City Council - Regular Meeting

are invited to attend in-person meetings in council chambers. Public access is also available by telephone by using the call-in numbers posted on the meeting agenda. And tonight's meeting will be broadcast on the city's YouTube channel online. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Mayor Lighty?

Here.

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

Here.

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

Here.

Council Member Lighty? Here. Thank you.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. ACTING CITY MANAGER LOVELAND, ARE THERE ANY RESPONSES TO RESIDENT INQUIRY?

NOTHING THIS EVENING, MAYOR.

THANK YOU. ARE THERE ANY ADDITIONS OR DELETIONS TO THE AGENDA? Up next, public invited to be heard. This is an opportunity for public comment on any item not set for public hearing. Statements are limited to five minutes per speaker. Statements must be related to city business and limited to matters of community interest. City Clerk Small, did anyone sign up tonight?

Yes, Madam Mayor. There are four individuals on the list. The first person is Tom Lampo.

Great. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to counsel.

All right. Hello to North Glen. Hello to you for me. Big shout out to God for providing the moisture that we just received. I'm serious about that. Thank you very much. So I'm Tom Lampo, 3951 Jackson Way, and I'm here to lift North Glen to the Lord in prayer. So please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, we come before you tonight in humility. There is no one greater than you. We want to invite you here to North Glen and for you to be with us to guide us in our decisions. In Zephaniah 3.17, your word states, The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing. Your word lets us know you are in our midst. Your presence is welcome here and wherever we are. North Glen is yours, as is all creation. With a sincere heart, we humbly give you thanks and praise for the moisture you continue to provide for us. Give North Glen and her neighbors moisture. Wet your earth, fill your streams, water our farms. We lift your name above all others. There is none that approaches you. Your provision has no end. Philippines, 419 states. My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches and glory in Jesus Christ. Moisture is essential to our lives. Please do not lift your hand of provision from us. Continue to bring moisture to your land. We are truly blessed. With our vote, we can shape and mold this society we live in. In your word, in Daniel 2.21, it states, He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. So as we prepare to cast our ballots, we'll take you at your word. Help us to walk in humility and apply your word to our lives. Help us turn from our evil ways and rejoice in you. We submit and trust in you with an obedient heart. Bless us with your wisdom and knowledge. We are living in incredible times. You have placed us here for just these times. We are witnessing the work of your hand in North Glen and across the world. We are living in a time of transformation. Many are struggling, and there is still a period to go through. So we'll claim your word in Psalm 62, 1 through 2, which states, For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. When the pressure of daily life seems overwhelming, impress upon our hearts to seek out quiet times with you. Bring us peace in these silent times. Lead us to calm waters. You are our God, and we are your people. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen. Thank you, guys. Have a nice night.

Thank you.

The next person on the list is Chris Baum. Welcome. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to counsel.

Yes, my name is Chris Baum, and I'm in Ward 4. I attended the June 1st study session where a proposal to increase the stormwater fee by $4 was discussed. The Council did not seem aware of the fact that fees were instituted as a way to get around TABOR, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Why the stormwater would be broken out from the Public Works budget is perplexing, except that it was a way to mislabel increasing taxes without voter approval. Surprisingly, council was concerned that the fee had not been raised since 2004, as if a surreptitious means of raising taxes is an acceptable practice. Why do we have fees? Because they are a deceptive way of labeling tax increases to avoid voter approval. Taxes automatically increase revenue with inflation. Housing prices go up, property tax revenues go up. Consumer prices increase, sales tax revenues increase. TABOR was instituted in the 1990s because government tax rates and spending increases had far outstripped inflation. Government spending still rampantly outstrips inflation. Only if revenues do not increase enough, rate increases are required. Inflation since 2010 is 52%. Tax revenue since 2010 has risen 211%. Fee revenue since 2010 has risen 160%. Very startling comparison. Shouldn't a high-performance government keep its spending within or lower than the rate of inflation, not four times the rate of inflation? The plan to increase the stormwater fee is a deceptive and unscrupulous means of increasing taxes. The top five category of stormwater projects cost a total of $3.5 million. We spend $10 million a year on recreation. Cut recreation by one-third since it's a questionable government function, and we can fund all the stormwater projects in one year. I would much rather forego a flooded basement than have recreation. Stormwater drainage is a core function of government. Let me repeat, inflation since 2010 is 52%. Tax revenue has risen 211%, four times the rate of inflation. Fee revenue has risen 160%, three times the rate of inflation. I was truly astonished that council members seem to know nothing about fees or TABOR. Thank you very much.

The next person on the list is Melissa Ryan.

welcome please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council

Melissa Ryan, and I no longer feel comfortable giving my address or my word. You're going to hear why in just a moment. Because I believe what happened to me last weekend, not this past weekend, but the weekend before at the park, was a direct result of me coming here and speaking to council in regards to the Mental Health Transitional Living Facility. I was walking my dog, as I have stated to all of you here before that I do regularly at the park near my house. A gentleman came up from behind me out of absolutely nowhere. I didn't see him. And he shouted my name to get my attention, did not recognize his voice, startled me. I turned around, he's ripping a piece of paper, and he starts yelling at me, do you know who Elijah McCain is? This is the last page of the police report that proves that the police murdered a mentally ill person. He's like, it's terrible people like you that want to stop mentally ill people like myself and pedophiles. We're not bad people, and it's people like you that are the problem. Startled me, kept following me, harassing me verbally, accosting me to where I am 5'2". This gentleman was 6 feet tall. I weigh 135, maybe 140. This guy was at least 180. The way he was speaking, he was not well mentally. He was all over the place, just screaming and yelling at me. Really intimidated me and harassed me and followed me until my dog, who's the friendliest dog ever, took his fighting stance like he was about ready to attack because my dog was so freaked out. And that's what got this gentleman to finally go away and go off into an alleyway.

With that said, I've been coming here for three years saying about the dangers of this park, the things that are happening.

That exact same afternoon, my 60-ish-year-old neighbors came up to me and said another person there walking their dog stopped them and warned them that the kids at the skate park were yelling some of the most vile, hateful, racist, vulgar language they have ever heard. SPEWING IT AT SENIOR CITIZENS AND TRYING TO ATTACK THEM AT THE PARK. THESE WERE A GROUP OF WHAT THEY DESCRIBED AS 13 TO 15-YEAR-OLD BOYS. I BELIEVE CHIEF MAY KNOWS EXACTLY WHO I'M TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE THEY HAD SAID THAT THEY HAVE SEVERAL PEOPLE CALLED THAT DAY JUST WITH THE VERBAL ATTACKS. THOSE SAME KIDS APPARENTLY CLEAR OUT THE PARK WHEN THEY'RE THERE. I'VE BEEN COMING HERE SPEAKING FOR THREE YEARS ASKING FOR HELP AND INSTEAD WE'RE GETTING POLICE BUDGET CUTS UNDER FUNDING OUR POLICE DEPARTMENT OR WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH STAFF. I HAVEN'T SEEN A PARK RANGER ALL SUMMER LONG AND I AM AT THAT PARK CONSTANTLY. WE DON'T SEE THE POLICE PATROLLING THE AREAS ANYMORE. IT'S NOT JUST ME, IT'S SEVERAL OF MY NEIGHBORS. YOU GUYS CUT THEIR BUDGETS. Even though people are asking for help and security and safety, and this is now what's happening to where I am now literally, instead of doing anything on my phone or talking to friends, I'm carrying mace and my taser in my hands because I don't know if I'm going to get attacked again just for coming here and asking for help and speaking my mind. That facility, honestly, I understand they're not required to check in or do anything, but that needs to change. If we're going to have people that are directly released from prison going there, they just have access out to the public to accost people for not wanting pedophiles in their neighborhoods directly across from a school, that's beyond me. I would like to also bring to attention that you guys at Stokey Elementary, what if that's one of the ones that is closed with this Adams 12 announcement? I believe that might be why Lori Goldstein actually removed her bill, because she's the Board of Education president, and she knew that this school might get shut down. So what's the harm then of putting pedophiles there? So then what's the next action you guys are going to take? Because I'm going to tell you right now, if I keep feeling terrified, To live in North Glen, my next action is gonna try to start getting you guys recalled. Because we need people up here that are going to listen to us and actually take action and support the police and keep your citizens safe. Instead, we're getting budget increases, tax increases. Business is shutting down and accosted in our own parks. Like this, it's out of control. So something needs to be done. And if you guys can't do it, maybe the next set of people will actually listen to the residents that come here asking for your help. And I don't know who that would be, but if you guys are listening, somebody do something about this because this has got to stop. Like we shouldn't be scared to walk our parks. We shouldn't be scared and avoid the skate park area because those kids want to beat us up or don't exit here because the mental health facility people are going to come rushing up this area. Chief May, your police officer that responded was very helpful and I appreciate him a lot. Thank you. Thank you.

The last person on the list is Tim Long.

Welcome, please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to counsel.

Tim Long, 10661 Utrello Lane, Ward 4. So much for the close-knit community. People are always trying to phone upon us, you know, and your great expletives that you put in here, expletives deleted, should be included. I'm here to recognize, among other things, the freedoms that we have and that were given to us. I have a copy of the Declaration of Independence Constitution to remind myself of what really is important in this country. Many of you probably don't even know what is in the Constitution or have had it in your schools to know what's really important. Unfortunately, what Mr. Baum just said about money from the people to the government is a tax. A tax by any other name is still money from the people to the government. I wear a Ribbon to recognize the passing of a firefighter by the name of Chad Tellinger. Mayor Pro Tem attended the funeral, which I must say was one of the largest I've ever seen. Full honor guards. Chief May was there, as you might expect. Wonderful presentation, representation of this firefighter's first-line responder and a real gentlemen. Um, I had the privilege to serve for 12 years on the northland north metro fire rescue district. And I'm here to tell you that is a fine group of people. They work in concert and always have with the police department and with our firefighters. They've always controlled their situations whenever they can. When they come on scene, they work together. They always have. Contrary to what the gentleman, Mr. Kondo, has said about they haven't really worked together in frontline work until he showed up on scene, and he's the president of the North Metro Fire Rescue District. Was he at the funeral? No, he was not. Is he listening in tonight? I doubt it. This is the problem we're having with government. He writes things in the connections, again, which are Falsely stated a lot of words you have to be careful what you use in terms of the words that you write to people Including the mayor with this last connections when she talks about good government. There's really about relationships if you look up Good government anywhere in the dictionary anywhere in any civics class anywhere else. You will not see the word relations So feeling good in good government management good government has to do with founders of our country as well as the founders of Northland who put priority on infrastructure, balancing the budget, public safety, seeing to it that our police officers always have what they need. We're not seeing that. You gambled and lost by going vertical. You thought you'd increase the population here. It's stagnant. It stayed the same. It's 38,000 people. I was very taken aback when I went to the finance committee, as did Mr. Baum, to see that we are short on tax revenues again this year. But the suggestion, and I don't put this on staff because they have to respond to what the policies and priorities you people set. You're coming up short again. The suggestion is maybe we should increase fees to hotels and other purveyors, vendors in the community. That's not very good comms, if you ask me. Speaking of comms, looking at your understanding of where you want to build a model city for Northland, like Reston, Virginia, the victim capital of Fairfax County, Virginia, you're not very astute on this. And I'm really ashamed, really, to say that you really haven't done your homework well. And for you, sir, Mr. Nowicki, as chairman of the Finance Committee, not to know what the bottom line is, 25% of expenses in our general fund, the rainy day fund, we're losing money. It's going down, and you don't have a way of tracking it. What I would suggest to you is you have to significantly rein in your government spending, you have to look at expenses and don't go anymore with this foolishness of net zero operations of this building, which is scientifically impossible and which you spent $5 million you didn't have to spend on it. over budget, everything else, and it's still in difficult shape. You've got infrastructure problems across the city. You're going to have to be aware of that. And let me just tell you this, you're not allowed to raise expenses to cover operations. Sorry, so no more debt, please.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak to council tonight that didn't have a chance to sign up? I mean, I'm up for it if you're up for it. I know. You know what? I will be sure to give you time at that moment. And actually, let's move right there. If counsel would join me down front, we have two proclamations tonight. Well, we are gonna kick it off with Juneteenth, so come on down. So I'd like to welcome North Glen Cultural Program Supervisor Patrick Berger and guests. Come on down. Thank you. Come over here. Come over here. Come introduce yourself. I don't know your name. What is your name?

My name is and I'm daddy's daughter. And I'm eight years old. And I forgot. My name is . Thanks for coming.

I have a whole thing to read, and then I'm going to give it to you, all right? You ready? Okay. Really long. You can probably help me because I know you know how to read. We have to say where at. Well, I'm going to read it. Say something else. Wow. She's my new favorite. Oh, my goodness. Oh, wrong one. I grabbed the wrong one.

I'm glad we double checked. My goodness.

Okay. We're going to kick it off with Juneteenth. Juneteenth. Whereas Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced the end of slavery, more than two years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, marking a significant milestone in the nation's journey toward freedom and equality. And whereas Juneteenth is recognized as the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States and serves as an opportunity to honor the resilience, achievements, and contributions of black Americans throughout our nation's history. And whereas the city of North Glen values diversity, inclusion, belonging, and mutual respect and recognizes that our community is strengthened by the many cultures, histories, experiences, and perspectives of its residents. And whereas Juneteenth provides an opportunity to deepen our understanding of our shared history, celebrate cultural heritage, foster meaningful dialogue, and reaffirm our commitment to creating a welcoming community where all people are treated with dignity and respect. and whereas the city of north glen in partnership with the north glen arts and humanities foundation and the diversity inclusivity and social equity board will host its annual juneteenth celebration on festival lawn on june 19 2026 bringing together people from north glen and our neighbors community organizations performers and local businesses to celebrate freedom culture community and unity And whereas all residents and visitors are encouraged to attend the Juneteenth celebration to enjoy music, food, educational opportunities, cultural activities, and community connections that make this event a meaningful and enriching experience for all. Now, therefore, I, Meredith Leidy, Mayor of the City of North Glen, Colorado, hereby proclaim June 19th, 2026 as Juneteenth Freedom Day in the City of North Glen and encourage all residents to commemorate this important day through reflection, education, service, and celebration as we honor the past, celebrate progress, and work together toward a future of opportunity, understanding, and belonging for all. Dated at North Glen, Colorado, this eighth day of June, 2026. So thank you for being here. Would you like to add? No? Oh, you do.

What would you like to say?

I just have to say thank you and also how I got daddy.

That might be.

Yeah.

Do you want to share?

Yeah. I want to tell them. I'm adopted, and I have a mom, but I just don't live with her because she broke my arm and she got arrested.

Oh, okay.

Well, now you have a dad who loves you very much. And he's sweet, and we're going to go to McDonald's after.

to be six at a council meeting. So much fun. Okay, we're going to take a photo.

Thank you for coming.

Yeah, you're going to take that one.

Get a Happy Meal for me.

