City Council - Regular Meeting

i didn't think we were doing a second set of interviews in there yeah oh so basically final section for the thumbs up there's amy but someone asked me a question okay we're gonna get started in 30 seconds here gang 30 seconds no interviews yeah that's fine all right

All right. I'll send it to her. I'll tell her we changed.

June 2nd. There you go.

Okay everyone we're going to get started tonight. We have a lot going on tonight so welcome to everyone to the City of Steamboat Springs regular meeting number 2026-15 May 19, 2026. It is 5 0 1 and I also want to welcome our guests from the county tonight. We're so delighted to have you all here with us. tonight. So thank you for being here. Julie, could you do roll call, please?

Stephen Muntean.

Here.

Gail Geary. Here. John Agosta.

Here.

Dave Barnes.

Here.

Michael Pacino. Here. Amy Dixon. Here. Is here.

I'm online. Amy's online. There she is.

You are. And Brian Swintek.

Here. okay and can we add to the record that we also have from the county commissioners macy's redmond and salinas as well as where are you county manager harrington thank you all for being here with us tonight a couple of quick things before we get started uh we will have public comment tonight two different times first time will be a general public comment on subjects not on the agenda tonight um and we will do that uh since we have the commissioners here we'll be with them for about the next hour or so and then we will roll into general public comment after that so if you're here or online for general public comment it'll be a little bit after six o'clock probably probably and i will get to the pledge don't worry And the other thing is, I wanted to mention that regular public comment or public comments specific to agenda topics will occur during those topics. So with that, we will do the Pledge of Allegiance. We have two flags, one behind me, one up here. 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 or justice for all. Okay. Thank you, and we're going to jump right into our joint meeting schedule. We have four topics on the schedule tonight, and we've allocated about an hour for those, so we'll try to be timely with each one of these subjects as we go. The first subject we have is the urban growth boundary and community plan strategic growth element. Brad, do you want to come down and lead us through that?

I happy to do that. Uh, Brad, Brad covered him in the planning department, uh, with the city. So let me get this presentation going for everybody. So as President Menteen mentioned, this item is related to kind of two intersecting topics, the urban growth boundary jointly adopted by the city and the county, as well as new state requirements related to comprehensive plans. The item I'm talking about tonight is a requirement called the strategic growth elements. I'll use the presentation to sort of help you understand how those things intersect and really what it means as it relates to essentially the request that we're making to you all tonight, which is to submit the community plan as adopted to the Department of Local Affairs in hopes that they render a decision that they find that our existing community plan MEETS THEIR REQUIREMENTS FOR STRATEGIC GROWTH ELEMENTS. THAT'S THE MAIN MESSAGE THAT YOU'LL HEAR A LITTLE BIT LATER IN THE PRESENTATION. I WILL, AS NOTED HERE, CLEARLY THIS ISN'T RELATED TO THE COMMUNITY PLAN. IT'S ADOPTED BY BOTH CITY COUNCIL AND RECOGNIZED AS A SUB AREA PLAN BY THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS. IT IS RELATED TO SOME COUNCIL GOALS. I TEND TO OBVIOUSLY USE THIS SLIDE. THERE ARE potential sort of funding implications of not being in compliance. That's kind of still being sort of sorted out as to what that means. But there certainly is a risk of not being in compliance come January 1 of next year. So I'll talk a little bit about some recent actions that the two bodies sort of made independently, what the sort of aftermath of those actions mean, and then a little bit about the strategic growth element piece. The community spent about two years working on the community canvas or the Steamboat Springs community plan, culminating in a council action to adopt the plan. By adopting the plan, they actually are adopting the urban growth boundary as well because it's referenced and spatially represented in the document. When council took action, that included removing three areas from the urban growth boundary. Those are depicted on the map. The way that they're referred to is they're referred by the names that you see on the slide in our three mile plan that we also prepare. Area five, tree house. Area six, it's called the ski court parcel. And area seven, a south steamboat. Fast forward. a few months the county through their actions to adopt the urban growth boundary did two of the three so they they adopted removing area six and seven ski court parcel and south steamboat but they did not include or did not recommend changing the boundary as it relates to treehouse council was considering potentially taking the same or an identical action to the county commissioners, but ultimately decided to indefinitely postpone that action. As noted in the memo, the net effect of not having some identical actions is, for all intents and purposes, no action. The boundary reverts to the version that was included prior to beginning the community plan. So all three of those areas remain in the urban growth boundary that's the boundary of record at the moment so that's sort of issue number one issue number two the strategic growth element uh through senate bill 24 174 the state introduced a variety of requirements some related to housing plans and housing needs assessments that local governments in colorado need to pursue but there are a couple elements related to what comprehensive plans is adopted by local communities need to include including adding this requirement of a strategic growth element. In essence, the element comes down to kind of three things that you see on the slide. My shorthand for that is it must include a description of policies that pursue strategic growth from the state's perspective. analyzing the possibility for infill locations uh to accommodate uh future growth and an analysis of undeveloped areas that are under consideration for future development that that's the crux of what uh to satisfy the state requirements your comprehensive plan uh needs to include So we, and both city and county sort of, so the folks know this, we kind of got wind of that obviously after the legislation was adopted, but we were like in mid-plan development process. We didn't really have a way to adjust on the fly. We generally said we'll have to come back in 2026. And when the state actually issues guidance, we'll know exactly how to react to that. And so the Area Plan Coordinating Committee, which the way I tend to describe it, serves as almost like an executive steering committee for the plan development process, met to talk about these requirements earlier this year. Staff and our consultants kind of walked through, here's what that analysis could look like. And the crux of the direction was, if there is a way for us to submit to the state the existing community plan, and have them find that it actually meets the state requirements as adopted, we should do that. And so with that direction, I reached out to the state and had a couple of consultations and ultimately we landed on an informal finding from the state that as adopted, the community plan meets their strategic growth element requirements. And so really kind of the next conversation is this group, um uh good with us go ahead and moving forward with a more formal submittal and getting that sort of formal issuance of a finding uh from the state of colorado um the the going back to sort of those three bullets that i described in terms of what a strategic growth element needs to include i'm not i won't spare you the gory details of the documentation provided on the first two it's pretty straightforward um you know listing these are the policies that are included in the community plan or this is the type of analysis that we did in the plan development process that looked at infill locations for potential development and redevelopment The third one, the strategic growth element, was a slightly different approach. As we looked at sort of state guidance and that sort of black and white map that you see on the slide is sort of an illustration that the state has put out there to sort of help local governments understand what they should be doing in this instance. In this case, they are suggesting that, on their map areas a c and d are undeveloped lands that are not adjacent to develop lands and those are the types of areas that additional analysis is needed to satisfy the strategic growth element requirements And basically what I did is I shared with them the urban growth boundary as included in the community plan, even through sort of the iterations that I mentioned earlier, and mostly just asserted that our plan does not contemplate development of undeveloped lands that are not adjacent to developed areas. the state agreed with that assertion so in some ways this this this requirement doesn't apply uh because we are not actually considering uh those areas under our current sort of planning uh fabric uh going forward so they they agreed uh with that assertion and then finally um the thing if you spent some time with me uh either in the hallway or in an actual meeting sort of talking about these requirements one of the things that i've just been lamenting is that um It's hard for a place like Steamboat Springs and Route County that have been doing coordinated joint planning for 30 years to fully demonstrate to the state that we're doing it today because it's so hardwired into our process. A contemporary plan doesn't necessarily highlight it in the way if we were doing it for the very first time. So part of my documentation was to give them basically 30 years of history of why the urban growth boundary exists, how we co-manage the boundary. So that was included in the sort of the informal documentation. I would say that sort of bullets two and four on the slide are kind of the things that I suspect resonated most with the state. is the boundary is not intended to be fixed it's not a line that that never moves it is intended to but it is intended to represent where the natural sort of expansion of urban development occurs it intends to prevent leapfrog development which is actually obviously very much what the state is looking uh to avoid or wants you to do analysis to understand the implications of leapfrog development and then that fourth bullet of that it really is sort of a key component of the county's approach to managing growth and the city's approach to managing growth and how they jointly helps to reveal and maintain the character of the sort of two individual jurisdictions. And so I think that was something they recognized clearly as well. then finally just in terms of sort of background just so that everybody kind of has a sense of this um you know obviously we do uh adjust the urban growth boundary from time to time that that includes adding areas it also includes uh removing areas but we should also recognize that it is simply one tool in the toolbox both the city and the county are doing other things that are related to maintaining that community character so that first uh bullet that you have on the on the right hand side is something that i communicated to the state that's an initiative that the city's pursuing sort of demonstrating that support uh or meeting the requirements of strategic growth if i fire a county staff person doing the exact same exercise i would sort of talk about the role of conservation easements and purchase of development rights to maintain the agricultural uh activities and operations in the county like we're doing multiple things um that sort of uh work in unison uh with each other uh so as mentioned really just kind of looking for direction from both groups and since obviously we're sort of talking about particularly on the urban growth boundary side of things uh something that is that is jointly adopted by by both entities this is this would be the city um pursuing um the certification uh from dole that the existing community plan uh meets the the um strategic growth element requirements i think the main implication that you should be aware of from from my read of this is it probably means any conversation about future expansion or adjustments to the urban growth probably should wait until next year. Just to like be clear of this sort of window that we're within to demonstrate compliance by the end of the year and really the earliest you would want to start that conversation would be in 2027. Knowing you have five years before you have to submit your next of a strategic growth element. And the other thing that I'll just mention is that actually five-year window actually lines up pretty well with one of the goals in the community plan. The community plan sort of notes that there's a long standing expectation that expansion of urban services and growth in this community from the city's perspective is West Steamboat. But we also should ask ourselves in five years, if we have not seen annexation and development of urban level services and new communities on the west side of town through annexation, maybe there's a question to be had as to whether that is the boundary that still actually works for the community. So that lines up well, again, with kind of a commitment that's made in the plan as adopted.

that's sort of it for the for the overview happy to be a resource or answer any questions you all may have yeah thank you brad um so before we talk about the recommendation do we have any questions for brad anyone yes commissioner macy's

I'm wondering, because I took a look back at 24174 just recently, more related to connectivity, habitat connectivity and landscape stuff. And I'm wondering in your conversations with Dolla if their vital landscapes and resources report came up at all.

It did not. Their main finding was related to, again, kind of what I mentioned before is that we were suggesting, we the city was suggesting that really that analysis, that third level of analysis related to undeveloped land really didn't apply in our case because we have a boundary that clearly defines where growth is intending. And so therefore in some ways that analysis wasn't something that we necessarily needed to pursue. And that's where some of that vital landscape would come. If there was an expectation that we needed to pursue that type of analysis, that is one of the steps that they recommend that you do.

OK. Other questions? OK, let's discuss the staff recommendation. Who would like to go first?

I support what staff is recommending.

Okay. Is anybody in disagreement with that?

No, I think based upon the discussions that Brad has had and the input that he provided and the information that he provided to us, that it seems to make sense to move forward as staff suggests. Yes.

I think given the timing of the updates of both of our master plans and land use plans and codes, what you're recommending makes sense. I will say, however, I think there's a lot of value in this vital landscapes and resources reports. And we are talking about it at the county level in consideration of habitat connectivity and wildlife crossings and corridors and starting to integrate that thinking into a little more of what we can implement through the code. So, you know, I think in your conversations with Dolan, we're not having those conversations right now. But you know if that does come up and they push back on that element for you guys, I think you could say that we have considered it and are discussing it. Implement with senate bill 24 174 it's just mandated that cities and counties consider and updating their comprehensive plan so it's not it's not that we need to adopt, but we do need to consider yeah.

All right, are you good bread Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

OK.

Thanks, Brad.

The second topic for discussion here tonight was ballot measures. And it was more of a general discussion versus a presentation around the number of potential ballot initiatives that may be forthcoming over the course of 2026, 2027. We can even talk about 2028, but I think 2026 to 2027 and just so that everybody is clear about those and maybe have a little dialogue about uh there may be some need to prioritize a bit so with that in mind um i just wanted to and i'll share a couple and then we can layer them on but um when i look out between now and the end of 2027 i see uh the potential for an rta ballot question around funding potentially Potentially an annexation vote, which doesn't have to be in November, but obviously is more cost effective if that were to happen in November. Next year is the Mill Levy vote for the Amph Valley Housing Authority. Fire district consolidation, potentially. and local marketing district expansion um is another one that we're looking at closely and i believe there's some other ones and i don't want to just run through the laundry list but i'm sure some of you could add to that list i believe maybe commissioner redmond can add to that list

Well, you know, there are some that I'm aware of, and some of these, I believe, are coming through the nonprofits. Northwest Colorado Health had mentioned that they were thinking about going to the ballot. Well, you did mention the RTA. That won't be this year. You know, that will be in the future. Sonia. Who else were we thinking of might be coming at us? Was it was South Route?

Uh, actually hasn't been decided whether it would be this year. Right? Right. But the other 1, I think you're thinking of is the wildfire and land stewardship.

Yes, that was.

Yeah, and that 1 is basically came from the wildfire mitigation council and. Alliance, and they were in a situation where they needed the county to write a letter to. A funding source and well, trust trust for public lands who would then do some research for them. Um, on some of the questions of what voters think about this, and so. They came to us with a very focused intent on the ballot in 2026. We asked them to please give us all time to consider and prioritize like we're talking about right now and did not make any commitments to that one or any other.

We also have home health and hospice, which is what you said, and then childhood education.

Do you anticipate south route housing at some point?

going to the ballot? I do not know anything that that group will do. We have not had our first board meeting. Not all of the jurisdictions have approved the board. I know we did today, but I think that that will need to come from that established board. It's not a conversation we've even touched yet. But I will certainly keep you guys in the loop.

And to add to that, we've received information when we had someone from Magellan Strategies come in and talk to us about just voter registrations and demographics and everything else that states that in odd year elections, which is 25, 27, the tendency is that the voters skew much older.

Mm-hmm.

in odd-year elections. And in even-year elections, it skews far younger because you end up with far greater turnouts on those years, too, when you have Congress and potentially presidential elections going on. So that's another consideration. I guess when you think about that, the older demographics turn out in odd-year elections. And obviously, some of these measures may appeal more towards different demographic groups. So I guess the question I really have is for everybody and all of us is, do you think we need to think about some sort of process or way to prioritize things or think about things as we move forward here over the next six to 18 months?

I don't think that that would hurt to have that conversation. But I also think about the fact that some of these nonprofits are independent. They're going to do what they want to do. But I think it would be good for us to have an understanding of what's coming at us. My concern is ballot fatigue. There's an awful lot coming at people. Everybody's looking to step into their pocket. And I guess one that might be possible at some point is some support for child care within this county. So with the lack of government funding, there's a lot of people that are in desperation to try to maintain their services. And they're reaching everywhere.

And just to clarify, some of the nonprofits obviously don't have taxing authority and are approaching us to be the taxing entity or sponsoring entity for a tax kind of a pass-through like we have what we call our voter-designated funding sources, their designated bill levies that we have in place like for Horizons right now. City Council Chambers, And so, those are all discussions that Commissioners going to have, but I think it's important to keep that dialogue going because it just more and more come forward every you know few weeks, it seems it's also important to note that we're going to see a huge push on our. City Council Chambers, Community on the nonprofit communities with what's happening in medicaid right now. City Council Chambers, And those cuts are going to dramatically influence our providers here with nonprofits and other providers. City Council Chambers, And they're going to be coming to the local government entities at some point that backfill some of that i'll know what that's going to look like we don't know this full impacts. City Council Chambers, Some of those impacts, we won't know until December this year because of how the big bill was structured but there's other demands coming our way to kind of maintain existing services, not in apps and what we have now.

And I'll just jump in with the point that basically, as we look at these things, it's important to recognize that not each of these initiatives is in the same stage of development and growth and understanding of our community. I think some people have a philosophical approach of throw everything on the ballot and see what people want, which is not my approach. I mean, my approach is let's understand better what our community wants and needs, and then approach them and see if they would like to participate. So I think when I think about the ones that we rattled off and where everything is in different stages of development, some of the things that you look at, like reauthorization of the housing authority, like your fire question, like the RTA, I think are further along in their discussions than some of the other ones. So when we think about strategic timing and prioritization, I think it's really important to think about the familiarity the voters already have with these different questions. And that might drive some of the decision making around the timing of this. That being said, there are also many externalities around what's going to be happening in the future. And we have a lot of concerns about the one big beautiful bill act and what it's going to do post 2026 midterm elections, because we will not see those impacts until then as a county. And I think people, the regular voter, will feel them a lot more at that time as well. So I think it's important to put some strategic thinking into the discussion. I don't know if that means we have like a little subcommittee. But as Jay mentioned, nobody can go to the ballot for a tax without a jurisdictional authorization of a special district, a county, a city, et cetera. So ultimately, we will have to make these decisions. And obviously, with consideration and input from the community members who have already approached us and are developing their strategies. So I don't know how we want to move forward, but I'm definitely paying a lot of attention to this.

Yeah. Anybody else have a thought?

Yeah, but my comment is basically we do need to coordinate this and we need to coordinate this together because you rattled off eight. I have another couple of those, you know, so I have a number of like 10 right here of things that could go to ballot. And if we don't do that in a coordinated fashion and really understand what's our priorities and what's that message, these are all going to sync together. So basically, either we're going to coordinate this and coordinate this together and coordinate with the community, or these are not going to fare well.

I concur. I think it makes sense for us to coordinate. I don't know, Jay or Tom, if you guys have experience in whether it makes sense to form a subcommittee between a county commissioner and a couple of council people to determine a process. I mean, if you've seen any sort of processes or really just as a way to put a little structure behind how we would coordinate.

City Council Chambers, I don't think there's a set playbook for that every community is going to do it a little different and it's really these boards want to work together on it, I would note that we have some of our other municipalities looking at other tax questions. City Council Chambers, Looking at one or two sales tax questions this fall that's still to be determined we're actually somewhat involved in that because one of them would be for additional law enforcement, which at this point we're anticipating being contracted for no creek. So we'll have a you know some piece of that, because we'd be the recipient of some of that funding. So there's other things going on in the other communities which we're meeting regularly with them. Some campus tomorrow night. So those are discussions the commissioners will be having throughout the county, trying to get a grasp of what everyone else is up to, too, because they all affect outcomes.

Stapp, On the list on the list. We talked about a lot of external I mean RTA is an idea with all of us why VHA is a IGA but outside of that it was all external groups. Stapp, Brown County. We went to the ballot last year for a lodging tax. So I guess outside of the fire district consolidation. Is there anything else the city is considering in the next one to three years that is not on this list.

They are not solidified yet. But we do continue to talk about parks lands acquisition. And do we you know, do you have some kind of bonding, you know, or something associated to support land land acquisition? And we've also talked about, you know, but through our process of fiscal sustainability, do we have some type of sales tax transition to property tax type of ordinance or message?

And I might just qualify that a bit in terms of right. I mean, bring it up another level in terms of we are obviously looking at fiscal sustainability and those are a couple of the ideas that are on the table, but that we are continuing to explore that as a council in terms of potential ways to diversify funding or as well as to create more sustainability.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure that we've decided. I mean, we absolutely have not decided on a specific mechanism.

To your point over here, Aram, we need to engage the community too around what their preferences are and interests and what they're willing to potentially support. And so we're going through that process now too of figuring that out.

Yeah, I think my question is like, what do we want that engagement to look like when it comes to asking the community what they would like to see future investments in? Because I think if you look at any one of these as an individual thing, yes, absolutely, I support an RTA. Yes, absolutely, I support early childhood education. Yes, I support affordable housing. But if we have to prioritize these in the next one to three years, that's going to be hard for us to do. And I think that community input is going to be important. And so what does that engagement look like so that we can say, no, these are the real pinch points, like cost of living is something we hear over and over again. Right. And so what is going to help drive that cost of living down for families and seniors or We hear that. I just think that there's a lot of things that and maybe there are multiple things that cover this. But how are we as a group going to make these decisions and prioritize that taking into taking community engagement into mind? Because I think every one of these is merited and has value. Like there's nothing on this list that I'm like, I don't really want to see that. I don't think any of us up here feels that way. I think we all want to see land stewardship and wildfire mitigation. And also we have cognizant that our community is already feeling the pressures of a lot of these things. And so how do we balance? How do we make life better and more affordable for the people who want to stay here? And what does that look like?

So is there support from everybody in here to have some sort of a subgroup, and it's not a group that's going to meet weekly or anything, but just to kind of monitor this and maybe help with the community engagement piece of putting that together?

