City Council - Regular Meeting

IN COUNCIL CHAMBERS ON THE LOWER LEVEL OF CITY HALL. PUBLIC ACCESS TO TONIGHT'S MEETING IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACCESS CHANNEL 8 FOR COMCAST SUBSCRIBERS, ON THE CITY'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL ONLINE, AND BY TELEPHONE USING THE CALL-IN NUMBERS POSTED ON THE MEETING AGENDA. WILL THE CLERK PLEASE CALL THE

Mayor Lighty? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Luke Manjaro-Massa? Here. Council Member Burns? Here. Council Member Sievers?

Here.

Council Member Kondo?

Here.

Council Member Roper? Here. Council Member Gough? Here. Council Member Nowicki?

Here.

Council Member Lighty? Here. Thank you.

All right. We would like to welcome Director of Planning and Development, Becky Smith, to provide an introduction to our first item, the Walmart and Wing drone delivery.

to make sure this is on. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Thanks for having us tonight. Becky Smith, and I'm here tonight to talk about drone deliveries, but before I get started with my presentation, we were asked by an operator and a retailer to come in and present on some of the operations they've been deploying around the country and their experience. So tonight I have Josh Bucci with Wing Site Launch Team, and Ryan Irsek with Walmart Government Relations to present, and then I will get going on my presentation. Okay, thank you. Welcome.

Hi, Mayor, City Council, City staff. Thank you so much. My name is Ryan Ercik with Walmart Public Affairs and Government Relations. The first thing I wanted to do is thank Director Smith and especially her staff, especially Colette Cook for all of their work, going back and forth on some of her presentation details today and getting those worked out. So, we really appreciate you all, and it's great to be here and have the opportunity to kind of talk about new and innovative ways that we're looking to serve our customers here in the North Glen area. As we all know, the traditional way of shopping has changed over the last 10 years, especially with COVID. It really accelerated how people shop, not only shop Walmart, but shop in other ways. Obviously, it's easier to click a button on your phone and get something delivered to your house than it is to make your way out to the supermarket. We've all thought of, all of us retailers have looked at different ways to service our customers You know, at Walmart, we've looked at in-store pickup. We've looked at online grocery pickup, where we're allowing seniors and Walmart moms and Walmart dads to come out and pick up their goods. And in the last five to seven years, delivery has really taken off, not only getting your packages delivered, but also getting your groceries delivered in-home, in your garage or on your doorstep. Not only has the way we've serviced that customer changed, but also the expectations by our customers on how quickly those items are delivered. Back in the day, the standard used to be seven to 10 days for you to get something via mail or FedEx, right? And then that moved to two to three days. And today our customers expect almost same day or next day delivery and they're willing to pay a premium for that. And so drone delivery is just an innovative way for us to continue to serve our customers, to speed up that delivery time. And so we wanted to be here tonight to introduce the subject to you. You know, as my colleague from Wing, Josh, will really walk you through the deck, but all we're really talking about is a drone nest at our Walmart parking lot. And that drone nest is basically 13 to 30 parking spots, a six-foot fence, and a small kiosk where the drones sleep at night. And then an electric generator that helps power those drone spots. So when we're talking about nests, it's not some big warehouse where these are going to live. It's basically a Walmart parking lot. We did celebrate. I wish I had some birthday cake or a milestone cake with me today. We did celebrate a milestone earlier in the year in late May. We celebrated over a million deliveries via drone. throughout the US and so with that I'll turn it over to my colleague from wing Josh and he'll really Talk talk about drone delivery and the aspects of the drone itself and the nest so with that. Thank you We'll be here for questions and again.

Thank you so much to the city staff Good evening Just the mic here a little bit Yeah, like like Ryan said Josh Bucci from Wing. Excited to talk to you guys a little bit about drone delivery. See if this clicker works for me. So we are Walmart and Wing. Like we've said, we've been partnered together since 2023. Wing has existed for much longer than that as a company. I think it's like almost 14 years now, which is crazy to say. But most of that time was really just experimental in the lab, designing what we think is the best drone for this use case. So since 2023, we partnered with Walmart. We started in the DFW area, really liked that as an opportunity to experience a bunch of different weather patterns. It's also a very challenging airspace. So our team really liked that as an opportunity to validate the use case and make sure it works in as challenging of an airspace as DFW. From there, we've added Metro Atlanta, Greater Houston. And this slide deck is a little bit out of date on me, unfortunately, because we're also operating in Charlotte and Orlando. We just launched the Orlando Metro last week. So very excited to be expanding. The partnership with Walmart has been amazing. So like Ryan said, we've completed over a million commercial deliveries to date. That is pretty out of date at this point as well. The customer reception has just been so positive that that number of deliveries has just been ticking up really rapidly, which is awesome. It validates the use case. It shows that there is a demand and people are utilizing it. How our system works, we usually say our flight times are less than five minutes. Usually say delivery happens in under 30 minutes. Most of that time is picking the package off the shelf, getting it to the drone, and then five minutes of flying. Going here. So this just talks a little bit about our app. I'll skip through this. Hopefully there's a video. It seems like I'm not going to be able to show you the video, which is a slight bummer. But that's okay. I'll talk you guys through it. I don't know if there's a way. Okay.

I think. Oh, yeah. We can see it.

Oh, is it working?

It's working on our computer.

All right. Let me go back. Well, if you guys want to watch it on your computers, that's awesome. I'll talk you through it. So the video will show one of our example nests, which is one of our first sites in DFW. It shows one of our certified ground professionals putting out the drones in the morning. Basically, the drones are brought out in the morning. They do a quick hover flight to test all their systems, make sure everything's good to go. When a delivery or an order is placed, someone walks the package out to where a drone can pick it up. The drone hovers to about 25 feet in the air. It lowers down a tether. Package is loaded onto that tether. That tether retracts up into kind of the belly of the drone, locking the package in, like you can see in the image here. That's the blue kind of hexagon shape is the package, which is locked into the bottom of the drone. It goes to the delivery location, lowers down to about 25 feet again, drops the tether to the ground, and releases the package. So when we pick up the package initially, we climb vertically to about 150 feet. That's really our minimum flying height. So we like to climb vertically directly above the nest. And then from there, we will progress horizontally. We usually fly between about 150 and 400 feet is kind of our prime zone, which we've decided on with the FAA. And so like I said, climbing vertically and then going horizontally and then on the other side coming down vertically as well. These are pictures of two of our drones. So on the left-hand side is our smaller drone. It weighs about 11 pounds and can carry about two and a half pounds. Our engineers, if they were here, would tell you guys how impressive that is. I don't really know what that means because I'm not an aeronautical engineer, but I do know industry-wide, The weights of our drones compared to how much we can carry, very much cutting edge, very much competitive in the space, and some of the lightest drones you'll see, which is awesome because that speaks to our safety case. Our drones are made almost primarily out of styrofoam and carbon fiber. You can see a lot of redundancy built into our drones with multiple propellers for each movement that they do.

The drone on the right is 17 pounds, can carry up to five pounds.

