are waiting to vote for this. They are angry, and they're sick of this referendum and initiatives being abused in Louisville by a group of people. Okay, I'm sorry. I can't see the timer. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tonya.

Next is Tamar Krantz, followed by Barbara Taylor. Tomorrow, if you're speaking, we can't hear you. Tomorrow we can't hear you if you're speaking.

Do we have another person on? Why don't we, at the minimum, why don't we go to the next person and then hopefully we can come back.

Next up is Barbara Taylor.

Good evening. I'm Barbara Taylor. I live on Hoover Court, and I submitted written comments to you, so I wasn't planning on speaking tonight, but I'm so old. I was on the Charter Commission, so I thought I might give you some context. We ran the initiative to become a home rule city, but then when the commission was elected, it was a 12-member commission, it was a contested election. I think I've knocked... on every door in Louisville several times. And so it was an exhaustive and an exhaustive process, which you all can understand better than anybody else in this room. And it was, people did not agree. We worked for several months on this, but this underlying value, excuse me, Open government was the foundation of what we did and I can't see any reason to change that threshold because 800 is a lot of signatures and adding to that number just increases cynicism and raises the bar for people to interact with their government and And I think as a civics teacher, I can't reinforce often enough that citizen participation, messy, cumbersome, maddening as it is, often produces more engaged citizens and better results. So thank you.

Thank you, Barbara.

Tamara, if you can hear us, you're up next.

Can you hear me now? Yes. Oh, great. Thank you. Sorry, I'm not sure what was going on there. I just wanted to say that I agree with the last speaker, and I really appreciate the points that some of the previous speakers made about how important it is to preserve direct democracy. The one thing that I find in the staff analysis and the report that seems to not make sense to me is that the reason that is being provided for this is that it is being done to align with surveyed municipalities. I don't understand that because we are not working with other municipalities on our ballot initiatives. So I don't see why there is any need for alignment. It also doesn't make any sense because you are also proposing at the same time a very unique policy. issue to require a public meeting prior to submitting an initiative to the city clerk for approval and that's something that it looks it looks to me that denver is the only municipality in all of colorado that does that so if alignment is truly important i would hope that you could explain why for one thing we want to align and for another thing we really want to be an outlier I hope you'll consider not sending this on to the ballot. I think it's going to do a lot more harm than it will do good, and I'm really opposed to it. Thanks for taking my comment.

Thank you, Tamara. All right. Back to council. Any initial thoughts? Yes, council member.

Yeah, I think I just want to maybe address the direct democracy and preserving democracy. You know, we're talking about numbers, not like the ability to or not to do this. Right. It's like should be 500 signatures, 800, 1000, 2000, 642, 5 percent for it. I mean, no one's arguing for 4 percent. Like, why don't you care about democracy? Why aren't you arguing for 4% or 3% or 1%? One signature, right? Like it's just a number. So it's not that anyone is talking about allowing or not allowing this capacity for the residents to have their voice heard. It's just a number. Should it be? the current 5%? Maybe. Should it be 10% like some others? Maybe. Should it be seven and a half like we have here? Maybe. I actually don't think it's some huge like, oh my goodness, what are they doing? It's just a number. So then I think the strongest argument I've heard is then why? It's just a number. What are we really doing by going from five to seven and a half or from two and a half to five? So we are doing something. We are changing it. I don't think drastically in a way in which people will not be able to do it. I think the process is cumbersome, but the signatures is like the last piece of it. And so whether you have to get 800 or 1200 is a detail that matters, but it doesn't make the process itself more or less difficult. you know, I really don't have actually a strong opinion on this. I think that what we were trying to do is find something that was, my memory of our last conversation was trying to find something that was actually still a little bit more accessible than most, but more than what it's been. And so that, More than what it's been, but still lower than most. And so that's why I'm comfortable with 7.5% and 5% as our numbers, because I think it's that. I think it's a little more than it's been, but not as high as some others, and super accessible. But it's not an attack on democracy. It doesn't limit people's ability to do this. And, you know, I mean, I think the why is... You know, we very nearly had a major issue on our hands with 300 and 301, and it really put a huge target on our back, like, wow, that's really easy to potentially cost us $60,000 and then millions of dollars in lawsuits from, you know, citizens that don't have the expertise to be making ordinances. And it was really concerning. And so... I don't think it's backlash. I think it's, wow, we might want to put some things in place that prevent that from happening again. So we're not talking about the extra meeting, but this idea of Let's make sure they're informed and have an opportunity to engage with our staff on what they're writing. And then let's make sure they get enough signatures that it is difficult to get something on a ballot, but not like impossible. It is difficult. You have to put a lot of work in. If someone wants to put a different number out, I'm super flexible. I'm okay with seven and a half and five. If you want to say like 6.25 or 6.78, it's always a round number. I actually, I just think it's a number and I'm not super engaged in what that number is.

Other comments? Yes. Council Member.