Yeah, it seems when we were talking RTA and whether we do funding, that's the one component that we're all sharing together. And is that funding something that we're going to do as a countywide? Let's not make any assumptions, but if there was a ballot language for a tax of some kind, if the county did one, would that already include the city and everyone would vote for one thing? Is every jurisdiction going to have that? This type of process would be really great to have in place to help guide those on committee level before they're brought up to a council level.

And then with the RTA, the clerk has already created the district boundaries. So it does include all of the municipalities that are in there. So she has a voting file for that. But I think it's a good discussion to have. Is the district preferable or is it muni by muni? I think that's important. another important part of this conversation is also um is there another way forward i mean everything we're rattling off you know these are not problems that are unique to our county our city some of these are statewide issues and there have been some studies to look at you know can there be statewide measures can there be legislative efforts that would help to solve some of these problems so i think an important part of the discussion is other alternatives and what's been explored and discussed But I, for one, would be very eager to be a part of that committee. I'm tracking this stuff anyway, very closely and all the time. So I think it would be valuable.

Yeah, I agree. It's valuable. And I think we start sooner than later. And I think to your point, a lot of these are state issues, and some of them are being made worse by the state's budget right now, right? Not because they are trying to, but we just saw huge cuts to childcare and early childhood education in this legislative session. We saw cuts to Prop 123 funding, which goes towards affordable housing. So yes, a lot of these are state problems, and some of them are being made worse by the budget deficit we're seeing at the state level.

Okay, so do we have interest from Council to join? I'm assuming you're volunteering to be on this. Do we have anybody from Council who would be interested in working with this? Councilor Gossa? Okay. Do we need...

I have interest, yeah.

Okay. Do we need two from Council?

I think it'd be good to have two.

Who else? if nobody's going to say yes raised her hand she did amy dixon raised her hand okay good she's perfect for that go amy all right there we go district three stepping up

of the district. I was going to say I'd be happy to, but I will defer to Councilor Dixon.

Okay, so I do think, as we I know it has to be one commissioner, and I think Commissioner Macy's will be great at this, but I do think it's important that we bring in voices from outside of Steamboat Springs, noting that all three people on this committee are very Steamboat Springs centric and heavy. And so we have to keep in mind our rural residents and residents who live in Stagecoach and Hayden and Clark and those families that have already been pushed out of Steamboat Springs as we prioritize these and do community engagement.

Oh, I guess I see the subcommittee as really coming up with a process and then brings a process that then brings it back to council and the commissioners for input in terms of specific issues. But what's the... Oh no, I was going to say, but what's the process for how do we gather information? How do we talk with the various entities to say, okay, this is something you're thinking about, but have you looked at what other communities are doing to your point? Is there an alternative solution? You know, thinking about it from the fact of, is this something that we could address at the state legislative level? So I see it more as process and then it comes back to the entire bodies.

i agree so counselor gary if if this is somebody you you know feel deeply on this i i i would also you know forego and say if you want to join uh council addiction on that he was hitting the fly he was trying to fly no i look at these and i'm like i'm gonna be involved in these and you know these anyways and so um but yeah so yeah we can talk and take it offline

do the same thing i was going to do the same thing well you know i asked commissioner redmond if he wanted to because we kind of just jumped to whoever volunteered but if you would like to do this i mean i definitely wouldn't stand in the way i think you'd be great no i think i think the process point is that gail made is awesome i just want that to be like in the forefront as we're thinking about what does the process look like how are we engaging our community what are the priorities like that we keep in mind like outside of steamboat springs that's my only request and i think you guys are more than capable of doing that

Would it be prudent to engage somebody like Magellan to get information for the subcommittee and for council and commissioners to look at what's realistically able to pass? Looking at the demographics, looking at what's popular, what has passed, what hasn't passed, so that there's some more direction up front?

I like Magellan working forward. I think right now, just understanding the process of how we help the nonprofits and others kind of get to their point where we can have that discussion. But I think Magellan's gonna be good once we decide which ones we would move forward with, but they should be a part of that.

They're the ones that will guide you to which ones would pass. So I think that's kind of backwards.

Well, potentially, but they're big on, they need ballot language. in order for their polling. They love to have ballot language so that people really understand the trade-offs there. Can they help us define that? Yeah, they can help us define that as well. So there's a couple of steps there. There's seeing what is the community's want and desire, and then is there a way to do that in some sort of orderly fashion, or could you even do multiple things? It's hard to say, but yeah, they can help with that. So you're on, yes? councilor dixon and then who is the third one on do you want to talk offline or do you you want to talk draw straws yeah i think we could do it i think we can make a decision okay okay and so then we'll leave it up to the three of you to set up a time to kind of outline coming up with that process all right good super all right number three yampa valley housing authority iga And Jen, can you just share a bit on that since we have gone through that and I believe we've reached a final version?

Yes, so Dan Foote forwarded me the draft that we are working on with the county. I understand he was chatting with Linnea and Angelica. So there are four changes to the current IGA between the city and the county establishing the housing authority. And those four are first and foremost, alternates, clarification on alternates. clarification that an alternate assumes the duties of a board member when that board member is vacant, an ex officio board member. In the meantime, that ex officio alternate has the ability to attend all meetings and receive materials, but only acts when the official ex officio director is gone um the other item is term limits um the proposal is to have not more than three consecutive terms um and then have a gap of three years in between terms if someone wants to come back to the board and other two changes are less weighty there's just a deletion of the regional affordable living foundation language which is not applicable anymore and then also a clarification that the state board of ethics commission will apply to any ethics issues that come up on on that board of directors there's really no other body to refer it to so so that would go to the state board So four major areas of changes.

And I think we are in agreement on those.

Yeah, I mean, I shared those with the commissioners. Bidding the language, clarifying. The ethics one was really the conflict of interest. That's where it came up was a conflict of interest. City Council Chambers, statement and since why vhs its own governmental authority, the same conflict of interest clause that applies to the county applies to why vhs are just adding that into the iga. City Council Chambers, The alternate language I shared with Dan foot was the same one that the Commissioners approved for the south route housing authority. City Council Chambers, And so we felt comfortable with that and then. City Council Chambers, The term limits, we were all comfortable, so I think that that.

well i guess what i'd say is i wasn't sure about the state board of ethics getting involved that that comes to me as a little bit of a surprise so i do think it's really handy that the city council has straight at the bottom of your page file an ethics complaint i mean i'm wondering where those go does the city council get raised to the state board of ethics is that

I was saying that since their home rule they like have their own ethics code written, but that city count that city of steamboat springs ethic code could not apply to why the ha because why the ha is not home rule it's it's government authority. Given those powers by the state, and so we would use the state's ethics.

code.

And Helica stated that correctly. Yeah, we, we do not defer to the state board. We have our own board of ethics that handles ethics complaints in the city. And I don't know how the county, you guys might just go to the state.

We fall under the state.

Right. So it'd be the same state ethics board.

only other comment i have is um and i said this before but i know i stand alone is on term limits i i see that's an unnecessary um item because because the commissioners and the council members do the interviewing and doing the hiring and and so if they want to enforce you know if somebody they felt has been there too long they can it's their choice but um i know i stand alone on that one

I mean, I think though, I think it's, I mean, I would concur. I think when we had that conversation, I had some hesitancy about the term limits also for those same reasons. But I recall, I think we were in the minority and that the majority of council supported term limits. Yes.

One thing that's awesome.

And Steve, it was the city who brought up adding the conflict of interest ethics. That was a change that didn't come from the county. So if you guys want to expand on why you wanted to include that, if that's a question, because that was a recommendation from the city to us.

I don't think that was, I think that came from Dan.

I think I brought it up, Steve.

Did you? Okay.

Actually, I know I did. Yeah, so that was me. It really came from looking at other housing authority IGAs. And really a standard practice was they had conflict of interest in the IGA. So when I think about any other board, you generally have a conflict of interest statement in there as well so that's where i felt i think for transparency um for our community i felt that was important so that came for me i i still feel strongly we should have it although i agree with sonia about the um reporting the state ethics um for but that's the way it has to be i guess that's fine okay thanks amy appreciate that

I mean, maybe an option would be, I mean, does it, so am I hearing correctly that it would have to go to the state or could this, could an ethics process be developed that would be similar to what we do at the city level? So it would be a subgroup of commissioners and city council representatives that would be on the ethics committee board. I don't know, maybe Jen, that's up.

Yeah, I don't believe that is an option. Um, you know, home rule municipalities had to fight pretty hard to get out from under the state ethics board and assert our home rule authority. Um, and so the way this is currently drafted, the state ethics code would apply as well as the state ethics, um, commission. So I don't think that the Yampa Valley housing authority has that, um, ability that, that we do to, to develop our own, um, board.

City Council Chambers, Okay, that makes sense, and I think it's very important that we would have some channel to approach that and you don't have the home rule, so this would be the only next alternative. City Council Chambers, would be a state ethics now you you were questioning that is there another avenue besides the State Board or is that the next best.

No, I was just questioning because we really, truly had not discussed it. We didn't understand exactly why the conflict of interest question came up and how it would be implemented, so this was the first I had heard of it. And, you know, I think as I'm thinking about it, I mean, you know, I think your point that If we suspect there is an ethical violation, you know, obviously we have the capacity to remove directors at any given time for a cause. That being said, you know, if we suspect is different than if it is proven. So I feel like it's a little heavy handed to jump to the state. But if it is something that needs to be proven in order for us to be able to agree that it's important to remove that person, then we do at least have that backup documentation. So I can live with it. It does feel honestly a little heavy handed. I want to make an argument for term limits while I have the mic, because I think one of the things that we've really been asking our boards and commissions to do is succession planning and make sure that they have a pipeline of people who are coming in, people who have the skill sets that are needed. It's not just the same people sitting all the time. And so, you know, we talk about term limits. I think people see it as a real negative and a punishment. I see it as a real positive and a good way to continue to insert new energy and ideas into the organization, fill gaps and skill sets and that kind of thing. I support the term limits.

OK. Any other comments on the IGA?

If I could just quickly jump in. Since I brought up the conflict of interest, I was really focusing on a conflict of interest statement. And I haven't seen the revised version. So this is the first time I'm also hearing about reporting to the state. If folks are uncomfortable with that ethics component and reporting to the state, that can be dropped. And we can have a stand-alone conflict of interest statement in there, which would, I feel like, still be appropriate. But it takes away that reporting to the state ethics board.

Just real quick, I am not trying to play attorney here. I'll defer to Jen on that, but it's going to apply probably anyway because the housing authority is going to fall under that umbrella of the state ethics board. We have a regional building department which serves the city, but we fall under the state ethics code. Years ago when we had a complaint on an ethics issue, it went to the state ethics board and our employee got investigated. It's not a fun process and it's very unsettling for staff. But it's the structure we have in place in Colorado for authorities and counties.

All right. So what I'm hearing is we'll leave the IGA as is with a little with no change on the conflict of interest piece.

Yeah, and just to be clear, the current draft is simply a reference to the state statute that governs the county and governs the state as well, and state and local officials. And they have their own rules of conduct for public officers, and so those are the standards. Essentially, it's felt in suspenders. I mean, it's not necessary at all. I don't think it's necessary because we're governed anyway. Right.

I mean, I think it's not necessary, then we don't need is my I mean, I don't see why we would be redundant with something like that.

But it might be a way to inform folks who are serving on the board, who they will be, and what rules they are under.

Not more involved in IGA.

They also have a whole entire packet that they've signed regarding ethical situations and conflict of interest. And I mean, to me, I would assume, yeah, well, it's an onboarding process. So it would seem to me that that would be the place for this type of information. If you want to get it to the person who is signing up to serve, here's your packet, here's what you're responsible for. And if you don't do it right, here's who you're answering to. But I mean, I just think the bylaws are the bylaws. This is like agreement between the two of our organizations. And, you know, if the state law is the,

guiding law i mean how many more things could we put in there that are already going to be that way we could keep going okay so where are we here i'm here we have two choices we can move it to the bylaws and take it out of the iga or leave it in the iga

I would still advocate for leaving it in the IGA. I do understand it's in the bylaws and that was brought up when we had the meeting and Nantucket Valley Housing Authority was there. Again, I looked at other IGAs and other housing authorities across the state, and this was a common practice to have a conflict of interest statement in the IGA. And since this is an agreement between the city, the county and the housing authority, I would still advocate we have it.

Do we have the language? Because I'm hearing you say conflict of interest, but then I'm hearing ethical violation.

Yeah. In the YVHA IGA, Article 10, page 10 has a conflict of interest that is almost a page and a half long. And so it's in the bylaws already. And this is the conversation that we had, me, Jay, and Linnea had with Dan and Steve and Tom when we talked about this. I think coming from you, it was, no, it needs to be in the IGA. So that's where this conversation delved from, but it is in there pretty in depth. Yeah.

And I would just argue, I mean, ethics is broader than conflict of interest.

Yeah. And that's what I'm kind of trying to get clarity on what the language is that we're trying to insert.

Right.

I mean, are you asking then that we also do the ethics in the other place?

I have been comfortable with not having this in the IGA since it's already in depth in the bylaws, the conflict of interest statement.

What's the harm of having it in there?

I don't think there's a harm in not having it in there.

I think the harm is, I mean, just for having gone through a lot of these ideas and once you open up an idea, people like to put any old thing in there and just keep on going and keep on going. And to me, simplicity is what we're looking for. And it seems to me that, you know, we could come back and say well sure let's get redundant on a number of different topics and walk them all the way out to their termination even though that's where they will naturally end up igas are what we agree to us we don't have any control over whether or not the state ethics board is going to look at the housing authority or not so why are we agreeing that that's the way it's going to be what if something changes and all of a sudden authorities are now looked on by somebody else and it's not the state ethics board now we have to go back and revise our iga because we have said you know the law of the land today is going to be the law of the land tomorrow and the next day and into time so i just feel like the more that you put in there that's superfluous the more you get into a possibility of having it be irrelevant in the future and needing to be changed

I'm wondering if we could just like find a compromise or a middle ground. In the RTA IGA, there's like three lines about a conflict of interest. It doesn't reference the State Ethics Committee. It just says director conflict of interest and then it's like a couple lines in compliance and then it says in compliance with sections. 18 that you know all the numbers of Colorado revised statutes and that's all it says it's like three lines it's in the RTA IGA it's section 3.13 instead of having and Jen maybe this is a question for you, instead of having this whole. state ethics thing in the IGA, if we could just add those simple two lines that are in the RTA, ICA.

I let me read out what is actually an issue, because it is actually just two lines. It reads ethics, board members shall be governed by the provisions of parts one and two, Article 18, Title 24 of the Colorado revised statutes, and the provisions of Article 29 of the Colorado Constitution. Just so that's what's currently on the table.

So your comments make this even more baffling to me because an authority is an authority to some degree.

I mean, authorities have statutory requirements.

And so now we're going to have two authorities with two IGAs that have different language. Is that correct there, Jay? Because of the differences of the way that the authorities are created? I mean,

I don't know the details to answer that.

I'm just kind of curious. Seems to me that this should be in the bylaws and not the IGA. In most boards that I serve in, that's where you will find these conflict of interest policies.

I think the difference is that most boards don't also have an IGA. An IGA is really a contract between the entities, the government entities, including the housing authority. Where I view a bylaw is really the internal rules that govern that body or that organization.

And I'm in total agreement with you. And when you look at, say, the Northwest Colorado Development Council, which is an IGA between three counties and ten municipalities, the conflict of interest is in the bylaws.

Yeah, and I am absolutely Puzzled and uncomfortable with the idea of moving forward with this hearing that it is inconsistent with what we have done with our other authority. I feel as though when we hired Kaplan and Kirsch, they were on it, they were current, and they really made sure that our Mary Pelletier, requirements and everything in our idea was consistent with what is required of an authority. Mary Pelletier, And so I think we need to answer that question and settle that question because it makes me uncomfortable to think that we require this thing of one authority and that thing of a different one in ideas that are ultimately similar models.

then the path forward would you say we're not going to solve this right here tonight it doesn't sound like should the path forward be to have um the various attorneys get together and sort through these two igas and and come back with a either recommendation or rationalist supporting why they're different that's a good wise plan thank you steve shang more money on this i mean well

I don't think this is going to be a lengthy discussion. It's just going to need to be based more on direct comparison.

I mean, I would assume one of the ways of doing it is preferred versus the other, but I don't know that.

Can we take like a strong vote right now of like who feels strongly that the conflict of interest could be in the IGA, or can we just move forward with the others to get it? Is that something we could do now?

Sure. I mean, we are in agreement on the three other three edits, so they're good to go. So the question is, do we want this? Conflict of interest. Language to be in the IGA or in the bylaws. Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, it's already in the bylaws.

Well, I'm OK. Resigned in one place, yeah.

well i think it would be beneficial to understand it a little bit better i want a little i mean i'm not a lawyer so i can't right i mean in the sense of i totally concur with the consistency being consistent across the various different igas but i um it doesn't mean that if this is a standard practice that maybe we shouldn't enter i'd entertain it so i'll be it okay i'm good with that okay we're gonna leave it with

We'll look at the RTA.

Pardon me?

We'll look at the language in the RTA.

Okay, thank you. Okay, final subject, Slate Creek Steering Committee update. Is that you, Gail, Dave, or?

Well, it is. I mean, I had kind of some prepared comments, and I think Dave and Halika were ready to go too, but since we're at the top of the hour, And we had information in the packet. Maybe this could just be an opportunity that if any, hopefully everybody got a chance to read the minutes from the last steering committee meeting, the Slate Creek Steering Committee, and kind of talk about kind of, you know, where we are in terms of the decisions that have been made, as well as, you know, what is on the agenda for the June meeting. And I believe you know that we've been reporting out to council and i know that the county commissioners um commissioner salinas i think you know um you i know have been talking as well regularly with the commissioners and given your structure is a little bit different than ours right i think probably even a little bit more communication so long-winded way of saying we can give some highlights or we can answer some specific questions if there are some

I think that we're not here together very often as a group, so I don't want to let that clock determine our conversation. That clock can change and it will go to 630 and we can still be talking about it. I think that if we have all of us here in the meeting, we need to let this time go so that you can go back with the proper information and we have a time to vet anything that we're at right now. So my suggestion would be not to just summarize it, but let's have the discussion what we're here for.

Okay, does everybody have that everybody has the time for that?

Sure.

Okay. All right.

Well, as I say, I'll start out and then just say one thing for those who are looking for public comment that will be coming up next and probably somewhere between 615 and 630. I would think they go.

all right thank you president montine so we did have our meeting in may and basically we began the discussion uh kind of a little bit along the lines of what i just talked about which is one of the tasks that we had been assigned as members of the steering committee was to go back to our respective groups and determine what kind of accountability and um and what to try to get some guardrails in terms of what kind of decision making could be made in that room. And from a YVHA board perspective, I think that feedback that we got was they really wanted to engage more indirectly in shaping and approving any sort of deliverables. But I think there's also kind of a recognition that the planning process and key decisions we've got kind of a timing issue. And I think both from the housing authority as well as from a council perspective in terms of when we meet and when we can actually have those conversations, we wanna make sure that we're getting input, but we also wanna make sure that we don't in any way kind of delay the process. you know, I think generally speaking, again, the board wants, YVHA board wants input on kind of specific deliverables. You know, what I relayed to the group and what I think we heard from council was that we certainly wanted to, from a council perspective, wanted to have input on any sort of financial impact that was going to be, that was going to in some way or another impact our as well as making sure that we have the ability to weigh in on annexation and then also kind of a strong interest in terms of how is the project scaled, right? From a phasing perspective, as well as what kind of infrastructure impacts and constraints there might be out there that would in any way impact how we move forward in terms of what's possible. And as I mentioned earlier, I think from a County Commissioner perspective, you all have had conversations and given you have more meetings than we do, really have the ability to have a more cadence in terms of the conversation and providing any sort of input. We also talked about kind of the in-state and specifically defining a clear planning process by the end of June, including major phases of work. decision points, as well as where the opportunities for community engagement are needed. This roadmap would likely incorporate both technical analysis, as well as coordinated what we're gonna call political steps, which are feasibility studies, scenario development, and potential annexation pathways. And again, no intention here to create, just to start from scratch, but basically to build on what we know and what we have already or learned the hard way, I guess, so to speak. We also discussed developing two or three different feasible development scenarios, potentially including maybe a do nothing baseline to help the community as well as decision makers really understand the trade offs so that we know, right, and can make informed decisions. we talked about the scenarios probably trying to include you know the various different dimensions of of kind of moving forward such as what's the unit mix how what's the land use you know affordability levels as well as overall scale and i think importantly there was you know agreement that any scenario brought forward should be grounded in feasibility ensuring that conversations with the community are rooted in realistic impact and realistic options And then we also just talked about how would we discuss and evaluate the various different scenarios, noting that we wanted to make sure and look at affordability, density, number of residents served, environmental impact, traffic, cost per unit. And we also really just made a general acknowledgement that there is kind of that ongoing pressure to address the housing shortage balanced with the community's concern about scale and the ability to absorb growth without any sort of significant need for new infrastructure. so again um that's kind of at the forefront of everybody's mind we do have our next meeting scheduled for the 17th and the 18th and the goal of that meeting is to define an end goal for the future annexation proposal outline an annexation roadmap with key milestones and then identify the necessary components of the next plan the and the annexation of proposal and then specifically where there are points for community engagement

where we need to lean more into any sort of, you know, the technical analysis and how do we bring that all together.