So we're not talking about your week's worth of groceries that you're getting via drone. It's really those convenience items. You wouldn't be surprised how many of the deliveries nationally. Our team has metrics on deliveries that happen through any service that are under those weights. And it's the majority of deliveries. So that's kind of what we focused on. But it is your convenience items. I have little kids at home. We were talking about swim practice before. You get ready to go to swim practice. You realize you don't have goggles, right? Walmart has goggles. They can get to your door in 30 minutes. More often than not, in our house, it's baby wipes right now or baby Tylenol. It's those types of things. You need something quickly. It's hard for you to get out of the house, those types of conveniences. So we do take privacy seriously. We like to show this image because we're up front with, there are downward facing sensors on our drones. They're very low resolution. So that image on the right hand side is an actual image from one of our test facilities. It shows you what we are capturing. So we're really just picking up shapes. If you guys saw the video that delivery happened in a driveway, I don't want to say that's common or that's always where delivery happens. But when it does happen there, we need to be able to scoot over and not put it on your car. Or if there's a tree, bump over and make sure we don't set a package down in your tree. So that's what those downward facing sensors are for. There's no live feed of these images. Access is very restricted. And there's all kinds of additional privacy information on our website, which is helpful if you guys have additional questions on that. What we bring to the community, I talked about kind of that convenience, increasing access for people, delivery with speed, reducing congestion. If you think about it, each one of these deliveries could be a car that's on the road driving several miles to pick up a small package. And then efficient transportation. I always love sharing this stat because I think it's so impressive. If you order a box of pasta, you're making pasta for dinner from Wing and Walmart. Obviously, don't want to leave out our Walmart friends. The energy that it takes to get that pasta to your house is less energy than it takes to boil the water to cook the pasta. So very small amount of energy being used to transport goods. It's very efficient, which is great. We are Part 135 certified, so fully certified by the FAA. They regulate us nationally. They approve where we go and when we go there. We work with them hand-in-hand. Like I said, Wing has been around for over a decade. A lot of that initial time was just sitting with the FAA and figuring out what does it look like to provide safe, efficient drone delivery. This is just a picture of some of our pilots. We call them pilots. They're really more like air traffic controllers. The drones are flying autonomously. So they're observing the airspace, standing down if there's helicopters in the airspace, things like that. And then this image got a little bit jumbled, which is a little bit of a bummer, but it still hopefully relays the point. So sound is another question that we get asked a lot about during overflight. So when that drone is at that 150 feet or higher, It says 43 decibels. It's basically imperceptible. I like to tell the story that when we were getting them sound tested, the report says the crickets at the facility interfered with the ability to pick up the sound from the drone because the drones are so quiet in overflight. Now, obviously, when they come down to do that delivery, you're going to be aware of their presence. That decibel reading is around 62, similar to what a car is or a delivery truck outside of your house. This is just more about our app. Community outreach. I like to show this slide because we're not just here to deliver goods via drone. We like to be a part of the community. We like to make people comfortable with our drones, bring our drones to events. So if there's anything like that that the community wants us to be at, just let us know. We're happy to be there. And that's one of the things we really value about the Walmart partnership as well, is that's a core value of theirs also. And then a picture of our nest. Hopefully you guys saw this in the video. This is just an example of one of our sites. Like Ryan said, very low infrastructure. All of our charge pads are attached directly to the existing pavement. A fence that's six feet tall, and then a small storage structure is what's at our sites. That's just a quick layout of examples of the storage structures. Yeah. So that's my quick overview. I'm happy to answer questions if there are any.

There will be. Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. So I have several questions. One, is this daytime ops only or are you going to operate at night?

Yeah, it's a good question. We like to say 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. because that's when the FAA says we're allowed to fly. A lot of times we adjust to the store's specific operating hours, but those are what we usually talk about for our flights.

So how do you de-conflict the flight operations with other drone operations, whether they're private or the fire department or police department? How do you make sure you're not going to collide with any other drone operators flying below 400 feet?

Yeah, that's a good question. So do you guys have police and fire drones here in the city of North Glen? We do. Awesome. So we have a whole airspace outreach team that will meet with those teams that fly those drones. They'll figure out what your operating procedures are like when you guys are flying. Ultimately, we honor any other TFRs that are posted by the FAA. So if there's an incident or something that requires a TFR, we will not fly in that area. Additionally, our drones have ADS-B out and in, so we're able to pick up any other drones that are in the airspace that have that ability to transmit.

So I have my private pilot's license, but I don't know what TFR stands for. I wonder if you can spell that out, please.

I think it's total flight restriction. That's a good question. Our pilots are always saying the acronym TFR. But yeah, it's basically a flight restriction. You know, if there's a football game or if there's a police incident, a lot of times they'll put up a TFR so no one's flying through the area.

Okay. And then... Here in Colorado. I don't know where you're from but we have wonderful weather where we get high winds and All of a sudden storms that just brew up within less than five minutes. I can tell you that from our North Glen Knights What happens when a tether gets snagged in a tree or drone crashes? Can you talk about your protocols for that?

Yeah, good question So if a tether got snagged in a tree, I've never heard of that happening But the tethers are designed to release if there's a certain amount of tension on them so if it were to get snagged in a tree it would release at that point. I'm also not aware of any of our drones crashing. We do have contingency landings that happen at times where the drone will realize that maybe it needs to return to the nest and it will return to the nest or it will find a safe place to set down if it has a critical issue. We do have teams that are local in every region that will respond to incidents like that if they do happen.

And that brings me to my last question. Can you talk about your protocols when you have either damage to property or personal injury?

Yeah, so I'm not aware of any damage to property or personal injury across a million commercial flights. We do have protocols. We do have insurance. You know, if a drone ever were to go down, we have standard protocols for response, notifying emergency services if we need to. Fortunately, I'm not aware of that really happening, so.

Okay, so you're saying you're going to rely on local public safety assets if necessary?

No, I was speaking more along the lines of notification. If there was something where we wanted to make sure you guys were in the loop of what was going on. Again, not really aware of that happening, but we always like to be engaged with the community and let people know if something does happen.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

Councilmember Goff? Thank you. This is really an interesting topic, if nothing else. So thanks for coming. My question is about your, I guess your nest is what you call it. In terms of security, I mean, if drones are stored in a little shed, if somebody decides to break in and steal, you know, all these drones, I mean, what kind of setup do you have for something like that?

Yeah, so we have an access control. That's a lot of what the fence is for, controlling access around It's locked with keypads to get in and out, and then there's an additional lock on the storage structure. Fortunately, the drones aren't very useful if someone were to steal them. It's not like they can fly them themselves. They can only be flown from our central operating hubs. So we haven't really had many incidents with security, but that's what the fence and the storage structure are for.

Okay. Thank you. That makes sense. I hope that it's advertised to people who might think, oh, cool, you know, Christmas toy or something I can get.

Yeah. Yeah.

Councilmember Sievers.

Thank you, Mayor. I will just say, earlier we only have the one Walmart, so I did naturally some distancing, assuming it's where I would assume Walmart would put it. That's not for me to decide, but it seems like it would be for the delivery area in the parking lot like this. It's about 350 foot, no matter which way you go to a house, 350 feet. And Otherwise, my only comment on the structure is it kind of looks like any other outdoor gardening or construction situation. So I just wanted to provide that context.

Thank you. Council Member Nowicki?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for being here tonight, sir. This is really interesting. What is the kind of package drop-off distance? You said driveway. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so we usually say it's like an arm's length clear area or a picnic table size area is what you need. So, you know, sometimes that will be your driveway. Sometimes it's an open patch of grass. But if you can think stretching out your arms in either direction, if you have that clear area, we can drop off.

Okay, so, yeah, I guess if I'm standing on my doorway, you would drop it. And the person doesn't necessarily have to be there, right? You can still just drop it.

Yeah, don't necessarily have to be there. Again, these are typically fast-paced deliveries that are getting to you within 30 minutes, so oftentimes people are ordering it because they're there or about to be there. What we do is we identify locations on your property using satellite imagery. You might have one location, you might have two locations, and when you're in the app, if you have one in your backyard, as an example, you can choose your backyard when you're doing the delivery.

Okay, the other thing being like porch pirates, you know, because people start hearing drones and, you know, oh, the drone's coming and, you know, maybe someone's taking an opportunity. Yeah. Is that ever come up with y'all? Or I don't know, maybe that's more of a Walmart issue that they're got to address.

No, it's a good question. I really haven't heard of that coming up. I think If anything, the drone is better for that than other forms of transportation. Because it has lasers? There's no lasers. But again, you know, within 30 minutes, a lot of times what we say our delivery is. And so you know when it's coming. You know, it's not like you place a delivery and you're waiting, you know. Is the company going to bring it? Is it going to get delayed? You know when it's coming. And so most of the times you're there or, again, you're ordering it because you need something quickly.

And I imagine there's kind of some, like being that it's with Walmart, there's probably some integration. Like, hey, the drone is approaching. Hey, the drone dropped your package off. 100%.

Yeah, just like any other form of delivery. We're Walmart Plus members at home. And when I do a driver delivery, it's like I get a text message when they left the store or when they're five minutes from my house. It's similar with drones. Okay, cool. Thank you. Yeah.

So some of the questions have already been asked, but I'm wondering, you've mentioned that you're in like the Dallas-Fort Worth area or the Orlando area. So are you coming to the Denver metro area? Are you already here?

We are coming, hopefully, assuming you guys want us. No, yeah, we're talking with several cities in the Denver area.

Okay. I wrote down, why us? Because we have a very small Walmart and we're a relatively small city. So I was trying to figure out, like, are you meeting with Denver? Is this all coming about in the next year or two?

We're trying to move quickly. Like we said, we've seen the demand nationally. People want this. And we've worked with Walmart. I will say, we pick each store very specifically. We have a bunch of metrics that we look at in terms of and really a lot of this comes from the Walmart side, what kind of appetite is there already for online pickup within a certain radius of that store? And so as an example, maybe people within X distance of your store are currently doing a lot of online delivery, things like that. And then also where we can fly. We make sure to validate where we can fly, look at nearby airports, other flight restrictions. So we're very intentional about what sites we pick.

Okay. And then I'm assuming on the app that at some point it tells you that your product is too heavy?

Yes.

For online delivery or for drone delivery?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. You have to choose it specifically. So, you know, we're not just going to send you a drone without you being aware. You have to pick that option. And through that process of picking that option, it will tell you if something is not eligible.

I WAS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S UNDER FIVE POUNDS. THAT'S A WHOLE GAME WE COULD PLAY. HALF A GALLON OF MILK.

THERE'S A LOT OF THINGS. YOU'D BE SURPRISED.

THAT'S NOT VERY MUCH. OKAY. THAT WAS HELPFUL. THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER CONDO?

THANK YOU, MADAM MAYOR. A COUPLE OTHER FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS. ACTUALLY, TO PILON WHAT THE MAYOR WAS GETTING AT, ARE YOU GOING TO BE SERVING THORNTON CUSTOMERS FROM THE NORTH GLEN MINI STORE?

If they live within the radius of the drone, so within six miles, yes. Anyone within six miles could get service from this store.

Are there any legal ramifications flying across city lines?

No. Once we're in the air, it's fully regulated by the FAA. We do outreach to other, you know, we're talking with Thornton, we're talking with a lot of the municipalities locally. So we do do outreach as a courtesy. But once it's in the air, it's really regulated by the FAA.

So it sounds like your operations, if they were to commence, you would actually do all of this outreach and do the notifications, or you rely upon the city to do that?

Oh, we definitely do a lot of that notification. We're happy to support you guys in any way, shape, or form, but most of that comes from us.

Okay. My last question is you made mention of drone pilots, so I'm curious. It kind of infers these are first-person drones, not autonomous.

No. Sorry if I confused that. But the FAA requires us to call them pilots. They're really more like air traffic controllers. So they can manage a certain number of drones. Each pilot is regulated specifically through testing with the FAA to see how many drones they can oversee in an airspace. But they're really looking at the airspace. The drones are fully autonomous. They fly themselves.

Okay. So that means do they have a radar and an algorithm on board to make sure they're not gonna run into another drone flying in the same volume of airspace?

Again, we have beacons for communicating back and forth. Also that 150 to 400 feet, the FAA says that's kind of where commercial drone delivery happens. So in theory, any normal consumer drone should be below that 150 feet. But then we're also transmitting out and in for any other aircraft in the space.

So these operators, where are they located?

Yeah, we have a couple locations around the country. We have one on the West Coast, one on DFW, and one on the East Coast.

And are they assigned a specific area, or do you rotate these operators? Do they eventually develop some situational awareness about the areas that they're covering?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if they are overseeing the same area consistently. That's a good question. I'll have to follow up on that.

All right, yeah, I would appreciate an answer on that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

You're welcome.

Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for this information. It is pretty cool and very interesting. I was trying to look through the presentation, but I couldn't find it. And I'm sorry if you mentioned it, but is it only delivery to residential customers or is it also to commercial customers as well?

That's a good question. It depends on the property owner, whether a delivery zone gets placed there. If it's commercial, it's up to the property owner.

Oh, okay. I mean, they're small items anyway, but I would assume there could be employees in a business that want something, for example. Okay, so up to the business owner. That's my only question. The rest of the questions have been asked. Thank you.

Well, that makes me wonder if they would deliver to schools.

We won't deliver to schools. We don't fly over schools. That's part of our FAA regulation. We do not fly schools.

That's fair. I was just thinking like, you know, a little salad being dropped out of the sky.

It could be good. You know, also drone delivery in the hands of high schoolers at their school. You never know what will happen. Okay.

Thank you. Councilmember Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for being here. This is a very interesting topic, and I guess I will be the naysayer of the group. So, you know, DoorDash, this sort of like gig economy, like how do you see this impacting those types of jobs here?

Yeah, it's a good question. So we're partnering with Walmart right now, like I said, so not really impacting the DoorDash front as part of this conversation. We do bring a lot of jobs to the area with our staff. We have people staffing the nest. Now, there is some efficiency that's getting gained there. It's not a single person driving these small packages. But also, there's still space for those larger delivery orders, those larger grocery orders. So we think it's all balanced together. There's certain things that make a lot of sense for a driver in a car. There's other things that make a lot of sense for really efficient means of transportation via drone.

Do you have any data from your other areas around this or no?

That's a good question. I'd have to follow up on it.

Cool. Thank you.

Yeah.

Council Member Lighty. Thank you, Madam Mayor. To kind of piggyback off of that, I guess this is more of a question for Walmart. How long do you see this partnership lasting? I worked at Walmart in high school, and so I remember when they had the ridiculously tall online grocery pickup towers that would bring down your little order, and those did not last very long. So are we worried that this could be a trend that we see fading out at some point?

I hope not.

Thank you, Councilwoman, for that question. And, you know, it really just depends on where technology and where our customers take us, right? So, I mean, this drone delivery is born out of innovation and trying to figure out ways. So, I can't say in 10 years that we're not pivoting to something else. You know, those pickup towers, that was a huge investment by the company in 103 cities across Colorado. We have 103 stores, and most of them received one of those. And we still have those towers, those pickup towers, in a lot of those stores. And then what did you see happen after those pickup towers? We then kind of moved outside to online grocery pickup, and so there wasn't that much need to come in for those. So as technology advances and as consumer demands or, you know, a bar gets moved, you know, standards, So I can't say where we'll be in 10 years. And then also, Mayor, I wanted to address one of your questions. So what is under five and eight pounds? The average Walmart has around 120,000 items in it. And through this partnership and through this delivery of five to eight pounds, you can get nearly 60,000 items delivered via drone. And as Josh mentioned, most of those are gonna be one-off. So it's really not gonna impact that driver, that gig economy, because they're kind of working hand in glove of, you know, that Walmart mom's ordering that larger order and those groceries that are going to be delivered, or maybe it's that, you know, that computer or whatever that's going to be delivered. So they all kind of complement each other. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I worked in online grocery pickup, so I'm like, I know exactly what you're talking about. That's so awesome. So thank you so much. I appreciate you. Council Member Roper.

Okay, mine is similar to my colleagues here, but yes, the gig economy, but also where is our measure of our human capital piece? Like, will this be taking jobs away from people in our community? Like if you think about, if you've ever read the book, The Walmart Effect, that our deodorant used to come in boxes. Walmart thought it was more cost effective to get rid of the boxes and just put the deodorant on the shelf, but then that took away jobs from the people who made the boxes. So I just want to, I mean, I know it's not up to us, but my question is, does this inadvertently take jobs away from our community?

That's a great question, Councilwoman, and it's something that we've received. from other cities. And no, we again think that this will basically supplement some of those jobs. So, you know, as the councilwoman over here had mentioned, you know, when Walmart has made some changes within our store, maybe they were stocking the orange towers that she was speaking of. Those people weren't let go when the technology changed their jobs changed. They suddenly went from filling the orange towers to actually walking around the store filling orders for them to be delivered to the online grocery pickup. So we foresee this as you're going to not only have the associates, it's likely going to be the same associates that are taking the orders out to the drone pad as the same folks that are filling the online grocery pickup delivery order. So you're gonna see actually, we're likely going to need more staffing to help out with that effort because you're not only filling those larger orders, but now you're having to fill drone orders as well.

Okay, thank you for that insight.

Great call on the deodorant. And I'll say... I mean, it's a good book. But not only did... Some of you may not remember, but deodorant did used to come in the box. And whenever it was taken out of the box, it took up less shelf space. But it also took up less space on our trucks as well. So you are more efficient... BE A TRUCK WHICH SAVED YOU GAS, SAVED, YOU KNOW, SO YOU'RE SAVING, YOU'RE HELPING SAVE FUEL AND SAVE EMISSIONS. SO IT WAS KIND OF A PLUS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AS WELL.

I GET THAT. I JUST WORRY ABOUT THE BOX MAKERS.

RIGHT, YEAH.

COUNCILMEMBER NOWICKI.

THANK YOU, MADAM MAYOR. A question, and I'm kind of looking through the documents here. I didn't see anything about, and maybe this is for you, sir, as a representative of Walmart, pharmacy items or like meds, prescriptions. Is that permitted through FAA? Is that something Walmart does? Is that, would that?

So correct me if I'm wrong, but yes, at some point, if it's allowed, we would love to be able to deliver health and wellness items. However, obviously there's very strict requirements on what could be delivered. So if it's like over-the-counter cold medicine, things like that, but anything that would require age verification, obviously the drone isn't going to be able to do that. So same with adult beverages. So you're not going to be able to get a six-pack of Bud Light delivered for the football game.

Too heavy. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Too heavy anyway. Sorry, peak course.

Okay, so in your experience, no one's kind of done the med delivery yet?

Have we delivered pharmacy in some of the others?

No, we haven't done it yet. It's something we're working through with the FAA and with Walmart, you know, that chain of custody, like Ryan said. You know, right now, I don't know if you guys get Walmart prescription delivery. It's an amazing service. But right now they check your ID when they get to the door. And so working through what does that look like with a drone? Is there a way to do that? Those are just things we're working through with Walmart, but it's definitely a goal of ours.

You've got to get some cameras that people can just hold their ID. Privacy is very important to us. You guys give away all your data every day. Come on.

Oh, goodness. Okay. I don't see any more hands. I would say thank you for coming. This was very interesting. We learned a lot, and we appreciate you being here.

I just wanted to again say thank you to the mayor and city council and city planning, especially, you know, this. us being here didn't just happen overnight. There was a lot of back and forth with city staff, and so we really appreciate their partnership and look forward and hope that, you know, I know that sometimes there's the fear of the unknown, and this is new technology, but we appreciate the partnership and the due diligence, and we hope that you look at Walmart and Wing as resources down the line. So thank you guys.

Thank you. Thanks. Have a great evening.

all right second item commercial drone delivery discussion with our director of planning and development becky smith all right so now we're going to get into more of the policy side of the drone discussion and so the purpose tonight is really to provide city council with an overview of commercial drone package delivery how these systems operate regulatory authorities, and approaches taken by other communities. We will be seeking council direction on whether to use existing special use permit regulations that are in the UDO or prepare unified development ordinance amendments that address drone deliveries as a use specific item. Just a little background, commercial drone delivery uses small unmanned aircraft to carry goods a retail or distribution location to a customer's address. The technology has matured very quickly, as you've just heard, and communities are receiving requests related to installation of drone launch sites to accommodate these drone deliveries. Joanna is going to pull up a link to a video that FAA has on their website that just talks a little bit about how this works. It's a really quick one minute video.

Welcome to Main Street, USA. The Smiths need dinner for their family. The Joneses need medicine for their baby. The Browns need another part for their DIY project. And they all need it now. Imagine, they place their orders and drones all take off and deliver straight to their door. You don't have to imagine. It's happening now. And the FAA is making sure it's done safely. Pilots from different companies enter designated flight paths into their flight management software. The systems communicate with each other, coordinating flight routes to avoid other drones and maintain safety throughout the flight. Pilots at each drone base manage multiple flights at a time and can manually take control of a drone if needed. Automated, efficient, and safe drone package delivery. The future is now.

Thank you. And so there are a couple of different regulatory frameworks involved here. The first is the FAA, and they regulate everything from flight paths, altitude, and safety certifications of unmanned aircraft. Commercial drone delivery operators, as was mentioned earlier, must have the certification requirements to obtain approvals before operating.

Oh, he's driving from up here.

And the city has no legal authority to regulate anything that's in the air. I was like, I thought I heard something weird. OK. And the other regulatory framework is the ground, which is really where the city has authority to regulate this use. So the city can regulate from the point of distribution. And this includes the structure or the launch pad, fencing, screening, hours of operation as far as launching goes, parking, lighting, and security and staging. We can do this currently through our UDO regulations. We do have a special use permit that we would apply to this type of scenario. And then we have our fence standards and screening standards and outdoor storage standards. And so those are what we would apply if we were to receive an application. But these are not use specific standards. So they're very general in nature. So the UDO does not define drone delivery at this point. It's a technology or operation that we didn't contemplate in 2019 when we wrote the UDO. As just mentioned, we would apply the special use permit. The special use permit does go through a planning commission review process and they are the final deciding body in this type of application. The city's outdoor and accessory storage regulations along with fencing and screening standards would be the primary tool. So again, how it looks, the setbacks, the amount of parking spaces that it's taking up and making sure that they're still compliant with the parking standards, things of that nature. The current special use permit standards in the UDO, the Planning Commission would review for these criteria that are listed here. So, compatibility with the surrounding area, impacts on future development, compliance with the UDO, impacts on access, traffic, and emergency services, conformance with the comprehensive plan, compatibility with the urban renewal authority plan, if applicable, and adverse impacts on health, safety, and welfare. As part of our research, Collette Cook, one of our planners, did a survey of many communities. She sent requests out to 36 communities that we know either have drones or have drone applications. And 14 responded. And so we did learn some information from these communities. Fencing is the most common point of concern that we heard from these communities. Several cities require more ornamental fencing. or added landscaping to make the site look more aesthetically pleasing. Resident feedback was mostly positive in these communities, although some did report noise complaints, although most said that it was pretty acceptable at this point in terms of the operations they're experiencing. Some cities did impose residential buffer distances, and most cities are using two common approval paths. So either a special use permit with an annual or a renewal period timeframe, or accessory use under their existing standards. None of the cities said that they noticed any sort of traffic reduction due to drone deliveries. And there weren't any safety incidents reported. We also decided to do a survey of more of our regional peers because we know that this technology is coming to Colorado. And so Collette did send the survey to 13 of our neighboring jurisdictions and 10 responded. Most responding jurisdictions have no drone specific code provisions. Thornton seems to be the fastest moving in this area. And they're moving forward a launch pad ordinance, which would be a planning commission approval through a special use permit. Wheat Ridge is actively developing an ordinance right now. Longmont determined that this use is not allowed because it's not defined in their code. And there's a strong desire for regional coordination and just to learn from each other as far as how we're regulating this use. So this is likely going to impact North Glen whether we ever have a launch pad or not because once the drones are in flight, they're outside of our jurisdiction. So if any of our neighboring communities install a launch pad, those drones could fly and deliver to residents within our community. Operators can fly anywhere right now between four to seven miles but the technology keeps changing so that could increase potentially in the future. Drone delivery hubs near our boundary. Again, we wouldn't have any sort of regulatory authority if it's in a different community. And once they're in the air, they're under the control of the FAA. So denying a launch permit in North Glen does not necessarily prevent drones from flying over our city. So we do have some policy options on the table to consider tonight. So we can, if an application comes through, review it with our existing special use permit application. And we would ask some specific narrative questions so that we can inform our community as far as what's happening. Again, there's no, in this scenario, no code amendments would be required. So we would just use what we have on the books. to review a drone pad launch site. It would preserve flexibility as far as there wouldn't be use-specific standards. Applications would be evaluated against the ones that we already have in the code, and it could result in some inconsistent reviews or longer processing times just to figure out how to make those regulations fit with a specific application. The other option is to amend the UDO to define commercial drone delivery uses and establish use-specific standards. Applications in this scenario would likely still be processed through a special use permit before the Planning Commission unless City Council said, no, that's an application we would prefer that came to us for a review. And it provides applicants with greater predictability, and it gives staff more precise review tools to determine if staff supports an application. So, these are just some of the questions we have for you tonight, and we're also happy to entertain other questions that may have come up as you are looking at this topic. But does City Council want staff to proceed with case-by-case evaluation using our existing standards in the UDO, or should staff move forward with a UDO amendment that looks at use-specific standards for drone launch pad sites? And then after that, if an amendment is desired, are there concerns that Council would like us to prioritize, such as buffers from residents, schools, parks, visual screening, and hours of operation? Are there specific questions or concerns that council wants staff to raise directly with a prospective operator before any formal application is completed or accepted? Do we want these permits to be subject to an annual or periodic review of some sort? And does council want follow up presentation when an application is received? So right now, it would just be a planning commission review and decision. So if there needs to be another process where this maybe is a council review, that would be a question on the table as well. So.

Thank you. I will start with council member condo.

Thank you, madam mayor. I would like to ask a point of privilege if we could, if I could ask the questions of our subject matter experts in the room, I, It just occurred to me that I did not ask this question. I wish I did. And the question is, how do you communicate with these drones? Is it VHS line of sight, satellite, cellular? I wonder if you can expand on that, please.

Yeah, so you might be getting slightly beyond my technical area of expertise. But we are certified by the FAA to be beyond visual line of sight. I believe it's cellular mainly.

Okay.

Yes.

Then my follow-on question, probably for our city attorney, is it within scope or bounds for the city to establish policy that has defined, say for example, requirements for ground-based infrastructure supporting these sort of communications? Glad you asked that question.

Director Smith, could you, if possible, go back to the regulatory framework slide? What is difficult for this body, in my opinion, is that all of the questions that you're asking tonight are frankly irrelevant to what the city can consider. And so... Page 11 of 58 in your packet has a regulatory framework slide. You also have a confidential memorandum from my office. The FAA regulates everything in the air. And so really, when we're talking, yeah, right, 25, yeah. This slide is, in my view, the most important slide in the deck because the city's authority is limited to what's in green. And it is really about impacts on the ground from a land use perspective. The minute that... drone is in the air, it is no longer regulated by us at all. And so when you're talking about impacts related to privacy, to neighbors, to how drones interact with one another, flight paths, totally outside of our jurisdiction. So the discussion about what if we don't do this, will we still have drone flights over North Glen? I think it is likely the answer to that is yes. because the drones don't recognize municipal boundaries. In fact, they explicitly cannot under FAA regulations because airspace doesn't recognize those boundaries. So the challenge for council as it considers this is really the land use piece on the ground and not impacting how they interact with other drones, how they interact in the air.

Okay, I understand. Thank you for clarifying that. I guess I'm just going to tell you what my darkest, deepest fear is. And that is that if the system is hacked and all of a sudden a third party or a non-state actor decides to turn these drones into weapons, then it becomes a public safety issue.

And the difficulty is we don't regulate that at all. So if the city wants to regulate... land use, it absolutely can. And frankly, if the city wants to ultimately make the storage requirements significant enough that it might be difficult, it could do so. But that still won't impact what you're talking about because likely, and this, in my opinion, is not about Walmart because there are other POTENTIAL DRONE DELIVERY VENDORS THAT ARE OUT THERE THAT WILL, AS THIS ISSUE EVOLVES. SO REALLY, A LOT OF THE CONCERNS COUNCIL IS EXPRESSING, INCLUDING THOSE, WE WOULD BE SUBJECT TO ANYWAY. THIS IS REALLY ABOUT ON THE GROUND.

OKAY. THANK YOU.

COUNCIL MEMBER BURNS.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm just going to run through your questions there, Director Smith. I'm going to find it again because we left that slide. Sorry. Okay. I think moving through a case by case, I think like where I'm really sitting is like I feel like we need to meet with everybody else and like coordinate with Thornton since they're ahead of us, Wheat Ridge, like I just want to see what everyone else is doing and then we should all just kind of like work together is kind of like initially where I'm sitting because to City Attorney Hoffman's point, it's in the air, it's in the air, you know what I mean? And there's not a lot we can do. So the only thing I'm like kind of concerned about and this isn't, issue I don't think with the presentation the current situation with the Walmart but any future organizations or companies that want to do this is the residential piece of how close can these be these launch pads be to residents homes from like a noise perspective and that and like look and feel kind of vibe and those are the types of things the city can absolutely regulate yeah on the ground where we belong Not in the air. And so that's the kind of, that's kind of where I'm at right now. And so like thinking about like a permit subject to annual renewal, like I really, maybe yes. I just don't feel like I have enough deep dive information in this, new vertical as a whole. Like, we got this one use case scenario of the Walmart, and I can picture that, but I do not, I need a bigger picture. Does that make sense? To make an overall policy impacting potential other vendors. I just don't think I have enough information of what that could look like, you know? Because, like, you know, a year from now, And I'm just spitballing here, but, like, you could upload your driver's license or, like, use your digital license and get weed delivered. You know what I mean? Like, I just don't know, like, what is coming down the pike for this. And, like, to make assumptions around policy right now feels like we're going to spin our wheels until I have a better understanding of sort of, like, what does this look like from a 5, 10-year perspective, I guess. Thank you.

Council Member Gough. Thank you, Mayor. So on the screen where you were kind of comparing the special use permit with amending the UDO The special use permit has like maybe longer processing time, those kind of issues. But if we can't come up with an amendment, is that going to make the process like easier on staff, quicker for the applicant? I mean, is that the potential difference there between doing it one way or the other? I mean, is that one difference?

It makes the analysis for staff maybe easier if we know what we're looking for in terms of where placement is appropriate, what type of screening. Right now the way our fence regulations are written and our accessory storage, accessory uses aren't necessarily completely straightforward with this use. But we can do it. And that's when we were sort of a hypothetical, okay, if we have an application that came in now, how would we do this? And that's what we determined makes the most sense based on the regulations. They're not going to be the most user-friendly either for an operator because there are some limitations to how they can be placed.

Okay, thank you. So I'm kind of with Councilmember Burns. I think if we leave it As it is now, my understanding is it's a special use permit. And so, for example, if Walmart wants to file for this tomorrow, that's how it would go. But I would like to hear from our neighbors so that there's some consistency. I don't see that there's any way this is not happening. I can see every fast food restaurant in the United States doing this. And we could have drones zipping across North Glen and All day long. So I'm for trying to make it simple, efficient, easy, and consistent. And if that means kind of waiting until we hear from our regional partners, that sounds great for me. And then as far as the follow-up presentation, I think it's just if we hear more from our neighbors, that would help us decide that should be part of the follow-up presentation. You know what? I didn't have my speaker on. Sorry. Thank you. Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to thank Council Member Kondo for unlocking a new fear for me of the drone. I'm going to have to take up clay shooting, apparently, for the future. So, yeah, it's similar to what's already kind of been said on the dais. I mean, it sounds, you know, we're The radius is four by seven miles to delivery, give or take. North Glen's seven miles, so they're going to be flying over. I think I'm leaning toward kind of just keeping as it is the case-by-case basis until we have more data, and then we can kind of, because then we can maybe see what the barriers are, what maybe residents are saying. then kind of draft an ordinance rather than draft an ordinance get all the have it be practically exposed to you know reality and then have to come back and redraft the ordinance so that's kind of my thinking um i i mean i i would at some point like to draft an ordinance and it sounds like the ordinance doesn't even apply to the drones it just applies to the launch pad right which theoretically if we're going off walmart it would there's one walmart in the city and it would you know the launch pad would be in the parking lot. So, yeah, I think this is kind of taking it maybe by use case and then kind of seeing, talking to our partners, kind of seeing where the chips fall and going from there. That way we're not making you all do kind of any unnecessary work. We can all learn together.

Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll back them up. I'll just say, like, you know, there's two Walmarts in Thornton that are all within delivery range of our city, basically all of our city. The ones south are both only a few miles away from here. So, and then... I think, like I said, you know, Thornton's already done a lot of work. I would totally support holding, seeing what their final thing is, and then adjusting if we need to. So as we're not duplicating work that's being done next door. And my only concern is I would support a special use permit with the annual, especially up front, just because it's going to be new. And to Council Member Burns and someone else's perspective is like, Yes, right now it's Walmart, right now it's Wing, but five years from now it could be every food place, every random dispensary or anything, and you can imagine how that would be annoying. My only concern is that I'm sure Walmart would always do right by our city, but I am concerned about the launch pad. I assume it would be right in front of that delivery area. They just renovated it. It's beautiful. I'm sure they'd put it right in front of there. I don't think people that live in that, it's a neighborhood market, therefore it's in the neighborhood. I really think people, the only thing they're going to care about is noise. And again, based on Google Maps, I know that's also Wing's parent company in Alphabet, but if that's accurate, I would say at least 200, 250 feet. Just to say we tried, because again, when there's one launch in every five minutes, They're going to be very upset. But yeah, that's all I have to say. Thanks.

City Attorney Hoffman.

Council is considering considering the coordination with other communities. I guess I would ask as it relates to Director Smith's questions and again the same slide That identifies the types of things that the city would regulate to councilmember Seavers point Certainly distance from residences. It sounds like is an important one but things like hours of operation because as While Walmart is the one that put on the presentation tonight, along with Wing, this would apply to any launch pad in North Glen. And so as we're having these conversations with other communities, I believe Walmart is close to wanting to file an application. And the idea if we want to apply what would be what's called a pending ordinance, in other words, something that you direct that it be drafted, I think I would hope that they would work with us to wait until that is completed. or at least understand that there are regulations being drafted based on your direction that would apply to their operation. So direction on what of those issues matters to council is important as we start drafting and coordinating with our neighboring communities.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Temp. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, City Attorney Hoffman, because I was thinking and taking notes as I was listening to everybody, but to Councilmember Seavers' point, it made me think, yes, Thornton is drafting an ordinance and they're working it, but our situation will be slightly different for the very reasons that Councilmember Seavers pointed out. It's a neighborhood market. The distances are going to be different, maybe what we want versus what Thornton wants. FOR THOSE REASONS, PLAYING A LITTLE BIT OF DEVIL'S ADVOCATE MAY BE A PROACTIVE APPROACH. IF THERE'S AN ABILITY TO DO A PENDING ORDINANCE, THAT SOUNDS REASONABLE. YOU'RE GOING TO SAY SOMETHING.

And I don't think anyone is suggesting the ordinances would be identical. I'm suggesting from a framework perspective. So it may be that Wheat Ridge and North Glen both have distance limitations. But based on the way that Wheat Ridge or Thornton or anywhere else has their cities laid out, those distance limitations may be different. So they will absolutely be jurisdiction specific. But it's sort of the idea of the framework to make sure we're regulating the same types of things on the ground.

Yeah, and I'm in agreement with everybody else on that. But just, like, maybe a little bit more proactive just because we, I don't know, I feel like we... do well in terms of thinking through ordinances and maybe could catch something that Thornton isn't. But for those reasons, yes, it's good to kind of compare. I had another question about that, but I'm going to go back to something that I thought of from the previous presentation when we asked about commercial versus residential and the mayor brought up school zones and then it was mentioned that while the FAA has rules about that, and this is obviously governed by FAA regulations. What other sensitive areas does the FAA, so FAA regulations, not ours, have? You mentioned school zones, so what other areas are considered in that as well?

I think right now they're considering restrictions over, like, utilities so like our wastewater treatment plant or water treatment plant might be a restricted area in the future i think it's open for public comment right now that's the only one i know of off the top of my head because it just came through in an email i don't know of the others

Yeah, I think a good general way to think about it is critical or sensitive infrastructure. So it can be utilities, you know, electrical facilities, water treatment plants, and then obviously military bases, things like that. I'm not sure if there's one in North Glen. But yeah, basically sensitive infrastructure.

Okay. That was something I wrote. So critical infrastructure, sensitive infrastructure, but those are already included in the FA guideline, so covered there. I would... I WOULD THINK THE ANNUAL CHECK-IN IF WE DO GO THAT ROUTE IS PROBABLY GOOD JUST BECAUSE OF CHANGING TECHNOLOGY AND WEIGHT LIMITS COULD CHANGE. BIGGER DRONES COULD EQUAL MORE NOISE. AS WAS MENTIONED, TECH CHANGES EVERY YEAR. WE'VE SEEN IT. SO THAT'S JUST WHERE I STAND RIGHT NOW. AND I'LL LEAVE IT AT THAT. I MIGHT CHIME IN AGAIN AS I REGROUP MY THOUGHTS. THANK YOU.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you guys for being here tonight. Thank you for being here. I do agree with so much of what my colleagues have said. Also, I do agree with setting the year, the annual reevaluation, because for all the things we've said, I think it is important to revisit that. I also want to at least say for myself, this is not my area of expertise, and I'll own that. So I think I will rely on staff and your expertise and professionalism. I know a whole heck of a lot about running a school. I do not know a lot about drones. So you guys are the professionals for a reason, and I think I will support you on that.

Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think this question is maybe more towards the Attorney Hoffman. As I'm thinking through just like autonomous and like ports and sort of regulations, Waymo is also coming to the area. Is this something we also need to think about tangentially of just like autonomous deliveries in general and like what all of this looks like? Is this something we should think through to have something? Again, I think like I'm just stuck in like We have this one use case at the moment. It will not stay like this for long. And I don't want to keep fixing ordinances and coming back in the next two or three. I don't know. I'm just trying to future proof a little bit.

And this one will be, and that's a really good point, but this one will be different in terms of how we regulate it just because we can only regulate the launch pad site. So it will be what type of screening, what the accessory structure looks like, where the drones are kept overnight, how much parking they can use, where on the site can it be in the front, or does it have to be on the side or the back?

And to me that is super similar to something like if autonomous cars were needing to be parked somewhere. You know what I'm saying? It's same, same.

I was picturing on the street.

I was thinking of the facilities, if all of a sudden it feels like it's a hop, skip, and a jump, if you will.

Yeah, there is a fairly viral YouTube video of Waymo. parking area and the cars getting conflicted and the impacts on the neighbors to that parking area where they couldn't move out of the parking area. So even with autonomous vehicles, the regulation is likely going to be limited in most respects to that type of analysis of where they're housed and from a land use perspective. A lot of the more broad focused issues about operation will likely be preempted if it's not already. But we know with drones that we're already into an area that was preempted. I mean, we did work with the police department over 10 years ago now, I believe, on drones at the time and regulation at the time related to privacy interests of folks in North Glen. And even at that point, preemption was already a significant hurdle to the city adopting regulations. So North Glen did not. There are a couple of communities in the metro area that have tried to regulate, from a trespass perspective, the operation of drones. And even that's limited, very limited.

OK, obsessed with the viral YouTube comment. Also, I am in favor of a yearly REVIEW AND DISTANCING AND I WOULD REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LIKE TO WORK WITH OUR PARTNERS AROUND THE HOURS OF OPERATION BECAUSE SPECIFICALLY FOR US, IF WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL AND ALL OF A SUDDEN THORNTON IS LIKE YEAH, THEY CAN FLY UNTIL MID 24 HOURS OR WHATEVER IT IS AND WE'RE LIKE A HARD NO, THAT'S GOING TO GET A LOT OF RESIDENTS CONFUSED. THANK YOU.

COUNCIL MEMBER LIGHTY. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for this. I'm so glad that I'm after you because that was a really good point. I didn't even think about that. Question about that, though, because we're the land use, can we regulate their hours of operation in the sky?

No, we could regulate when they take off, timing-wise, because that's where the noise impacts the neighbors.

Got it. Okay. That just connected all the dots. I love that. I'm also really glad that the Mayor Pro Tem asked about the regulations around the FAA because it sounds like they already have a lot of regulations such as the buffers. If we added more, would that conflict at all or not?

So they don't have, oh.

I was going to say, in the memo from my office, there's actually a link to, on the first page, to a fact sheet. And I would encourage you to look at that as well.

Okay, then, just to go down the list of things, I do think just because my biggest fear was also revisited with Council Member Condo's comment about getting hacked with the drones, I would like to have that annual review just so that we can keep a closer eye on these permits. Just who knows what's going to happen. And then I'm not sure if... Did anyone answer the question about the follow-up conversation? If we do receive an application with this permit, I think that would be a good idea to have, even if we are pushing it back to meet with any of our colleagues, just so that we can be aware of what's going on. And I think I may have answered all the questions. But I am kind of waiting for the day that my Amazon delivery is dropped in by a drone. It's off. Yep. I know. Walmart and Amazon and all the things. I feel like this is, like you said, it's going to keep going.

It's going to keep going. So thank you. Sure. Come on up.

Just talking about the reoccurring approval, we're totally fine with that. We understand. When we first started rolling out these sites in DFW, it was annual. And I guess my only warning there is like, Two years might be a better cadence, something a little bit longer. What we found in DFW was, you know, I sat in front of city council, it seemed like, every six months and asked them the same questions. And they were like, why are you here again? Why are you talking to us? So with that, you know, maybe considering a longer duration. A lot of our initial cities we rolled out with, hey, this is just a year trial. That's great. And so I don't know what cities you guys communicated with, but like Fort Worth, where I live in Texas, we said, hey, this is just a year. Each of those cities came back and gave us permanent approval in the long term to the point where now we seek permanent approval. Now, that's not to say, we're okay. We want to come to your city, and so we're willing to take the restrictions that you guys implement. But I would encourage maybe longer than a year just in terms of y'all's time and agenda space on city council meetings. It does turn into a lot, so.

Thank you.

So I had a few questions myself. I am very much in support of a follow-up presentation when we receive an application, coming back and getting specific details. I think I'm wondering about some sort of IGA. We have them. with other municipalities for other reasons. And I'm a little concerned that Thornton is on their way. And do you happen to know how far along?

They have an ordinance going through the process right now. So I think it's either scheduled or they've had a hearing. Okay.

And I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain it's Amazon. You met with Amazon this morning. I'm talking to Director Smith. Sorry. Director Smith, do you happen to know?

I don't know. So they have one pre-application that they've had, and then their ordinance to define a launch pad and then process it through a special use permit with the planning commission as the public hearing is expected to go to council on

the coming months is the information that we got from them i think the questions i have because conversations i have had are about the amazon distribution facility that thornton has right and so talking about sites and drone launch pads there as we've mentioned our city is only so big so if we were to create something that just completely tightened everything down to where it was pretty inaccessible so for example if we had a residential requirement as mentioned distance from homes if that's a land use you know, regulation that we put in place, it'll eliminate them. It's not going to eliminate them flying through our city. And so they're going to cross right over us no matter what's happening. And that's why I'm wondering, Corey, do you think there's a space for some sort of IGA? Because if one thing we can manage is time, that would be something that I think we could come to an agreement on with our neighbors.

I think there is an opportunity for some sort of regional collaboration. The reason I don't think the IGA is necessarily the mechanism is because these are all separate land use approvals, and each jurisdiction has to exercise its own quasi-judicial land use authority. However, I think some sort of memorandum of understanding, for lack of a better term, but some regional collaboration on timing related to, and it would have to be, again, related to impacts on the properties adjacent to the launch pads, even though we may be concerned about the impact on the neighbors where the deliveries are being received because of the preemption issue. We have to tie it to the land use issue, and the land use issue is them coming and going from the launch pad.

Well, and I think that's my concern with that distribution center in Thornton because there's nobody over there. So they could be running them 24-7 because that noise isn't going to impact anybody. It's all industrial, so... It'd be nice to see what their draft ordinance is, if anything, so we can get eyes on it and have a better understanding of what's coming. And it doesn't sound like Westminster is having conversations, at least from Director Smith, your research.

I think they were just one of the communities that didn't respond to our request for information.

Okay.

So they might be having the conversation. We just don't know.

yeah yeah and i know there are some communities for example in the southern metro area that are have are are definitely engaged in these conversations as well okay not just in this in this portion of the metro area okay is there any conversation happening at the adams county level do we know not that i'm aware of no

don't know that we reached out to any counties i think we just reached out to different municipalities okay i was just wondering okay well i mean i think knowing that there's not a whole lot that we can make decisions around if i go back to i'm going back to the slide I mean, knowing, you know, we have guests tonight and knowing that we have one Walmart location, it is a very small parking lot right in the middle of the neighborhood. So I don't know that that's the best example for this conversation because their parking lot was already impacted by new routines over there. So... I mean, it's, I don't know. I think it's, what is a pre-application?

A pre-application is when someone is getting ready to submit an actual physical application with all of their information and they come in with their concept to get more information about the process and hear about the timeframes for review. and what they can expect during the review from the different divisions that need to review that land use.

Okay. So I'm back on the policy choice slide where it's, we can either use our special use permit process or we can amend the UDO. And I went all the way down where it says it provides staff with more precise review tools. I don't know that we're in a place to draft a new one right now because it sounds like council needs a lot of questions answered and possibly more examples. I know you reached out to as many as you possibly could. I wonder if there happens to be a municipality similar to ours. where it's just a right in the middle of our neighborhood kind of market in a situation where they're gonna be flying across us from all angles when this goes through with our neighbors. I don't know if that exact example exists, but might be interesting. But I do support the amending of the UDO. I just don't think we're ready. And I would like a follow-up when we receive an application.

So that's maybe a question for Corey, because right now the path that we would use in the UDO is a special use permit, and I don't know that it really has the opportunity for a call-up.

Correct. So you've got a chicken-egg problem.

Okay.

Because theoretically Walmart could come in and apply tomorrow. under our existing special use permits. So that's why we are seeking direction, even if that direction is to look at amending the code to create a process in collaboration with regional partners. That is direction enough for tonight that would assist us in getting started. My hunch is, although I don't know this, that Walmart and Wing would probably want to be at some level involved since they desire to have an application. And so they would certainly have information and it would be collaborative in that respect. Because we would want to request that their opportunity for a robust application choice in moving forward would be to actually have the regulations in place that council is talking about it at a high level and so i think we can we can have those conversations um In our memo, that was sent to you separately, there's examples from communities outside of Colorado that have looked at this much more carefully. And we identified some of those, that even though it's different states, the land use issues are remarkably similar, no matter where you go. And so I think if that's the direction, we can work to implement that. If, for example, you use a special use permit process and amend that, it still wouldn't come to council. You'd be getting it, the planning commission would have final approval, but we can bring the parameters of what that looks like to you so you know what the planning commission's going to be considering and get you comfortable from a policy level that it has the right things in place.

okay so when i go back um this is to my colleagues when i go back to where it says page 17 it's the slide with the policy choice um just reading the language it uh and the specific word choice of that slide i i believe we should move to amend the udo as uh corey Just paraphrased and stated as far as future direction.

So that is my recommendation, but we still have some hands up councilmember condo Thank You madam mayor Based off of the conversation I'm also of that thinking the green box the green I Thought I'd be creatively colors.

Yes, I

But I also listened to what council member burns talked about and that is you know, we would like to have some alignment or Standard that is consistent with other municipalities or the county so I definitely for Feedback or direction. I think that is also important We make sure I'm answering all these questions I WOULD ALSO BE IN FAVOR OF AN ANNUAL REVIEW JUST BECAUSE THE TECHNOLOGY IS EVOLVING SO QUICKLY. I THINK WE NEED TO HAVE FREQUENT SORT OF DISCUSSION AND UPDATE BRIEFS, IF YOU WILL, SO THAT WE CAN ADJUST AS ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY, IT'S GOING TO HAVE HICKUPS. I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO BE ABLE TO WORK THROUGH THOSE BUGS. AND THEN FOLLOW-UP PRESENTATION ANSWER IS YES.

Thank you. Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. The only thing I didn't point out earlier is I support amending the UDO. I support a residential buffer, and I would support... You said the limit wing was 10 p.m., the FAA? Okay, so I think 8 p.m. is fair also, just because it's in the neighborhood. That's it. Thanks.

Council Member Gough. Thank you. Well, I think, you know, in my first time around, I said the UDO amendment with some further information is the way to go. I just don't want to lose out or like miss an opportunity because we may are making applicants having to wait for us to hash all of this out so I don't know if that's an option to do the special use permit let's say if somebody applies tomorrow and then work on this amendment but that's I don't know that's a question for somebody I don't know who would we can work with our

with Walmart and Wing and anyone else and try to navigate that. There is something called the pending ordinance doctrine that we may be able to apply if we needed to because ultimately what we want to avoid is if Walmart comes in TOMORROW AND APPLIES AND GETS AN APPROVAL THAT IT WOULD BE WHAT'S KNOWN AS A LEGAL NONCONFORMING USE. SO WE WANT TO HAVE THE RULES APPLY ACROSS THE BOARD EVEN IF SOMEONE COMES IN EARLY ON.

Okay, thank you. So that's that question. I think I do believe we need to limit hours of operation to something reasonable. And, you know, we've heard a suggestion. I'm fine with that. And a distance noise buffer and, you know, just some reasonable requirements for fencing. All that, I think I trust staff to come back with, you know, suggestions on that. I do have a little bit of concern about, I mean, right now like an annual review sounds like a good idea, things change all the time, but if we're starting to get like 12 different companies with an annual review, that's 12 of them a year, I just feel like we need, if there's some way to have some options around that, or as needed, or something like that, because I do see, like right now, it sounds like a good idea. In five years, if we have 12 different companies flying drones all over the place with applications, you know, coming in all the time and reviews coming in all the time, that's going to be not only our time and, you know, during our meetings, but also take up staff time and energy. So that's my two cents on that.

Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll try to capture all the things. I think I still stand where I was before, where I said I agreed with a pending ordinance, as city attorney Hoffman said. Easy for me to say. Just because I think there's that proactive piece, as mentioned, if they come in. So there's no non-conforming applications. In addition, with the collaboration, which our city attorney also mentioned, as part of that. So it's green with collaboration and pending ordinance, if I've captured all of that correctly. And yes to all the other things. I still, I know that it was, worth considering. You know, it was mentioned before that maybe two years is more appropriate. I get that. But I feel like at least since this is brand new for us that we kind of need to see how it's going to go. And that's why I know I'm speaking for myself. The annual check-in just feels a little bit more comfortable right now. I am assuming there's potential to modify that in the future if we're like, this is great. We have no problems. But it sounds like it's going to happen anyway. And we've got neighbors close to us who are probably going to be using them, so better to get ahead of it, in my opinion. But yes to all the things. I think for the hours and all of that, I think that's part of that regional collaboration, so we can kind of figure that out together. What are you doing? Because this is kind of what we're feeling. So did I answer all the questions? And yes to a follow-up presentation. And there was something about it coming back to council and not just the planning commission. Was that another question? Or did I get that wrong?

Yeah, so right now the special use permit is planning commission as the final decision. So if we're amending the ordinance, we'll come back to you with the specific criteria that the planning commission would be using for the use specific so that you would be understanding what their review process is. Okay. I think I got all the things.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. One piece that I haven't heard addressed would be, and Corey maybe you can jump in here, I'm sorry, City Attorney Hoffman, would be conduct toward the drones. Is that something that would need to be regulated? something we have to think about no i just mean like res you know like i could see people you know like come drones come in and you have people throwing rocks at drones or things like that is that something that needs to be considered as part of this if someone threw a rock at a drone and damaged it that's covered by our existing criminal code so um i mean there was a

Stephen Colbert episode out of Deer Trail, Colorado, where someone was selling drone blind permits, trying to shoot down drones many years ago. That was a long time ago. But that's still a risk because obviously if people try to do that, whether they hit the drone or they hit others when they miss the drone, but our existing codes cover it.

Yeah, and I'm just looking at, because we covered land, I'm looking at your memo, and I apologize, I did not give it a thorough reading before. Land use, property-based rules, conduct-based rules that don't target flight paths, such as harassment, trespass, reckless endangerment, surveillance, privacy, things like that. I mean, is that too much for kind of initial ordinance, or is that things we also need to consider?

You could, but a lot of that is not going to be related to these particular applications. And a lot of it is actually covered, for example, utility infrastructure. The discussions they were having about we could include city facilities if we wanted to make those areas city utility facilities. So there are things we could do, but a lot of it is still subject to preemption. And if you're talking about criminal misconduct, our existing code largely covers it now.

All right. Okay. Other than that, I think I would amend my statement to kind of be more in line with the discussion, Mayor, with you and City Attorney Hoffman.

So I have a question. Is there an opportunity to put a temporary trial basis on all of these?

If you have a special use permit that is subject to a time limitation, it would in effect be that.

Because I just keep thinking, and actually it was Council Member Nowicki at the very start of this conversation was like, How do we write it now knowing that things are going to change or we're going to get a reaction from residents? And so we're making assumptions, right? We're making assumptions it's going to make a ton of noise. It may not. We saw that decibel presentation. We're making assumptions that it's going to be super disruptive. But without knowing that, I think it's really hard to be really tight with it if all of these, at least for a period of time, were trial-based permits.

I think, in effect, special use permits are because they're subject to annual renewal. And so we could build language in that would identify the types of things that would impact renewal, which could be, which again, have to be related to the land use piece. But yes. So I think in effect, they already would operate that way under a special use permit.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, as has been mentioned, technology is changing at such a rapid pace. It wouldn't surprise me if a small business owner was like, I'm going to do it from the marketplace, right? down the road but right now we have one viable location in our city and this technology is very new and it's not in the metro area yet so it makes me nervous jumping out there as the first one without having it be a trial basis i don't know i'm just wondering about that piece

Sounds like from the slides. I'm not sure even if we started everything tomorrow We'd be the first one based on where Thornton and and what we Ridge are but nonetheless again If if there's a special use permit that has conditions that could be subject to non-renewal the city can always amend an ordinance So, okay, you could have a special use permit and if the technology changes You can change the rules Okay

Okay. Does that, do we have a contract at some point? Because that seems like changing the UDO would violate somebody's contract.

Not at all. You change the UDO, you just changed it, for example, for natural medicine. okay um got it and you could theoretically undo that change some at some point if you wanted to if for some reason the impacts were different than you imagined you could revisit it you've revisited your marijuana regulations many times as that industry has changed over the over time okay so it is not unusual at all to do that okay uh well as uh council member roper stated i don't think we have a drone operator

expert up here so we are gonna trust you and we would like I think just as far as direction goes one of the things I would like to do is possibly mirror our noise ordinance because I do see the the benefit of i mean as a single parent having medicine dropped out of the sky when i had a kid with a fever would have been great uh not having to load them up and do that but that may happen at nine not 7 30. uh so i think if it mirrors our noise ordinance that's fair and then if you want to propose something that is similar to another city that has a neighborhood market that's really close to homes. I think that'd be great and I think we'd like to check that out. Council Member Nowicki.

I did want to, and I kind of wanted to jump into your discussion with City Attorney Hoffman. From your memo, it sounds like, stop me if this is not a fair characterization of this, but that most cities are kind of moving toward

they have very few cities have kind of passed drone specific ordinances before allowing operations is that correct in colorado in colorado that is not the case in other states that is the case in other states in colorado it is still very new and cities are still making that determination but if you look at at some of the information both in in director smith's um summary and then also in ours it's mostly out of state that are that we were referencing Okay.

And we, I didn't see anything about outcome data from that.

It's too soon. Okay from the other states you mean okay that it's so new there, too I mean you have examined for example and again remember that that is a turning client privilege communication that you're referencing that the memo, but you have Ordinances from a community in California that was adopted this year very recently And then one other one that I believe was also, if not from Georgia, that was the end of last year.

So these are really new. Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Gough. Sorry, one last thing. As we're having this discussion, it occurred to me, I mean, You know, maybe I'm trying to anticipate things that will never happen, but would we need to specify or have something in the language about people doing a nest or whatever you want to call it on a rooftop? I mean, that would be like, you know, if it's a small area with a parking lot around it, that might be a way to get it into their business within the buffer zone that we've discussed.

Yeah, we will be looking at both siting and parking lots and on rooftops.

Thank you. That's a really interesting point.

OK. You heard a lot. So it sounds like we're going to bring forward an ordinance. So we're in that pending ordinance status. OK. And so we'll probably bring that soon. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, I will now adjourn the study session. I WILL NOW CALL TO ORDER THE SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL MEETING OF AUGUST 3RD, 2026. WILL THE CLERK PLEASE CALL THE ROLL.

MAYOR LIGHTY. HERE. MAYOR PROTEM LUKMAN HARAMASA. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER BURNS. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER SIEVERS.

HERE.

COUNCILMEMBER CONDO.

HERE.

COUNCILMEMBER ROPER. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER GOFF. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER NOWICKI.

HERE.

COUNCILMEMBER LIGHTY. HERE. THANK YOU.

I will entertain a motion that the City Council meet in Executive Session pursuant to Section 4.5 of the City of North Glen Home Rule Charter for personnel matters regarding the City Manager's employment.

I move that we move to Executive Session. Second.

Please open the vote. The vote is open. I know a lot of people forgot to log in. We'll give it just a second.

I OPEN JOSH'S FIRST, OKAY. COUNCILMEMBER ROEPER IS A YES, OKAY. I WILL CLOSE THAT VOTE AND THE MOTION TO ADJOURN TO EXECUTIVE SESSION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY.

WE WILL ADJOURN TO THE EXECUTIVE SESSION.