So cute. OK. All right, our next proclamation is sponsored by our Dice Board. They were busy tonight, but we do have representation on council. So here we go. Whereas the City of North Glen is committed to fostering a welcoming, inclusive, and connected community where all residents are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. And whereas Pride Month is celebrated annually in June to recognize the history, resilience, achievements, and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other LGBTQIA plus individuals and communities. And whereas Pride Month commemorates the ongoing pursuit of equality, visibility, and justice, while honoring the advocates and allies who have worked to advance civil rights and create safer, more inclusive communities for all people. And whereas diversity in identity, background, experience, and perspective strengthens the social, cultural, and economic fabric of North Glen and contributes to a more vibrant and compassionate community. And whereas the city of North Glen supports efforts that encourage belonging, understanding, acceptance, and mutual respect among residents, businesses, visitors, and community organizations. And whereas during Pride Month, the city recognizes and celebrates the many, LGBTQIA plus residents, employees, families, students, business owners, community leaders, and advocates who help make North Glen a welcoming place to live, work, and visit. And whereas the city encourages all residents to join in celebrating Pride Month and reaffirming the importance of inclusion, kindness, equality, and respect for all members of the community. Now, therefore, I, Meredith Leidy, Mayor of the City of North Glen, Colorado, do hereby proclaim June 2026 as Pride Month in the City of North Glen and encourage all residents to celebrate the diversity that strengthens our community and to continue working together to build a city where everyone feels valued, respected, safe, and welcome. Dated at North Glen, Colorado, this eighth day of June 2026. Well, those two are just too darn cute. Okay. All right. We have two presentations tonight. The first one is our 2025 audit. Clifton Larson Allen. Sorry, that's one whole word. Principal Paul is here. Paul, say your last name for me.

Niedermuller.

Niedermuller. Well done. We'll present the audit to council. Welcome.

Thank you so much. And honorable mayor, members of city council, I'm happy to present tonight's December 31st, 2025 annual comprehensive financial report. And I prepared a few slides to kind of walk us through the document as well as our role as your independent auditor. So starting with the good news, our role and our responsibility is to issue an opinion on your financial statements. These are your financial statements of which our job is to opine on those to make sure that they're all materially correct. We work for council and we work very closely with management in order to get this conclusion. So we're happy to report we did have an unmodified or a clean opinion. And further, we did not have any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in your internal controls. And I think that's a very top honor for the city, and I applaud your leadership in terms of financial stewardship as well as your management's responsibility taken for that role. The one thing I also wanted to highlight is we did not have a single audit this year. As you're aware, if you receive over a million dollars in federal funds, you're required to receive a more comprehensive audit to make sure you're being stewards of those dollars. You were below the threshold of the million dollars and did not require that component for this year. The other item, new implementation of a GASB standard 102 that deals with dependencies or concentrations of certain risk with revenues. So, if you have a major employer, you have a major source of revenue required to disclose that and the impact that could have if you lost that component. So, you did implement that, but I just want to highlight you did not have any items that were addressed within your financial report presented. Before I get into a lot of details, I want to bring some just high-level observations from the financial statements and presentation. So, your total net position, this is all-in assets versus all-in liabilities. This is your full accrual basis of accounting, very different than your fund structure, but you'll see you have $365 million of net position. there was an increase in net position or income in the current year of $10 million. And on the far right, it represents your governmental fund balances. This is your general fund and your capital projects funds had $32 million associated with the equity I also highlighted a few items below in terms of the general fund unrestricted balance was 33% of total expenditures as well as the total unrestricted of your fund balance of $21 million as of December 31, 2025. I mentioned the net position component, and that's your all-in assets and your all-in liabilities. You'll see the majority of those, that equity is tied up in investment in capital assets. So, the district, or excuse me, the city holds capital assets, which they, you know, capitalize, and then taking any debt associated with the accumulation of those assets, you show a component of net investment in capital assets. So, that represented $286 million your total 365 and you'll see the amount of unrestricted is 45 million and then the restricted amounts when we caption anything restricted on this slide that means external restrictions these are not council appropriations meaning you have basically voter intent or bond proceeds or anything like that that requires an external obligation to spend those money in accordance with that guidelines Going back to the change in the income statement, you'll see the largest share of your revenues is sales and use tax, representing almost $33 million in 2025. And then you'll see the highest cost associated with it is public works. I just want to highlight that that includes your enterprise funds, your wet water and wastewater, The second component relates to public safety. Your total net position, as we highlighted, was $10 million. But you'll see the various categories as we go through the capital assets. You'll see how those are the biggest thing is infrastructure. These are roads, streets, bridges, et cetera, and various improvements, as well as building improvements. Water rights and machinery and equipment kind of round out your total capital assets. The amount of debt outstanding is highlighted on the right of the slide. I will highlight that you do not have any general obligation debt. You have two certificates of participation and then one wastewater revenue bond that's pledged with the wastewater revenues that you receive as a result of providing that service to your citizens. Just a couple of things on the fund balance as a percentage of expenditures. related to 24 versus 25, you will see there's a decrease. There was a spend-down of fund balance that happened in 2025 as a result of a couple of things. You had a decrease in your sales tax year on year, as well as your licenses and permits. Both of those decreased. Combined, it was about $2.3 million. You did have spending that was $900,000 less than your budget, but that did have an overall decrease in your overall fund balance as of 12-31. I do want to highlight that you did meet your reserve general fund reserve policy of 25% and that component is highlighted on the slide. And just want to highlight a couple major initiatives in terms of capital improvements that are listed within the slide and in conclusion I want to be able to address any specific questions that you have as our role as your external auditors. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Does council have any questions or comments? Council member Condo, can you give me a thumbs up if you're good? Okay. Thank you. Excellent. Oh, what am I looking at? Is it not working?

Sorry, Madam Mayor, that was me attempting to give you a thumbs up.

Oh, yeah, that's okay. Yeah, no, sometimes he has questions. I thought I'd just double check first. Councilmember Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for this report and for highlighting all this information that is publicly available for anyone who wants to come and look at it as well. You can find it in our packet if anyone needs to take a look. I just wanted to make sure that's clear for everybody.

Thank you.

okay thank you we appreciate your time and i just want to highlight your your team your finance team does an incredible job putting this financial information together they're extremely timely and and that just want to recognize in front of council yeah thank you we appreciate that as well okay up next we have papers are everywhere

Supporting thriving schools in a period of declining enrollment, so we have the Adams 12 five-star schools, Chief Operating Officer Molly Brandt and Chief Communication Officer Joe Ferdani is presenting to council, welcome.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members honored to be here tonight. Before Joe and I present to you on this topic, I do want to share that Chris Gidowski, Superintendent Gidowski just sent his apologies for not being able to attend. He's attending to a family medical event. So we are happy to be here to talk about how we're going to support thriving schools and Adams 12 through this period of declining enrollment. So tonight we will cover both background on declining enrollment, district specific trends, our overall impacts, and our path forward as we know it today. Our goal is to ensure thriving and fiscally responsible schools through consolidations. So as you look at this slide, our challenge, due to many of the factors you see in the bulleted list on the left, um is that we are experiencing declining enrollment this is not something probably new as we are hearing about that throughout the denver metro area and across the nation we are seeing decline in birth rate and according to our state demographers data it's even lower here in colorado than in other parts of our nation simply put fewer people are choosing to have kids and when they do it's typically later in life To bring your attention to the graph on the screen, you'll notice this is from our state demographer's office here in Colorado, and it shows population growth by age. I want to bring your attention to the orange bar at the top, and that is our 65-plus population, and that is the fastest growing population here in Colorado. And conversely, if you look at the bottom of the graph in the dark blue, that is who you would be expected to enroll in K-12 education. So that's our zero to 18 population. And as you can see, that population is expected to decline over the next 10 years and has been declining from years past to present. So this situation is also exacerbated by the cost of homes and that the housing stock is not turning over as fast as it has in the past. You often hear this referred to as aging in place. So that is when individuals come in, have a family, go through the K-12 system and stay in their starter home then as they retire versus downsize like we would often see. This is because of our high cost of living here in Colorado and other housing market challenges. This then leans us into our district data. So this is our district enrollment projections. As you can see, we do continue to decline. In 2018, we're over 35,000 students. As of October count in 2025, we are just over 29,000 students. And as you can see in the dashed box on the right of the graph, we are expected to continue decline as expected. So what does declining enrollment look like in our schools? We wanted to come and break this down a little bit by level. We oftentimes look at things elementary, middle school, K-8, middle and high. So first, we'll look at elementary school. So I just want to clarify, this is not city data. This is district data, so including all five cities that we serve. So this is our elementary school building capacity. We have the capacity to serve, in Adams 12, our K-5 students in our non-charter schools. That's just over 15,000 students. As of October count, you can see that we're just over 10,500, and this gives us a utilization estimated to be at 69% enrolled at our elementary schools, providing 31% excess capacity in those buildings. As we look at our K-8 schools, we have the capacity to serve over 3,000 K-8 students in our district. And as of October count in 2025, we are just over 2,700. And that utilization is strong at 90%, and with an excess capacity then of 10%. As we go into our comprehensive middle schools, you will see that we have a capacity to serve over 8,600 middle school students across our non-chartered schools. And as of October count, we are serving just over 5,200. That gives us an estimated utilization of 60%. So we're a 60-40 split here in elementary where we have 40% excess capacity. or really about 30, almost 3,500 open middle school seats. Now looking at our high school posture, we have across our district, we have the capacity to serve 10,500 over that. With high school students, we currently serve just about 9,000 students, giving us an 85% enrollment and a 15% excess capacity in our buildings. I wanted to pull out for my last slide here before I turn it to Joe, the elementary and middle school. So, those are really the two that we're looking to address through closure and consolidation. That is because, as you can see on the data, we have excess capacity. And Joe is going to go through kind of our what we look at when we think about a thriving in school, how excess capacity tends to reduce. what we consider to be a thriving school and how we are planning to address that.

So we'll start at the elementary... There we go, at the elementary level. And when we look at the elementary level, we talk a lot about the number of classes per grade level or rounds. So our goal for a thriving school is really three rounds at every grade level. You have three classes of kindergartners, three classes of first graders, and so on as you go up to fifth grade. As you can see from this chart, we are getting to a point where two rounds is going to supersede three rounds because of the declining enrollment that we're seeing in the district. You can see two rounds, a steady increase really from around 2019 on within the school district. So when we talk about a thriving school experience and what we can get with three rounds versus a two round setting, when we have schools with several two rounds at each grade level, We have part-time specials teachers oftentimes that are split between schools. And we've heard over and over from staff as well as our families that that is not an ideal environment for student learning. We oftentimes see a lot of turnover in those part-time specials teachers who are really looking for a dedicated school to build community with. We're also limited in schools with two rounds with teacher collaboration and that ability for teachers within the grade level to really collaborate on professional learning, be thought partners with one another in terms of developing strategies within the grade level and the students that they're working with. And we'll also see part-time dedicated support staff. So that might be an academic interventionist who's not full-time or a social-emotional learning specialist or other mental health specialists who are either part-time or split between buildings. And it also limits the number of after-school activities, clubs, activities that students are exposed to. Because if you have fewer staff members who are able to offer those after-school activities, you're limited in terms of depth and breadth of the activities that you can offer. And then similarly, at the middle school level, we really look at, when we talk about thriving enrollment, three teachers per content area. And when we talk about content area, English, math, science, social studies, three teachers per content area per grade level. This is the ideal. It's certainly not something that we see across the board, but that's our goal or aspiration. And the reason being is, again, you're able to offer more electives for students to pick from when you've got uh three teachers per content area per grade level and then again those as i talked about at the elementary level you're going to be able to offer more after school clubs and activities athletics it's just a more robust programming opportunity So bottom line, fewer students means fewer dollars and less staff. And that really leads to tough decisions about reducing opportunities and supports for our students if we don't do something. So what's our path forward? some of our guiding principles throughout this work is we want to establish enrollment levels to support that adequate staffing full-time staffing teacher collaboration robust student programs and the full-time specials being key at the elementary level and we know that We are providing a thriving school experience now for our families. And we want to be able to do that five years out, 10 years out. And we know that declining enrollment is not something that's going to reverse anytime soon based on the projections we're seeing and the sustained low birth rate. And we just want to be able to continue to offer that high quality student and family experience that provides a strong sense of community and that we're meeting the needs of all of our families and students. We're meeting them where they're at and able to provide the programming and services that they're looking for. And lastly, that we're using district resources efficiently to maximize student learning by maintaining those enrollment levels that are financially stable across all 50-plus schools that we have. We want to ensure that we're providing that thriving experience for students no matter what school they're attending. Just last month, our Board of Education adopted a policy to guide our work in terms of any closure, consolidation, or repurpose recommendation that comes forth from the district. And that policy really outlines the expectations that the superintendent and staff must take into consideration as a recommendation is made. So everything from the ongoing cost savings expectation that students who are affected by any recommendation that they experience a similar or expanded learning opportunities at the schools that are receiving them that's at or near the average per pupil funding within the school district. that we allow enough time for our families to explore school opportunities through our choice process and learning more about their receiving school and an opportunity for those schools to come together and develop a culture as the consolidation takes place and we move forward. further on. We want to minimize moving students from the same school to multiple schools. We want to keep those students together as much as possible and have boundaries that are compact, keep neighborhoods together. And also moving students to schools that would be unlikely to be closed or repurposed for five years or longer. So we don't, we want to avoid as much as possible a move and then another subsequent move two or three years down the road. Also keeping in mind what type of academic rating we want to make sure that our students who are moving to other schools are moving to schools with similar or stronger academic rate, have a similar or stronger academic rating. And then lastly, minimizing any adverse impacts on the neighborhoods surrounding a school that is closed or repurposed. So this is the timeline for school consolidations during the spring we spent much of the spring uh really building understanding around the the current state around declining enrollment and how in particular it's impacting our school district a lot of presentations to various parent groups as well as all of the municipalities that, five municipalities that serve Adams 12 five-star schools. Just making sure that you all are aware of our timeline and the various considerations that we're looking at. We also hosted, before school let out for the year, an interactive webinar the superintendent where parents, community members could get the latest information on declining enrollment and school consolidations, as well as ask their questions of the superintendent and other district leaders. We also had an opportunity during that webinar to ask a few questions of those who were participating about, for example, those thriving school experience. What does our community most value? I can tell you we heard again the importance of full-time staff and their students having full-time specials teachers, full-time support staff, interventionists, social-emotional learning specialists. That was a value to them, as well as robust after-school programming. This summer, we're really in a stage of refining options and scenarios and just looking at all of the options in depth so that when we get to the September and October timeframe, early this fall, that we are making a recommendation to the Board of Education. And then any change that takes place in terms of closure or consolidation would not be implemented until August of 2027. That allows for a year's time really to work with affected staff, work with families in terms of identifying their options and um building school culture as we move uh into that 27 28 school year and with that that is um the end of our presentation we uh Thank you for the time and also just your ongoing partnership with the school district.

Thank you. We do have a few questions if you have time. Sure. Councilmember Kondo. He's online.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. Going back to slide 11, page 11, and I fully recognize the Colorado Demographers Office and those dynamics. I'm just really curious. Obviously, when you look at the slide, it kind of shows the peak in 2020, and then it starts to go down afterwards. And I was just wondering, is that an artifact of A, pandemic, B, students that may be leaving the district to go to charter schools and or just be homeschooled? I wonder if you can comment about that.

Are you talking about the slide? Can you see the screen?

Yeah. Is it this slide on page four council member or is it the other one?

Or is it the two rounds? I was looking at page 11.

Okay. So that one is about if you have two classrooms at second grade or three classrooms at second grade or four classrooms at second grade. So when you are showing up.

Okay. That was the round calculation. And maybe that was what was causing me to have this question as to, you know, Where are these students going? Are they going elsewhere aside from public school, whether it is charter school or home school?

I think what is very clear, Councilmember Kondo, is what's the primary driver for our district as well as districts across the nation, across Colorado, is really a sustained lower birth rate. That's the chief driver, so to speak, of why we're seeing declining enrollment In fact, we're seeing our largest grade level class size at the high school right now and those cohorts or groups are starting to roll off and all those smaller grade level class sizes are starting to roll up through the district. So that's why when we looked at the high school capacity while you still see larger groups of students at the high school level. But as these smaller cohorts of students move up, you're also going to see that at the high school level.