So again, that's a really high level summary. I'll defer to my colleagues for what I missed.

Great summary. Okay.

I don't think you missed anything. I think Commissioner Salinas brought it up that, you know, our next big steps are probably realistic steps are going to be funding for studies and things that need to happen. So those are probably going to be perspectives of everybody bringing these back to the organizations to see where that funding is going to come from.

Yeah, that's a good point. Council member Barnes. We talked about obviously we're in this high level right now of defining shared priorities, and there is a sense of of urgency in the room. I don't want to say that we don't have that. But when the city has done their own constraints analysis that you guys will be reviewing in early June. But that's not going to be the only one that needs to be done when it comes to feasibility analysis or additional things. And so YVHA has a $500,000 grant from the county that is for this purpose, that is one identified funding source. But if we need to do additional feasibility studies and analysis of that parcel and looking at these development plans, where is that funding going to come from is kind of Leah Peoples, Early on in the roadmap, where I think we will kind of get need to get together as the housing authority, the city and the county to really dig into. How are we going to fund this phase of the slate creek? You know. I don't want to say Brown Ranch two point. Oh, but of Slate Creek. And so, yeah, I think that's a great point of when we will need to get involved is, how are we going to address that? How are we going to pay for that? What does what do those opportunities look like? What buckets do we already have that we can pull from? And what do we need to go out and seek when it comes to grant or or other funding that may be available? So that's a good point.

Yes, you have a question. What's going to be different this time? You've talked quite a bit about the product and all of that, but there's this whole thing out there called the community. And there were citizens who had a better plan. Have they brought their better plan? Are they engaged with this? I mean, you know, are we keeping our eye on the folks out there who this will potentially go to? I mean, I would assume it would go to them given that it's now three times and, you know, Council has tried the annexation solely, it didn't really work. So like, what's the vibe with that situation?

We haven't gotten there.

Well, I mean, I think I would say there's 100 percent recognition that there. Yes. Right. I mean, in terms of community engagement and broad community engagement, I mean, there was a lot of community. We learned a lot of lessons the first time around. Right. But this time, making sure that we are soliciting engagement on a broad scale. And I was just thinking, if you didn't have a chance, take a look at the. I think the roadmap, I guess I'll call it, that's in the paperwork. I think it's like page 15. And one of the things that we specifically did, right, in terms of looking, laying out what the key milestones are is an exercise where we talked about where does it make sense to lean into the technical advisors and where does it make sense to really lean into community engagement. so that we're making sure that we are engaging the community and getting informed input. We do have some money left over from the Belonging Colorado that will be specific to, that can be specifically used for community engagement. I would say that probably, I think we probably all agree on this, that at this point we would like to be, I think, I'm not sure that we've done what we needed to do in terms of community engagement, but really this is a process, this is the roadmap. And once we kind of hit the end of June, I guess I was thinking about is where we then really ramp up the community engagement aspect.

I share your concerns with what's going to be different this time as someone who was not elected at the time but went through this process and saw it, as many of us in this room were. I think a couple of things we're trying to identify as differently. One is bringing on a developer early in the process. trying to get a development perspective on board early as we start scenario planning, as we start looking at scale and phasing so we can have that on board to say, yeah, this can be done. We want those voices in the room early, which is a change from last time. To your point, no, we have not seen a plan presented from the group who said they had a better plan. So no, we're not there yet. We have not seen that. But I do think that HAB-Masyn Moyer- There are you know housing authority putting on that hat has said. HAB-Masyn Moyer- We felt like we did a good job of this, this time, our last time clearly something went wrong, and so we can't follow the same roadmap like there's going to have to be changes, and I think that has been acknowledged. HAB-Masyn Moyer- What those leads are I think that is for this group to figure out.

And one of the biggest differences will be the city's constraint analysis and what can actually be built. So it would be a far smaller number to start with than the original proposal. So that's a huge difference just in the scale of the project that we would be asking for annexation, right?

So one question to the Council is, you know, looking back and looking forward, are you seeing this process as more of a collaboration with YBHA, or is this going to be more like it was the last go-round?

I would hope that it would be a collaborative effort. We did not include them. They sat on the sidelines and were participants, but kind of like

left to the side in a sense i think that being the landowner and the applicant it's vital that we actually include them moving forward well and i think that was the whole point right we have to have a hundred percent agreement or we don't move forward that was how our board was set up that was how we vote and so if we don't get full agreement in our way of voting with this to five then we bring it back around talk about it some more until we get to consensus

i think that's a really good point counselor brian so again it's i think it's described in this in the the documentation but this is collaboration this is partnership and if you know and then there is the opportunity for somebody to not agree but we don't move on until we get to a point where we all agree

Or as elected, what can we point to to give hope to anybody about things happening at Brown Ranch? Because even me personally, I feel my hope and optimism dwindling and I feel like we're in process. So maybe those who are involved, what specifically can we point to as progress and that there is hope?

ending our relationship with community builders and moving forward with a different facilitator. Might be the start of hope.

I have a different perspective. I'm not surprised. I think it's been really important for us to be around the table. I think the fact is that we are around the table. We are committed to working in partnership and collaboration and not seeing this as a negotiation. um and i think we are going into this more informed and a recognition that community engagement is critical so that we bring the community along which is i think one of the things that didn't happen well the last time and make sure that the community is engaged in terms of what's happening and like what we talked about that we're looking at the constraints analysis that we're looking at the technical analysis that we are you know talking about coming together with a developer what i would call it advisory board right so that we get that kind of input put from the developers not it's not a seat but just engaging that local community um and you know using that information to to move forward and so you know again and also providing what the trade-offs are I mean, I think that's, again, and trying to do that in a way that is clear so that we can make those decisions in terms of if we want this, it may mean that we can't do this.

or we need to figure out- I'm a lot more pragmatic, and it seems like this process is taking years and years and years, and I'm sorry, but Community Builders is one that's going down a path that we've allowed because of Belonging Colorado. So I don't disagree a lot with what he says, and I think that we keep doing these laps because of, it's just we're all over complicating a big part of it okay and so i appreciate your cons your comment but i agree more with mr barnes in the context of what counselors when tech was saying is that what hope can we give our community that we're not going to do another year or two long lap i'm pragmatic i want to get to some some you know the constraint analysis what can we build give some people some hope and we spend months and months and months talking kumbaya and trying to build this thing and that's what my frustration comes from. Okay, so I'm really tired of the kumbaya. I think we can get to something that's more realistic and pragmatic because we have three full annexations that this city planning has gone through and looked at. Okay, let's kind of, we're spending, to me we're just spending too much time on this facilitated kind of kumbaya trying to get to how we're going to make the decisions. Could we just look at where we are with it and move forward? That's how I feel.

And I would say I didn't mean disrespect to community builders. I think the process has been very worthwhile. I think it's been good to get to that point, but I think we have to cut the umbilical cord and walk forward and move into the actual planning phase.

I think what you're getting into is questions that are going to be answered in not very far into the future, a couple months, because this phase is over with. at the end of June or early July. So what you're talking about now and bringing in the constraint analysis, we will have a very lively discussion about this come that time.

Yeah, and I think one very positive thing I agree with you, Michael. Everything takes too long. Transportation, housing, all the things. I'm 100% with you. I understand that, and I agree. But that being said, I mean, I think the idea that this is not a negotiation, it's a collaboration, is huge. And I think we need to recognize and thank the people who are willing to do these two-day meetings and put the hundreds of hours in. I mean, these are our elected officials sitting down and trying to say, you know, we've learned some things. let's put them together. When we put the city and the county and the housing authority into the room, we all have different opportunities for funding sources, different relationships with different types of agencies. I mean, it creates a much stronger entity as a whole. And so I think, you know, what I'd like to be able to say, of course, Brian is, you know, we're going to see houses next week, but I think just the fact that we have the right people on the team with the right approach and attitude gives us access to resources we wouldn't otherwise have. It's not the same as .

I think the important comments in this conversation, I think Brian's question is very important and needs to be stated publicly and needs, the community needs to hear the people at this dais say that we understand the sense of urgency. that we agree with them that this needs to happen and move quickly and that that is what is different this time is that ever i think we are all on the same page that we want to see something come to life because the you're right people are losing hope and that needs to be said out loud people are leaving Our peers, I think we relate to that at this table more than anyone else because we are living it and we are seeing it. And I think that is different this time around is that hopefully that there is agreement at this table that this is a real issue that needs to be addressed with some sense of urgency. And the collaboration piece is important. We're not putting people at the table who are not who don't believe in that mission. But all of us in that room I have confidence in really want to see something happen. for the sake of our community. And so I appreciate and really am grateful that you're asking those questions because the community needs to hear that. They need to hear us say, we hear that you are losing hope and we are taking that seriously.

And what I'd add to all the same pieces is basically the community wants to know what's going on. They want to have something that they can put in their hand. And what they can put in their hand are things like, what are the constraints? What's the size? What can we reasonably put in that space? And then what are the designs and the neighborhood designs, neighborhood planning options that we have? And those two things are things that the community can hold and that's what we're looking for. They're looking like, what are you guys doing? And so I guess the question I have, I do have a question that is, at what point will we be able to come together and have those two things that they can hold?

City Council Chambers, I think the city you guys are having your constraints analysis June 2 presented, and so that will give our group a lot of guidance to start implementing the next phases of the roadmap. City Council Chambers, So I think once we have the city's constraints analysis, then we can go back and look at the previous feasibility studies that were done on the land. City Council Chambers, We can find the gaps that are identified and start funding those and start having those answers, so I think we're very close to having those first answers come the city's feasibility or constraints analysis.

I mean, and I, I mean, I want to go on the record and say that, I mean, I absolutely concur with you, council, which, you know, we've been in this for a while and, you know, we'd love to have seen houses already built out there, but if, but I think it is important in terms of this, in terms of what we're doing now, we need to build a strong foundation in order to be able to move forward and actually quicker once we get, once we are able to move.

okay process yes progress yes slowly progress thank you okay anything else okay well thank you all commissioners and county manager for being here tonight and sharing you're gonna stay for time with us i'll pass

come on you're welcome and we'll give you a minute to um thank you if you want to thanks stay until 10 30. i mean you're not oh there's patrick because you've done it nothing in the past that's probably what to take watch out very true thanks for the invitation and for dinner appreciate it

I mean, the child care. We got a few things. Always a pleasure.

Another test.

Thanks, Tim.

Versus later. Thank you. See you.

Bye-bye. Bye. And we're already including other entities.

Sorry.

Yeah. So and I've talked to time a little bit about this, but we're starting to see the some pressure on.

Yeah. And then see if we want to come back to it.

Needed that longer discussion.

State patrol.

We needed to have the freedom for the full discussion.

The only thing I was going to do. Just like at the discussions. Yeah. Put them in a box. Yeah.

OK, everyone, are we good? All right, we are going to move on to public comment at this point in time. So if there's anybody in the room or online, if anybody in the room would like to make public comment about any subject that is not on the agenda tonight, come on down. You've been very patient. And if there's anybody online who'd like to make a public comment on anything not on the agenda, please raise your hand and we'll get to you. State your name and address, please. And you have three minutes.

Do you want the full address or just the abbreviated? I'll give you the full one. Nick Bells. I reside at County Road 14B 30755. So I'm here today as a resident of Steamboat Concerned Citizen to talk about an ongoing conversation you guys have been having about Steamboat Ski Resort. Having grown up here and spent most of my life here, I have some feedback about the things that I've observed. A lot of things with the resort have changed, and our community have changed, and a lot of things have remained constant. As far as the things that remain constant for me is community engagement. The resort sits atop our public lands, they utilize our water, they rely on our community for their workforce, and they appropriate our Western heritage for their marketing. What I have seen change is the resorts level investment in our community. In my time of living within the community, I have seen the resort over promise and I feel intentionally under deliver. I feel it's a strategy of theirs to come before you and make grand promises in order to prevent other outcomes from occurring. And then they kick the can down the road long enough that it loses steam and it loses interest. Another thing for me that is important is the historic record of the ski resort. Let's take parking, for example. Having grown up here, I grew up in a time our elevation was our population, 6,700 people. In those days, all of the existing parking infrastructure existed, as it does now, with some exceptions. The biggest change for me was the removal of the Meadows overflow lot, a lot specifically designed in the case that there were too many people trying to park at Meadows that was there for that overflow to handle that additional load. That lot was redeveloped into real estate, and we lost that ability for parking. The Denton Dash lot, as I call it, is now paid parking. The Knoll lot is now paid parking. The resort recently came out and said that during peak hours and times, the Meadows lot will be paid parking. It's easy for me to foresee a future in which there is no free parking at the resort. There's diminished capacity because parking spaces have been converted into real estate. and that the community is left handling those displaced users and the increased number of users my ask of you is to hold the resort accountable for their impacts on our community and pursue a lift tax and start that process and then give it to the community and let the community decide thank you thank you thank you is there anybody else in the room who'd like to make a public comment on something not on the agenda tonight

Come on down, sir. State your name and address, and you have three minutes.

Ken Brunner, 789 Spring Creek Circle. I wanted to thank you all for your service. It's been a while since I've sat back there, but I remember it's a hard job and you get thrown all kinds of curveballs and very few people, unless you've sat there, really understand how hard the job is. So thank you very much for your work. I'm here to ask you to direct your staff to intervene with a land use matter with the county. And this is over in the Spring Creek area, right at the trailhead. I was on city council when we adopted the west of steamboat area plan which was kind of an addendum to the 1996 community area plan that plan was a joint agreement between the city and the county city council county commissioners city planning commission and county planning commission all signed onto this document which essentially said that the city was going to try to and the county were going to work together to maintain a hard urban growth boundary on the city of steveau springs the city's commitment was for density infill and redevelopment and the county was supposed to use one for 35 and preserve functioning ag and wildlife we're all very proud of the land use pattern that we've done here and i was lucky enough to lecture a number of different local governments around the state on the success that we've had in this collaborative work but one of your own members of your staff has been kind of leading a project over here that we weren't really aware of until 10 years after it was already approved. but a planning commission referral approved the access for a single 1200 square foot house on this one and a half acre. It's such a steep site that the road itself used up almost a half an acre. So there's about an acre left to put, now what is being proposed is eight large units on that same piece of property. They're using a hundred year old plat um even though it's zoned ag forestry and it's being reviewed by the board of adjustments for the county and their only priority is to review the appropriateness of the setback variants that they're um that they're proposing and it does has nothing to do with the land use approval from their perspective we've already approved it there's nothing could be further from this from the truth There's a safety and access issue all along there that's heavily used. Every day of the year, you can go by and see lots of cars parked there. Heavy use by both our residents and our visitors. And it's narrow and dangerous right where that road is constructed. My sister was killed back in 1991 by a truck coming down through there just because it's so narrow and dangerous. It's not something that we want to propagate. It'd be good to have better notification if I'd known about this when it was first being proposed. We could have probably done a lot to slow this down then. I'm really hoping that you can direct your staff to look into this matter and intervene with the county and assure them that, you know, the many times that we received applications in my eight-year tenure to do any kind of a variance to this hard urban growth boundary was an easy decision to that we wanted to honor that historic level of cooperative planning between the city and the county thank you for your attention thank you thanks again i won't be the last one you hear from okay is there anybody else else in the audience come on down

Amy Charity, 281 Locust Court. Good evening, council members. I'm here to reinforce really this partnership and how important it is with SBT Gravel and the city. We are in final preparations for our event, which will take place the last weekend of June. And our team is working very closely with the city staff and the county staff to make sure we have another successful event. This year, we'll welcome 2,750 riders, approximately 80 vendors, and dozens of sponsors. And this is a significant impact on our community in a positive way. Even though we have this international presence of our riders, we are still deeply committed to giving back to the steamboat community. we focus and invest on the local businesses as much as possible and this is substantial for example we'll purchase nearly 3 000 rider meals from skull creek greek we have 89 porta potties from twin enviro it is huge what we spend here and every single place that we can spend locally that's what we do in addition to our spend our rider spend is substantial and we're working with the csu extension office on an economic study on what rider spend is and we will have that report available to you in the fall um it's in the approximately 10 to 20 million dollars and they will come back with what that is but it is a real number for um what our writers spend it's not all about the economic impact we also give back substantially to local non-profits we have for years and that's been a commitment to the cycle effect route county riders 4-h and many other non-profits this is both a financial contribution and giving our time and resources of our team and that's what's critical to us We understand that running an event of this scale comes with a lot of responsibility and we have made so many changes to make sure that our impacts are positive and that we are lessening any impact on the rural county. We are doing that through extensive communication. We are actually visiting every single residence without a no trespassing sign. that are on our courses. We are sending mailers and we are communicating in every way we know how to say the hours that cyclists will be riding by their houses. It is important to us to be a positive contributor to Steamboat and we really need your support in doing so. So thank you for allowing us to move forward with our events.

Thank you, Amy.

Good luck. Thank you, Amy.

Okay, we're gonna go online real quick and get Craig. If you want to make a public comment, can you unmute and state your name and address? And you have three minutes.

Good, my name is Craig Tolliver, 1224 Ridgeview Drive, Steamboat Springs. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Good, thank you. So I'm addressing the same issue that Mr. Brenner was addressing. And I would encourage the city council and actually all interested residents to really pay attention to this issue on Spring Creek. And for those who don't know or don't know exactly what we're talking about, I assume all of us have been on Spring Creek, but there's that very steep driveway that comes down right next to the parking lot, literally right at the trailhead, if anybody doesn't know what we're talking about. What many don't understand, and I think what Mr. Brenner started to address, was that back in 2014 and 2015, this issue was before the Steamboat Springs city council and at that time the applicant made he asked the city to allow access through the steamboat city land to connect that driveway and it was on the february 3rd 2015 steamboat spring city council meeting item two and he made representations that he wanted to build a single approximately 1200 square foot house he was very concerned about the visual impacts so on and so forth it's very clear in black and white I guess, assuming based on those representations, the city allowed him to create that driveway. So fast forward 10 years later now before the route county planning right now is his plan to build eight eight multi-story garage homes right there literally on Spring Creek. And you can say, is it above or is it on Spring Creek? I'm not interested in parsing words, but it's right there. He's asking for setback adjustments across the board from the county because he can't build anything without setbacks. These lots are about, several of them are 25 feet wide by 99 feet long. They're zone agricultural forestry. This will be a huge impact on the Spring Creek Trailhead. He hasn't gone through the process of showing that any of these adjustments are the minimum required adjustments to allow reasonable use of the property. In fact, you might ask, well, if a single home and a consolidation was the reasonable use 10 years ago, why are eight multi-story homes the reasonable use now? And that wasn't addressed in his application. So this is before this public comment is ongoing for the county. I encourage the city of Steamboat Springs as an adjacent landowner to weigh in here. There'll be significant construction impacts The county told me via phone and has told other people via email that obviously with that steep driveway, there'll be construction impacts. The county will have to work for the city to shut down the Spring Creek parking lot, not surprisingly. Nobody can imagine any construction trucks going up that steep driveway with bikes and dogs and children running by. And I'm assuming there'll be significant closures to the trailhead into the parking lot. So this is a really serious issue. I implore everyone to really take notice of this. It's PL 20260040 before the route county planning. Michael Fitz is the individual anyone should contact if they have comments. The first round of comments are due this Friday on the 22nd. Thank you.

Thank you, Craig. Okay, is there anybody else in the audience who'd like to make a public comment? Come on down and state your name, address, and you have three minutes. Kim Haggerty, 74 Park Place.