Yeah, I largely agree with Council Member Dickinson. They do think it's important to say, at least for me, that the purpose of this is to make it incrementally more difficult to get something onto the ballot. And the reason is to be eligible for the ballot, you should have to show some minimum level of support among the community for the idea you're proposing. I feel the number we have right now is probably too low and that this is an incremental INCREASE TO THAT NUMBER THAT WILL MAKE AN INCREMENTAL DIFFERENCE. I DO THINK 300 AND 301 ARE VERY INSTRUCTIVE. This group, all of which was elected, many of us ran on sort of the notion that we can no longer have a de facto development ban in Louisville. And one of the policies we spent a long time on is the comprehensive plan. We had untold numbers of public meetings, untold amounts of public outreach, solicited more comments probably than any other public processes that he's ever done. And while that was all going on, These initiatives got onto the ballot to try and short circuit, in my view, the process that we were trying to go through in good faith and a process that tried to engage as many members of the public as we possibly could. And I think one of the reasons I'm strongly in favor of this is Look, if that process really wasn't working, if we weren't pursuing the comprehensive plan in good faith, so on and so forth, absolutely, you should have ballot access to say, I'm going to recall my council member or I'm going to propose an initiative to do something different. but the bar should be a little higher because that threatened to throw a wrench into the very significant machinery we had put in progress to adopt a considered and informed and stakeholder supported comprehensive plan about what land use should look like here. And look, I can't guarantee that what we're doing is going to prevent that in the future, but I think making it a little harder is a good thing. I will add to Councilmember Dickinson's point that it's just a number. It's also just one of several safeguards around this process to make sure it's not abused. There's a signature requirement. There are single subject requirements so that initiatives don't confuse voters. There are timing requirements about when you must gather signatures and turn in certain things. And a lot of the point of all of that isn't to limit direct democracy, it's to do it in a way that isn't misleading and that is fair to everybody and doesn't result in constant special elections or innumerable ballot measures that would probably have the opposite of the intended effect. The final thing I'll just say is the state of Colorado has a long and mostly not so good history of passing statewide ballot initiatives, including TABOR, which we talked about tonight, was a citizen-initiated ballot measure that's caused no shortage of problems for this state. There have also, and I just pulled a few of the highlights, The state of Colorado has passed citizen-initiated measures opposing desegregation, opposing gay rights, banning same-sex marriage, various citizen-only voting requirements in 2020. It's not an unalloyed good. We have done bad things with this power, and we should be careful how we use it.

Other comments? Yes, Council Member Kern.

Thank you. I actually appreciate the enthusiasm and the level of detail that went into that. I think it's helpful for everyone to hear some of the behind-the-scenes thought process behind this. Other than just it's what others do, so let's do it as well. You brought up something really interesting, Council Member Huffner, about timing and special elections. I don't want to make this more complicated, but there was an idea, and I think that this actually allows for more people to actually have access and vote on initiatives or referendums when they come up, which is allowing the city council to set the election, the ballot initiative date to match with a November election versus being limited to the number of days required to put it to the voters who were mandating a special election if the timing of the signature collections were heavy, and I wondered if that's possible to either have that conversation or add that in, and I was kind of hoping that the city attorney, this did come up and there was a conversation around it, and I was hoping she could bring some light to the details around that.

City attorney?

Sure. Thank you for the question, Council Member Kern. This question came up late yesterday afternoon, so I'll preface by saying I did some quick initial research to give my thoughts on the matter. What I saw is that the City Council likely has the authority to defer referendum and initiative elections to a you know, the city's regular election date rather than a special election. I would discourage the council from trying to add that to the charter amendment tonight. It's something that the city council can do by ordinance. I think it should be done in a really thoughtful manner. I did find the one example of Denver. It's the only place I looked because I knew that they had that special provision about the meeting before the initiative petition can be signed or filed. And, you know, Denver does by ordinance require or permits their city council to determine whether or not to call a special election or to hold the election on the initiated or referred measure at their regular election, subject to some limitations in the Denver charter elsewhere about special elections. They limit special elections to two per year. So if there's already been two, it has to go on the next regular election ballot. So as a home rural municipality, there are certain requirements for initiative and referendum that must be in the charter. You must allow for initiative and referendum, and you cannot require signature requirements that exceed 10% for referendum or 15% for initiative. But the procedures and how you do the process, the city does have some flexibility. And enacting those by ordinance is just as effective as having it in your charter. And that's exactly what Denver has done. They don't have it in their charter. It's an ordinance. And then that way, It gives the council some flexibility to really dig into it. And from learned experience, if something's not working, then you can change it and fix it.

Thank you so much for the clarification and helping all of us, I think, better understand this. I really like the idea that the voters, just like on any initiative or referendum, will get to make a decision on this, and they can use historical information, they can use all of the very thoughtful public comment that everybody has made tonight to help them make that decision. My understanding is there will also be factual, like just statistic information posted on the city's website for clarity for residents. So I'm personally in favor of putting this to the people for direct democracy to be at work with us and let everyone be able to decide where this is. And I think we may or may not, based on how the results are, have two ordinances we need to discuss after the selection. Thank you.

Thanks. Council Member Fahey.

I just wanted to confirm that I agree with what Councillor Kern just said. I think it's a good idea to put this to the voters and let the voters decide what percentage of signatures they think we should require.

Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. And then Council Member Cooperman.

Thank you. My fellow council members have made a number of really great points tonight. I appreciate the public that showed up both online and in person to share their thoughts as well. And I would say that's exactly the reason why I think it should be put on the ballot is because as an elected official, I have heard from both sides of the coin of feelings on this, so much so that I think it should go to the voters for the voters to decide more broadly how they want to move forward with this particular item. So it's not my personal opinion tonight about the matter. It's me representing people who say they don't like it and they do like this idea and saying, all right, let's put it out there for everyone to vote on and decide.

Thank you.