I hope that- So yeah, I recognize that there is a bolus and it's working its way through and that decline will advance as years go on. One other follow on if you'll indulge me. That calculation for the rounds number, it just occurred to me that teachers in this day and age now not only are supposed to provide a class in person, but they're also supposed to do a virtual class for those people that are not available to attend in person. So I'm wondering, is the artifact of having virtual classes, does that affect the math?

Are you talking about, just to clarify, Congressman Kondo, are you talking about a hybrid model?

You just gave him a promotion.

Yeah. Wow.

Yeah.

I don't know if I want that kind of notoriety. Let me rephrase my question, right? teachers are now expected to provide an in-person class format and then also do a virtual. And so now it's like the number of classes that you're offering is just double. And I'm wondering, does that have any impact on your calculus?

Thank you for that question. In Adams 12, I am not aware that we have a hybrid model for our teachers. We do teach in person. We do have a five star online academy that our online students attend and that but that is separate from the classroom they attend daily.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Mayor Pro Tem. Oh, yeah. Sorry, Councilmember Gough, trying to go in order.

You guys all have your hands up. Thank you for the information. This is really, I know this is going to, we're going through some tough times here right now. I had a question. Does the district have, or when will we find out what use the emptied buildings might be put to?

Great question. So we are not planning to have a plan per se before announcements. So in September, we plan to share with our board our slate of schools and our consolidation plan. And then they plan to vote on that in October. That is at which time we will start investigating what to do with our vacated buildings. somewhere between, we'll start that somewhere between the announcement of our consolidation plan and throughout the year. Our goal, the reason for that as our goal is to have partnership in that with our municipalities, with our community partners. We definitely want to find the just right fit for a vacated building. We'll look first inward at district needs that we might have to move something there. And then we'll look outwards into our community including meeting with you, I'm sure, again, around what buildings are available and what uses you might have as a city.

So the school year that begins in 2027 will likely see a few empty school buildings until the things get figured out. Okay, just wanted to clarify that. And then the other thing is I began work for District 12 in 1988. And at that point, they had elementary schools went to sixth grade, and they had junior high school and senior high school. And it was, I mean, there were, I think, four or five mobile classrooms in the elementary school I taught at that year. And part of the reason for moving to a traditional middle school and high school was to accommodate the moving of this large cohort of children up. Is there any possibility of going back to elementary schools, going to sixth grade, and then having a junior and senior high school? Has that ever been discussed? Was that discussed?

That hasn't been currently in our conversations. Our number one goal is to create a thriving experience. And we, however we believed we can achieve that is what we're going to explore. We have been exploring different scenarios. We have not landed on any school scenarios yet, but we're getting closer, but we have not discussed that in particular.

Okay. All right. Well, I'll throw that out there. Nobody's brought it up yet. Thank you.

Well, thank you. We'll take that into note.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you both for being here and for that information. I know that it's probably really tough to go through all of this. And there's so much data that has to be taken into account to make these decisions. And they're not taken lightly. I would not want to be in your shoes right now to have to figure this all out. I think Councilmember Goff kind of asked the first question that I was going to ask, which is what happens to a closed school building or repurposed, because I noticed the language said close or repurpose. So I would assume that if it's closed, it would be repurposed either way, but that or in there, like is there potential for it to be sold, for example. And the second part of that was partnerships between the municipalities where those schools may be closing or consolidating which you mentioned you already answered that that would happen but if you have maybe just one or two examples of what a repurpose can look like you know toward libraries child care whatever something like that um in previous school closures or consolidations i'm just curious we have um looked at all a lot of the school districts in the denver metro that have gone through closure

and their process for evaluating the next use of the vacated building or not. And I will say the examples that we're seeing throughout the Denver Metro area vary from everything from a district purpose. Like, for example, if we were having a building that we were renting, it would make really good financial sense to move that into a permanent building that is currently vacated. Other items that we've had people discuss with us is meeting with their municipalities, talking about recreation centers, parks, things like that that might be a need in the city in that space. or place. And then finally, and lastly, we have talked to other districts around us who have gone to selling the building and the land for things like child care or other community uses.

OK. Thank you for that additional information. That just kind of helps me wrap my brain around what happens when those schools are closed or consolidated. So thank you for that. And then in terms of that timeline, that looks pretty tight coming up here. And you're in the refine options phase. And I know you mentioned you've had webinars to kind of get feedback from the community. So what further discussions or community events do you have planned to kind of, you know, is that maybe happens in September? Were you still gathering feedback from the communities in Adams 12?

Yes, when we return to school in August and our back-to-school communication leading up to that, we will be, again, reiterating where we're at in the process, when the announcement is going to, when the board will consider the recommendation, things of that sort. But we've really... I mean, a lot of the work that's helped inform what a thriving school experience looks like has come from, for example, we have a long range planning advisory committee made up of parents, community members, staff members. this goes back two years now where they were studying we knew about the issue of declining enrollment and they were going into schools talking to families about okay what does what does it look like in this school where you have three rounds versus another school with two rounds and what are the resource differences and challenges so um We've been doing, you know, while a lot of the discussion has been most recent in the spring, the work around thriving school experience and what we're looking to achieve has really been going on for a couple years now. So, but in terms of when we come back, in the fall, we will continually be communicating about where we are in the process and what step comes next. And that includes even after the announcement, just the work that we'll be doing with families and staff who are impacted by any decision.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. I know one of the biggest things we hear on council is communication, communication, right? And making sure that happens between all of our residents and municipalities. And Mayor, I have one more quick question if I may. So this policy, the new policy that was adopted last month requires ongoing cost savings. So I mean, maybe it's a silly question where those dollars go. Depending on where the school closure happens, are those dollars reinvested more in that area where those consolidations or closures happen? Or is it kind of spread across the district?

So we are digging into our financial model as we come up with scenarios. And I think we'll have better answer to that as we march into the fall. That will be something we can definitely include in our recommendation. But we haven't discussed exactly how that will happen because there's multiple uses. But our general fund and the savings that we'll find in both operation or maybe deferred maintenance, Those savings are being calculated currently and we'll be exploring exactly what you're discussing here in the coming months.

Yeah, I understand. It's definitely a high-level question. Of course, you know, we hope whatever municipality is affected that the dollars kind of maybe spread a little bit more love around in that area. All right, that's all for now. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Councilmember Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for being here. As a parent who's just gone through the kindergarten choice process, I'm wondering thoughts around schools with, like, lower enrollments versus, like, someone like STEM Lab that has, like, a wait list of over 100 kids and sort of, like, what's the calculation going on here where clearly there's schools parents are preferring in our neighborhood versus others, and how are we going to balance this out so every child gets an equal education across our municipality and the district?

We're always cognizant of what our families are looking for, and we do have wait lists at a couple of our schools in terms of wanting to choice in new. And so that is certainly one of many factors that we take into consideration as we move forward through this process.

Yeah, as someone who did not grow up with a choice in option, you just kind of went to the school you went to, the neighborhood school, I think, you know, the stress on parents and choice is also pretty extreme. And so that's maybe something to think about is just like, every school should be a good school to every parent. Just a thought.

Thank you. Council Member Roper. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mr. Ferdani, Ms. Brandt, thank you for being here so much. I appreciate you being here. Thank you for this very thorough and informational presentation. We do know the importance of thriving learning environments. So thank you for putting students first in all these decisions and just having that lens as you make these. We also know, as you mentioned, the importance of after-school opportunities. And I think Ms. Ryan would agree that keeping students in after-school opportunities will keep them from other shenanigans. And again, thank you so much. I see every day the remarkable job that Adams 12 is doing and the impact that you're making here in our community and in the lives of our young people. So even though this is concerning, thank you for presenting this with compassion and just a comprehensive approach moving forward. Thank you so much.

Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you both for being here tonight. You know it's it's hard not first of all full disclosure. I also have kids that will be entering Adams 12 Next year, so we're really excited about that So I'm I'm really trying hard to separate the parent the dad from the council member so If I cross that line just say all right, you know, but I think I think I'll do pretty well but I do want to express my disappointment both as a parent and as a community member. And this isn't necessarily directed at you, but I do think it does signal, you know, difficult times, you know, declining enrollment, you know, again, growing up in the 80s and 90s, it's like we didn't have to worry about any of this, just kind of worked out. So, you know, part of this is saying these are these structural issues, you know, when it gets, it goes to schools, it goes to stormwater, it goes to taxes, things like that. It's all connected. You know, so again, if there's any residents out there like myself feeling disappointed in this, you know, I just want to kind of name that. Having said that, I do actually have some legitimate questions here. And I do thank you for your compassion and your thoughtfulness around this. I just want to get some kind of clarifying questions. It sounds like residents will kind of know September, October, correct? OK, we'll kind of know. So when residents learn, what is that process like? And again, I can go online and figure it out. But I'm saying for kind of maybe the larger audience, if there's people online that aren't necessarily going to hop online, if they wanted to kind of get involved or learn more information or kind of advocate for this, hear more information, is it as simple as kind of going to school board meetings, something like that?

It is. There's two ways people can get involved. One, I would highly recommend going to our Adams 12 website. We have a page, and Joe's team's done a remarkable job putting this page together with frequently asked questions, including the process you're talking about of how we will support whether you're a staff, a parent, or a student, through this process. And there's lots of information there, including the timeline you saw tonight and other resources. And then our Board of Education resumes meetings in August. Okay.

Thank you. So, my guess is, and I don't know either of you kind of personally, professionally, my guess is you've both been at this a while. Have either of you kind of gone through the consolidation process before?

You mean personally or professionally or both?

Both.

No, I have not, unfortunately.

Okay.

I have not either.

Okay. Well, that kind of rules that question, because I was going to ask about kind of what about professionally kind of doing this?

We haven't professionally, like individually, but we have been meeting with our colleagues in other districts, like since this time last year. Okay. That was the first place we started on our journey of we knew we had to address decline enrollment and we wanted to go learn. from those that have been through the process, what worked, what didn't, how do you support families, how do you support students? Our goal is that we create a thriving experience throughout our community in doing this. And we hope if people were to look back two years from now that they felt supported, seen, heard, and there were options that they had as they go through this process. And we are very hopeful that we will be able to bring that.

To our community this fall great that might even be better than because I'm really curious What does that consolidation process kind of look like on the street level and it sounds like you've kind of done a little bit of? Research about that. Can you just kind of talk a little bit about kind of what you saw like?

What did it look like so there's a lot of different options that we're seeing each district takes a slightly different approach and Some of the basic kind of standard options that we've seen are you have a school that is closing and consolidates with another. So, there's a receiving school and a consolidated or closing school. So, we've seen that pairing out there. We've seen also multiple receiving schools with one closing school, depending on what the district in question may be dealing with with boundaries or the size of the receiving schools, their enrollment, transportation needs, and lots of complex factors. I mean, Joe and I wish this, and our superintendent alike all wish this would be a less complex problem than it is. But there's lots of complex factors. And those are kind of two of the more traditional items we've seen in talking with other school districts and how they've approached this work. And our hope is that we can maintain or improve a student's experience.

What schools are closing?

I love that question.

Ah, that was my trick question.

Oh my goodness, I was about ready. If I could turn off his mic, you were told not to ask that question.

I'm kidding, I kid, I kid. That was a joke. I didn't expect an answer.

Pushing the mayor's buttons over here. You get one more question, Nowicki, and then I'm moving on.

All right, all right. you know what i i'm not sure what this question was here so i'm just going to stop there thank you very much for your time again we'll be following this process and i thank you both for what you're doing councilmember sievers

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you all for being here. Obviously, this is a touchy subject. I'm glad that I have so many people on the dais that are in school, leading schools, and have a history of doing it, so I will lean heavily on them. I will just say, like, Since 2020, in one year, there's roughly a 6% drop, and then over the next five years, about 12% drop, and you still anticipate another 8% drop until 2030. What percentage of those is just birth rate and less kids making it to the next level versus like charter schools growing? I have here since 2017, charter schools are roughly 13%. So do you know what percentage is like charter schools, first birth rate, even if it's a guesstimate?

I do not, unfortunately. We can get that data for us if we need it for next time we convene on this topic, but I don't have it with me today, and even a guesstimate might be a little off, so I'd hate to do that.

That's fair. That's fine. I just think we should try to put that information out so residents can color the situation. And then I also, this is probably another question that we'll have to look up or, but About a year ago, I did a deep dive on the Department of Education, probably because it was being closed, basically, or something, ripped apart. So if I remember the math correctly, most states get federal funding through the Department of Education. Some states are as low as $1,300 to $1,700 a student. Some are as high as $3,100, $3,200 a student. Have you, in AMS 12, are you aware of changes that have happened over the last years in terms of federal funding to Colorado for schools or any changes whatsoever and this playing into not helping that? Or is it, I don't know.

I would say that funding across the board, whether it be federal or state, I'm sure everyone is aware of the state funding challenges. And so we have seen challenges as well at the federal level where it's been unknown what funding we would be receiving for a while. But today, we really have yet to see any substantial reductions in terms of that federal funding. There's talk that potentially with the next fiscal year ahead of us that we will be. So that's yet to be determined.

Thank you. And then I have a little more context. I think this is a challenge, you know? I don't envy your job. I don't envy having to go through and pick winners and losers because you're not actually doing that. You're trying to do the best. You're trying to make everyone a winner, but people are going to take it individually different when their child's school closes, right? So that's a big deal. And I think people have gotten very used to the everything's up and to the right. Since 1990, Colorado's population has almost doubled. So I'm sure closing schools because of lowering attendance probably hasn't been a problem across Colorado, if I had to guess, a lot. just based on those numbers alone. But, you know, these are responding to data points and facts and, you know, information and trying to make the best decision you can. But it's not something that we can change tomorrow. And this is a worldwide thing. There's very few countries in the world that have a replacement birth rate above replacement. So it's not North Glen thing. It's not a MS-12 thing. It's not a Colorado thing. It's not a U.S. thing. It's a worldwide thing that we're going through right now, and I just want everyone to keep that context in their head when they're talking about school closures, and we can't perpetually grow. We would like to in terms of everything, the money we get paid every week and month, but there are corrections at some point, and I don't think we're getting out of this correction anytime soon. Thank you.

Councilmember Roper. Thank you again, Madam Mayor. I think just to clarify for my councilmates and perhaps those in the community watching, this really sets us more up for success, even though this seems concerning, because instead of spreading our resources very thin, it will consolidate those resources into places where we really can create those thriving learning communities, if I'm understanding this right. Also, I think you guys know the year that I've been through and after I've seen the monumental effort that the district has put towards just making sure that students have everything they need and are able to thrive no matter what where they are located. I have every faith in the district that they will be able to make this happen for our students. And then lastly, I think it is important. I know we, I talked about this a lot last year, but we have to start looking and putting pressure on our state representatives and legislators that we must fund, fully fund our public schools. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Lighty. Thank you so much for being here. I just wanted to add a little positive note to this kind of doom and gloom conversation. I work in a district that took in a lot of consolidated schools and I got to see students that were not going to go to an art school just kind of get placed at an art school and now they're singing and they're dancing and they're participating in all these different things that they would not have the opportunity to do if their school didn't close, which kind of sounds terrible, but at the same time, now they're living their best lives, and I get to see huge smiles every single day. And so it does sound really scary and really sad, but it could also be a really awesome thing in the end. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Yes, she's talking about a thriving school. Couple questions. The web page that you mentioned, is that up and running? It is. Where can we find it? Because I'm on your school page, and I'm on the district page, and it's not easy to find. Sure.

Well, you can certainly type in into the search bar, like declining enrollment to find it. Or if you go under the district tab, there should be a menu item that says school consolidations.