Hi everybody. My first one is late night buses. This is a big topic right now with like the bus system and paid parking. Please, I urge you to bring back late night buses. It's a short term, December 1st, April 1st. That's all we're asking. Get our employees home safe, get our locals home safe, get our tourists home safe. Please, please, please consider this in your process of figuring out the bus system. My second one is short-term rental. The process, it's still flawed. People are still not getting notified. They're still getting summonsed. They are still getting bullied. by chrissy duran and they are still fighting this system we already did this we did this we did this together and i thought we had a whole process in place i really did i felt good about it and the entire winner went by and i became the spokesperson for people contacting me personally saying what is happening i just want you to be aware that it's still happening so i just i'm putting the ball back in your court Please educate your city staff that this is still not a thing that's like, we agreed, okay, be lenient, give notification, let them have a chance to rectify whatever was wrong. We asked this and you agreed. So please, it's still a thing. Like talk to, I don't know, Dan Foote, talk to somebody and find out how many people this has happened to since, think it was september i think it was september that we decided this this should not happen anymore so i just wanted to bring that attention to everybody because it's been coming to me so i wanted to bring it back to you so thank you thank you kim all right is there anyone else in the audience who would like to make public comment on anything not on the agenda tonight okay is there anyone online please raise your hand

seeing none we will close public comment and i think we're going to try to if we can uh right now we're on to and i know we have a number of presentations and i see many of you in the room yeah can i make a couple quick comments well i'm going to come back to that okay i'm going to come back to it so we may make some changes here so just hang in there for a little bit if you think we're running a little late tonight but i did want to follow up on a couple of these things i think um number one the spring creek development and jen if you wouldn't mind just kind of um alerting everyone to what is our role in the spring creek development um what actions can we possibly take regarding that and what is our our accountability around that

sure um as you guys all are aware and as the commenters discussed this property is in a planning process with route county they have their own zoning codes they have their own sets of regulations we are not a part of that that process the city does not have a role that i can think of off the top of my head We did have a role that one of the commenters was correct in granting a 2015 access easement. The city, you know, if there's a desire to, of course, make individual comments, free to do that.

i can't think of any other regulatory mechanism that um you guys have to um to weigh in on this on this item um i have a follow-up clarification in that i because since i work with the staff member who's who is owns this property i almost feel like i need to recuse my recuse myself on this but i so basically what is you know What ability do I have or not have to really make a comment given that I work closely with that staff member?

There's no decisions that we're making that relate to this property. And so as much as you have... I am being asked for comment. And that's fine. And as Jen says, we don't really have an authority in this one. And so whereas with the Slate Creek property, That's in the county, but they're trying to annex it into the city. We're very involved in that one. This is outside our city boundaries, and it's like discovery land. We don't have a lot of authority. We can make some influence. We can try to do what we can, but I don't think we have any authority one way or the other. May I ask a question?

I feel like there's kind of an implication that there was maybe it was misrepresented in 2015 that what was told to the council at that time, the impact was small. And now and that council made a decision at the time with that. And now the plan is larger. Is there any validity to that concern?

You know, I have not looked at the council packet from 2015. I did have a chance just to take a look at the easement itself. And the easement itself talks about talks about access to the sort of consideration was that they would build a bigger parking turnaround area at the bottom of spring creek road and also provide access to the north so there's nothing in the grant of the easement that talks about any limitation on the number of units so i didn't see that in the actual recorded easement

Do you have any comments about the speculation that the road would be closed? I mean, from the perspective of, are we talking about it's closed to parking? And again, would that be something, I don't know whether that's city property in terms of the road or the parking?

It's county road. There's city property on both sides of it. I imagine that the county would coordinate with our Parks and Rec Department and perhaps city manager has some comments on how that might play out.

Yeah, I mean, I think there would be a coordination probably with some sort of construction site management plan. I mean, the county's not gonna want a county road to be closed. So we would work with them in terms of trying to mitigate any of the impacts. So I don't know the extent. We don't know what the plan is in terms of construction We don't know whether they're going to build one house over the next eight years. They're going to build eight houses in two years. I mean, we just don't know that information. So it's hard to say or speculate kind of what the impact would be. So, and they may not even know at this point, they're just trying to get approval for the allowance to build those units. So, okay. Yes.

No. We did grant sewer access, right?

wastewater we did for up to eight units.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Any other comments on this?

All right.

As a clarification, I just wanted to state that the the reason that the city granted access to the wastewater was that the alternative would have been septic tanks and leach fields, which we did not want immediately adjacent to Spring Creek. So there was some health and safety reasons to grant that allowance. Councillor Dixon, did you have a thought?

I'm sorry. Yeah. Would there be any interest from city council to write a letter to the county about this project?

Saying what?

Yeah. Well, I don't really know yet, but that it is quite problematic. If anyone has used Spring Creek in the wintertime and the thought and even the summertime, the thought of having more traffic up and down that county road,

is definitely a problem any response to counselor dixon's i have no idea what it's going to say or what we would write or what we're support or not support so no not at this point

Or for me, I don't know enough about the project. That's my problem. I can't even visualize what that plot looks like. So I'm not necessarily opposed to it. I just worry about signing something without knowing what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I share that because I've heard, but I haven't actually looked at the plans in terms of understanding what it is.

So... We don't know whether it's one a year over eight years or all at once or whether it's just speculation.

Yeah, I agree. I need to get information on it as well, which I will do. And maybe I bring it back to council.

If you're going to get information on it, Councillor Dixon, and then you can bring it back to council and educate us about this. That would be great.

And what's the Friday deadline? Is it just for the initial comments? Do we know?

I got the impression the comments were

public comment period for the variance requests through the county but we can follow up and find out what those dates are for you if you'd like yeah I think that would be helpful a couple other of the public comments around late night bus service from December through until April 1st again that's something that obviously we can bring to SST and look at what that impact would have in the budget for next year or for in October. The STR situation, I am not aware of a lot of activity in terms of what we experienced a year ago. And if there is, activity or whatnot, it might be good to understand what it is. In other words, are we seeing, I assume we've seen a decrease in a lot of the issues we had over the course of the last year, and maybe it'd be nice just to see what the trends are and what is going on at some point in the near future to just get an update on that. Any other thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think we talked about that, actually, when we adopted the changes in the rules. So maybe it's something that Tom's staff can take a look at. Because I think we talked about reporting back at whatever time would be an appropriate time, just in terms of did what was done and what was adopted in terms of revising the rules actually have the impact that we thought it would?

does that seem to be a sounding board for some of the str issues and i would say that most all the ones that i personally looked into seemed to be well documented by city staff that the reporting was done on time and that they missed deadlines of their own volition and um so i'm not aware of any egregious um or non-communication from city staff

I agree. I think it's time for just a review.

Yeah, just see what the trends are and what's been going on.

I think we had talked earlier about putting it on at our December goals or retreat was to put it on a work session to really look or somewhere we talked about overlooking the whole short-term rental licensing and see how it's done and worked and evaluated.

okay you go with that yes we'll report back with that sort of an activity um so you have an understanding i i also wanted to follow up on the ssd comment that you just made we did just give you the presentation on the winter service and we were telling you that winter service was not going to change If you would like to revisit that, we will need to know that sooner rather than later because it changes our recruiting and hiring practices. So as of now, the direction was to proceed with winter service as it was last year.

Does anybody have interest in looking at further late-night bus service during the winter months as to what that would cost or not?

i think would be beneficial to get the info um so that we could at least make a decision on it if if in the budget process later we could allocate for it especially with the advent of paid parking so i didn't make that decision ahead of time we can't we have to hire we're spending money now that we need to not spend in the future so i would say like as though i think it would be great we can't offer it we don't have enough money if we're keeping the same level of service that means we already have to cut somewhere else

So I was not in the meeting, but I did go back and review the videotape. And what I heard in that meeting was Jonathan Flynn stating that it was less of a staffing issue and more of a operational bus issue, and that we are seven buses down. And so expanding that into a night service was operationally risky. You know, not from a staffing level, but from a bus level that we're, you know, that's why we're ordering seven new buses. Did I hear that correctly?

You did.

You did.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you for bringing.

So we'll close that down. Is that good? Thank you, Tom. All right. It's almost seven o'clock, but before it gets to seven o'clock, I'd like to see if we can do a really quick, any comments from city council on reports or whatnot that they like to make. I mean, mine is not going to be quick.

Can I go? Yes. OK. I have a public apology, and then I have updates. So I would like to take a moment to publicly apologize to former Council President Robin Crossan for the insinuation that she and her role at SSRC somehow compromised the Gondola Transit Center negotiations. I said this last week during our Council meeting and discussing what was going on at GCC. While I do have had concerns and continue to have concerns regarding counsel's interpretation of conflicts of interest, my direct statements about an individual, President Crossan, were unfair, disrespectful, and mischaracterized her as an individual. In my frustration with the process, I lost sight and instead chose to blame a person. My comment did nothing to further my goal, but instead undermined it. And so for what I said, I am deeply sorry. One thing I know for sure is that anyone who serves on council and works the city only does so because they care deeply about our community. Boiling someone, especially one of my peers, down to a single data point isn't right. It's embarrassing for me personally, and it's not the kind of behavior and leadership I want to model as a member of council. I would like to highlight President Crossan. During her tenure, she led the charge on Brown Ranch. She spearheaded regulation of STRs, found dedicated funding for affordable housing, and did something I find absolutely impossible, which is maintaining an amicable relationship with the resort. I admire these accomplishments. I'd like to thank her and the rest of the counselors at that time for doing so much for our community in so little time. While we all make mistakes and say things we regret, few of us have the privilege of sitting as a leader in front of a mic while we make that mistake. So once again, I would like to sincerely apologize directly to Robin and the rest of the community for pointing fingers and blaming individuals instead of bringing us together to work in the best interest of Steamboat. I felt it was very important to say that.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you. Now onto my two updates. One, I ran into Kathy Cannell at the dog park, and she said that she had been meaning to come. She felt like it was important for council to know what Steamboat Digs Dogs does for the community. And so I would like to get a pulse from council about working with her to come for a quick community report just to fill us in on what Steamboat Digs Dogs does. And the second thing, this was raised to me, I already articulated, I don't think there's much appetite on council, but I feel obligated to raise it, was the discussion around the up to 9% on the STR tax level and that the original conversation of that up to was that it was going to be flexed depending on what was going on economically. are in the economy and we are seeing a tough season. And so is that a conversation that we should be having now about adjusting it down to lower the total lodging rate to try to encourage additional bookings? So I'm raising that as well to council to get a pulse. Those are my two updates. Well, and we did cow feed with council, but I'll let someone else talk about that.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Swintek. Any other reports?

Yeah, I have a quick report on the RTA. So the RTA decided that we're going to move forward with an RFQ for a hiring firm for executive director. We expect that to be posted on bid.com and this Friday. And we'll also reach out to other search firms that we've worked with in the past to make sure that they're aware of this. But we feel that we do need additional assistance. And so we are going to look for a search firm for that. And then, in addition, my understanding is, well, we did get the, as we said before, the $500,000 from Ski Corp for the first payment in support of the RTA. That's in the bank, and we're paying back funds, and so it's my understanding that we have paid back of the city of Seymour Springs the full money that they've loaned us for our legal services, and so... uh i guess maybe a question to kim has you know to confirm that uh all payments have been or i don't know who where that's going going into whether it's it's in the supplemental we'll talk about it today oh it is okay all right um so that's it okay thank you others yes i had two announcements um one you know i think council has been talking about or started talking about last fall kind of the issue of volume based pricing or kind of pay as you throw

the concept of paying, you know, having adjustable rates depending upon kind of your trash size. So I just wanted to make sure, mostly for anybody that's listening, that the Western Resilience Center is having a community, their community meeting tomorrow. I think it's at like one o'clock, right? And Alicia Archibald is going to be talking about kind of what's being considered as well as I think Jen Schenk from the High Country Conservation Center will also be talking about the experience over in Summit County. So if there's anybody else, anybody out there that wants to learn about pay as you throw, volume-based pricing, this is your opportunity. The second thing I wanted to talk about is the post office and had a conversation, had a call from Julie Suter, who works with Congressman Neguse, really just kind of checking in in terms of what we're seeing in Steamboat and whether we think, you know, particularly in kind of the old town areas or areas where We don't have home delivery if people's services, you know, is getting better. And you all may remember that within the last year we did get the postmaster to agree to not charge anybody for a P.O. box who doesn't have home delivery. I think there may this issue is kind of coming back up. really from the perspective that we have a postmaster now who really wants to move forward with cluster boxes, which again, we have cluster boxes in a lot of places in our community, but specifically not a lot of them in Old Town. So there may be a cluster box coming to you soon. So if there's any interest or questions, again, this will take coordination between, I think, the city as well as between the Postmaster. But it has the benefit of not only better service, but also if we can get any cars off of that intersection at 3rd and Lincoln, that would be a huge benefit as well. So if anybody has any questions or you hear from anybody about comments or thoughts, send them my way. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention.

Great. Super. Any other council reports? Councilor Dixon, do you have anything to share tonight?

I do not.

Okay.

We have one on water teams meeting. Yes. We touched on the adoption of the new landscaping codes that also consider the new fire mitigation codes as well as city code updates, which we visited after that meeting. We touched on our drought conditions and the fact that we are under stage two drought restrictions now. um and this may and most likely will change later in the season to stage three uh we discussed best practices to disseminate information about these restrictions and how to keep it front and center one way is put links on the home page of the website that would just direct people to those restrictions even on watering days just making it super easy maybe on other landing pages on the website they were going to look into that but And then also, um, who is under those restrictions if you have a business that involves power washing or cleaning driveways, or that uses water. Um, so that people that have those jobs understand what their restrictions are, which, which are that does not restrict their businesses, but just so they can easily find that information on the website. Um, and keep in front of center also with fire restrictions, fire bands, um, just adding that in again. So it's it'll be one of those big queues that comes to, um, people coming to the pages without having to look through the departments and everything. If there's front and center links. um we touched on what stage three restrictions might look like and it doesn't seem like there's a real road map for stage three um and that some of them may be dictated by the state um and and then also maybe superseded with stricter restrictions by the city but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it um and that was basically a wrap up on that

Okay, thank you, Councillor Barnes. A couple of quick things. The RFP with the Housing Authority is out for the search firms to help us select a new ED. Those should be back in a couple of weeks and we'll make a selection in June. And then it's about a 12 to 13 week process after that. So that's where that stands. The other thing I'll just give you is a brief update on the winter parking program. We met with Ski Corps on May 18th. which was yesterday. SSRC's winter parking program is being implemented this upcoming ski season and the city and SSRC continue to work on mitigation strategies. And we're gathering and analyzing additional data so that we can make better, more informed decisions. This includes such things as quantifying the number of skiers coming from the south as well as those out west of town to see how we might provide free parking options and whether people will be interested in using them. For example, we have confirmed that there are around 50 cars that come from the south each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We need to further engage the community into understanding their level and interest for example of parking at haymaker and taking a shuttle directly to the gtc not to the meadows parking lot how often would the shuttle need to run and at what cost could then be calculated but we need to understand the level of interest we're also exploring community engagement strategies which will provide information on local preferred options to get to the ski mountain for example what percentage of skiers would carpool park at a downtown lot with SST service to the mountain or even pay for parking at the Meadows parking lot? The answers to these questions would lead us to various different scenarios. We're also getting more information through surveys from HOAs that's going on right now on what enforcement strategies make the most sense. For example, is signage enough or do we need to have video monitoring or some combination of these things? we continue to meet to finalize our mitigation strategies our next meeting is june 1st and we just keep moving this ball forward and we'll let you know after each meeting which we try to hold on monday so we can give you an update the next day

It reminds me about Coffee with Council. This topic took up about half the time, would you say, about the paid parking and the implications. One of the concerns was if we're pushing parking to Haymaker, what is the impact on Nordic skiers, people who buy a pass at Haymaker? Are they able to park there and use their passes and access Nordic skiing? And then... I would look to the other counselors to validate what I'm about to say, but I feel like it was a resounding opinion in the room that people were pretty frustrated. And there was a big discussion about why are we not pursuing a lift tax was the conversation. Feeling like the city was being taken advantage of, worries about the impacts on other businesses and parking elsewhere, a lot of the things that we've raised. There was a discussion between council members of the reason of why and why not to pursue the lift tax and each individual counselor discussed it. And, oh, and the other three things that were discussed. One, we didn't know this, tobacco use in teens is monstrous and a lot of vapes that are used, the majority of them are not FDA approved. The teen, a lot of them actually want to get off, like quit it, but find it impossible. So there is a, what was it, route who- tobacco-free yeah tobacco-free Coalition of route yeah they came and spoke I thought it was very interesting maybe we'll get some more updates from them uh sore was there which is seniors of around route serving older route people an older What used to be... Sorry. Apologies, Sor. We talked about what they offer to the community as well, and they had spoken about us purchasing a Campbell property and just explaining they're increasing their services. They want to increase its act capacity. They want to increase how often they're offering lunch. And having a dedicated space for them rather than just sharing a community space would be really valuable so they can increase their offering. There's a lot of things like walk and move. It just makes it difficult for them to increase what they do.

And to add on to that, one thing that I learned from them is I didn't realize that SOAR was actually the organization that was doing Meals on Wheels. So when they're talking about the capacity that they need and the growing needs for a permanent space, it's directly related to the fact that they're running Wheels on Wheels and needs a dedicated cooking area and distribution. Well, and they serve lunch too, both of those things. Yeah.

Yeah. And then the last thing was just around the commuter rail, talking about the Campbell property purchase and saying, maybe we could purchase the far end of the Union Pacific lot and build a car bridge across the way and make it this great big transit oriented development. So those were the updates that caught you.

one thing i'd add on for the tobacco coalition is i asked the gal and i apologize to forget her name but to please reach out to city to maybe get a time to come present one of the hardest things is that it's regulated by the state and not by locals as far as i understand but we do have the ability to pull a sales tax license for violators that are selling minors illegal vape and they said one of the biggest problems is that there's a lot of black market vape that we're not even aware that they're selling and that there is no regulation as to what is in those products and these folks are selling it i think we have 22 within five miles of of um

of the schools so just a a big concern to sort of figure out a way that the city might be able to help yeah and there's there's a movement forward on this issue in fact counselor pacino went to the high school the other day and you met on that and in fact we've analyzed for example the fines that we give for selling to underage i think our fines is something like 100 to 200 dollars where many other communities are well over a thousand dollars other communities have also um

eliminated flavored tobacco and they don't sell that anymore we still do so i think we have a lot of things we can do and and that is moving forward i don't know if you have anything to to add from that school outing or not no thank you that you just hit the nail on the head that there's a lot of um there's a lot of product being sold at the convenience stores and gas stations that are not in their initial product it's a natural product but when you they the synergy between that and kratom and some of these other things can turn deadly And yet, they're selling them at a store. You can just go buy stuff. And a kid could overdose on what they buy at the grocery store. And they're not allowed to buy it until they're 18. But there's the problem is that the fines are so low. And so regulatory-wise, we have the ability to kind of up the fines and do some other things. But this group that's been doing the roundabout with the Coughing Council and this with schools is trying to get a tobacco-free kind of awareness to what we can do as legislators.

And I would just clarify, I think Dan has said that we as a council could ban flavored- Flavored tobacco. Flavored tobacco.

And increase the fines. We can do both those things, so. Okay, I think that's it for council reports, but I do wanna come back to you on the two things you're requesting from council. One was on Steamboat Dig's dogs and to whether or not you suggested a community report or a presentation update. How does the rest of council feel about that? You okay, up or down? Okay. That's a majority. All right. Amy?

That's fine.

Okay. All right. And the other thing is about this potentially reducing the SDR tax from 9% to 7% or something for a short period of time just to give a break to the lodging community. And i don't know how everybody else feels about this but you know a two percent break which goes to isn't gonna make much of a difference to the tourist who's coming to town i don't think um and that's really who it's going to um and my other concern is that the str tax we're going to need every cent we have for all of the affordable housing projects that we have going so i personally um have some problems with that but i don't know how the rest of council feels i'm not in favor of that

I concur with your assessment, President Muntean.

I would just ask, can we lump this in with that goal setting conversation of assessing STR? The up to just provides a lot of lack of clarity. I feel like you don't want to, I mean, can we at least discuss it at our goal setting? You don't even want to discuss it.

Which goal setting meeting are you talking about? December. December at the retreat?

Yeah. No, the December one, like when we go over our annual stuff. I'll write it down.

Okay.

We can, we can determine at least just decide if we want to, we can have, we could talk about priorities.

Okay. It's 10 after seven. We do need to take a quick break. So we'll take a quick 10 minute break. Thank you all who've patiently waiting out there because I know we have a number of presentations and whatnot. So we'll get to you shortly.