So I wanted to start with a comment that Councilmember Dickinson made and I mean I think it's totally true we're not right well right the question is not whether we are eliminating or direct democracy it's about the level of direct democracy that we might have in the city of Louisville. And I am a representative for Ward 1. And so I might not have run if I thought that direct democracy was the way to always go. And I don't. I think there are a lot of benefits to having representatives. But that's not really the question, right? I mean, we have to have this kind of direct democracy because the state requires it. And so the question is, what level of direct democracy should we have in Louisville? So to shift a little bit, it's probably been clear over the last year and a half or so, but I really value well-reasoned explanations and arguments. And on this particular issue, I have not come across what I would consider to be well-reasoned arguments and explanations for putting this on the ballot. So I've heard some things which I think have some validity, but not enough for my purposes. So in particular, the staff reports have often emphasized alignment with other municipalities. You know, on the one hand, that can be an argument, but it also doesn't have to be an argument for why you might do something like this. But as at least one resident pointed out, those comparisons are actually rather more complicated than I think the, at least what was presented in the staff reports show. And besides, I mean, I think Louisville can decide what it wants to do on this particular issue. I don't think we need to think about aligning with other municipalities. You know, we've also, Councilmember Heffner has talked about, you know, how social media can make gathering signatures more easier. And I think that argument has some validity to it. You know, it does provide a platform for getting out your message and maybe getting people to somewhere where they can sign. Even so, I think that one begs the question of, you know, why would we do this now? I mean, we've had social media for many, many years now, and yet now is when we're considering this possible change. And so I just, I don't feel like that argument holds up to the question of why we're doing this now. I mean, the other thing that people have brought up is the experience and the lessons that we learned from the ballot measures 301 and 302. I personally didn't support those ballot measures, but I was out there knocking doors because I was looking to get reelected. At the same time, we were considering those ballot measures And I think some of the best conversations that I had were about those ballot measures. So even though I did not agree with them and there could have potentially been pretty bad consequences from them. I felt like those ballot measures generated a lot of good discussion within the community. And then what happened? Well, we had all that discussion and they were voted down, which in my opinion was the right thing to happen. And so I think it's just an example of the process working like maybe it should work. So Yeah, so I don't know. I just, I don't see a good reason for for changing the percentages. I think if we wanted to generate a good reason, we'd have to do some actual analysis about like, okay, in a community of our size with these percentages, if you change them, what does that actually change to the process and how things play out? And we certainly don't have any of that kind of information. I don't think there's a good argument for why we should do it now. I think, in fact, there's an argument for not doing it now, which is what is happening at the federal level, which is not to say that the purpose of this has anything at all to do with that, but it is about optics. I'm not going to be in favor of putting this on the ballot for those reasons.

Are you going to comment or make a motion? I just had a brief comment. I just want to just briefly respond to the notion that this is in any way some kind of voter disenfranchisement. We are specifically sending an issue to voters to decide. It couldn't be farther from the notion of voter disenfranchisement of any kind or restricting ballot access in any way. We're asking people to vote on how they want their government to work. And to me, that is the very foundational principle of what we're all trying to do here. you know, in a democratic republic. We're asking people for their vote on the founding document of the city as to whether it should remain the same or whether it should change. And so I just, I bristle a little bit at the notion that this is in any way related to sort of voter suppression or voter intimidation or anything along those lines, because I just don't think it is.

Thanks. I've got, I guess I want to cover a couple of points. What this is not about, this isn't an attack on the Charter Commission or the thoughtfulness that they brought to that task, which is clear that they did that and remember that process and the vote and all of that. I think those of us who were here at that time remember that, certainly been reminded of it and really appreciate that, again, a great deal. It's not an attack on the initiative and referendum process. A number of people have said that. That is guaranteed by the state constitution. It's very important, I would argue, pretty fundamental. It's not driven only by the experience in the fall with initiatives 303.01. In my view, I think it's partially driven by that, of course. You've heard that. People have said that. But as I'll get to in a minute, I think it's bigger than that. What I think it is about is, first of all, are charters fundamental foundation is government by the people through representative democracy. That's what it is. That is the default and a really important default. And what you have here is two people from each ward elected by popular vote and subject to recall. which has happened, as we know, and has been discussed even tonight. And you've got a mayor who's elected by everybody, and who, as a result of that, gets comments from all over the place. And I know others do, too. That kind of brings me to, you know, the referendum and initiative piece is very important as a check on the representative government. But the representative government, which is direct democracy in electing us, obviously not in every decision, but it's a very important thing. But as I mentioned, I get a lot of comments. I've gotten a lot of comments on this from the last five years as both a council member and then as the mayor. And I think that Mayor Pro Tem talked about lived experience. I don't know how many referenda or initiatives occurred between when the charter was first passed, and 2021 when the process started occurring, and we've had a number of them since then. But that's a lot of recent data. And our city is not the same as it was at the beginning, at the founding of what is our city's constitution. And Thomas Jefferson used to say that we should review the Constitution every generation. Well, that was not something that ended up happening. But 25 or so years since, not a bad time. to talk about this, particularly when there's a lot of information coming to us as people who are trying to govern the city. A lot of information where people say, this should be tested. So that's a good reason, I think, to put it. It's not simply a random decision, and it's not based solely on one instance of direct democracy. So for those reasons, I think knowing what this is about and what's not, I hope that if this is passed, that we will not hear a divisive conversation in the community about attacks on and suppression of votes and trying to liken this to the things that are going on out of the federal government right now because I don't think it's anything like that. I think it's a disservice and I hope that that's not where this goes. I think there's really good arguments to be made. I think they're not as good against this as they are for, but I think we can have good conversation and I look forward to that. So I'm going to support this. Do we have a motion?

Mayor, I think you need to take another round of public comment.

Sorry. Yes.

Hi, Cindy Bedell, Ward 2. So just after listening to the City Council discussion, just for the record, I want to just note on the intention of putting ballot ordinance 1931, increasing signatures required for referendums and initiatives, Councilman Dickinson said, yes, let's make it more difficult. And Councilman Hoffner said, yes, it will make it more difficult. Correct? So just for the record. Also, I'm just curious why, if we're wanting to be consistent, I don't think there was an ordinance to change the number of signatures required for recalls. So that seems a little bit inconsistent to me. And I guess that's it. Thank you.

Thanks, Cindy.

Next up is Tamar Krantz followed by Tanya Samoreau.

Hi, this is Tamar Krantz again. Are you able to hear me?

Yes.

