City Council - Regular Meeting

City council meetings and council chambers on the first 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 roll? Mayor Lighty, here. Mayor Pro Tem Lukeman-Hiromaso will be late tonight. Councilmember Burns, here. Councilmember Seavers, here. Councilmember Kondo, here.

Here.

Council Member Roper. Here. Council Member Goff. Here. Council Member Nowicki.

Here.

Council Member Leidy. Here. Thank you.

All right. We have four items on the agenda tonight. We are going to kick it off with our communications and marketing assessment update number two. Our acting city manager, Loveland, will introduce this item.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. Tonight, we have our consulting team from Joy Riot here. Jessica McCarthy and Natalie Tilton will present, and I'll ask them to come up and present this second update to you.

Good evening. All right. Are we on the big screen? So hello again. Just a reminder, I'm Jessica McCarthy. This is Natalie Tilton with Joy Riot. We're excited to present the next round of updates for you all on this marketing assessment. So we will be going through the stakeholder focus group findings. So we're talking to staff and stakeholders, getting their perception as well as kind of adding that to what we heard from you all, and then using all of that information to go into our community questionnaire that we are looking for approval or feedback on tonight. We'll get into more details on that in a minute. To start, I'll have Natalie take us through the stakeholder focus group questions or findings.

Thank you. So to jump into a little bit of background before diving into our findings from stakeholder groups, to inform our overall marketing communications assessment, we held four focus groups with key stakeholders. And the findings in this deck really include stakeholder perspectives only and are meant to inform our broader research with the community and staff and are not meant to serve as final conclusions. Stakeholder groups consisted of members from the police department, parks, recreation, and culture, economic development, and city comms. So to dive into our findings about North Glen as a whole. We asked stakeholders to define North Glen in three words. And most often we heard that North Glen is a small town, is hardworking, and most notably is a community. And these factors really work to emphasize that North Glen is very relationship driven. Stakeholders emphasized that these descriptors really are what set North Glen apart from its surrounding areas in a positive manner. In terms of stakeholder perceptions of North Glen, we observed that there is an alignment between both city council and stakeholders in internal and external perceptions. Internally, both groups express a strong pride in the North Glen community, have an acknowledgement and awareness of the amenities and offerings of the city, define North Glen to be very affordable and family-friendly, and both groups express the sentiment that North Glen is a hidden gem. Externally, both city council and stakeholders acknowledge that there is currently a visibility issue with the city overall. North Glen is often confused with surrounding areas. Individuals don't always know that we exist, and it is often overlooked, sometimes seen as purely a pass-through location rather than just a destination. This really contributes to issues with a greater awareness of the offerings and opportunities within North Glen. Jumping into our findings with North Glen Communications. We asked stakeholders to define the role that communications plays within city government, their department, and their specific role. And what we heard is that communications really is serving multiple functions rather than a singular one. Across departments, these functions include informing and educating audiences to also help give a layer of government transparency to help market and promote events and services within the city to build trust, especially around public safety, and to drive engagement and participation from audiences across all efforts. In terms of city communications, that department also plays or has additional roles in managing channels and information distribution, ensuring consistency of the North Glen brand across all touchpoints, and really supporting alignment between different departments. When we asked stakeholders what efforts they were most proud of, what we heard were very strong department-level examples. This is the police department expressing pride in their ability to provide transparency and build trust with their audiences, park recreation and culture expressing pride in their campaign-driven engagement, economic development expressing pride in their relationship-based outreach, and city comms expressed pride in their ability to really serve as that core management and support system for both city council and stakeholders. However, we also heard from stakeholders that there are opportunities to amplify these efforts across the system overall, instead of just being specific to these departments. When talking about barriers to developing a clear strategy, what we heard from stakeholders is that barriers are really rooted in execution, alignment, and clarity in how work should be getting done, rather than the strategy itself. These barriers include things such as capacity limitations, having to serve multiple audiences that each have different needs, having a lack of shared systems and tools in place to help in communication efforts, having undefined expectations and success metrics that stakeholders can benchmark their communications against, and also reaching alignment between city council and stakeholders. Operationally, we heard many challenges that stem from limited resources rather than a lack of effort. Stakeholders understand what they need to accomplish, but they have challenges in executing upon that. The primary challenge that was made clear by all stakeholders is capacity. Staff is having to adapt to meet communication needs alongside their primary roles and responsibilities. Additional challenges include a high level of initiatives that stakeholders are having to promote. For example, Parks, Recreation, and Culture has a great system and long-term planning in place with their editorial calendar, but the sheer volume of programming and events that they have to communicate really sometimes prevents them from acting upon all of their known opportunities. Other challenges that we heard were that there is a lack of programs and resources to help stakeholders in their efforts of execution and there's a lack of defined communication guidelines both citywide and department specific. We also heard that there is a current gap in priorities. Stakeholders expressed that not all communication needs and requests can be treated with the same matter of urgency and planning. However, there is not a current framework that really defines what these priorities should be for stakeholders. We heard that there is a very strong desire for clear guidelines, expectations, and evaluation practices that stakeholders can adopt to their specific department needs. We also heard that this gap in priorities leads to stakeholders having to compete for limited resources. And we heard that city council expectations do not always align with stakeholder capacity. This is in part due to the evolving nature of city council with members changing over time. So this empowerment sentiment is a matrix that really is meant to reflect stakeholders' perceptions of their empowerment and ability to act relative to the capacity and resources currently available to them. So to kind of break this down point by point, the police department expressed a sense of empowerment in regard to their ability to communicate and act in real time with their audiences. However, they expressed running into challenges and limitations regarding their available resources and their ability to reach a broader strategic alignment. economic development, express empowerment in ideas and future communications that they would like to implement, but they run into limitations when their staff is having to consistently balance both communication and primary role needs. Parks, Recreation and Culture express a high level of empowerment, specifically regarding their ability to develop and execute campaigns for each of their individual events and shows and programs that they are working to promote. But they really run into their limitation in regards to their limited staff capacity relative to the sheer volume of programs that they are promoting. And then city communications expressed a strong desire to continue growing and acting upon their efforts for communications, but they really run into challenges rooted in capacity. This is also impacted by the fact that they currently have two vacant positions within their department as well. When we discussed desired training and resources with stakeholders, the needs that we heard expressed were really rooted more in tools and systems rather than in a lack of knowledge or skills. These desired needs really revolved around having more people, so support or positions for communication specifically. Having more tools and systems such as a centralized asset library, editorial calendars, and success metrics in place for tracking the success. Other needs were around having additional support for planning and increased budget for future marketing efforts. And finally we heard a strong desire for having those really clear and defined guidelines and expectations. Despite these operational challenges, we found and we observed that alignment exists between stakeholders upon their importance of communication, establishing trust, and getting audience engagement and participation, also in promoting events and programs. Stakeholders also agree on the importance and value that communications brings to the table and has very strong examples of success. Stakeholders all expressed a very strong alignment to continue expanding their efforts in the future. However, misalignment really stems from differences in department processes, not from execution or lack of effort. These differences in the processes that each department currently uses really stem from really stem from stakeholders having different definitions and operating with different lenses of what effective communications is really defined as. These differences in view for effective communications really come from stakeholders evolving to meet different timelines, audiences, and needs. in their efforts. So this chart really breaks down the different processes between departments, and so that way you can clearly see where this misalignment occurs. Things like planning systems, evaluation metrics, coordination across different departments, and evaluation measures really are all some of the spaces where these processes differ. This misalignment in department processes combined with the limited capacity that stakeholders are currently acting in is what makes centralized coordination difficult. Through our conversations with stakeholders, some other key points and themes that were brought up is that audiences are very diverse and they require tailored approaches rather than a one-size-fits-all mindset and really reaching them in effective ways. Also, that marketing plays a direct role in the participation and outcomes with our audiences, such as event attendance, and that even small increases in resources or budgeting can really impact stakeholders' ability to execute. And so to inform the next phase of this process, we asked stakeholders what types of questions they would like for us to be asking the community and residents. And what we heard is stakeholders are interested in understanding how residents want to receive their information and what channels those are. Also understanding how they currently receive their information and where they're looking to versus where they're not. And then finally, stakeholders really want to understand how engagement varies between different age groups of the city. So how teenagers versus adults versus the elderly are all working to understand. So with that being said, I will pass it off to Jessica to walk you through the next phase.

Do you mind if we stop for questions at this moment? Okay. Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, thank you all so much for this information. It is illuminating. On slide 14, the priorities gap, or no, slide 13. So staff adapts to meet communications needs alongside primary leave. responsibilities so does that is that from folks who have a marketing title because some of the people we spoke to like that is their job yeah and so is it just like the economic like or okay cool just wanted to make sure um because that makes sense but they okay yeah so like economic development they're economic developers not necessarily yeah yes and that makes sense um Yeah, thank you. Just wanted to clarify that because I know we got y'all spoke to a mix of people who have a marketing or comms title, and some who don't. So I think that was like my main question. I have a lot of thoughts. But we can share that at the end.

Well, and I wonder too, because I had a lot of thoughts as well on, I think we can, whatever slide that is, let's say that's 14. Nope, back to the other one. So I was looking obviously at the bottom one about city council expectations in alignment with stakeholder capacity and talking about those evolving and disjointed expectations. And I know that Council members do change. But over time, I think the world has also changed. And so I am wondering if there was any discussion around that. Because in the eight years that I've had the opportunity to sit up here, council has changed dramatically. Demographics, experience, education, age, it's just a wide variety. And but so also has the world in the last eight years. When I first joined council, we were in a very dark and dingy room. And everything was very simple, you know, like web access was simple, that internet engagement was simple. And over the last eight years, a lot has changed. And so I just wondered if there was a place to put those two topics together.

Yeah, yeah, great question. So there were a lot of conversations about the evolution of, you know, how people are consuming information as well as counsel changing as, you know, part of the process. And, you know, I think overall it's a matter of, you know, as Natalie was saying, There's a desire to want to better communicate with the community, better communicate with council as well. And so, you know, I think they're looking for at this point, what are the best ways to make sure that you are staying at the forefront of these communications efforts, making sure as new council members cycle in where those expectations are still aligned moving forward. And so I think as part of this whole process, we'll be able to provide some kind of recommendations and guidelines to kind of help set the stage for that and then kind of implement things moving forward to continue that evolution and continue that conversation with new council members as that happens.

Well, and I also, that phrase was sort of stated similarly on two different slides and it triggered an experience. We've had some moments where it has felt like staff versus council. And my hope is that that's not what these mean because we've had a couple moments in my time here where that has felt like a thing where it's like you know council's expectations are too high and staff can't do it and we need to have a bandwidth conversation because council's asking for more than we can provide and those are honest reflections of the work for sure but i just i kind of got a little a little sticky with those two bullets because I was just hoping that we're not in that place again.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that I do think should be very clear is there's actually a lot more alignment and the desire to be aligned where there isn't than it just purely being a staff versus council thing. And so, you know, being an observer in all of these conversations, I do see a lot of, you know, opportunity to get to a place where those expectations are aligned. And I think that really is the biggest thing of, hey, you know, there were actually some people in certain groups that were saying, you know, do we need to just document, like, what are the expectations? How do we evaluate what is a priority? When something urgent comes up, where does that fall in the line of all of these other things, which I thought was a really great observation. And so, again, I think there's this willingness to, hey, how can we all get on the same page and, most importantly, serve the community, which is where, you know, asking some of the questions of the community specifically are going to be really important as well and seeing where that, making sure all three parties, so to speak, are aligned. Yeah.

Well, and I think it'll tee us up to the next part, but as I was listening, I wrote down, like, city council also equals residents. Yeah. and community right we're bringing we have very different roles council and staff and we're bringing forward ideas and concerns and questions from our residents as well as being residents ourselves that are experiencing all of these confusing things. Like I tried to Google something this week and was like, oh no, none of the information on our different pages match. And so that was a concern, but that was my experience as a resident trying to find information. So I think, I guess I, maybe it's a message to staff that it's, and I also wrote down, it's about the product, not the people. Like when I think about some of the stakeholders, I haven't heard anyone up here say, oh, that person is bad at their job or that person is not doing comms right. I think it's been about the product that we're providing our community could use some revision. Some modernization was something else I wrote down. So, oh, looks like Council Member Lighty also has her hand up.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much. I did, I was looking, I also kind of got a little twisty at those bullet points and I was like, so arts, like, it was a little confusing to listen to that as obviously one of the newest council members to hear that. I'm like, what do you mean? Like, are... are standards too high or expectations? I'm not sure. And maybe that was just communicated in a little tricky of a way. And then I was looking at the empowerment sentiment page, the page 15, and you noted the two missing positions. And I was wondering if that's something that That is clearly impacting that department. That is also something that is fixable. So how do we work with staff and how do we work alongside to make sure that we get them out of that section? Because I think it's better to be in the higher areas and feel a little bit more confident, but also making sure that they don't have the lack of two people and the strain on the rest of the department. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so again, great question. So the missing two positions piece came up a lot in terms of we feel like we don't have the capacity right now, but they're hopeful that these two positions will help that in the future. And so the other thing in thinking about, hey, we're going to get these two positions, there was a lot of hope that this process which you know that's part of what we're here to do will also help to set those new people up for success of hey here are the new standards here are the expectations this is how we should be working together as a whole council member burns

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just to kind of like build off of this conversation we're having, was there any talk between departments of like working together? Like, I don't think we use Slack, Teams, like, you know, any kind of like Teams channel where there's just like comms and like marketing folks from across the whole city chatting, working together, talking about things. Because I think the thing that I'm, I am interested in that, but then the other thing I'm having a lot of feelings and thoughts around is the empowerment sentiment versus the process misalignment grid. And I am aware that one of the missing positions from the central comms is a director-level position. And so that leadership is right now being fulfilled by our city manager. I guess now deputy city manager. You're acting communications director. Three titles. Sick. And I think, like, where I'm having, and where I think, like, we, as on the dais, I won't speak of everyone, where I have problems sometimes is, like, the freedom of, to act and then we all like I see content that feels in misalignment with our brand and so like that feels like that dynamic feels out of sync and then when you look at you know Parks and Rec kind of has a content like a content calendar which you know I think like we're missing a lot of like 101 items across the team. And I'm just not sure how we got to this position. I know you all can't answer that for me. And our city manager is out. But I think that's where I'm sort of sinking in, is to how did we get to so many red boxes up there? Yeah. So my original question, though, was like, did people talk about wanting to collaborate across departmental? Yes.

So they didn't get as specific as talking about Slack or anything like that. There was definitely a desire to have more of kind of across communication and just being kind of all on the same page, having similar plans, understanding those plans. I know there was the communications committee that is relatively new, where they're bringing all of those together. Everyone is very excited about that and sees a lot of potential in that to help bridge that gap, especially until that new kind of head, department comms head, oh my gosh, I can't speak English anymore tonight, is in place and can also help to kind of be that umbrella and get everyone on the same page as you were saying, you know, tonally and all of that stuff as well and cross-promotion opportunities too.

Anybody else?

nope if not we'll just let you move forward thank you great all right so the community survey um we have taken all of your feedback staff feedback council feedback some of our typical things that we kind of dig into when we're doing things like this um and have put together this community survey I want to kind of take that a step back first and talk a little bit about the methodology here. So this will be an online survey. We will have both English and Spanish language versions. The original scope had up to 30 closed-ended questions. We had too many questions to ask. We're way over, but we're giving you added value. You're welcome. We also have one open-ended question per the scope. In terms of getting this survey out, a link will be provided to the city to disseminate via normal communications methods. Actually, speaking of the communications committee, we met with them just a few hours ago to talk more about this. So there are a ton of ways that we are going to be doing this digitally, in person, and also making sure that there are things available to people who may not have a computer at home. We talked about a lot of ways that you know, in addition to posting it on social media, emails, putting in the connections, making sure that there were iPads and things readily available at your Fourth of July festivities and some of the other in-person events that are happening in town, getting some setups at the senior center and educating the people, the staff there to help anyone who may not have a computer at home to be able to come in and take it there. That's just a few of the very many ways to get this out here. The survey will be in market at least two and a half weeks. As of the current schedule, if everything goes according to plan, it will be in market by July 3rd and open until the 21st. And again, the goal of this is to really understand the needs and perceptions of the North Glen constituents and understand where they are looking for better communications, things like that. So before I jump into this, so what you're about to see is what we call our programmers version of the survey. This is not how the general public is gonna see it, but wanted to show you some of the backend things about answers that are gonna be randomized, the select all that apply, things like that. So to jump into that, as I mentioned, this will be both in English and Spanish. So the first question will ask in both English and Spanish which language they prefer, depending on which one they go to. It will then do a branch into either the complete Spanish version or the complete English version. Clearly you're only seeing the English version today. Once this gets approved, we will be translating that into Spanish. This next section of questions, it's really more of kind of screener-like questions. So trying to make sure that we are talking to people who actually have some sort of connection to North Glen, whether they live here, work here, have a business here, have visited for one of your events, things like that. And if they haven't, I just realized, we terminate them, which in our language just means we kick them out of the survey. The next screener question will get into how long that they have been connected to North Glen in the ways that they had just answered, and also understanding whether or not they currently live in the North Glen city limits. This next section focuses on where they're currently getting their information from North Glen specifically. The first one is where they have either received or looked for this type of information. We actually pulled this list from, I believe it was your 2021 communications survey, focusing only on the North Glen owned properties. There were some other things in there. Part of the reason for doing that was also to see, you know, if we wanted to look back and compare the two, we have that data available for you. If people answer that they find you on social media, that is when we will dig deeper and have people kind of, again, branch off to dig into what platforms they are currently either following you or actively seeking out information from you. Um, we also dig even deeper on that in terms of the exact profiles that they are following or actively seeking. Um, and then we take a step back and ask them about what platforms that they are on in general and what they are actively using in case there's an opportunity there to connect with them in some different ways. This next section goes into their preferred methods of communication. So it looks very similar to the previous section. wanting to now understand, hey, what are the places that they are really looking for this type of information? This section looks a lot scarier than it is. We are asking people to tell us how frequently, if at all, they would like to receive certain topics and certain types of information from the government. So we have everything from more than once a week, weekly, every other week, monthly, only if critical, and then do not want this information at all. We've also separated this, even though things will be randomized within this, we've separated this into different categories. So kind of the city of North Glen as a whole, and I'll talk about the other ones in a second. All of these answer or I guess question choices come from things that we know you are either currently doing or have talked about potentially wanting to do or wanting to understand if people are even interested in all of this stuff. So everything from city council updates to urgent public safety information, updates on kind of city improvements, community stories, things like that. As we continue on, so things that people either might expect from economic development, parks and parks, rec and culture, the police department, etc. Also knowing that you have a very diverse community, we ask if there is some languages that they think that things should be communicated in in the future. We then move into the section that is really about evaluating the current communication. So the first one, we go very broad and just kind of getting a, from, very satisfied to very dissatisfied answer to how satisfied are you with Northland current communications with the community as a whole. We then go into having them rate on that satisfaction scale. Some of the really specific either topics that you guys had, you know, concerns about or wanted to understand if this was a concern in the community. So things about Do they think the information is timely? Is it transparent? Is it easy to understand, easy to find, as the mayor just recently pointed out? And so, you know, trying to understand their satisfaction with those types of things. We then go into the kind of overarching Northland value and positioning. All of the answer choices here actually came from things that either council members, staff, or stakeholders had told us about Northland. Again, trying to understand hey, is this what the community feels as well? So we ask this in a couple of different ways. One, getting more at the types of words people might use to describe North Glen, as well as what they think North Glen should be known for in the future or statements that feel most appropriate for North Glen. The combination of these will help us understand where the community is feeling in terms of the kind of overarching value that North Glen provides in positioning information. I won't go deep into the demographics, age, all of that stuff. This also helps us cut the data later in case we want to look and see if there's any differences based on age groups or things like that. Knowing that we are also asking people who maybe don't live in North Glen, we wanted to kind of get, hey, where are we getting people from? You'll notice a lot of these uh, questions also have kind of an other please specify thing where people can add. So we have that here as well. And then the final open ended question, we really wanted to have a very broad communications question to, you know, if anything kind of sparked as people were, were answering this or had any additional things. So we're asking what is the most important thing the city of North Glen could do to improve how it communicates to you or the community? Now, I always warn our clients, we will definitely get responses that have nothing to do with communications. We'll let you know what those are just in case. But that's something that happens and we'll let you know either way. So real quick before I open it up for any questions or thoughts on the next step. So what we're looking for today is approval or feedback on this community questionnaire. Once we have that, if revisions are needed, we will make those revisions and take this back to the city manager's office for final approval. Once we have that, we will translate this into Spanish and do the survey programming and then provide the link to the communications committee to get this out in all of the ways that we about. survey again will be in market at least by July 3, through the 21st. And then we'll begin our analysis report development and our more robust recommendations and plan. So with that, thank you so much. Open up for any questions you may have or feedback.