Thank you.

10 minutes.

They were so bad when I was in high school.

I remember being in college.

This was a long time ago.

I had to play around a little bit. My driver's license. But I still used it. That was terrible. No, not you. You two pairs suck, buddy.

i didn't mean to come out that way pretty seven cut the umbilical cord pretty well hey gang we're gonna get back together in about one minute please one minute two more yeah let's do it team seven are we gonna do a gender review we're gonna go through the process or jump ahead we're moving around okay

let's see who are we waiting on here mr eight barnes that's it we're all here we're all here council of dixon okay uh we're gonna move around the agenda a little bit here and we're gonna move to community reports at this time and items on the community reports um may be commented on the same manner as the consent calendar and public hearing items Written community comments are also encouraged and accepted by email on any topic to city council at steamboat springs dot net. So up first in our community reports is first impressions of route Connie presentation on the early childhood strategic investment plan. So who wants to come on up Kyle and Meg?

to share um one clarifying question the slides submitted do the slides submitted do we run those or how's that happening you do if you have do you have them on your computer i do yeah yeah it's best to join the the city council zoom link and then just share your screen and josh is coming out to help you

Josh, go. Go, Josh. Standing by.

Let's start again. Well, it's just a swirling loading screen of doom. Okay, here we go. Yay.

Thank you, Josh.

Same ones from BCC? No. Okay. They're similar.

Hopefully we'll get there.

I would just go. OK. So thank you. So we had the opportunity.

Can you just give us your name and what organization you represent and that little record?

Kyle Blakely, Avent Strategies and we are I am with my wife, we are consultants working with first impressions on the effort to. Kyle Blakely, educate the Community, the county. Kyle Blakely, about the early childhood education crisis in rock county. And we're here tonight to, as you said, talk about the strategic investment plan, kind of give you an update on where we've been in the process and where we're headed. We did have an opportunity to speak with all of you recently about this, just to give you kind of some background so that maybe tonight we'll kind of go through. You might see some things you've seen before. We'll go through those somewhat quickly. in order to then maybe open up the discussion and let you ask some questions and go. Great. So again, just to kind of the first couple of slides or first slide, I think is a little bit of a recap of some of what we explained. Just because Route Thrive by Five is a fairly new entity, um it is a coalition of uh folks in the community and around the county uh that are committed to this issue and helping solve this issue and find a sustainable funding solution and so you can kind of see how obviously first impressions is Within Route County, Thrive by Five is connected to First Impressions, but has a little bit broader scope in terms of the folks involved. We have an executive committee of about five people, and then an advisory committee of about 15 people who are working on this right now. Again, the strategic investment plan goes into a lot of detail about the crisis, but one of the primary things is the lack of infant and toddler care in Route County. And right now for every one slot that's available in infant and toddler care, there's seven infants that are competing for those spots. And so obviously that then has an impact on the local economy. And in terms of parents missing work, people leaving the workforce, people leaving the county, in all, it's about a $10 million a year economic impact throughout the county. The other thing that is a real issue related to this is just the cost of care, what it costs to provide it and what it's costing families to access it. And there is a gap there that is part of the problem. The entire early childhood education market, I guess, I don't even know if that's a fair word, it's a broken model right now because it's impossible to charge enough to cover the costs of the care and still get people to be able to afford that. So right now, households are spending 25 to 30% of their income in Rock County. on childcare, the national benchmark is 7%. Our goal through the strategic investment plan is 14%. Still higher than national benchmark, but trying to get it down. So the cost gap, you've got 15 to $22,000 that parents are actually paying for the care but it costs between 25 and 35 000 per child to provide the care so there are those gaps and right now the providers are relying on grants and philanthropy to try and fill those gaps but again it's it's just not a sustainable model so the solution the strategic investment plan actually do you want to talk about this a little bit

Meg Franges, Executive Director, First Impressions, Rock County. So the strategic investment plan, this has been a project we've been working on for multiple years now. It's kind of the culmination of everything that we have done in terms of a needs assessment, some cost modeling, and then some work into solutions. so looking at the entire system in route county it would be about 17.5 million dollars to fully fund an a high quality early childhood system for all families that want to access it Right now we have some of that covered, as you could see on the previous slide through tuition and through grants and subsidies from the state and from some local dollars, but where we have a gap is 8.5 million annually. And where that would need to go would be into three buckets. The first one being capacity. Capacity is the physical space to provide care. This is what we're continuing to see go away, whether it's family childcare homes, Or it's actual childcare centers closing their doors or reducing the space that they in the slots that they can offer this is where we need to build this back up. And then the second would be access access in terms of in terms of affordability getting families closer to 7% of their income, but also access in terms of the times that families need to work. We have a pretty big service industry here in our community, being a rural resort community, and we do not have any non-traditional care hours. So this would be some of the shift work from four to 10 or on the weekends. And this really wouldn't need to be built. This is something we could do with pilot programs, trying to access the already licensed childcare space that we have in our community, thinking about just, you know, individuals who work in restaurants needing to make their money on a Saturday. We have a lot of families that work that way that both parents are in the service industry. So the third bucket would be our people. And this is people in two senses, one being the workforce, the teachers, but people are also the children. Those are ultimately who's going to benefit from the strategic investment plan. So if we can invest dollars into livable wages for teachers, currently our early childhood professionals, almost 50% of them have second jobs. They're making about $3 less an hour than what would be considered a livable wage. If we could get them to see a career path in this, we could reduce some of the burnout and turnover, and we could keep really, really qualified individuals in this field, which in turn would have better outcomes for our children.

A few other communities around the state have started to solve this problem with public funding. Roaring Fork Valley, Aspen, from Aspen to Glenwood Springs passed a quarter of a cent sales tax last November. It'll generate about $10 million a year. Eagle County has committed $8 million a year from their lodging tax to help solve this. San Miguel County has a tax, have for several years to help fund this. And Larimer County, again, different audience. I mean, different scenario, really. But another quarter of a cent sales tax last November, and it'll generate $28 million. But you've got a lot of other places around the state that are also Grand County has public funding going toward this. Summit County has public funding going toward this. I think La Plata County. So a lot of them had. So the flip side of this, I realized there's a lot of different things to consider relative to this. At some point, this becomes a competitive issue from community standpoint with other resort communities and other ski towns that are solving this problem. It will have an impact. Again, Routt County has lost more residents 25 to 44 years old than almost any other county in Colorado over the last few years. And this past year, from what I've seen, Routt County actually had a population drop this last year, which I think is for the first time. Overall, not just 25 to 44, but an overall population drop. which several areas of Colorado have seen partly because of overall affordability of which early childcare is a big piece of that. So we're off on a 12 month public education campaign. We've done polling. We saw some real positive aspects from the polling, but not what we consider to be a slam dunk to go to the poll right now, go to the ballot right now. So we're gonna do this education campaign. We've redeveloped the website. We're gonna have the social media campaign. We've started a coalition building effort. In the first month, we've already made presentations to over 20 organizations here in the county. We're gonna be hosting public meetings. We're gonna be developing community events. Hopefully this fall with the help of some statewide funders, a significant, event here in Routt County, here probably in Steamboat. Colorado Mountain College is offered to host it. Gary Community Ventures and Move Colorado Forward have offered to partner with us to bring in speakers and panels to really talk about this issue and bring in people from the western part of the state. We've been developing collateral materials. We're working on an email newsletter, developing relationships with reporters so that when they report on this issue, that it actually has an impact. And starting in January of this year, before we get to our next round of polling, we're actually going to almost treat this like a political campaign and start to have outreach with voters who are likely to vote. uh at the ballot uh as early as next year like november of 2027 people who are likely to vote on that we're going to be actively targeting those individuals for uh public education

And I will note on this too, we're actually hosting a community event next week on Thursday at Little Toots. And this is just for anyone with young children who wants to come and play and learn about the Thrive by Five. Anyone who has... experience this so parents of young children or even older children that want to come we're going to be doing just some pizza and just a fun play night so hopefully it'll be sunny and nice just putting that out there

And these are the organizations so far that have committed to be champions for this cause. The bottom level there, the bottom row, Buell Foundation and Gary are state organizations and Children's Funding Project is a national organization that has been helping us with this effort so far. Again, A year from now when we come to you, I say I hope there's 12, 20 slides of logos there, people in the community that are behind this. um obviously this is uh i i we would love to have the the city to be able to say yes we're on board as supporters of this effort um that we could list you with our others use the website um any avenues that you have or opportunities that you have for us to communicate with residents about this issue we'd love that opportunity but also as individuals which is the next slide. Oh, sorry. And you can sign up at Route Thrive by Five to be a supporter and continue to get information. Please connect us to people that you know who've gone through this. We're starting a series of videos. We're shooting six of them this week with individuals from around the county that are affected by this. We're going to be on social media if you could follow and engage with that. Talk to your friends and neighbors if you'd host a coffee for us. We'd love that too, to bring in your neighbors, family, friends, anything just to help us really start to John Potter, put together and develop the grassroots piece of this, we feel like we've done a good job so far of grass tops we really want to make this a grassroots effort at this point, and so any help that you guys might be able to give us that would be greatly appreciated.

John Potter, So thank you. Hal Hallstein, Well, thank you. Hal Hallstein, yeah and Meg for the presentation, what questions does Council have.

Well, first of all, I applaud you guys for this effort of outreach. You're doing it differently than others have in the past. They reached out to me. We met, we talked and got this presentation even beforehand. It's just so that we can have an open dialogue and not just 15 minutes or three minutes so i think that's a big start um i i'm not sure where we go today with supporting that as a city of steamboat i think you're going to get a lot of support from all of us right now but the way you're approaching this is um i think very uh interesting and i like because on the back end of this we know that this if you were here you were here earlier in the conversation with the ballot language the ballot talk with the county commissioners about what is coming up down the horizon uh asking for a lot of taxing mechanisms and property taxes and things like that so um getting in front of this right now you may find that you know maybe there's other ways of getting eight million dollars that work to the benefit of the whole community so i'm curious to see your engagement be familiar with your face over the next year and see how we work together on this that's cool right i think you're doing a good job

I have a question for you on, because, you know, I've talked to you about, for example, the St. Louis project over there in Frayser. And for those who don't know or in the audience, you know, they're building affordable housing and on one floor of one building, it's a childcare center that can handle up to 75 people. And then there's apartments on top of that, three or four stories. But so when we start thinking about, okay, let's always keep childcare in mind when we're building housing, new developments or affordable housing developments or whatever and then i've talked to some people who say well what we really need to do is get more individuals in their home to open child care facilities because that's dropped to what two or three or some really four yeah so that's kind of disappeared and and maybe it's because when people did it their kids grew up and now they haven't been replaced but i i guess the question is i know you're going to say well we got to do both but but where should the real priority be because obviously if you put in 75 units somewhere that's 75 or 75 kids who could go to, that's a lot different than trying to find 75 home or let's say 20 homes or whatever it is. So I'm just trying to understand there, how do you balance that out? Because it doesn't appear that the home environment with only four from 26 is really kind of slid off the map a little bit.

Well, I think that both of those models have very unique challenges. With a center-based model, Building it is step one, and it's incredibly important to have that capital build. But the struggle for infant toddler care in a center-based model is the ongoing subsidy that that center would require year after year. I do believe in the St. Louis project, they have a more holistic age group that they're serving where a preschool capacity could maybe offset the cost of the infant toddler care. where our community does not need any more preschool. We need to preserve the preschool we have and fix our infant toddler so that we can continue to see enrollment in our preschools. So I think with a center-based model, it's that ongoing subsidy because you can only have five infants in a room. And so it becomes very expensive when you're just doing infant toddler. For a home-based care, I think it's just a shift in the types of homes that young families are accessing. It's a lot. more difficult to provide a family child care home in a two-bedroom smaller unit. I know we don't all get to have the white picket fence dream anymore, and I think a lot of us are okay with that in terms of younger families, but thinking about having a family child care home, the 26 we had back in the day were homes. with yards. It made sense. It was workable. And so it's a licensing barrier. But again, it's that capacity. It would have to be a home that could make it work because you have to also think about the health and well-being of that person who's going to be the owner operator. If they're living on top of their work, is that what's best for kids? Is that what's best for them? I don't know. So I think each has very unique challenges. Thank you.

so oh sorry did you go ahead okay um i like to put you know you talked about only one of seven you know infants you know actually you can find space uh to put that in numbers i think you told me that's it's around 270 you know um infants in our valley so that's a it's a pretty big number and then if you look at st louis project which you walk in and you say this is a huge space and which is you know we are getting excited but that's 75 spots for out of the 270 so it is a know i recognize that it is a a big problem so um don't have any solutions here i know that you know we are looking at you know that as like the camel project and adding child care there um as as certainly something that the city is committed to and you know for so that's one piece of the pie yeah that's great yes

terms of kind of thinking about what you just said from the perspective of we know that we have the the most immediate need right is that um infant right to toddler and the fact that we are set on that older group do we have the opportunity or willingness to course correct right i mean it seems like right what what we understand to be the best model right is that you have the zero to four in the sense of right the ability to cover the cost

move the you know subsidize potentially the infant care can we work our way out of that do you think yeah so i i think we've had some discussions about this and you know i think there was a time when the system was stabilized um where we had more infant toddler capacity in our case it was family child care homes and children would age into preschool and preschool was good um currently all of our preschools do have availability we have a surplus of preschool spots because we don't have infant toddler care so the idea of maybe taking a preschool classroom and flipping it into an infant room maybe, but would that just flip this problem down the road? It's also costly to do something like that because licensing requirements for an infant room are very different than they are for a preschool room. And so it's definitely something that comes up, but- It would still need to be subsidized. It would still have to have that ongoing subsidy. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like I don't know if that would be the right solution for now because we're going to need that preschool in three years when those babies are now three.

You know, it's interesting. After I met with you guys and hearing about it now, it just came to my mind was wouldn't it be good? Wouldn't it be good if we had, in part of your system going through this, a way that the teachers – free housing, great, we had people wanting to be childcare teachers. And so part of your subsidy as you're going through this and you're looking through that, I think that the community could get around, especially with building some projects that we have at the Campbell property and such, we already knew that we were gonna have some teacher housing above a childcare facility. but see how motivated that could be by giving free housing in the city of Steamboat Springs to any infant, toddler, school teacher, or preschool. And I mean, we have to be a little bit outside the box than the traditional, because it's just, we're never gonna meet that need. And we have an extremely generous community. And if we frame this right over the next 12 months, we could be very successful in some areas. And this is one that I think that if we can find a way to make it to where people are applying for a position that we can only take seven because you've got 15 people applying for a caregiver position. What would it take to get to that point? And so, I mean, to me, I was trying to think about it outside of just providing a facility because I think I was talking to someone earlier this week. We can build a facility. All day and Sunday, and I don't think we have a problem for the infrastructure. I know you have some, but there's options. What there aren't options for is the school teachers to be able to have a child care facility in this town. And how do we get that to be so attractive that it just makes it work for them? And part of that's going to be, I think, your outreach with public. uh and some generous donors in this town that says we're going to help sponsor seven teachers in perpetuity and here's a fund they put just for that you know there's a lot of creative things i know with tim woganet in the uh community foundation there may be something that can happen with some vendors uh people that will be willing to do that but it's just an outside the box kind of idea how do we make it to where we have people waiting in line to be a teacher for infant care wow that would be a great solution

You got my support. Amy has a hand raised. Oh, Amy. Hi, Meg. Sorry I'm not there in person.

It's okay.

What I am hearing is that The biggest issue is operating expenses year over year. So yes, capital is one thing. Finding providers is another. But those two don't matter unless you have operating subsidized year over year over year. I just want to make sure we're all clear.

Yes, you're hearing that correctly. Yes.

And this is in all 50 states. This is not just unique to Colorado or Routt County or whatever. This problem is in all 50 states. There isn't affordable childcare in one state.

And I think that's why we're just continuing to see it crumble. We're losing family child care homes. We're losing child care providers. Little lambs, young tracks, whatever the reasons may be, doors are closing and they're not opening. This is not an attractive business model for someone to, I want to start a small business. It doesn't work that way anymore. I think maybe there was a time that it did. I don't know what time that was, but that's the way that it's been operating. It's like a free market system that the market can't handle it anymore.

Yeah. Yes.

So I mentioned this to you last time when we met, that I have a neighbor a couple of doors down from me who actually had an in-home childcare and was one of the people who backed out. She's still doing the lower down level, like you used to have a couple, yeah. And the reason is, is because of all the code and regulations that she just could no longer keep up with. um is there most of these are coming from the government u.s fed and state level but is there anything that we could do at the city level to ease that portion um to open it up because if a data point of one of saying, I just cannot keep up with all the regulations. And if you came and she was saying, if I came in new, I now would have to have sprinkler systems in my house. And so it's even more difficult now. So I guess the question is, is there anything from the city level that we could do to help that?

Yeah, this is such a complex question and thank you for bringing it up. If something comes up, you can count on me to let you know. But right now, I think, to your point, I would hope that she has sprinkler systems because a lot of these licensing requirements are there to keep kids safe, and there's a reason for them. So I understand that it is a heavy lift for our home child care providers, and First Impressions our staff pamela she's incredible she has an entire road map to licensing and we can hold anybody's hand who wants to become a licensed family child care provider we have grants that you can access pretty much tomorrow but i think what grants cannot get you is time and that's where our providers are struggling when you're a single provider in your own home You're caring for kids five days a week. You don't have a lot of time. So we've tried to put in work to this, but we're still seeing that providers are not accessing the roadmap. And it's almost like, well, it's just easier to not, but that's not keeping kids safe. So it's a tough one for me because I see why the rules and regs are there. And when I find one that we can fix, trust me, I will tell you. But to that point, we have a home provider in Steamboat. She's a level five on Colorado Shines. Her name is Lena Wingard. That's the highest quality you can be. She does it because she offers care three days a week and does admin on the other two days of the week. So she's got a system set up for herself where she's full all the time, she's high quality, and she's made it work. You just, I think that's where maybe some small business coaching, how can we help them set hours or reserve time or provide a substitute to give them admin time? So we're still working on that.

Other questions? It amazes me that if you're spending 30, 40% of your income on housing and another 20 to 30 on childcare, how anybody has any kids. I mean, seriously.

Well, that's the birth rates down. I mean, all across the country, and that's a big part of it is just overall affordability.

Okay. Any other thoughts from anyone? Well, thank you so much. I would like to draw everybody's attention to it, because I don't want to just ignore what you said. What we need from you is... Yeah, we'll get to that. Your support, your logo, and your communicate with your residents. So I just throw that out there for everyone. If anybody has any thoughts or comments on that.

Yes. In my opinion, I'm on board to use our logo and have our support.

May I ask a quick question? Sure. So what is that for our, so I support this 100%. I support you and all the work you're doing. For our support logo, I know you're still looking into what a potential ballot question would look like. And so is our support saying going to be assumed that we then support any ballot question you all come up with?

Right now, the support is for the cause and the public education and the pursuit of a sustainable funding solution. Obviously, at some point in the future, if a ballot issue came about, if it was a countywide ballot issue, The commissioners would have to refer that. If it was a city, you guys would have to refer that. So you would have another opportunity to say, we disagree with the solution you've found. But again, for this to be successful, whatever we do, we really do, it needs to be something you guys support. So I'm hoping that that support would continue. But right now, it's just letting the residents know that this issue is important and we're pursuing a solution. OK.

So to be more, I think we've talked about this, but to be more explicit, um the specific conversation around the str um dollar so that's not that won't be coming up and then people hearing you talk about it and then seeing the city supports it and thinking that we support a the short-term rental tax reallocation yeah okay um

I mean, I don't think that we're here asking for a referral for that. So it wouldn't at this point be for the STR. I mean, I think our charge was to do some public research and ask the questions. We had an incredible gift to work with the Buell Foundation and Gary Community Ventures. to do some really preliminary polling that we're now gonna use as baseline data for this. So, I mean, we did poll that and that's information for you all to discuss with yourselves and do with it what you want.