Great, thank you. I want to say I really appreciate that Councilmember Cooperman said that he appreciates well-reasoned explanations and arguments. I just want to add to that that I also appreciate a really balanced staff report that includes pros and cons and well-reasoned explanations. This has come before you, this is like the third time that I've listened to a city council discussion on this matter, and never have I seen anything in writing that refers to ballot initiative 300 and 301, but it sounds to me that this is the most pressing reason for bringing this forward, according to Councilmember Dickinson, Mayor Lay, and Councilmember Huffner, that they don't want to prevent similar measures from coming forward again and create what they're calling a higher bar, and I would consider to be a barrier to allowing residents to put something on the ballot. i i think that it's really doing a disservice that you are saying that you say these things verbally without any supporting evidence um for example um mayor i'm sorry council member dickinson said that um initiative 300 and 301 would have led to millions of dollars of lawsuits I don't see any explanation for that. In the last meeting, Mayor Lay said that this would have violated the state—would likely have violated the state constitution. Just as a reminder, Ballot Initiative 301 was only asking for a resident committee. As was formed last time, there was an impact fee. AMENDMENT TO THE IMPACT FEES. SO I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW THAT WOULD HAVE LED TO MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN LAWSUITS. I THINK THAT BY PUTTING THINGS IN WRITING IN A STAFF REPORT, YOU REALLY ARE ABLE TO PUT CORRECT INFORMATION DOWN. AND THE ONLY REASON THAT I SEE IN THE STAFF REPORT AND PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPECTING TO COME TO THIS, WHO WANT TO COME TO THIS MEETING ARE ONLY READING THAT THE REASON IS ALIGNMENT. I DON'T FEEL LIKE THIS IS BEING VERY, THAT IT'S BEING LOGICAL. Council Member Hoffman's statement is particularly illogical, saying that this is not related to voter suppression. The entire idea is to create a barrier to make it harder to place initiatives on the ballot. So I just wanted to say I don't see—I'm not following the logic in the council discussion tonight. Thank you.

Tomorrow.

Next up is Tanya Samaru, followed by Matt Jones.

Hi, this is Tanya Summeru, Postville resident again. I just want to say you only have one choice, council.

Call the bluff.

The people who support popular democracy, put it to the voters. It's just a threshold. We're arguing about how high and how low it should be. And I'll tell you how people think about this who are outside of the 301 supporter group, which is everyone else in the room.

Here's how they think about it.

That election was stressful. It was annoying. It kicked off the whole community. People were at each other's throats, literally on social media, like screaming at each other. There was gaslighting. There were nasty tactics. And nobody liked it. It wasn't nice. And in the end, people felt like to. And so, you know, the question of the threshold is something, it's a visceral feeling in every resident's gut. So I say, go ahead, send it to the voters. You'll find out how they feel. If you win a campaign on 300-301, you will find there's a lot of residual anger. And the anger is over feeling like people got lied to and deceived. So I'm going to say call your bluff. And Councilmember Huberman, one thing to say for you. It amazes.

Tanya, if you can hear us, we lost you.

Sorry. We do not have good connection here. We're at a power outage. Can you hear me? Yes. There's a power outage in my neighborhood. So anyway, I just want to say, Council Member Cofferman, you devalue the stress. And it's nice that you knocked on doors and had nice conversations with people. I'm glad. But every conversation that happened in Louisville was not nice about this. And I think you need to take that into account. You don't have to vote to put this on the ballot. I think your vote's not needed. But I think moving forward, when you make your decisions, you should start to factor that in and stop saying, I need analysis, I need this. The only analysis you need is how many votes. Is 400 enough? Is 800 enough? Is 1,200, 1,600? What feels right in your gut? Because that's what people have a right to vote for, in my opinion, right now. Like, you could do that analysis. You could ask staff for the numbers right now, and you're not doing it. So I'm sorry, I don't follow your logic. A lot of people don't. You've completely lost the putt. So thank you so much, council. Obviously, I feel strongly. I yield my time.

Thank you, Tonya. I think, yeah, there's two other.

Next up is Matt Jones. Next up is Matt Jones, followed by Catherine Smith.

Matt Jones, Louisville. So it's obvious where this is going, but I just want to put two facts out there, at least in my mind they're facts. We have a backdrop. The first one is we have a backdrop of of attacks on voting rights in this country in this midterm. We have it. It's happening. Referring this to the ballot increases a barrier to voter access, increases a barrier to voter access. It's not suppression. It doesn't fit that category. But it makes it harder to vote on things for people, the citizens who have the power reserved to them. This isn't a small thing. 400 more signatures is really 800 more signatures when you know that many are going to get disqualified. That's a lot more time. It's a lot more effort. It's a barrier. And I think it's a bad idea. And to the notion of, oh, I'm just referring this to the voters, if it were a bad idea, you wouldn't be doing that. It's good enough for it to pass and become law in the city. You're basically for it. So when I hear people, and I've heard that speech a lot over the years, oh, I'm just referring this to the ballot. No, you're deciding there's okay enough to put on the ballot and not vote no. And so I just wanted to clarify those two things are factual in my mind. And I do appreciate you listening to us and going through two rounds of this. But the backdrop in this country is so bad, and my own city is making it harder to access the ballot. And it just is so frustrating.

Thank you, Matt.

Next up is Catherine Smith.

Hello, I'm Katherine Smith. I'm a Louisville resident. And I just wanted to comment on what I heard many of you say, which is, it's just a number. And you know it is actually not just a number. It's somebody's sweat walking door to door, standing on corners, explaining. And if it's just a number to you, lower it. But in fact, all you're considering is raising it. And you're considering raising it because you want to make it harder and you've said so. I think you need to own it. Thank you.

Thanks. Any other? Thanks, Catherine. Anyone else? Okay. Let's bring it back to council. Comments? Yes, Council Member Dickinson.

