City Council - workshop

Good evening and welcome to the October 19th, 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 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. Council reports. Councilor Zayi.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. This past week, I did a few more visits with our water utilities, which I will be reporting out kind of a bigger piece once I'm kind of done and collated everything. I had a chance to swing by a EV, electric vehicle kind of showcase here at City Hall. So thank you to our Sustainability Department and Community Services for putting that on. I did not get behind the wheel of... North Glen brought some of their fleet down to kind of show the different vehicles that could replace gas vehicles in the fleet particularly now you know they mentioned a lot of pricing stability w

Thank you. Councilor Ireland? I went to the Westminster Chamber of Commerce Leadership Program. Our city manager did a great job explaining our city's structure as far as our charter, our finances, our budget, or how we're set up. I could tell that the Chamber of Commerce appreciated the knowledge that they gained from that. And so I'm glad I could go. Went to Westy Fest, stood there for five hours, was great. I've never seen such a great turnout. The weather was amazing. I guess I heard we had 46,000 people show up. And a lot of them all were from our city, so the sales tax dollars hopefully

Mayor Pro Tem. I was out of town ripping my arm off. So I missed it. So I'm sorry. I love Musty Fest. So I'm sorry I missed it this week.

Sorry. I do have Dr. Cog this week. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Okay, I attended the Mile High Flood District this past week and we reviewed the annual budget and what's really neat is our president of the Mile High Flood District attended the I think it's the American Public Works Expo. It's national. Anyway, just a few weeks ago. And she was elected or nominated the upcoming president of the National Public Works Expo. So that's exciting. So over the next year, she'll be the president-elect, and then the following year, she'll become the president. And we have that person now leading us in Colorado, which is really exciting. And then

Thank you so much. Any questions or comments? Councillor Zaddi.

I have two questions. One, was the State of the City streamed online, live streamed?

And second question on the vendors for the Westy Fest. This is 124. Was that the highest we've had? And what was the vendor revenue historical?

So is the revenue gain driven by the volume that we put more in or are we increasing the cost per vendor to get that?

So more vendors wanted to sponsor than past years? Yeah. Okay, thanks.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, City Manager, for the presentation. I appreciate you mentioning the... that was in downtown Westminster. I did have a chance to go to that, too. Just wanted to bring up, as I was chatting with some of the organizers from our downtown business association, a few highlights, too, that half of the vendors that were there were repeat, were kind of there for both years, so they enjoyed it enough to come back, and there was space enough for some new people to kind of wet their feet, and it was a very successful day from what I could tell and from the conversations I had

Councilor Ireland. I just wanted everyone to know that I have a collaboration meeting. I think Councilor Azadi will be there too on Monday with Adams County about childcare. So I will bring that back on Monday night also.

Thank you. I think I'm also going to be attending that. So yes, that's exciting. And then I just want to focus on a couple of things you mentioned just because I don't feel like I gave Westy Fest the attention it deserves. So thank you for giving it more. Truly again, thank you to the staff. Everything I heard that once again, the shuttles were smooth logistically, that challenge is just, it's huge. we're going through the whole city. And so I know it takes a lot of people coordinating. Thank you. Thank you to the many people who helped make the, um, event happen leading up to yesterday and, u

Thank you. I just, it was fantastic. The turnout was incredible. The fire right next to it, you know, provided some heat, which was very helpful. And so I'm just so grateful again to your team for all the work that that took.

Well, thank you, director. Thank you to your teams. Thank you to our high schoolers. And that drone show was incredible. I think it was a big win. And I'm just so grateful that we live in a city where we get to do really cool things like that. So I love it. Anyway, well done. I think we have a presentation this evening. So I will let you go ahead and get us started.

Councilor Ireland? I just thank you for what you've done. So I've been studying a lot to data centers, you know, we all want to get up to speed about it. And the technology is emerging so quickly that we, the big data center stuff may be just a mute point and not to too long a future. For example, companies are developing modular data centers that can operate using renewable energy even when the energy isn't available continuously. Other technologies are allowing artificial intelligence to operate across networks of ordinary computers, reducing the need for some centralized processing. Of cour

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Councilor Ireland. I think that's like one of the, you know, infill is one of my biggest concerns when it comes to these data centers. So with that in mind, right, like the obsolescence of these larger data centers will be a task, particularly for areas that have many of them. And so I think that's now, you know, I know that i i that's one piece and i want to thank staff thank you john for for kind of bringing this to uh forward to us and for staff taking the feedback from council you know i i want to kind of be clear particularly for the few who might be lis

I was just thinking about two things. One, when you're talking about the prohibited land uses supportive of kind of explicitly stating that I am wondering if there are some broader criteria that define why they're prohibited or relate to the prohibition. So like the high water use, I'm also thinking about the transformation or changes in the technology too. So when we think about parameters for those prohibited uses, it could be a high water use, noise impacts, building coverage slash impact on, you know, stormwater slash just our natural environment. So those might be things that can still gu

Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Like if it was an IGA that we could... I don't know how many options there are for giant data centers in our vicinity, but you never know. Okay, that's all. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. And I just wanted to first of all thank Councilor Barajas for bringing this forward. I think it's really important. the utility of this I think is actually even more. So it's not redundant in the sense of number two, right? That's such an important piece that I'm glad you guys brought forward, right? Because I didn't really think about the intergovernmental, the jurisdictions and how we can influence that too. It's not just what's within our boundaries, but we have all these agreements. So thank you for bringing that so we can make sure it's ho

Thank you. Any other thoughts before we do some quick polling here? And then I don't think that it, you know, from what I understand, these are some general recommendations, but I don't think it stops here, right? There were other items brought forward that we're not discussing here, such as IGAs. And so if we want to pursue that, it sounds like we're going to need some further discussion, but let's at least work through these three and see if there's general support or opposition. So on the first one, Councilor Azadi?