I mean, I don't know. Yeah. I think that, yeah. I mean, I guess maybe just to follow up on Councillor Dixon's point and no surprise, right? I mean, we, again, right? Absolutely support the initiative, support the cause. So, you know, you guys have done a tremendous amount of research and anybody who hasn't had the opportunity, definitely take a look at the documentation of the Thrive by Five. Is that right? right, in terms of just the information, the impact, you know, all of that. I mean, there's a lot of critical information in there. And so certainly, you know, from my perspective, absolutely support the education, support the cause, support the need. We just, to the extent that, again, don't want to mislead anyone in terms of if the city's logo, my concern would be if the city's logo is on it. And once you start talking about particular funding mechanisms, that again has to come back to council for a discussion. So I don't know how we draw that bright line would be my question to you. So in terms of how we would, you know, just from a city perspective, if we were to put our logo on this, you know, how do we draw that line that says,

know whether you've got a big old asterisk on it that says you know well what we you know and maybe that's the case right the city supports the initiative the city city supports that we understand the need well but we we reserve our right to in some of the community groups with some of the community groups that we've talked to so far the issue of the polling has come up and we've explained to them what we polled but that str is not an option so it So from that standpoint, I think they understand that we researched that stuff, but they know that you guys aren't planning on doing that.

i think it's even just to be clear just to clarify i think it's broader than that right i mean in terms of if you were to come back and ask for a sales tax i mean that's something that would have to come back to council for a decision in terms of whether you know whether we would weigh in or support it so that's what i'm just looking for we're signing up to have that conversation i mean that's what the ask is is we are committing to having that conversation no matter the funding source we will have that conversation we still i agree but i think once our logo goes on something

i would say i do think we need an asterisk yeah i'm going to say that we're fully supportive of community engagement and broadening the conversation but that our logo is not put on any advertising material that mentions a ballot initiative until it's brought back here absolutely yeah i i hear that we are on an education

path of education right now is so it's acknowledging and understanding the problem that we as long as we have your assurance that this has nothing to do with a funding mechanism whatsoever whatever that is

you have that assurance.

And I think in that vein, clearly we're gonna be part of the conversation with them. So Meg, first impressions, we've been supporting you for many, many years. We're not gonna stop supporting you. And this is a avenue of which we wanna participate in. How do we help you guys get sustainable funding? Just like we look at that for our own city governance. and so it's always a challenge with the the needs of the services of the community but this one is definitely high on our list because we've talked about child care for many times many years that i've been on council this is the first time meg that you guys have actually got a plan and your community outreach in the next 18 months is going to be really dramatic And so I think that with that, once we start seeing community support, it's going to make our job a lot easier helping you find that funding mechanism. Don't know what that is, but we're going to have to lean on the community to help us to find that, as will you.

Yeah. Okay, let's see.

I don't know. We'll need your support.

Amen. And it could be a solution even broader than just your organization. so thinking creatively let's just see if there's any uh public comment on this is there anybody in the audience who would like to make a public comment please come down see no one is there anybody online raise your hand we'll close public comment

I have one more question, because I like to size things up. Like, okay, we're 270 short. You also said there were 8.5 million, you know, is needed to meet the funding models of getting down to 14% of your income. know you have the number what for the for a quarter quarter percent uh tax sales tax for the county what does that number bring you in it's about half it's a little less than half this is the county not the city the county it also pulled a two mil property tax and it was closer to four million a quarter cent sales tax was a little less than okay thank you okay well thank you so much

Thank you guys coming tonight.

Thanks for your time. Okay. All right. Next on our agenda is search and rescue update. Who do we have coming down tonight? We have a looks like the entire search and rescue team is coming to search and rescue party.

Right. We found them. We found them. They found us.

Please introduce your team or have the team introduce themselves. That would be great.

Good evening, folks. My name is Bobby Carlton. I am the team president for Route County Search and Rescue.

Dan Emmert, treasurer.

John Williams, equipment director.

And Harry Sandler, training lead. And before we get going, we just need to be able to share our screen for the slides.

And you guys all get paid really, really well with search engine, right?

Big bucks.

Here comes Josh to the rescue. You're volunteers. I want everybody in the community to know who is up on our podium. Thank you guys tremendously. Seriously, you guys save lives.

A little quick while we're getting going, who here recreates in the back country? Anybody?

You got some hands?

Hi, Amy. Maybe we'll see you out there. Hopefully not.

No. Right, exactly. The goal is not to, right? But we feel better knowing that you're there.

Things happen. Twisting an ankle, it can happen. Right. We'll be there to get you out.

There we go.

oh my god it worked how about this sports fans all right all right next slide all right so a little bit about rap county search and rescue we started in 1968 with a bunch of folks who got together help each other get their snowmobiles unstuck in the back country and that turned into something a little bit bigger than that so we've been doing this for quite some time um we're of course a 501c3 non-profit we work under the jurisdiction of the rock county sheriff's office um we you know the best way to call us is 9-1-1 because dispatch puts us out there um we co-own the building at 9 11 yampa street uh with uh steamboat springs area fire protection district and we co-habitate the building with steamboat fire and rescue um we cover an area that is pretty expansive i'm around county's what 24 100 square miles we also help neighboring counties Rio Blanco and Garfield County. There's certain areas of the flat top that we can get to a lot quicker than they can. So we have a mutual agreement with them that will be there for them. Also up on a rabbit ears, we have Jackson and ground County. So all encompass is about 3000 square miles. It's bigger than a couple of us states. So we cover quite a bit, quite an area.

All right. So backcountry search and rescue expertise. Hopefully we can get you to the table. So Routt County SAR brings many specialized skills you need to personally find your HBCUs in the county. This includes backcountry access, technical ropes rescue, safe route finding, we can talk about that more later, wilderness medical skills, patient packaging, oh, excuse me.

Yep, there you go.

And transport, which is one of our biggest things. Due to the geography of Routt County, our operations are one of the more motorized in the state, it turns out. In addition to our team, Routt County SAR can also quickly mobilize specialized local, state, and federal SAR resources, such as dog teams, SAR aircraft, and access to additional statewide personnel. Routt County SAR also works with Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue in support of our joint backcountry medic program. The value of volunteer service. If you take a look at the numbers on the slide, from a personnel perspective, the numbers above equal to three full-time paid employees. In actuality, Routt County SAR fields 35 all-volunteer rescuers that are trained, mission ready, and on call 24 by 7 by 365 days a year. Community education focusing on backcountry safety is also part of our mission.

Incident types.

You want to stay close to that microphone. Try to stay close to the microphone.

I love to walk around. We like to walk. That's kind of what we do, isn't it? The majority in incidents involve backcountry injuries and stuck disabled subjects with known and close to known locations in the backcountry. Technology has reduced the number of searches in the past 10 years, but let's be very clear, location accuracy is not a guarantee. A SAR axiom we live by is that every backcountry rescue starts with a search. A small portion of backcountry missions do involve recoveries. Just as important, these missions bring the deceased back to their loved ones. The most recent example involving Route County SAR was the recovery of four individuals killed in an aircraft crash on Emerald Mountain. Mission counts by activity. This is always an interesting one. Not surprisingly, subjects involved in incidents generally align with popular seasonal backcountry recreation activities. Fun fact, Route County SAR assists more snowmobilers than any other SAR team in the state of Colorado. People like Buff Pass, it turns out. so missions per year note if you see the kind of drop off in the last three years reduced hunting licenses due to the harsh 22-23 winter is likely the cause of lower calls for service during 2023 and 2025. as you'll see shortly a lot of our our missions are involving hunters they're one of our best customers CPW experts are expected to issue more hunting tags in the coming seasons as the herds rebound. And just for example, we've had 16 calls for service in 2026 so far. As you see in the next slide, we're building for our fall mission count. So monthly numbers and timing, the benefit of an all-volunteer organization is that we're able to adjust to varying call volumes and timings. As an example, we had no calls in the last two months. We're all kind of just ready to go versus last September where we averaged a call every other day, just to give you a perspective. So as you can see, fall is one of our biggest periods.

So based on the data we collect, um, this is probably closer to, um, 33%, a third for each local visitor in state. Um, so, you know, a lot of, a lot of folks think, oh, it's all these out of state tourists. We're helping our residents. Um, we're helping Coloradans. Um, it's, it's not just the, the sort of out of state tourists that sometimes end up in the news. So, um, We're gonna dive into this a little bit further on the next couple of slides, but the steamboat area is a big driver of our calls. We are Route County Search and Rescue, but you'll see here that steamboat is a bit of a hotspot. So, you know, public lands and open space lead to a lot of calls. Not surprisingly, we do help out on private land as well occasionally. And like Bobby was saying, there's some spots here that are not in Routt County, but are there in Fire District, It's a Rock County Fire District or just we can get to that location a lot faster. So the Flat Tops in Rio Blanco and Garfield County or Rabbit Ears and Buff, Jackson and Grand County. And that's about 60, over 60 of the calls in the last five years have been out of county assists. So what does that look like here in Steamboat? And so we use the Steamboat Springs Area Fire Protection District to kind of say the Steamboat area. And we're looking at, in the last five years, 174 incidents which is over half of our call volume. Some of these we did respond with steamboat spring fire rescue for sure. This includes city property or city open space like Spring Creek, Emeralds, but also just a lot of the hot spots that people like to recreate here. From north to south, we've got Mad Creek and a lot of equestrians, hikers, bikers hunters in the fall buffalo pass in the winter snowmobiling skiing on the summer biking hiking running spring creek obviously with spring roll a lot of biking but also we know that that trailhead's quite busy with hikers and dog walkers and whatnot fish creek um is probably one of our more common areas that we respond to, and that's both the Fish Creek Hiking Trail, as well as Fish Creek Canyon in the winter, assisting with ski patrol, as well as sort of the general resort area. Emeralds across the valley there, huge trail network, as you guys know. um and then rabbit ears uh we've got in the the winter both the cross-country skiers and the snowmobilers um so um this is really why our facility in downtown steamboat is so important is it allows for rapid centralized access for a significant portion of our call volume excuse me So please don't take this as like anti-trail development or that these new trails have led to a big increase in calls because they haven't. We just always encourage safe, responsible recreation no matter where it occurs. But The city's invested over $5 million in two-way funds to enhance local recreation opportunities. And so we're the safety net for those trail users. I just want to recognize that connection between an increase in backcountry use and the higher likelihood that people may need help from search and rescue.

economic impact of outdoor recreation. You can very foundation visitation to Steamboat Springs in our residents. Satisfaction is rooted in outdoor recreation. We are destination location, uh, that is sought out for for its outdoor splendor and numerous outdoor recreational opportunities. They're strong year round use in the back country in route County. I'll go back to that one. So according to the Colorado tourism office, and this goes back to 1997, uh, travel impacts for route County add up to just a little over a billion dollars from the outdoor recreation community. Bye, brother.

right we get a web community support from a number of different avenues as you know the city route county and a large portion which is this is over the past 20 some years but an even larger portion now of our yearly expenses and revenue comes from grants and private donations So a mixture of the three help us to be able to exist, educate, grow, replace equipment, and do everything we need to do within a given year. As a chart here, you know, as you know, it's challenging to plan everything you need from year to year. You know, we have there used to be so little money that there wasn't much to replace. And then there was hardly anybody on the team and there wasn't that many people to train, you know, and over the past 10 years, we've been able to, to grow in a healthy way. Um, obviously things got a lot more expensive, you know, you'll see those capital replacement spikes there. Uh, as you know, new, new vehicles, uh, are the big thing, rescue trucks, um, things like that. That'll make this year, uh, $450,000 expense kind of year, which is way greater than any year we've ever had. Luckily, that truck should last us a good long time. And we've been steadily replacing snowmobiles, ATVs, things like that, as you'll see over the past seven, eight years. Last year was a light year. We were able to just go without any major equipment replacements, and that was around $160,000 in expenses and upkeep, education, all of these things here that contribute to our...

There's that one, Perry.

So yeah, some people ask us, why doesn't Search and Rescue charge? Couldn't you support yourselves if you just charge for rescues? Public service is for the greater good, just like fire and law. It's safer for the team, especially for the subjects to call and for us to respond sooner rather than later. Things get very dangerous as storms get worse, as it gets later in the day and we're working at night and the risk of everything we do changes. So charging for rescue doesn't really discourage the risky activity that people will partake in. It just discourages calling for help, which puts everybody else at a lot more risk.

So what's the future look like? We're really fortunate to have fairly robust community support. And we're a resource for the seven counties that were to route county, Jackson County, Moffett County, not a lot of tax base. We are always there to help our neighbors out. That's just what we do in Northwest Colorado. But our goal is just to continue to modernize and invest in the team in order to provide the best service we can for both visitors and residents.

So why do we do what we do? We've got 29 men and 11 women that are dedicated to backcountry search and rescue and helping people in their sometimes worst day ever. This is what we do. I think that the best way to describe that to you is to give you just a little bit of a look into a mission that we had last year. We had a young man that was on a snowmobile that lost contact with this group and was stranded in the back country outside of a steamboat lake overnight. And the overnight activities in the back country, it can be, Devastating, it can be deadly. And so the outcome was never guaranteed. My job on this particular mission was to go into Steamboat Lake State Park parking lot and be a radio relay between the field team and our incident commander. Just so happens that the family of the lost individual was also in the parking lot with me. It's a 25-year-old young man, and I had the father in front of me, aunt, and several other people of his family in the parking lot. The mood was pretty heavy because we just didn't know what was going to happen. Well, Harry tracked this guy down, and the news came over. the radio that the individual had been found, that our team was feeding him warm food, water, and providing him with dry clothes. So I, as the liaison at that point was able to convey that to the family in the parking lot. And I tell you the blanket of anxiety that has sat on that parking lot all morning long, Richard blew away like smoke in the wind. It was probably one of the most satisfying moments I've had with the team. And this is why we do what we do. We want to help people out. And the biggest thing is let's bring people home. Thank you for your time.

thank you thank you thank you i'll give you a hand for what you do well i could i could say i am a strong supporter of sar i donate to you every year and i cannot believe what you do for little amount of funds you know and but i did learn two things here the first thing i learned is you know your presentation is you know if you're going to go in the back country if it's the safest vehicle is a horse well the least like it was the least number uh in the past four years you had only you saw the other category we have had multiple horse rescues people falling with horses on top of them um so

It's not a specific category, but it is definitely out there.

The other thing I learned is I was giving our locals too much credit. I do have one question, though, and that is, as well as you do with your current funding, if there was, if someone dropped 100,000, I don't know what the, you know, if someone is able to drop something on you, whether money or equipment, what would that be?

Dan?

What's your biggest need, you know, in addition, you know?

You can take the short-term answer, fund equipment, fund equipment director, a new truck, right? Which the theory is actually, graciously contributed the $300,000 plus we needed to get that truck. So that's going to be delivered sometime this summer. That's something we've been working on for the last couple

That's replacing a 1999 F-350 that will do almost 30 miles an hour hauling a trailer. Doesn't make for exactly expedient rescue. So that will be delivered sometime in June. And honestly, go ahead.

To answer your question, I think two things is space. We know that's getting tight. And then transportation. our we have a marketing fundraising committee that is really doing a ton of work to help us afford some of these capital expenses um but also some of that money helps with just team operations and so i think if they cannot have to work as hard um and and we can get some more local support um to just cover sort of the baseline um and then hey we need to work you know we want to do this training that's expensive or we need to replace some equipment um you know we still have the ability to fundraise as a non-profit but i think just sort of that baseline support is would be helpful to take some of the pressure off them right thank you i i got it um 160 000 a year is about what your average was

Like in money, $160,000?

That's expenses without replacing any equipment whatsoever, yes.

Yeah, yeah. Help me understand. I'm stranded somewhere. I call 911. What do they do first? How come they don't call the fire department? How do they get to you?

Sometimes they do. Understood. We work really closely with all our... Let's say I'm in California Park. Yeah. Depending on the time of year, the location, the conditions. If we can fly a helicopter up there, we work with Classic a lot. That might be the best. But we had a call, what, last one or two minutes ago? Yeah. pretty serious lower body trauma with a snowmobiler in the middle of a snowstorm. And we worked with, um, West Route Fire, they had a paramedic come up. We came in from Steamboat Lake as well with North Route Fire, brought this guy out using our snowmobiles and road building and whatnot. And then he needed pain meds. Steamboat Fire also came up to help out with there. So it was just a group effort. Yeah, the process varies, but typically we're going to get paged out sort of through that kind of communications. Our agreement with the county and the sheriff sort of say, hey, this is a backcountry search and rescue call. Go just direct to them. We've worked under that kind of communications for as long as I've known the team to exist there's some counties that the sheriff takes the call and then the sheriff starts sort of pushing buttons and directing traffic and we're really fortunate that sheriff doug trusts us to to get it done and says you know you guys are the experts and let us know how we can help if you need help what i find most in an amazing is um is how much you guys get paid

I mean, with all due respect, we have a very robust fire district and a fire department and a police department and we're at West Route and a lot of places and we have funding that is put out for all of this. Why are you guys still doing this? I mean, and I don't mean it in a negative way. What I'm saying is that we have as a community over the past, since 1968, built our fire departments and our police departments with budgets, okay? Whether it's the sheriff's office and everybody else. You guys seem to be the first call that even the fire department calls upon to go take care of these back country deals, right? And you still do it, and yet your funding is so low and and so i mean how come this hasn't and and this is more i'm just asking the question why haven't you been absorbed in one of the other departments that any one of the community governments have so the jurisdiction in this most of the mountain west in the state of colorado for sure the jurisdiction for search and rescue is the iraq as the sheriff um so

We fall under the sheriff's jurisdiction. And he's essentially our boss. We get county workers comp when we're at training or on a mission. So, you know, we are covered. We are a county organization. The sheriff is the one that has to provide search and rescue services. Similarly, like he's the one that's the wildland fire warden. But often it's like, well, you're firefighters. You guys are the experts at this. How can I help you? But, you know, you guys go fight the fire. Same thing with search and rescue. They, you know, don't have a ton of staff and funding as well. They're busy doing law enforcement stuff. And so they rely on us to go help people out in the woods.

But that's the key. You just said it. They rely on you guys, a volunteer group of experts, right? that they say, this is in your field, not ours. Please go find this guy. Call us if you need anything. You know what I mean? If we stop and think about that, it's absolutely amazing how much without SAR, what would our community be like?

a lot of dead people personal decision for for all of us and so i think you'll get a different answer depending on who you talk to but there's been a culture in the back country you think of mountaineers stopping on everest to save people that aborts their entire mission this is something that was born maybe thousands of years ago, humans helping humans. Right. And so that culture exists today in the form of search and rescue. If you look at an agency in Colorado and I think it's its foundations were. Hundreds of years ago, but it's this tight group of individuals that are recreating in the backcountry that. Have a responsibility to save. I mean, you might see this in between mariners, right? This kind of behavior. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he, Him, Good point they don't have to but it's kind of the law to go save someone in distress and so that kind of builds the foundation of I think why a lot of us do this. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he, Him, We love to recreate the backcountry there's not one of us on the team that probably wouldn't be rescued at some point in our life by. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he, Him, Already been. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he, Him, And I personally want to know my the name of my rescue. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he, Him, Right. But I think that's, for me, one of the reasons I do it is that I appreciate being in the back country. I love being in the back country. And I know things can go wrong. And I might have to assist someone right next to me that had a bad day. So.

So you guys are here today, and I appreciate you guys are here today. What more can we do that you're not already getting from this community? I mean, if you really think of the deficiencies of $160,000 in operating expenses, we make decisions. That's, you know, I don't want to say a decimal point, but it's not a huge amount when it comes to a lot of things. What can we make sure the public knows that when they dial 911, it's you? And how could we help? What can we do?

Yeah, you know, that's a big thing that, you know, we have been realizing is that there's, we're busy training, right? And we're busy responding and we're busy with our lives as well, you know, but we were lacking in letting people know what we do or what we need and what really goes on behind the scenes, you know? So we've been trying to step up and, you know, we don't like to run around with our hand out. We don't do it at all. Our events, we don't want to constantly be asking for money, you know what I mean? It's just not in our nature, but it is important to, to share what we do and how we train and what goes into the level of, of training and expertise and not just in medical, but in, in so many capacities, you know, that we're, we're trying to do better at that. And so, Yeah, we'll let you know.

We just did the- And that's, thank you guys for getting out there. Go to Rotary, go to the chamber, do something, do this again, not just to us, because we often just, there's things that you're doing that people just need to know that it's not just calling 911 and fire department shows up, the police department shows up. We got Church and Rescue, which a bunch of guys volunteered.