Yeah, I won't go long because I don't want to repeat myself too much, but yeah, I again sort of generally agree with the comments. The part that I'm just missing on is I'm actually okay with five or seven and a half, and the point is If it goes to the voters and they vote no, then it stays at five. And if it goes to voters and they go seven and a half, then it goes to seven and a half. Like, I actually don't really care either way. But we do have residents that have asked us to bring this. We do have residents that are frustrated with the current lowest bar in the state or one of the lowest bars in the state to get something on a ballot. And so would you like us to increase it a little bit? And then it is to the voters. It's not just a, I don't care. It's like, this is a request, and now all the voters get to decide, do we want to keep it at 5%? And if you guys are right, and this is an incredible attack on democracy, they will vote no against it because they get to vote. And I don't think it is. And they might vote yes, and that's what you're concerned about. But then the voters will have voted yes. We think seven and a half. And why would the voters vote to increase their own threshold to get something on a ballot It's because there are more than one resident in this community and some residents are frustrated with other residents, not with council, this has nothing to do with council. Residents are frustrated with other residents for wasting time and money and resources without a good enough reason, and they might be battling over that, but those people are gonna go to the ballot and decide should it stay at 5% or should it increase to 7 1⁄2. So we're not just punting to the public. People are asking us to increase it. No one has ever asked me to decrease it. That has never come to me. No one has ever asked that. And so you could say 10% or 5%, but I think 10% would be too high. I think that would be wrong and I wouldn't support it. So that's why I'm okay asking the question of seven and a half, because if it passes, I'll be okay with that. And if it doesn't, I'll be okay with that. I really sort of don't care. What I'm doing is putting it out there. I don't think these are extreme numbers. I think these are reasonable options for our community to vote their conscience on.

Other comments? Okay. Now I think it's appropriate for a motion.

I move that ordinance number 1931 series 2026 pass on second reading.

Second.

Any further discussion? Take a roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamlington. Yes. Council Member Cooperman.

No.

Council Member Dickinson.

Yes.

Mayor Lay.

Yes.

Council Member Hefner.

Yes.

Council Member Fahey. Yes. Council Member Kern. Yes.

Okay. I want to kind of call time out for just a second. We've hit now three of them, I think. Yeah, three of our six. It is 9 o'clock, and at the very least, I'd like to take a break, but I just want to make sure as we're looking forward, you know, I don't know that this is really going to, you know, there'd be some debate, I think, on at least one of the measures that, based on the discussions we've had, but I think we gotta keep powering through after the break. What do you think? Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs side? Okay, why don't we, let's get me back here promptly at 9.05 so we can move forward. I really appreciate everybody who's hanging in there. I really appreciate the civility of the conversation because it's getting on in the evening and we'll keep it up. Thanks. On... And the next one that we're going to be considering, the next charter amendment, is ordinance number 1932, series 2026, an ordinance amending the city charter concerning locations for public meetings and providing for the submission of the ordinance to a vote of the registered electors at the November 3rd, 2026 special election. We have had a staff presentation. Do council members have any questions of staff on... this ordinance as it's drafted. Yes, Councilmember Cooperman.

Just one quick question. If this were adopted, the body would have to vote, is that correct, to decide on where they holding meeting somewhere else?

Yes.

That's all.

Other questions? All right. Let's go to public comment if there is any. Do we have anybody signed up for public comment?

No. Okay.

Councilmember discussion?

Other questions? No?

Let's go to public comment for the second time if anybody.

No.

No. All right. Any further discussion? Go ahead.

I move that ordinance number 1932 series 2026 pass on second reading.

Second. Any further discussion? All right. Yes, Council Member Cooperman.

Can we just be clear that we're talking about the second reading language?

Thank you for that clarification, Council Member Heffner. Yes.

That was the subject of my motion. Good. I think all of these, it's the language, but it understood that there have been changes. Okay. Let's take a roll call.

Council Member Fahey. Yes. Council Member Kern. Yes. Council Member Cooperman.

Yes.

Council Member Heffner.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton? Yes. Council Member Dickinson?

Yes.

Mayor Lay?

Yes. Next is ordinance number 1933 series 2026 which is an ordinance amending city charter to require a review and comment period for initiated ordinances and charter amendments and providing for the submission of the ordinance to a vote of the registered electors at the November 3rd 2026 special election.

We've had a conversation with staff on this but if there are any questions that

Councilmembers have? No? All right. Do we have any public, Councilmember Cooperman?

I don't believe there's any language about the timeliness of holding that public meeting in the, you know, once someone comes forward with a draft initiative or a charter amendment, there's nothing about when that public meeting would have to be scheduled. Is that correct? Oh, there is, okay.

I believe it says no later than 10 business days after submission of the draft text.

Thank you, I missed that. No, it's fine.

Other comments? All right, why don't we go to public comment if there is any.

First up is Tiffany Boyd.

No, now it is. So I would encourage you not to vote yes on this one because I feel like you have to turn your signatures into the city clerk anyway once you gather them and that just adds an extra unneeded step. Thanks.

Thank you, Tiffany. Any other comments?

Next up is Matt Jones and then Cindy Bedell. Did you?

uh... your microphone first of all i want to make sure i'm talking this is about to the having the extra meeting in the petition again simply this is another barrier to me for somebody trying to get on the ballot uh... it makes it harder i don't know how the timing would work it's a tight mind i'm not done personally but i understand it's a very tight time frame and stick a meeting there in the middle of it I know the intent is to provide clarity to the people putting something on the ballot, maybe avoid some problems. But when I heard staff discussing it and the council discussing it before, it sounded like it was very mixed bag. Some people were real concerned that Like the city attorney, I can't be involved because I would be providing them advice and that's not my job, that kind of thing. And it's kind of this weird conflict, if you will. So you have that conflict issue, you have the timing issue. It just seems to be unneeded. I know people think it is needed, but when I heard the meetings, it didn't seem much like that at all. It wasn't clear how it would really help that much, and it could really potentially timing-wise derail somebody trying to get something on the ballot. So I ask you to vote no.