Yes. Yes. Okay. I think you've got 7-0 there.

He's on a honeymoon. He's having a great time. All right. And then item number two. Yes. Yes. Yes. Lovely. Okay. 6-0. And item number three, support legislation. Okay. Councillor Zaddi?

And to be specific, that's referring to all the various prohibitions that we're talking about?

Yeah, so I asked because last time there were two competing bills. One was pro-data, one was against. And this would be against, just to be clear, that we're not supporting If there's a bill that's supporting, we're not going to. So this is actually for the policy statement itself, our legislative policy statement. We have a new item that says we wouldn't. Is that what this is really saying?

Just, just so it's clear and explicit and there's no room for, but I would support that. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. I want to see what it is. So, and then the, in terms of the policy statement in, I can't remember the document at the moment, but hopefully we have a robust environmental impact section. Built it up a little. Yeah. Could be better. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, I would imagine we'd fold it into that.

So yeah, I'm supportive of following it and seeing, because I know we aren't sure what they're going to come up with. It's true.

Exactly. Okay. So it sounds like we have general support being added to our policy statement with council having the ability to review it first.

Perfect. Thank you. With that, did we want to address further options around IGAs?

Well, it was mentioned that we could try to work with our neighboring cities to build an IGA. We don't know what that would look like or if it was one IGA with our city and multiple other entities or if it would be multiple IGAs with each different city that is our neighbor to try to take a better look at, you know, what land use could be accepted or prohibited. It's possible, right?

So number two, that refers to the intergovernmental piece?

Number two is, and I'll let staff answer for more clarity, but number two is saying that we have water services that go beyond the city limits. And right now we would prohibit those water services for being used for data centers.

But it's not stopping if they want to still put a data center?

That is correct. We have not approached that line yet.

Yes, I'm all for that. If we can do that, yeah, sure. Yeah, so I believe, and I'm not a land use attorney or work in land use, so I could be wrong about this, but I believe what the work required, if we're going to model it after oil and gas kind of setbacks, would be to go through all of our IGAs with oil and gas kind of setbacks and then maybe add language to that And then from there, go and renegotiate the IGA. So it's a really big lift, I imagine. And then frankly speaking, if there is a neighboring municipality that's interested in building this out, either they'll just walk out of the IG

And perhaps we let staff answer or city attorney. But I just want to double down. I think that's a great suggestion to modify current language. Yes.

Right, Mayor Procham. Yeah, I would agree. I was thinking that we should be strategic about our, you know, where we need to do an IGA if everyone's kind of moving toward, you know, like prohibiting them or what have you, then maybe not as important. But I would also look at just long-term future that if there are properties adjacent to us that could potentially see one to be strategic about, you know, what if things change over time with that community? You know, if there's a really large piece of land, I'm not thinking of what that is at the moment. you know, that we should just protect ourse

And perhaps we have a have this discussion this time next year, you know, or if it's an agenda memo or something where we can revisit if necessary. Councilor Azadi?

Yeah, I was gonna add, I think there's a really good idea. Because bans can be reversed pretty easily. And if we know our values here, but we can't control other city councils forever. or at all really. So if they reverse and they put in a data center right next to us, it could happen. So an IGA would be protective long-term. Theoretically, unless we also reverse, but we would never.

OK, so I'm going to try to summarize the ask for staff as John looks at me with some eyes.

I just have one thing about the water. I think if we're selling water to them, they should not be able to use it for a data center, especially with the drought we are in. And that's Federal Heights, that's Thornton, right? North Glen. Just Federal Heights. So it's Federal Heights.

So that should be part of... That's a much larger question. Any input on that?

Thank you. Did you have anything else to that question?

No, thanks for answering that. Sounds like we have a little more homework to do, but just considering the situation we're in, we don't want the data center to pop up and take the water.

Okay, I'm not hearing any further asks, but it does sound like there's a general ask, and we can go around one more time to make absolutely sure. But a general ask to wait and see what other cities near us do, and then to take a look at land around us if we think that might be at risk, then be proactive. And I don't know what that timeline looks like, maybe in six months or one year, to be proactive about, can an IGA apply here? I'll go around and see if there's anything different we wanna add to that.

Perfect. And I would just add that this should come back to us, I mean, hopefully in less than a year, but with this council, right? Thank you. We can do that. Thank you, ma'am. Okay. Well, thank you for the presentation. Thank you for all the work. There was a whole lot of information in the packet, so I'm sure it took a while to put together. Well done. And thank you both. Have a great night.

Okay. With that, we have one executive session this evening. Mr. Attorney, would you please read the title of the executive session into the record, and then we'll call City Council as to whether we're willing to enter it.

Thank you so much. We'll now poll. Councilor Azadi? Yes. Yes. And yes. Thank you all so much. The time is now 7.30 on the dot, which is really nice. We will now conclude our open study session and hold our executive session here momentarily. Thank you.