Okay, I just want to make sure it's easy to find. And also we can Oh, yeah, that's hard to find. I would recommend putting some sort of banner as you move through this process because I think you're going to get a lot of traffic on this website. And you may even want to give it a fancy name. Jeffco certainly did. So I have a couple of thoughts. There's going to be a lot of feelings through this process, and I think we're starting to see just a little trickling of that from the parents on the dais. There's going to be a lot of feelings, and you know that, and you're anticipating that. But I want to kind of zoom out a little bit and remind everyone that we have a recent recipient of Superintendent of the Year. He is extremely skilled, highly respected, and doing an incredible job. And the recent passing of the mill and the bond and properly funding the district, you guys are doing excellent work with the resources that you have. That said, this is inevitable as you've already shared. And I just wanna remind not only residents, but council as well, that we are not the governing body for this process. We are a very small part of this at the Adams 12 School Board. This is their process. And so if we want to engage in that, we need to engage as community members and parents, if that is your role. But you were gracious enough to come and give us a presentation. It was not required, right? It is not our process. We are here to observe. And down the road, I know there was some questions about timeline. it's gonna be years before we need to be engaged. It's gonna be years before decisions around the buildings are happening. And so I just wanna remind everyone that you came, you asked to come and you gave us excellent information. A lot of it does connect to a recent presentation we had from the state demographer. He came and he started at the world level and zoomed in all the way to our city. and talk to us about how that's impacting our city function but of course we knew that it was also having county issue issues and school district issues we're hearing this across the state this is not i think i wrote down the number one assumption is that kids are leaving school districts to go to home school or charters or private schools that's not the case But that is the number one assumption that people make. And obviously, you heard that question first thing, right? Is that where they're going? No. Kids just haven't been born. And you did a great job of answering, because we can see how the birth rate has ballooned in high school. So the other thing I wanna caution, not only council and staff, but our residents, is speculation is not healthy. And so for us to start making assumptions about which schools you're closing or why you're closing this one versus that one, you will create a process and you will stick to the process and us speculating is not going to do anything but cause trauma in our community. And so I really do think we need to be the models for calm, steady, and taking your lead on this. So you may or may not know, I have a school in Jefferson County. We were a receiving school in the ROFS process. So that's what they named it, Regional Opportunity for Thriving Schools. Made it a little faster to say ROFS, but being a receiving school in that process. So if anyone on council wants to talk through that, I'm happy to do so. The amount of parent meetings that happen in each community, they're very well done. but they're tough. Like I, you know, there were parents saying we need a pedestrian bridge over this major street because our kids can't get to the new school. Well, that's obviously not gonna happen, right? So there's outlandish recommendations that come out of emotion and people are gonna be sad, right? If you have a fourth grader at a school that is feeling really established, they don't wanna go somewhere else for one year, right? That feels icky, that feels not fun for kids. And so really it's all about shaping the new experience and watching how all of the schools embraced Council Member Roper or Principal Roper's students i know that that's going to happen in every single one of our communities so i think it's going to be okay i think it's just going to be hard but it makes a ton of sense you've laid it all out there the reason is clear and i know that your team is going to do a great job so thank you so much for giving us this information and again if people are interested they need to go to the website and then stay informed by attending board meetings along the way So thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good night.

Thank you all.

All right. Okay, we're going to move into council communications. I will start with Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you to everyone who came and spoke and presented and continued to show courage to show up at the mic. That's really appreciated. I do have to start this off, too, with let's go Knicks. Knicks and four, baby. Okay. We are also Nuggets fans, but Knicks number one. Happy Pride to everyone. Thank you so much for everyone who came for proclamations. Appreciate that. THAT WAS GREAT. THANK YOU SO MUCH TO STAFF FOR PRIDEFEST THIS PAST WEEKEND. IT WAS HOT. PEOPLE SHOWED UP. IT WAS GREAT. A LOT OF FUN. AND THEN CHAIR OF THE FINANCE COMMITTEE WILL REPORT ON FINANCE COMMITTEE. THANK YOU.

I just drew a blank. Council Member Lighty.

Interesting blank. I also attended Pride this weekend, and I specifically want to shout out City Clerk Small and her team. You guys went above and beyond. You were there the entire time, and it was hot. But you also had the cutest little sign and popsicles for hot people. And it was so fun because people just kept coming up, and they're like, I'm a hot person. I'm like, yes, you are. Get a pop. Just get a Popsicle. And the amount of kids that just kept coming back, it was adorable seeing their little faces and the sugar high. So thank you for bringing that joy to the event. It was awesome. It was way too hot to be out there for that long. Last week I attended the outside agency funding committee meeting, but I will let our chairperson know what to do. speak out on that as well later this week i will be attending the colorado communities for climate action annual meeting in vale i'm really excited to attend alongside staff to get more information this is their 10th annual event so it should be really fun and really interesting and the topic of everything that came up in our legislative session will probably be there as well so i'm excited to report out other than that that's all i have councilmember nowicki

Thank you, Madam Mayor. First of all, I want to give a shout out to Jason, Deputy Director Loveland, for, you know, the work on the finance stuff. I think we all appreciate that. That's it. You know, the information we got tonight I think reflects, you know, all the work that goes into it on your end. And I also appreciate that, you know, you make all that stuff available on OpenGov.com so that people can go and dive into the information. There's certainly more information than anyone could want. So thank you for making that accessible and for your work. Yeah, I'm disappointed I missed Pride this last weekend. We were in another community, but it sounds like it was a good time. I was at a splash pad, so I was able to at least cool down. It was really hot out there, too. uh i do want to say happy pride month i also want to say happy men's mental health month um you know i know everyone thinks i'm probably the toughest guy in council but uh you know i i have my own challenges at times so uh you know it's important i appreciate being able to connect with all of you um you know and and really it's it's about connection a connection to each other connection to our communities and uh so i appreciate all of you when I need you. Diving into some business, finance committee meeting met, and we discussed this at our council meeting last week as well, the stormwater fee review. Again, this is not great. No one loves the stormwater fee raise. We're looking at, it hasn't been raised since, I think it was 2004, from $2 to either exploring options around $6 or $8. NOT GREAT. YOU KNOW, WE ESSENTIALLY HAVE 22 PROJECTS THAT ARE IN NEED OF KIND OF REPAIR, AND WE'RE LOOKING AT MAYBE TACKLING FIVE WITH THAT. SO, YOU KNOW, I KNOW WE'LL BE, THIS KIND OF SEGUES NICELY INTO REVIEWING THE 2027 BUDGET REVIEW. So, you know, I think we discussed all options around the table as far as, you know, looking where we can make cuts, where we can make savings, things like that. We heard, you know, appreciate residents coming tonight and holding their feet to the fire a little bit, you know, because, again, we need to hear that. THE OUTSIDE AGENCY FUNDING COMMITTEE MET. THIS IS A COMMITTEE THAT MEETS TO KIND OF REVIEW EVENT SPONSORSHIPS, GRANT OPPORTUNITIES. WE HAD SEVERAL DIFFERENT ORGANIZATIONS, NAWAY INCORPORATED, WHO DO THE PEOPLE'S POW-WOW, BALSTON HOUSE, CASA, EARLY CHILDHOOD PARTNERSHIP OF ADAMS COUNTY, ECPAC. SO WE EXPLORED THINGS WE COULD DO WITH THOSE COMMUNITIES AS WELL. I believe that is everything. And yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to thank everyone that came out tonight and all the residents that spoke. It's been a while since we did communications here, so I'll try to go as quick as possible. Thanks to the city for the pride proclamation. When I think of pride, I think I've brought it up a few times, like it's just people's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. So there's nothing more to be said about it. I can't think of, and the Juneteenth proclamation, I think there's nothing more valuable than celebrating something that important. So I'm with it. On Wednesday, May 20th, we did, I was at the committee, the North Glens 150-250 committee meeting about Eleanor M. Wyatt Centennial Park. It ties into the celebration on August 1st that we'll be having. It also ties into people pushing for the pedestrian bridge to possibly move further. So I tried to actually, I brought that up at Thornton Fest this weekend. And I plan to bring it up at ADCOG and Dr. Grogg. On Thursday, May 21st, I attended the Public Works open house. I know Council Member Condo and Roper went. But yeah, just more of the same. Appreciate the staff. I got to talk to a lot of the departments, the people testing the water, the people treating the water at the wastewater plant, which I haven't made to yet. going to work on meeting some of those people at the workplace and get to know more of their needs and what's been going on there. Monday, May 25, we celebrated the memory of those that we made the ultimate sacrifice to the country with Memorial Day. Goes without saying it's important Monday June 1st the study session that councilmember no key brought up The stormwater fund fee increase later. We're going to hear about 104th marketplace and those that also comes with if all our dreams come true And we've turned it into this marketplace that we see in our our dreams That's also going to more retention bonds more stormwater so more investment more on top of the 3.5 million, on top of the projects we haven't really got to understand yet because there are places that are not something we've seen yet. So we need to keep working on that. Tuesday, June 2nd, the Planning Commission voted 4-1 in favor of the resolution amending the Section 36 area plan, which simply removed data centers as a preferred option for land use. However, we as council and staff have to work to better understand and start putting in safeguards in place should this hypothetical usage become a real-life proposal. On Wednesday, June 3rd, I dropped in as an alternate to watch the vice chair, our own council member Kondo, run the board work session. So lots of talk there that was valuable to see what questions people are asking. On Saturday, June 6th, I also attended North Glen Pride, and it was very, very hot. But I also went to Thornton Fest afterwards. I can tell you my friends that were with me, they did not take the heat well. So I was ready to push through, but I had some quitters on my hands, so I'm sorry. I would have liked to stay at Thornton Fest longer, but I appreciate all the staff and the city clerk's team for putting together Pride. And again, it's always good to remind people that we got their back. And then here we are on Monday, June 8th, 22 days until the primary election, and 147 days to the general election. Please, regardless of whether in person, via mail, or through the drop box, which is right out that window, there's a drop box, please make a plan to vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Goff?

Thank you, Mayor. So I'll quickly go through some things as well. On May 26, the Juneteenth planning committee met to finalize things. That's our last meeting before the actual event. Very exciting presentations, vendors, food trucks. It's going to be fun. Hopefully not as hot as Pride, but it probably will be. And then later that day, the DICE meeting met. We did not have a quorum, so we couldn't really vote on anything, but we did get updates on Juneteenth and some more information on some Dia de los Muertos events. that we will meet on or vote on in our meeting in July. And there also, there is a community survey out now, which was available to people who came to Pride Fest and will, the diversity board will be out there at different events over the summer with like the QR code thing, trying to get, you know, as many people to give us input as possible over the summer. May 28th, I attended the North Area Transportation Alliance meeting as an alternate for Councilmember Kondo, who is out of the state right now. So that's why he didn't attend to that one and probably other events as well. And anyway, what we heard at that meeting was a very thorough presentation from the City of Erie. They are developing two new interchanges just north of us off of I-25. and they finally got the funding and the plans in place. I don't know that I wrote down when they're gonna start, but that you will be seeing some improvements up that way soon. The main point, I think, of the presentation, at least my takeaway, was that there is a discrepancy between regional and local models of density and transportation needs. And so it took Erie, Erie had some challenges in receiving funding from the state level because those models were not exactly matching up. And the regional models are usually used to decide on funding. So as a group, the NADA group decided that their next like order of business is to try to figure out how to improve the data, how to get more of the local real time on the spot data to the state for better funding. Then, let's see, May 29th, the Senior Health and Fitness event took place here at North Glen, and I stopped in. They were doing little mini classes, and they had lots of giveaways and information to encourage the health of our seniors. And I did talk to someone who lives in Westminster who told me that North Glen does so many wonderful things for our seniors. She always comes here instead of whatever Westminster is or isn't doing so we can pat ourselves on the back for that Then the next thing as I did event did attend the pride event on June 6th, and yes, it was very hot I could not stick it out for very long. I'm sorry, but with the dice board was there in great numbers and And they're probably still recovering from that. That's why they're not here tonight. But it was a very big success. My son came from Aurora with his dog who got one of the ice popsicles. So I will thank the city clerk's office on behalf of Blossom. And I am very proud of the fact that we do put out our proclamation. Pride is an important event. It means a lot to me personally, but I think a lot of our residents who maybe aren't even members of the LGBTQ whatever plus community. And I had a friend who said, plus doesn't mean, it means everybody. It's just all inclusive. So I'm very proud of North Glen for participating and supporting in that and look forward to doing it in the future. And that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Dr. Kopp, for covering the native meeting in my absence. Clearly, I am not in the state as my return from a family friend funeral took a little bit longer. That being said, I only have one topic to talk about tonight, and that is the recent passing and the funeral of Lieutenant Chad Tellinger. Chad, a.k.a. Telly, was a firefighter at Station 63 here in North Glendon. And he spent 27 years at North Metro Fire, the last five years at the training center. And so he had a very profound impact on the recruits going through the North Area Fire Academy. It is a very sad and tragic event for North Metro Fire. I think his passing, his death is one that we haven't had in quite a long time. I will say that North Glen Police Department really stepped up and provided a number of cruisers and patrol motorcycles to help with the several convoys, if you will, for lack of a better term. I actually participated in the honor movement that happened on May 22nd before I left town. And I will tell you what was most memorable for me as I was riding in the chief's car was that I-25 from Welk County was shut down. And practically under every bridge we were going under, there was a fire engine with firefighters standing on the top of their trucks, rendering salutes as we drove underneath. That, to me, was the most moving sort of experience that I've had in my elected official life, not one that I would like to repeat ever again. I do want to thank Mayor Pro Tem Shannon Lukeman-Haramasa. Obviously, her husband, James Haramasa, is a member of the board. They were present at the funeral that occurred on July 6th. I had the opportunity to watch via the live stream. And the one thing that I want to share with you all, I think is something that Brianne said in her eulogy. She mentioned that Chad's mantra are three words, love, care, and kind. And I wish that all of us would carry forward those three words in our lives as well. Clearly, he was a beacon. He was an inspiration for many. And I just ask that you remember Chad Tellinger and his mantra, love, caring, kind, when you have an opportunity to do so. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Roper. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

a lot of notes here so sorry um thank you to everyone who came out to speak tonight um miss ryan mr lampo again as he said and i would just want to reiterate um the voting really does change our trajectory and it's important that you get out there and have your voice heard um this week i attended the five star classic which supports the five star education foundation It's always, and this is interesting that we had our presentation tonight, but it's also really good to see our mill levy dollars being put to work this summer as so many of our North Glen schools are having upgrades or much needed repairs done to the building. Let's see. June 18th is our Neighborhood Nights celebration for Ward 4. Come out for food trucks, music, and a movie, which I think is Zootopia. Zootopia? Again, I attended Pride this weekend. It was wonderful. Thank you to staff. Thank you for everything you did to put this off on. Thank you to our police department who was there and I just appreciate your presence. I will agree that the popsicles were a huge hit. My nephew was probably one that kept going back for thirds and fourths. Thank you for a wonderful event that just brings our community together and as was spoken to earlier, relationships are a part of what we do and if we don't have the collaboration, then we can't do the rest of our work that needs to be done. So relationships are a big piece of the work we do and I'm glad that we engage in it. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I will start by just echoing what others have said in terms of just appreciating people coming up and speaking. We need to hear the good, the bad, the ugly. All of it matters. So I'll just say that as well. And also thank you to our finance staff for making sure that we get a great audit review. Really appreciate that. That's important. And, you know, just looking around and hearing the stories on the news, I know that's not the case for every municipality anywhere. So thank you. for that. Then getting into communications, I was able to go to, on a positive note, Thornton High School's groundbreaking since we were talking about declining enrollment and all those things that are very serious. This is a positive thing for our district. So it was kind of fun to see the plans and it's going to, you know, serve a great need. So good things are happening and we'll see where the rest of it goes. Sad news to report, of course. I even hate saying this. I went to two memorial services related to just community events, and one, as Councilmember Kondo mentioned, was for Lieutenant Chad Tellinger. May he rest in peace. He was only 52 years old. of illness, and it's just a constant reminder, everything that we do, to continue to support our first responders and make sure that they have access to all the help they need, whether it's medical, mental health. I think that is something that we need to still maintain and make sure we keep top of mind as we go through even our budget discussions. So I'll just say that. May he rest in peace. There was a lot of representation from Northland, all our uh chief was there deputy chief and a bunch of our command staff and police officers were also there he was very loved and very respected in the community and uh given the incredible relationship we have with north metro it's a loss that's felt by many and you could tell he was very very loved and very appreciated in the community I also went to a funeral service for a Rawson House board member's husband. She's eight months pregnant, expecting their first child. And he also died suddenly of an illness. So unfortunately, those are kind of not so many great things, but also important to just be there for people in our community going through tragedies and heartbreaks. On another note, other business, I completed part three of my Colorado Municipal League webinar series, and I'm thankful to City Manager Guyer and Deputy Chief Rice and our crew program director, Jessica Hulse, who were on the panel. and they did great. We had lots of great questions and really the discussion was around collaboration and how to work through all the things that are involved in keeping us and the community safe and what that looks like between the city and the police department and mental health providers. So that was really great. Thank you to them for attending that. Ralston House had its board meeting here at City Hall. So that was cool. First time that we've done it here. As was mentioned, I'm glad that it was, Ralston House was funded because they are a huge part of our community and they do a lot of good in terms of taking care of the kids in the needs surrounding providing services and wraparound services for kids who've been abused. Very important organization. On a positive note, I went to the business retention and expansion committee nominating committee's category, choosing category meeting, I guess, for the business celebration that's coming up. So I will keep my lips sealed. I don't know that the final winners have been chosen, but we got to vote on that. And that's always a positive thing to kind of learn more about the businesses in our community and how we can support them. And then getting to choose winners is pretty awesome. And then I will end on... Just echoing that Pride was a great event. Yes, it was hot, but it was really fun to be there. It was great that we had such a great turnout with council members. We had six of us up on stage. I got to do the welcome to fill in for the mayor, who's very busy doing other things as well. But it was an awesome event, and I think it's important for our community to know that we show up and we support them. And we'll continue to do so. And that is all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. I wanted to start by a question. I didn't want to interrupt the flow of communication, but I wanted to go back to OAF. Council Member Nowicki, do you have funding, like how much is in the OAF currently?

Before or after?

I was wondering what you spent. I had a conversation with a colleague in another city, and I had a question about the Ralston House funding. How much did you give to the Ralston House? Okay. I'll let you look. I just have some questions about OAF. $1,500. Okay. It came up. I was talking to a neighboring mayor whose community gave way more than we did. And the current Ralston house location that is hosting this event is in our city. And it's one of our, uh, like, uh, one of our most precious partners. And so I guess I was just wondering if the committee could talk about why they didn't go with a full sponsorship for that location since it is in North Glen.

You want me to comment on that? Yeah, that'd be great. So I think part of it is we only have a $20,000 pot to begin with. And I think we're down now to roughly about $6,000. And that leaves us... for the rest of the year. So we've got to try and kind of fund, you know, pick and choose what do we want to fund. So we try and kind of time it as to, you know, what that would look like. That was what we gave last year. Also, you know, I guess if I'm Being honest, part of the tangible benefits is that it is in North Glen. So some of the perks of giving more. It's a great organization. We'd love to give more. But some of the perks don't necessarily come back to us because it's already in our city. It's already kind of being advertised, things like that.

What are the perks?

Well, like the kind of advertisement. They're coming to North Glen here in our city.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

And I see there's some shaking the heads.

Well, I mean, because Mayor Pro Tem sits on the board. I just wonder if the OAF is open to discussing that, like if it hasn't been fully decided. I would like to open that discussion, I guess. That's why I wondered how much you had left for the year. And if, because I know, well, let me go back. So I used to sit on the OAF as well. And so working very closely with our, Staff member that helps us I recall Going through and and she's very knowledgeable. She's done it a long time. She knows exactly what is typically coming So if you're anticipating a lot of asks in the fall I could see having that conversation, but we're pretty far in the year to still have that much money so I guess to me the the perks of are not about bringing the Ralston house to the city. It's about, this is their, one of their fundraisers for their programming. And I know our police department relies heavily on their programming. It benefits children and families in our community. And so, um, being one of the few municipalities that has a location it feels like we should have name sponsorship level um and so i was i was taken aback when another city has that and we don't and so i was just wondering if the committee would reconsider that conversation

Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly willing to reconsider and, you know, and I apologize if I misspoke, not necessarily PERC, but one of those, if we have some sort of timeline for kind of what's coming down the pike because we don't currently have that or we didn't get that, That might be helpful to kind of plan out. It's also helpful if you guys do have interests, you know, organizations that you guys kind of work with to, you know, also state, hey, this is kind of a particular interest because that is something we can always kind of balance and we do consider. In this case, we didn't get that, so.

Okay. And then do you recall what you gave to the other organizations at your last meeting?

At the OAF? Yeah. I can, if you want to give me a moment, I can look. Otherwise, Joanne may have that information at the end.

OK. The other event was, well, there were a few. The CASA, Indulge for CASA event was sponsored at $3,500. The Early Childhood Partnership of Adams County Breakfast was sponsored at $300. And then there was the People's Powwow that Councilmember Nowicki mentioned earlier. That event was tabled until the next committee meeting.

And then you said Ralston House, was it 15? Correct. Okay. The other reason, and I'm not trying to press you, Council Member Nowicki, you're just the chair of the committee and you brought it up, is we missed their major fundraiser this spring because we weren't on top of it. And so we typically participate in both fundraisers. And since we did not do the spring one, IT ALSO FELT APPROPRIATE TO EXTEND THAT. LET ME PRESS PAUSE ON THAT BECAUSE I HAVE MY FULL COMMUNICATIONS BUT IT LOOKS LIKE OTHER PEOPLE WANT TO JUMP IN AND HELP ME WITH THAT CONVERSATION. So I'm going to go back to that in a minute. So I want to address public comment. We so appreciate when residents come and talk to us and bring concerns and elevate things that are happening in the community. I just want to remind anyone who's listening or people in the audience that not all of the statements are civil or appropriate or even accurate. productive and unfortunately that changes the messaging that comes across and I think as long as we can and these members have already left so they can't listen to my lecture about it however as long as they can stay civil it just makes it easier for their message to come across and so when they when they indulge in personal attacks that is not helpful And also just to remind everyone that council is accessible. You can call us, you can email us. I know every single one of us has scheduled a coffee meeting or a lunch meeting with residents if there is a concern. And you can come and talk to us and we will help with some creative problem solving. I think sometimes it boils down to clarification is what's needed when residents have questions because there was a probably a little more misinformation tonight than normal about how city finances work and and all of that and so i just want to make sure that residents know if you have a question reach out we're happy to answer the questions and we're happy to sit down and listen and i will tell you i have many many experiences where residents have sat down with me and given me really creative solutions that we are actually able to move forward so um i just want people to know that we do hear them as long as we can have accurate statements and then if you heard anything tonight that you're concerned about please reach out and then i just want to make sure everyone knows we did not cut the police budget that was stated tonight and that has not happened SO REALLY QUICKLY THERE. THEN LOTS AND LOTS OF COLLABORATION GOING ON. SO I'M THE VICE CHAIR OF THE METRO MAYOR'S CAUCUS. HAD A MEETING LAST WEEK. LOTS OF COLLABORATION WITH AREA MAYORS. SO WHEN IT WAS STATED TONIGHT THAT GOVERNMENT IS NOT ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS INACCURATE. IT IS ABSOLUTELY ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS. IT'S RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN US AND THE RESIDENTS, BETWEEN THE RESIDENTS AND EACH OTHER. WE LIKE TO FOSTER THOSE RELATIONSHIP BUILDING. And it's also relationships with our colleagues, whether it's on a committee, whether it's across the county or across the state or even across the nation. So the second thing that took me away from Pride, which was such a bummer, was the U.S. Conference of Mayors met over the last four days. I got back yesterday. And that was an incredible event. moment where the u.s mayors all come together and when we talk about creative problem solving and talking about the issues that are impacting the state the themes were public safety that's a theme across the country also surprise surprise data centers was a theme and effective communications. I was like, whoa, we're talking about that right now. And that's a theme in a lot of these. I also sit on the climate mayors. And so that was another great group of colleagues to meet. I have reached out to the mayor of Palo Alto, California, because she shared at a pre-conference session that I did not arrive early enough for, um about sustainable data centers and a 50-page stanford research paper that has just recently come out and you're nodding like you know what i'm talking about no surprise i'm excited to see it um because to talk about data centers at a climate mayor's event was interesting right it felt like two things competing and yet um there's some new and interesting conversations it's a non-partisan group of mayors, the entire conference, and it's very solution focused. And so it is a valuable use of time. And I have tons and tons of notes and I wrote down details will be synthesized for everyone soon. But I just got back yesterday. So those are most of my things um i want to also thank the finance team for another successful audit uh it is a lot of work and it's it's not a lot of work one time it's a lot of work 365 like you do excellent work year round and so thank you for that we consistently have clean audits, and I appreciate your work. The team for Pride, we know what it takes. And also just to kind of shout out the team, because that sort of food truck carnival kicked off the summer of events, and everyone's going to be working really hard as we go forward. okay so back to oaf because that was a question i had as i mentioned um because i used to sit on it and i'm concerned about the ralston funding but i'd love to know the numbers um so city clerk small you mentioned what was decided what is the current balance after or before i don't know the current balance now is uh six thousand six hundred fifty dollars so that's the budget remaining for this year okay and that's after the 3500 for casa 300 for early childhood partnership correct and 1500 for ralston house so the powwow was tabled can i ask why who does anyone want to answer that

I can jump in. Great. Yeah, that was tabled. We wanted to get more clarity. In the past, the People's Pow Wow had utilized in-kind funds from the city. So we went in-kind, meaning city services that were kind of given to them. So we just wanted to know kind of more information if they would be kind of, if they were going to ask for kind of financial assistance and in-kind donations or in-kind projects. So that's what we wanted more information about. And to be fair to Council Member Lighty, I mean, it was a two to one vote. So, you know, there was some really good discussion about that.

Okay. Councilmember Goff? I just wanted to add to that that in the past also the DICE Board has supported the People's Pow Wow, but we were told that this year, I don't know, through some technicality that I don't quite understand that the DICE Board could not make a donation or fund in any way. So that's probably why they, I mean, I know that's why they went to the OAF because they came to us, the DICE Board first.

okay well that's interesting they're also a valuable partner in our community uh yeah and and it is something we do want to revisit okay council member timely manner um that was discussed as well um city cook small made sure that we had all the information ahead of time um and she did discuss the dice board that it was already brought up to the dice board um and the communication throughout um so and i i just want to make it known i did i voted no just because the information was laid out into in the packet for us and so i believed that all the information was what was already provided for us and i didn't see a reason to table it so that's why i voted no oh you voted no to table not no to fund okay good clarification uh mayor pro temp

Thank you, Madam Mayor. If I can just jump in here. Thank you so much. I also used to sit on that committee back in the day. And I just want to say that I am also concerned because they are such a huge community partner. And sitting on the board, I see and know firsthand that funding has been cut DRASTICALLY, VOCA FUNDING HAS GONE AWAY SO MUCH, LIKE, IT'S A STRUGGLE, AND I KNOW ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THEY LOOK FORWARD TO IS THAT NORTH GLEN PARTNERSHIP RELATIONSHIP, WHICH IS WHY THEY KEEP HAVING THE EVENTS HERE. IT'S NOT REALLY, I KNOW YOU CHANGED YOUR WORDS, IT'S NOT REALLY A PERK, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE FUNDING GOES DIRECTLY TO HELP KIDS HERE IN NORTH GLEN, AND, YOU KNOW, AND I SEE THE NUMBERS, AND OUR Detectives, our police officers, they work very closely with the Ralston House. There's a lot of kids, unfortunately, I say unfortunately, that they need the service, but fortunately, there is a place like this, and they're located right here in Northland, you know, the main facility, so to speak. There's a new one that's going to open. It's a consolidation of a couple locations as well. but they also get sponsorship from those cities, which is one of the ones that also gives a lot, even though they're not in Northland. So I just want to continue to advocate for that because that is a longstanding partnership and relationship that I think is important to not, cut their requests short, if possible. Thank you for letting me speak to that.

So you were speaking specifically about the Ralston House?

May I clarify one point? Sure. I do want to say we're not kind of cutting anything. We're not spending less money, if that makes sense, than we have in previous years.

What was their request?

I don't think they had a request. Yeah, they just laid it out. They didn't actually come with an ask.

Well, they always want the top.

Which, insider hint for those on the OAF, if you have requests, put it in there because then we have more information to go off of, you know.

Well, I assume they laid out the packages then. That's what they normally do. They did, yeah. Okay.

But I'm just saying we didn't reduce the amount that we have, we kind of match what we've given in previous years.

Okay, well, they usually ask for the top sponsorship if possible. I do know that. So, yeah, that's, I mean, thank you for reconsidering it.

Yeah, I think the more, it feels less because we didn't do spring. So as an annual donation, I think it is less because we missed the spring fundraiser.

Again, I would have to go back and look at the information to clarify that that is accurate.

Okay. From my experience it is but that's okay. Councilmember Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just have a couple thoughts, questions, concerns around this. As I've never sat on the OAF board, but I do sit on the Finance Committee and the Legislative Committee, which are very transparent boards, and we have our own website. You all do have your own website as well, but maybe you could put, like, a rubric or pass your current level of donations so the rest of council has a clarity into what you're doing. Because we haven't had a report out, really, in a couple months, weeks, whatever. And I'd also love your internal process as to why we give to certain, I see the grant process and the criteria on our website, but it doesn't seem like, it does seem like there's an extra layer happening internally that is more from, that is in addition to staff's recommendations. And so I think, I don't know about everyone else on the dais, I won't speak for them, but I would love to know more about your processes and making those decisions. Thank you.

That makes sense. Yeah.

Good night.

Yeah.

speak to that, too. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, kind of in this process, I did sit on the board last year. I was not the chair. I am the chair this year. And I was reminded, again, since Council Member Lighty came on, we've had really good discussion, really robust, argumentative discussion. It's been good. that we had not had in the past. And it did bring up for me, like, hey, we do need to really do more to kind of onboard new council members. And certainly, transparency. If we can put this information on our website, that way people know where the money is going, the organizations, things like that. I'M MORE THAN HAPPY TO DO THAT, SO I APPRECIATE ALL OF YOUR KIND OF INPUT.

THANK YOU. MY FINAL COMMENT AND THOUGHT AND FEELINGS ON THIS, TO BE PERFECTLY HONEST, I'M A FIRM BELIEVER IN GIVING BACK TO OUR COMMUNITY AND SUPPORTING THE ORGANIZATIONS WITHIN OUR COMMUNITY, SPECIFICALLY THE PALAO A lot of many volunteers are from Ward 1, so I'm particularly interested in that. So maybe if anyone on the AOF board has any questions, I know there is a fellow Ward 1 council member on there, but I'm also happy to chat about any of that, as well as Ross and House, you know, Beers and Brats, I believe, you know, anything within our city, I believe our name should be on there, not anyone else's. Thank you.

Remind me who the third person is.

Council Member Kondo.

Oh, Council Member Kondo, did you want to weigh in at all?

Yeah, I'd like to let the other two members weigh in.

I think that our chair pretty much summarized most of the high points. Again, we're just trying to figure out with 20K and reaching about the midpoint in the calendar year, just making sure that there are monies available for other organizations that may apply in the last six months. As far as The piece regarding Ralston House, yeah, I think that's one of the things that we do is we look at, as part of our assessment process, what monies or items of value were given previously. And so generally, we try to not cut back, but either stay at a same level or in some cases, organizations may have just increased the prices for the amount, say, for example, to have six seats and what have you. And so part of our conversation, which ties in with what was mentioned earlier about building relationships and the value that comes out of that, in addition to the criteria that's already listed on the website about direct benefit to residents, we also have conversations around that piece as well. What is the value add? when we do have council members participating in certain gala events? And is that really going to bring value that merits that additional amount that we pay for? So for example, the gala event for CASA, I think last year was $2,500. And when it bumped up to $3,500, we had a conversation to figure out, OK, is it worth it or is it not? And we obviously decided that we would And obviously, we also look at who goes to these events as well. We are certainly going to not pay any money for seats where it's not well attended by council or staff. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. When are you guys meeting again? Oh, OK. um i i i'm again going on past experience that there's a difference between um the grant program and the event sponsorship program and the event sponsorship program definitely there's a history of ask right there's like a calendar of events that we anticipate each year for the most part i mean on occasion something pops up but it also kind of dies out at some point in the year and the grant process is completely different um and so it's the committee's split on those two things and so you guys were discussing sponsorships which is different than the grants correct correct yeah okay and and we'll make sure that we you know going forward uh you know one of the things we talk about is uh

kind of having a calendar of typical kind of events. We'll make sure that that's included in part of our process.

Okay. Has anyone on the committee attended the powwow in the past? No. Okay. I was just wondering, has anyone on council attended the powwow? OK.

I don't believe they've had an event in a while, though. I know with COVID, it kind of they kind of stopped doing events. If if I recall, I'm totally off.

They've had events. Yes, I attended very briefly during my campaign season. They do a beautiful job. It. If you haven't, I recommend... So what I struggle with, and I raised my hand just to point this out, is one of our criteria is the organization cannot be associated with any personal interests of a member of city council or a city of North Glen employee, and that would be deemed a violation of the ethics policy. And so I get really excited about this event, and so I'm not sure if that would... fall under that criteria or not. And so I wanted to bring that forward as well, because that was a conversation that we were having as a committee, is what this criteria looks like and how we follow it appropriately, if that makes sense. And then also, I appreciate that you pointed out the grant application process is different than the event sponsorships. That was also something that we needed to provide a little clarity on as well.

OK. If you haven't been, I have attended the powwow and I do know that the they are our residents and they often come here. And when I thought about this, I was like, Ooh, it'd be great to have them back. Cause when they perform in a council meeting, it's, it's really, it's amazing. And, but, you know, knowing that their connection with the city and that also it aligns with our values are, you know, everything that we talk about with diversity and inclusion and And we do a lot of proclamations around all sorts of different members of our community. And I think if I could encourage the OAF to reconsider that one, I would, I think it's highly valuable and it would be a benefit add to our community. Okay, well, council member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just had a few clarifying questions. I'm hearing contradictory things from our OAF members and what's on the website. I just want to clarify. The website says we have a $25,000 budget, not $20,000. Which one is correct?

The event sponsorships budget is $20,000. The information on the website is for the grants program, and that is $25,000. Okay.

And it says applications for the 2026 grant process will be available soon.

correct the grant process has not been opened for 2026 yet okay um do and will we have like like any kind of communications about that going out going forward yes okay great before the process is opened thank you you're welcome thank you thank you um that is interesting because the sponsorship we don't include our budget for that should we add that to the website or no SURE, WE CAN, I'VE BEEN TAKING NOTES, WE CAN DEFINITELY UPDATE THE WEB PAGE. YES, AND THE COMMITTEE IS ASKED TO TALK ABOUT THE PROCESS AT THE NEXT MEETING, SO YES, WE WILL REVISIT EVERYTHING. OKAY.

COUNCILMEMBER NOWICKI?

YEAH, AGAIN, THESE ARE GREAT IDEAS. LIKE I SAID, THE ONE THING I DID SEE THAT MAYBE there's things I think we can do to really kind of strengthen us. You know, I think the inherent tension with this, with OAF, it's a great organization. There's just such a small pot of money. You know, so it's like, how do we spread $20,000? I mean, that's, you know, when we talk about $83 million budgets, you know, $20,000 is chump change. So that's the, and the challenge is, you know, at least the thing I'm always thinking is kind of how is this beneficial to North Glen? You know, but that can look very different. Is it monetarily? Is it, you know, how is this beneficial to the residents? Is it providing space for community? Like the powwow event, things like that. So I just want to, you know, in these discussions, and again, I do really commend Council Member Lighty for kind of bringing some of this up because it does, you know, what is the role of government? All of these things kind of come into the room. So, you know, I do want to name that. And again, I appreciate all your feedback about this.

Great. My time on OAF was great and I felt like it was a lot of money and it was a lot of fun to give away. So I felt like it was the best committee to be on. And so I look forward to hearing about your next meeting. All right. City Clerk Small, do you have any updates tonight? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I do not have any reports. All right. Acting City Manager Jason Loveland.

One thing that I will mention is thank you for the acknowledgement of the audit effort. And I want to acknowledge Joanne Koenig, our Deputy Finance Director, who really does all of the work on a day-to-day basis and really leads the team at a high level. So thank you, Joanne.

Yes, you're here. Thank you. We appreciate you. City Attorney Hoffman.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council. I normally don't comment on things in public comment. But when something is dramatically wrong as a matter of law, I feel the need to at least clarify that the discussion about a stormwater fee, whether it's a good idea or not, it is not a tax. And there is a great deal of law in the state of Colorado about the distinction between a fee and a tax. And really, a fee is charged for a particular government service. Here it is a stormwater fee to address storm drainage, whereas taxes generally go to distribute the general burden of government. and so i don't want to get too far into the law other than to say that the stormwater fee is most clearly a fee and not a tax under any definition of tax under colorado law thank you appreciate that clarification all right the finance report let's see it april 2026 update acting city manager loveland will present this to council

Thank you, Mayor, members, Council. I'll go through this pretty fast since we've put a lot of numbers up there on the screen today. But as mentioned, this is through April. I will kick off with the sales and use tax update. So as you can see on this chart here, I will really through sales that occurred in March that then we collect in April from the tax collections. So Again, we've talked about this for a while now. Flat sales and use tax growth, technically down 0.6%. We'll just call that flat for now, for the first three months of the year. Again, at this time last year, it was also down about 1.4%. I was looking back, starting in July of last year is really where we started to kind of trend downwards and really haven't picked up Since then, although there's some ebbs and flows and kind of some early months, just overall the totality of sales and use taxes is flat. Taking a look at the tax collected by a geographic code, you can see kind of the different performances on the far left-hand side of that is the out-of-state or really the online sales. That's up 11.2% when compared to last year. Overall, this grouping less, I guess, from the marketplace over to the right is down 1.3%. We would expect some of that with business closures. Safeway in particular does drive kind of that downward trend for kind of the brick and mortar locations within the city. be very brief on the fund analysis from one month to the next, not a whole lot changes. You will see on this slide sales tax shows it's up 17 percent. Again, about 16.7 percent of that is the new revenue coming in from the half percent sales tax that was previously going to the water fund. So, overall, while taxes in that line item show are up, Our overall collections across the city are, as mentioned, flat. Total revenues are at $10.9 million, which is up $700,000, which is comparable and attributable to the new tax that's coming over. On the expenditure side of things, you will see some savings across departments. The majority of those are due to vacancies, as we are identifying expenditure control throughout the organization. We do have several positions that are frozen or paused on the rehire process. And then additionally, last year we had several vehicle purchases that were funded through the ARPA funds, which we do not have this year. So the reduction in spending We are on pace and on track in comparison to the 2026 budget, but some of those lower spending percentages that you see on that far right are driven by the vacancy savings that we're seeing from frozen positions and the vehicles. Interestingly, the Water Fund, one item to note, so through April, consumption was actually up 3.5%, So this was midway through our conversations before we declared the drought on April 13th. So we'll continue to monitor that. I don't have maize information, but that will definitely be something that we are keeping track of to see how our messaging throughout the community is working as far as conservation. But through April, consumption was actually at 3.5%. Wastewater funds behaving as we would expect as far as revenue collections and expenditures Same for the stormwater fund And additionally on the sanitation funds the increase in revenue on that side is the increased fee for trash service That was one of my quicker finance presentations and um but all in all from one month to the next uh not a ton to report a lot more information out on our website at the northlandco.opengov.com if you want to take a look and we'll be back next month with a hopefully more positive update on the sales and use tax side of things but that's where we are currently happy to answer any questions any questions for

Nope. OK. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right. We're going to move to the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second. Please open the vote.

The vote is open. Please vote. Councilmember Condo, how do you vote?

I vote yes.

Thank you. I will close that vote and the consent agenda passes unanimously. Okay.

Public hearing CB 2038.

Will the city clerk please read the title bill for an ordinance amending chapter 11 of the North Glen municipal code amending various sections of the unified development ordinance.

I will now open the public hearing on CB 2038. Comments are limited to five minutes per speaker. Is there anyone who would like to speak either for or against CB 2038? Okay, come on forward. Please state your name and address or award for the record and provide your comments.

Good evening. My name is Cindy Wander. My business is Wander Spring LLC. It's located at 11154 Huron Street in Suite 104. I'm here with you this evening to express my gratitude to the City Council of North Glen and to all of the North Glen staff who have been working on the proposed revisions to the Natural Medicine Unified Development Ordinance. I would like to express my full support for the proposed revisions. Your efforts are deeply impactful and will allow my business to begin providing a new healing service. for survivors of trauma, including veterans, first responders, and our community members who have experienced childhood abuse or neglect, or who have been otherwise victimized. As you know, natural medicine practice is highly supportive of healing for people struggling with depression, trauma, PTSD, end of life issues, and addiction. So if the proposed revisions are adopted, I will be able to begin the process of working within the regulated space designated by the state of Colorado to provide deeply therapeutic healing experiences for our community. Thank you for taking the time to review the initial regulations put in place for natural medicine practice and for proposing adjustments to them to be more suitable to the specific practice of natural medicine, which differs significantly from other types of business, such as medical marijuana sales. By making slight shifts in the parameters like location requirements and hours of operation, you are supporting a proud North Glen business of over a decade in its endeavor to expand both operations and its impact for the greater good of the people of North Glen. I'm also pleased to share with you an update that I've completed my nine-month intensive training program in psychedelic assisted therapy. While I maintain a beginner's mindset and receive consultation on a regular basis, I am also entering this working space with significant knowledge in how to safely and therapeutically support people in expanded states of consciousness. I look forward to doing everything in my power to allow for the maximum benefit for healing that is possible for each and every person who joins me and the collaborative team I'm putting together for this work. Thank you so much for your time, for learning about something new, for caring about my business, and for supporting the health and healing of our beloved community. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak either for or against CB 2038? Okay, hearing none, I will close the public hearing. Ordinances on second reading CB 2038 Unified Development Ordinance Amendments. Is there a motion to approve on second reading?

Motion to approve.

Second. Oh, racing, racing to the front line. All right. Thank you. So our Director of Planning and Development, Becky Smith, will provide a presentation on this item. Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor Lighty, Council. Tonight I'm presenting on CB 2038, which is an ordinance amending the Unified Development Ordinance. The UDO was originally adopted in 2019, and since its adoption, we've brought forward multiple amendments and recommendations for Council's consideration and approval. Staff continues to track areas of the UDO that may require revision and bring forward proposed amendments as needed. Staff is presenting tonight on the following amendments, amendments to the natural medicine businesses, setbacks in mixed use zoning districts and various administrative corrections that we have found. So the first one for discussion tonight is the natural medicine businesses. And this was an initiated request by city council after receiving input from a business regarding operational limitations posed by the existing code. and studying natural medicine options. The big changes in the code are that it expands the hours and days of operation for natural medicine healing centers, and it removes the distance constraints from residential properties and parks. The second item for consideration tonight is the setbacks in the mixed use zoning districts. And this was initiated by the Planning Commission. And they found that after we implemented the mixed use zone districts, and we had some come through that they felt that the five foot minimum setback was a little too close to the right of way. And so we've had a couple applications come through and they wanted us to bring back some options for them to consider. And so after studying the issue, they wanted us to bring forward a recommendation for moving from a five foot minimum setback in mixed use corridor and mixed use neighborhoods districts to a distance of 10 feet. The other items for consideration tonight are administrative in nature. So the first one is that in the code, staff discovered that several sections of the minor site plan, which is administrative, actually referred to major site plan. So it's just a correction in language. The second one is we are updating the code to be consistent. So in one place of the code, a public hearing is not required for the vacation of an easement, but then there's a table where it does say it's required. So this is just cleaning it up to add consistency in the code. And then we realized when we had a vested rights case come forward that the UDO did not appropriately reflect the right or correct approval process. And so we're updating the code so that a vested rights case does come forward to city council for approval. And I think this is the final one. But this is just updating the code to reflect the current service area. So the code does reference Tri County Health Department, which was our health department, when we adopted the code in 2019. And now we have Adams County Health Department. And so we're just cleaning up that language. We did go through the proper notification process per the unified development ordinance to let everyone know that we're having this hearing tonight. And Planning Commission did review the amendments on their April 1st, or sorry, April 21st, 2026 meeting. And they've voted three to one to recommend approval of the amendments to City Council. And staff is recommending approval of CB 2038 on second reading. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Does Council have any questions? Council Member Nowicki?

Thank you, Director Smith, for being here. Thank you, Madam Mayor. With regard to the kind of the change, the setback, do you know if kind of increasing that minimum, does that have any kind of impacts on any of that kind of infill development, things like that?

It would impact any new entitlement case that comes forward. So for the development, so the one on Community Center Drive is mixed-use corridor, the Lexan, and that one has a five-foot setback. That one would be considered legal non-conforming. So they are allowed to keep the non-conforming situation on site. We also have one that came through and has been entitled but hasn't come forward for building permits yet. So if they come forward within the time frame of their entitlement, they can construct with that 5-foot setback. Any new application would have to comply with the new 10-foot setback if it's approved tonight.

Okay. Is there kind of a standard? Is five foot or 10 foot kind of the standard?

Yeah, so part of what the Planning Commission tasked staff with doing was looking at other municipalities in Colorado. And there is quite a range of what other municipalities are doing, but we did note that North Glen's minimum setback was really the smallest or the shortest besides the city of Golden. And then there were some that had 20 foot and 15 foot setbacks, but the majority had a 10 foot for this type of use. And so that's where the planning commission felt really comfortable with that 10 foot. They're still working to achieve that mixed use by but setting it back from the road a little bit further.

Gotcha. And I appreciate taking my questions off the cuff and having the responses. Thank you.

And I think that's it. Thank you so much. Please open the vote.

The vote is open. Please vote. Councilmember Condo, how do you vote?

Yes.

I will close that vote and CB 2038 on second reading passes unanimously.

Congratulations.

OK. CB 2039 on first reading. Will the clerk please read the title? A bill for an ordinance repealing and reenacting Articles 1 through 8 and Articles 11, 15, 16, 17, and 21 of Chapter 10 of the North Glen Municipal Code, adopting by reference the International Building Code 2024 edition, the National Electrical Code as adopted by the state of Colorado, the International Plumbing Code 2024 edition, the International Fire Code 2024 edition. The International Mechanical Code 2024 edition, the International Fuel Gas Code 2024 edition, the International Residential Code 2024 edition, Metro Cohort Model Code, the International Property Maintenance Code 2024 edition, the International Existing Building Code 2024 edition, and the International Swimming Pool and Spa Code 2024 edition.