Thanks, ma'am.

Next up is Cindy Bedell.

Hi, Cindy Bedell, Ward 2. My concern would just be that there's something in how this is written that would provide a protection that this required meeting would not delay the initiative bringer-forthers, whatever. petitioners from meeting the deadlines for filing and getting everything turned in so I have honestly not read the detail of the how the ordinance is written but that would be my main concern because you know how difficult it can be to create a personal in-person meeting among different people with busy schedules so there should be some protection in there to make sure this doesn't delay the initiative past the required deadlines. That's my input. Thank you.

Thank you, Cindy. Is there any other public comment?

No? Okay.

Councilmember Dickinson.

I just want to apologize because I have to leave to pick up my wife and daughter from the airport. So I'm going to make my comment and depart. I'm really, I appreciate maybe the last sentence in this where it says where appropriate such comments. from the staff may contain suggested editorial changes concerning the format or substance of the draft text, but city staff shall not have the authority to require any amendment, modification, or other alteration to the text of the proposed measure, or to impose additional procedural requirements on the proponents. So what I read that to be is, if you don't want this step, you submit the draft and go to me like, yep, I don't care what you say, and you walk away like, no changes need to be made, but we would never put an ordinance in front of the public without having worked with staff to be like, is this good? I mean, is this the right format? Is this legal? Are we doing this well? I think it's a wonderful step to promise petitioners you will get an opinion and a comment from staff and potentially some edits to make it flow better or be appropriate to all those things. If you don't want it, ignore everything they said and just keep it exactly as is. And if it's beneficial, you can use it. And that's great. And so is it a delay? I mean, maybe by a few hours, if it's really, if all it is is something you don't want, it's maybe a couple hour delay. And if it's useful, that's the hope, right? I'm going on the other side of it. I'm hopeful it's very helpful that it can help petitioners in good faith create something that is well done. And when they have something that's important to the community, that they're able to put it out in a way that, because we can't change it. You know, council can't change it. We can't go, oh, great idea, but let's just tweak this one part. we have no ability to do that. And so staff giving them some sense of, you might want to tweak this one part or, you know, actually you have to have it be 30 days just by like state law, like, oh, thank you. No problem. So I really like this. I think it's in good intention. And I think the negative is so small that I have no problem with this moving forward. So those are my comments and I apologize for leaving, but I trust you all to finish off the meeting. Thank you.

Thanks. Other comments? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem.

I actually have a question probably for the city manager or attorney, sorry. What is the definition of proponents in this?

So the petition proponents are the ones who are putting forth the petition. So when the petition is filed in this meeting, this review in the meeting and feedback happens, before the petition is filed with the city clerk for approval as to form. They have to list the names of people who will represent the petition signers and all matters related to the petition. So those folks are generally referred to as the petition proponents.

And so for the purposes of this particular ballot issue, do all the proponents have to be present or just a proponent representative? I'm thinking of the comments regarding scheduling and challenges. Is that worth clarifying here or no?

I think that's a really good point. Yeah, I can see the merit in having a proponent Proponent representative rather than all of the proponents.

Yeah one or I won't get into the details of the numbers, but I'm just it's not clear to me What would be required in that meaning as far as attendance of proponent or proponents goes?

I will say in my previous experience with this I not all of the proponents were required to attend. And a representative, you know, depending on what the issue was, it could have been one of the proponents. It could have been an attorney for the proponents. So I don't think we want to make it so difficult that we require both people on the petition to attend. That was not my intention.

I mean, I don't, I leave it to the experts in writing ballot language, but it sounds like that might be worth clarifying here.

I mean, you could say something like at least one of the proponents or their representative or at least one of their proponents and And a representative, actually I'm not even sure I would say the last, but you could require at least one to be there, right? What would you like?

I don't do my best off-the-cuff drafting at quarter after nine at night, but in reading through the language, it says that the meeting... will be held not later than 10 business days after submission of the draft text at which the city staff designated by the city manager shall provide their comments on the proposed measure to the proponents at a meeting open to the public. I think there's conceivably a meeting open to the public and petition proponents don't appear I can think on this one. That's certainly not the intent to require attendance at the meeting. From my view, the meeting is an opportunity for the proponents and the public, because anyone in the public who's interested in the petition can come to the meeting, follow the meeting virtually, understand better the petition that has not been filed at this point. So it's not interfering with the timing requirements under state law for initiatives.

So I think, I mean, based on your comments just now, that it's... setting a public meeting for which the proponent or proponents may or may not attend. It's the public meeting. I think it's fine as is if that's the intent behind it.

Right. And I don't see even the plain language of this new Section 710 proposed for the Charter that requires attendance of the proponents at the meeting. The meeting is convened to provide the feedback and the feedback will be given to whomever attends the meeting.

Okay, that's helpful. So I think my comments and concerns have been settled just now. I don't see any need for changing the text.

Okay. I agree with that too. I don't think I think if we really are serious about making it an opportunity and not a... somebody used the word punitive measure, which I think is absolutely not what this is about at all. If somebody doesn't want to avail themselves of that, I think that makes sense if they choose to do that. But I think there is something really good about having the public be able to hear thoughts, comments, questions. And to provide, you know, well, to ask the questions of their own. So I would not be in favor of putting a number, a requisite number of people from the proponents group to have to show to that. I was, yeah. Others? Okay. Should we take our? Go ahead.