You know, Councillor Pacino, I don't know if you remember, but at our budget meeting last year, search and rescue came up. And we were kind of like, well, what would they do if there was more money or whatnot? And we really couldn't answer the question, quite frankly. And I feel that, you know, I know a lot more about you after today than I certainly knew back then.

amen well you have you have and uh we all appreciate all of you same to you thank you and tell that to your entire team too but i'm sure there's another question i'll just ask a quick question again yeah immense gratitude for all that you all do because we know there's a lot and you're putting your lives at risk as well in terms of getting out there so absolutely appreciate that tom can they can they um apply for the community support agency uh yes i don't know if they are part of the community support process they're not but they could be part of that as a 501c3 yeah i don't that's what i was thinking i don't recall ever seeing um you all being part of that or putting in an application so maybe that's something that staff could follow up with you all on in terms of what the process would be we have we have the human q

We're giving them some funding, but what avenue is that?

The city gave them some funding last year, but not through the community support.

Yeah, not through the community support. So we've got a mechanism to support community organizations that basically provide additional support to our community that is not necessarily handled through city operations. So maybe who should they follow up with?

You, Kelly?

Kelly?

I'll reach out to Harry. He and I have been communicating, so I'll reach out to him and we'll connect on that. Great.

Thank you all. Thank you guys. You guys are awesome.

While you're still here, I'm just going to ask if there's any public comment. Is there anybody here who would like to make a public comment tonight? You're smiling back there. I know.

I know.

I know she's not going to come down, but that's okay. And I don't see anybody online either.

What do they do that they need so much rescuing? Are they shooting each other?

You combine coming in from out of state, you combine ATVs, horses, being off-trail in the backcountry, there's definitely not any drinking, and you've got knives, guns, arrows, and what could go wrong?

It's always the obvious. So it is. Said humans.

Thank you so much. Thank you again, guys, for your time, and great job.

Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.

You bet. And I'm closing public comment.

All right.

We're going to move on, and I think we're going to move on to the consent calendar, and then, Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, we'll come back to staff reports after that. We finished the rest. Are you okay doing it that way?

That's up to you, yeah.

You guys okay with that? Yep.

okay you know i might just ask about the parkland acquisition let's ask about where is um angela just because i know they had some other people that were maybe going to participate other people i don't see anybody here anything

Good evening, Angela Cosby, your Parks and Recreation Director. Yeah, Commissioner Glenn Davis, who's also representing the Whistler neighborhood, will be joining for one slide. But I also told him I'd give him a heads up. So please just continue on with your agenda. And as we're getting close, I'll let him know and he'll join us via Zoom.

Well, what's his bedtime?

It's actually his kid's bedtime. And at this point, I'm guessing he'd rather put the kiddo down and join us later.

Okay.

Thank you. Thanks for clarifying.

Sarah's okay?

Okay.

All right, we're going to move on to the consent calendar. Items on the consent calendar may be reviewed, commented upon in the same manner as other agenda items. Any member of council or the public may request withdrawal of any item from the consent calendar for further discussion at any time prior to approval. If items are not removed, they may be approved with a single motion. I will read items 10 and 11. There's only two items on the consent calendar, and then I'll ask the question if you want any one of those pulled, and then we'll ask also the people in the audience and online if they want to pull either item so number 10 is the first reading of an ordinance vacating a portion of utility and drainage easements located on lots 46 47 48 49 50 51 58 and 59 the glen subdivision pl20250402 and item 11 is the first reading of an ordinance which is the fourth supplemental budget appropriation ordinance of 2026. Does anyone want to pull either item 10 or item 11? OK. Hearing none, I will ask, is there anybody in the room who would like to pull item 10 or 11? Seeing no one, is there anyone online? Please raise your hand if you want to pull item 10 or 11. seeing no one i will ask for a motion to approve items number 10 and 11. so moved second okay we have a motion by councillor swintech second by councillor gary all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes seven zero or six seven zero right amy You were an aye? Okay, thank you. All right, we're going on to item, next item, which is public hearings, motions, resolutions, and ordinances. Will we read each item into the record? Public comment will be provided for each item. Item 12 is a second reading of an ordinance vacating a portion of a utility easement located in lots one and two, Overlook Drive subdivision, PL20260050. And is that you, Rebecca? So this is the second reading of an ordinance.

Second reading of an ordinance, Rebecca Bessey, planning director. I'll just give you a quick overview. As the title indicated, this is a request to vacate a portion of a 20-foot existing utility easement along common lot lines of lots one and two of the Overlook Drive subdivision. The purpose is to accommodate a driveway and retaining wall for a new residential development on lot one. Several recent development applications have prepared the slot for development. There are existing utilities that will not be affected by the proposed vacation. All affected utility providers have reviewed and approved the proposal, and there has been no public comment on this application.

Okay, thank you. Any questions for Rebecca? Okay, if not, I'll ask for public comment. Is there anybody in the room who'd like to make public comment? Seeing none, we'll ask, is there anyone online? Raise your hand. Seeing none, we'll close public comment. Bring it back to council for deliberations and or a motion.

I will move approval of agenda item 12. Second.

Okay. We have a motion by Councillor Geary, second by Councillor Barnes. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Okay, motion passes 7-0. We'll move on to item 13. It's a second reading of an ordinance amending chapter 26 of the Steamboat Springs Revised Municipal Code by replacing section 402 and amending articles 2, 3, 4, and 8, and the appendices to update the landscape code for water conservation, wildfire resiliency, and minimum requirements. PL 20250313. That's Bob, and this is again, second reading of the ordinance. Do you want a brief overview from Bob?

Read it twice. Read it twice. It's in two packets, we're good.

Any questions for Bob? Okay, thank you, Bob. We'll ask, is there anyone in the audience who'd like to make a public comment? Please come down, seeing no one. Anyone online, please raise your hand. Seeing no one, we'll close public comment. Bring it back to council for deliberations and or a motion.

I motion to approve agenda item 13.

Okay, we have a motion from Councillor Agosta.

Second.

Second by Councillor Geary. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Nay. Okay. Motion passes 6-1. with Councilor Swintek opposed. Okay, item 14, second reading of an ordinance rezoning property located within Hilltop Resort Condominiums, Parcel One, City of Steamboat Springs, County of Routes, State of Colorado from multifamily residential MF1 to a custom PUD zone district described and depicted in exhibit A for the Hilltop Resort PUD PL20250398. This is, again, the second reading. Hi, Kelly. Good evening. Anybody want an overview from Kelly or have any questions?

No questions.

This is easy tonight, isn't it? Indeed. Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anybody in the audience who would like to make public comment? Seeing none, we'll turn to online. Is there anybody online? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, are there any... Is there anybody... Are these... Would you like to make a comment?

Good evening, Council. Alex Smith, President of Vanco Hospitality. Thank you for your time. I'm here for questions and answers, however I can help.

Thank you. I don't think we have any questions, do we? Okay, we'll bring it back to Council for deliberations and or motion. Motion to approve, Jenna, item 14. Second. Okay, we have a motion from Councilor Agosta, second by Councilor Geary. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Okay, motion passes 6-1. Councilor Swintek opposed. Okay. Thank you, Alex.

Thank you guys for being here. Yeah.

Good luck with the hotel. That road maintained.

okay item 15 a resolution upholding the planning director's decision of legal non-conforming use abandonment related to pl20220525 and denying the associate appeal pl20260055 rebecca um can i request screen share permission yes vacation trips pictures from vacation

Okay, I'll be pretty brief. You've seen some of this presentation a few times before. This is an appeal of a decision regarding legal nonconforming use abandonment related to a short-term rental property. um this property is located in overlay zone c that's the prohibited or red zone and as you know we do confirm legal non-conforming status and review for potential abandonment or any other termination through the short-term rental license and annual renewal process The relevant code section is 103D, which states that intermittent legal nonconforming uses, such as short-term rentals, terminate upon abandonment or discontinuance of the use for a period of 12 consecutive months, regardless of any intent to resume operation of the use. So the timeline for this particular circumstance and property is such that the property was registered as legally non conforming as a short term rental in January of 2022. The prior property owner received a short-term rental license on June 15th of 2023, and they then subsequently renewed that license in June of 2024. The last documented short-term rental stay that we are aware of that occurred in 2024 ended on October 19th of that year. The current property owner purchased the property on January 17th of 2025. They received their short-term rental license on March 6th of 2025. And they did not conduct a short-term rental stay until December 3rd of 2025. So you can see that there's more than 12 consecutive month, more than a 12 consecutive month period between August 19th, 2024 and December 3rd of 2025. um so that as i mentioned the relevant code section lays out the legal non-conforming abandonment period as any consecutive 12-month period in accordance with that section 103d the legal non-conforming use was abandoned as it had been discontinued for more than 12 months And our determination is that the legal non-conforming status of this property terminated on August 19th of 2025. Planning Commission heard this appeal at their April 23rd meeting and unanimously recommended denial of the appeal and upholding the original decision regarding abandonment. I am happy to answer any questions for you. I do not... See anyone online that looks like the appellant but I could be wrong about that I don't know that they are present.

documentation to the appellant receive on march 6 of 2025 and their license issued.

um they received an approval letter um with their license that was after they provided documentation of um the prior listing report they were asked for that documentation provided it so we were able to issue a license um to them in march of last year and so are they notified that time that they would have to rent that property before august 19th We were not specific about a date to them. I'm happy to talk a little bit more about why we don't do that, because that was a question that came up at Planning Commission as well, if you'd like me to elaborate.

Please.

Okay, so I know in a prior appeal, there was really explicit, you saw in our approval letter that transmitted the license, we were very explicit about a specific date. And the reason for that is because it was a matter of like less than a week, I think. And we knew that that would be, that was a really tight timeframe. It would be very um confusing to issue a license that we knew ahead of time had the potential to expire within a matter of days in this case they were issued a license in march there was not it was not a close time frame we understood that they had the intention to go ahead and use the license we had previously asked for the information the prior booking um we understood that they were aware of the 12-month time frame and the reason why we don't in most circumstances want to issue a letter with a specific date is because that date can change daily so when we're reviewing a license application we really don't know there could be a stay that very day that we issue that license. And so for staff to put sort of that burden on staff to verify up to the minute before we can write an approval letter, I feel like there's a lot of room for error there. And that puts that burden entirely on staff to communicate and ensure that that is... um accurate as of the approval letter issuance so in this case there seemed like there was plenty of time to conduct a short-term rental um and so we we we didn't give a specific date is it possible i mean it seems like a couple of these

um appellants came because there was a purchase the property which they probably bought at a premium because they had a short-term rental license and yet a failure for the new owner to understand the rules of engagement Is there any way that we could change our policy that would start the 12-month clock? I mean, clearly in August of 2024 was the last documented stay, and then it was actually bought by someone in January. Is there any avenue that we could start when the new property is sold to when the when you gave a new license on march 6th could they not have a clock start on march 6 for the new license not fulfilling the old license 12 months so it seems like there's been a couple of occurrences where that has been a problem and when you do give a license it may be and i'm not i'm just saying the assumption that they have 12 months from that date is there an avenue for us to to change that policy

I mean, I'm going to interrupt, right? I mean, it's 10 of 9. That is a policy debate, right? Which is not part of this appeal.

right can i ask a question well it's 10 of nine and we have more issues to go so i mean do you want to get into this agenda item 15 and it's only 10 of nine oh no we we have to go back to the ones that we've met but we have a couple more so should we say do you want to get into this discussion tonight guys without getting into a big debate about this um it is a policy issue we're not going to resolve it tonight gail i mean rebecca i'm fine if you answer yes or no to michael though

i don't know that i can answer with a yes or no i think it is a policy decision it would not be a simple fix it would drastically change the policy um i would just there's one one comment that you made leading up to the question that i think i want to i would like to address if i can um i don't know that it's necessarily accurate to say that a new owner isn't aware of the policy. So there are no, for legal non-conforming STRs, there's no one that can get a new license today or renew an existing license without having to provide prior documentation of bookings. So it's not that they come in, they just get a license and there's no information shared. We will not issue that license until they provide us with the prior booking. So there are discussions that occur for every one of those about that 12 month time period.

And is there, in this appellant case, did they have any remodeling that was done in that condo that would have kept it from being rented?

That question was asked at Planning Commission. They answered it, I believe, and it should be in your minutes. I believe the appellant's answer was that there was some cleaning and some minor painting work.

I'm talking remodeling.

To be clear, there's not an exception for major remodels either, but that question was asked directly of the appellant, and she did answer that in the Planning Commission meeting.

thank you and that is in our packet as well that that comment i just had one kind of just weird question well not weird but if i if i um got a license on march 1st and i sold the property to somebody else the following february 1st and that person then has the month of february to renew that license if it hasn't been um rented or no uh maybe but probably no so a new owner doesn't renew a license a new owner applies for a new license yeah um there

their ability to obtain a license doesn't depend on when you as the prior owner got your license it depends on when you as the prior owner last used the property as a short okay rental okay so you as the new owner must know the last time that property was rented Correct. And we have a lot of information out there, and we advise realtors and potential buyers all the time that when they're interested in a property, ask for the booking reports.

And I would say that if you're renting in the red zone, especially, and you're buying a property, you'd probably ask the question or see the records of what kind of rentals.

Well, the new owner has to provide the documentation of the last rental. Correct. They're cognitively aware of when that was rented last.

In this particular case, the appellant indicated that the prior owner chose to stop renting in August because they wanted to make it easier to show the property. So there was a series of choices here by the prior owner and the new owner who chose not to engage in short-term rentals. quickly in order to paint um so i think that there's some choices that were made here in this situation that resulted in abandonment of the use we're clearly getting more and more examples of failures from people that would affect their property so hopefully they'll start more aware the realtors and this do we have any other questions for rebecca

Yeah, just jump in real quick. Rebecca, remind us how many short-term rentals we have across the city for STR?

I should have the exact number, but I am really bad at numbers. So I'm going to say it's like 23 to 2400. Yeah, it's over 2000.

Is this a systemic problem that you're seeing or are you just seeing one offs where folks like this example did not rent versus seeing a systemic problem with our policy?

um i don't think what we're seeing is unexpected so i just want to clarify we have probably between like i said 23 to 2400 short-term rentals but they're not all legally non-conforming so there's a much smaller number that falls within the legal non-conforming category and i think We knew, like, a legal nonconforming use is allowed to continue under that status as long as they continue the use. I think that it's expected that over time you see some of these go away. So I don't think we're seeing it at any sort of... alarming trend i think certainly we may even be seeing fewer in some circumstances because i think people understand the rules a little bit a little bit better i think the ones that we see sometimes go away are those that are not really being used on a regular basis as a short-term rental

okay and just last thing um if you can add in your city manager report maybe a little bit later how successful we are with getting us down to the caps i know that i have no idea in four years what we've done with the caps but we established caps in the yellow zone and it seems like we've had a lot drop off or not renew it would be nice to at least have that information to council and just add it on a quarterly basis or something like that of successes you know if we're down to those uh areas where i think uh sunlight was the one that actually ended up having a a lottery draw for some of their short-term rental licenses about the only one neighborhood but thank you okay i have a question for um uh he's a policy question so basically if careful no no no careful no no no

If we wanted to do a policy change, what's the process to bring that to the agenda?

Yeah.

You talk about it. One of our retreats.

Okay. At the December budget retreat.

Okay.

Would be, we'd put that on the agenda.

Okay.

Yeah. Any other questions for Rebecca? Okay. Let's open it up to public comment. Is there anybody in the audience who'd like to make a public comment? Please come down. Seeing none, is there anybody online who wants to make a public comment? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, we'll close public comment. Bring it back to council for deliberations and or a motion

I just want to highlight because there's a lot of commentary in the Planning Commission notes that I feel like we're trying to speak directly to Council. So I just want to make it clear there is no leniency in this. That was the reason it was structured this way intentionally not to create any level of grace. The point was to make sure that the neighborhoods were preserved in the red zone. And that's why there's no way to cure this, that when you break the rule, it's gone. And that was by design.

Good point.

Yeah. Thank you for making that point.

Great point. I agree. And yet we're the body that can change some of the rules of engagement if we find that we need to.

Okay. So move to deny agenda item 15 and uphold the planning director's decision.

Okay. We have a motion by councilor to withhold the denial of the appeal. uphold second uphold yeah i'll pull the second second by councillor gary third by councillor barnes all those in favor say aye aye opposed did you say third by council no i didn't mean to but they both said it at the same time so it's just the second by councillor gary please it's getting late i was trying to city manager thing um do we have any attorneys report tonight no report no report okay before we head back let's finish up here with old business we have minutes from a bunch of interviews and applications for various boards i assume everybody looked over those and saw who was appointed to these various boards are there any questions

only a point of clarification that the actual that'll come back to um council as part of a resolution in terms of approving the potential appointees right if not i will take a motion to approve minutes 17a through 17 e so moved moved the minutes okay 17 a b c d e second

motion by council gary second and council of chino all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes seven zero okay we are going to move backwards now and we're going to move to staff reports number seven and we'll start with tom the city manager report all right thank you council president

um i will make my manager's report significantly shorter than i was going to but there are a few things that i would like to um highlight um the first being that uh just a reminder that the city um did release its rfq or request for qualifications for a financial services partner support their affordable housing fund rolling solicitation program We did receive those statements of qualifications and the interviews were conducted and we did choose a vendor and that was approved. The budget for that was approved tonight in your supplemental budget appropriation. So that is moving forward and I'm glad to get that moving forward for those at STR rolling solicitation. Thank you. We continue to review through the Housing Affordable, the ad hoc committee to look at STR requests. And so there are a number of projects listed in there that we continue to look at. So there's continues to be interest, I guess, is the point of that. Good news. I think you all have seen this, that the Historic Preservation Commission locally designated the Halston Hill Rodeo Grounds, the Steamboat Springs Pro Rodeo Series, and Brent Romick Arena as a local landmark to the Steamboat Springs Register for Historic Places. The city-owned property met two of the three eligibility criteria for historic resource, historical importance and geographic importance, as well as the additional criteria for a local landmark, the city's highest local designation. So I think that's a really, really important milestone for that venue, given the importance of that to our cultural history. And I just think that's a really important point to highlight. So kudos to the entire team and to the Parks and Rec Board and everybody that participated in that. The city did receive notice from the US Bureau of Reclamation that the award of 5 million for the Yampa River Walton Creek Confluence Restoration Project will not be executed. All selected proposals for the upper basin environmental drought mitigation funding opportunity authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act were reevaluated and it was not found to be fully aligned with current priorities. So very disappointed about that, but we will continue to look for all and any opportunities to fund that really, really important project for the city. um i did want to say the staff completed a draft of scope for of work for the next phase of the stormwater utility project uh a management plan and a community engagement plan and we're working with the fcs consultant team to find finalizing that so that continues to move forward um a couple of things that were not in the report uh the city was informed by dola on may 15th that the city's expedited review process meets the state requirements so additionally the state transmitted a finding of full compliance with proposition one two three commitments the city made for the current cycle of 24 through 26. so that means that the city of two mill spring can file a new commitment later in 26 and projects located in the city will remain eligible for prop 123 funding over the next three year cycle which is 27 through 29. so good news um and a shout out particularly to brad for all his work on that And then finally, we've got a really exciting event coming up on May 28th. We are inviting the community to gather at the Civic Plaza to celebrate and recognize the Ute heritage of the Yampa Valley by an official dedication of the Northern Ute Bear Dancers sculpture by world-renowned Southern Ute artist Orland Joe Sr. The evening centered around the traditional bear dance will be followed by a community potluck at the depot. And later I will circulate to you the proclamation, which will be read at the ceremony by Council President Monteen. Although the sculpture dedication and bear dance celebration is a one day event, we hope that it opens the door to knowledge sharing, intentional consultation, and the trust building to strengthen government to government relations between the City of Steamboat Springs and the three Ute tribal nations. And this is just the beginning of that relationship. So really important event. I'm inviting all of you in the community to attend that. We're really excited about that. And that concludes my report. Okay.

Questions for Tom?

Yes. I was curious. Do you want to elaborate on who actually won the financial service contract?