Councilmember burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for this. And appreciate the additional questions. But I am slightly feeling in the heat of election season, ballot initiatives, people are getting a lot of surveys for a lot of different things. And I am slightly feeling the length might be too long. Have you had, do you have any data from previous surveys you've done like of this length or shorter? Like what is like the drop off rate and like sort of what that looks like? Should we tighten this up kind of thing?

Yeah. So, um, yeah, so we have timed this. We have a different ways that we time these things. It looks like a lot of questions because it is kind of faster multiple choice answers. The typical time is five to eight minutes pending that last question and how much of an essay people are willing to write for that. So as of right now, we typically keep question errors like this under 10 minutes. So that fits right within the range of getting a high level of engagement once people start the survey.

Councilmember Condo.

Going back to D9, I'm just kind of interested. I've heard residents talk about a desire to receive information vis-a-vis their water bill, like an insert. And I'm just trying to figure out where does that fall in these categories that you have here?

You're talking about the kind of giant matrix here?

water bills, ma'am. Delta nine.

Yeah, so our slides are different than yours, which is interesting. So it's under preferred communication. Question nine. There you go.

There we go. Okay. Um, so originally, let's see. Yeah, so the originally I think that was all categories under the printed materials in general. We could add another example there if that would be helpful in terms of like water bills or things like that, but in general it was printed materials.

Yeah, I would appreciate that. I have received feedback and I believe Dr. Goff may have as well in our in our annual town halls where there are wards that some residents would prefer to receive information that way, and I would like to make sure that that opportunity for them to respond to that option is available.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council Member Sievers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thanks for continuing the work. I guess I'll just give quick feedback on everything I thought about So my biggest concern coming out of it is obviously, honestly, staff capacity. Because I guess I'm excited to boil down, like, what it means to be current. And sometimes things don't have to take a long time to be current. So I just, I think, and my other main takeaway, my computer will stop. Oops, I passed it. I'm getting there. I promise. Oh, there it goes. All right. It's still going. Anyway, it's an empowerment thing.

It's literally still going.

So it makes sense that the police department and the economic team is up to the far right. I think they have resources. They also have a mission. When you don't have a mission, and your mission is everything, I feel like the mission is nothing. So I can understand why having a staff issue in the city of Northland main comms is to the left and bottom. But when we even have things that are out there, okay, I guess I can't rely on that. So even when we have things that are pre-made, like why I serve, Like I didn't bring it up to anyone, but I was the only one not posted on the reels. The only thing that actually gets traction. So it's like even when we have stuff pre-worked on, it's not getting to the post. And the other thing I was thinking is that, you know, I understand staff concerns about the desire to put themselves out there in the same way. So we're elected officials. Some of us may or may not want to go to the next step. So if, let's say someone does, they have an incentive to put themselves out there and make a brand by pushing city stuff. Staff maybe doesn't have that same incentive sometimes you know if they're a police officer Maybe they're just looking to do police work if their economic team or public works. They're just looking to do the job and So I understand that I think when we keep this conversation going like when we find out and we boil down what is and try to put things into place that gives staff more Freedom to post and feel confident that they know what the rules are and not the rules But like they know kind of the process and the rules think it'll be interesting and like I think working together as a council and a city staff is is good and super important going forward you know it's on our side you know staff capacity if you I want to put in my but my my my shoes I work in six days this week at a totally different job doesn't do the Northland so It's hard for me to have capacity too, but I also, you know, I want to work with the staff to improve. So I think most of us up here would like to work with the staff. So I think we need to really find ways to plan things. We have these schedules. I mean, they're printed on shirts at this point. I think we could probably see a few opportunities three, four, five, six weeks out that maybe we could plan something and do it. That's basically what has to happen. So I think boiling down and giving people permissions, finding people that want to do it versus they're being forced to do it is super important, too. And also, like... I started a social media page for the office. I don't even want to do more social media, frankly. I want to do less. But I feel like I owe it to people to try. So I'm going to try to be an example of what the city can be. So even though I have like 10 followers, I hope to improve on that in the next few weeks. I'm looking at June as a challenge. Do June really good. And I think if we break it down into smaller bites, it's more consumable. But that's what this is. We're getting a bunch of little bites, and we're putting it in a big package, so it seems a little daunting. But really, just the ability to put out current stuff as it's happening, I feel like that's not city council's wish. That's kind of just how media works. I think it's a lot, but it's also all common sense stuff. And I think if we just work together, it'll be and continue down this road. And then, you know, I think it'll go great. But I'm a little concerned about capacity. But if you don't want to do something, you're not going to find the capacity to do it. So that's, I think, the biggest challenge of finding people that want to do it. Thanks.

Council Member Roper. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Sorry, I'm going to build upon my colleague's words. Again, as Council Member Seavers said, it also surprised me that there was a lack of capacity in all divisions. And it made me wonder, I guess, why? Is it the tools? Is it just their capacity with confidence? Is it their capacity with time in their day? And I think with that, referencing what you had said earlier, is it us versus them? How do we build that meet-in-the-middle place? And I think with that, we're going to have to develop trust because a little bit of that's been broken. But how do we get to that place where we can collaborate and have cohesion together? So those... assumptions aren't in the way of our work. What else? I also, I'm also concerned a little bit with the length. I know that, and I know this is your job, so I'm not telling you how to do your job, but in my world at school, and we know that people have very short attention spans, and so I would hate for them to get bored. Of course they wouldn't because your questions are amazing, but they may get bored. So I'm wondering if we could condense or combine some of them, if that could be a possibility. Like a couple of the arts, two were more about performances. Could we combine those? And then two were more about the classes or behind the scenes. And I felt like maybe we could condense those. Also, you talked about in Spanish. Is that the only language it's going to go out to? Absolutely. Because, and again, this is not my job, but if we're going to ask them what language they want it preferred in, but they don't speak the language, how are they going to know which one to pick? I mean, do we have data on the primary languages spoken within our city? I know we do have Spanish, but also there's Farsi languages. Pashto, like from our refugee families. I would just want to make sure that we're hitting all the people that we need to. And then lastly, I know that this is of has time constraints that we want to get this out sooner rather than later. Are we at all worried or considering just the season we're in with summer travel? And would it be better to have like at the beginning of August when kids are back in school and families tend to calm down a little more? Versus running to camps, running to pick up someone at swim lessons. And sometimes these things get pushed to the side. And that is all. And I'm sorry.

Council Member Lighty. Well, I just kept checking off all my things. Thank you, Council Member Roper. I have a few questions. Is this the format that the survey is going to go out in? Thank goodness. I looked at it and went immediately, no, I am not taking that survey. I'm not even kidding. I looked at it and I was like, oh, I personally would not take this survey just because of the format. Okay. I'm like, no.

This is the back end internal survey, if you will.

Fabulous. Okay. And then I know not to... beat a dead horse but the length it's so long and as someone that touching on the time period there is the amount of election surveys and then back to school surveys that are coming out and just the sheer amount of information that's thrown at families especially during this time is a little tricky and again I would I would probably push it to the side and go I'm not going to take this right now. This is not my main priority. I have seven surveys about what my child allergies is. So that's fun. And then another thing, just in this election season and our political climate, is there a way, I love our anonymous comments, but is there a way to keep the residents anonymity? Is that the word?

Oh, yes. There will be no identifiable information. That.

Okay, that was another thing that I was a little iffy about just because some people may just not want their information going out or they don't want to be in a survey because that could be pulled by certain systems. And then I was just looking and number seven, question seven, the sheer amount of social media pages that we have is ridiculous. And it causes a lot of contradictions because you could go to one and then... Four other pages say something completely different. And so is there a way that through this process we can put in the other, put these all together? Why are there so many pages? I'm not going to all these different pages, especially when all of your information is different and incorrect. That's something that I struggle with. Yeah, those are all my questions. That's all I got.

Mayor Pro Temp? Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for this presentation. It's a lot of information. I know you're doing a lot of work on this. I've heard a lot of things that I agree with overall. The first thing that stood out to me, obviously, was that the priority gaps and what seems to be that disconnect between Council and staff so I won't beat the dead horse to death But it is a concern my thoughts around that is There has to be oddly enough more communication right in terms of what this process is going to help that look better like I know that was a weird way to put that but I I think it was Councilman Receivers that said it's all about lack of processes, lack of SOPs, and maybe that's something where the disconnect is, that staff feels they don't have the capacity to perform at the level that we want them to or hope they can. Also, with AI being something the city is now using, I feel like there's so much opportunity to connect where they feel they can't. I mean, everything is so much easier now with AI. So I'm just really curious to see where this is going to go. And I am assuming you're going to give us that feedback in terms of how we're going to be able to help bridge that disconnect and that gap, right? That's a big part of this. Okay, I am also concerned that the surveys a little long as was mentioned before just is there any incentive when? People fill these out or is just like please please do yeah, not right now Okay, there is an opportunity presented that usually helps with with that as well, but there is not It's just a thought I know I don't think we have anything like budgeted for that, but some kind of incentive I don't know what that could be It's just a thought. You know, maybe it's a day pass to the rec center. I don't know, something that could get people to fill it out, because people hate surveys. I'm one of them. And so, understanding that importance to you, I think, is we have to communicate that to them. We'll see. I'm curious to see what kind of feedback you're going to have. Let's see. I was going to say, I'm assuming that text messaging will be one of the ways that this will be put out into the world. Great. I agree with everything else that was said. So many different communication channels. There was something that I had a question in terms of, I guess when we get all the feedback, I'm assuming that since this keeps coming up, capacity as a core issue, that council will need to be able to distinguish between operational improvements within the recommendations from like budgeting, budget staffing, or policy implications too.

That is also part of the recommendation.

Yeah, that's a big concern in that clarity. Okay. That was a lot of words, but thank you.

Council Member Gough. Thank you. And thank you for all the work you've been doing on this. I have a couple of different comments. One is You know, the capacity comments are so tricky, let's put it that way. I'm a retired teacher, and if you ask teachers, you know, what could you do to make your job better? Well, we don't have enough capacity, we don't have enough resources. So that's a tricky one. And then the other thing I would say is that I agree that there are too many social media pages. I have one, and I try to post things about different events and things that are coming up, and sometimes I'll hear about that we're gonna do one, and I'm searching for where I can find the Facebook page, because I'm old school with Facebook, and I can't figure out, is it in Parks and Rec, is it the City of North Glen? And sometimes I just give up because I can't find it. So I do like the idea of trying to consolidate those. The other thing I will say is that the DICE Board is putting together a survey that we're going to put out this summer. So there's another survey. We did not have any way to check how long it's going to take people. The questions are much longer. It's not like these little things where you just read something and you just check things. But we only have, we don't have anywhere near this many questions. However, I will say that we are looking at it in its full length. And I'm going to, I would trust your expertise that it's not going to be too long to take. And I know some people hate surveys. Some people love surveys. And it might be just because of the DICE board that people want to give that, the diversity board input. But we've never, you know, most people want to do them. And they'll just stand right there and do it right on their phone. So, I mean, I'd be willing to at least give it a shot, and then if it doesn't work as well as we might hope, then maybe we can do it again in August, as was the suggestion or something. And then also, if you're at events and there are people saying, you know, we have the survey, and this is why we have it, and this is what, you know, you will probably get a whole lot more responses. That's what the DICE Board found in the past. And I think that's all I have to say on this, so thank you. Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for this feedback. Excuse me. And being able to see the survey. And I don't know if this is a city question, but with regard to the kind of distributing the survey, it says social media, email, mail. Is there going to be like a separate mailer that is sent out?

So this was put together with some initial thoughts before we had the official communications meeting literally a couple of hours ago. So as of right now, it was decided besides connections, it's not necessarily going to be physically printed and mailed to places in addition um the instead it will be a lot more of direct contact working with different community groups and things like that to get especially into some more of the underserved community members okay i appreciate that answer and that it still seems a little kind of black box-ish as far as we know is that going to be like a city events and going door-to-door like how good I guess I'm just let me let me read to you the the list that was talked about today thank you all right so and this is not everything this was just some of the stuff that I was writing down as we were all talking so iPads for the 4th of July info booth, as well as additional events that are happening throughout this time period, connection, social, newsletter, both from the city as well as all of the different departments, including it in their newsletters, posting QR codes at theaters, senior center, rec center, the push notifications on the app in addition to text messages, digital TV screens throughout the facilities, working with boards and commissions to also put that out and throughout any ways that they can, Northland Arts List, adding it to the bottom of emails, email signatures, info booth at concert, park message boards, different partners, so working with property managers, HOA managers, community centers, setting up a computer specifically at the senior center that has the survey and have staff available to kind of set them up with that. Breck Center computers can also have an active link and various versions of those types of things.

Okay, that sounds pretty robust. So, yeah, well, I look forward to the feedback. I mean, as far as the length, I'm going to defer to you all on this one. Fun fact, I once had a job where I did surveys for a living, and we had a 45-minute gas survey on what type of gas people like, so... by phone. So that was a nightmare.

Well, we're doing better than that one.

This will be less painful than that. But yeah, I think it looks good and I look forward to what you come back with.

Okay, I'm gonna jump in before we go back around. Couple things, as has been mentioned, the land of education is filled with surveys. We give them a million times a year, and this is too long. It's just too long. People aren't going to have the attention span for it, and I'm just afraid we're not going to get all the information. I think there's opportunity for either removing questions or for reorganizing. I think it's interesting that some things are at the bottom that feel like questions that would be more intro, like... how you feel about the city but then i started to wonder are we asking a satisfaction survey or are we asking a communication survey and so it felt like we added these are you happy in your city questions as opposed to just focusing on the topic at hand um So I had quite a few comments that were mentioned. I think the accessibility thing jumps out at me the most as far as length. Some of the questions are super wordy. And when I think about either people that are second language learners, or any, just a wide variety of residents that we have. I think some of the vocabulary, it's super, super wordy. And I feel like there's opportunity there to make it a little more accessible so that people finish it. because the text alone is going to defer or it's going to deter people from wanting to do it there's just so many words so i also had a question about format because this is not appealing and again our slides never match which is interesting because we have the full page um and but so for an example um questions 10 through 17 I was wondering about format because if I'm supposed to do a scale from one to six and if I'm doing it on my phone maybe and I lose the scale, I'm going to get down and maybe I forget what six means and then I got to go find it, right? So I wasn't quite sure format wise if it was going to be individual.

It will be a sticky navigation thing so it will move down as you move down. Great. Like you said, this is our programming thing. So for example, the very first question that asks about language, that will be the only question on the screen at first until they go off. So it won't be a long scrolling document. Because there's skip logic and branching patterns, they'll be kind of grouped into, I think, a couple of questions at a time.

so we actually I think it's a state law that we have to have accessible websites and so I was just wondering if we if we could use a platform that functions like our website where they can select their language and translate the whole thing automatically oh on there you know no one has asked that before I will find out okay if it can be I was just wondering because a lot of our a lot of our websites have that right where they can pull it up and then just change the language so that way it's fully accessible to what they need yeah we have it like it's it was mandatory that we switch to that so that was a question because I do think accessibility is super important especially if we want a wide range of input I did like the ideas about some sort of motivation. So CCPP did a survey recently and I went to their booth and they were like, here, scan this real quick. You did the survey. You get to spin the wheel for a prize. People like little teeny things and it's really not that much of a budget crunch to be like, hey, you get a North Glen pencil or you get a piece of candy or you get a sticker or you get a... Anything. And so if we were going to do it at some of our night events, if we were going to have, I like the iPads at the 4th of July. However, when you said that, I was like, but I'm not, if I had littles, I'm not going to give up a half an hour of time with my kids to stand here with an iPad. So it's got to be faster and it's got to be quicker and it has to be shorter. So that was the other thing. thing I was thinking about. Question seven brought up something that you've heard from other people, but I just went, what do we seriously have? I didn't know we had a pirate fest Facebook page and a food truck carnival Facebook page. Like I didn't know we had all of these different social media accounts. I knew we had too many, but I did not know that each individual event had its own and that seems excessive so when i looked at that i was like well okay some of those make sense but some of them don't and then as people were talking i was like well push the survey out on all of those I mean, I guess we've got all those. We might as well use them. But I think as we move into strategies going forward, I think we should probably streamline. But that's another story. We're talking about the survey. All the way back up to question five. The question is, where have you received or looked for information about North Glen in the past 12 months? Google's not on there.