I just wanted to make a comment, I guess, about timing. I mean, as the city attorney just noted, right, the way that this is drafted doesn't interfere with any of the timing requirements for the initiative or charter amendment process. I mean, I guess the way I would think about it is, you know, If this went through, essentially what you're doing is you're saying, you know, if you're interested in doing an initiative, you have to plan ahead a little bit more to account for submitting your draft, waiting potentially 10 days to get that feedback, I think, before you could then submit it to the clerk. So, you know, and then you still get the usual timeline, right? Yeah, so I think it's maybe more about planning ahead, which you could see as a little extra burden, but anyway.

It may make one comment about that too. It actually may help proponents. If I disapprove a petition because it's not as to form or there's some other issue, that eats into the time that they could be collecting signatures. If we can say before they even submit, you need to change how this works because it's not in the form of a proposed ordinance, it might actually give them more time to collect signatures because we're not going through the whole disapproval process.

Great point. Thank you for adding that. Okay. Public comment?

Catherine Smith.

I have to say, oh, I'm Catherine Smith. I live in Louisville. I'm tired. It's too late. I have to say I misread the ordinance and I thought that the attendance of the proponents would be mandatory, not optional. And now when I listen to it with different ears, and I think, OK, so there's a meeting. The proponents come. They don't come. People from the community come. Maybe no one comes. The city staff talk to each other. I'm feeling like it's just a little bit odd and I'm also concerned that it might set the community apart from each other in that If the proponents don't come, the staff say what they say, there's an unclear communication, then you're going to have this bizarre thing going on where potentially the city's going to have to explain or modify statements that were made. And I just think it's messy. What I thought was going to happen was... The proponents were going to come in and they were going to have a private meeting. I don't understand why the meeting was public. I thought they were going to have a private meeting. I don't know that there's any open meetings law requirement that's coming into play here because we're not talking about boards or commissions or city council meeting. And so I thought it was going to be this... genuine discussion between the staff and the proponents in which they really talked about the language and the clarity of the language and the purpose. And then the proponents walked away and they could take that feedback and use it or not use it. And it turns out my idea about what it was was completely off base. And what you're talking about just sounds odd to me. So, thanks. That's my honest feedback.

Any other public comment?

Next up is Tamara Krantz.

Yes, this is Tamara Krantz, and I live in Louisville. I was also confused because I thought that the proponents would be required to attend the meeting. Are you hearing me okay? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Sorry about that. I I'm thinking that you're saying this is a real benefit to position proponents and not a punitive thing. But I think that with tight election schedules, the idea of planning ahead isn't always as easy as you think, especially with 10 days. I'm thinking an example that popped into my head is that the city council does a work plan. Somebody comes and says, hey, it would be great to include dark skies. And the city council says, okay. No, we don't want to talk about dark skies this year. So someone goes off and says, okay, I think I want to make an initiative about making dark sky lighting a requirement. they have to prepare this 10 days. It depends on where that meeting occurs and when that decision is made by council, how long they have until the next election cycle. 10 days could be very significant. So I do think that it is punitive. And I think that, I don't know if you've thought through many different scenarios, But it sounds complicated, and again, I think that this is a case where we'd be a real outlier, as Denver's the only place that's doing it. And I don't think there was enough in the staff report for me to really understand how this has benefited Denver and to see any of the cases where this has come forward. So I hope you'll give this some more discussion tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Tamara. Anyone else? And I'm going to say that I'm a little tired too. Is that our second round of public comment? Yes. That's what I thought. All right. We'll bring it up to council. Thoughts? Comments? Yes.

I move that ordinance number 1933 series 2026 pass on second reading.

Second. I want to make one comment. Of all the ones we're dealing with tonight, this is the one I kind of feel the most lukewarm about. I'm still going to support it, I think. I think all of us, when we were... As this was being developed, I really thought this was going to be a pretty simple matter and one that the public would really like pretty much unequivocally because it was sort of free, if you will, free consulting. I think the way it's structured, it's all out in the public view so that this issue that people were worried about, about the staff throwing cold water on something and deterring somebody or maybe persuading them not to go forward, it was all real clear. Everybody would see, whoa, that was not very helpful advice or that was not fair or whatever. But I think it was all an attempt to try to give some assistance. And I don't know how other people feel. Like I said, I feel this was, I think it's still a really useful thing. I think it's worth supporting, but I've been a little surprised at kind of the pushback on this one. But I also think that probably it's a good one for the public to have a voice and a decision on if they think it's useful. AND I THINK THAT I'M SATISFIED THAT THERE'S NOT THIS SIGNIFICANT BARRIER. IT'S A BUMP. IT'S LIKE A SPEED BUMP. BUT IT'S NOT HUGE FOR SOMEBODY TO MEET THIS. SO YES, COUNCIL MEMBER.

I ACTUALLY LOOKED AT THIS look at this was that this was an opportunity for feedback and it would be helpful. We happen to have a current city manager, and I said this last week, that is very generous with her time, makes herself really available to the community, and at risk of making a joke twice i would like her to be the city manager as long as i'm living in the city which is going to be a long time but in case there is another city manager it holds that new city manager accountable to the standard that she has already set to communicate and meet and take time with our residents especially ones thoughtful enough to want to bring an initiative or a referendum. So I think it's it is absolutely meant to be a valuable tool that will hold future staff accountable to the community and being just as helpful and thoughtful.

Council Member Cooperman.