I knew you were going to ask that, and I don't remember the name of the firm. Are they local? It's some sort of acronym. CHI, that's right. Kind of like the coffee, spelled just like it, CHI. not local not sorry good answer thank you brian okay um yes uh not a local firm and you're not a chai tea drinker i have drinking chai and then the second question would be as you said unfortunate about the confluence of the yampa river and the walton creek restoration project any other are we pursuing potential other funding sources um i i really don't know i mean i'm sure we are that's a really really important project and we'll continue to look at any opportunities it's it's a big project so it'll be probably multiple sources of funding if we find any so all right thank you we'll keep you updated on that okay

if that's all we'll turn it over to sarah to talk about first quarter financial update sarah's coming down and setting up um the urac interviews i thought were is that not being approved today there's a minute no they went through there okay and and as we go into the financial one i just wanted to add something that we did miss on the um supplemental because we just kind of blew through the consent agenda I don't know who I want to thank, but our staff. The CEO impact acceleration grant, oh my gosh. There was one, two, three, four, five different CEO impact grants that were well over $2 million. And so we didn't give kudos to the fact that our staff worked with to get some serious money that we are, I mean, it just, it blew over, but my gosh, where the community needs to realize how much money we got from grants. So who's in that department that, just make sure they know team effort so they just let them know that that it is not gone by the wayside i circled that and highlighted that and i just wanted to kind of get it through but my gosh thank you appreciate that yeah thank you counselor pacino for raising that yep

Sarah Briones, Deputy Finance Director. So tonight I'll be sharing the Q1 2026 financial update, more of a high level summary that's focusing on the general fund revenues, expenditures, and then a brief look at personnel costs through the first quarter. So I'll go ahead and get started here. all right so this uh to begin this first slide provides uh again a high level snapshot of where we landed at the end of the first quarter so general fund revenue came in just over 19 million dollars uh general fund expenditures were a little above the 13 million um both compared against or next to the annual budget of 67 million As we move on, total revenue of 19, a little over 19 million received at the end of the first quarter was almost 29% of the $67 million budget. So 47.6 million left to bring in over the next nine months. this 29 of the annual budget puts us slightly ahead of a simple or basic 25 quarterly benchmark although a little bit tricky to compare being that we usually make a lot of our revenue within the first quarter Just high level, as expected, $13 million, over $13, almost $14 million in sales tax revenue. Charges for services includes things like EV charging, special duty fees, as you would expect, ski passes, lift tickets, things like that. And then the other voluntary assessment that you see a little bit below that, that's related to the ski area's contribution. Towards the city. um next i'll talk briefly about sales use accommodations and short-term rental taxes um i would like to note that this report was put together before the uh it was still the preliminary numbers so some of these may vary slightly from what was published uh with last friday's report but it's minor changes there um for example sales tax um for Q1 ended up about $808,000 down from the same period last year compared to the 811 or almost 812 that you're seeing here, minor, but we'll take that extra 3,000 or three or 4,000. So this was a sales tax revenue decline of a little over 5.5% from Q1, 2025. With that use taxes, use tax was down over 51%. Accommodations tax was down over 7.5%. And then as we turn to the short-term rental tax, this slide here shows a life-to-date sort of picture of the revenue and expenditure activity related to the short-term rental tax fund. So short-term rental tax was down nearly $753,000 from last year. Even with this decline, though, I think it's important to note that we are still projecting an ending fund balance somewhere between $28 to $35 million, and that is including the major plan commitments such as the Campbell property purchase, the deed restriction pilot program, Cottonwoods at Mid-Valley, Lofts at Base Camp, so on and so forth. So again, planning to have an ending fund balance between 28 and 35 million at the end of 26. With that, Council, also you all have additional ideas about the future project considerations for STR funds. So we'll probably be hearing more about those in the coming months. This next slide, we're gonna shift a little bit to expenditures. And this again is just a high level picture of where we landed with expenditures by department after the first quarter. As I move on to the following slide, this is just a different picture. I'm not going to go into much on this. I'll just hold it here for a brief period. Basically, this is just another way to look at the expenditures by the cost center or spend category versus by department. I think it's important to note that The total expenditures at the end of the first quarter, only 19.4% of the annual budget was used. So we still have about $54 million or over $54 million to get us through the next three quarters. As I move on to the following slide, I just wanted to touch briefly on personnel and again point out that 19.6% of the annual budget was used. We did have several vacancies in the first quarter. Staff is also being very cognizant of the revenue that we're bringing in. and the shortage that we've seen so far. So we have delayed some of the hiring. We're really assessing full-time FTEs that we were approved with the 2020 SUGS budget. So we're paying close attention to that. And then there are also seasonal factors that play into this personnel. And then For the second to last slide, I just wanted to clarify that most of these bullet points are not necessarily formal staff recommendations, but rather guiding thoughts and just potential objectives. So with that, our team will continue to monitor revenue projections closely, tighten spending where appropriate, um prioritize careful use of reserves rather than reductions to community services and we're committed to staying proactive steady and measured while we go through this process so with three quarters uh still ahead of us we'll continue to move forward confidently and adjust thoughtfully as conditions evolve so And then with that, I'll just pause here and ask if Council has any questions, directions, or next steps that you'd like us to consider at this time.

»» The only one that I had was, and thank you, first of all, great report. Love seeing it. Kim, thank you for guiding us fiscally going forward in this. The one question that I had through your presentation that I couldn't get answered in any of your graphs. was in my mind I was looking at that 19% and how that's under the 25% kind of a big picture. Makes me feel real good. Probably you too. But how does that relate to previous years? So are we at 19%? Because we know December can be heavy years of expenses and money revenue. But when I looked at 19% and you're just using the 25% on average because we're quarter by quarter, Is that fall in line? I mean, 19% about right? I mean, or is it above? You should be below because we've had low sales tax.

So that's a great question. And I would say below. I mean, just I can do the analysis and get back to you with a more definitive number on that. But for example, in 25, we had 14.7 million of sales tax revenue at the end of the first quarter versus 13.9. So, I mean, right there, there's less.

My comfort came into your 25%. That was just kind of big picture, fits below that, and it was good. But it was more of a curiosity.

Yeah, and I think I, you know, that's why I tried to state like the 25% is like a simple benchmark, basic benchmark. Again, I don't know if it's super relevant for our seasonal ski season type community, but I did feel good when putting this together that, you know, our revenues, even though lower than we had hoped at this point, are still good. You know 29% and our expenditures are still 19.4 to 19.6 so I still felt at least cautiously optimistic and comfortable with those numbers.

other than that great report i would like to i'd like to add on uh to what michael's saying i would love to see um when you have quarter one or next time six months um quarter one 2026 actual i love to compare it to quarter one 2025 actual and not just in total dollars or total revenue but in percentages because that's very helpful to me if if we're saying that revenues you know at 28 and expenses are at 19 well how does that compare um to previous years and whatnot so if if we could just add you know a little more information that compares year to date this year versus year to date last year

Absolutely. And the funny that you say that because I actually started with doing 25 side by side with 2026. And then it was just sort of my first time and kind of redesigning some of this. I'll definitely do it for the next year.

I'm cool. And especially when you know, the budget is pretty close, you know, it's almost flat, you know, it's so the numbers would be interesting.

Yes, that will be easy. And I'm happy to do that.

And that was my same question too. So yeah, you know, so having that comparison and that's the only question I had too.

Any other questions for Sarah?

Thank you. All right.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And we'll just ask for a public comment real quickly. Oh no, we don't. Do we have to staff reports? Yeah. Anybody want to make a public comment? Please come down. Anybody online want to make a public comment? Please raise your hand. We'll close public comment and we'll go on to Parkland Acquisition Update. Matt, last but not least tonight.

Good evening, counselors. Matt Barnard, Parks and Rec Development Manager. I want to start out with an overview of our parkland acquisition process. I know some of you haven't seen this present portion of our presentation before. And for some of you, it's just going to be a little bit of a review. Our parkland acquisition process really has a six-step model that we like to use. Starting out with step one is our parkland acquisition plan. This plan uses current adopted documents such as our Steamboat Springs Area Community Plan, our Parks and Recreation, Open Space Trails and River Plan, our PROSTER, West Steamboat Springs Area Plan, Yampa River Management Plan. When we're referencing parkland in our parkland process, we're really referencing all developed parks, recreation facilities, open space, natural areas, and trails. Our plan will identify areas of interest for future parkland development. The document will be public. It doesn't use any specific land parcels. It really just represents areas of interest that our community could benefit from parkland in those areas. We have established a parkland acquisition committee. We call it our PAC. And on that team, we have a route county commissioner, a city councilor, a parks and rec commissioner, our city attorney, we have representation from our planning department staff. And then from parks and rec, we have our director, our deputy director of land management, and then our development manager. Step two, our land acquisition strategy. The Parks and Recreation Land Acquisition Strategy provides the City Council and Parks and Rec Commission and staff with a roadmap for acquiring parkland. Our roadmap can be really easy for some of these properties or areas. Strategies may include outreach, relationship building, periodic check-ins. This is also the step where we explore partnerships and collaboration opportunities with other community groups. Once a parcel has been identified from an area of interest, a specific strategy for acquisition will be developed for that parcel. That's really when that parcel or that property kind of gets legs in this process and starts moving forward as you look at step number two most of the properties in our parkland acquisition matrix kind of just live at this level until an opportunity becomes available to us for it to move forward or a property is identified as for sale and we can move it forward step three are acquisition actions the parkland acquisition committee will guide the parks and rec staff with acquisition actions implementing an acquisition strategy a city attorney and staff will be negotiating directly with the landowner this is where we consider conservation easement partnerships carry out financial appraisals on the property and survey and legal descriptions, completing a due diligence that includes review of land title information, environmental documents, and establishing a funding plan that may include grants, route county purchase of development rights, donations, city funding, et cetera. All of these steps at this point will be discussed in executive session with city council as we move through these steps. um step number four the acquisition approval report to city council and parks and rec commission on the outcomes of the negotiation and the due diligence process discuss options to purchase and the available funding strategy for the specific partial parcel city council direction will be required again this will be an executive session Step number five is complete the acquisition. The conveyance of the parkland will be completed and the City of Steamboat Springs will retain title. In this step, we're appropriating funds, we're satisfying grants. acknowledging partnerships, completing conservation easements, if those are applicable, creating an ordinance to purchase. And then last, step number six is announce the acquisition. The city announces the acquisition publicly at the time after the documents have been executed by both parties. We do a press release. We really talk about why this property is valuable to the city and how it will serve our community. And we're really memorializing the acquisition. Having this framework as we move through it, I think it really creates great transparency, A, to city council, parks and rec commission, and it just really gives us a guiding document that we know kind of what our steps are and we can, I actually reference this quite often as we talk about different properties and talk about what steps there are.

So it's really a useful tool that we've implemented.

Moving forward, I talked about in the plan, it includes a bubble map of interest areas. So on our map, this is our most current map right now. And all the blue shading really represents 17 different areas within our community that could benefit from a parkland acquisition. And again, lots of parcels are highlighted there. It's just an opportunity of one that we're really looking forward to take it from that step two area and start moving it through the process. Now we're kind of getting into the how of the process, like how does this really work? We've identified 12 different attributes and I won't go through those in great detail, but each one of those attributes has a collection of three or four questions underneath it that as we're reviewing a specific area of interest, we focus on each one of these attributes and we kind of talk through those three or four questions that kind of stir up conversation and kind of align everybody's thoughts with the availability to make a decision on where we would rank a property. The ranking kind of goes into our matrix. I know some of you have seen this before. We have 17 different properties that are in this matrix right now, and across the top, again, are those 12 attributes. The parkland acquisition committee also has the ability to modify that top row, the multiplier, that multiplier we are changing every year as we reassess the numbers and the value that we're giving to each one of these properties each year you know the trends or the interest or the areas of impact that we're trying to influence with parkland can change from year to year and we're really using that multiplier to give a heavier weight or higher score to an area so we can really identify how does it stand out against the other properties that we're you know looking at of these 17. From there, we're moving over to our last column that gives us a score. That column just ranked in order, gives us the green box on the far right. And again, we're not just pursuing the top priority in this column by the highest score. Everything has value. It just has a different weight. And I really like to use Slate Creek, our number two. This was a 97 score. So it scored really high. It has recreational value. It has passive recreation value. It has conservation value. It has a riparian corridor that adds a whole other level of scores to this matrix. So it gets a really high score. But then if we look at number 16, which is the Emerald Auxiliary Parking, this project doesn't have all that flair. It doesn't have... active recreation practice passive recreation we're doing nothing for wildlife habitat with this but it serves a need in our community so if an opportunity came forward we could go to number 16 and just say that there was a property in that area we could already have identified we've already communicated it with city council and with parks and rec commission we know what the value of that is and what areas that can hit it's not going to hit some of those fun things but it's really going to take the pressure off the parking situation at emerald park And that's just, I just want to kind of give you a little comparison of what that does. Now I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about parkland acquisition updates for Slate Creek. I think the biggest opportunity that really landed in our laps when we first started pursuing this project about two years ago was the gift from the sellers. And the gift isn't a financial gift. It was the gift of time, allowed us to go out and make some of those connections that we needed to make this funding strategy really work for this property. For those of you that aren't familiar, the bold red outline is the parcel boundary. It is 187.84 acres. It is right between the Yampa Valley Housing Authority's Slate Creek neighborhood property and then the Bob Adams Airport property. So we're pinched between those two. um if as we're now going inside the parcel the northern parcel that a portion of the parcel that is shaded in the yellow our vision for that is that would be the regional park that's where we're going to see sports fields soccer decks a playground facility a bathroom facility kind of on the right side of that yellow shading is a green area. We've identified just over six acres that we can use for indoor recreation. That indoor recreation piece will allow us to have a City of Steamboat Springs Rec Center someday, or maybe it allows us to have a partnership with the Sports Barn Group. It just has really carved out a specific area in our funding model that would allow us to do indoor recreation and then the unshaded portion of the bottom that we've kind of left unshaded intentionally is this is the conservation area this is 131 acres um and i like the topo and just kind of the variety of the terrain to kind of reflect through in this you can see the riparian corridors that cuts through there this is really where the beautiful part of this property is um I've been out on this property twice already this week with two different consultants as we look forward and being able to price some of our future projects. And it is really shocking every time I'm out there, I'm noticing something different or there's some different piece of takeaway. So I can't wait until someday we are able to activate this and make this a public space and let them have some of those same experiences that I've been having over the last two years of kind of moving this through the process. Kind of wanted to talk some numbers here for a little bit. Original purchase price at the top was $5.25 million. The due diligence that we had on this project was $135,000. That did include the stewardship reserve that we are paying to Colorado Open Lands. That money will be used to manage this property for us and Colorado Lands as we move into the future with this property. So bringing our total acquisition cost to $5,385,000, kind of in the order that we received our grants. I did want to take a second and pause here. This was really the second or the The first opportunity I've had to work really closely with the grants team for a long time wanted to do a little kudos to Kelly Romero. He needs to specifically ginger Scott. We've been kind of partnering on this project for about 2 years and. The education that I received has been really valuable and. has just increased our influence as we've worked with all these different partners and just made a lot of connections so it's been a really cool growth process to go through this but our first grant was our goco grant at 1.4 million dollars our second one was the land and water conservation fund grant at one and a quarter million dollars. Our third was our local partner here with Route County, purchase of development rights grant at $590,000. This was a partially funded grant. Last year, the grant pool was very deep, a lot of competing projects, and we're just thankful that we got some grant money from the county. And our last grant was the Gates family grant from here in Colorado for $50,000. The first real funding came from city council in the 2024 CIP funding cycle at $500,000. So earlier you passed the first reading of the supplemental. I just want to kind of just talk about what we're doing to fill that gap. The CIP reserves, we are taking $135,000 from that. And then the accommodations tax, supplemental would be $1.4 million. So all in the total city contribution, including the funding that you gave in 2024 is just over $2 million. And then total grant funds raised is 330 or $3,330,000. So about 62% was raised through grant funding for this project to get to the total acquisition of $530,000. $5,385,000. Sorry, it's getting a little late. Moving forward onto Whistler Park, just giving you an update on this one. Again, we had a really great partner with this project, working with the Steamboat Springs School District. They did allow us an 18 month uh timeline in our purchase agreement so we could look at what opportunities we had that we could raise some funding for this um just wanted to jump again to a map just to make sure everybody it knows what that 9.2 acres is that we're purchasing from the school district and how it impacts the park right now um As you can see, the large blue rectangle that's reflecting through, that's the sports field. The little almost oval blob on there is currently where the playground sits. And then that property line goes all the way across the creek into that lower portion of the property. So I think what a lot of people think is city parkland at Whistler really isn't. We're using that through the agreement that we have with the school district. And so the impact through The Whistler neighborhood area as we go back to our bubble map, this is an underserved area of steamboat for the density of population that this park is really to serve. So if we were to lose 9.2 acres of parkland from this property, it would have a huge impact. A, we're already underserving that area of our community and then to lose half of that park, it would just really, really set us back. As we look at the budget for this, the purchase agreement price that we have with the school district is $3,600,000. The due diligence on this is a little bit different than the last one. We're only at $38,000. So our total acquisition cost for this is $3,638,000. um right out of the gate um city council funded 500 000 through the 2026 cip process to kind of get us started with some seed money for this project as we move forward and went back to the same group of grants and and beyond we've started to identify This is a much different property than we have been considering in the past. I know we've done a lot of talking over the last couple of years about Slate Creek and Copper Ridge and the opportunity of what a conservation easement can do for a property. That's just not the fit for 9.2 acres of Whistler Park. And so it really changed the opportunities available to us in our funding. So currently, still working with the grants team, we're still looking at some opportunities. but we haven't really identified one that is a really good match for this project that we're going to attack we're still looking right now if we were to be at the point of needing to close we'd be looking at the accommodation tax for another supplemental for one million three hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars we had identified in this funding model um because of the large outcry I guess from the Whistler neighborhood that they wanted to be heard in this process and they wanted to be a partner in this process they did engage us in a couple meetings out at Whistler Park last year and we're just a resounding sentiment that they wanted to be part of the process we're looking at a 50 50 split with this so we're looking for community donations at 1 million 800 000 and i do think parks and rec commissioner davis is online and he's going to maybe just share a couple comments on the funding strategy that the neighborhood is kind of working on so commissioner davis if you're available yeah can you hear me yes

Good evening. Good evening, Council. How are you guys?

Good, good, thank you.

So yeah, so just real quick, I just wanted to kind of be able to speak and let you guys know what we've kind of been up to over the last couple months. We've definitely established a core group of community members to lead kind of the funding initiative and we're currently in the planning process on average with the size of the amount that the community needs to raise. It's usually about a three to we were um hey glenn you just moved away from your mic can you hear me no no no i've got it it's really like glenn there you go i've got a headset on that's weird sounds like you're back don't move can you hear me yes Okay, perfect. So with a fundraising effort of this size, the planning usually, and you want to have a good planned out campaign. It usually takes about three to four months on average to plan something this size out. What we don't want is a campaign that's kind of poorly run or poorly executed. or even a campaign that kind of paralysis by analysis. So we're having some initial discussions with Angela's group and Matt as well. And then one of the ideas that we thought we could get off the ground pretty quickly and get going was kind of installing some sandwich boards around the park. And then maybe with the farmer's market at the city council tent and then um at the free concert series when when that gets going as well um just to make it very easy to have the qr code on there and links to the community foundation uh funds so people can kind of click the qr code on their phone and pretty much be able to make a donation there pretty quickly um The community interest is there, and so we're definitely identifying major donors and community supporters in the community. We've come up and broken out a revenue matrix with kind of target amounts and revenue goals in those different areas. And then also we want to be coordinating with the Yampa Valley Community Foundation to develop community match day fundraising events, kind of like what we saw with Casey's Pond. the fundraising effort over there. Also kind of canvassing our community in the Mountain community with flyers that also has the QR code and make it easy. We're also developing and coming up with an online social media fundraising campaign to expand community engagement and donor outreach. And then planning any additional fundraising opportunities through maybe some bench naming, field naming, the playground naming, trails, trees. We still have to get kind of with Angela to see how that works with the city and the rules and bylaws with that. But that's kind of where we're at right now. Okay.

Well, thank you for that. We appreciate it.

so back to this uh this this ones are pretty simple um total so total city funding is uh 1 million 838 000 and then total community donations our target is 1 million 800 getting us back to our 3 million 638 000 for our total acquisition cost any questions how much time is left to raise that 1.8

Of that 18 months?

It would be July of 2027. So just a little over a year. A little over a year? Mm-hmm.

I don't have a question. I just have a request. If you guys have a donation thing at the farmer's market, can someone be there that I can pass someone over to when a citizen yells at me that we're bankrupting the city and we're asking for donations, please? I'm having flashbacks to some interactions there. It would be great if there was someone who could act as a buffer. That would be great.

Good job, Brian.

so i played a little steve yeah i played a little math and i took 1.8 million and i i divided it by 500 and i came up with you know 3 600 households that if we had got 3 600 households donate 500 that would get 1.8 That sounds rather daunting to me. I don't even, anyway, so it was like, I don't even know how many households are in the mountain area. And I suspect it's not 3,600. I suspect it's closer.

Like we have 2,300 rental properties.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I have to admit, I'm concerned, you know, that we, we had that we, um, This is a big number for just QR codes. For one year, basically. For one year.

We have to try something.