Yes.

Can you tell me why?

Yes. We are focusing on the North Glen owned channels.

Okay. But one of the problems we have, as I mentioned, is that Google is used as a search engine for most people. And if I want information, for example, what time is the Kiwanis pool? I'm looking over at our city manager. What time is the pool open? I'm going to Google that because it's faster sometimes than trying to find the right North Glen page. And yet it's not accurate. So if Google information is not up to date, but that's what people are using, then we have a problem. So then I look at it because Google gives me an answer. And then I go to the pool and it's closed. So how do we, I mean, that's just an internal stumbling block that we have to fix. But if we don't want people using Google, I don't know that we can stop them. So when I first saw that question, I was like, oh, yeah, people Google for information all the time. So if that's me, that's not an option here. So then I don't know what to choose because I'm not going to choose 10 because I do look up information and maybe I've looked at the city's website, the other one, or the Access North Glen. Sometimes I go there to find the website because it's an app and the website's not an app, but now the rec center is. So there's, I don't know. I don't feel like question five is finished. Let me just say that. Yeah.

So part of the rationale, because I know the original survey that we pulled a lot of this from for question five in particular also had different news channels and things like that. Since you don't have control over that and we're focused more on North Glens marketing and communications, that's kind of the intermediary where, yes, you could be Googling something, but Google's also pulling that from your website. So therefore, it's the website that may be the issue there. So our focus in this has been really your owned properties versus something, you know, there's other, in addition to your owned Facebook channels, community members who have created their own channels as well, but we don't have those on here, for example.

Okay. But I thought we were trying to find out where people go. to figure out how to maximize that. So if a search engine is not an option, because I will tell you, some of these other things are too frustrating to go to, and it's faster to use something that's just an AI version that's gonna pull my answer for me than for me to try to sort through, well, I don't know, should I go to the website? Well, I couldn't find, I mean, I'll give you the pool example as a real one because Went to the website. It had some information. Had to find the parks and rec guide that gave me different information. Google gave me different information. So we had three different attempts. Took me way too long. I was so frustrated. I was like, forget it. So that's, I guess I feel like if we really want to know where people are looking, we should give them the options. Like I'm not going to go to 7 News to find out, but I am going to use AI to look it up.

So you're talking, when you say Google, you're talking specifically about the AI thing at the top.

Just the AI. So I just go to Google and put in, what time does the Kiwanis pool open?

We can add that. Yeah. I just wanted to be clear.

Yeah, you could ask Siri what time.

Right. When you first talked about Google, I was like, well, it's going to link you to the, but you're talking about the AI version or the AI update. Yes.

Because I feel like that is realistic. And I think people choose that more than they choose, I'm going to go to northglenn.org and and I'm gonna try to click on here, and I'm gonna go to Parks and Recreation, and then I'm gonna go to the pool, and then I'm gonna, like that takes a really long time. And I really think it'd be interesting to find out if people just skip all that. But if it's not an option, we can't find out. Does that make sense? So that was the first thing I wondered about. Then I went to question seven and was like, what the heck, that's too many. The... Oh, there's a language piece on here. Let's see, is that question 32? Something about that doesn't sit right for me, and I think it's the English only is sufficient for me. Because that... is not the same as in which language should North Glen provide information? So I think it would be nice to have an option that says it should be accessible to all languages. It should be, I don't know. This just feels very limiting because it's also not all the languages. So something about this question just didn't sit right. And because if I was answering it right now, I would click other and I would put all languages that are necessary. Our content should be fully accessible to everyone. But I have to click other to say that. And the English only is sufficient for me. Someone could say Spanish only is sufficient for me. Vietnamese only is sufficient for me. So I would probably take those five words off. Yeah. Cause they feel, I don't know. They make me cranky. Okay. Let me go back to, Oh, so the, the, Question 28, around the police department. So this is content. So let's go back to the question at the top. It's hard to find. Let's find it. Oh. How frequently would you like to receive information about each of the topics? So we know that we have a lot of people that go to our police department page. They go to the Facebook. The police department social media is frequently used. However, this part of the survey doesn't get to the complaints that I hear. So it's not about do I want crime reports and recaps. it's do i want them with weapons and body cam footage and photos of drugs or do i just want the information so it's like this perception of the information or the quality of it and so we there's like a back and forth of crime stats don't bother me but when i see somebody get taken down by five cops on this body cam footage and there's like a bad boys, what you got to do, track in the back, that makes people uncomfortable. And that doesn't give them a perception of safety. But there are people that it does. And so I'm trying to figure out how to gauge that because some people are like, yeah, I like to see the bad guys get taken down. That makes me feel like the police department's doing their job. Other people are like, I don't like to see tables of drugs and weapons. That makes me feel like it's less safe here. And I get a ton of feedback around that. And so those four items on the police department, I'm like, I can't quite figure out how to get that information from that part of the survey. And you know, we don't, there's no way to also say, unless you just look at social media tracking, the cute little donut post got so much traction It was shared widely. Other departments were commenting. It got a ton of traction, and it made people feel good, and it was funny. That's not in here anywhere as far as some sort of community engagement. I mean, I guess it could be 30, but not really. I think it's the, and I know every website needs a balance, but I get the most comments when we post scary things. They're like, ugh, now it feels like we live in a city of crime. And that, I don't know how to capture that.

We'll work on that for you.

Okay. I also was wondering if we're putting it out in all these places, is there a way to limit it to one response per person?

So we have talked a lot about this. One of the things, so since we are not capturing any personal information, you know, oftentimes to do that we'll say enter your email or something, though people have multiple emails. What we typically do is look at IP addresses. But however, because we're doing the iPads and community centers, What we are going to do is before we start analyzing the data, we'll look at IP addresses and look at is it a personal thing that someone is taking multiple times or is it a kind of rec center or more of a public available thing to minimize that. we'll be able to totally get rid of it. You know, someone could technically probably take it on their phone and their computer. But we also have done this a lot. And we typically know when it's the same person kind of trying to say the same thing in a slightly different way.

Okay. So have you thought about reorganizing it. So I think when I look at it's one of the final questions feels like it's more of an intro question. Not all the demographic stuff. But well, I am wondering about all the tell us what you think about North Glen. So I don't know if like 41 and 42 should just be dropped. And even 40 because i don't know that that's what we're asking but that final question right before 40 so i guess it's like 34 through 39 that seems like a general intro to the survey yeah so um well let me step back so the the 40 through 42 um

knowing that there was a desire to get more cohesion on how do we position North Glen and how do we kind of bring everything together in that way. That's what we're trying to get here at here. However, if that's something where you think, look, based on the priority of what we're trying to do with this and wanting to cut down, if you want to cut that out, we absolutely can. So going back to these previous ones, we actually purposely put these towards the end because we were trying to get at some of these other things before they saw these questions where we're getting at some more specifics so that it doesn't influence maybe some of the other things in terms of satisfaction. So this was one of those research strategy things. I would love to hear if there's other things that you think are maybe out of place or could be cut or things like that.

I mean, again, it's just long. And I think I'm worried that people are not going to tend to the large chunks, right? City of North Glen has eight questions, eight or nine, eight questions. I don't know, I keep picturing myself taking this survey and I would probably be done pretty quickly. And what I don't want is for us to be on the backside of this going, oh, the data didn't tell us what we wanted to because it was too long. We only had a certain demographic fill it out. They didn't understand this question. So we got weird answers or like, I just, I want to make sure that it gets what we're hoping to get out of it. And it just feels almost finished, but not quite refined. But we have more comments. Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Okay, so kind of like to build upon what Mayor was saying, can we just like ground ourselves in the ultimate question we're trying to answer with this? Like what is the purpose of this survey? Is it around general, I mean, it's obviously general communications, that sort of thing, but could we, like, articulate that as a point of view real quick? Because to me, like, I am looking at it, but again, like, I have my own internal biases about this of, like, I see marketing, comps, and branding as, like, the three sections, and, like, that's what I am, and I am personally interested in, like, am I personally interested in the 17,000 Facebook pages we have and like is that question in there because and we want to see if people are actually using these or is it in there because like an internal person fought to keep their page I guess is like my question because I think it should be an executive order to slice some of these out and like sorry community but like because like I don't even think we do Mudapalooza anymore do we? Yeah, we do.

Okay.

There are how much I know about it. So, yeah, I just feel like some of this stuff is just our own problems coming out. And I would be interested to know what social media platforms are people just using. I mean, I have other data sources for that information, but it would be interesting for North Glen. And so I think it's just like, but I am worried about the length. Do I want to know the answer to all of these questions? Yes, I do. But I am worried that people won't take it without, like, an incentive. So I like the mayor's idea. I think it was yours. Was, like, a pencil. I'm also a little bit bummed for missing all of the ward, like, neighborhood night outs. Like, I think that would be a prime place, like, because we go there and, like... We could, like, easily sit and, like, give this to people and, like, talk about it more in depth of, like, why this is important to the city, why we're doing this. And I know, like, you know, whoever will do that at events is important, too. That's just kind of, like, where I'm sitting with this. And I understand the logic now of, like, putting... the sway of like the and like not getting people's like perspectives before the data stuff um okay but yeah so like if we could all agree that like the purpose of this is to figure out what's working and what's not from our community then i think then i don't know maybe we do need i want all the questions but i fear it's long from that perspective

and see what happens. That's a good idea. Well, when you were talking about grounding in the purpose, I think that's where I'm lost. So thank you for summarizing my brain meld. The ultimate question for me is, is it easy for you to find the information you need? Yes or no? Like, that's the question. Not necessarily how often they look at different things. And so I guess I'm feeling like we've sort of veered off the overall goal. Like what do we want to know from our residents?

I mean, I want to know all of those things.

It's like I, but like I, but again, like I am biased. Is there a part two, like answer the first five questions. And if you're interested in giving us all this additional information, go ahead. But if you answer five questions really fast, you can be done. But we've got a succinct version. And then it's almost a click here to continue if you have time. Like I just feel like some of these are like internal data pieces that are interesting.

Yeah.

That will help us make decisions on do we keep all the different things. I just... Like, for example, North Glen Arts. Those are interesting, but how often do you go there? More than once a week, weekly? Only if it's critical? I don't. Only if I'm looking for something is not an option. So it just feels too complicated. So I'm trying to figure out, like, what do we really want to know? Do you want to know how often they go to the theater production page? I mean, we have data that tells us that. We should have data that tells us that. The website should tell us, yes.

Are you at, like, from a professional standpoint, does that technology exist? Yes. Do I know if we have that information? I do not.

Well, maybe instead of being more than once a week all that that you're talking about, it would just be how easy is it to find the information you want about blah, blah, blah. And they would just say,

Something's amiss, because I talked about the pool, but the arts was another thing I was trying to find, and I went to three different places and never found what I needed. And I was like, oh, for heaven's sakes. But the flyer at the theater had the information I needed, but none of the website pages did. I was like, ah. So anyway, something's amiss, but I don't know that this is going to tell us that.

Sorry, I interrupted you. Are you good?

No, I think, like, I think that's totally fair. Like, I think, like, because that's why I was like, well, what, like, and that's why I wanted to ask the question, like, I don't know if it's to the dais or to staff, like, what do we want to get out of this survey? Because I have a very biased perspective, like, because I would love to know all of this information. But do we need it? But I also am struggling because would the survey look like this if we had a comms director with a strong point of view, strong leadership, strong vision? Not that city manager does not have all of that. It's just not her main job or main purpose. And so that's where I'm sort of struggling with like, yeah, because we could easily find out what the website traffic data looks like, I think. I assume there's tools for that. I know there are, but like, I just, so I, so yeah, I hear you for sure mayor on that. And that's like, where, like, are we trying, like, do we want to just like hand this survey data then to the next comms director and like, let them do with it what they want? Like, I don't know, I guess like, who is this for and why? I don't know.

We're going to go another round. Council member Roper.

I had some of the same things you guys were thinking of. And again, I said last time, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry for speaking out. I'm sorry that we do value your work. I know you put a lot into this, and I'm sure it feels like we're tearing it apart. But we all have opportunities for growth. That's what I hear all the time. So I was thinking, and again, this is not my... expertise. Again, it is very long. Like I said, could we condense it? Could we also just do small upfront questions? Like it could even be open-ended questions because we know people love answering those. And I think with that, what is it that we're trying to do? We wanted to know where people went for information. How could we consolidate that essentially? And then also we had a big focus on our branding of our city and what we wanted people to come away with when they think of North Glen. However, we know that that story in part has to come from us. If we don't tell the narrative, then people will tell it for us. So I think that was part of this to just identify where we wanted to go with that. And with that, we know that we'll get more accurate or real info when people have an internal motivation. So, I think having, like, the two or three open-ended questions, but then having something in the connection where people would have to sit down and think it through and would be in a quiet, calm place or at neighborhood nights. Because if I was, same, if I was at the Fourth of July, my learning personality would not work with all the things. And I just be like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Especially if I got a candy. But what if we, I think if it all comes down to also how we market it to our community so that they have buy-in or they see it as they are, their voice is playing into what legacy and marketing we're moving forward. So whether we even give our marketing a marketing, like, like, I don't know, build your legacy here. Or, I mean, how are we having our community buy-in so that we don't have to give them the candy, but also they feel like it's important and that comes back to that internal motivation.

Is that all making sense?

Yeah.

Okay.

And that is all. Thank you. Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Okay, so I have a couple more questions, and I apologize if you've covered this before or if I wasn't here for it, but with this goal of up to 300 hopefully completed surveys, so obviously I hear we're all talking about our residents, and our residents is our audience, and they have different needs, right? So a business owner is going to have different needs versus a parks user versus somebody with small children. somebody visiting or somebody working in the city, and they're going to want that information, different types of information through different channels. So as much as I go, oh, that's a lot, then I think, oh, we kind of do have to know because they are trying to seek information probably through different channels, and that might not look the same for everyone. So I think somehow that's important. And everything I'm hearing here is, in terms of the survey being so long, it's like what questions are essential versus what's nice to have. There's a lot of nice to haves. So hopefully we can cut it down to what's essential. Because one thing I heard the mayor say is, well, you know, someone at the park with their little kid is going to want to go spend more time with the kid versus stand there and complete a survey. So, in some ways, the psychologist in me is starting to see there could be a bias towards people who have more time, right? Or, and I don't know that we really want to do that and say, well, you are incentivized, you know, stay here and complete this, because then it maybe tends to be more biased to people who have more time or who are more opinionated. Those people tend to fill out surveys more readily, too. And, boy, you have a tough job, right, trying to get to all of those audiences. So, I'm just throwing that out there because, again, I'll go back to the incentives, too. Like, you know, having something maybe to keep the kid entertained there and spinning the wheel while mom or dad fills out the survey could be a better way to go. But, you know, we're human. The law of reciprocity. Give people something, they'll want to give you something back, even if it's just small things. So with that, I'm going to go back to that first question about different audiences. Are these findings, when you give us the results, are they going to be segmented by like residents versus business owners, people who work here, visitors, age, language, geography? And that's when I'm apologizing if you did say that.

We haven't officially covered that yet, but so how we will share the results with you, we'll talk about everything kind of from an overarching perspective, and then we'll go into if there were any variances based on any of how we can cut the data. So, you know, age, residence, all of those things. If anything was, hey, this is actually very different for residents based on everyone who responded or, you know, the, you know, there's like some outliers in terms of the age demographics. There's breakdowns there in terms of where they're looking to get information. So all of that will be provided to you.

Okay. I think that's important to see where the different responses are coming from, though. Because what we've heard is people are feeling that we're not transparent enough. So transparency, I think, is one big goal of this, right? Besides also how do we brand? How do we get our communications out there better? So I think that's really important to know, just for me personally. Like, what I go look at as a business owner, what I search for is going to be very different than when I'm in grandma mode, and now I'm, you know, looking at different areas and parks to take my grandkids to, for example. So, okay. Great. Good to know that, because I think that's going to be important. And then, for getting it out to maybe those, the demographics that aren't the mostly more stronger opinionated people, who will fill it out right away. They have something to say. I like all the places that you mentioned. I want to mention we do have a Ward 4 meeting June 18th that I think is the only Ward meeting that is happening before the rest of the surveys go out. So I think please add that to your list. Ward 4 tends to be a strongly opinionated Ward. But good feedback can come from there. And then did you mention like apartments and community centers? Okay. You went really fast, so I couldn't go back and think about all those things. I think community centers too, cultural community centers where people gather a lot, that's already, you're nodding, so you got all that stuff. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Lighty.

Thank you. Just a subtle plug. There's a Ward 1 meeting also. I think it's July 16th. That's our neighborhood night. So if you want to pop over there, it's in the middle of my neighborhood. So I guarantee there's going to be a bunch of people there because they love coming to Central Park. I do have just a few things, and I pulled up the website just to see what the thing is called. But the accessibility piece is huge for me. That's my background. And so I think it's interesting that not only do we only have two languages, but there are also other languages. Not disabilities, but there's other people that need a little bit more assistance when it comes to these things. I mean, the first thing I thought of is my grandparents aren't carrying around their readers at these fun events. So how are they going to now look at a screen and then they have to zoom and then unzoom and then try to go back? That's another thing that our website uses Recite Me, and it's really cool. I don't know if that's something that you guys could implement into the survey of being able to maybe have it be read to you or have it be able to be zoomed in. Or there's other things where you can screen mask because in some situations you can't read all of the things that are on the screen because they all meld together. And I mean, that's something that I personally deal with. And so I wouldn't take time out of my day to do a survey that isn't something that I can access myself. That would really, that would bother me just a little bit. And then I think about some of my neighbors. They don't even know that this is going to happen. You could send it in the connection. You could send it in the water bill. You could send it in every single thing. And that's just, some people just aren't as connected as we want them to be. And so I'm thinking about how do we How do we grab their attention? How do we get their opinions? Because that's a huge piece of if they genuinely have no idea what's going on because they just keep getting mail that looks like trash, that's a problem, right? And then I also wanted to point this out because it's been said multiple times that it's hard with the... different sites. If you go to our website on a computer, it is completely different than when you go on your phone or on a tablet. The format is completely different. It's not accessible. And that's something that's also really tricky is I can come on my computer and I'm like, oh, look at this. I can see all the things that I need to see. But if I tried to do that on my phone, you wouldn't be able to see anything. And that's another thing is, as a younger resident, I'm not sitting at my computer all day. I'm not going to pull out my laptop to go through the website. I'm going to pull it up on my phone. And then another thing, because we mentioned it, Safari and Google have two different responses. And I know it takes it from the website, but if Safari is taking one thing from the website and Google is taking another, and they are two completely different responses... That's a problem. It's the same thing with Google Maps and Apple Maps. They're two completely different responses, but if they're taking it from the same website... How were they two completely different responses? That worries me. I also was just thinking about if you're doing this at the rec center, I think about my volleyball players when they would get dropped off, they will take that survey. And that's another thing is how do you incentivize one of the questions or one of the options was under 18. There's a ton of kids at that rec center that they just like to click buttons and they will do it for you. But again, there are some kids that don't necessarily know how to read the big words Or when you put all those things together, they're going to go, ah, I don't know what any of these things are. I don't know. And then we lose that response. And I think that's another piece that could be huge. And then I was looking at just some of the different questions, too. Personally, I don't deal with... a lot of utility or billing or payment options because I do that through the person that I live with. And that is something that a lot of our residents do is there is one main person that focuses on all the things in the household and then all their roommates just chip in together. And so how do we reach out to those people? How do we reach out to the multifamily households to make sure that everyone is getting the same information and the same accurate information? huge on accurate because i've been doing a lot of googling myself and i cannot find anything and then i get really annoyed and just give up and go to thornton because they have an easier website so that's one of those things where it's we lose our traction and we lose our residents to easier websites and easier social media programs and things like that so yeah council member sievers thank you madam mayor uh

I just want to bring this up to staff, but also maybe I'll just email them, but the boards and commissions is one way of getting the survey out. Kind of going back to the mission statement and having a mission, and that gives you that motivation to move forward. I feel like sometimes the Citizens Affairs Board lacks a really distinct mission. I know you were on it, too. I was talking to Selena at the 250-150 thing, and... I think this is a perfect opportunity to try to get them a mission, unlike the dice board. They don't have something that they are aiming for, so I feel like I'm going to email them. I don't know. They're supposed to be different from us, so I don't want to necessarily... email them if you guys think that's not appropriate. But I think it's a perfect opportunity to try. And I plan to go to most of the neighborhood nights, so I think absolutely has to get there, even if it's me doing it or something. But anyway, Citizens Affairs Board, for wherever they can make it, I think that'd be a good mission to give them. Whether or not I'm supposed to do that or not I guess is what I'm questioning because they're supposed to be a step removed from City Council So what's the norm? I don't know. I mean I was just talking to Selena.

She's just she's looking for something to do so Councilmember Nowicki Thank You madam mayor a question for you all Given the length of the survey how confident are Let's do scale of one to five, one being low confidence, five being most confidence. Not one to six. One to six, there you go. How confident are you that we can get at least 300 respondents?

Five.

Five. Okay. That's good enough for me. Thank you.

That does seem doable.

Are we on the six point scale now? Six, whatever that is. Yeah.

A couple additional questions. When Councilmember Sievers said, well, maybe I'll help, are interviews a part of it? Like, is that an option that we've considered?

For the community members, not at this time. Yeah.

Okay. And then reaching out to churches? Yep. Okay. Just wanted to make sure that was in there. I did like the idea of marketing the survey. Mm-hmm. I think that's super important to make sure that the people understand the purpose. I am starting to wonder because first of all, this is a tough thing to do, right? It's a, how do we get, how do we cover all our bases with a communication survey? It's like a mind meld, right? The survey about the survey, that's very tricky. And so it is hard and there's been a ton of reaction and response and feedback today. So I'm wondering about the timeline. if you guys are going to take the feedback if we need to dial it back a little bit. I mean, I know our goal was to get it by the 4th of July. I don't want to push you guys if you think that's too tight to not recreate it. You don't have to start over. But I think there's just a lot of feedback.

Yeah, we had built in a round of revisions that we would go back to staff with. So I'm not worried about this timeline at this point. as long as you all are okay with city staff approving the survey based on, you know, that we have taken all of your feedback in and we don't have to have another meeting with you all for the final approval. If that's the case, we would probably have to push it back just based on the timeline.

Okay, so then I'd probably look to our interim city manager because there's a ton of feedback. How do you feel about taking everything that you've heard tonight and WORKING WITH THEM GOING FORWARD.

I FEEL LIKE WE'LL NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS WITH THE TEAM THAT'S BEEN INVOLVED. I HAVEN'T BEEN INVOLVED WITH THIS PROJECT. SO I DO WANT TO GET THEIR FEEDBACK ON YOUR FEEDBACK TONIGHT. TALK WITH THIS TEAM AS WELL AND COME UP WITH A PLAN TO MOVE FORWARD. SO I DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR YOU AT THE MOMENT. but we'll let you know once we can reconvene and strategize on the path forward.

Okay. I think that's a very appropriate response because I think we knew that of all the topics tonight, this one was going to be a hot topic and there is going to be a lot of engagement from council because it's something that obviously you can feel the interest and the passion around. And that said to, you know, council member Ropers, thought, like we really do appreciate your work and the fact that you built in time for revision means that you're not mad at us for having opinions, which I think is great. I think it just goes back to not only have we personally taken a ton of surveys and had some personal experiences, but you know, taking all the comments that we've heard from residents over the years and are just like, oh, we got to figure out how to narrow it. So some of the things I heard, if I was able to summarize, is that we want to be super clear on the purpose and what we're trying to accomplish and sticking to that narrow focus. marketing the purpose super clear to the people that are taking the survey. And then, you know, maybe focusing on the essentials, not necessarily the nice to haves, and making it fully accessible. I think those were the hot topics, but I know the interim manager was taking MAD notes over there too. So I like that you're going to meet with the team and figure out next steps. So thank you. It looks like Council Member Roper, your hand's up again.

No, that's okay. I apologize. One more thing. I think my just thought right now was we need to or we should make sure that we take the feedback from staff. And what do they want as well? Because yes, we all want something. But also, if they're going to be doing the work on this, you know, their boots are hitting the straight, how can we start that trust and coming together to build what we all want?

Yeah, sounds great. Do you have any questions for us?

I don't think so. I really appreciate your feedback. No, we're not mad. This is part of the process. This is why we do this.

Yes.

So I really appreciate your feedback. We took some good notes, and I'm confident we can get to a survey that you will be very excited about and one that is, most importantly, actionable after the fact.

Yes, absolutely. But thank you for your presentation tonight, and we'll see you soon.

Thank you all so much.

Thanks. All right, next up, maybe he's ready. 2026 end of state legislative session report. Our city lobbyist, Adam Berg, is here. Welcome.

All right. Good evening. Attenberg with Foster Graham Law Firm here to give our end of session report. It has been, believe it or not, 19 days since the session has ended. So it feels a little bit like a lifetime ago. But we are not done. The governor is signing bills as we speak. He's also vetoing bills as we speak, which we'll get into a little bit here tonight. So quick recap. They convened on January 14th of this year, and they adjourned Sani Dai on May 13th. That is the 120-day session. Notably, they do not have to go 120 days. They could adjourn early. I cannot tell you when or if that has happened before. This year they took on nearly 650 bills. On state bill, our lobby platform, we had 714 measures in total introduced. That platform includes resolutions and other items that are read across the desk. And then obviously this year was sort of a transition year. It is the governor's last legislative session. We have a major election upcoming, which will obviously change a lot of the state dynamic. And you could really feel that in the building this year. I think there was some tension between the governor and lawmakers and maybe lawmakers pushing a little bit more against the governor, kind of seeing where he was at. And the result was a legislature balancing continuity with change. So there were issues that rolled over from last session that they brought back up this year. There are going to be issues from this year that they're going to have to bring forward next year, like data centers and some of the stuff that was ultimately not resolved during the session. Although lawmakers returned for another session really with the same body from the 24 election, you can see the makeup was very the same as last year. I don't know why that's not showing up clearly for you all. But obviously, House members, we had 22 Republicans, 43 Democrats. In the Senate, we have 12 Republicans and 23 Democrats. Huge margins, right? Almost a supermajority. Democrats have maintained that control for a long period of time. I think what's interesting is 24 was actually a big transition year for Colorado politics at large. It was actually the first year where we no longer had any Democrats who'd served in the minority or any Republicans who had served in the majority. within the legislature. So obviously that's a big change. And then Republicans kind of kept to a lot of their messaging this year about state overspending and concerns around public safety and concerns around what they've characterized as overreach by Democrats in different policy areas. The leadership for this year was largely the same as the prior year, although notably Senator Lundin did resign to take on a new role, in which case we appointed a new senator or Senate minority leader in Cleve Simpson. And then obviously in the House, Rose Pugliese also resigned and Jarvis Caldwell took over that leadership position. Outside of that, we largely maintain the same positions as from the prior session in twenty five. And then the vacancy committee conversation. It's something we've all heard a lot about in recent years. Obviously, in 25, we welcomed a whole new slate of lawmakers, some of who left. Some new members showed up this year due to vacancy processes. And roughly a fourth of lawmakers, 27 right now, have at some point been appointed to the General Assembly through a vacancy process. We're not going to debate the merits of whether that's a good thing or bad thing. That is just the reality of the system we have in Colorado. Some key themes from the session. First and foremost was the budget. Lawmakers, when they entered in January, knew they were facing between an $800 to $900 million budget. That got worse when they got the March forecast. It's about $1.2 billion plus. And it was underlined every conversation that lawmakers had this session. If you were billed with a big fiscal note, you were going to struggle to get out of appropriations. Medicaid writ large was a conversation throughout the session of how do we provide service while also reining in spending. And then, of course, we've had now ballot battles that are going to play out in November potentially around transportation or oil and gas and some other issues also associated with budget. Healthcare Medicaid at large, again, we saw major service cuts to different programs. I think the JVC did their best to try and balance what they could with the budget. We also saw Kim Bimsteffer resign during this session of HICPF. A lot of finger pointing about mismanagement and fraud and the program at large. So we are currently, obviously, for much of this, waiting till the next governor to determine kind of the direction healthcare moves. Energy, utilities, and regulatory policy, this isn't a new topic. The thing that is new is data centers is becoming more of a conversation at the state capitol, and it's also becoming a conversation nationally with Congress looking at data centers, and locally, where we see jurisdictions trying to determine what they're going to do Artificial intelligence, again, was brought this year since the landmark law was passed a couple years ago. They did indeed pass a bill this session to address AI. It's a little more restricted than I think previous efforts, but notably with the bill going into effect this year, they did need to get something done. Labor, employment, and the business climate. We saw the Labor Peace Act changes brought forward again this year. You likely saw in the news that the governor vetoed that bill on Friday. It was a similar bill to the prior year. I think this issue will come back next session. Regardless of who the governor is, I anticipate this conversation to continue. not go away. We also saw bills related to large employer Medicaid coverage, which ultimately didn't pass. We saw some sort of OSHA safety protection bills. We saw some climate related bills and work temperatures this year. housing affordability and land use again a major topic under the polis administration this year was no different uh though i will say it was sort of a mixed result this year in this space there were some governor priorities that passed there were others that that did not and ultimately died in in the senate or in committee we will see this issue from my perspective, is not going away. As long as there is a housing affordability crisis in Colorado, it will continue. How that looks under the next governor is sort of TBD. I will say, and we talked about this quite a bit this year, the issue of local control, I know it's something we talk about a lot, is increasingly and frustratingly partisan under the Capitol. We saw a lot of votes this year where the only people voting no on some of these bills to support local control were the Republicans, which I think left a lot of us feeling much different than we did a couple of years ago, where we kind of got to duke it out more and felt there was more support. But I think that's a noted point for for this year. Gaming consumer protection and emerging markets. We've seen sports betting take on kind of a new fight this year. Obviously, it's tied to the Colorado Water Plan. I think that'll be an ongoing fight. Public safety and community resilience. Flock, right, kind of the systems we use to monitor and enforce the law are increasingly under scrutiny at the state level. I think we saw firearm policy back this year. We saw prison capacity. We saw obviously mental health facilities, which we all know is a big topic. And then sort of the plan for how do we deal with what is appearing more and more like a mental health crisis here in Colorado. And then governance, rulemaking, and agency authority. Over the last five plus years, we've increasingly seen legislators pass broad policy and ultimately punt the rulemaking to agencies and rulemaking bodies, and so what has typically been, you know, we get through session and maybe a law goes into effect in August or the following year, is now often a multi-year rulemaking process. And so the lawmaking period really does not end in Colorado anymore. I always say, if you're only paying attention through May, don't be surprised if something comes next year that we weren't aware because it wasn't tracked that we need to be aware of. Now I want to talk obviously specific to the City of North Glen and the way we engaged this year And thank you to the policy committee members for all your extra time on top of this to kind of go through these bills and then pay such attention and represent the community. We ultimately took 19 bill positions this session. That was of 68 separate pieces of legislation we ultimately brought forward for review that would have potentially impacted the city and then determined, you know, what was our path. The thing I think most notable is the city. This is without vetoes because one of the bills we did support was vetoed recently. But without vetoes, we had 68% success rate. So the position we took was the ultimate outcome of that bill, whether it was passing or failing. I think that speaks to the engagement of the council and the way they approach some of this legislation and obviously working with our members and our partners. A couple of the key bills I want to note and sort of how they turned out that we weighed in on. First was 1001, obviously anything with an early bill number typically is a priority of the governor or leadership. This was signed. This deals with... You know, it's a repeat of a bill last year, kind of the YIMBY effort or the YIGBY effort, if you're familiar with that. That ultimately was passed this year. 1308 lot splitting, which did pass the House but died in the Senate in part because of our good senator in the area, Senator Linstead. who weighed in on this would have dealt with some lot splitting. Minimum lot size, similar outcome, ultimately died in the Senate where the margins were a bit narrower. But obviously, a couple of these are mandates on local governments in terms of housing. Environment and energy, this was a late bill on our docket in a way. Huge bill, sunset of the PUC. If they did not pass something, the PUC would have essentially gone away at the end of the year. which they couldn't have. This was a big conversation between utilities and environmental groups and other stakeholders about what the PUC is and what they should do. The reason the city got engaged in an amend position is the initial bill would have created a new pathway where a non-municipal utility or a private utility could have simply gone to the PUC for determination if a local government chose not to approve a project. So think you don't approve a substation in a certain location, It's appealed to the PUC. PUC says, sorry, you know, we're approving this. That was actually struck through from the bill as it ultimately passed, thanks to the work also of CML on this, who kept us in the loop. Mental health and public safety, House Bill 1285. This was obviously our bill initiated through CML. We put a lot of time and effort and energy and conversations into this. I don't think any of us were pleased with the outcome. I think it was a really frustrating committee hearing. Ultimately, the state did decide to extend their bill sort of internal policy around the prohibition of sex offender placement for several years. I think this is an ongoing conversation. I think it's something we continue to work on through the interim and talk about bringing next year, seeing what the legislative dynamics play out. 70 was a ban on government accessing historical locations, so it did not pass, but we'll have placed restrictions on the ability for us to access databases around some of the information we use for license plate reading or that our police department may use. And then another one, 152, is changes to automated vehicle identification system usage. This is something we've talked about with the law enforcement groups and the PD that actually updates some of the systems and the way we would enforce traffic laws in a positive way. Transportation infrastructure, Front Range Passenger Rail District. Thank you to our Senator, Senator Mollica, who made sure that North Glen was not included in the rail districts, given we do not have a stop in proximity. The bill ultimately did pass. It will be going to voters in November to determine whether or not they want to fund it. But thankfully, North Glen is not included in the district. 129, this was dealing with TIF, really looking initially as sort of is TIF taking money from school districts and whether the reporting requirements. There was a lot of pushback against this bill, including us, and the bill was ultimately laid over and did not meet the muster of the session. Some other bills really quickly, and you all received our end of session report, and then our other much longer end of session report that has everything. If you're really bored or you want to kind of do a deep dive, that's a good document to do it, or you're welcome to reach out to me if you want to just talk policy. So I want to get to the budget real quickly. And again, we sort of dove into this, but we knew the budget was going to be a problem. It was a problem last year, so this wasn't necessarily a surprise to any of us. But what we're dealing with is now both a structural problem because of the laws in Colorado and also an immediate problem because, you know, federal funds have sort of run dry. We've created some extended programs that we really can't fund in perpetuity at this point. And candidly, Medicaid has grown beyond our ability to manage it, despite the fact it is a critical service, and we're trying to navigate how to do that. So in March, we received a large leap in the budget deficit, and this is right as the long bill or the budget is getting introduced at the Capitol. I think the JBC member, Rep. Taggart, said it really well, as you can see in blue. And in response, the JBC tried to find a way to balance it this year. There were 64 orbital bills tied to the long bill during session. That's not necessarily a high number. That's a fairly common number. But all those bills obviously have to implement all of the changes that the long bill directs. And one of the only things lawmakers have to do every session is pass a balanced budget. That's really their main job during the time at session. So this is the kind of structural immediate pressures, right? Rising caseload and growth of Medicaid, expiration of ARPA funds, education and K-12 funding we have to fund at a certain level. Tabor obviously creates some restrictions on what we can and can't do. And then kind of this inflation versus baseline cost increases. And the reality is that the cost of maintaining existing services have risen faster than the available revenue growth to this state. At a base level, that's where we ended up. So after months of negotiations, they did pass a balanced budget, $46.8 billion for the next fiscal year. The governor signed it into law. That new budget goes effect in July 1st when we transition to the next fiscal year. And the point now as we look forward is we are really at a fiscal inflection point for the state of Colorado. What that means is we have seen lawmakers talk about TABOR. They've talked about what does the state do when we reach a point like this. So do not be surprised if come the next session that continues to be a conversation and possibly referred measures down the road looking at larger budget issues. And now we get to the vetoes. So the governor has a notable history of vetoes. You can kind of see his track record. Last year was his record of 11 vetoes. You can see sort of his predecessor. I do always like to note that Governor Odent Governor Owens vetoed 47 bills in 2005. That is the record. And that's obviously a time where we had sort of a different political makeup at the Capitol. Where we are now, so the governor has until the 12th to either veto legislation or becomes law without his signature. under Colorado law. As of May 17th, we did not have any vetoes yet. As of today, we have six. And we are slowly seeing sort of that effect of what we anticipated, which is the governor received all the bills, and now he is going through with his team determining what he will and will not veto. So 1005 has been vetoed. 1255 has also been vetoed as of now. I believe 1210 and 134 are not yet up for a decision, but I would not be shocked if those are also vetoed. So I'm anticipating we get between 9 to 12 vetoes this year potentially from Governor Polis. And then looking ahead, I can't remember the exact count off the top of my head. I want to say it's like 230-something days until session starts next year. And even as, so the first and foremost issue is the budget. It's going to be an issue for the foreseeable future. It is going to create problems for what lawmakers can and can't do. From a municipal perspective, the thing I worry about is unfunded mandates increasingly coming to local governments who obviously have some of our own budgetary issues. So that will be an ongoing fight. We have a major election coming up in November that includes for governor and other statewide offices that includes all of the House seats in Colorado's General Assembly and about half of the Senate seats. So we will see whether or not it's a big political swing either way, at least some new people coming under the gold dome. The growing inter-party and intra-party tensions, whether it was the Opportunity Caucus that we saw sort of pointed fingers at this year under the Gold Dome, or tensions in the minority party between Minority Leader Caldwell and his caucus members and having the Longville read at length. Those are the type of things that are becoming increasingly prevalent in Colorado's internal system is this battle between the extremes of both parties and then those who view themselves as kind of moderates of the parties and trying to find a balance. Again, the future and ongoing challenges of TABOR. TABOR is the law of the land. As of now, there is nothing they can do about it, and it does set the bar. and can create sort of a complicated long-term ratchet down effect is typically how we talk about it, about the state's ability to spend. And then the continued debate over Colorado's vacancy committee process. I was actually surprised it was as minimal as it was this year. I think when you look at the public's perception of it, they're actually probably more concerned than the internal lawmaking body is. But I do think it's something that, as we have a quarter of the lawmakers in that building appointed through these small processes, that is raising a bit of ire from those in politics. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions you may have. And thank you again for all your work this session. You know, we'll be back there before we know it.

Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for this very in-depth presentation. I think it was a long legislative session for us. We didn't get everything we wanted, very clearly. But it was lovely having you and your team as a partner during this session. and we look forward to fighting good fight next session as well um i think it is interesting too specifically that our community north glenn was so specifically impacted by the vacancy process this year with the passing of senator winter and the sort of domino effect that we saw um so i think that specifically impacts a lot of our residents this year and sort of has us, I mean, I'm specifically having a lot of feelings about that. But yeah, I think this was super helpful. Interested to see what will come. Thank you.

Council Member Roper. Thank you so much. And thank you for all the work you've done this, I was going to say semester, this session. And really, I think I can speak for myself. I feel like you have represented us well. You've represented our ideas and what we want to go after. And so I do appreciate that because that has not always been the case. And it's important that we feel like we're represented because we are representing the voices of our community. So thank you so much.

Councilmember Nowicki.

Yeah, excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Berg, for being here. Again, I just want to say thank you to you and your team and the city staff, Corey. legislative committee for following these. You know, I don't, I really appreciate the updates. I think you and your team have done a great job of just following along with everything, kind of walking with the city through every step of this process. So I really appreciate that. And yeah, look forward to what's to come.

Councilmember Sievers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. As you know, I appreciate it. I've let you know that as a newer city council member. And I purposely put myself in a position to get more of a front row seat to that debacle that you call the statehouse. So it was interesting, I will say. But I really appreciate it. You made it consumable. I feel like. I could always do better. So, like, I'm very excited for next year, basically what I'm saying is I feel like there's a lot of growth possibility. And, yeah, I just appreciate it. Like I said, it was pretty easy working with your team, with the rest of the legislative policy committee, city attorney and everyone. So I just appreciate it. Thanks. And I will be taking you up on that cup of coffee or something later. I want to give you a break from this, though. I'm around. Maybe in a month or so.

Mayor Pro Temp. Thank you. Thank you so much, Adam, to you and your team. I mean, I think having you guys as our lobbyists has been just incredible. I would say the biggest thing, the biggest difference is that I feel like we felt really heard during this whole legislative session. And that you fought really hard for us. So I really appreciate that. I was going to say the updates that you've been sending are just incredibly insane and so detailed. And all of that information is just so great to have in one place. And I'll speak for myself. I would never find that on my own. So that is one thing that I think you've done really well besides all of the back and forth. And it's been great working with you on the legislative committee. So looking forward to... sort of, next year. Looking forward to it, but not looking forward to next year. Thank you.

Well, I have said it many, many times, but I can't say it enough. Thank you. I wrote down, so the regular updates are so detailed and specific that none of us felt out of the loop. We felt like we were down there with you. Even if we're not on the legislative committee, every single person was informed and could speak to everything that was happening down there. But that's only because you gave us such thorough weekly updates. um i did write down that we should market this update in the future like we should really sell this moment and make sure residents know that he's coming because we get a lot of questions about you know what's going on down there and and there's this perception that it's our responsibility to tell the residents They're not reaching out to their state representatives necessarily because they don't hear back from them. So we're closer to them and they reach out and say, hey, how come you're not giving us updates? So I think we should just definitely say, hey, our lobbyist is coming because this update was such a beautiful summary that We've never had such a thorough summary of everything that happened down there. It's usually only been North Glen specific, but we know that we're part of this bigger region and we need all the information. So, so lovely. But I think the other thing that I appreciate so much, not only what's been said, like we felt heard all of this, but you have a fighting spirit, which I really appreciate. And you have to have it down there. You can't just be passive and just take it in and kind of ride the road, right? You have to have that fighting spirit, which you have on behalf of North Glen, which we absolutely love. So thank you. And Council Member Goff?

I just thought of something. So thank you, because the reports that we get from you are so detailed and very informative. So I do appreciate that. But just in listening to the Mayor talk, I thought, I wonder if there's a way, like on maybe the legislative policy website that we have, you know, that there could be a link to this particular document or some way for residents just to Because this is so concise, you know, just really, and it shows what North Glen has done, what we have done, how hard we've worked to try to, you know, push forward legislation to benefit or protect our residents. So thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Just real quick. Thank you all. Thank you, Corey and Heather. I mean. As you know, I'm not an attorney. We have attorneys on our team. We have Corey, which is incredibly helpful. And then just all your all input on stuff. I think it in our first year, I'm trying to kind of learn your priorities. And I think we had a great communication. As you said, Mayor, I love a fight. I'm anticipating we'll have some more next year.

Yep. Thank you. Thanks for your time tonight. Okay, up next, stormwater assessment. So we will welcome our Director of Public Works, Sarah Borgers, to present this item. Good evening.

Mayor and City Council, it's good to see you tonight. So we're here tonight to talk about our recent stormwater system assessing project that we worked on, and also talk about what some of those findings were and how we can move forward from what all the things were that we learned. So we'll give an overview of the stormwater system assessment itself. We'll talk about some proposed stormwater fee increases. And this is all follow-up. Deputy City Manager Loveland has met with the Finance Committee, so the Finance Committee has seen some of this as well. So what is our stormwater system? So stormwater, of course, falls from the sky, hits the ground, and runs off. Technically, our streets are considered part of our stormwater system. I don't list them here, but a lot of the street sweeping and the things we do are actually related to permit requirements we have for our stormwater system. So you can see you see these stormwater inlets. You see them all over the city and the roads. That's where the stormwater enters the pipes underground. There's also manholes that you can see kind of there. You see those all around as well. Some of those manholes are for our wastewater system. Many of them are for stormwater system. Those are completely different systems. I would also like to note here that our wastewater goes to treatment at a wastewater plant. Our stormwater goes directly out into the environment. And so that's kind of a difference here when we're talking about stormwater. It's not treated. So we always encourage folks to not put stuff down the storm drains. So then oftentimes those pipes will go to open ditches or go through storm pipes to leave the city. We've got 28 miles of stormwater pipe underground, which is quite a bit. Box culverts, we've got about 2,900 feet of box culverts. So all a box culvert is is a pipe, but it's square. And it's usually the big ones that you think you might be able to walk through or that people kind of get into and graffiti things and that kind of stuff. And then we also have outfalls. So this picture on the right is a location where our stormwater system then discharges into waters of the state, which would be one of our creeks usually. So the goals of the stormwater assessment, the first off was we didn't have great mapping of our system. And so one of the very first things that the consultant helps us with is to assess what we had, pull in some plan sets that we had and evaluate in the field and make sure that we have mapping that actually matches what we're seeing in the field. Then they went through with a camera. We talked about the TV van during a recent CIP approval. It's essentially the same device. We take a camera, we put it down the pipes, and we see what those pipes look like. We can't do that in all cases. We'll talk about a few cases where the pipes were actually inaccessible. Also, the bigger pipes, we have trouble putting a camera down because they don't drive. They don't have a wheel that we can drive. So if they get off track, they wander away and it makes it hard to take a look at those larger pipes. Where we had available budget, we also cleaned some section of pipe to make them available so that we could actually get a better look in those pipes. And then based on that, the consultant helped us with cost estimate for repairs. So the types of deficiencies that we found in doing this, utility line intrusions, structural concerns, hydraulic performance issues, that just means If the pipe's flat, then the water doesn't drain very well. Access and maintenance challenges. So sometimes there are long stretches of pipe that don't have any manhole access, and there's hundreds of feet of pipe that we just can't get to. There's debris and blockages, private infrastructure conflicts. That's primarily where we've had our pipes drilled through by boring companies. So we've got quite a bit of that around. What I will say this did not identify and would be an entirely different project is where we've got stormwater capacity issues, meaning we need a bigger pipe because there's actually more stormwater coming through that area. That is a different kind of a project. Projects that would fall in this would be like our 112th area where we've got some capacity issues. That's a different conversation that's Those conversations are when we get Mile High Flood District and those kind of folks involved. All right. So the consultant gave us a rating schedule. Zero is everything's A-OK. Five is our most significant defects. That's joint offsetting, collapsed pipe, broken pipes, kind of severe cracking, clogged pipes, that kind of thing. Versus number four, which would be like a significant defect where we've got some pipe deformation. So some of our pipe is corrugated metal or plastic. It can actually squish over time. And it goes down the line kind of as so. Mostly what we're looking at is our fives, which is our most significant defect. So this is a picture of our city. I think this question came up during the meeting with the finance committee. All of those black lines are zeros. And there's some pink lines. I think there's one on Grant and there's a few more around where we've got some pipes that we just couldn't look at due to debris in the line. There was one pipe they found where some Industrious individuals had put large rocks into it, so we have to work through that and figure out how to clear some of those pipes so that we can get access to those. But the top five areas where we're going to talk about doing CIP projects, we have listed are those red areas where you see red on the map. So our number one spot is 104th Avenue replacement. The map that the finance committee saw had all of 104th highlighted. That's not where the project is, it's really focused here, kind of just west of Washington. Let's see if I can make the, there we go. So that's this little red area right there. We wanna prioritize that one, it is in lanes of traffic, and so we wanna make sure that that one is safe. Our number two spot is up here on 112th, and there's a little bit you can't quite see that's over more towards the Fox Run side of town, but that would fix a few areas on 112th. Then we've got Irma Drive replacement, which is down here. Muriel Drive, which is this kind of right in here. Is my arrow visible to y'all? Can you actually see? Okay. And, oh look, there we go. Number five would be our Larson Lane, right through here. So those are areas where we've seen some pretty significant issues and we wanna go ahead and get those taken care of. So what does a high priority look like? So we found 22 of these locations. We're really talking about five for doing CIPs through the immediate future. But they look like this. So the top pipe is where you can see the pipe should be around. and there's parts of it missing. That, unfortunately, is fairly common in stormwater systems. The bottom pipe is where we've had what is a fairly good conditioned CMP pipe, corrugated metal pipe, that has someone's bored through it. And so we've got some places in town, up and down Huron, and some other places where boring companies have come through, and this is fairly typical It's a little bit of a project to figure out who it is and are they still in business anymore and all kind of variety of things. So these are problematic for us. We really worry about the ones like at the top where we've got a pipe that's actually failing. A medium priority. So we've got 11 of these locations separate. This is where pipes have separated at the joints. There's minor cracking, maybe a little debris in the pipe. And so if you look along the bottom edge of the pipe, you'll see where that pipe is kind of shifted. And there looks to be a piece of rebar or something that's caught on that because of that lip there. So that's what we're calling a medium priority. This is low priority. This is where we're just seeing some minor wear and tear. You can see that the pipe has got a little bit of corrosion at the bottom, but nothing that's too terrible. And as long as we maintain it, we can keep it functional for a while longer. And then we had some pipes that were inaccessible, like I mentioned. So there were either debris or standing water. The pipe was offset so the camera couldn't get past that section. We had the utility line, the boring lines in the way. or there was just damage in the pipe that prevented us from making it through. All right. So that was the assessment. What are we doing about it? So as of this year, we've put, Council has approved $100,000 for general maintenance. This could include everything from cleaning out ditches to making minor repairs to pipes, doing cleaning of the pipes, and probably some of this is going to go towards... those pipes that are inaccessible so that we can get those cleaned out and get eyes on them and see what they actually look like. So this is something that's already in place and the financial model shows this money kind of every year moving forward so that we can continue to do maintenance. So of the five projects that I mentioned on the earlier slide, these are those five projects. ranging 104th Avenue at $840,000, 112th Avenue $790,000, Irma Drive replacement at $625,000, Muriel Drive replacement at close to a million, and Larson Lane replacement at $330,000. So our current fees as they are today don't allow us to get to all of those projects within the next 10 years. So Our current fees were put in place back in 2004. They haven't been increased since then. So we've got some room to build on that. What we are proposing tonight for your consideration is raising our $2 per month residential rate to $6 per month and commercial from $20 to $6 per acre per month. And so we'll get a little bit into, let me skip this one for a minute. So I know everyone loves it when people read spreadsheets to them. But here we are. This is a format you've likely, I think you've seen before. This is a fairly standard one. But just starting at the top, this is if we were to increase rates from $2 to $6 starting January 1st of 2027. So you can see At the top there, our revenue is slowly increasing. And then moving down to the expenditure side, which I will speak more fluently to, is we've got our operating budget first. So primarily this funds one FTE. So we do have one person that's responsible for our entire stormwater program, which includes all the permitting and all of the things that go along with it. We are also expecting a new permit to be issued here within the next year or two. And along with that permit is going to be substantial water quality analysis and some increased requirements for regular maintenance of the stormwater system. And so we are anticipating some increased costs there. That is what that second line item is. We have a third line item here. We've got Washington Street and Aquanas Park detention at $1 million. That's anticipated to happen in 2028. That is a project with Mile High Flood District to improve capacity in that area. So we've got that one scheduled. And then the $100,000 for additional maintenance funding, that was the $100,000 I mentioned earlier in the presentation. We know that Mile High Flood District is a fantastic partner. They do a lot of cost sharing, makes projects really affordable to us. And so while we don't have specific projects named here, we want to make sure that we are accounting for some capacity within the stormwater fund in order to facilitate some of those projects to actually increase capacity. So then we get to the next line items down, which are our five projects. And you'll see they're split out. across two years. The idea here is that the first year we would do engineering design and the second year we would do construction. There is an escalation factor because things get more expensive over time. So if you compare these numbers to what's on the page just before, they'll be a little bit higher, but that's just accounting for inflation. So we've got 104th would be in 27 and 28. 112th would be from 2029 to 2030. Irma would be 2031 to 2032. We did, if you notice, also line up some of our funding, Mile High funding with the Irma project, because we do know we've got that area at 112th where we are concerned about capacity. So that would be in the early 2030s that we would be looking at doing that. And then Muriel and 33 and 34. And Larson Lane repairs would be 35 and 36. So this would keep our employee busy over the course of the next 10 years addressing these five CIPs. We did also put some money in to do another system assessment here in 2033, which is seven years, which is fairly common to do a reassessment of a system. All right. So the unassigned fund balance at the bottom, that's how much money is left at the end of every year. And so you can see where we are keeping positive there for the most part. All right. So the slide I skipped over was the slide of what if we don't raise rates? And the line does this I would like to say we're not gonna do this But what it means is is that we probably can do one to two of these projects we wouldn't have money to contribute to mile-high flood district projects And there may be some level of needing to reduce operating funds even further from there but if you take the same CIP and And don't raise rates. The numbers go red very quickly. All right. So, one of the questions is, well, can we do this more quickly? The answer is yes, and with more money, we can do many things more quickly. This expedited CIP would be an $8 per month fee increase or $80 for our commercial users for each acre. This would also require probably, I'm trying not to reference previous conversations, but would probably require an additional FTE to support this. We do just have the one person and she's going to be very busy with permit renewal here coming up. So this is something that we can do. If we want to push things more quickly, that is possible, but it does cost more money. So these are those three lines. We lost some of our numbers, thing at the bottom here. But no change, of course, that is, we wouldn't do that, but I think it's just the point of if we address all the CIPs and don't make changes to our Fees, that's what happens. And then the blue and the green line are our fund balance for both the $6 and the $8 options. Comparing rates to our neighbors, our current Northland rain at $2 puts us at the far left of this graph. Moving up to $6 puts us maybe a quarter of the way, puts us between a little higher than Thornton at the same level as Westminster. And at the $8 rate, that puts us somewhere between Louisville and Castle Rock, kind of right in the middle, just for comparison's sake. If we were to move forward, we're, of course, wanting to make sure that we communicate these things appropriately. We've got our a fairly typical way of sharing things through social media, the connection utility bills. We'd also talked about your stormwater fees at work signs. So as construction's happening and we're causing problems on 104th with construction, you know, people can know, hey, this is our money that we're improving our stormwater system with. So next steps would be, we would propose bringing forward resolution this summer The 2027 budget proposal would be based on the approved fee increase, and a resolution would set new fees beginning January 1st. I am happy to answer questions.

Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, we went over this in Finance Committee, and it's kind of a bummer. So where are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when you need them? Down in there just sweeping out all the pipes. Okay, I want to go back to the condition rating. Looking at the map that had kind of the condition rating, I think it says it's page nine in my documents here. This is better than the previous one we saw, but I'm still a little unclear on something.

I wish I could push a number in here.

We'll go one by one. We're not going anywhere.

There we go.

Yeah, so if I'm looking, and obviously I live in Ward 2, so I'm looking at kind of the Ward 2. I see it's pink and black. So no grade and inaccessible. Like if you look toward the top right, am I, am I, and I don't know, I was like trying to zoom in, but it legit looks like it's pink and black.

Is it, are you looking at the far?

Or is that just the borders of North Glen?

I think you're probably the, I think on this map, the borders of North Glen are purple. If you look at really closely at it. So that's probably what you're seeing.

Okay, so that clarifies a lot. And you say gray, which is none, but I don't actually see any gray on the map.

So the gray doesn't show up, so that's where you see all the black.

So wait, gray is black?

Yes. Okay. Black is the new gray. Black is the new gray. Okay, well, I didn't aim it very well, but the arrow is...

So I thought gray is asset good operating condition, and you're saying gray is actually no grayed.

So I apologize. I'm just seeing this here. This came from the GIS of this map, and the no gray just means there's a zero there. So all of the black lines here are in good condition.

So every black line I see means asset is in good operating condition. Yes. Okay. Well, that's a little bit of good news.

Okay.

Okay.

The pink here is those areas where we couldn't see the pipes. So if you see like Grant right there.

Okay. But that's not the purple of which is outlining the city. Yes. Okay. Clears mud. Clears some of the pipes in our city, I should say. Okay. So when, and then when we go to inaccessible, so when we say something is inaccessible or something, so is water actually kind of still able to flow through that or is it like, 100% blocked?

It depends on the situation. Oftentimes, it's rocks that are in the way. So there is still water, but that water likely isn't flowing as freely as it should.

Okay, which would have an impact on kind of flooding and, and possibly things like that? Okay. So rates haven't been adjusted since 2004. Everything else, prices go up. Nothing was moved since 2004. Do we have any idea? Has this ever been addressed previously?

I'm not aware.

Previous councils? It's okay if we don't necessarily know. I'm kind of looking at you, Jason.

No, that's okay. I've been here for 16 years. I don't recall it coming forward to council. Okay. So it's been a while for sure.

Yeah. And I mean, obviously stormwater is a pretty big asset, you know, important. So we're looking at a rate increase. to address, there's 22 problem areas, like legit real red problem areas, of which our rate increase would address five of them.

The five that we are most critically worried about.

Right, that we're most, okay. But there are 22 that are critical.

Some of them. And some of the 22 are incorporated into a single project, but yes, there are more than five critical areas and several more than five critical areas.

Okay. And I guess looking at, and I apologize, I'm going to make you fast forward here. If we look at the impact to stormwater reserve, so we look at the, I believe it's slide 20.

We looking at the $6 one?

I'm sorry, keep going. The line graph, yeah. Because that'll be easiest for folks to kind of see. We have the 2036 estimate, so we've kind of knocked out the five projects, right? Okay, at what point? And then we obviously want to start working on the other projects. At what point, I guess, would it start going down?

So if we go to the $8.

I mean, I suppose I can see the line right there. I kind of answered my own question, I think.

Okay. And also we have, just to further answer that, and you can see in 20, 32, 33, there starts to be an out-year projects, which we just put kind of a flat amount because we know that we have a lot of work yet to do. So that line that you're seeing there does include the expectation that we do these five projects and that there would be presumably another five more projects behind it.

I know one of the things we discussed in the Finance Committee meeting is, is there any way, and I don't know if this is possible because it's like punting it or kicking it to future councils, but essentially putting in some kind of rate increase, like every two years it's going to increase by a dollar. That way we're not stuck in this position. I've had Netflix for 10 years now and they've had 17 rate increases. So, you know, I don't understand why a city can't do that. It sucks. Don't get me wrong. I mean, no one wants a rate increase, but this is a vital asset. You know, our stormwater, our drinking water, these are all more important every day. I think, you know, we understand that. So is that an idea of like we can kind of build in a kind of rate increase, or is that something future councils will have to deal with? I really, in thinking about this, I don't want to pass the buck, right? This is a problem. Let's find a way that we can deal with it, but also kind of set, you know, future councils up for a little success. I know maybe that's not politically savvy or correct. Maybe not. you know, that's not a good sell to community members. But that seems to me kind of the best thing for the city kind of in the long term. So that's just a few of my thoughts.

Thank you. Council Member Gough?

Thank you, Mayor. A couple of things. Well, just right off the bat, to respond to Council Member Nowicki, I was actually having a note here about how to increase again in the future, because we definitely need to do an increase, but we already did increase the trash collection rates, and I had a couple of elderly people complain about that, wondering, you know, so... I don't know that I wanted to go to the $8 fee, but, you know, we have a new director of public works, and I have every confidence in you that, like, especially the economics change, that you could come back to us in a couple or three or whatever years and say, you know, if we do this, another increase, we can do this much more. So I would be in favor of going up to six dollars not the eight, but then the other thing I also wanted to just Suggest is that when we were pushing this out to residents? just to somehow link this to like flood prevention that let don't just say stormwater because Like that the don't doesn't always click with people like what does that mean you know so? Anyway, I guess those are my two comments. Thank you

Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yeah, just to sort of build off of Council Member Nowicki's points that we also discussed in Finance Committee, I am just going to publicly express my disappointment for this and the lack of future planning. Like it was really nice to keep things at $2 for 20 years, but like it clearly has come around. And everyone knows that I talk about future proofing and planning a lot, and this is a key case of that. And so I think while it might hurt in the moment, increasing to $8 with a potential policy that we can put in place that other councils can then do with what they want, that rate increases occur in very specific incremental time periods, whether that's two years or five years or whatever it is. but we cannot be in this position again because this is how residents will be feeling, are paying the price, which I don't love, but we clearly need to do this. We have a lot of projects that need to be done. And I am also feeling, so all of that aside, that's where I'm having a lot of feels right now. I'm also kind of concerned about not being able to see down Grant. Yeah. That is like a big stretch that's all downhill. And so I am having a lot of feelings about that because it's right off from the creek. So I'm feeling a way about that as well. And how do we figure that out? And so I'm also having a lot of thoughts and feelings, clearly a lot of feelings tonight, lots of feelings. Because this was completed two years ago, correct? So we're already two years behind, right?

It was finished last year, but it was early last year. Okay. Yeah.

Because it was done during, like most of the scoping was done 2024, right? Yeah. Okay. So I am feeling, that's the only reason why I'm proposing eight, because I am feeling urgency to get a lot of this done more quickly so we don't have a larger, bigger problem. Just with like current economic situation, zero grant money available. I think we're on our own for this one. And so, but yeah, that is sort of where I'm feeling. I think we should just bite the bullet. GO TO EIGHT AND HAVE A PLAN IN PLACE MOVING FORWARD SO THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN. THANK YOU.

MAYOR PROTAN. THANK YOU, MADAM MAYOR. COUNCILMEMBER NOWICKI HIT ALL THE POINTS THAT WERE REALLY AT THE TOP OF MY MIND. My question right away was, why have we not implemented any increases since 2004? Because I feel like this hurts our residents so much more to be like, hey, now we're just going to do a $6 or an $8 impact increase because we have to complete these projects. And that really does not feel great. I'm in favor, and I don't think it's kicking it or punting it down the road. I think it is setting future standards. Council's up for success and our city up for success, most importantly, to have some kind of step-up system to cover this in the future because, I mean, you know, this infrastructure is going to continue to deteriorate. I mean, even if we fix it, you know, 10, 15 years down the road, going to have to be looking at it again. So I think we have to have some smart long-term plan in place so folks don't get hit with a major increase. Because this does feel pretty major to me when I think about some of our residents who are, you know, barely making it. But we have to do it. And I did, yeah, the photos were from 2024. So is there even potential that things are worse since the last time those photos were taken? That's a concern. And then the purple areas, I'm also really concerned about that. I'm like, we don't know what's going on there. So do these impact increases, impact fee increases, does that, are we sure that will cover potential problems in those purple areas that we don't know? I mean, because we don't know.

There very well may be things we don't know. And we were having this conversation this morning, actually, that the areas we're showing red may not be the area that actually ultimately causes us a problem. And so there is a level of risk management that you do with stormwater we are not all that dissimilar from many communities stormwater is overall industry-wide one of the least well-funded utilities and so you do end up having to manage risk with that and so the six dollars or the eight dollars either one we'd love to fix it all tomorrow that takes time and that takes resources to do it and so that's where we work really talking through the $6 or the $8 is the direction that makes the most sense to manage risk while not making it a massive increase in impact on residents.

Yeah, I'm definitely still in that thought that we need to have a system set up in place in the future because there's so much unknown purple areas. And I don't know, I worry. And depending on weather and debris and all of that, big storms, we just... There's just so much potential we need to protect our residents and our infrastructure. So top of mind for that. And then is there or are there, do we know of any grants that maybe are geared towards like stormwater? I feel like there are. So maybe that's a potential, you know, CDSA. Well, that's all kind of up in the air, but things like that. Are you aware of potentially looking into those?

So there are some BRIC grants and some other things that were available. Those went away, although I have heard rumblings that those are starting to reappear. So it's possible how much those grants would be and how easy they are to come by. I couldn't speak to that, but they do exist out there.

I'm sure we'll be keeping our eyes out for it because that is a major infrastructure necessity for cities and municipalities. So I feel like there should be something out there. Whether we can get it or not is another story. Thank you for this unfortunate news.

Council Member Roper.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for this presentation. I think as many of my councilmates have said, it's really important that we protect our infrastructure, and water is an essential need for all of us. And I know just when Councilmember Sievers and I toured the water treatment facility, we did see that some of our infrastructure is aging, and I think it's important that we put the investment in now and go with the $8 versus edging it up every year. I think also that would future-proof us a little bit. And I always say this, but thinking back to 2004, none of us could live on what we made in 2004. And so how do we expect our city to do that as well? So we have to have also some investment from our residents, and we'll make things great for them.

Council Member Gough.

Thank you, Mayor. I guess I'll have to somewhat change my mind and say I'm not opposed to going to $8. It is, I do feel like it's really necessary. I also know it's going to be very painful for some people. I do, I think it's worthwhile to look at some kind of a policy or process for revisiting this like every two years or whatever, every year, whatever. But I really hate to lock future councils into an increase because then we're going to get into something. I mean, we don't know what the economics will be in the future or what grants or anything. We don't know the future. So I kind of hate to do that part of it, but to actually have it come back to council, whoever's on the council then can, you know, look at the numbers and look at the pictures of the pipes and make a decision at that time.

Thank you.

Council Member Nowicki?

YOU KNOW, I'M NOW GOING TO ARGUE AGAINST MYSELF HERE. AND I THINK I KIND OF AGREE WITH COUNCILMEMBER GOFF ON THAT ONE. BECAUSE AS I THINK ABOUT MY OWN SELF AND MY OWN HOUSE, LIKE, I DON'T NECESSARILY HAVE LIKE A FUND SET ASIDE FOR REPLACING PIPES FOR MY HOUSE. SO LIKE CURRENT ME IS PRIORITIZING THE NEEDS I HAVE CURRENTLY. and going to screw over future me. So it's hard to kind of make the argument. By doing this, kind of prioritizing current residents at the expense of future residents. I mean, I suppose this is a larger governance philosophical problem. So maybe locking future councils into stuff like that, probably not even possible. I see Corey warming up over there.

Well, no, as it relates to fees, you can certainly put something into the code that contemplates how fees would be increased over time, but council can change it. Future councils can change that.

Okay. I mean, at least making our best effort to say, hey, this might be something worth revisiting every couple years. I did want to ask, I know, and maybe this is the scam I got roped into, about the pipe outside of my house that I'm responsible for. So I bought into, I think it's like home serve. I pay like five bucks a month and I can get insurance if that pipe goes out. So is there any, are there kind of types of programs like that where you can kind of pay into a fund to cover pipes like that? Or is that not kind of covered?

Yeah, so the stormwater system won't have any pipes that are like privately owned, unlike the water and the wastewater system where you have your service lines going from the city infrastructure to your home. The stormwater system is all publicly owned with the exception of sometimes you'll see ponds, detention ponds that are connected to our system and that'll be privately owned.

Okay. That's good to know. And then, so, yeah, I mean, if a pipe bursts, we can't do an insurance claim on that. That's just money out of your pocket. Okay? That's good to know. Thank you.

Council Member Seavers?

Sorry, I'm still doing math. Could you go to, oh, perhaps.

Sure.

I saw her hands up.

All right, Council Member Burns. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was going to just say what our good city attorney had also said, that past councils put us in this position, so I don't really have a lot of... feelings I think we should set them up for success and they can change it if they so choose and want to but at least we have a set it and forget it policy in place so that no one else has to go through this right our residents or future councils thank you ready thanks well it's a lot of math I try to use technology to do it for me but it's crazy I mean

You know, talking about infrastructure, I've tried to show up to public works stuff recently, and I think, you know, I think I have a different thing for Ward 2 to talk about. But in terms of, like, just increasing it a quarter, one quarter each year over the last, 22 years that has been increased is over well over a million dollars so it's like we've lost that plus i think i'm it's rough but you're losing money and and no one's coming to save us no one's coming to install our storm drains and uh like uh customer no one was talking about like the areas that we don't even know it's concerning i i also come at it from you know working-class folks but like 2004 is a long time ago and I mean obviously we're not not I don't like to have the conversation about raising fees on people but there is no other alternative as the graph shows and just based on what we don't know and what we do know I mean I would I I would support eight because it's going to get us to where we need to be. And I have a different issue with Ward 2 about gasoline alley, and that plays into stormwater and monitoring and that kind of stuff. I really want to see if we can focus on that. That's a whole other story for another day. But, you know, it's extremely important, and no one's coming to do it for us. So if 2004 is so long ago, like... You know, so we just should have raised it multiple times since then. But so I feel people's pain ends up being like $96 a year. I mean, every dollar counts. I totally get it. I could be talked down to six, but I mean, because we've not increased it over years, we've lost a million plus dollars at least. So I don't think we have a choice. and it puts us still right in the middle of cities and we probably wouldn't have to raise it for a couple of years regardless. So I would support eight.

Council Member Lighty. Thank you, Madam Mayor. First, I want to say, I apologize if this is snippy. I'm slowly fading. I'm definitely getting sick over here, so I'm just going to... I don't feel good. I'm dying. I'm struggling. First of all, 2004 was not that long ago. I was born in 2003. Let's not make it seem like I'm old. Thank you. I am not getting old. 2004 was not that long ago. I think it's it's interesting to see that we haven't done anything since 2004 that does that does suck like I'm gonna be honest that does especially for our residents that are on a a fixed income, and they're not going to see a social security increase. They're not going to see any increase in their paycheck. They're just constantly seeing decrease after decrease after decrease. And as someone who, like my grandparents, moved out of this state because of things like that, it sucks to think that we're going to lose residents because of things like this. And so I've kind of... I see that, yes, of course we have to do this, but I'm also kind of playing the devil's advocate of we have a lot of residents that are going to go, why? Why didn't you pay attention before? Now you're paying attention, but you picked pictures from two years ago. So as we've noted, there's... there could be more damage and then I have residents that have had their basements flooded or have had lots of flooding and now I'm looking at it and I'm like oh so it could have been due to a storm water drainage situation and we didn't know that at the time or we did and we just hadn't fixed it because we didn't have the funding for it so I think I'm just really frustrated on behalf of the residents because It seems like a city issue that we weren't paying attention and now our residents have to pay for it. And that really sucks. So just putting that out there.

okay so i think we've realized we're in a little bit of a pickle so thank you for bringing this forward um based on some of the comments i i think i would challenge staff to maybe bring us all the other things like this that we should probably take another look at if there's any other fund or fee that we haven't updated in a while can you think of any or can you bring them forward for us to discuss

Yeah, we would be happy to bring forward. There are several things that are not exactly similar. I will say from a stormwater standpoint and that fee, as Director Borgers mentioned, it usually gets deferred a little bit in the scheme of water rates, wastewater rates, sanitation. And that tends to be the structure of public works. of kind of how that works. And so I think from my perspective, I really wanted to bring this forward. It's not like it hasn't been thought of for the last several years, but something that's a little bit more tangible as far as here's actually targeted projects, not just, hey, the fee hasn't been raised for a long time. We should raise it. And so part of this has been a longer process runway to come tonight just based off of let's actually see, let's do the assessment. That assessment took a couple of years. It took a while to come forward. But just in the planning stages of doing things that are difficult, of course, you know, raising fees on the residents, we wanted to be thoughtful in that approach. And really be able to show something other than hey, it's been ten years. It's time to raise it So that's partly where we are but no disagreement. We definitely need to speed up kind of our fee assessments Probably across the board for the city not just on infrastructure and things like this, but I know other infrastructure things in Public Works new construction tap fees and whatnot are I don't know exactly what date those have been set, but it's been quite a while. And I think that we get into that sometimes based off of what development is or isn't happening. The last, for an extended period of time, like the last housing developed was in Fox Run, and that was 2004-ish. And then... where there isn't new development happening on a regular basis that we were trying to fund and identify ways to fund. Um, I think that those things probably do get set aside. So that was a long way to say, yes, we will bring something forward. Okay.

Did Carl's farm not trigger anything?

I, you know, that, um, we were down the path pretty far and then it was, Oh,

about these things and so we were kind of yeah okay i mean i think everyone's reaction is whoo let's take a look at all these things so yeah i know it's adding a task to staff but if we could take a peek um at everything and that way would be good so when the finance committee met we talked about this and it was where two dollars to six dollars may not be that big of a jump. It's a triple jump, right? So the headline, North Glen triples their stormwater rate. And that also, as Council Member Nowicki pointed out, is everything else is going up, whether it is Netflix or our trash rates or, and so it's a cumulative, that's a hard word to say this late, impact on residents with a fixed income. And so I think being sensitive to that and knowing that we are going to have a reaction, I think we we probably need to do some really solid communication around the need not in a way that sounds this alarm and you know the city's falling apart if we don't do this but I think it's important to communicate the the urgency around the timing of these repairs because now I do agree we should jump to eight. So now it's a, we just quadrupled our stormwater fee. That's gonna get some traction. It just is. Now two to eight is a responsible choice. It's a hard decision for this council to make, but you know, that's what the numbers are asking us to do. So, I mean, at least that's what I heard. I heard support for eight. begrudgingly? I mean, no one's standing up here going whoo, right? It's it's a begrudging eight. But I do think it's going to help out. However, I did have a question because when you were presenting, you had mentioned that that was going to require staff.

So what I will say is that our existing FTE wouldn't be sufficient to to manage that quantity of project load. Now that said, there's all that we could look into further. It sounds like council's really interested in looking further into this $8 increase and what that looks like. Is there opportunity to have consultants support us in that or something like that? So we could look into options of how to make that work. But there is, we did specifically set aside money there to help support

some sort of additional staff support for making these projects happen so it's built in because i think my concern is we're not in a place to add fte this year no so if we can't and we should just do six based on capacity which we've heard that word a little bit tonight um then maybe maybe six is the more responsible choice as far as because we can't add fte and so right

So the third line item down on the expense summary is increased staffing needs. Now, whether that's an FTE or that's hiring an engineering firm to help support some of that load, we could look and see what kind of options there are and what the most cost-effective way of making that happen if council is looking for a more expedited. This is a situation we can make it happen, but...

six dollars makes us more comfortable from workload perspective but if things need to get done we'll figure out how to get them done and the six dollars does not include staff correct over an extended time so there's probably a fair amount of different ways we can approach the fact that we need a increase So we could do something like $6.27 and bump it to $8.28, and we could see what that modeling kind of looks like. This has all been brought forward on kind of pay as you go, so accumulate cash to then pay so you're not doing any type of financing. I think that that's the preferred path. But there would be opportunity to look at what happens if we increase the rates to six or eight, whatever that number is, and finance the projects and get $5 million worth of projects done over the next two years or something to that effect to get ahead of it. Of course, the projects then cost more. because you're paying interest in over whatever the term is, 10, 15, 20 years. But that's another possibility. Other possibilities are taking a look at different loan programs or grant opportunities. Again, competitive, no guarantee if you get those. But it might be reasonable to take the smaller step in 27 since it's been a while to six. with a plan to assess where we're at and increase the next year. And so that might be something that is a little easier to roll forward, kind of a staggered program. That's something that we've done with some of our other rates that have been kind of on a 10-year trajectory to get to where we need to go. So that's something that we could could consider and model. I think that it would be very close to where we're at with either one of these scenarios. But from just a communications standpoint, that might be something to consider.

Can you take me back for a second to, it's the slide right after the eight and it's the lines, the line graph impact to stormwater, that one. So that one's interesting to me in the sense that the eight and six are relatively the same, right? Obviously no change is not an option. but I kind of like the idea of going from six to eight because of the staffing piece of it. Um, but also this graph tells that story. Can you speak to that?

Uh, so the main reason from the six to eight, they look pretty much the same, um, as we, um, shorten the time horizon on the $8. So we're getting more projects done sooner. Um, And that's the blue line for folks that are looking at the TV.

Yeah, no, I don't. Mine has the key at the bottom. Yeah.

For some reason, some of the slides are projecting on like in the bill inside here, um, on the screen, uh, oddly, uh, but the blue line is the $8. The $6 is the green line, similar path, but that's largely due to the timing of doing the projects.

Okay, so you get the projects done faster because it looks like that green line surpasses at some point and then it sort of levels out. So I think to me, it's the fact that if we go, and what's interesting is the finance committee actually had a conversation and doesn't look like the feedback was taken, but we asked for the $4 slides because we were tentative to jump from two to six. And we were like, oh, could we get a $4 makeup? So we skipped over that one, but it was discussed at the finance committee simply because it was starting to feel uncomfortable to make that jump. I don't know. I mean, we have more thoughts. Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just, you know, I had last year we didn't do any CapEx projects because they were going to sell the company. So when you dig yourself into a dig yourself in by not doing things over years and years and years. It's just hard to ever dig out of that hole. And sometimes you just have to have the political will to take the bullets. Please. Oh, my God. Take the criticism. Take the criticism. There you go. But, like, this is not something that we did. This is something that's been done over 22 years. So, unfortunately, when we always look... I am going to be one of the first people to ever say, oh, you know, working class, tough to spend money or make people spend money. It's not a popular thing, but it is reality. So I find myself there. And then on a totally different note, but kind of a similar conversation, I don't know, talking about the stormwater fee at work, signage that could be a thing in the future. I just wanted to see how many people on the dais or staff saw the Westminster video about their pothole filling and how well that was done. I was like, whoa, that's next level. And in the similar vein it would be the same idea now this is over a longer range and people care less care more about potholes than stormwater probably but if you can correlate it with flooding and and just overall infrastructure it would it could be a thing and anyways that was just my bringing it back to comms earlier i was like i was really impressed and that was only like a weekend or something it was kind of like mom donnie's doing in in new york so yeah you have to show people why they're paying this for that. So I would always emphasize that in the future too. Like if you're going to raise a raise it, you got to make it, you got to flaunt your work. So that'd be it.

I completely agree. And I think the, the comparative slide is also helpful. Um, because I mean, we're still in the mid range at eight. So council member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just based off of what Director Borges and Deputy City Manager slash Finance Director Loveland has said, slash Coms Director, Interim Coms Director, it's a real multi-hyphenate situation for you. I would be interested in looking at a six to then eight increase because I am concerned about the FTE. And the way the graph and the way if I'm understanding the line graph is that they look very similar because we're front loading projects, so we're spending more up front. So it doesn't really sort of show the increased growth till 2036 because we're spending that much. But I think I would be interested in Again, maybe being the first to practice what we have been talking about tonight is that sort of like planned growth, planned increase approach. Because $6 still keeps us right within our neighbors, Thornton and Westy, versus $8 puts us into that Boulder County territory that I don't love. and just see what that looks like. But I don't know. So I'm in favor of that option.

Mayor Pro Tem?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yeah, I think I'm in that same boat of starting at six and then looking as we've talked about it, having some kind of step up like we did with the water rates. That's planned. You can see it. It's coming. And I think the benefit of doing that too as well is to wait to jump to the eight is that we have all those unknowns, and what if those unknowns are bigger than what we think they will be since there has not been an assessment in so long? I think at that point we can look at further stepping up if need be. I think, I just feel like that's a smarter way to go about it, but obviously this is your expertise. The FTE thing is an issue because we said no new FTEs, so how to justify that even through a rate doesn't feel great right now either to me. So that's kind of where I'm sitting right now. Again, it's been said, but really not happy that nothing was done since 2004. But I think it's a lesson learned for us now to set the stage for that to not happen in the future to our residents. So that's where I am. Thank you.

Council Member Sievers.

Sorry. I've got to speak again. The FTE position and everything, like, that is if we go at max speed with the income. Like, how many times have we had residents come in here and say, you know, why are you financing this? Why are you financing that? You're building a fund. You're building a savings account. So, although I totally support going to six and stepping it up later. It doesn't necessarily need to be that aggressive. We can just build a savings account and then really take on bigger projects further down the line when we've had time to think about whether we need this or we need that. That's all I'll say.

Council Member Gough.

Thank you. I think I'm still sticking with eight as much as I hate to do that. And the reason I would say that is we're going to have a very difficult communication challenge when people say, well, you just raised the rate. Now you're raising it again. You know, so there's going to be some of that where people don't understand why, you know, like with the trash collection, we're not looking at doing it again in a couple of years. That's it. So I have a little issue with that. And then I do agree with Council Member Seavers that, I mean, you know, everything could cost more than you've anticipated. So if we go to eight, we don't have to worry about that. You know, even if we can't do you know, hire another person or like you sounds like you can maybe third party some of this out to get some of it done. I just hate to say it, but I think I'm going to stick with an $8 increase or increase to $8. Thank you.

Okay, well, where do we stand? There's two proposals on the table. There's a jump right to eight with all the the work that goes behind that and there's starting with six and moving to eight councilmember nowiki can we just split the difference and do seven i mean i i'm guessing we can and our interim city manager gave us two thumbs up on that one there you go can we pick that one How do you feel about that one?

Lucky number seven.

Seven? There you go. Seven? I'll go with seven.

Yes to seven, but also some sort of something that we are on a schedule moving forward that we can communicate out to residents. This was an oopsie. We will fix it going forward. And yeah.

I think it's about communication. I mean, I don't know that it needs to be an oopsie because when I think about what was just shared as far as the reason, the reason it wasn't a need, I think that makes sense because I also know, like, Thornton, according to Google, theirs is five straight up. And not Google, Google their websites, but... they're really big with a lot of growth and a lot of older neighborhoods and it that seems low to me so there has to be a reason for that as well and so i don't know that it was this huge fail i think it was something that we probably didn't look at for too long um and i think i think there's a huge communications piece that ties back to our earlier thing and without a current team in place we're going to have to get creative because it does need to be communicated well. And I think I probably, I think I, didn't I share with you the pothole story? Weren't we talking about that?

You did.

Right. And so it was very similar in the sense that there's good work that can be done, but then you have to share what you're doing in a positive way. And so that's, that's, it's key. So I think if, I mean, I support seven because I think it does split the difference. And I don't know if we're going from seven to eight or if we're just going with seven for now. There's hands up again. Mayor Pro Tem.

I feel like Council Member Nowicki having a fight with myself internally right now, back and forth. It's really, really tough. I will go with the majority if you all think that seven is better and splitting that difference makes more sense. I am still leaning a little bit more towards starting at six and then revisiting or having that next step to eight. And it's only because I am still thinking about those unknowns. And once we find out those unknowns, we could be like, oh, we should have risen it to nine. So then we might have to have some kind of further plan. I know that's maybe... thinking way too far ahead or overthinking it is possible. So I'm good with six, and I'm good with seven if that's what the majority want to do. But I'm so internally torn right now with the plan. We have to have a plan to either its policy to look at it or to have a set increase, whichever one. But that's where I am.

It hurts. Council Member Nowicki?

Overthinking is one of my strengths. I know I kind of proposed the schedule thing. I don't know. I'd have to see what that looks like. When we say schedule, does that mean we're committing to a future kind of increase or that we're just committing future councils or the city to kind of review it? Because, again, I think I'm changing my mind as I think about, you know, I'd hate to lock it in. You know, I think maybe that is something that for future councils to debate. But I'm good with seven. It's a bummer, but it's got to be done.

So where did we land? Seven? Mayor Pro Temp?

I was going to say seven is fine. I just want to add to that. We've had step-ups before that are proposed and planned, so that's kind of along the lines I was thinking. But I think at the very least, if we at least set it up that it is revisited, you know, at least in policy. So I just feel like we can't have another 2004 to 2026 happen again. That's where I stand. But seven's good.

well and i wonder because knowing how long it takes to get projects going right i don't know that i would recommend going from seven to eight after one year i would like to see seven as a nice middle ground and then can we sort of put somewhere possibly even in writing that it's four years from now i know four sounds like a long time but the amount of time it takes to get projects up and running and completed and bid out and to have a report back on this is what we accomplished and i am curious about the assessment though if we need to do that assessment again sooner

So seven years is a fairly typical number. We can certainly move that up, but that ends up being a million to a million and a half to do that work. Okay. So it does take away from our ability to do CIP there. So I think we've got it 20.

I mean, we do have a list of projects. We're probably going to be busy for a bit.

Yeah. So we have it shown here in 2033. Okay. But certainly we could prioritize it if we want to get a better sense of where the system is at an earlier date.

I know. I mean, maybe.

Right.

Yeah, that's so true. I mean, maybe we can get at least schedule an update in two years. and a reassessment of the fund and the projects that have been completed? Because we're not going to have, I mean, if we say, hey, come back in a year, you're going to be like, okay, so we have a little bit of money, but not enough. And we started this project and we haven't gotten very far, right? Like it's a year is not going to do it, but maybe an update in two years.

I think that we can do that. And I think that the advantage that we have now moving forward is we have the assessment from even if it was two years ago, we have an assessment with projects laid out. And so that will be, from a staff perspective, more of the cue and initiate bringing forward the conversation because we actually have the 22 projects and the 11 projects in the medium category. And we can set that out into our 5-10 year CIP And be able to plan and structure that better and identify different cost escalation from that kind of standpoint to say, hey, we're not going to be able to tackle this project if we don't raise rates like now so that we have an accumulation of funds. And so I think that for me that's the biggest difference from previous is that we didn't. We knew that things were going to deteriorate, but we didn't necessarily know to what magnitude. And so now that we have the study, we're able to play that forward. And so going to seven sounds great. And then I think within that, as we do five-year CIP projects, because we have now a list of a bunch of projects, bring that forward more regularly. And whether that's two years or three years or whatnot, now we're set up to succeed, I think, a little bit more by having an assessment that has a plan built behind it. So I see all of the things that you all are talking about. I feel like we're in a better position now just from having this one conversation tied to the assessment as we

know kind of plan moving forward so so can we and maybe this is what corey said no to can we add to the resolution that we're going to do a check-in every even-numbered year absolutely and you could you could still put in a fee if you wanted it's just that a future council could change it oh that's fine i'm just thinking that may send a more comprehensive message to say we're going to go to seven and then in every even numbered year we're going to do a deep dive into the fund and make you know appropriate decisions and do check-ins on projects and and corey will say that in a fancy way

Lawyer. I will do my lawyering.

That sounds great.

Okay. How do people feel about that?

Yeah, I think it's great.

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

all right director moding is up she's been so so patient economic development and nura update director of economic development allison moding is here thank you ma'am good evening trying to decide if it's good that i get to wrap it up or if i had to last so we'll go with it's a good thing so

So twice a year I get to come talk about all the fun things that we do on the economic development front. So this is the kind of year, the full year report for 2025 and then a sneak peek into 2026. So, quick overview of projects and activities, and NURA is also included in this presentation. So, I will do a quick demographic overview. We'll talk about our new businesses. I'll go over our business retention and expansion activities, talk about NURA, and then quarter one update looking ahead. So this looks a little different than the demographic summary that we normally do. These numbers were pulled from the 2024 Census Bureau estimates. I thought it was really interesting to look at the various household sizes. You look at five-person households, four-person households. I think if we look at other communities, I think that's something that is unique to us. Most of these numbers you've seen before, we typically look every year at the educational attainment, median household income. So these are all probably things you've seen before. Last year we did a 2024 top 10 visited places. This comes out of our placer database and they track visitor traffic to different locations. And this year's list, even though I don't show you the last year list, did anybody get extra credit and look back at last year's presentation? No, it's okay. I brought it. Very similar to last year's numbers, North Glen Marketplace is far and away our largest, most visited commercial area, followed by Washington Point and Washington Center. This was, again, the end of 2025, so... I think Safeway's closure at the end of October probably didn't move those numbers too much. But generally, those are all at the same shopping centers. But new to the list this year is the Haven 124 East Lake Station apartment complex up on Claude Court right by M&O. So I don't know if they have added more residents. And so that number, maybe they have more people coming and going. And then Carl's Farm is also, I think, I can't remember if Carl's Farm was last year or not. Carl's Farm was number nine last year, so. Commercial real estate, we always take a peek at our retail, office, and industrial product demand, just kind of get a sense of what's happening with those numbers. Generally the same number of properties, but I will say that our average office and retail lease rates are up over last year by a couple dollars a square foot industrials down at just a little bit and Then vacancy numbers have gotten much tighter in all three categories. So we're seeing more More occupancy less vacancy. So that's a good thing. I Commercial permit data, you know, we've talked just kind of in general as we forecast what's being built. We knew that permit valuation in 2025 was going to be down. Of course, 2023 was an awfully big year, so we're going to keep working to get back up towards that number. I know we've talked a little bit about social media tonight. And I think from an economic development standpoint, we're finding that social media is a good way to engage with our businesses. It's a good way to get them some exposure, help people understand what we have in our community. So we saw a huge jump in the reach from 20 in 2025 over the prior year. Few more posts, quite a few more followers and more engagement. So we'll continue to try to tag more of our businesses and create more of that kind of reciprocal activity as we as we work with them. New business snapshot, so this year, or in 2025, I gotta quit saying this year, last year. 55 new storefront businesses and 24 new home-based businesses. The numbers for 2024 are there in parentheses. About the same number of new jobs created, and then a little more commercial space was absorbed from 2025 over 2024. And I will say some of these numbers are, I mean, it just depends, right? It depends on what new businesses we welcome into the community and what kind of, whether it's service or retail, we tend to see more employment with restaurants and retail. A lot of the smaller businesses and home-based businesses obviously don't contribute too much to those numbers, but every job counts. As we look through our new business locations, we kind of like to take a peek at where those are headed and, you know, a few new businesses in all of those areas that you see on the list. The biggest one is City Center, which includes Webster Lake Promenade. And... trying to think what other major kind of, I think a lot of that is driven by office evolution. So, we welcome a lot of new business into the office evolution at, right there at the corner of Grant and 120th. So, that, in fact, the office evolution expansion last year, they added about 43 new offices to their fifth floor suites. That would be my guess, that that's a lot of those new businesses. 16 ribbon cuttings in 2025, and we saw many of your smiling faces there, so thank you, as always, for your support. This is just a list of those ribbon cuttings, and I always like to include the pretty pictures because we have all of our smiling faces. So I divided these up. And I will say that, you know, we have... great big, like let's see here, so Arden at Carl's Farm, you know, huge, big, fun, lots of food and a great party, but then we also have the smaller, you know, the smaller like Mile High Psychiatry or Terra Element, so really a good mix, I think, of big businesses. We saw Walmart North Glen, the Walmart Neighborhood Market, Had a major remodeling project they completed last year, so a lot of fun events. And then, of course, another part of that business retention work that we do, business visits. We do reach out one-on-one to go meet individually with businesses when it's appropriate. We have business walks three or four times a year where we go out to Canvas-specific commercial areas. In fact, this week we're going to hit up what we call the Cherokee Business Park off of Huron, just east of Huron, between 112th and 120th. So we take groups of folks out there just to go knock on doors and introduce ourselves and check in to see if there's any questions or concerns. And then our business events, I think, are starting to take on a life of their own. We've had some great business after hours. Looking forward to our... business celebration this year. And really, I think, trying to find ways to connect businesses. As we have these business after hours, more of these social events, and of course, the lunch and learn educational events we've really found, I probably said this last year, but when we make our events fun, then we also get an opportunity to educate and get get businesses to connect and network with one another. This is a picture of all our winners from last year's business celebration, our Gold Rush business celebration. I can't quite announce this year's theme yet, but it'll be a good one. Along with that event, we also send out quarterly anniversary cards. We maintain our shop local directory. National Small Business Week, we just wrapped up in May, and then we'll be kicking off our business survey survey seems to be the topic of the night, right? So we'll do a business survey, just asking our business owners, what programs do you like to see? What topics are you interested in? It gives them a chance to tell us what they're interested in. I'll switch over to Noora just very quickly. This is our current list of our NURA board members. We're continuing to manage two urban renewal areas with five active urban renewal plans. There's the map. It looks the same every year. We did 66,000, just over 66,000 in grants in 2025. The majority of those are business improvement grants. Those tend to be signage, window kind of window, I want to call them window clings. So since many storefront businesses don't have other facade improvements that they can do at their locations, we're starting to see more and more interest in these kind of window clings that helps them set themselves apart from other neighbors, say in a strip center. So we've had a couple of those in the last year. And then we did have one at Buag, one grease trap that we installed at Washington Point for YoYen's Latin American Cafe. And in fact, there's a picture of the, if you ever wondered what a grease trap looks like, that's pretty much what it looks like. It's a hole in the ground, right? And then the sign that we granted them. But other improvements that we can use these grants for, Outdoor lighting, we did a pretty big outdoor lighting project last year at the North Point Business Park. We had heard from many of the tenants that there were some, you know, tenants after hours when it got dark were nervous to walk back to their cars. And we said, well, why don't we look at a lighting project? And so now we're starting to connect some of those shopping centers with the police department so they can do some SEPTED discussions, do some lighting analysis and help make those areas safer too. So we've done fence staining and repair. We do electrical and plumbing upgrades. And then, as I mentioned, the grease trap. Also in 2025, we, NARA made the final incentive payment to Hutinsky Capital Partners under the 2017 redevelopment agreement. We held a joint executive session with all of you to talk about Washington Point. Boy, that's been an adventure. And then we did complete a conditions survey or a conditions assessment for the 120th Avenue corridor. So the blight study is what you'll hear us refer to. And then jumping ahead to the first quarter of this year, January through March, on the economic development side, we worked on new content navigation for the new website. We are planning a really fun event with the Parks, Recreation and Culture, we're doing a mini city. So we're gonna invite businesses to come in and we're gonna set up in the community rooms and kind of targeting kids that are like two to 10 years old to come in and experience different parts of a mini city. So that's coming together, that's in July. We've held four ribbon cuttings so far. And then we had a business walk at Office Plaza North back in March. Neura, we have been working on some commercial real estate acquisitions. As you all know, that was not a successful acquisition, but the due diligence that we worked on to potentially acquire property for a future grocery store, we're still looking at that grocery store priority, looking at ways that we can be prepared when the right potential grocer comes along. We're currently working on cost estimates to determine how much deferred maintenance we have at Washington Point so that we can go to property owners and say, here's what we need your help with. Neuro will certainly be a partner in that as well. But we'll see if we can address some of the backlog of maintenance there at Washington Point. We still hold the property at 112th and Irma. We have 1.34 acres on that corner. It reissued the RFP and for the third time we did not get any bidders on the property. So we're looking at some different options for what comes next. We do have a We do have an offer on the table that came through just a few weeks ago that NURA is considering. So that may pan out to be something good. And then we're hoping demolition will start on the buildings this week. American Demolition has said that they are wrapping up a job and hoping to be on site this week. So that corner may look a little different the next time you drive by. I'd also mention on the city economic development side, we have been working, city attorney, jason heather and i as the and becky smith as the targeted economic advancement and momentum team we've been meeting every every two weeks or so to just really take a look at what projects are under review we've got about 13 projects some small some little bigger in the kind of in the planning pipeline and we've got a couple of other big projects that are actually under construction if you've been out to North Glen Marketplace. You've probably seen the Bubba's 33 work in the building that used to be Soul Barbecue. They have been working night and day on that property. So really excited to see them get open. We're hoping by the end of the year. Looking ahead, I mentioned our grocery store recruitment focus. Also talking with North Glen Marketplace about some potential opportunities out there. I will repeat the same thing I said to Nura a few weeks ago that I'm very optimistic and probably more optimistic than I've been since I started with the city about some of the prospects for the marketplace. So, crossing our fingers that we can announce some of those additional tenants soon. Ask you to save the date, October 27th, for our next business celebration. And then also adding that we are hosting a sustainability lunch and learn in July in conjunction with our sustainability coordinator and with Excel Energy. We have an opportunity for businesses to learn some more about what some of the innovative things that are happening in that within our sustainability program. So, considering, as I mentioned, a different approach for the 112th and Irma property, and our Washington Point redevelopment, and then the best news of the night, probably the Washington Center sale closed at the end of March, and Neura is currently negotiating an agreement with that buyer for some pretty significant facade improvements, signage upgrades, and both the monument signs and the wall signs for each individual business, and then the landscaping. So we're hoping to see some work starting on that this summer, as early as this summer. They're doing, I think, some destructive observation this week in those units, and so... they're moving quickly. So very exciting. And then I think I'd finally just wrap it up by saying we did attend ICSC just a couple of weeks ago and came away with about 35 different potential tenants to follow up with. So some of those are development projects, folks that are interested in the Civic Center campus who are interested in acquiring property, acquiring shopping centers. We've seen a couple more of our shopping centers hit the market. So I think that gives us some good potential for new energy, new owners to come into the city and reinvest money. And so looking forward to talking to those folks. And then above all, just I think we continue to hear that Northland is a great place for developers to come do work and do business. It's the building department. It's the planning department. It's public works. It's all of us working together to really push projects forward as quickly as we can. And I'm hopeful that that's going to benefit us. So that is all I have for my comments. Happy to answer any questions. I know it's late. I'll talk fast.

Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Director Modine, for this presentation. A few questions. With regard to the marketplace, it says that there were about 5.3 million visitors in 2025. I know we've talked about, you know, grocery stores and things over there. Do you know offhand, like, how many visitors, like, grocery stores, like smaller chain kind of grocery stores they're looking for?

I do not. I can find that out. I think, you know, every chain, every company has different demographics, different things that they're looking for. I think sometimes They want a certain number of families. Density is one of the things that we hear about often, that they're looking for density. We know that grocery stores tend to be, people don't travel long, long distances to go to grocery stores unless maybe it's... Trader Joe's. But for the most part, people, groceries are very much a convenience store option. So I don't know if there's a number, but it would be interesting. And one of the things that we have talked about is looking at, I think the word was, was it twinning or doubling? But the idea was looking at other successful grocery stores and what are some of the characteristics of those sites and how can we replicate those here? So that was a tip that we got.

And I'm sure it's kind of one metric among many. Now, moving on to kind of the 112th and Irma corner. I know previous discussions, and maybe your comment is a nice segue, you had made the comment about a different approach or seeming to kind of indicate you have some insider information that maybe you won't.

I don't know about insider information. We have an offer on the table that we are considering On top of that, the approach that we've discussed with NARA is hiring a broker specifically to market that site to the kinds of users that we think we would like best there. So we do know that most commercial realtors work on a commission basis, right? So it would be a little bit different where we would probably hire somebody just for a flat fee to, say, put our site in front of as many of these kinds of businesses as you can. Gotcha. And let's see what that gets us.

I know previously there were some kind of rumblings or discussions around the Mercedes Mexican restaurant, possibly kind of relocating that or looking at that. Do you recall?

Yes. So they, and we talk to them fairly frequently and they'd like to stay there. So if we find a user that can spare some space and integrate them into their site plan, that would be fantastic. If not, Nora has a relocation package policy that we could help them. Obviously we would do our very best to keep them here in North Glen. Um, I think that's where they would like to stay. So we're not giving up on keeping them here. Okay.

Um, and cause just South of them is the carwash that, and the carwash is abandoned. Do we know kind of what's going on there?

So the carwash belongs to the, um, to the mosque and they have, uh, intentions to turn that either into parking or potentially I have heard that it might become an expansion. I don't know that they've made any of those decisions yet. So I think that could be...

I mean, is it... I mean, not... It sounds like obviously having a buyer there, a possible buyer, is a really good thing for that corner. I mean, could we revisit like a rezoning or something? Is that...

So right now it's zoned commercial general, so it's already pretty flexible in terms of commercial uses.

I mean, is it only commercial? I don't know. I mean, we talk about kind of increasing density. I mean, could that be, I don't know what kind of residences would go there if it was small townhouses or something. Is that something, I mean, we haven't been successful at selling it, I've lived in the city for six years. It's been an empty lot for that entire time. And I look at things like having the light rail close by and having space like that. It's like, well, do we need to look at rezoning it to some sort of residential or something? Would that have a taker?

I don't know. I was surprised that no one approached us with a potential multifamily or, like you said, a townhome. Yeah.

Okay. That's all my questions. Thank you.

Council Member Goff. Thank you, Mayor. So this is, I think, a pretty easy question, and thank you for staying this late and presenting the information. You had talked about sending out a business survey, and I think you guys do that every year or something. And we just talked about how Um, this, uh, you know, we're trying to get a survey out about, um, better communications in the city. Is there any, have you thought about kind of combining them or taking a couple of their questions or.

You know, so when I was listening earlier tonight, I thought it might be smart to add a, maybe we add a question that's specific to. figuring out what's the best way for us to communicate as a city, maybe not just economic development with those businesses, too. Okay, well, that's all. Yeah, we'll talk to our friends at Dr. Barrett and see what we can do.

Thank you. Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Everyone's becoming comms people on this up on here, and I love it now. Because I was going to ask the same thing, because I was going to be like, do other cities, like, have a specific economic development page? Do you guys like to do that? Like, do social media? And, like, what is the – I just have a lot of thoughts and questions around that. The other thing I wanted to talk about, too, was, like, we are so young. We're even younger now. Then the last time we got this presentation, Northland's median age is 28.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. We're a young, vibrant city. And so I think thinking through that and how we communicate and where people's income levels are and what, you know, things to attract to the city I think is really important. I thought that was so interesting. Yeah. I also love to see that the Walmart neighborhood market was like in our top ten. I frequent that Starbucks a lot, so I get it.

So I happened to look at the Starbucks. I was having a conversation with somebody about when they moved. Apparently that Starbucks building used to be over on 104th, and then they moved it. But that particular Starbucks, because it's so small on a per square foot basis, it has a crazy high amount of revenue per square foot now. It needs to be bigger, but I mean, it's all numbers, right?

Yeah, you can walk. Also, you can walk up to that one. You don't have to go through the drive-thru hot take to walk across the street from the pool. But, yeah. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, I just thought that was super interesting from our demo perspective and, like, the businesses we're trying to bring in would be interesting.

I do feel compelled to comment. I think, you know, demographics are often dependent on where specifically you draw those numbers from. You know that. So I think as I looked at various, because I went at I went in to check these numbers to make sure that they were reasonably accurate, and I just, I think, which set of numbers, and is it an estimate, or is it a forecast, or is it a, you know, I think we generally rely on the demographer's office to tell us what we look like, so part of me said maybe I should just put the demographer's report in here, but... I think the truth of the matter is that we are a young family. It's a lot of starter homes. People are starting their families here, and we heard this. I may have said this once before, but Second Time Sports has a location by the courts on Washington, and they've been in North Glen for 13 years and they're starting to really see a lot of young families that are moving into homes in the neighborhood where they grew up or where one of the owners grew up. Anyway, they're just starting to see that turnover, I think, of older residents into younger families. And so I think we're kind of in that transition. And I feel like when I look and see some of the businesses that have chosen to locate here, like Kids Empire and

know the swim schools and it feels like there are a lot of businesses that have kind of that that family focus so excited to see and there's i think there's some more opportunities council member sievers thank you madam mayor trying to make this quick uh thank you for the presentation obviously uh uh i i try to show a lot of enthusiasm about the economic development team uh when i came on i was and i was thinking about the city in general i was just Our footprint is small, so we always need to be super good with our small footprint, in my opinion. And to rebut on some people that will say, I've seen it online some places, about sending staff to conventions or conferences to get educated on other options. That is what we're trying to do. We're trying to be better every day so we can have a better city. So if there's anyone concerned about the cost of that, I would rebut with that. And, yeah, I'm just excited. I think Council, I'm excited to keep working towards that and in whatever way that helps. But, sorry, I have to shoot a horn in the sand because I was dying to know. This is not related. I'm sorry. Over the last 22 years, you've pulled in about $10 million based on that stormwater fund. If you had just raised it a quarter, I didn't have time to finish my math. If you raised a quarter every year in the last 25 years, you would have ended up at $7.50 today, and you would have banked $13 million more in the stormwater fund. So over the course of 22 years, roughly $13 million we lost out on. So I just want to point that out.

okay um i'm gonna go back to this for just a minute um only but i'm gonna jump on what you just said because i had the opportunity uh to go with city manager guyer um and our director to the icsc uh conference that was incredible my takeaways are plenty i was going to save them for communications but since you're here um one of them is how brilliant this woman is Seriously. And how hard your job is. Because it's very easy, and I have residents do this to me all the time, where they go, hey, so I see that that place is empty. Would you just put an Einstein's there? I'm like, well, sure, that does sound like a great idea. However, we don't own the property. Einsteins may not want to go there. And all of those factors are so complex. And so your support of businesses, but also your knowledge of what is in our community. So the demographic summary, like we were talking to companies, and this is the information they look at. And they decide to come to us or not based on some of these things. And we heard it very subtly about a year ago that Trader Joe's were not the market for them. And it's hard for us to hear, but some of it is based on this information. I'm going to tell a story just because, you know, City Manager Geyer's not here. She very much had a specific location in mind and wanted a Dairy Queen. And so we went together and we went to talk to Dairy Queen. And they were like, nope. Because within three miles, there's another Dairy Queen. And they pull up their maps and they say, okay, well, tell us about your place. Tell us where you want it to go. We don't own the property. This would have been a facilitated conversation to begin with. But they'd pull up the map and they're like, nope, there's a Dairy Queen. Too close to there. Sorry. See you later. And that continued for a few days. And it could be very frustrating. We did have a chance to sit down with Hutenski Partners, which was great because they have a lot of fun ideas coming. I can tell you it was a nice conversation after our somewhat spicy one when Brad was here. And they listened to our feedback and put it in place and had diagrams. They were like, okay, we heard you say this. We're workshopping this. Like no decision has been made. But at the end of the day, it's their property to do what they want with. But that doesn't mean that as we walked around, we had meetings with people and they would say, hey, I have this really cool business. And you could see our director go, oh, I'm going to take this back to them. right and so the work is to find the just right you know business and the just right property owner and do that work and that that's the work that um director moding is doing and it's it's hard and it's also time consuming and you know i learned things you're obviously being quiet about certain things. So I'm like, okay, I won't spill the beans. But there's some exciting things on the horizon and in the works. And that's great. But it's all happening behind the scenes. And when residents come at us and say, but I want this to go here, it's not that simple. And so, but it was lovely. And then I got to come home with a free Lowe's bucket. If you've ever tried to take a Lowe's bucket through the airport, it's a good time.

It was a giveaway at the Lowe's place.

I did have a question, though. Can we, because the two, I think they're decided that what's going in at Safeway and what's going in at Walgreens. Ish?

Ish. I mean, it's a study session, so.

Okay, well, ish. I can't, it's not, well, yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, I thought it was interesting because as we walked up to two particular companies, one of them was 7-Eleven, We didn't even finish introductions, and the 7-Eleven team knew exactly who we were. They knew everything about our city. I mean, that particular gentleman, like, lives in the area. His kids play in our parks, and they're planning for a 7-Eleven to go in that Walgreens. And they have a completely different strategy, right? So they don't care if there's another 7-Eleven within three miles. They have something called a shoestring strategy where they are happy to zigzag up and down a street. So they know that we already have one on Washington. And they're like, yeah, no problem. Ours will be a little different. And so super excited. But it was so nice to talk to someone who knew our city so well and was super excited about to be here. That just felt really good. And then while it's not a grocery store, the same thing happened when we approached Crunch Fitness. They're very excited about coming to North Glen. I think that's almost reality, I'm pretty sure it's a done deal. So that new fitness center will go into where the Safeway is. Now, while it's not ideal, it'll be a new business that's committed to the community that will help us keep it from blight, it'll clean it up. And they're also very interested in partnering with the other landowners to improve the whole area. So there were really, really positive, um,

conversations that came out of it but ultimately it was wow you have a hard job and you're very good at it and i appreciate you so thank you thanks for letting me tag along appreciate that it's you know half of what we do is i think on the attraction side the other half is how we support our existing businesses and i give a shout out to marisa and cc and the work that they do to to try to answer questions and keep people happy and make those connections is all, that's the fun part of the job.

Well, but that's the part of your department that we see, right? We see you at ribbon cuttings. We see you at the business awards. We see you hosting the business events. And that's this part. But the other part is invisible. to most of us all the time and to the residents for sure. And that's the understanding of the market. And that's the understanding of your property owners. Like there's so much knowledge you have and you're doing incredible work on the other half of your job. So thank you for that. Did you want to add something else, sir?

Just real quick. Along that line, shortly after Safeway closed, I went to the haircut place over there and, you know, I asked the guy, like, hey, how's things going since Safeway closed and, you know, all that stuff. What would you want to see go in there? And he actually said he wants to see a gym go in there, so. Look at that. He manifested his destiny.

Back and tell him you're welcome. Right.

So, I mean, again, that'll be good for his business there. It will be good for his business, for sure. So maybe even the tattoo place and, you know. This is, I have to know.

We're profiling gym goers right now, but it's fine.

On page five, the demographic summary. Who did that image? Because it's beautiful.

Oh, so it was out of placer. Yeah. And I am sure that it's AI generated. Okay.

Well, that's all I need to know. AI is just better than us. They did a great job.

I did think twice. Do I really need this? And the answer was yes.

Yes. It's fantastic. So thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Well, that is all we have, and we're only three minutes over. So well done. Thanks, everyone.