I think in principle this could be a very valuable opportunity for people who are interested in doing an initiative or a charter amendment um my i guess my only you know i think it you know our staff has a lot of knowledge and getting that feedback um yeah could really be helpful i guess my One concern I've been thinking about a little bit is, you know, is there other people out there who might say, oh, I'd like to do an initiative or a charter amendment, but, oh, look, I have to do this thing, and that intimidates me. And, you know, is that little bit of intimidation going to dissuade someone who might otherwise want to do an initiative or a charter amendment from going ahead? And, you know, on the one hand, if you want to do an initiative or a charter amendment, you have to go out there in the community and get signatures and talk about it, which maybe that's more intimidating than this public meeting. I don't know, I just have a little bit of concern yeah, that we might be intimidating people with this requirement. And that's actually sort of led me to think about, like, what if it were sort of flipped on its head, where you didn't require a meeting, but actually if the proponents wanted a meeting, then they could request one, and it would then be required. So the staff, you know, have to provide feedback if it's requested, essentially, instead of the way that it's currently worded. That's sort of the main thing I've been thinking about on this particular one.

On that suggestion, you know, consistency is kind of maybe one of the reasons why you don't want to just leave it as an option. I mean, it would be an option. Let's just assume for a second that we would say, no, let's not put this one forward. Let's not vote for this. people would still set up a meeting if they wanted to with the city manager, and that could happen. I mean, I don't want to out you, but you're the only one on the council who's done or been involved in an initiative, and you talked to staff about it, right?

Yeah, I talked to staff. I mean, not before I submitted to the clerk, but...

You think that would have been helpful, just out of curiosity?

I mean, probably.

Mostly because you've been through that experience. Not everybody has. Now you're on the other side. It's having to make rules about it. But I don't know how staff feels about that. I mean, there is, you know, there's an advantage to staff for them not to get, you know, to have meetings that are private, essentially, and then somebody comes out of them and they say a bunch of things about the staff, and it's like... wow, that's not, you know, that's not what happened. And then the public doesn't get a chance to be involved in that process. So the public might say, whoa, they got to have that discussion. We don't know what it was. I wonder what that was about. And now we don't have, we're out of luck. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. I was just going to say, um, you know, all these points and comments certainly are important. I feel like we've discussed this, um, quite exhaustively and I'm, I'm fine moving forward with where we're at right now. Did someone already make a motion, right?

Yep.

Okay.

Why don't we, unless there's somebody else, let's take a roll call.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton? Yes. Councilmember Cooperman?

No.

Councilmember Heffner?

Yes.

Councilmember Kern? Yes. Councilmember Fahey? Yes. Mayor Lay?

Yes. Okay, the ordinance passes.

We are to the last one of these.

Ordinance number 1934, series 2026, an ordinance amending city charter to update and clarify terminology and providing for the submission of the ordinance to the vote of the registered electors of the November 3rd, 2026 special election. We've had, again, conversation. with staff about this, and so unless there's questions about it, we can go straight to public comment. Okay.

She stepped out. Okay.

Is there any public comment?

I think Katherine signed up, but she stepped out, so.

Hello, Catherine Smith. I think I still live in Louisville. It's 937. I just wanted to point out that there's a proposal to change the word citizen to resident, and I think that there's possibly members of the public, and I am really confused about what you're considering, but I think if you look at the city charter, it's I think the word choice is important. I think that the word citizen is the word that talks about the relationship between people and their government. The word resident is talking about who lives here. They are not even necessarily citizens of the country. And members of the public is people from all over the world. My suggestion, stay with Citizen. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Catherine. Okay. Back to Council. Any comments? All right, none. Let's go back to our second round of public comment. Is there anybody? Okay. All right, let's bring it back to Council. Do we have a motion?

I move that we pass ordinance number 1934 series 2026. Second.

To clarify, the change is to members of the public, right?

It is to members of the public and the sections of the charter that currently use the word citizen do not relate to the interaction of a citizen to their government, but rather to the open government policy, public records. Public records are available to all members of the public, not just citizens. So we are in fact clarifying the language in a way that makes it accurate.

Good. Thank you for the clarification.

Sure.

Any other comment? Yes. Council Member Cooperman.

I think the change to members of the public is actually really good. I think that citizen and resident are actually too limiting, especially for the reasons that the city attorney just pointed out. So I'm glad that we had that suggestion last week. Since this is the last one that we're talking about, I just wanted to make one general comment. Even though we have been talking about these for a while, You know, the public only engages towards the end typically, which in any case. But especially with some of the public engagement that we've gotten more recently, it has led me to feel like maybe we should have set up whatever the right term is, a task force or another commission or whatever to go through some of the issues on these particular topics. I feel like this last one is sort of the only one that's really housekeeping. And even that I think you could debate. So I don't know, I just felt like there are a lot of issues associated with a bunch of these, with all the other possible charter amendments, and maybe it would have been a good idea from the beginning to have stood up some kind of commission or task force to help us out. Thank you.

We have a motion. We have a second. Any other comments? Please, let's take a roll call.

Council Member Kupperman.

Yes.

Mayor Lay.

Yes.

Council Member Heffner.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton. Yes. Council Member Kern. Yes. Council Member Fahey. Yes.

All right, ordinance passes. Next is resolution number 65, series 2026, a resolution calling for a special election for November 3rd, 2026 to be concluded, to be conducted as a coordinated mail ballot election. Is there any staff presentation on this?

I do not have a presentation on this. Just to clarify, the reason we have to call a special election for this year is because this is not our normal election cycle. Had you not passed any of these things tonight, there would have been nothing on the ballot for Louisville, so that's why we have to call a special election.

Thank you. Any questions that council members have? This one is... Well, any public comment? I guess that's next.

No.

Nope. Back to counsel. Any discussion? Council Member Hafner.

I move we approve Resolution Number 65, Series 2026. Second.

Further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. City Attorney's Report.

No report this evening. Thanks.

Are there any upcoming agenda items identification of future agenda items that council members would like to discuss Seeing none I can just tell that councilmember Kern is ready to make a motion to adjourn. I just feel it in my bones. I Move that we adjourn second Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed?