City Council - workshop

Get more ready. to the October 5th, 2026 Westminster City Council study session. Thank you for joining us this evening. Please remember that our meetings are governed by the rules of decorum posted inside the chamber doors. We ask all attendees to maintain a respectful environment, no disruptions, threats or audible expressions of support or opposition are permitted. Signs and placards are prohibited and all attendees must remain seated in designated areas. We will begin with City Council reports. Councilor Izadi, anything?

Thank you. Thank you, council and staff for your patience last week as I had a cold and it wiped me out worse than I thought it would. Every single day I thought, oh, I'll make tomorrow's event and did not so. A few that I want to call out that I missed. I missed the Simchat Torah, which was interesting. It was a Jewish community event that was held here this weekend. So that was interesting. And I really hope that I can attend next year. So sorry to not be there to celebrate with them. I did stop by because it was outside and I was mostly better this weekend. The Westminster Fire Department 4

Thank you so much. Any questions on the City Manager's report? Okay. Any items that we want to bring up for a future agenda session? Okay, and then I have a natural flow from our reports onto the city manager's report, and I tend to do that second. Does council see any reason not to reverse the order of that on the agenda for study session? Okay, Abby, do you mind in the future? I tend to do it most nights anyway. Thank you. Okay, well, that brings us to our first presentation of the evening. which is a review of revised recommendation for the event center ordinance.

Thank you. Council questions and comments? Councilor Haag?

And just for some clarification, I wanna make sure we stay on the topic of future event centers, because that's what we're discussing. However, some of these questions are pertinent to the future event centers that we're discussing. So let's make sure we keep our questions aimed at that, but we'll allow it. Go ahead.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Councilor Brahas?

Thank you. I was just waiting to see if there was any feedback on that or clarification.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for your work on this. I really appreciate the stakeholding that you did and bringing in the chamber and our other local businesses to help understand what the best course of action might be going forward. So appreciate that. I'll say I disagree, Councilor Johnson, with the point you made on the special use permit because that's why we're here today. And that's what got us here is this bypassing council review. And we discussed this at length last week time we had this topic and our event centers, I forget what the number was, but it was single digits. I think it was

Again, I'll refer to our present attorney, Mr. Greg Graham, but I believe that that's up to our special permitting and license board.

Thank you. All right, is there a slide asking the questions that I should pull? I don't think there is, which is fine. I believe that the question is, are we in support with the recommendation or would we like to extend the moratorium? That's correct. Okay, so I'll go around real quick. Councillor Zaddi, excellent. Councillor Haag, okay. Yes, okay, excellent.

option but otherwise I'd move forward with it. And I'm a yes. I guess that brings up one last clarifying question for me which is I made an assumption that it would go through Planning Commission first regardless and then to Council. Is that correct?

Okay, one more quick ring around, I think, Councilor Zotty.

Thank you. Oh, excellent. Okay, I agree with both because I'd prefer this to see the experts on the planning board. That's why we have them. And so I'd prefer to get their evaluation before it comes to us. Thank you. Okay. With that, I think that wraps us up. Anything further we need? Thank you so much for your work. Much appreciated. All right. City Manager, would you please introduce the next presentation?

Thank you so much. Before we lead into questions and comments and thoughts, I just wanna acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that in our strategic plan, there's a very direct, and I think also as a poll question that we've asked for it to come back to council comments, just, I wanna get ahead of this conversation that council has asked to discuss fire sprinklers. in terms of affordability to our housing solutions. And so I will let council guide the conversation that follows, you know, and perhaps council doesn't about face on that ask, but I wanna get ahead of that in terms of what

Councillor Ireland, did you have a thought? I think she was first.

Mayor Partem, before you move on, could we expand on that point? Because that was something I was going to touch on. Could you reiterate, you said you do know that each line on the TAPs could staff or yourself expand?

Thank you. Well, following off that, you know, a picture says a thousand words. So I too agree that I've learned a lot from this presentation. So thank you for that. I do have a few questions to make sure I'm doing my due diligence because, you know, I have promised, you know, residents and stakeholders that, you know, we would work to reduce, you know, so that we could make housing more attainable. And so just, you know, I'll go through each of these. How many garages have we had on fire? How many incidents have we had over the last year or whatever metric you have that's available?

Thank you. How many of our neighboring municipalities have adopted those requirements?

Yeah, and then have we done any state holding with any of our partners to understand what kind of an impact it would have on the cost of a house or a unit to build?

Okay and then to the costs that were provided you know several of us mentioned that those are not the same numbers we've seen but what all does that include?

Okay, thank you. You're welcome. That's good to know. So this includes everything, parts and labor.