Motion to approve.

Second.

We are ready. All right. Well, welcome back, Director of Planning and Development, Becky Smith. Hello.

All right. So tonight is the first reading of CB 2039, which is to repeal and reenact several articles of Chapter 10 that were listed. by City Clerk Joanna Small. Adopting, so sorry, Chapter 10 of the Municipal Code, adopting by reference the 2024 International Codes and the National Electric Code as adopted by the State of Colorado. In addition to the adoption by reference of these codes, the CB 2039 also adopts recommended local amendments. At the April 20th study session, staff provided an overview of the 2024 International Energy Code with amendments developed by the Regional Building Policy Cohort also known as the 2024 metro cohort model code or mcmc and then also or following that meeting on the may 4th study session staff provided an overview of the remaining 2024 ibcs including the amendments recommended by the building department north metro fire rescue district and our public works department staff is planning to provide a formal presentation at the second reading when we have the public hearing which is scheduled for July 13th. And we're happy to answer any questions at this time if there are any.

Doesn't look like we have any tonight. Thank you. Please open the vote. The vote is open.

Please vote. Council Member Canto, how do you vote?

Yes.

Thank you. I will close that vote. And CB 2039 on first reading passes unanimously. Thank you.

Discussion item tonight, 104th Area Plan Update. Director of Planning and Development, Becky Smith, will introduce this item.

Thank you. Tonight's discussion item is really a midpoint check-in on the 104th Area Plan. This is one of the city's priority sub-area planning efforts stemming from the city's comprehensive plan looking up a vision for North Glen's future, which council ratified in April of 2023. The 104th area plan actually covers four of the 11 prioritized areas of focus identified in the plan. It includes the Marketplace, the Marketplace Annex, the Boondock Street vacant property to the south of O'Mara Ford, and the Bannock Street and 104th area and they were all selected for their proximity to one another and their potential to positively impact the city. Tonight, Blake Young, our lead consultant from our team with Kim Lee Horn, will be presenting on the draft future land use map for this area. This map has been developed through a process that incorporated community input, market analysis, and technical constraints review. It reflects a vision for a modern mixed use activity driven destination with retail, dining, entertainment, housing, and flexible office uses. There are a few important points to keep in mind as you review the map. This is a policy document, not a site plan. So it sets the direction for future land use decisions. Actual development proposals will still go through the city's standard review process. Because all of the properties in the 104th area plan are privately owned, this plan will not rezone any property or mandate development It establishes a vision and a framework that guides the city's response to future proposals. We are seeking council feedback on whether the draft map reflects the desired direction for this area and whether any revisions should be considered before the plan is finalized. And following your feedback, Kim Lee Horn and staff will refine this plan, incorporating land use recommendations and an implementation strategy with prioritized action items and identified capital investment needs. Council will then have an opportunity to ratify the Planning Commission's final adoption through Council resolution. And so with that, I'll invite like up to present.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council. Thank you for having me. Like Becky said, my name is Blake Young, for the record, with Kimley-Horn. And we will be going through a quick overview checkpoint on the 104th Area Plan. So, like Becky said, this was identified in the North Glen Comprehensive Plan. But the purpose of the 104th Area Plan is really to establish a vision and a framework for future development. And also to work with stakeholders in the community to establish that vision and then carry that forward into the area plan. quick recap on the community engagement efforts thus far we have held a community survey and meetings with stakeholders and property owners to get some direct direction on the vision of the 104th area plan we've also hosted at multiple neighborhood nights and also hosted an interesting city design charrette which was very USEFUL FOR US TO IDENTIFY WHAT ACTUAL LAND USES COULD GO WITHIN THE AREA PLAN AND SOME IDEAS FLOWING FROM CITY STAFF AS WELL. WE PRESENTED THESE THREE SCENARIOS AT THE PROST BREWING COMPANY OPEN HOUSE WHERE NOT ONLY RESIDENTS BUT VISITORS WERE ABLE TO VOICE THEIR OPINIONS. SO THE AREA PLAN VISION, WE START WITH A VISION STATEMENT THAT IS that the 104th area plan will provide a modern mixed-use retail destination that prioritizes connection and community with an engaging atmosphere for shopping, entertainment, and living. And with that vision, we have six vision columns, if you will. The first one is vibrancy and community, family-friendly and safe, walkability and connectivity. green spaces and landscaping, diverse retail and dining, and economic vitality. We also conducted a market context analysis to understand what the trade area or market was or how it was influencing North Glen and the 104th plan area specifically. So we studied four different sectors, housing, retail, office, and hotel. I'll start with housing. The demand within the trade area is projected to grow to about 30,000 to 59,000 new units until 2050. That need is really small. really specified for townhomes missing middle housing. And then retail consumer spending is also expected to grow by about 21%. And office demand is also projected to grow by about 1.3 to 2.4 million square feet of office space. And that office space is more of the flexible office space, smaller scale, not the suburban-style office space we are all accustomed to seeing. And then hotel, I'll get into this a little bit later, but hotel, the demand is about 750 to 1400 new keys. That is pretty standard across, but hotel typically needs more retail and more housing to support that level of demand. So what exactly does this mean for 104th? For retail and dining options, the strong performance in region-wide and declining vacancies is signaling a great opportunity for the 104th area and is signaling some great movement in the right direction for us. The best fit uses would be dining and food halls, entertainment and experiential retail, and neighborhood serving retail as well. That is all very consistent with what we've been hearing from the community in that survey, neighborhood nights, and the open house. And housing, as As we look at housing, we can use housing as an economic driver to encourage and incentivize new retail. So I'm sure you've heard commercial needs at the rooftops. And so as rooftops come through or new units come through, that drives up the demand for more retail. And then the office and hotel strategy. This is a slightly different take on what we've been using for the 104th area plan. The office demand does exist, but should be phased and more targeted towards medical and flexible space. And then hotels, like I said, becomes a little bit more viable later on in the process as that demand is there. We did conduct a traffic analysis. traffic analysis was conducted in two different intersections, so Melody Drive and Marketplace at 104th. And current conditions right now is stating that Traffic operates at an acceptable level right now at a level of service of D at Melody Drive and a level of service of B at Marketplace. And future theoretical redevelopment traffic is manageable. And so when I say theoretical redevelopment we used a 1000 housing units in terms of growth and 200,000 square feet of new retail as growth and that still is keeping that level of service and at those two intersections as acceptable. And no major roadway improvements would be needed within those intersections through 2035. However, there are some targeted safety changes that would be necessary to reduce illegal turning at 104th and Marketplace. And this is the sort of the big topic for the 104th. It's infrastructure and the biggest constraint that we've seen so far. So I'll start with drainage and stormwater management. The upsizing and or reconstructing of the storm sewer pipes along Melody Drive would be the first recommendation that we would have to start incentivizing new development or retail within the marketplace and 104th. and the construction of one regional water quality and detention pond north and south of 104th or multiple water quality detention facilities throughout the entire area. So there's two ways to go about this. You can have essentially two large ponds or a series of facilities across the entire area plan to absorb that stormwater management. And then these sanitary sewer managements. So not a whole lot of improvements needed here, but we are seeing some upsizing of some minor portions of the sanitary sewer main based upon the final site layout. And when I say final site layout, I mean the theoretical just bringing on more units, not really identifying where and when those would occur. And then potable water management as well. We would recommend a full water network analysis upon final site design. And then also upsizing of minor portions of the water main based on final site design and unit count. So the current zoning map is reflecting, as you all know, a lot of commercial, a lot of multifamily. And the future land use design charrette scenarios identified three different terms or three different phasing options here. We have short-term, mid-term, and long-term. So this was done with city staff during the design charrette to just pull ideas out of land uses and get the creative juices flowing. For short term, it was more mixed use infill, so identifying projects that could occur right now and could alleviate some of our constraints in the sites. And the midterm was focused more so on entertainment and employment. And then the long term was full transformative scenario here. So that informed the draft feature land use map and this land use map is continually being updated as we speak right now and This is just a stop in time of where we are at right now, and I wanted to present to you all this update and get some feedback before we move forward. And so right now, we are breaking out the site into three main categories, so core commercial, COMMUNITY COMMERCIAL, WHICH WE'RE PLAYING WITH THAT TERM, POSSIBLY COMMUNITY MIXED USE TO BE A LITTLE BIT MORE APPROPRIATE THERE. MEDIUM DENSITY RESIDENTIAL, AND THEN GENERAL COMMERCIAL, THAT GENERAL COMMERCIAL IS JUST MORE AUTO-ORIENTED, BIG BOX RETAIL THINKING, BROCERY STORE, ESSENTIALLY WHAT WE SEE THERE TODAY, BEST BUY. And the community commercial or community mixed use could be more neighborhood scale mixed use, so focusing on neighborhood serving retail, smaller scale, there and then potential horizontal or vertical mixed use for for residential. And then the medium density residential is more apartments for rents or that missing middle. We have been hearing a lot from the community that anything over three stories is considered high density and so that four-story threshold is is very strong among the community that's consistent and so when we say medium density residential in this case keeping that to more of a walk-up style residential product so i will stop there and open it up for any questions for you all

Council Member Gough. Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of questions. One is, you know, I know this is in the process or whatever, but slide 13 seems to have the residential on the south of 104th, and then this, the one you just showed us, had it north of 104th. So did that just change over time, or what was going on there? Slide 13 is the future land use comprehensive. You went past it, that one. See number 10 is supposed to be limited multifamily. So is there residential somewhere else on that or is that, that's it?

Yeah, so this is with the future land use map within the comprehensive plan. And the 104th area plan would be an amendment to the comprehensive plan.

All right, thank you. That helps me.

That's a really good catch. Within that area 10, what we found was trying to push more of the multifamily north to create more activity around retail, connectivity, and all of that.

That makes much more sense. And then somewhere in there you said that in your planning for traffic that we would have 1,000 housing units. Can we really fit 1,000 housing units?

That was essentially a test fit to see sort of where we're at in infrastructure. throughout the infrastructure portion of the area.

Okay, so it's like an upper limit or something.

Yep. It was really to give us some parameters, planning parameters to start from before we really dive into the land uses.

Okay, great. Thank you. Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Excuse me. Thank you for being here tonight, sir. With the traffic analysis, that's good news. With regard to the infrastructure slide, it identifies stormwater utility needs, but doesn't kind of go into specifics to final site design. Are there any kind of, i don't know if this is like an in your opinion kind of thing and maybe this is for you director smith are there any kind of infrastructure improvements that the city would need to fund or commit to before private investment is realistic for that area I imagine the answer is yes, and can you just maybe say a little bit about that?

The answer is maybe, or up to you, and how you would like to incentivize or phase development, and what that investment looks like in terms of dollar amounts, and if that dollar amount would then result into a certain level of development. So, you know, talking about completely uh redoing you know a mile of of storm water drain is is much different than just uh maybe creating um a small pond if you will sure to simplify that um okay were you here I don't know if you were here for our council meeting tonight because we're having discussions about storm water

Can any of this discussion be in the context of kind of the stormwater stuff that we're looking at? Like I know we need to make improvements around the city. Is there overlap, I guess? And I'm kind of looking at you because you probably know more than him.

Yeah, my understanding is that the study that was presented to you a week ago was really looking at the existing infrastructure and not new infrastructure. And so that's really the gap that we're trying to cover with the fee increase that was currently being considered.

OK. I'd hate to repair a pipe and spend all this money, and then it's like, oh, yeah, now we've got to go back and open the road up again, and we're going to repair it. is there any way to kind of have it if there's any things like that can, that we consider in this package?

I, so we are including our public works department as part of conversations. And then when we actually get to a point where we have a development proposal on the table, those are things that we would work with them on. If there is a city project that is occurring as far as the capital improvement project, We always do look for some synergies. I don't think it would cover the full stormwater management in the case of 104th, because 104th, the marketplace, the area to the west, all of that was developed before there was stormwater management that was mandated. And so we're trying to catch up from having just paved over and not done anything. So, which, I mean, that was common of development of the time. It wasn't that we were doing anything different.

Sure. Okay, thank you. Synergy, that was the word, too, by the way. Thank you.

Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I feel like it's Groundhog's Day for me sometimes, because the Planning Commission is, I feel like I'm, I just want to reiterate some of the stories, or the things I brought up at Planning Commission, just for everyone's edification. The 1,000-unit size was, again, a ballpark, and things come together, but Aspendale is almost 200, so... Their footprint's not that big. So you can imagine, I lived in the Boston area, and there was a stop and shop grocery store. They had a few chains. It was a big footprint. They had a lot of parking. Well, they demolished it. They had mixed use. Still had a huge grocery footprint and other shops, but they were able to build 1,000 units of that in one space, which is smaller than the marketplace. I'm not saying that's North Glen. I'm just saying... Yeah. The other thing I brought up was obviously 104th Traffic Enforcement. There's some stuff coming up with that. Stormwater money I brought up at Planning Commission because, again, even if you had this ideal growth in that area and everything goes according to plan, you're going to trigger the water treatment plant to have to go through $2 to $3 million worth of changes just because of that. So, you know, there's... between and I checked on the stormwater the five projects they listed they weren't necessarily in that area because I was like oh yeah we just talked about this let's and I referenced the map and this we don't know everything we can't see um but they weren't specifically in this one area so that's not to do it twice in a row and then uh I just brought up um oh one of uh planning commission folks brought up uh I think Beth brought up how they kind of measured and did a survey for Melody and Marketplace versus like 104th. And, you know, there's some changes coming to 104th, maybe the ramps up too. But she's like, I think it's a little busy down there. So she pushed back a little bit on why we didn't really do that. But otherwise, yeah. I as I was looking at it from the Planning Commission spectrum I just think it's really ideally placed for hopefully these things work out and these plans get into motion at some point because I really think above 120th there's a lot of competition and below there is some but there's this gap I feel like this place could really benefit from, especially even just hotels. Everything's 120th and above, basically, and it's a few miles. But also we'll see what Thornton does with that 88th Street development where it's a big plot of land. I mean, that could eat into competition. But I just want to thank you and just report those out since I don't know how many people watch the Planning Commission.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Temp? Thank you, Madam Mayor. Welcome back. I did get this presentation at our last NURA meeting, and I know NURA folks had a lot to say too, but we're in general agreement with it. Some of the questions that came up or some of, I think you already relayed, was like to keep it lower profile housing, more of that missing middle, which we need. And, you know, the fact of the matter is we need to diversify our sales tax base in Northland, and we don't have a lot of ways to do that or areas to do that. So this is key that we get this right to make sure that we kind of maybe lead with that housing because that brings the people in. A lot of big companies we know maybe don't establish their base in the marketplace because we don't have that housing nearby. And I know the mayor went to a conference where they probably talked a lot about that as well. It's tough because I know, as you mentioned, our residents are like, we don't want more housing. But however, there's a need for those first-time families to have this type of housing. So with that being said, it seems like the right way to go about it. One thing that we talked about in Newark, I know we've talked about it in city council meetings, and it looks like it's on one of the hand-drawn ones, is having some kind of a park space I guess it is in the long-term transformative, yeah. Some kind of like community gathering space. I don't see that on the draft future land use, but maybe it's just because that's just the model that it is. So is there still some intention to have something there? You know, we talked about like the, oh gosh, the Thornton Outlets that has like a park or other spaces. I mean, we've all mentioned it to death here, so...

is that we we are showing an overlay so it would be a green infrastructure overlay and that would include parks or stormwater facilities whether it's above ground or underground and then on the uh the underlying land use would be that commercials so however you know developments would occur that it would um remain flexible. So whether it's one large park or maybe it's to smaller parks that are that separated by by building or or something else. But I think in the revised land use plan right now we have that green infrastructure overlay almost exactly where that transformative central green spaces right now.

Yeah, that's great, because that is, we've all talked about like that, just that parking, so much parking and like the lack of connectivity is super important to all of us. So I'm glad to hear that's still a thought that's in there. It's just different here. So yeah, I'm sure it'll look different when that time actually comes. But walkability, connectivity, I mean, these are all things we really need. And having that... potential residential base could help with that. Of course, now I go into all the concerns. I see there's surveys and studies that have to be done, you know, with water, stormwater costs. I mean, those are all definitely concerns in terms of, oh, we love this vision, and it is a vision, but the reality that we need to look at to make that happen and what that's going to cost infrastructure-wise, I think, is super important. One of the things that Neuro brought up concerns to, they thought, that Melody, they weren't so sold on the fact that Melody doesn't need any improvement. So I don't know how anybody else feels about that. It is a high accident, high traffic area. So it's potential maybe there is even more traffic modifications or navigations needed, which is more dollar signs, too. So it's tough because we really need this, especially with our declining sales tax. We need to bring in that kind of experiential identity that we kind of started with PROST. And this is it. So I hope we can make it happen.

You know, I will note going back to the green infrastructure that each of the land uses would allow or not allow because we're doing land use, not zoning, but it would It would include essentially areas for pocket parks or anything like that to be incorporated within that land use. And so that was just sort of providing general flexibility across the entire plan. that no matter where you are, that pocket parks could be an option if a development plan came forward. And going back to our goals of providing that walkability and the connectivity in the open space and connectivity in a sense of not just pedestrian and bicycle connectivity, but actual people connecting with each other in public spaces, I think that's something that we don't want to lose sight of. Um, and then also, um, there was conversations along melody of transforming melody. And right now it is acting like the, essentially the back door, um, or the service road of, of the marketplace. And we have a lot of right, right of way there. And so during, um, during the planning commission meeting, There was a lot of discussion and debate about, you know, what that could look like and transforming this even further and then pairing that with the infrastructure improvements that are needed under Melody as well.

All right. And detention ponds, yeah, multiple versus one, that could tie into open pocket spaces too. I know that was mentioned. Okay. I'm good for now. Thank you. Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Vladimir. First of all, thank you for the presentation. One thing that's just going through my mind is obviously this is a long-term conceptual framework where you're looking at whether we're talking about residential, commercial, what have you. So what was mentioned earlier in a prior question was all about sales tax revenue. I wonder if part of your assessment or analysis you're also looking at the mix of residential and commercial and thinking about what are the proceeds coming from property taxes.

So we do not have a tax, what we would call an impact analysis or a tax impact analysis. But for this, what we're doing in terms of our analysis with traffic, with infrastructure, and everything that follows, is that we're not, so say, using the 1,000 unit number, if it redevelops, we're not trading a one for one or a two for one. So if a development comes in, would be removing units and then replacing those units and then additional units on top of that so i think that was a one clarification that i wanted to make is that specifically with the traffic analysis and in future ideas that come forward it's it's not a an addition on to what we currently have per se It really depends on the development type that comes forward and their plan. But with the area plan being fully, almost fully developed right now, there is a lot of trade-offs there in terms of land uses and tax base. And so we wanted to keep As much of the commercial tax base as possible because that's where a lot of the revenue comes from and then as residential goes trying to make that residential more cohesive and transitional from the single family to the commercial core so adding on to that tax base I think is really important to us in the area plan. and will find its way into the implementation portion of the area plan. So keeping that first and foremost, because that is what a marketplace really deserves.

The reason why I asked that question, I'm kind of reflecting back when you know, uh, district 12 came and presented and they talked about revenues and things of that nature. And they were comparing themselves versus district 14. And part of it was that, uh, Adams district 14 is getting more revenue because they had a larger mix of commercial, uh, property taxpayers, as opposed to district 12, where we're predominantly residential. So as I sit here and I think about future city finances and, and, uh, revenue proceeds, You know, it just caused me to think about what is the ideal mix of commercial versus residential that we will need to aim for, if you will, to generate those sort of cash flows to help us continue to be a solvent concern.

Council Member Lighty. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for presenting. I just have a few. I'm not sure if it's a question for you or it's just a general question for my friend on the Planning Commission. And I also kind of just wanted to note this as someone who cannot afford to live in their own ward right now. Yes, we're excited about the residential. Is there a way to make sure that this housing is affordable instead of basically pricing out our residents? Is that something that, I mean, we don't, we have no, we have, I mean, so no, nevermind. They answered.

Well, I don't think we should just hear it. There's like a discussion being had about that.

Not right now. I'm going to take my turn, and then I'll tell you why. So a couple of things. First of all, thank you. This is a lot of work. And it's a very thorough presentation. And I appreciated the director's sort of caveat at the beginning, because my biggest concern is that residents aren't going to understand that this is a vision, not a plan. and a couple things just experience lately uh conversations with the owners of the marketplace experience at the conference with our economic development team the icsc conference it's really hard for me to be like woohoo when we don't own this land so when we own it i have a completely different investment in the conversation because we have more control over it when this is property that doesn't belong to us it's tricky because while i agree with the work that you've done and i like the work that's in this plan i also know that we can put this forward and the owners of the marketplace can say yeah that's cool but we're not doing that we're doing this and this and this and this right now i know that the plan is designed to be shared so that they get an idea of what the vision is my concern though was all that community input and making sure that the residents understand that just because they said they want to park there doesn't mean they're going to get a park there and just because they said it in a survey and it ended up in this plan and council voted yes for the plan that still doesn't mean they're going to get a park there and it also doesn't mean that anything is going to change in the next two five ten years from now and i think that's the hardest part of this because you did incredible work and then i do think it's important for council to know because we're looking at budget but this work was 225 000 the sub area plan for section 36 was 148 000 that's a lot of money that we're spending to get an aspirational plan that I don't know is actionable. And so it makes me a little nervous. I can also be inspired by it. I can also say, yes, that makes sense. We should definitely have that. then i also wonder what your thoughts are on the longevity of this plan because if we if it takes us five ten years down the road to actually have the conversation will this analysis still be current so i have two thoughts okay um so my first thought is i have done quite a few of these yeah i've done i think in the 20s okay all across america

And I think we're at about an 85% or 90% hit rate when we do a sub-area plan that it is successful or at least gets the ball moving in the right direction because these plans take tens of 20s of years. And I think the first step is you all being proactive in this process to begin with because Developing this kind of process signals two things. First, it signals that North Glen is ready for change, ready to reinvent what they already have. And two, it signals to the market that all are open for business and i think those two are very important things i used to work for the development side before i came on to the public side working with with public jurisdictions and on the development on the private development side the number one costs for development is not hard costs or soft costs for construction it's not interest rates it's the unknown when going into a jurisdiction and not understanding or knowing what planning commission or what city council or what the people want. And I think that is something that holds a lot of water in terms of the return on your investment into this plan is setting that in stone while also providing the flexibility within the plan to respond to developers as they come forward. And so that is something that typically gets overlooked in a process like this. I know it's just colors on a page right now, and it's very fugazi or up in the air. you know, establishing this vision really signals out to the community, both private and public that, um, that we want change and that we're ready for it.

Okay. And that makes sense. Um, and I think, I think that is all true. Um, and I think we've started those conversations with the landowners and the developers already I guess I just want to make sure it's clear to our residents because I can think of another property not in this plan that residents have a lot of opinions about what should go on that corner and they're going to be disappointed in what goes on that corner and so thinking about how we manage expectations in that way. I do think it's beautiful work. I just have a hard time being like, woohoo, it's going to happen for sure, because we don't know that. And I can't imagine a hotel going up in our city. I just can't. I think it got debunked already because we had it in the Civic Center master plan and it wasn't going to be viable there. So I don't know. So going forward, I just want to make sure we're all clear on the plan. So we talk tonight. We give you some feedback. It sounds like you've got some yes, we love it kind of feedback. And then it goes. and there's going to be a final recommendation and implementation strategy. And so it looks like eventually there might be a resolution ratifying whatever planning commission decides, but this is still not a site plan. It's just a vision plan. And if a developer comes in and says, I'm not doing that, that's just the reality of things, right?

Well, if it's adopted as an amendment to our comprehensive plan, Then if a developer comes in with a rezoning to do industrial, for example, and it doesn't meet what we've outlined in this plan, we would look at this and say this doesn't meet the criteria because the criteria in the UDO has several factors And it will say conformance with the comprehensive plan. And so a property owner, since this is all individual property owners has the right right now to do what their zoning allows. So they don't lose that right, they could come in with any sort of application under their current zoning. What this will do is also say we're also open to these other land uses. And so if they think the market is right for another land use that we have outlined in this plan, they'll feel more comfortable coming forward with a rezoning to ask us if we would approve that. The other thing that this plan will sort of suss out but not at a like very deep level is some of those infrastructure improvements like the stormwater, where if at some point the city is in a position to consider or Nura those types of improvements to make a project more development ready. Those kinds of things can also incentivize development by removing some of those barriers.

That's perfect. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Well, that just wrapped it up so well. Thank you. Gave us some purpose, and this was great. Thank you for your time and your work. It's well done.

Thank you.

Thanks. Oh, Council Member Nowicki.

I do think Council Member Lighty deserves kind of a response to the affordable housing piece. I mean, because everyone just kind of shook their heads. Are we that cynical already?

Mm-hmm.

I'll just say, we, I don't know how many years ago, talked about developing this area that the city actually owns. And we had discussions about that. And there was, I can't remember what the term is. where we could do like rent control or whatever workforce housing yeah something and um we nobody no one was interested in even building it with us you know owning it and they didn't have to buy it and all that so in this situation where we don't the city doesn't even own it i mean it is theoretically possible if we did like crazy amount of incentives but WE ARE CERTAINLY NOT IN THE POSITION RIGHT NOW TO SPEND MONEY ON SOMETHING LIKE THAT. UNLESS THERE IS MORE GRANTS FROM THE STATE OR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OR SOME KIND OF MAGICAL MONEY SHOWERING DOWN ON US FROM HEAVEN, BUT I MEAN, I DON'T KNOW THAT IT'S NECESSARILY CYNICAL, BUT IT'S JUST THAT THERE ARE SO MANY OBSTACLES TO IT RIGHT NOW, AND IN SOME CITIES DO, YOU KNOW, MANAGE TO PULL IT OFF, BUT I THINK THEY PROBABLY HAVE MORE RESOURCES THAN WE DO, AND I DON'T KNOW IF ANYBODY ELSE WANTS TO MAKE ANY OTHER COMMENT ABOUT THAT, BUT I MEAN, I'M ALWAYS GOING TO KEEP THAT IN MIND, BECAUSE I'D LOVE TO BE ABLE TO DO IT.

ANYBODY ELSE WANT TO WEIGH IN? GO AHEAD.

Like, as the mayor was saying earlier, like, this is all aspirational. And so, like, the addition of affordable housing is also aspirational at this point, right? I would also say that it depends on the future the state goes in and, like, what monies are there and who's at the helm. of that and like making decisions around affordable housing and what that sort of looks like from a top-down perspective. Because I don't think, I mean, if we're all following, you know, the discussions around data centers and sort of incentives, I think more and more residents are understanding sort of tax breaks and things are going to incentivize different things coming into communities. And so, I don't know, I think there's just like a lot of future discussion to be had on like what that looks like. Whereas like you know, residents aren't getting tax breaks, but like corporations are to like do different things. I think it's a very nuanced conversation, but I think it's aspirational, but unlikely.

Well, and again, that's kind of my point. If this is an aspirational document, then maybe Council Member Lighty raises a good point as exploring what that would look like, and I know she wants to say something.

I just, I think I need to clarify my question a bit. I think it was more of And honestly, we've also kind of answered it, but just for the benefit of everyone. I think it was more of, do we have a way to not make a giant apartment building that was mentioned earlier that I think the lowest rent is two grand a month? I think that was more of my question is, is there any way that we can regulate that at all? And the answer is no, clearly. But I think just for... Resident purposes that kind of stinks like it just sounds really bad Being a future. I mean I'm human but like just moving forward in the future that just doesn't sound encouraging It sounds kind of doom and gloomy so that stinks So I am kind of on the board with on board with the are we that cynical like are we able to put that in our? aspirations of making it so that people can actually live in our city and

anyone want to take that so i would just i would say looking at that and i will let corey chime in if i say anything wrong but since this is an aspirational document there's nothing that would prohibit you from saying and we would also be open to affordable housing i wouldn't want to put in the plan or i wouldn't recommend you can put in whatever you want I wouldn't recommend mandating that it be affordable because that could reduce the flexibility that would allow the redevelopment we want to see. And since this is a guiding document, it is not the place to regulate or mandate any type of affordability. I don't know if Corey wants to clarify.

No, I think that's spot on. You can certainly put something. But as the mayor talked about, this is also private property. THE CITY COULD CERTAINLY LOOK AT ADOPTING WHAT I WOULD CALL MANDATORY AFFORDABLE HOUSING TOOLS, LIKE HAVING A CERTAIN NUMBER OF UNITS IN EVERY DEVELOPMENT BE AT A CERTAIN PRICE POINT. THAT IS CERTAINLY A TOOL THE CITY COULD LOOK AT IN ITS TOOL BOX THAT HAS A PRICE AS WELL IN TERMS OF HOW IT IMPACTS DEVELOPMENT LONG TERM AND WHAT AND WHO MAY DEVELOP. BUT THOSE TOOLS ARE AVAILABLE IF THE CITY WANTS TO EVALUATE WHETHER TO USE THEM.

Well, and did Dr. Goff, you mentioned that that had already, that was discussed previously with this development, right?

Right. I mean, I guess what happened then, and it'll probably happen again, I mean, things could change in the future, but if you require like 10% of the apartments are whatever, affordable, whatever, then you do have developers that don't want to do it because they'll lose money. So, I mean, there's a question of other kind of incentives. Could you give them whatever? So I'm not saying it's impossible, but it does take some creative, I don't know, thinking and maybe a lot of resources.

Council Member Seavers?

I'LL JUST SAY ONE OF MY PROPERTIES I MANAGED HAD LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS. IT WAS MANDATED THAT 20% OF THE PROPERTY WAS AFFORDABLE. ALSO A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF PERCENTAGE OF IT WAS TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH HAD ABILITY TO PLACE PEOPLE THERE. And, you know, this was a 389 unit. They had townhomes. They had small apartments. They had big apartments. So it does make people less flexible. But also, what's your version of affordable, again, changes where you're living. Mm-hmm. I WAS IN THE WESTERN AREA AND YOU CAN'T GET A PLACE FOR UNDER A MILLION. SO WE'RE SUPER AFFORDABLE COMPARED TO THAT. AND LIKE LEXINGTON MASS, IF YOU LOOK, IT'S VERY COMPETITIVE SCHOOL MARKET. IT'S VERY PRICY. SO STILL, WE'RE EVEN AFFORDABLE COMPARED TO THAT. AND WE'RE AFFORDABLE COMPARED TO A LOT OF OUR NEIGHBORS. SO IT'S TOUGH, BUT, YOU KNOW, PUSHED MYSELF OUT.

Those are all our hands. Thank you. Thank you for the discussion. We appreciate it. Have a good night. We're back to public invited to be heard. Anyone else want to join us? Opportunity for public comment. Statements are limited to three minutes. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak to council at this time? Okay. There being no further business, we are adjourned.