City Council - Regular Meeting

1:02•CLChris Leh

Good evening. It is August 25th. It's a special meeting of the Louisville City Council. Can we get a roll call, please?

1:47 – 2:46•CLChris Leh

If you'd join me as able for the Pledge of Allegiance. Welcome all. We have tonight several things on the agenda, but the first one is joint meeting with Library Board of Trustees. So welcome to the meeting. All of you. I think before we go any further, probably good to introduce ourselves to you and you to us, even though we've met before. So perhaps we can start with you, Jamie.

4:27•JKJudi Kern

Hi, I'm Diana Langley, City Manager. Judy Kern. I'm a Ward 2 Representative.

4:45•DHDietrich Hoefner

Josh Cooperman, Ward 1. Dietrich Heffner, Ward 3. Thanks for coming.

4:55 – 5:06•CLChris Leh

Right, I think the first thing on tap tonight is presentation. I'm not sure, how are you handling this? Is one person doing the presenting or multiple?

30:01 – 30:21•CLChris Leh

Sure. Why don't we just briefly, if people have clarifying questions for you about the presentation, and then we can address some of the questions that we've got. Any questions about the presentation? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem.

33:11 – 33:41•JKJudi Kern

to others. Yep. Council Member. Thank you for asking those questions, Mayor Pro Tem. They were mine as well. And thank you all, really appreciate you being here. And I agree, interesting to hear your connection to the library. This is probably more for the director. So same thing with the programming. I was curious, is the increase across the board on every type of programming? Or is there like a heavier lean toward young and children's programming? It seems like that's a really popular item.

34:11 – 34:26•DFDeborah Fahey

I'm going to continue on with this topic. I'm wondering when you have an increase, which sounds pretty significant in attendance, how do you staff or manage those larger events?

34:58•DFDeborah Fahey

Well, thank you, and thank you for what all of you do.

35:02 – 35:17•JCJosh Cooperman

Council Member Cooperman. I was also going to ask questions about the program number increasing, but I'll ask a very different question. I'm just curious, how does the library foundation raise most of its funds?

36:04 – 36:50•CLChris Leh

Other questions? I have a couple about the library snapshot in particular. I guess one of the things I was curious about is there's, you know, you've broken it down into full-time employees, part-time, and then volunteers, as well as volunteer hours, but just the numbers of those three, full-time, part-time, and volunteers, how do those compare with other libraries, say, in Colorado, if you know, and same thing nationally?

38:07 – 38:52•CDCaleb Dickinson

Council Member Dickinson. Just curious, because I didn't see it in here, if you guys are... what role you guys might be playing in, you know, what is the revamp of front and center and what I see as sort of the outdoor library for much of the year. Like obviously street fair and farmer's market and things are known as popular events here, but I think there's a lot of intention on making that space sort of, you know, hopefully feel like the outdoor portion of the library. And I'm wondering if you guys are, involved at all in conversations in that direction, if you have excitement towards it, if

40:28 – 40:43•CDCaleb Dickinson

Yeah, I think that's my hope and concern, right? This great opportunity for more programming and like, more programming? How do we do more, you know? So I think it's, yeah, it is an opportunity and potentially a problem area as well.

41:07 – 42:58•CLChris Leh

Why don't we move to some of your questions? I want to start by kind of maybe Well, hitting the first one, what are council's top priorities? I think you've laid out some good priorities. I want to, and this is, don't take this negatively. This is a question or this is kind of a comment that I have about what the boards generally do and, frankly, what we do. What we do is we hit policy broadly, and when we're doing our best work, I think leave the operational stuff to the staff who do a terrific job, and you know that Brandy does. So a couple of the priorities that I looked at here, particular

44:17•CLChris Leh

We should probably take public comment before we go into the council.

44:30 – 44:53•CLChris Leh

All right. Then back. Questions about priorities? I know that that's a question we get from every single board and commission. Yeah. Council Member Cooperman.

44:55 – 45:23•JCJosh Cooperman

Actually, I'd like to ask a follow-up question first, sort of coming off the mayor's comments and questions. So you're called the Library Board of Trustees rather than, say, the Library Advisory Board. I don't remember from our statutes and such, but is the Library Board of Trustees more formal than an advisory board? And could you clarify that for us?

46:20 – 46:45•JCJosh Cooperman

I don't know if anyone from the board would like to sort of comment on whether... I mean, you said you're learning a lot about how library law works in Colorado and so forth. So, I don't know, do you have any... thoughts or concerns about how you're functioning as a board of trustees currently or not?

50:48 – 51:13•DFDeborah Fahey

I'm going to kind of follow up on this a little bit. I'm wondering, with some advisory boards, they're not allowed to accept donations from the public and then specifically use them for their priorities. As a licensed board, are you a 501c3? Can you accept cash? And no. It's a fantastic question.

51:37•DFDeborah Fahey

And do those two boards interact and cooperate? Yes, quite deeply.

54:57 – 56:15•DHDietrich Hoefner

Yeah, thank you. Thanks to all of you for coming and sharing in the presentation. I agree with everything my Word 3 colleague said. I would add, you know, on the sort of taking care of what we have front, I do think that's really important. The other thing we've all been working hard on is we just finished our comprehensive plan for land use and we'll be implementing that with a development code rewrite. You know, and depending on who you ask, I think one of the outcomes of that is going to be We're hoping to get open Lewisville to more and different kinds of people than necessarily live here

56:18 – 56:36•CLChris Leh

We have just a few minutes, but are there other council members who want to weigh in on these? I think council member or member of town did a wonderful job of explaining, I think, encapsulating what certainly I said or want to say.

56:36 – 57:27•JCJosh Cooperman

Yeah, I would absolutely echo what... Council Members Hamilton and Heffner just said. I just wanted to add, I mean, on point number two, I would say, like, one of the things we're looking for from you is advice on that. I mean, I feel like you all are much more qualified to to advise on where we need to invest or not to invest for the library. And so I would say, sort of in line with number three, you should really feel free to provide us with that information. And I, for one, am happy to have conversations about that. Or I think if you just want to send us memos or emails or anything like tha

57:31 – 58:10•JKJudi Kern

Yeah, I agree. The Mayor Pro Tem stated everything so well, I won't try to restate. I just wanted to see if you guys hear some of the same things that I do. Do you hear from the senior community at all, the members who come in and need especially books and the access or lack thereof to the newest novels that are out, especially in large print or newspapers in large print? Because what I've What I have been hearing is the only access is a digital one, and I find that that is not actually typically used by our senior population. So I was just curious to see if that was something that you guys ha

59:36 – 59:54•JKJudi Kern

If I may, just real quick, is that also something that you guys share with the foundation since they're responsible for helping to do some fundraising that that might be targeted type of fundraising and there are specific organizations that maybe they would be able to communicate with to raise money when it's something specific for that? I don't know.

1:01:12•JKJudi Kern

I buy my e-books because I can't rent them.

1:01:16 – 1:02:15•CLChris Leh

Thank you very much for getting together. One thing I do encourage you, and I think you've heard it a couple of times, is watching budget and giving us input is the way we get good input from the boards and commissions. And I hope you'll continue to work with the director on that and on... on the work plan, which is coming up too. If you're interested in making some suggestions, we're getting close to finishing the budget, but there will be a draft budget that comes from our city manager the first. We're going to have to shut down because we've got other things coming. But please, if you have

1:02:23 – 1:07:22•CLChris Leh

Thank you. Do you need a minute to set up? Are we headed back upstairs here? Are we? Okay. I'm going to use a quickie. Why don't we plan to come back in a couple of minutes when things are set. and we're ready for our item B which is discussion and direction on the draft cross guidebook that's parks rec open space guidebook and why don't we start with this presentation

1:24:30 – 1:24:56•CLChris Leh

Good. We will start with council questions, so I would like to kick off on this one. No questions at all. Wow. Okay. We can go to public comment. I actually, I've got a couple of questions myself, but...

1:25:05 – 1:25:29•JCJosh Cooperman

Let's see. A couple of smaller questions. So on the, there's the map that shows all the open space properties and it has the different designations of types of open space. Are those currently established or are those suggestions?

1:25:39 – 1:25:58•CLChris Leh

Yeah, I forget. Yeah, I think I know the map that you're talking about.

1:27:47 – 1:28:20•JCJosh Cooperman

Okay. And then another question about a map. So there's one of the trails maps showing existing conditions again. It seems like it shows some bicycle lanes, but not all the bicycle lanes. So I was wondering, you know, is it supposed to show all bicycle lanes or are there certain ones that have been emphasized or like are there actually ones that are sort of designated as parts of trails? I'm just not sure.

1:30:04 – 1:30:22•JCJosh Cooperman

Okay. That's helpful. Okay. And maybe... I don't know. Maybe that's all for now. Thank you.

1:30:26 – 1:32:03•JKJudi Kern

Great, thank you. First off, appreciate, like, this is a huge amount of work. I know that I've mentioned this to you guys before, but I thought in a very public setting, I would offer that as thanks, because I think this is a big project. So I had a question about, it's under the open space, and it's, I think, in the details of the action plan that we're kind of talking about. Page 114, Chris. to help you find it. And I think it's under the Open Space 2.3. It has a mention of wildfire mitigation in with vegetation management practices and ecological restoration. And then in 2.3.1, it talks abo

1:34:16 – 1:35:06•CLChris Leh

Other questions? Okay. I want to follow up on one of the questions that Councilmember Cooperman asked, which is when, if and when we adopt this, probably when we adopt this in some form, As to that figure 11, what are we going to be adopting? And what are we not going to be adopting? Are we going to be, I mean, is that going to set in priority, I guess, your future activity? Is that what we're talking about? Or is there something different than that?

1:36:17•CLChris Leh

Okay. Got a couple of… I think Adam has a thought, too.

1:37:22 – 1:38:00•CLChris Leh

And I think, if I'm recalling, one of the emails that we received suggested perhaps running that along 96th. And I guess I was interested if you have any thoughts about that, whether that's something that was evaluated and what your thought is around that. I'm not suggesting plural or con, I'm just interested in what your thinking process was around that.

1:40:00 – 1:40:18•CLChris Leh

So tell me if this is right, that that's sort of a, that's in the category of things to be determined later. It's not something that we would be, if we adopted this, we would be adopting that particular piece of it.

1:41:13•CLChris Leh

Any other questions? If there are any more questions, we'll take public comment.

1:47:52 – 1:51:55•CLChris Leh

Thanks. Let's take it back to council. I want to do a little bit of framing on this one. First, others can speak to this obviously, but I think I speak on behalf of all the council that this is a monumental effort and we really appreciate all the work that's gone into this by staff and by the community. I was, you know, I looked at the community engagement and we've talked about this a bit and I thought it was a really good example of community engagement following on to the comp plan. But it's actually more community engagement than in the comp plan. And I really appreciate that. I think that

1:51:57 – 1:55:37•CDCaleb Dickinson

Yeah, you know, I liken this to the comp plan. I think I said in other moments that, you know, something this big is like, it's everything and it's nothing, right? Like it's this really, really, really important document. And in the end, It isn't what we actually use on a daily basis. It's a guiding light. And so it's very important to get it right. And then there's a lot of work to do after its eventual adoption to think about like, yeah, where's the money actually coming from? Which specific project is actually being funded and when? But I think this is an awesome opportunity. draft and an a

1:55:43 – 1:58:28•DHDietrich Hoefner

Yeah, thanks. You know, I know I've shared a lot of my feedback directly with staff. I think there's a lot of things to liken here in terms of the amount of community input. I think we have a lot of really good sort of statistical information about what people asked for, sort of what does the wish list look like in terms of what people want. I think there's a lot of great descriptive information about what conditions are like now, especially in the trails plan. I think there's a lot of that good information, the vegetation survey, the existing needs assessment. The thing that I struggle with i

1:58:31•CLChris Leh

Other comments? Yes, Council Member Fee.

1:58:35 – 1:59:28•DFDeborah Fahey

I'll just build on what Councilman Heffernan just said. I think that this isn't a plan. It's a guidebook. And so this is just going to guide us to the right plan and to the right outcomes without specifying, because we don't know what will be the best decision two years from now. This is going to guide us and say, you know, look at this and look at that and go this way. But we need, this isn't the plan for what we're actually going to do. And so I think it's been wonderfully put together and it does have the priorities of the public and the council. And so we're just moving forward in this dir

1:59:29 – 1:59:56•DHDietrich Hoefner

Do you mind if I just... Is your proposal we take like long-range plan out of the title Yeah, but the sort of the core document is called the long-range plan I

1:59:57•DFDeborah Fahey

Right. But this is kind of guiding us to a long-range plan.

2:00:09 – 2:00:31•DFDeborah Fahey

I don't think we need to be that specific in what the book says because it's just saying we're going to go in this direction. These are our priorities, and these are the order in which we would like to do things, but it's not what we're actually going to do. It's just possibilities and a guide.

2:00:33 – 2:09:35•JCJosh Cooperman

Okay. I guess, first of all, I sort of share Council Member Hafner's concerns. I do think, though, that Council Member Fahey's comment helps to allay that to some extent. I wanted to make a few more specific comments. So reading through both the trails and the and the PROS plans or whatever you might call them. So, you know, we have our guiding principles, we have goals, strategies, action items, but then we also have places where there are themes and where there are priorities and where there are recommendations and where there are challenges and opportunities and next steps. I just feel like

2:13:35 – 2:21:48•CLChris Leh

Um, you anticipated me. I haven't made my comments yet and I want to try to bring together and try to summarize some of the things that I hear so that we can move forward and answer some of the questions that you've raised, Sea Manager, because I think those are really important, particularly practical questions about how we proceed. Um, I... I really wholeheartedly think of Councilmember Cooperman's observations and recommendations are terrific. And maybe to the point, I think part of this that is difficult is what's always difficult in this, which is the level of specificity. and the level o

2:21:49 – 2:24:17•DHDietrich Hoefner

Yeah. Council Member Abbott. Yeah, so I guess I think about it in a slightly different way. which is it's been the better part of two years of engagement. I am reluctant to insert ourselves directly into the editing process. I think this is all, in my view, this is all useful feedback to staff, and they should sort of think about it and chew on it. and consider whether it makes sense and whether there's sufficient remaining resources to accomplish the feedback if it does make sense. I don't know that I'm especially comfortable sort of directing fine grain adjustments at this point. And the one

2:24:19 – 2:26:36•CLChris Leh

Let me clarify one thing, just... I said I think I'm not interested in the staff doing a rewrite either, and I'm not sure Council Member Cooperman was. But, you know, these are, I think, suggestions. There's a few suggestions, and certainly the budget for this is we don't want to blow. We've already spent plenty of that. We don't have very much left. Um, and we do, you know, we trust you in terms of taking the input that you've had and you decide what you want to do with it. Um, I think the suggestions have been useful, but, um, and I think it's interesting. It's an interesting question about

2:26:57 – 2:29:42•DHDietrich Hoefner

Yeah, so I mean I think of it as are we signing off sort of that these are the right set of recommendations and priorities that have been sort of informed by our input and at least what i'm looking at especially with respect to the long range plan less so with respect to the trails plan it's it's more of just a sort of a summary of a lot of information and so to sign off on it as a plan and thinking about 10 years into the future when most of us probably all of us won't be sitting here and some proposal comes forward and it's like, well, that's in the plan, we should go do it. This plan could

2:29:50 – 2:30:18•DFDeborah Fahey

I'm wondering about the same kind of thing. And instead of calling it our long-range plan, we could just call it our guidebook, our prose guidebook for what we would like to see, but there is no requirement, there's no timeline, and it's up for discussion and changes at any point. That's a long title.

2:35:54•CLChris Leh

Others who haven't spoken? Yes, Council Member Kern.

2:36:00 – 2:37:26•JKJudi Kern

So do you mind if I like segue off of this for a moment and just go to actually just something that's in here combining trails and the guidebook? Thank you. Is that OK? So one of the things that you guys had mentioned in here was providing trail connections to parks. And there is one map that has like the parks numbered so that it's easier to see where they are on the map and then have a reference sheet. Would it be helpful or is it possible, because I would find it helpful, if one of those trails plans actually had these numbered 34 parks with it so we could see where those connections were?

2:37:35•CLChris Leh

Yeah, I don't think you have, actually, on this issue.

2:37:41 – 2:38:27•JCJosh Cooperman

I mean, I guess we never maybe made it explicit in our previous conversations, but I just sort of assumed all along that we would eventually this would come to us and we would vote on whether or not to adopt it. So, I don't know, I do like the sort of the certainty that a formal adoption would give to staff. I think, I don't know, maybe I just need to think a little bit more about that question. But at the moment, I do think it would be helpful to our staff if we considered it for adoption.

2:38:32 – 2:38:52•DFDeborah Fahey

I agree. I think that staff needs the assurance that we're supporting what they've done and the public needs to know that we're supporting what the staff has done. So I would also support supporting the long-range pilot.

2:38:59 – 2:40:00•CLChris Leh

I guess I want to I want to push this a bit because I'm very concerned about where we are right now. I think we can take a vote about how we do it. We've given direction on this for some time. Now, there could be a question, of course, whether you followed the direction or not. I happen to think you did. Generally, there's things that we all... disagree, you know, probably disagree with. It sounds like the trails plan, everybody, I haven't heard anybody complain about that. So that one, it would be awfully odd in my view to accept the trails plan or, and not do the same with the cross plan. I

2:40:15 – 2:41:53•CLChris Leh

I mean, when I say it's irresponsible, that's what I mean. I can't imagine anything. I certainly haven't done anything in 14 years on council. where we had an idea, and I don't think there was any question that we were headed toward adoption, where we just said, a month left to go, maybe not. I do think that that, among other things, it leaves staff out to dry. But I also think more importantly, because we are deciding how to move forward, I just don't think that's a very wise thing. I can speak to one thing that Councilmember Heffner mentioned. I think it was mentioned about the sustainabilit

2:45:16 – 2:45:37•CLChris Leh

If the council is inclined to both give you what you need and staff to go back and do the reworking, the time is going to have to slip. I mean, based on where we set it, right? This is not going to get...

2:46:18 – 2:46:46•CLChris Leh

It's fair enough. It's premature. That's what I'm hearing. Well, why don't we take the... um the smaller if you will it depends whether it's a small or big issue but it's not the the big issue that councilmember hefner made how do people feel about the uh that trail 18 yes thank you i think um

2:47:16 – 2:47:57•JKJudi Kern

Yeah, I would agree, but I would also say that that includes 17, 18, and 19, all three of which are heading south and are in the necessary to be expanded and evaluated. I think all three could use greater evaluation as to the Mayor Pro Tem's point. As we develop Red Tail and see where those needs really lie, it could be that it is greater access from a multi-use wide path along 42 to quicker, easier to get to the hospital or the businesses or what have you versus a recreational trail. And I think that would be that would require a lot more evaluation than we should be doing tonight.

2:48:03 – 2:48:49•JCJosh Cooperman

I mean, the Staff can correct me, but the way that I look at that map with the possible future connections is like we went out to the community and we asked them where they want to see connections. And then we tried to summarize that, and this is the summary of that engagement. And so I don't have any problem just showing that. I just would want to be very clear. This is the status of that map. These are things that are ideas that our community had. But to move forward with any of them, we'd have to go through that process of figuring out should we actually go through with any of these? Just t

2:48:49 – 2:49:21•DHDietrich Hoefner

Can I just read from the plan and see if this solves the issue? The proposed trail improvements are for consideration purposes only, each of which will require further evaluation prior to final approval. All proposed trail system improvements will undergo a thorough staff review and city council approval prior to implementation. Evaluation criteria may include connectivity, safety, ecological protection, maintenance cost, and staff resource ability. That sounds good. Put that in there. It seems like a good disclaimer to me.

2:49:21 – 2:50:06•CLChris Leh

Does that solve your issue on that? To the larger point, I guess at this stage, I mean, I think we've had good discussion about whether to adopt this or whether we're heading to that direction, whether people ultimately choose to vote for it or not. Is the direction to bring back a plan i mean in terms of something council would adopt as opposed to just receive are we going to vote on it and adopt it as a as as american one clarifying question i think also within

2:50:31 – 2:50:43•CLChris Leh

I guess I had understood that we wanted to get it back, but is that a hand up or is that a thumbs up? Hand up.

2:51:08•CLChris Leh

As opposed to bringing back one more and then making a final decision on adoption?

2:52:01 – 2:52:24•DHDietrich Hoefner

First, yeah, go ahead. I'll just say on the second question, for my money, the time is better spent having staff continue the community engagement window, focus on that process. That's who we really want to hear from. And I'm sure to the extent any of us have additional comments on the draft, we'll share those. But that's just my view.

2:52:28 – 2:53:30•CLChris Leh

yeah, I would support both adopting when we're done and Not having another bite at the draft Apple Fair enough, I keep I keep trying to find places where you where staff might Want another chance to come back? I I think that it sounds like We want to keep moving toward, one, to get the public input, two, to keep working toward a draft that we come back ultimately for adoption. And that we will see the changes after when we are on that path. Any thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs up. Okay. Does staff have the direction that it needs?

2:53:51 – 2:54:46•CLChris Leh

Okay. If council members have additional thoughts they want to share with staff, fine. We'll have thoughts from the public most certainly and look forward to that. Good discussion. Thanks for working through this with us. Tough discussion, but a good one. Right. I think the next part is C, appointment of council committee for potential amendments to city manager employment agreement. I think those who are working on the evaluation of municipal judge and the prosecutor are I venture to say not going to be those who work on this next.

2:55:23•JKJudi Kern

Go ahead. I was just going to say I would make a motion.

2:55:28•CLChris Leh

Okay. Second. As long as they're willing. All in favor?

2:55:33 – 2:55:57•JKJudi Kern

Aye. Any opposed? So moved that we return. Second. Aye. Aye.