And then as far as we've also heard there's costs as far as the water lines and it sounds like we're providing some sort of subsidy around that. Is that what I'm understanding?

This is very helpful. Okay. And then I'm just kind of curious if we have it on hand. If not, I understand. But what is our current policy in full around sprinklers? Like what all are the full requirements we're requiring for our housing?

At least one, we're not specifying how many other than one inside.

Understood. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I don't think I have any further questions. And obviously, you know, there's no cost of a life, right? A life isn't valuable. So I understand that. And so thank you for those visuals. It's extremely helpful to see how effective the sprinklers are. And I appreciate you coming to us to say that this is an issue that you're seeing because that's what we need to know. Appreciate that too. Okay, any further thoughts or questions from council? Okay, and then as far as direction needed, what all do you need from us?

Okay. Yes. Thank you. I similarly feel to Councillor Ireland's point, I don't know that it'll make a significant impact, but any life that we can share or that we can spare and save is valuable. So I'm a yes. With that, you have a majority. And thank you. Thank you for your time and your presentation. It's much appreciated. Thank you.

Two more caffeine. Okay, we will call a short break here. Timing is a little after 8. How about we come back at 8.15?

All right, welcome back. City Manager, will you introduce our next presenter?

Thank you so much. Before we go around for questions and thoughts, can we get a few more details on this measure, such as what is the percent of the tax? I know it was included in the packet, but just for the folks listening and how long it would be in effect, I think it's forever, right? Just a couple of those details.

Okay. Although I suppose we could direct any further questions your way. I can answer questions. Okay. All right. Other thoughts? Okay, well, I will say my piece as briefly as possible, which is I understand the frustration with this ask and the hesitation of the community to get behind it because we have been paying into fast tracks for 20 years. And that is something that I have not forgotten. And so I want listeners to know that it is However, I also, without following the sunk cost fallacy here, it is very difficult in the US anywhere to build a train, it's almost impossible, right? And th

Great. Any Other thoughts? Okay. Let's go around and do a quick poll on whether we're in support of this measure. Councillor Azadi? Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. No. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Okay. Oh, yes. All right. Thank you so much. I think you have a 5-1. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. And again, could you just repeat the dollar amount? Does it have a sunset and what does it look like?

Thank you. Other thoughts? Council Rosati.

Okay, I'll add my own thoughts are I deeply appreciate inviting JETCO to come over here just a few weeks ago and present a more thorough analysis of these. Due to the past, I had some hesitation. I wanted to know more. I am really excited about the fact that they have an accountability committee, that they have new dashboard reporting, similar to what our city has on our transparency portal. And these are measures I would have asked for if they weren't already doing it. And so I just wanna say thank you to their school board members that are over there leading the charge. and that are putting

Thank you so much. Any discussion necessary? Okay. Councilor Zotti? Okay. Thank you.

Okay, any questions? Is there any more, just again, is there any more detail on this measure?

Understood. Thank you. Any further questions or comments? Okay. Councilor Azadi? Yes.

Brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. You're welcome.

Oh, good question. Actually, Teresa, yes. And I had a follow-up. Thank you for reminding me. So, Councilor Johnson, ask your question, and then I have one more as well.

Okay, so we'd prefer to have that conversation right now.

Understood. Okay. Do we want to make time for this discussion real briefly? Yes. I don't see any nays. Okay. What are the measures that we would like to discuss?

Okay. Ms. Teresa, are you able to give a short overview of 87?

Okay, thank you so much. Any questions, Councilor Rosati?

Thank you. Other questions? Councillor Eiland?

So, yeah. Thank you. All right. For those, we'll go around one more time. And those who haven't spoke, I'll hit first. Councillor Brawhouse.

Okay. All right. We'll do a quick poll. Yes.

It is a good point, but I support as well. So you've got 6-1. Great, thank you. And then, Councillor Johnson, did you have one more or do you have several more? Just so we can identify. I have several more, but I think a very similar one is N-N. Okay. And just so we all know where we're headed here, how many others are we going to take a look at?

So I think I'm proposing a different way to do this.

I don't think we have the time or energy to look at all of these. Traditionally, the city takes a look at the measures affecting us locally. We don't take a look, but since we wanted to, to be fair, the state has more measures on the ballot than I think they've ever had. And so I did want to address any immediate concerns you had. I'm open to looking at the two that you mentioned. Otherwise, do we have a proposal from staff?

I appreciate that thought. I'll make two quick points. So thank you, Councillor Azadi. I was thinking of something similar. If Council feels strongly enough to take a position on these, then I think that it can be done via email from staff in such a way that doesn't involve us all, right? Don't reply all. I do also want to note that this is not traditionally what we do. And so if we want to do this, we can take a new direction and we can say that we're taking a position on all of these items. I don't think that residents are looking to us to do that. And so if we want to do that, I think that

Okay. Just to make it clear then, oh, Mayor Pertem, you've got one more point. I'll just add one more note before we go on with this discussion. The ask that I'm overwhelmingly hearing, and I do hear it, I just want to be clear that staff is on board and council's on board with the ask too, is that we're asking staff to do some more hours of work to provide some guidance or at least the impact municipally that it would have on our city for each of these ballot measures. And I want to be sure that council is okay with that ask and those hours.

Thank you. Okay, quick poll here. I'm gonna, in that case, we're gonna leave an end to the emails just with everything else so we can get through the agenda. That means that we will take a position on that and all the others requested. Quick poll, are we okay with this, Councillor? Yes.

Take a poll on all of them? Even if we haven't read them all yet? Councillor Johnson, do you want to reiterate your question one more time? That is a good clarifying. Are we only doing the ones that you've listed or are we doing all of them? And at this point, I would recommend we do all of them so we don't leave other councillors out if they suddenly want to come up with one. Feel free to.

Excellent. Thank you for that recap. Councillor Azadi.

We make modifications. Okay. Councillor Ireland, does that improve the time? I have a lot on my plate, Samara. Understood. Yes.

Yes. All right. Thank you. Thank you all. We appreciate you. Have a great night. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. And if you want to take a deep breath, thank you, Council, for being so flexible with that. I actually really appreciate our ability to get through very large items fairly quickly here. Welcome, Chief and City Manager. Would you like to introduce our next presentation?

Thank you. I just want to acknowledge that that was quite thorough and quite in-depth, and we appreciate all the details and the specifics.

Thank you. Okay, Councilor Barajas, and then we'll go around.

Thank you. Yes, thank you so much. We're gonna do a quick time check here in just a second. Has anyone who's not spoken want to go? Mayor Patel, I don't think you've spoken.

Okay. Thank you so much. With that, let's do a quick poll to continue this discussion this evening as it's 1030.

Yes. Yes. Excellent, okay, thank you so much. With that, we will continue. All right, I'll share my thoughts and then we'll go back around for further questions and comments and hopefully get to the questions that Councilor Zahle would like to ask. This is such an interesting topic and difficult topic because my job is to support the city and the citizens and it's to support you. And... you did give specific examples of how this has helped us, both the residents, get clarity on crimes and help you and the agency resolve cases. And so I'm sorry, I'll just say publicly, I'm sorry if it appears t

Thank you. Okay, with that, we'll go back to you, Councillor Izadi. You had some follow-up.

Thank you, Councillor. All right, I don't see any opposition. So we're just gonna go ahead and as you recommended, go through each ask and see where we stand on them.

Is there any questions or comments before we take a poll?

And then I want to clarify on this one as well, remove data. I'm not sure that that would be possible or, I mean, I believe our local data retention is 30 days anyway, so I don't think it would be.

Well, I was, when I got to my vote, I was gonna say I agree with this except for the parking.

And I apologize. My understanding is that these are all polls, right? And that we're asking to have this brought back to us to decide on the dais.

Like if we just stop. So I think that that would be up for staff to give us a recommendation when they come back because this is our ask. I fully understand that there's probably some large penalties with breaking the contracts. I'd like to hear some of those numbers. But we can also pause the tool use while we figure out the contracts. And I think those are two different things. And so again, I think this comes to seeing the vision and then the how for council direction. But we can approach that hopefully when it's brought back.

Okay. Okay. We have a majority. We would like to see surveillance policy. That alone, I'll just make sure that we're clear. It's probably going to require several discussions and several different cross-branch discussions. a lot of work to do. So we'll see what staff can do. And I don't want to put that with a time priority. I just want to make sure they can do the work and bring that back to us.

Yeah. Okay. It's scheduled for November 9th to come back to council. Legislative policy protocols and policy statement discussion. Oh, good. Thank you. I was going to follow up with that.

Councilor Johnson. We need to vote on that. Yeah, just a quick poll. Yeah, make sure we're all on board. Okay, I am as well. And that, I just want to comment. I mean, that comes down to just having our lobbyist team hear the goals and visions and values of the council that should have been brought to us for awareness. I don't know how we missed that. So putting that there. That's it. Okay. Thank you, Councilor Azadi. I appreciate your work on this. Final thoughts. Okay. Chief, thank you. Thank you, Jenna. And thank you, I'm sorry, first name? Tyler. Tyler, thank you so much. Appreciate your ti

Thank you. With that, oh, we would have had to do another vote, so that's fantastic. 11.01, we are adjourned.