City Council - Regular Meeting

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 Leidy? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Luke Minharamasa? Here. Council Member Burns? Here. Council Member Seavers?

Here.

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

So we do have one deletion from tonight's agenda. The youth commission update will be rescheduled to a later meeting. Are there any other additions or deletions? No. Okay. We will move into 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, is there anyone signed up to speak to council?

Yes, Madam Mayor. There are several individuals on the list. The first person is Michael McGuire.

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

Yeah, my name is Michael McGuire, number 3623 East 133rd Court.

I'm going to pause you for just a minute. Can we make sure his microphone is on? Is it on?

I got a green light.

Okay. It just wasn't sounding loud enough, but if we're good, sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.

Okay. Yeah. Thanks for this opportunity. I'm here to talk about the Fusion Swimming Team. My son is on it, and... he's done very well in it in the short time he's been there. Um, and I don't think anybody here realizes what a value you have in coach Jim.

He's back here.

I used to, uh, coach kids sports. Um, and I know what the sacrifices of it, and you have a, a gym and you're letting him go. I think, uh, This is a mistake. I'd like to ask a couple questions. This email I got a couple days ago about the funding for the swimming says there's a $100,000 shortfall. Now, I'd like to ask a couple questions. Do you get funding from the state or the county or anything to help fund this?

So I'm going to say no to that, but public comment is not a back and forth conversation. We listen to you. We take notes while you're talking.

Okay.

Thanks.

Well, I don't have a lot to say, but I'm just saying that I think this is a big mistake. Okay. And I'd like to make a quote from a former statesman. Ten words that are hated the most. It's, I'm here from the government, and I'm here to help. Ronald Reagan, 1981. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person on the list is Alec McGuire.

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

Hello, I'm Alec McGuire, 3623 East 133rd Court. And just about a year ago, I walked into tryouts for the first time with enough confidence to sink a boat. Immediately that was all evaporated when I first walked into the water and saw all of my future teammates coming and passing me in the water. But my coach, Coach Jim, had more confidence in me than I had in myself. And he said that soon I'll be able to swim as fast as all the other teammates. And the first few months were kind of rough. I was pretty weak and wasn't able to swim as fast as the others, wasn't able to catch up. With all the help and support of my teammates and with my two coaches, Coach Jim and Coach Bailey, I was able to pretty much catch up with all the others and be as fast as them. ALSO, COACH JIM, HE, TWO YEARS, TOOK HIM TWO YEARS AND HE SAVED THE SWIM TEAM FROM WHAT WAS BARELY NOTHING LEFT OF IT TO ALMOST 50 PEOPLE CURRENTLY ON THE TEAM. AND TOGETHER THESE KIDS AND ATHLETES HAVE CREATED A STRONG TEAM AND A BOND. AND WE DON'T THINK OF IT JUST AS A TEAM, BUT ALSO THE SECOND HOME. If you shut down the team, you aren't just canceling a sport, but you're also taking away the family that we've built together. Also, I've asked many of my teammates on if the team does shut down what they plan to do, and many of them say that they don't want, they're probably not going to continue swimming due to other teams not being as welcome to newcomers as Fusion has been to us. SO I'M ASKING YOU TO PLEASE NOT CLOSE YOUR DOORS ON US AND KEEP THE NORTHLAND FUSION ALIVE SO OTHER KIDS CAN HAVE THE SAME OPPORTUNITIES AS I DID AND SO DID THE OTHER TEAM MEMBERS. THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. THE NEXT PERSON ON THE LIST IS KEN THAIN. Okay. We'll go to the next person. Alrighty. The next person is Alexa Dickin.

Hi, please. Uh, welcome. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council.

My name's Alexa Dickin, 13031 Trenton Place. I would beg you not to cancel the Fusion swim program. I left my vacation early to come speak, so maybe the city will hear us out and see how much this team means to us. I want to talk about what swimming means to me and my journey. Swimming has always been one of the most important things in my life. I've always been in the water for as long as I can remember. As any other kid, my parents put me in some lessons. My lessons instructor said I should join a competitive swim team. So that's where I started my journey on Kudas at seven years old and until I was 13 years old. On this team, it started out positive, but as I got older, I experienced situations of bullying. And what made me leave the team was an abusive coach who pulled me out of the water, screaming about two inches from my face, acting like she was going to punch me. The team wouldn't do anything about it, even though it was witnessed by board members and by other coaches, including the head coach and the entire team. And the team did nothing about this. I never felt safe after, and I was scared of my coach, which is a feeling no kid should feel about their coach. The next thing they did was look for a new team. The options we had was move to a team 30 or 40 minutes away, Or the other option was quit swimming as a whole, which anyone who knows me knows I love swimming more than anything. Then we found Fusion 15 minutes away, which seemed like a better option. We saw Fusion got a new coach, so we tried out and gave the team a chance, and this was the best decision I could have made. At first, we were worried of starting this team, not knowing if it was going to last. I joined the team, and I instantly loved it. Everyone was so welcoming. As soon as I met Coach Jim, he was exactly the kind of coach I wanted and needed, and I knew I wanted to swim for him. I have made great friendships and relationships on the team. Everyone has become family, and we're such a supportive group of kids. From going from a team where a coach was abusive to meeting my head coach, Jim, he is the type of coach any kid would want. He wants us to be the best we can be, and he's here for you in the sport, but also outside of it, too. He's helped me with various things, like my struggles in the sport and so many other things. I talk to him like he is my family, and he's been my mentor through the process. I have this dream of swimming in college and possibly making it to the Olympics one day. In June, I started recruiting for college swimming, and it's been going amazing. But now you're wanting to discontinue the team, and I won't have a team. The city seems to think there's many teams in our area, but there's wrong. There's not. If you want to drive 35 minutes to an hour, those are your only options. The only other team there is is CUDA's, my previous team. I will not go back to that toxic team, and I don't think any other kids should have to go because that's the only option. Discontinuing this team isn't just sad. It ruins things like friendships and relationships and so much other things. If you ever decide you want to rebuild the swim team, you won't be able to because you won't have a coach as willing and loving of the sport as Coach Jim. You're crushing kids' dreams, and not only kids' dreams you're crushing, you're crushing Coach Jim's. His dreams are to make kids better and take kids to the Olympics. I beg you to not discontinue this team. This is a team any parent would love to send their kids to. This team has went from zero to around 40 or 50 kids and is continuing to grow. It would be stupid to get rid of it when you see it's expanding. And if you've ever walked into one of our practices, you would see the amount of love we share for another, and you would see all the hard work we put into every practice. you keep other recreational activities that could also be declining your city's money as but and you keep these activities because you see how it's thriving and making your city look good but not giving our team a chance if you walked in you would see how good our program is keep our program raise our prices do something i know there's a solution for our team because you keep other activities just find a way to keep our team thank you for listening and considering it thank you

The next person on the list is Tenzin Kongsar.

Welcome. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council.

Hi, my name is Tenzin Kongsar and I beg you not to cancel the Fusion swim team program. I care a lot about this team, whether it comes to raising prices and other stuff, but please don't cancel it. Swimming has been a part of my life and is very important to me. In 2021, I was eight years old and I tried out for this team after passing my swim lessons. It was fun and I had some friends until the coach decided to leave us. My friends saw this and gave up on swimming for this team. I was the only one that hadn't left the team because something inside told me that there was going to be hope in a good and loving coach. Apparently my guts are right because in 2024, I met my coach. His name is Coach Jim. At the very start after swimming with him, I knew he was going to be a very good coach along with Coach Bailey and Coach Gugu. These coaches make me feel loved. And also every single day I see the same swim meets and gradually they become my best friends. They are so kind. loving and sweet. This team has built good friendships and memories. We would hang out like going to haunted houses and trampoline parks. I've had this dream that my friends and I were going to the Olympics one day together and we would work our butts off at practice and do well Meets if you discontinue this swim team. I don't know any other swim team that is near my house in school Also, I have to be separated to the people that make me smile every single day We also have a tradition when it is that someone's person's birthday I would tell everyone that it is that person's birthday without that person knowing and at the end of practice I would tell everyone when to sing it makes that person so happy and They would tell me that they feel loved and they feel like they belong here, which is true Everyone deserves people that care for them and cheer for them at meets. If I have to go to a different swim team, it will never be the same again because the people get along with our coaches and we build good bonds with them. Whenever we do good at meets, they would be so proud of us. If we think we did bad, not only are the coaches going to say we are going to train harder and get better, They will literally comfort us and still tell us that we did good when you think you did bad. These coaches and swimmates mean everything to me. If I get separated with them, I will never be myself and I will be crying knowing I might not see all of my friends on the same swim team we used to be on. I beg you to raise the prices but not to ruin friendships and good bonds with our coaches. Thank you for considering this.

Thank you.

The next person on the list is Delilah Viano.

Hi, I'm Delilah Viano, 5863 East 123rd Drive, and I'm here to ask you to please keep our swim team. I've been swimming with North Glen since I was four years old back at the old rec center before it got torn down, and all I ever wanted to do was join the swim team. And once I passed my swimming lessons, I was finally able to, so I joined in the summer of 2019. But in 2019, COVID happened, so the swim team was forced to close. But then it came back because that's what we do. We're fighters. We come back. We faced the sickness and the economic hardships that COVID brought. And then there is a time where we had no set coach and I was forced to quit because I was not getting any training there or anything. But then we got new coaches at Coach Jim and Coach Bailey and Coach Gugu. And Coach Jim just pushes you to do the best you can. And he always makes sure that he shows up for everything, even if I don't want to show up. He's always there. And now there's another dip in the road, and the response is to cancel it. After everything this team's been through, I think there should be another option than to just cancel it. We can keep going, but a lot of people, me included, don't have really another option. Kudos is not an option for us and I would be forced to quit and I really don't want to. And I have made real strong friendships here on this team. Everyone is so nice and so kind and it's really a good safe space. Especially if you have hard days, you can always come to swim knowing that you have friends here. And I hang out with them sometimes outside. Like one of my favorite swim memories is going to a haunted house with my swim friends. And that was really fun. So please don't take that away. Please don't take away our swim team. Thank you.

Thank you. The next person on the list is Delilah Foster. OK. All righty. The next person is Heather Buckley.

Hi. Welcome. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council.

Hi, my name is Heather Buckley and my address is 443 West 128th Place. Yeah, so I have two kiddos on Northland Fusion and one is 10 and one is seven. And mostly I want to talk about my 10-year-old because my 7-year-old is on the team, but she tolerates swim. So mostly it's my 10-year-old that I'm mostly here for. So my 10-year-old, she just competed at the age group state competition. And she did very well. I'm very proud of her. She's very proud of herself. She is thrilled about how she did. And so she's very happy. But yeah, I just want to talk about our journey with Fusion, you know, and even before Fusion. So when, how we got to Fusion, she tried team sports, like from when she was little, she tried soccer, she tried baseball, she tried basketball. She tried all of those team sports and team sports were just not for her. She has struggled with some social things and there's things that she struggled with. And we got to a point where we just weren't sure where to go next. And We just happened to be at North Glen at a birthday party. And there were signs up for a open house for this new head coach that was just hired. And the open house was next day. And we, Caitlin and I looked at each other and we were like, Hey, hey, let's go to this. And when we went and listened to Coach Jen, we were like, yeah, this is it. And we tried out and she had just, you know, she was going to Northland for swim lessons. And so I knew that her skills were like right around where, you know, tryouts should be. And so she tried out and she made the team. And here we are two years later, just two years, she went from swim lessons to age group state, competition. And so that's, you know, the type of coaching that she has been given. That's, you know, Coach Jim and Coach Bailey and Coach Gugu. That's the quality that has been hired at Fusion. And that is the kind of quality coaching that I would love my kiddo both kiddos, mostly my 10-year-old. At this point, hopefully my seven-year-old as well, but she just tolerates swim right now. But they, you know, that they can continue with. And... That's mostly what I wanted to talk about. And I also want to mention that when my kiddo, my 10-year-old, heard that Fusion was ending, she cried. And I just want you to know that. Fusions is not just a sport. It's not just a team. It's not just any other sports. Some sports and some teams, if they heard that their team was quitting or ending or whatever, like, okay, they can just go somewhere else or find another team or whatever. But it's not the same with Fusion. These kids cried. And it's different. And it's not just, oh, pack it up and find something else. IT'S DIFFERENT. MY KID CRIED. SO SHE'S STRUGGLING WITH IT. I'M STRUGGLING WITH IT, OBVIOUSLY. AND I ALSO AM STRUGGLING WITH SOME OF THE EMAILS THAT I'M GETTING FROM THE CITY WITH REASONINGS BEHIND THE CUTS. ONE OF THE BULLET POINTS FROM AMANDA PETERSEN MENTIONED THAT ONE OF THE REASONINGS FOR THE CUT WAS THAT only 10 of the kiddos on the team are currently Northland residents and so my address might not say that we are Northland currently residents however my kiddos do go to a Northland school they are Northland you know they are going to a Northland school I am Adams 12 teacher, Adams 12, five-star school teacher. So I do service Adams 12 schools, which includes Northland students. We shop at Northland stores. We eat at Northland restaurants. We live in Northland. So our address might not be Northland, but we live here. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person on the list is Nate Hill.

Welcome. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council.

Hello. So my name is Nate Hill. I'm not a actual resident, but I participate in the fusion program. So I'm speaking on that. I just want to address to the council kind of considering the nominal cost that the fusion team incurs versus, you know, the little impact to the, you know, $2 million that impacts. So, We received an email from Director Amanda Peterson highlighting the city uses the beneficiary of service model, which is included in the Northland user fee policy. It's built on four foundations, the market evaluation, format pricing, or market evaluation, beneficiary of service, cost of service, and data information. She included that the program, like swim teams, have a target of a cost recovery about 120% to 140%. The key word is target. In the email, she focuses on the fusion team and also points out to reach that cost recovery, it would exceed all the other regions and be well above the market rate. Something that she does not identify is the program assessments are based on the target, not the set limit. On the same page outlines the three, four foundations. There's one exemption stating other influences factors include grant sponsors, other outside funding sources that may increase the cost recovery percentage. The key part is says market rate can also increase or decrease the cost recovery amount based on what the market can bear. So that 120, 140 based off of the other regions, the swim teams is not reasonable. So today the agenda includes a reduction of .3, 300,000 to reduce the program. Just consider the programs mentioned at 100,000 expense. So while this does have an expense, it does also have potential for revenue. So if you do look at the total budget, you do have a revenue and expenditures. While this program is net, you could capture more revenue sources, and you're, again, kind of netting out the elimination of it. Also, you know, it seems like, not sure, but the rec department is kind of a target. So if it is a current target, you know, there is a current vacancy of the recreational coordinator that reported about a $63,000 salary expense in 2025. While this may or may not be optimal, this is about 60% of the cost of the team. Also looking at the Parks and Rec Advisory Board that was held last week, the fusion program was not included on the recommendation to the advisory board, yet the director presents it today for the agenda. One of the other things that you need to consider is if you do choose to eliminate other proposed like alternate programs of non-competitive care swim team Additional swim lesson and availability those also have cost so while you may be removing a little piece of You know the swim coaches you're still going to have additional cost for those swimming classes and those other availabilities Since 2024, the survey that the city paid for continues to show a trend of lack of communication of events in participating states that they would have attended if they were aware. Even though this was in 2024, in 2026, the city board minute in April of this year mentions residents are still voicing the same communication problem. If the city believes this program is a burden and a failure due to not getting enough participations, they should not punish the program and kids for the city's director's continuous failure of communication. Thank you.

Thank you. The next person on the list is Sonam. Okay.

Okay.

We'll go to the next person, and that is Lauren Weaver.

Welcome. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council.

Hi, my name is Lauren Weaver. We're 1017 Savona Avenue. I've coached and taught swim lessons for years. Because of this, my girls have been very, they've swam since they were babies. They've always been ahead for their age, and that's come with a ton of limits and red tape. Fusion was the only team to take a chance on my girls who were four and six at the time. They could already swim all four strokes, but not legally. Coach Gugu took my girls from swimmers to fast, competitive kids with beautiful strokes. They progressed so much in skills and confidence in the year since we found this team. It's our family, my kids. are truly loved by their coaches and encouraged daily by the older members of the team. My girls beg for extra time after practice to hug their coaches goodbye, snuggle Coach Bailey and tell them about their day. The coaches have formed a team that is strongly bonded and encourage each other daily. The Fusion coaches and team members are an integral part of shaping my children's futures as they grow. We are not North Glen residents. We live in Fort Lupton and drive 36 minutes every day passing several other teams along the way. This is because these coaches are worth it. We are not... members of this community but we are actively involved we frequently eat and shop at local businesses we participate and bring friends to all the city events we may not live here but we still consider this part of our community i'm teaching my girls to fight for what they believe in i hope that the city can recognize the impact of this fusion swim team that it has had on their community and the broader reach um i plead that the city reconsider their decision to eliminate a team that means so much to our family and our community Do you want to or no? All right. Thank you.

Thank you. The next person on the list is Curtis Dickin.

Welcome.

Hi, Curtis Dickin, 13031 Trenton Place. Good evening, City Council. I want to start by begging you to keep the Northland Fusion swim team. I know if you spent any time with these amazing student athletes, you would be not cutting this program. Instead, you would be doing everything in your power to make this program successful. You would promote it throughout the city, and you would be trying to get business sponsorships. If you were... Sorry. And you would be selling this team to all the families that do swim lessons with you. On average, swimmers have one of the highest GPA and graduation rates of all students. Males carry an average of a 3.55, and females carry an average grade point average of 3.7. They learn dedication, work ethic, discipline, and become masters of time management. These kids are more driven than most adults that I know. Many days they wake up, swim, go to school, swim, eat dinner, study, and sleep. They should be role models of how amazing young people are when they are given the correct tools. These aren't kids that are out partying. They aren't selling drugs. They aren't spray painting underpasses. They aren't running from the cops. They aren't drinking and driving. Significant considering Adams County accounts for almost 23% of youth crimes in Colorado while only accounting for 9% of the population. That's the highest in the state. North Glen last year alone had 167 juvenile arrests. I KNOW THE BUDGET ISSUES ARE REAL BUT I'M GUESSING THIS DECISION TO CUT THE TEAM CAME FROM LOOKING ONLY AT WHAT'S CONTRIBUTED BY THE SWIM TEAM FUNDS OR BY THE FEES. WHAT YOU'RE FAILING TO SEE IS THE INDIRECT BENEFIT OF THE SWIM TEAM. WE TRAVEL TO SWIM MEETS, WE TALK TO PEOPLE ALL OVER THE STATE AND ABOUT HOW GREAT NORTH GLEN IS. WE'RE POSITIVE AMBASSADORS FOR YOUR CITY. IN ADDITION, WE NOW PAY MEMBERSHIPS TO THE NORTH GLEN REC. OUR FAMILY OFTEN HAS DINNER AND SHOPS IN NORTH GLEN. IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS WE'VE SPENT SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS AT THE REC CENTER JUST ON PERSONAL TRAINING. AND WE WERE PLANNING ON DOING MORE OF THAT. FAMILIES GO RUN ERRANDS IN YOUR CITY WHEN THEIR KIDS ARE AT PRACTICE AND FAMILIES GO OUT TO DINNER WHILE YOU'RE AT PRACTICE. SO WE SPEND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN YOUR COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTING TO YOUR TAX BASE AND TO THE JOBS IN YOUR COMMUNITY. OUR FEES SHOULD BE RAISED. I GET THAT. I'VE MENTIONED THAT TO OUR COACHES ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS, BUT I DO CAUTION ON RAISING THEM SO HIGH THAT THE ENTIRE TEAM BASE LEAVES BECAUSE WE DO ADD TO THIS COMMUNITY. I KNOW THERE ARE DISCUSSIONS ON HOW MUCH MONEY THIS WILL BE SAVING THE CITY, BUT HAVING BEEN IN FINANCE FOR 25 YEARS OF MY LIFE, IT NEVER WORKS OUT TO THE AMOUNT THAT YOU'RE TOLD. I MEAN, IT JUST DOESN'T. YOU GOT TO CONSIDER THE FIXED FEES THAT ARE in the pool itself. You're still going to have to heat the water. You're still going to have to heat the building. You're still going to be paying lifeguards. You're still going to be paying for chemicals. You're going to be doing all this stuff and the space is going to be empty because in the evening when the swim team's not there, nobody's there. Finding a new team, as many have said, is not as easy as you think. CUDA typically has a 70 to 100 kid weight limit or weight. The Boulder swim teams are at capacity because so many kids have left the CUDAs. Brighton is fairly far from most of the teams and it's a small and in a very old facility that's not very nice. The program you have here, is great, and cutting it, you're going to cut a lot of kids' dreams. When we came here two years ago when this team restarted, meeting Coach Jim and having my daughter go through an abusive situation, we just knew we were in the right spot. We were nervous about coming here because of the track record of the team having ended previously. But we were promised by members of the city staff that this team would be here until my daughter went off to college. So I hope the city keeps their promises. You're not just cutting bad kids' dreams. These are good kids that should be role models throughout your community. I mean, they're all great kids. And if you spent any time with them, you would see this. I challenge any of you to show up to one of their practices and do what they do. And frankly, if this team is cut, I will not spend dollars in your city anymore. We're not a resident, but I will have no reason to come to your city. And my daughter has more followers than the city of North Glen. And frankly, I'm going to encourage her to reach out to all the swim families and tell them when they come up to meet VMAC, don't spend dollars here because you're not living up to your promises. We were promised that this team would exist. Let's find a way to make it happen. I know we can raise fees. If you broadcast it to the businesses in this town, there's got to be a way to find some fundraising. There's got to be a way to do some sponsorships with this team. These are the kind of kids we should be promoting, not cutting. So I hope you guys do the right thing. To the coaches, I know I'm out of time. Thank you for everything. You guys have been amazing. To the kids, be proud of everything you've built here. This is amazing.

Thank you.

The next person on the list is Stacy Dickin. Welcome.

Good evening, and thank you for allowing me to speak. I'm a swim mom, but tonight I'm also speaking as a parent who has watched her child find a place where she can feel safe, accepted, and valued. My daughter Alexa joined Northland Fusion two years ago after being a part of a previous program where she experienced verbal and emotional mistreatment as well as bullying from teammates. Swimming is a sport that requires enormous dedication, and that experience almost took away something she loved. But Fusion gave that back to her. At Fusion, she found coaches who coach without favoritism. She found teammates who support one another. She found parents and families who do not judge or make others feel uncomfortable. Most importantly, she found a team where she could work hard to grow and feel like she belonged. That is why it's so devastating We joined Fusion with the understanding that as long as there was a head coach, the team would continue through our child's high school years, Alexis now a junior, in hopes to swim in college. College recruiting has already begun. This is not a convenient time for these athletes to suddenly be told they must start over. They now have to find a new team, a new coach, new teammates, a new place to belong. And they are limited competitive USA swimming programs with limited space and pool availability. North Glen Fusion is more than a budget line. It is more than a pool. It's a community. It's a place where children have invested years of hard work, discipline, commitment, and heart. What is specifically painful is that the swimmers and families who were directly affected were not meaningfully consulted before this decision was made. I understand that budgets matter, but I ask you to remember these are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. These are children. These are athletes. These are years of hard work and dreams of competing in college. Once the team is disbanded, the relationships, culture, and opportunities that have been built here cannot simply be recreated overnight. I am asking you to reconsider this decision. Please listen to the swimmers and families. Please explore every possible solution before taking away a team that has meant so much to so many children. Because for the families in this room, North Glen Fusion is not just a program. It's a team. It's a community. And for some of these kids, it is a place where they finally found that they belonged. Thank you.

Thank you. The next person on the list is Santiago Buitrago.

Hello, my name is Santiago and I am a Northland resident. This swim team helped me discover how much I love swimming. I loved it so much that I decided to quit soccer and focus completely on swimming. My coaches have always been patient, supportive, positive, and flexible with me and all of my teammates. They have helped us work through challenges together as a team. When I first joined the swim club, I didn't know how to swim butterfly and my breaststroke was really bad. My coaches taught me how, and they encouraged me to keep trying even when it was hard. Because of their help, I got faster, stronger, and more confident. Swimming is my favorite sport, and this team has given me so much more than just faster times. It has helped me make friends, learn teamwork, and believe in myself. I hope you will continue to fund this swim team so that kids like me and many others can have the same opportunity to learn, grow, and fall in love with swimming. This team has meant a lot, and if you cancel it, it will be very difficult to keep going. I might have to quit and many others. It will be hard to find a new swim team that is close to my school and my house. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.

That's OK. The next person on the list is Teresa Wilson.

Good evening.

My name is Teresa Wilson. I live in Ward 4 in Thornton, but I spend a ton of money at Cafe Rio. There are multiple times a week. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and city councilors. As a public finance professional with over 27 years of local government experience, currently serving as the finance director for another Denver suburb, I completely understand the challenges of making difficult service-level decisions to solve budget shortfalls. Been there, done that doesn't even describe my career. Staff's decision to defund the North Glen Fusion Swim Club was made in a very uncaring and non-transparent manner. Uncaring because the decision was communicated at the very end of the current season with no time to transition the club to a new operating model. non-transparent because the decision was made in a non-collaborative fashion without any involvement from coaches and parents. Parents had no idea North Glen was experiencing a budget shortfall and that this decision was even being contemplated until last Wednesday. There are options worth exploring that would reduce and hopefully even eliminate the general fund subsidy of the North Glen Fusion Swim Club. They include increasing monthly swim club fees. This is something that could be implemented immediately. Implementing cost cutting measures such as adjusting coaches schedules to avoid overtime expenditures and reconsidering how travel related costs are handled. These are also things that could be implemented quickly. Applying for grants and seeking donations. After some minor searching over the weekend, I've already identified six funding opportunities specific to sports and swim teams, and that's just a start. Acquiring grant and donation funding would take some time, and I'm willing to help in this area as much as the city would allow, pro bono. Grant funding comes with reporting requirements, but we're not talking federal funding, so the administration burden would be light. And donations can be made in a tax exempt fashion under IRS code 170C1 with the right argument for swim team as a governmental function within a city run recreation department to meet the public purpose analysis required for tax exempt donations. I'm happy to help in this area as well. These are great ideas that would result in minimizing and hopefully eliminating the general fund subsidy. Beyond these options, if the city's desire is to devolve the North Glen Fusion Swim Club into an independent swim club model, this is not something that can happen within the timing notice provided by city staff. We would need time to work together to determine the feasibility and logistics this would require, then implement the new model. If the current decision stands, it is akin to a death sentence for the club. Please commute this death sentence and direct the city manager to work collaboratively with coaches and parents to implement these options, reduce the subsidy and save the North Glen Fusion Swim Club. And I would just like to add a quick antidote. My 13 year old daughter has only swam with Fusion for one year. She can already swim the 50 free faster than her 18 year old sister. That's the impact of Fusion. Thank you for your time and consideration this evening.

Thank you. The next person on the list is Shana Martin.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Sheena Martin, 1692 East 131st Circle. Our daughter started on fusion 16 months ago. She was just swimming because she was born a fish. And when a lifeguard pointed out that she had natural talent, we were introduced to fusion. It soon became a place for her to grow, to belong, and to have others pour into her growth as a person and an athlete. Because of this, a nine-year-old's mental health has been changed for the better. Because of this, a nine-year-old girl has a passion and an outlet and a place where she can identify that she can have a team and a healthy life now and into the future. Through this program, she qualified for two state events in February. She had been swimming for six months at that point. This past weekend, she represented North Glen swimming five events at state. And this was also just an incredible outlet for her because she really truly had hopes of continuing in this program. The news of this program closing is devastating to this audience and to more who couldn't be here tonight. Our daughter is just one example of so many kids who need the benefits of a smaller club. Parents who need the benefits of something local. So we're not commuting, not pouring our money into other cities, not trying to balance multiple kids and multiple activities. And in a place where kids get lost, being part of a number, not part of a team. We came to North Glen on purpose for targeted offerings. We're part of summer camps. We joined with a rec center pass. Our other children are in sports. So aside from SWIM, the loss of this will have significant impacts, not just on us, but the connection that we have to the city. And we share the concerns with the transparency and the lack of that as it's related to this decision being made. Please reconsider options to sustain this team. Please keep something that's this positive. Please allow this opportunity for all of us to be ambassadors for North Glen, for our children, Please reconsider the impact that this team makes as it grows for the health and wellness overall in the communities that this program serves.

Thank you. The last person on the list is Bailey Martin.

Hi, my name is Bailey Martin from East 131st Circle. Fusion has been a really good swim team for me because I need a place where I can just be interactive and make friends that can actually care about me. When I first started swim lessons, I was really scared. But then I got the hang of it, and I started swimming, swim lessons in the lap pool. And then Fusion Lifeguard came up and actually said to my parents, your daughter's really faster than the other kids. Have you recommended, have you considered fusion? And my parents looked into that and they're like, oh yeah, we should put her in that. So I tried fusion. I tried out with Coach Jim. And It just, this swim team has really changed my life and made a big impact on me because Fusion has been a really good place where I can just reset my mind by swimming and I can just be surrounded by friends and people that I love and Fusion is my family even if we don't live in Northland and it just has been really good for me because I need more of interactive and moving and stuff so like when I have really big emotions I can go to Fusion and that helps me get my feelings out and I just really hope that you reconsider not canceling this team. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the audience that didn't have a chance to sign up that would like to speak to Council at this time? Please come forward. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to Council.

My name's Chris Porter. I live at 117th and 11731 Lincoln Street, just on the other side of the park, right next to that monstrosity of a building you guys are building over there. I have a giant hole in my backyard. You guys dug up, or your contractor dug up a cavern in my backyard with a main power line going through it three months ago. I brought it to Jesse's attention. I've emailed him. I've text messaged him. It is filling up with water. 7,000 volts is going through that box. I need it fixed immediately. I don't even want to go in my backyard. I mean, it's frustrating. Also, whatever contract you guys hired to do that parking lot is awful. They filled the entire parking lot. There's no curb. All the waters, I sent Jesse videos of the water flowing down that hill into my backyard. And also that water is filling those holes near those big power lines. And that's a massive concern to me too, because all of us are going to lose our power that live in that area. And again, I had a bug spray guy come by. So he can't work in my backyard because there's an open power line sitting right there. It had happened while I was out on a vacation. No warning, nothing. They just said, hey, we need to get in your backyard and started digging. And again, that was three months ago. The water concern, Jesse said it has civil plans. I don't think it ever happened. If it did, the contractor's not following them because again, they filled that entire parking lot on the east side up to the brim. So the water's just going to flow right over the side uh another thing is you guys are putting in um mulch that's just going to fill with water and all that mulch is going to end up on the east side of the park which would be better because all it is is noxious weeds on that side so that's another concern we've actually CONTACTED YOU GUYS BEFORE ABOUT THE NOXIOUS WEEDS BECAUSE YOU DON'T MOW THEM DON'T DO ANYTHING THAT'S JUST WEEDS OVER THERE SO AGAIN I BROUGHT THIS TO JESSE'S ATTENTION NUMEROUS TIMES AND SOMETHING'S GOT TO BE DONE ESPECIALLY THE HOLE IN MY BACKYARD MY BACKYARD NEEDS BE I MEAN I DON'T GUYS HAVE EVER SEEN IT BUT THE HOUSE WITH THE STRING LIGHTS THAT REALLY NICE I PUT A NEW GAZEBO THERE SPENT A LOT OF MONEY IN THAT BACKYARD AND NOW IT'S TRASHED SO THAT'S ANOTHER CONCERN OF MINE AND THE CONTRACTORS. I LET THEM KNOW THE CONTRACTORS ARE COMING IN ABOUT 5.30, 5.45 IN THE MORNING, AND I TOLD THEM IF IT HAPPENS AGAIN, I'LL HAVE TO CALL NORTH GLEN PD BECAUSE THE CITY HAS A MANDATE NO CONSTRUCTION CAN HAPPEN BETWEEN 7 O'CLOCK AT NIGHT, 7 IN THE MORNING. THEY'RE SHOWING UP AT 5.45, 6 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING ON SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS ALSO. SO IT'S TOUGH. I'M TELLING YOU, IT'S TOUGH TO TRY AND GET A LITTLE BIT OF SLEEP WHEN THOSE GUYS ARE DOING THAT. BUT THE BIGGEST, YOU KNOW, AGAIN, THE DRAINAGE, AND THEN the noxious weeds. And one other thing, I mean, I don't know what the city manager does, but just watching her on the cell phone during the entire meeting was irritating as hell. The kids, I mean, I don't know how much you manage the city, but listen to everybody. I mean, you guys have been pretty focused up here. I mean, Joanna, you know, again, everybody's been focused, but she hasn't. And we finally got something right, it sounds like. I didn't even know about this program, but INCREASE MY TAXES, I'LL PAY FOR THAT BEFORE I PAY FOR ALL THE HOMELESS PEOPLE IN THE PARK. BECAUSE THAT'S, AGAIN, NEVER HEARD OF NORTH GLEN FUSION. I'VE LIVED THERE FOR 21 YEARS, AND I SAY I'LL PAY MORE OF MY TAXES TO HELP THEM OUT BECAUSE IT SEEMS LIKE IT'S A GREAT DEAL. SO THAT'S IT. Thank you. Congratulations. So again.

Mr. Porter, can we make sure we have his contact information? Can you give that with staff before you leave? Sure. Thank you.

Awesome. Keep it up, guys.

Is there anyone else in the audience who didn't have a chance to sign up that would like to speak to council? Come on forward.

Hi, my name is Xander Ray. I live at 1777 East 99th Avenue. I've been swimming with fusion for about two-ish, three-ish years now. And I've just been devastated by the sound that everything's been closing down. I've made more than teammates, more than friends. I've made family here. I treat some people here like my brothers, my sisters, some guardians. And I recently competed in a swim meet. I competed in the Silver Swim. I wouldn't have been able to get there if it weren't for Coach Jim, Coach Bailey pushing me, keeping me to get better, keeping pushing me, telling me to do better. And without them, I wouldn't be where I am now. And hearing about other teams like the Kudas and hearing what they do, I don't know if I have any other options if this team gets shut down. And I was thinking, I'm sure we could get sponsors. I'm sure there's a lot of people. I would like to help. We could help do fundraising. We could do stuff like that. But just this team means a lot to a lot of people. I think it would be very devastating for a lot of people if it just gets shut down out of the blue. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak to council tonight?

Welcome. I'm Emily. I live at 123rd Drive. My daughter has been swimming with Northwind since she was four. She's 16. This is heartbreaking. And there's 50 kids. And if these 50 kids are swimming, they are not getting in trouble. They are high school kids who can't get in trouble. They're too busy with swim. It is their life. And to take it away... I was so shocked when I saw that. We had no idea. I mean, this is our life. We don't live in North Glen. We are here at North Glen more than we are in our city. We are here every day. And this is our life. And so I am asking you guys, please give us a chance. We will have sponsors. We will fundraise. We just need a chance to keep the team.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak to council tonight? Is there anyone on the phone that would like to speak to council? You can press star six to unmute at this time. Okay. I'm hearing none. I am going to go off protocol just a little bit. Can the coaching staff please stand up? Are you here with us? So can you introduce yourselves to counsel, please? Please come forward. Actually, I'd love to meet you. We've heard a lot about Coach Jim.

Yeah, I'm Coach Jim. Jim Sharp, I moved out here August 1st, two years ago, to take over this team. I first came out to North Glen when my son and his family moved out here, two grandsons. We flew out here once a month for a year, every month, and would stay for a week. I came up to North Glen to check into swim lessons for my grandsons. What's your name? And I said, Coach Sharp. Time out. Retired Coach Sharp, Jim Sharp. And they asked me, what did you coach? I said, swimming. They said, oh my God, our aquatics person wants to talk to you. We need a swim coach. So I thought, well, that's great, but I don't live here, you know? Three months later, we made the decision to move out here. And knowing that possibility of a job still available, I called up and told them we were moving. They were very happy. And one thing that I've always done is, I guess it's in my DNA, but I rebuild programs. I've done that multiple times. I've placed kids on the US national team. And my vision for this team, in a quick two years, from five kids to where we are now and what they're accomplishing at the state level, that people are recognizing what North Glen is doing. And we're growing, we're getting better, and there's a lot of room to grow beyond this. When I was called and told that we needed to have a budget meeting. I was told that it was a budget meeting looking into next year what we needed to do. So I thought, okay, I left the senior state meet that was going on at that time and came down for the meeting and I wanted to be told that they were gonna cut the program. And the aquatics coordinator, Sarah, she and I, over two weeks ago, had sat down and already had a plan on increasing our dues because we knew that the program needed to bring in more money. And I explained that to Amanda when we had our meeting. But I think, as Mrs. Wilson said, there are other avenues with grants and donations and things of that nature that can be done to continue the program and raising the dues. It's not cheap to run a program, but when I came out here, when I was told what the salary was, and I was told it was a salary, I thought, you know, that's okay. I'm a retired teacher and coach from Indiana, social security pension, I'm good. You know, so I wasn't worried about it. But then when I got here, I told them it was an hourly. And I explained, I said, well, if it's an hourly, I don't know of a coach that works 40-hour weeks. And the hours that I put in at home away from the pool, I don't log those hours. I mean, that's something I do.

But...

um aside from that you know i go on for hours i do get windy as i told bailey but i think there there's a lot of room for growth and i i think there are other ways other avenues to make this program work and be sustainable in the future thank you can you introduce your coaching staff yes this is my coach bailey peterson And Gugu is my other coach, Gugu Tin. She handles our real littles, five-year-olds to eight-year-olds. And then Bailey and I coach the kids between nine up through high school. And we've had college kids come back in the summertime. What Alexa said, I've heard from other kids about how they're treated at other teams. That's not something I will stand. We're a group, we're a team, we're a family. We grow together, we stay together, we move forward together.

Thank you. I really appreciate your time. I'm going to take a quick moment because I know there might be a little bit of confusion about what happens next. This item is not on our agenda for tonight. The next time we are talking about the budget, which will also be this topic, will be August 17th. I know I speak for council when I say thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for saying such wonderful things about your team, how it's a family, your coach. I was so impressed, I know all of us were, with especially the swimmers that came forward. Your voices do matter. That is what this whole process is about. we appreciate it we've already started some conversations about some creative problem solving here but we have not made decisions and unfortunately it will not be discussed this evening so i wanted to thank you for coming and know that the next time we're going to be talking about this will be august 17th but thank you again we really appreciate it thank you we do have other guests in the in the audience so council's going to move to presentations we're going to honor the july 2026 waterwise award so if council will join me down front my glasses Welcome Jenna to the podium.

Wonderful.

Hello, everybody. Hello, Mayor Lighty, council members, and everyone else who's sticking around this evening. My name is Jenna Gregg, and I am the Community Outreach Coordinator for this city. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for this opportunity to present the awards for the North Glen Neighborhood Beautification Program this evening. For those who aren't aware, this program was established in 1998 to recognize residents who have done an outstanding job of making their homes and yards beautiful. The city is divided into eight separate areas and nominations are received from residents and neighbors throughout our community. Our volunteer judges then make their way throughout each street to determine that month's winners. The winners are chosen in June, July, and August and receive a large lawn sign to display for a month. And then council recognizes the winners here at the summer meetings. Each winner receives a framed certificate and then a keepsake yard sign. We have to take that big one away, unfortunately. This year, in alignment with the city and state's drought concerns, North Glen residents can receive an award only in one category, and that is our Waterwise Yards of the Month. This is awarded in accordance with our citywide water conservation efforts. These yards use less turf, more water-tolerant plants, flowers, trees, and shrubs. The Waterwise Yards also tend to include additional use of rock, mulch, and other landscaping materials. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to present the seven July winners of our North Glen neighborhood beautification program. If you are one of the I believe we've got four winners left with us this evening. Please come up to the front after I call your name. And we will present you with your certificate and your sign. And then you will take a picture.

We have someone for photos tonight.

Okay, awesome. A picture with mayor and council as well. So Our first Waterwise Yard of the Month goes to Tanner Lutz at 11271 High Street. Tanner, come on up.

Everybody smile, take several. Great, thank you.

Our next winner is Ernest and Peggy Rivera at 11341 Clarkson Street. They were not able to join us this evening, but let's celebrate their accomplishments. Up next, we have the Ortiz family at 10921 Mildred Drive. Would you like to come and join us, Louis?

Perfect. Everybody look at me and smile. Keep smiling. Thank you.

Up next, we have James and Nancy Falk at 10983 North Glen Drive. And I'll say they're in my neighborhood, and I walk past their house a lot. I love it. So James, come on up. Congratulations.

Now, Jim, because you're on the taller side, can I have Joshua switch with Jody? Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Everybody smile. Thank you.

Up next, we have Kevin and Kathy Flynn at 10949 Rosanna Drive. And unfortunately, Kathy had to leave us. It was running a little late for her. But let's congratulate them. They've got some nice AstroTurf. Next, we have Autumn Romero and John Perez at 10676 Euro Lane. They were not able to join us this evening either, but let's celebrate their efforts. And last but certainly not least, we have Angelo and Susan Hardina at 9853 Alamo Drive. Angelo and Susan, come on up.

That's good.

Everybody smile. Great. Thank you.

And finally, we'd like to ask all of our winners to come up for one group photo. So Angelo and Susan, if you want to stick around. Oh, we lost. That's OK.

I'll work on my Photoshop.

Hey, everybody look at me and smile. Keep smiling.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Okay, moving into Council Communications. We will start with Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just to reiterate what you said earlier, thank you to everyone who came out. Congratulations again to our Water Wise winners as well. Everyone's yards look great. I want to give first a big shout out to staff for the mini city that was put on a couple weeks ago. I don't remember when that was specifically. But my children attended. It was a blast. I know it was very well attended as well. So it was a very cool event. Thank you very much. I want to give another shout out. There's a lot of staff shout outs this evening from me to the city clerk's office. Myself and my children got our passport photos taken. And it was... A VERY GOOD EXPERIENCE FROM THE CITY'S PERSPECTIVE. I DID A MID JOB ON PREPARING FOR THAT. AND MY CHILDREN BEHAVED DECENTLY. BUT THANK YOU TO THE CITY CLERK STAFF FOR ENTERTAINING THEM AND HAVING POPCORN, WHICH WAS I BELIEVE LEFT OVER FROM OUR WARD ONE MEETING THAT THURSDAY. SO THANK YOU AGAIN FOR STAFF FOR THAT. It was very well attended. We had a lot of fun, a lot of positive feedback, a lot of great community building, and it was a really good time. So thank you again for everyone who helped out with that and came out. Just amazing job. And then last week I was able to attend the ADCOG dinner, which is our Adams County municipality sort of meet and greet we do once a quarter and talking about you know, our wins and struggles and just meeting with folks. And it was in a very cool space called Hidden Lake in Arvada. They had a lake. Who knew? It's hidden. But it was very nice to see our peers and sort of talk about all of our wins as a city. And that's it. Thank you.

Sorry. Thank you, Council Member Burns. Council Member Lighty.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you. I wanted to, again, reiterate, thank you to everyone who came to speak. I saw a couple of former volleyball players, and so I was like, oh, hi, guys. So thanks for coming. And it was so cool to see those young kids come out and speak. So thank you. I hope if you end up watching this, you probably won't. Thank you for coming and having that much confidence, because I definitely did not at 8 and 9. We did have our Ward 1 meeting a couple weeks ago. That was so fun. The one thing that I heard the most was the view in Fox Run. So if you ever need a little walk with your dog, come walk through Fox Run. It's gorgeous. Stand at the top of Central Park. you'll get a great little sunset view again i was also at the ad cog dinner it was so awesome to meet with people in adams county including our commissioners here are the things that they've got going on some new ideas that they have as well as some things that they are working through other than that that's all i have thank you thank you i'm trying to do the math here oh council member sievers thank you madam mayor uh

Excuse me, I almost did something there. I will just keep this brief. I also attended AdCog dinner, and it was good. This Thursday. We have a Ward 2 meeting, neighborhood night. So I would wish as many people as possible can come out. It should be good. I know Noiki is going to be very upset with the movie, but it's going to be Hopper, and we're going to have a good time regardless of if he's missing his Mario friend. And then lastly, the 250-150 conference. event this Saturday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It's going to be a really great time. Time capsule from 1976. Contents are going to be laid out. The contents that are going in for 2026 are going to be explained. There's going to be a high school band playing. There's going to be a food truck. There's going to be a bunch of cool stuff. And and they're going to unveil ideal plans for renovation of the park in the next five years so it's going to be a really fun event it's free of course and i believe there are maybe other vendors might show up and give out some free stuff so a great opportunity to celebrate state of colorado america and just the city in general thank you thank you council member condo are you on i am mad america can you hear me yes

Okay, very good. First of all, I want to thank the city staff and everyone involved with our neighborhood nights, which we had held last Thursday. And unfortunately, I think I might have jinxed it when I introduced the band and I made a joke about the weather in Colorado. And of course, it came down cats and dogs. So if anybody in the public is really upset because we didn't have the movie, please blame it on me. I do want to thank the speakers that appeared earlier talking about the Fusion Swim Club. As many of you in council know, and also in the public, I am a swimmer. And so I have that opportunity to see firsthand some of the things that the speakers have talked about. And it really does, I think, kind of hit me at the core. And I know that the conversation is ongoing, but again, it just, I get it. I understand that we have great programs that are really integral for developing people with strong sportsmanship and ethics and things of that nature. So I certainly hope that we will continue to work on this. I'm not going to set any expectations, obviously. But again, I just wanted to share my empathy and acknowledge the issues that were brought forth earlier today. Other than that, I was asked to keep my comments short, so I'm going to turn the floor back over, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Goff.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, we have a lot on the agenda tonight, so I will also keep it short. People have mentioned things I was going to mention. I did want to thank all the residents that came out to speak to us tonight. This is a great opportunity for us to be able to hear what our residents are thinking about and their concerns. So we appreciate the effort that people made. And also to thank everybody who came to the Ward 3 Neighborhood Night event that we had this past week. Both Council Member Kondo and I were able to talk to residents. And I also heard some very positive comments about North Glen from people who don't live in North Glen who come to our events because we do such wonderful things. And we are such great people. So I want to thank the staff for all the hard work they do to make these things a success. And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Roper.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. There's not a lot for me tonight, but I do want to thank our speakers for coming out tonight. Especially, I appreciate the way that adults were role models for our students and letting them know that their voices matter. I also was a swimmer growing up, and so I know the importance of that. And as an educator, I know how important it is for us to keep our children and young people moving. So I hope this is something we can continue to talk about. That is all.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I know everybody said it, but I also want to thank all the speakers. I mean, I was very touched. I was very impressed by those young folks that came up and spoke so eloquently from the bottom of their hearts. Again, it was all said, but they're obviously doing something right to build such great young kids from this program. I'm pretty grateful to have that opportunity to hear them. And my granddaughter is also in pre-team. So I get it. I get it. I see it. Other than that, I'm going to keep my communication short because I know we have a lot on the agenda. I'll just mention two quick things. Family Justice Center construction has begun for the new facility. So that's good news. And there's a new executive director, Amy Russell. So that's going to be moving along a lot quicker than it has been. Good news. And I attended the CML executive board retreat. and did a housing tour of golden and that's all i'll say i'll defer the rest of my communications for the next meeting but i'm pretty grateful to everybody that showed up and spoke so that's it thank you madam mayor thank you uh absolutely i'm not going to repeat anything that has already been said but i am going to add

that while not in the northern region, I did go to the city of Littleton. They have an event called Illuminate and it was their sesquicentennial event and it was very cool. And so it is fun to support other cities with the activities that they're doing. And so anytime you get a chance to do that, it's always interesting because we do a lot of the same things and we do a lot of different things. And then I was going to tee up inviting everyone to our event on Saturday. So please come at Centennial Park right behind Prost. And it is at 10 AM. So we'll see you then.

Let's see. City Clerk Small. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I do not have any updates tonight. OK. City Manager Guyer.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'd like to extend my apologies to the audience for the perception that I was being disrespectful. I WAS WORKING ON TEXTING OUR COMMS TEAM GIVEN THAT I'M ACTING COMMS DIRECTOR TRYING TO GET SET UP TO, NUMBER ONE, TAKE PHOTOS AND MAKE SURE THAT THE FACEBOOK POSTS GET DONE TONIGHT FOR THE GARDEN, THE WATERWISE GARDEN OF THE MONTH, YARD OF THE MONTH WINTER. SO I WASN'T INTENDING TO BE DISRESPECTFUL. I UNDERSTAND THAT'S HOW IT WAS RECEIVED, BUT I WAS working as well as trying to figure out what was going on with the resident who approached council about the hole in his yard so we need to do some work on that and we will take care of that but i just wanted to clarify that i wasn't sending personal messages that was all work related thank you city attorney hoffman good evening madam mayor and members of council i do not have anything to report this evening thank you uh moving on is there a motion to approve the consent agenda

Motion to approve.

I'll second.

Please open the vote. The vote is open. Please vote. Councilmember Condo, what is your vote?

Yes.

Thank you. I will close the vote and the consent agenda passes unanimously. All right.

Up next, we have a public hearing, CB2040. Will the clerk please read the title?

A bill for an ordinance amending Chapter 5, Article 3 of the City of North Glen Municipal Code to eliminate the 1% vendor fee.

I will now open the public hearing on CB 2040. Comments are limited to five minutes per speaker. Is there anyone who would like to speak either for or against CB 2040? No, okay. Is there anyone on the phone that would like to speak about CB 2040? You can unmute by pressing star six. Okay, hearing none, I will close the public hearing. Ordinances on second reading CB 2040, eliminate the 1% vendor fee. Is there a motion to approve?

Motion to approve.

Second. Deputy City Manager Jason Levin will provide a summary of this item. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Before you this evening, CB2040, I'm just going to do a quick summary. We've talked about it a few times, but just to put that one last piece on it. This is an ordinance that would eliminate the 1% vendor fee that retailers currently retain for collecting and remitting the city sales tax previously and historically the vendor fee was intended to help offset the costs an administrative burden to the retailers for collecting and remitting over the decades more streamlined electronic reporting has come into play and other simple tax simplification efforts which is why staff feels that this RETAIL FEE OR VENDOR FEE IS NO LONGER NECESSARY. THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT, AS YOU'LL SEE THROUGH THE STRIKETHROUGH, SIMPLY REMOVES THE PROVISIONS OF THE RETAIL VENDOR FEE, BUT IT DOES NOT CHANGE ANY OF THE OTHER REPORTING REQUIREMENTS REGARDING OUR TAXES. FROM A FINANCIAL AND BUDGETARY STANDPOINT, ELIMINATING THE VENDOR FEE IS EXPECTED TO GENERATE ROUGHLY $300,000 annually to the city, which those additional revenues will help support ongoing city operations and services. The ordinance that was approved on first reading has had no changes to it since we last spoke about it. And staff recommends approval of CB 2040.

Is there any discussion?

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

Yes.

Thank you.

Ordinances on first reading, CB 2037. Will the clerk please read the title?

I'm going to close that previous vote and just announce that the CB 2040 on second reading passes unanimously.

Thank you. Just moving along here. Sorry.

So a bill for an ordinance amending Chapter 7 of the North Glen Municipal Code by the addition of a new Article 7-11 to establish an automated vehicle identification system.

Move for approval.

Is there a second? Second. Police Chief Jim May will provide a summary of this item.

Mayor, Council, good evening. Actually, this will be pretty easy. I'm going to turn it over to Pete and Corey. So if you have any questions, I'll answer them.

Evening, Madam Mayor, Council. Good evening. Tonight, we will start with the Council Bill 2037 on the first reading for the automated traffic enforcement. City Attorney Hoffman and I have been in extensive conversation over the last several months as we know that we pushed pause way back in, I believe, April going into May with the legislative session just to see if there are going to be changes to the actual THE PREVIOUS LEGISLATION TO WHICH I'M GLAD WE DID BECAUSE THERE WERE. SO I'LL HIGHLIGHT THE CHANGES AND MAINLY AND I'LL LET THE CITY ATTORNEY DISCUSS AS FAR AS THE PLACEMENT AND WHY WE CHOSE THE SPEED CORRIDORS AND HIS INTERPRETATION OF THE LANGUAGE specific to Speed Courthouse and why we chose specific ones. Some of the highlights of the new ordinance is that it is registered owner of the vehicle from this point forward, as opposed to having to try to identify the driver of the vehicle. So therefore eliminating the photograph of the driver and only having to take the rear of the vehicle, match it to the description of the car. Now, with the actual speed corridors, when you look at the language and it discuss the amount of traffic, vehicle collisions, and the places that we had previously discussed about implementing the cameras coincide with, and I don't know if you want to talk into this, uh why we chose the roadways in which we did and through all of the data that we have pulled um especially when it comes to traffic accidents 104th and speed coincide with the comprehensive safety plan that you all adopted two weeks ago by the county, which was a multi-year initiative. If you look at the roadways, 104th is by far worst, 112th with speed, and 120th. So we wanted to identify those because we certainly have the analytical data to back up those due to, like I said, the speed and the crashes. and not only the speed, but the percentage of violations that occur on these roadways. So that is why we chose these to write them into the statute moving forward. There were, and here's a visual of them, there were some discussions on whether or not Huron, Washington, and Irma, I think we can have those discussions further down the road. Huron, with as many school zones as we have, that was something that we didn't want to outwardly eliminate or free up the officers. I'd rather have uniformed presence in school zones as opposed to a camera. And then when you get onto Washington, you certainly have a higher speed limit and varying levels of traffic. And you don't have the percentage from the data that we've seen that constitutes putting it in initially traffic. As we only want to implement a smaller amount of cameras, meaning three at this time, is just due to the sheer volume that we're anticipating and getting in the workload that it's going to take in order for us to verify them. So the data over all of the speeding and the crashes, that is the main one. And as per the statute, it has to. We have to report it. And when we get into the next presentation, I'll explain all the analytics that go into the software that the company has so that we can present it. And two, these roadways were identified by the five-year study that was done through the county. Southbound Irma, south of 112th, seeing as how we have the safety sensitive zone in there, that is one where We looked at it as maybe a future one, but our recommendations would be, if we were to move next, would be up towards 120th. But with 120th, the main problem area is near Carl's Farm. There's still a lot of construction there. You have to see how the roadways will be designed and what it ultimately comes out to, whereas the areas that we chose, we have both sides of the roadway and we're not intersecting with the other municipalities. So this is what staff is recommending. As we discussed previously, off 104th, we will capture both directions, east and west, between Croke and Livingston, and on 112th between Washington and Larson on those roadways. And with the data that was previously presented with, like I said, the sheer volume, And I know we've had incidents there, unfortunately, near the crosswalk on Larson there off 112th, just north of the school too. So that was our primary concern with that as far as on 112th, especially when you start getting close to school zones, but not in it just because there's a lot of foot traffic there. So if we approve tonight with the first reading and we push the contract forward after the next presentation where I'll get into what the system actually is, what it does, what it doesn't do, and the process working through that, then we will have to initiate things with Public Works. We have to pull permits. There's going to be some coordination with Establishing Power. I'VE ALREADY HAD CONVERSATIONS WITH THE MUNICIPAL COURT BECAUSE THIS WILL BE WEB-BASED AS FAR AS THE SUITE. THAT'S HOW THEY REFER TO IT. IT'S ALL INCLUSIVE WITH THE COMPANY THAT WE'RE USING. THAT WILL ISSUE THE TICKETS. AND SO I'VE BEEN IN CONTACT WITH THE COURT SUPERVISOR ON WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE BECAUSE WHAT IS ESTABLISHED SINCE WE IN THE the new legislation there are several ways in which if you receive the ticket that you could be found not liable for it one so it seemed pretty obvious is if your car stolen right you're not in possession of it to have the registered owner is deceased three if it was sold and or leased at the time and whoever had the vehicle hadn't swapped out and hadn't gone to DMV and changed it yet, right? And you have the bill of sale and you're not. And lastly, this will fall more back on the police to, should they respond to, say, a crash in that area, And it was deemed that the vehicle at the same time was speeding. You can't be charged with both, right? You can't be charged with both crimes. You can't get the automated ticket and have us cite you for the same thing. So we would have to follow up on that to ensure that if this vehicle was captured, we could do our investigation in whatever it is that we chose to do it. So those were the new additions, if you will, to the new legislation. So we have gone towards, like I said, eliminating the forward-facing camera and just working on getting the rear of the plate.

That's arguably the biggest one.

And after our communication, we interpreted that identifying specific roadways that have heavy volumes of traffic and that are corroborated with traffic accidents. The purpose of this is to change poor driver behavior. and the costs that are accrued with things of crashes and humans getting hurt. This is the point of matching it up with the data that the county pushed out as well. Anything you want to add?

the only thing i would add is that a lot of the changes that the deputy chief were referring to especially related to how you establish a corridor were in senate bill 152 from this past session and the portions he's referring to requires the use of quantitative data so when he's talking about studies looking at past accident history and the like that's because it's now an explicit requirement of the statute related to these devices

Thank you. Do you have any questions or comments from Council? Council Member Burns?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Hi. Thank you so much for the memo. That was also in addition to the questions I asked over the weekend. I did have some clarifying questions. The memo was fairly vague. And I didn't know if that was on purpose for what we could share, regarding our internal policies or not.

Which memo? Are you talking about the chief's response? Yes. Because I know that that was added today.

Go ahead. So thank you so much again for putting this together. I had asked a series of questions regarding sort of guardrails that were in place. There is a section where it says the department maintains a comprehensive written policy governing the use of FLOC and our other cameras. And thank you for separating the two. These are very hot topics, obviously, for the public at the moment. And it says that policy establishes authorized users, permissible users, supervisory oversight, documentation requirements, and accountability standards. And it's sort of like law, you know, you give me these bullets of then, you know, everything is sort of audited and trailed. Like, you know, there's sort of a process. But I think, like, what would be helpful in a communications outward to the public and for counsel as well is, like, what are we doing to ensure the things that we are constantly seeing in the news are not happening here? And what happens when, if... God forbid it happens here. I just don't think I got the clarity I was looking for with these sort of like vague statements in this memo. Thank you.

I think for one, I think the past performance on how we hold our people accountable through our internal processes are important. Again, we've had license plate readers for over 20 years. And we've never had a violation, you know, documented one from our officers using it. I think the oversight on those different systems. So really you have two different systems. You have the flock system that, you know, that our supervisors or supervisors look at who's using it, why they're using it. And if there's questions, right, that's that audit trail that we, we also look at. And if there is something that pops up, we'll question that officer, make sure that they have the purpose, you know, of why they used it. The automated speed cameras, totally different system, right? Totally, you know, the technologies used different. This is a system that does not, and he'll get that in his presentation, does not use, you know, a camera system that, you know, Continuously records it captures the violation and that violation is then sent to an officer to review So there's that human element looking at it making sure the plate matches the car in the VIN and and making sure that was a violation so all of that is for human review and once that's done it sent back to the company where they issue the summons and By the flock hammers, there's a lot of misinformation out there on this of, you know, with, I mean, just we're going to come up with a fact sheet, you know, especially after that posting, because it was, it's a tool that we use. And the reason why we posted that on our Facebook was the fact that we took drugs, gun, felon, stolen car off, you know, off the road. Would an officer, if they rolled up on it and cleared the plate, would have came up with the same conclusion, right, and the same stop. But it does not record sound, you know, which some people claimed. It's not pointed at schools. This is a license plate reader that tracks and gives us information on wanted people. Vehicles, you know, again, I've said it multiple times in here and how beneficial it is to our community where it solved crimes and gave us the tools necessary to recover a kidnapped child. It gave us, you know, the information to a hit-and-run suspect of a, what, 14-year-old kid that was found, you know, that was hit in our cameras. So there's a lot of huge benefits of this, and it, you know, and it's not... um we don't use it as surveillance on our uh residents it is there for a tool for us to use if we have information or suspect information recovered cars we returned so many stolen cars back to the victims right we've i mean it's just a great and this uh necessary tool that the law enforcement uh that we use in the northland police department And we oversee it. And I think that's the other thing, too. We haven't had violations like you sit somewhere in the country where someone used that technology. If we catch it, we have a discipline matrix that kicks in if we find someone that's not doing what they're supposed to do in any regard. SO I'M VERY PROUD OF THAT. WE HOLD OUR PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE. AND A LOT OF THINGS WE FIND ISN'T CITIZEN DRIVEN WHEN IT COMES TO COMPLAINTS. WE FIND ISSUES INTERNALLY AND THEN WE HANDLE THEM AND DEAL WITH THEM. SO I'M VERY CONFIDENT THAT ON SOME OF THE THINGS THAT THIS WILL NOT BE ABUSED IN THE NORCLIN POLICE DEPARTMENT. AND IF IT IS, WE'LL TAKE CARE OF IT.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. COUNCIL MEMBER SIEVERS.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Chief, Deputy Chief, everyone involved. We talked about this months ago. It's a speed camera. They've been around for 20 plus years. I'm not looking to get a ticket in the mail, but it is what it is. I will just say, I know these are hot spots in the city, so naturally the police will be there at some point during the day, but I would just advocate as for residents to not think this is simply a revenue generating thing that our officers will still be in that area. We're not going to ignore it so we could increase speeds and get more tickets. That's not the job. And obviously the police officers will be there still speed trapping at some points, I'm assuming. But I just don't want to be like, oh, OK, now we don't have to ever go there. and try to get as many tickets as possible. So that's not what we're going to do. This is just to calm traffic down in areas that are supported by data, that are dangerous, and we're looking to keep building up on these areas. So thanks.

Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Question for Chief, for Deputy Chief, and that is My understanding about the flock system is that, especially for access, you had limited the number of people who could actually access that database to a handful or less of senior staff. And I'm just curious, in regards to the AVIS system, is that going to be a similar sort of policy where only senior staff members will have access to the data?

Well, and I'm not trying to get the... the cart before the horse with the next presentation. But I'll explain what the system does and does not do. So reference how you are taking it. We will create the threshold and the criteria for the violation. So if someone drives past this and they don't meet the threshold for the violation, it doesn't take a picture of anything, period. You have to break the law of the threshold that we put in the system in order for the picture. And again, it is only the photo of the rear license plate and the rear of the car. Then that is uploaded. And if it meets the criteria, it then sits in a queue, if you will. Because you have to understand that this camera is going to run 365, 24-7. So it's going to, so if my officer comes in Monday morning and we didn't have anybody review, there could be potentially, we'll give round numbers, there could be 100 violations in this queue And then a human has to match up the license plate with the rear of the vehicle and meet the criteria, accept it, and then they get a $40 citation in the mail. That's the extent of this camera system. This camera system has the capability, it's called LiveVera, to have ongoing recording video running constant and he and i the chief and i spoke today just to confirm we're not even having that camera installed in the system so there it is not surveillance if you do not speed your camera does not get a picture taken of it and the only people that can issue the summons is our staff that's it it's Now, if there are 100 citations or violations, and they're not citations, excuse me. If there are 100 people that meet the criteria that we have established, and then our officer, it looks like 123 ABC, and then it's on a Honda, but in the picture, it's a Chevy. They don't accept it. It is still up to the officer to establish that there's enough to issue the summons or citation. So it still has that control, say, whatever, it reads a D as an O or whatever, and that doesn't match. That's where the humans come in, and the humans verify it, and then they are mailed the $40 thing via first-class mail. Within the 30 days... if it's in-state 60 out of state. That is the extent of this system. There is no ongoing filming. There is no captures of driver, because we're not taking photographs of the front. We've made specific things that this is for speed enforcement primary. That is the primary function of this. The data that we've received from the company is that a calendar year from now, statistically, with as many municipalities as they are in nationwide, that driver behavior changes between 50 and 60 percent, which is the goal of the system, not revenue generation whatsoever. It's meant to change Driver behavior, change crash rate, slow people down and have people be safe. Now, with those numbers that I just gave you, the 50 to 60, statistically also, those are from your residents or from the people that eventually know, this is my commute to work. I drive down, I'll use 104th as an example, because I have to get to the highway. i pass it and i know that i'm about to enter the zone therefore i've changed the behavior doesn't eliminate it but it does now to your point councilman severs red light violations at 104th and huron that is a big thing for the traffic team right red light violations cause bad crashes very bad right and people get hurt so no That doesn't mean we're never gonna be there or void of that entire area. This is just meant to assist us in trying to curb some of the issues that we have on 104th and 102nd. I hope that sheds a little light, sir. I don't know if he's still listening.

He's still there.

Okay.

I am still here and I'm just gonna parrot back what I heard, hopefully briefly. sounds like the Avis system is going to be accessible by a larger number of officers as opposed to Flock where that was intentionally a very small set of officers given that Avis has a lower functionality, I suppose, if you will, of just only capturing that license plate and maybe the make model of a vehicle from the rear.

I think we're talking about two different things again.

So again, we're mixing flock and, you know, the speed cameras. The speed cameras are going to be seen. Actually, there's going to probably be fewer officers. We're probably going to use our desk officers, you know, to review these cases of those that are in injury leave that. that are not injury, but they're on injury where they have to find that job or they'll be reviewing it. The flock cameras, that's a notification from the system that we get notified by flock on that. That's how we get the notifications to the officers and how they respond. It's not where we go in there and do it. So I would say more officers have an opportunity to be

explain you know uh have flock hits where you know then those on the speed cameras so um so just two different technologies sorry to your point what you're referencing is you are correct we have very few that have administrative rights on these systems and that will be the same on this avis system we will have um We, as the police department, for example, compared to courts, have far greater administrative rights. They will only be able to see the docket if someone is filing a claim, like I said, with one of the things that would allow them to get potentially the ticket dismissed. I hope that that clears things up. Far greater control on the administrative rights to both systems.

Okay, I understand. I think I'm going to stop and allow others to ask questions and inquire offline. Thank you, Bill. Appreciate the presentations.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I remember we had the whole discussion on what flock was and what flock isn't, and that's why you posted that on your website. So I encourage people to please go back and revisit that. I understand this is not the same thing. Absolutely not. As Council Member Seavers mentioned, this has been around for decades, the red light cameras when you're speeding, it's all over the place. And as somebody who has experience and is still suffering from a car accident, from bad behavior on somebody else's part, I absolutely support this. Overwhelmingly, all the residents I've talked to also support the speed cameras, just because the number one complaint I get from more poor residents is speeding. Speeding in our neighborhoods, 104th and 120th. I'm glad you identified those because they're huge crash corridors. And our police officers cannot be there 24-7. We'd love them to, but we just don't have that capacity. So I'd like to point out, too, that in our strategic plan under public safety, number 1.2 says traffic and speed enforcement tools. So we are completing our strategic plan actions or action plan. That was redundant as well. So for that, I appreciate the fact that it's based on data, and that's part of the legislation as well as a requirement, as I understand it, so that there's no, I guess, gray areas as to why they're going in the areas that they're going. There's actual data that shows these are high crash areas. But I do agree that communication and forward-facing with the public is important. So they understand, obviously, there can be confusion between the two. I think is important to continue, to Councilmember Burns' point, to get out to the community so they understand that. And I'd like to say that these are one of the things that we can control in our own city in terms of how our police department manages all of these systems, whether it's flock, which is different, or the speed cameras. So I appreciate hearing that, and again, communication to let people know. but we as a council are aware of it and on top of it, and so we ask these questions so the public also understands. And yeah, it's an educational process. I mean, there's no they're not getting points taken off of their license. So this is maybe I'm not gonna say it's a better way. But it is a maybe a less punitive way to correct the speeding in our city versus getting the points taken off. So hopefully that behavior will get corrected. And it's they're all over the place. I'd love Northland to be a city you just don't mess around. You don't speed. It hurts people on one of them. So Thank you. Council Member Gough.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation and the clarification between the two systems that we are talking about here tonight. I do want to acknowledge residents who have concerns about privacy and, you know, worries about misuse of these systems. You know, I think I share some of them myself, but I do feel like they're everywhere. They've been around a long time in different versions. And I also think that they're inevitable and I think it's as a council mayor pro tem I said Because of our attention to this these issues here in North Glen. We do have some control. We've spelled out policies We've given clear guidelines about you know what we do. We don't want any these to be used for. And so I do, you know, I'm glad when residents come and, you know, share their concerns about something like this, because we, I think some of us, at least most of us, maybe share some of the same concerns. And I'm really glad to hear about the policies you have in place to prevent misuse. And that's all I'll say. Thank you.

We're still allowed to take the picture of the driver. We can still do the front and the rear should we want to. We could still implement. We understand the concerns right now in the community and we hear our residents as well. and we have made decisions, right, we're still abiding by the law and going forward, but we hear them too, and I think that this is a way to meet both sides and compromise and lead them halfway.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, it's always going to be a tension between, you know, people's privacy and the safety of everyone, so appreciate it. Thank you.

Council Member Roper. Thank you Madam Mayor. Thank you both for being here tonight. Thank you for the clarification for not only for Council but for our community. Again, like many of my, like Mayor Pro Tem has said, it's a learning process for our residents. I think just even the small fee that we are collecting, we know that it's not punitive. I know one of my young people recently got a speeding ticket in another municipality and it was very, very expensive.

it was an expensive learning situation but thank you for helping to guide our residents and and ultimately to keep us safer thank you thank you i have no comments because we are going to revisit this on second reading and public hearing and all of that so this is not uh this is not the end but thank you for tonight and the next part should be shorter with some of this please open the vote

The vote is open. Please vote. Council Member Kondo, how do you vote?

Yes.

Thank you. I will close that vote and CB 2037 on first reading passes unanimously.

Thank you. Resolutions CR 61. Will the clerk please read the title?

A resolution approving an agreement between the City of North Glen and American Traffic Solutions Incorporated doing business as Vera Mobility for photo enforcement system services.

Move for approval.

Seconded.

All right. Well, it looks like Deputy Chief Rice is still here, so tell us more about this.

The shelter one came up, ma'am.

And that's like four down the road, so.

There was a short PowerPoint with this one, too. I just want to make sure that the community and you folks are crystal clear on what this system does and does not do. And from a communication standpoint, I will work with the city team as far as from internal, whether it's with the city manager and Joy Riot and our internal comms, Veramobility has also done the same right there in our neighboring jurisdictions, and we will put something out continuously, and we're also obligated to statutorily to do that should we decide to move forward with this. We do want to inform our community. There's going to be the appropriate signage along the way that has to meet certain requirements with size and distance 300 feet from the camera systems. So we will. IT INFORM THE COMMUNITY. IT IS MANY COMMUNITY MEETINGS AS THE CHIEF AND I DO I'M SURE WE'LL GET QUESTIONS AT THEM AND WE'LL BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO ANSWER THOSE TOO AS WE MOVE FORWARD. AGAIN THE THREE CAMERA LOCATIONS WERE CHOSEN A large portion was just due with the extensive amount of data that we've received over the last several years. This project started long before I was in this role. And then it coinciding with the five-year study that Adams County did. That was the point and the purpose behind it, and especially after the city attorney and I sat down for lengthy period of time talking about the identification of speed corridors. What does it look like? How is the verbiage? And moving forward. The process on the system, as I stated earlier, if you don't meet the criteria that we establish in there, VeriMobility will not even put it in the queue. The only people that have access to the queue are the ones that we allow them to have administrative rights to do it. They will review it, get hands-on and eyes on it, and then they will issue the citation should they feel that it meets the criteria. And then other avenues for paying, ultimately, the citation will work with finance to see how that's all done in coordination with the courts. But I'm all for questions if there's something I may have missed in this system. But I really wanted the community to understand what it is. and what it is not. It is not running cameras. It is not surveillance. It is a photograph of your license plate. Nothing more, nothing less than the rear of your car. And if you don't speed, you don't get it taken.

So we will have a public hearing. We will have another reading. This particular item is about the program agreement. So if council members have questions, that's what we're looking at for this part. Council Member Seavers?

Quick question. So back in April or February, whenever we talked about this in the spring, it was listed that each fixed camera would be $2,500. In the services agreement, it says $1,500. So I'm assuming since it's in the services agreement, it's $1,500 and not $2,500. And it makes it cheaper for us. Yay.

And that is due to the new legislation. TO FOREGO THE FORWARD-FACING CAMERA AND ONLY DO THE REAR-FACING CAMERA. THAT'S THE COST SAVINGS THERE FOR THE CITY AS WELL. AWESOME.

COUNCILMEMBER BURNS.

THANK YOU, MADAM MAYOR. SO ITEM SIX IS THE COMMUNICATION OF INFORMATION, AND IT SAYS THAT VR MOBILITY THROUGH OPERATION OF THE CAMERA SYSTEMS RESERVES THE RIGHT TO ASSESS A FEE FOR SUCH SERVICES, AND YOU DISCUSSED WORKING WITH THEM. WHAT WOULD THAT LOOK LIKE?

The fees are inclusive in the package as far as the $7 per. They have free communication. Should we sign the contract? The communications effort is part of the overall package. We're not going to get billed a separate fee. It's, again, what we're choosing to go with them is all inclusive it has the courts the issuance of the tickets the communication that's all of that is is included in that there isn't a separate fee okay well okay thank you

Council Member Lighty. Thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation. I didn't know if I should ask it in the first one or this one. You mentioned that, well, you kind of mentioned it. So if an officer came in on Monday morning and there were 100 thingies, How long, say something happens and this officer has to go do something else, how long are you able to store the violations in this system? Does Vera Mobility store it? Do you store it somehow in your department? What does that look like?

30 days, we have to issue the summons or the citation. And we review it. And it is put into... a secure access point that we only have access to, no different than our Axon and our other numerous systems that we use. So whoever has administrative rights and allows that person to get in, because you're right, and that is one of the concerns or why we're starting off small, because this is going to, it takes time to review all of these things. We have to do it. so that what you just alluded to doesn't become a very large number. I hope it doesn't. The goal is not for that. I hope we change some driver behavior, but we have to plan for that. So it will sit there. And we have things set in place so that that doesn't happen. We won't exceed 30 days.

Perfect.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I think that's it. Thank you. Please open the vote. You're welcome. The vote is open. Please vote.

Councilmember Condo, how do you vote?

Yes.

Thank you. I will close that vote and CR 61 passes unanimously. CR 101, will the clerk please read the title? A resolution approving an agreement between the City of North Glen and Lewis-Gameros Doing Business as LG Contractors LLC for the Concrete Improvements Project.

Thank you. Director of Public Works, Sarah Borgers, is here to present this item. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. So this is our annual concrete project. We did go out to bid and received 10 bids back. We are recommending going forward with low bid, $241,828. with LG contractors. You will notice that there are this contract split between a number of different accounts. That is because this also includes Greenway Trail work and some work that we do in conjunction with parks and they bring grant funding and lovely things to this program to help us replace trails. I'm happy to answer questions should you have any.

Well, one thing I noticed, I was so excited to see you that I skipped a step. I need a motion to approve. Move for approval.

Motion to approve. Second.

Great. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Council Member Kondo has a question.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm just looking at Exhibit A. Very last page where there's a build out bid alternate alternative be for 117 82 Lincoln Street Is that in any shape or form related to perhaps what one of the public speakers was talking about earlier this evening I

No, I don't believe so. This is related to installing curb ramps in that neighborhood. There are a number of corners there that don't have any way for someone in a wheelchair or pushing a stroller to be able to get into the street. So that's primarily what is an alternate B.

Okay, gotcha. I wasn't quite sure. I saw a curb and gutter, and so the light bulb went off. All righty, thank you.

I do not see any other hands. Thank you so much. Thank you. Please open the vote. The vote is open.

Councilmember Condo, how do you vote?

Yes.

Thank you. Okay. How do you vote? Okay. Okay, I will close that vote and CR 101 passes unanimously. CR 102. Will the clerk please read the title? A resolution approving addendum number one to the agreement between the City of North Glen and Providence infrastructure consultants for engineering services for the condition assessment of wastewater lift stations.

Move for approval.

Motion to approve. Second.

Second.

All right. Now we're on top of it. Director of Public Works, Sarah Borchers, is here again. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So this contract, it would be a contract addendum with Providence Engineering. They have been working with us to do an evaluations of all of our lift stations throughout the system. Lift stations are pump stations for wastewater. They're lovely things. And as we were doing that analysis of a number of our lift stations, we're looking at lift station F and it does have some more critical things that we want to make sure we're addressing more quickly. And so this is going to change their scope to include a more thorough evaluation of lift station F to make sure we can get on top of that work. Happy to answer questions.

Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So Director Borges, I'm just curious. So in the memo you talked about lift stations, Echo, Foxtrot, Gulf, and then Fox Run. Is there something significantly deficient in lift station Foxtrot, I guess over at 120th and Grant that really is driving the prioritization?

I Yes, so we had been in there, our staff had been in there doing some cleaning and actually hadn't at that point, Providence hadn't looked at it in detail. And we noted that there was some concrete failing within the structure that is having an impact also on some of the pumps and the pumps are all connected to the sides of concrete walls. And so once the concrete starts failing, that makes it hard for the pump station to continue to function correctly.

I understand. And then just for my reference, I think lift station A was like four and a half million gallons per day. What is the capacity of Foxtrot lift station F?

Oh, I don't know if I could tell you off the top of my head, but it is substantially smaller than A.

Check. Okay. Thank you.

I DON'T SEE ANY OTHER HANDS. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

PLEASE OPEN THE VOTE. THE VOTE IS OPEN. PLEASE VOTE. COUNCILMEMBER CONDO, HOW DO YOU VOTE?

YES.

THANK YOU. OKAY. THANK YOU. OKAY. I WILL CLOSE THAT VOTE AND CR 102 PASSES UNANIMOUSLY.

Great. We have two discussion items tonight. The first one is the 2027 Riverdale Animal Shelter Adoption Center Services. Police Chief Jim May will introduce this item.

Mayor, council, good evening again. I have to, you know, fall on a sword on this one. The mayor reached out to me. This was on a consent. As you can see, we put a lot of items in there. One of the things, too, when we have one of our long-term IGAs, like the school district, Thornton, victim services, all those, A LOT OF TIMES WHAT I'LL DO IS I'LL DO PACKAGE REQUESTS IN THAT NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET FOR SOME OF THOSE IF WE SEE INCREASES. THIS ONE, You know, the mayor sent me some questions in regards to it. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to reach out to the executive director of our animal shelter. I was talking, who's sitting in the room, Stephanie Wild. I had to call in a lot of favors. You know, not really. She was glad to come tonight and help us get through that and give you guys the information. of why these rates increase. We've been using the Adams County Animal Shelter for many, many years. They went from the old building to the new building. Again, some of the cost and funding has changed over the years per animal, our population. Again, and it was one of those things that were still challenging on the part of the animal shelter to really see the funding and everything else. So They've been working with staff. I know Heather and myself been in multiple meetings with their staff and trying to come up with a solution that makes them sustainable, you know, because that's something we definitely need here. I mean, the alternative is actually, I have no idea what the alternative would be. I think it would be maybe transporting at Jeffco or something like that. But so I'm thankful they're here, but I, like to turn it over to Stephanie and her staff to give the presentation.

Thanks, I appreciate you.

mayor and council members so glad to be here i am alicia reese deputy county manager for adams county and as chief mentioned stephanie wilde is here our executive director and she will introduce our additional staff tonight we're glad to be here um to walk through our fee proposal and then to answer any questions you all may have

Thank you for having us tonight. Again, I'm Stephanie. And I'd like to introduce this is Marla Vogel. She is our administrative coordinator. And she puts together all the billing and all the jurisdictional assignments when animals come in. We've been working with your team for quite some time. So we're glad to be here again. Thank you. So I'm going to jump right in. Make sure I know how to move the slide. There we go, okay, thanks. As Chief May mentioned, we've been IJA partners with North Glen for some time. I had one of our other admin staff look it up, and I think it's 20 years this year, and we appreciate the partnership. We also have intergovernmental agreements with all the jurisdictions that you see, and we serve within Adams County, because we're part of Adams County, unincorporated Adams County Animal Management as well. and really um there's there's a lot of need and we together with animal control officers and our and our staff create a safety net in the community for animals people and pets and we really value these partnerships we're here to talk about budgets and fees but when animals are out there in need or community members are in need we so appreciate how we work in partnership. And I especially appreciate our partnership with Chief May and his staff as well. So I wanted to just talk about our services and I will be brief. If you're looking at an animal shelter that is municipal or county or one that is non-profit but they contract with animal control, animal protection, they're going to have what we call the big four services and the first is taking in lost and found pets. Shelters really exist to be a place when an animal for a variety of reasons doesn't have any other place to be. Lost pets are our greatest, highest category of impounds. That is followed by pet surrenders when people have to give up their pets for different reasons to have a safe place to bring them. And if you're gonna have lost pets and surrendered pets there, you have to have adoptions because some of those pets won't be reclaimed. And we also have to find homes for the pets that are given up. And then we do have end of life care. If you've ever been a pet owner, my biggest complaint about pets is they don't live as long as we'd like them to. And so we do offer a lower cost option for those end of life services. It's a smaller part, but these are what we call the big four. We also obviously offer municipal impound services for animal control and protection. And really what you just see up here are the categories of the type of intakes we take in. We talked about strays. There could be court holds, a police hold. Maybe someone does get arrested and they have a pet in the backseat. Protective custody. Maybe there's a house fire and some pets need to come in until those owners can hopefully pick them up. Bike quarantines per state law. And then we do do a small amount of community-focused services. We do offer low-cost pet vaccination and microchip clinics twice a month at the shelter. We partner with the Adams County Health Department, offer some free rabies clinics as well a few times a year. Our events are mainly focused on community-centered events, parades, and educational, so we can get our word out about what services we have to the public. And then we do some emergency pet sheltering. We are the designated pet evacuation site for Adams County, should God forbid there be an emergency like a tornado or an environmental disaster. So if people had to leave their homes, they would have a safe place for their own pets to come in that time. And we train and do exercises to prepare for that time. We also have a very limited ability to house a pet for a resident in an individual crisis, maybe someone in an interpersonal violence situation or an elder person that is receiving hospitalization and they don't have next of kin where their pet can stay with us until they can be returned so they don't have to go through a loss of a pet on top of whatever situation they're dealing with. So the big question, and again part of why we're here, is why a fee increase and what is it for? I will say that we have not done an increase since 2018, which was approved by our commissioners and that went into effect in 2019. We moved into our beautiful new facility. Our other facility was out of compliance and outdated in 2020 during the peak of the pandemic. And we did plan the facility to deal with surges of intake, but we were not prepared for what we'd see starting in about 2022 where intakes just surged. And there was a lot of media attention that maybe people were working from home. And they adopted a pet and then went back to work and just wanted to give it back. And I can say that that is really not the case. There's lots of different reasons that animals come in, as I mentioned. But that surge, which we were hoping was a brief blip, has really continued on into this day. And I'll show you some data in a minute. But this has increased our cost, including costs for staff, which is the biggest part of our budget. And the current fee method that we've used for several years is just not keeping pace. I want to be clear because we did open up a new facility. That was fully funded by the county. And I just want to clear up that we're not asking for money to try to recoup costs for the building. This is purely on our operational cost. And the intent is really to kind of walk you through what has happened since we've moved. So why have costs gone up? I've already mentioned these surges post pandemic, we do track reasons. And when people are giving up pets, housing and financial stress still tops as the number one issue. We also see a lot of unspaying neutered pets, which I will say, is partly why they roam and sometimes get lost. And then probably for the last 10 to 15 years in shelters, not just here in Colorado, but across the country, we're just seeing a lot more behaviorally and medically challenged pets, which just take more time, care, and money. We also have ongoing facility and maintenance costs. It cost about a half million dollars for us to operate the facility. We've had to add security because in this world we've had to add security. We don't pass along those costs in this particular IGA fee increase, but it's certainly costs we have to cover. And there's new and existing regulatory requirements that we have to keep up with per our license. And just like in people health care, cost of medicine, food keeps going up, and that's the same when you're providing it for pets. This chart really just goes back to 2018 when we did the last increase and shows our pet intake at that 6,400. We did have that blip during the pandemic where we didn't have as many animals coming in, and then it started to climb. And every year thereafter, it has increased. Yes, last year at 8,300 animals plus was our highest number on record, and we are running about 200 animals over that number year to date right now. So we're not seeing this change, at least for the moment. So about a 30% increase since that time. Just to talk to you a little bit briefly about some of the things you may not think about because a lot of people think about animal shelters and those wonderful adoptions and they are wonderful as you would think. So is seeing people getting reunited with a lost pet. But it takes a lot and a lot of what happens is behind the scene and so daily cleaning and feeding of course is required. Even if it wasn't regulatory that would be important. In 2023, there's new statutory requirements through our pet licensing facility called the Pet Animal Care Facilities Act to provide enrichment for mental stimulation and also behavior support. We are there if it's a snow day. We are there if it's a holiday because the animals cannot take care of themselves. We have to provide essential medical care in a timely way also per our regulating authority, which is through the Department of Ag, through the PACFA, Pet Care Facilities Act, including appropriate vaccines. Pet housing something why we had to move to a new facility is that a longer a pet is there The requirements are for that kennel space or that enclosure to grow with the time that they're there So we're always making sure we have that we do carry a DEA license because we have controlled substances on site for the surgeries we have to provide. All pets before they're spay and neutered have to be, or all before they're adopted, excuse me, have to be spay and neutered. So that is something we don't have a choice about. And then there's the holding and reclaiming of lost pets. I say this whenever I have the opportunity is that I don't personally believe that pets are more important than people. I think some people may argue that they like pets better than people sometimes. But I will say that pets are very important to people, to your residents, to your constituents. So when we have a lost pet, that is family. Pew Research came out with a study, well over 95, 97% of people consider pets a part of their family. So you're watching and caring for that. So we really have to make sure We're doing a good job in trying to trace those chips and tags and getting pets home when we can. We do post lost pets on the website, which is also required statutorily, and we link our website to your animal control page as well. Finally, behavior assessments. While the state doesn't require us to do a behavior assessment, we do have to do a behavior disclosure when a pet is adopted or goes to transfer. So to have a disclosure and know what that adopter may expect, we have to do an assessment. So that's gonna be on thousands of animals per year. So all this just takes a lot to keep up with. We don't charge the cities in this fee structure for owner surrenders, but I think because it's our second highest status of how animals come in, it would be helpful for you to see how many animals are coming in from your jurisdiction and others. it's not meant to be a statement on if you're doing a good job in your city, it really tends to fall in line with population. And so last year, 225 animals came in from North Glen residents that could no longer take care of our pets. We also wanted to show you how much this has jumped pre and post pandemic. So the average 2018 2019 was 1100 almost 1200 pets. It's well over 1700 now and that average for 24 and 25. So we're seeing this trend continue. And then this is about length of stay. And if you were a hotel owner, and one of the things you would track is how many guests came to your hotel and how many days they stayed. And we do the same in a shelter. And they do the same in shelters for people. They look at that. And so 2022, again, coming out of that pandemic was the first year that we provided over 100,000 days of shelter for pets in our community. And last year, we ended at over 141,000. And so this is just taking more time and more staff and more resources. That's about a 36% increase. But if we really go back to the average to that 2018 20 to 21, we're looking at almost a 95% increase. So part of why I'm showing you this too is that our current formula, the fee formula that we really felt worked well in the beginning is not working because it was all based on shelter days, the number of shelter days. And what we did is we took our total budget and we divided how many shelter days we provided and we got a cost per day. And then we said, hey, North Glen, this is how many days of shelter we provided for your animals. and that worked really well but as this number is climbing it's diluting the formula and it's just not keeping up so we have gone to another method and we started looking at a different method in methods in 2024 we brought some ideas to your city manager heather and her team 25 and we've refined that some and that's what we'll show you today, but we feel like this actually helps us Cover more of the actual cost and it's more balanced. We feel an accurate the other thing we've added is we've always done a two-year average because your intake can fluctuate and so we wanted to smooth out those highs and lows and We're actually doing a three-year average with this formula, so it really buffers if you have a really high intake year. And we're only gonna bill one year in the rears versus two, so it just stay more current. The challenge, just to be very direct and authentic in what we know is tight budget times. We know that this creates some burden for our valued municipal partners, and there is no getting around that piece. so i know you've had a lot of meetings tonight and there's a lot on this screen i'm going to try to be as concise as i can basically this takes your three-year rolling average of animal intakes and our closing budget year from the prior year and it comes up with a flat rate fee and it does delineate between animals that come in through animal control and animals that come in through the public. And so if you look over to the chart here, you can see about 60% of all animals that come into Riverdale Animal Shelter do come through animal control. And 40% come in through the public. Riverdale, Adams County, we provide and fund the public services. We're just talking tonight about the animal control services. So then we're going to calculate what is your billing share, and we look at that three-year average I just mentioned, and we find out what percentage of that animal control side of the tower there of the chart is yours. And I'll show you that here in just a minute. Then we're gonna do what I think is really great about this formula, is we're gonna apply both credits and some individual fees. So we credit back, if you have restitution from a case that year, we're gonna credit back to you. If your animals get reclaimed by their owner, those lost pets do get picked up by their owners, we're going to credit that back to you. And so it does kind of create more of a partnership about what's going on. And so adoption fees that relate to your city, we're gonna credit those back to you based on your percentage. And then there's a few things we do charge separately for that aren't put in with everything, and that is disposals. We have officers bring in, sadly, deceased pets that are found on the road, and we do have a crematory and provide for that. And then we do, if we spay and neuter and vaccinate a community or feral cat and send it back, we do bill that back to you separately per cat. So once that's all added up, we see where you're at. One of the things Heather and her team and many of the city partners asked us when we came last year with the first run at this proposal was, it's just simply too high, and could you lower the target? And so we really heard that, and we have lowered the target. And what we've done is we've made sure in this current model that we're not going above 20% of our total budget among all the partners that we serve that you saw on that first slide. So if North Glen's portion is above that, then we're crediting back at the end to give your final flat rate fee. And then we won't, oh. They started at 30. Oh, yeah, Alicia just reminded me we did we were asking for over 30% of our budget to be covered when we first came to meet in 2025. So we've lowered that to 20. And we won't be doing this this year. But just to keep up with inflation and costs, we will add apply the local CPI to your flat rate fee if you continue with partners on us into 2028. But this first year as we're, we're moving to the new formula, we're not going to assess the CPI. So I know that's a lot of information. And again, you can stop us at any time with questions. And of course, we'll take questions at the end. So you may be saying, what percentage is North Glen of our total intake? And you're 6%, kind of right there in the middle of the group. And then all our IGA partners together, again, make up 67 plus percent of that 60% of animal control intakes unincorporated Adams County, we are the largest user group is 32.6% of that animal intake group. So here's really the final numbers. I'm just gonna start over here with the pie chart is that again, as you remember, I mentioned at the beginning, we take our total budget for the year, and then we're gonna minus our revenue to get our original cost recovery target. And so our budget in 2025 was 4,656,841. And then our share, the part that Riverdale picks up, is 2,664,000 and some. That again covers our own animal control intakes, that covers all the public services we provide, and that covers any, you know, miscellaneous cost. And then we have shared back the revenue that we made last year, $1,061,000. And that leaves $931,000 that we're asking the partners across the board, all eight of our municipal partners to share. And so for City of North Glen in the green, at 60% of our intake, what we assessed you last year was 40,350. What we're asking for in 2027 is 82,184, 41,834 increase. And we know that that is substantial. um this first year as we're attempting to balance and more right size our cost we know it is a big step up and going forward we we anticipate that it'll be more level in the end just to make it simple we're really looking for an 80 20 split that the the shelter adams county continues to cover 80 percent of the cost and the partners combined cover 80 percent Or 20, sorry, thank you. Thank you. So I know that's a lot of information. I'm gonna continue unless you have questions on this slide and I can come back to it at the end as well. So you might also be asking, what are you doing to try to mitigate costs? And these are things that we also talked about in the meetings that we had with your leadership. And a few things we just want you to be aware of. Most shelters that have our similar size and scope have a robust volunteer program. And while we're always wanting more volunteers, We had 35,000 service hours with volunteers last year, which if you look at just the labor time of that is like 17 FTEs. That helps us enhance the work that our staff are doing. And so we continue that. And many of our volunteers are your residents, which we very much appreciate. We also put animals into foster care. That actually helps with our live release rate because it's generally young and vulnerable animals, but it also gets them out of the shelter until they're ready to be adopted, which saves us on cost and space. We also increased some service fees in 2025, resulting in a 19% increase in revenue. Not a lot, but we hadn't done increases in a while, so that helped. We do have some limitations on what we can do to fundraise as a county government, but we brought in nearly 300,000 in grants and donations last year. Many of this goes to food and vaccinations, medicine, but we also had a grant for some dog trainers. We could not add more staff in our behavior department, but we wrote a grant for some dog trainers. And working with some of our dogs that are great dogs, they just need a little more training. And that so far data is showing that's reducing their length of stay by 29 days and every day, money and so that's really been helpful. And we have some pet retention grants that's to help people who are trying to reclaim their pets and maybe having some struggle and we were able to get 300 pets home last year with that grant and out of the shelter. We also really leverage partnerships with other shelters along the Front Range and 30 to 40 plus rescues and 590 animals we were able to transfer out last year to make room because we had a lot of mass impounds from many jurisdictions last year, including North Glen, and that helps us to create space and save on cost. A few other things we've done in the last few years, we added an online donation platform in 2023. So people could donate online. Well, we can't actively go ask people for funds. If they want to donate, we made it easier to do so. So that resulted in 34% increase. Our grants, even though we don't have a ton, increased by 60%. And I'm just going to have Alicia talk to you about plans we have for an Adams County Foundation to give us some more fundraising capabilities.

Thanks, Stephanie, so you can breathe a minute. So, yes, Stephanie's point is well taken that we have been looking at every possible way to mitigate costs at the shelter and to raise revenue. It's an odd bit of county statute that disallows us to go out and seek donations from the public for funding. However, What we can do is partner with a nonprofit arm that can do that fundraising on our behalf. So we're putting together that proposal now. You all will hear much more about that in about the September timeframe. But we'll allow us to seek corporate giving and bequests and things of that nature. And folks who are animal lovers are wonderful includers on bequests, particularly. and long-term giving and we've not been able to capture that market prior to now and so we'll be undertaking that soon thank you

And because in this model we do share back revenue, we're hoping as we can find other ways to create revenue streams that that will support all of us in a better way. And then restitution, I already talked about, we credit that, but I think there's always opportunities to improve our processes to collect restitution when those animals go to court cases. And then pet licensing program, we don't have a county-wide program. We're one of the few counties that doesn't have one. it does take staffing and money to ramp up and I don't know if in this current climate that is the direction collectively with our other municipal partners that we want to go but it is certainly something for future discussion that we can have. And then I just want to talk a little bit about value and cost and to wrap up here is that we really do have a wonderful facility and you know when Animals in your community are in need when someone has harmed them, when they're lost or they have to be given up, or if they have harmed somebody. That does happen sometimes with bites. We have a safe, modern facility with a wonderful staff to contain them. We really have worked to make the shelter very welcoming to all residents throughout Adams County. And when the big things happen, Marla kind of calls it shelter insurance, we hope the big things don't happen, like a disaster. But when the big things happen, we are there with a team on site to assist you. We also have just some really great things for your officers. And I'm not going to name all these things, but a few things. When we built the facility, we're long-term partners with many of the jurisdictions. We really asked them what would be helpful. And one of the things we have is a drive-through sally port, so they don't have to back up with those big cabs on the back. It really helps with safety. We have rooms they can meet privately with residents. We have an x-ray and a really modern clinic. Before the new shelter, if a dog or cat was suspected of having broken bones, we'd have to call around desperate to another vet clinic to try to get them to be seen. It was horrible for the animal, horrible for the officers trying to drive them around. We have that now. and just nice spaces. We did add a barn, and again, it was part of the original shelter build, but it was delayed due to budget constraints, and we were able to have the barn because you would not believe how many chickens and occasional goats, pigs, turkeys, and other things end up, and it's better to have them in a barn than a dog kennel. In terms of support, we have 24-hour badge access for officers. We have a manager on duty always by phone, We have a veterinarian or a vet tech on seven days a week. Our veterinarians also with most cases can serve as subject matter experts if you have to go to court. We do host quarterly meetings with officers because sometimes, you know, we see a process that's not working or a mistake was made and we look to mitigate that again on either side. And we have a great database that goes back like 25 years with all your impounds that we share. And then lastly, just to see some of the impact in the community. And I just want to say we are not infallible. We do make mistakes. We are always in a state of continuous improvement and looking at everything from animal care to customer care, our relationships with officers, and how we manage our budget. 4,000 animals went into a loving home that didn't have one last year. We had over 3,500 animals either spay and neutered or some other kind of surgery that was needed last year. 19,800 vaccines given to animals in our community supporting public health and safety. We had over 1,800 animals reunited with their families, which is so important, and provided really great care. We had 10 mass impounds last year. Seven of them were between July and December of 2025. It's quite an anomaly. It was quite an intense year. for the shelter and our officers and more than 500 of those animals came in, many from deplorable situations. Many had been harmed and the vast majority were saved in partnership with our staff and your officers and other officers from the jurisdictions that we serve. And so we're really proud of the work. There is a lot of need in our community, and it seems right now to keep growing. But we really intend to provide good services and good partnership through this process. So I have said a lot. We are done. And I and Alicia and Marla are here to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gough.

Thank you, Mayor. So, you know, I'm glad you mentioned the, I don't know, hoarding or large number intake or whatever. So I'm just curious about how using the three-year to sort of smooth things out, but like here in North Glen, we had a huge one last year. So I don't know, how does that smooth out over a three-year thing if we just have this weird anomaly of one year?

I'm going to have Marla, who helps with the billing, help answer the question.

Hi. Well, basically, I mean, if you've got, you know, one that's your low year and a high year and then another low year, it's just trying to even that out. As far as the hoarding case that we had, I guess it depends on how it comes in as well. That owner did actually surrender most of all of those, so that did not count towards the actual intake for North Glen. But if it does come in as a court case, as a court hold, then it would. Because then we're trying to seek restitution as well.

Oh, okay.

I didn't know that. Thank you. Yeah, so most of the, what we're trying to, that's why we kind of delineate between what comes in from animal control because usually those are the strays and we don't know who the owner is at that time. But all the ones that come in, even the protective custodies, we know usually we're working with the jurisdiction there because, you know, that owner has something that there's going on. So that's why they're coming with their pet. So we usually that if we know who the owner is, that's the delineation.

Council member lighting question Thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation It's really it was really interesting to see the spread of all the different cities next to us as well I was actually gonna comment on the hoarding case from last year as a positive thing since you guys helped us out so much with that you took I think what was it 115 animals for us and supported That was huge. So thank you so much for that. I also, I come to your low-cost vaccine days, and it is so fun. Oh, so great to hear that. I know. I'm like, I have three dogs. So being able to utilize that is huge, and it's also something that every time, I mean, I see a lot of residents from North Glen there, and so I get to talk to people, and they love it. So thank you so much for doing that as well. Is there any way that you could provide a little bit of information on how You mentioned your volunteers. How does that work? How do people reach out to you? How do they get connected to help you volunteer? Since it said something around 17 full-time employees.

Yeah, we have about 47 full-time employees, but it was 17,000 service hours that about 300 volunteers gave in 2025. We are so grateful for them. You can't really have volunteers fill a staff position. It's actually not legal to do that. but they enhance the work that we do and we could not survive without them. And I really appreciate your question and your positive feedback. So the way volunteers can get involved, you have to be 16. There is some treachery with volunteering with live animals and so we do ask for that threshold. And you can go onto the website and apply. We do an orientation about It depends. It could be as often as a month or every other month to onboard folks. We have a variety of roles from working with dogs, cats, or the public. And so we love it when volunteers come. It's about an eight-hour commitment, like two hours a week, but you can do more if you like. And so, yes, thank you for asking that. Thank you for coming to our clinics. And we were very happy to partner on the hoarding cases. Luckily, we don't have those every day, knock on wood.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. First of all, thank you for everything that Riverdale does. I know how important it is to have that partnership. And it truly is an outstanding facility. And the services you provide are invaluable. So I'll start with that. One of the things I guess I'm I'm trying to understand is, you mentioned like, credit credits back or is that so we have here proposed for payment plan, for example. So do credits back go against those future plans? Like, how does that work? I guess I don't quite understand how that works.

Yeah, it was a lot of information. And so that would be the proposed set fee for 2027. It's already set, and we just divided it up in quarterly payments to make it, but sometimes that's just easier for our jurisdictional partners. So we've already established the credits that come back in the formula before we get to that flat rate fee.

Is there anything else, Marlo, you would say about that?

Yeah, so, okay, yeah, so it's already established before we get to that number for 2027, and then we just divided that number into four. And so, this is a cost-sharing model, and maybe, Pro Tem, it's a really good question, it's a cost-sharing model, so as we're looking at, this is how many animals came in, we also wanna make sure that if some of those animals were reclaimed as a lost pet, then we're gonna credit back some of that cost back to North Glen because that pet now became as Marla said an owned pet so we're not going to pass on that cost to the city because we found someone who actually paid their fees to come get their pet does that make sense and then we did do take an adoption revenue so based on your your we're gonna share back some of that adoption revenue. And so it's sort of like, oh I'm kind of losing you here. It's sort of like we start with a grand total and then we say these are the things that are coming back to your city because people came and got their pets. This is adoption revenue based on your percentage we're gonna share back that we earned this year. This was a restitution case from the year prior and we got a check for $2,000 so we're gonna send that back to North Glen. And so, and then if you use any of those individual services, because not all cities use those evenly, so if you had some disposals, then we're gonna deduct some of the individual fees for how many cremations we provided and such, and then we're gonna get your grand total at the end, and that's gonna be the flat rate.

And that's, then you're billed. And then you're billed. I think that was the question, is you take the deductions before the...

So it's for the previous year, basically? Yes. Okay, right. So any credits that might happen in 2027 would be applied in 2028, or if, for example, that the gap reduction or whatever you called it, and maybe a foundation or something like that, so that would show up in future credits if that's something that reduces the overall... Cost, right?

You have it exactly. And it would always be based on our closing year budget, what happened in that closing year budget, and then your three-year average of intakes that we use those two measures as we put it together.

I appreciate just that. I mean, that makes sense. It would be based on previous credit, so you already have that. And then I just have a quick budget question. Since that's double what we maybe have expected, is that something we factored into our previous budget talks, or is that coming up? Was that included in the deficit we've already talked about? Just a quick answer, yes or no, is great.

Yes, it's included in the proposed 2027 budget in the full $80,000 amount. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Thank you for following all that, and you're welcome. Thank you for your feedback.

Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I had the opportunity to visit Riverdale, I think it was two years ago, when it there was the Denver Metro Animal Shelter open house. And at the time, I think I recall that the intakes were over 7,000 animals per year. And if I also recall during that tour, your shelter capacity was only 4,500. So I'm just curious, with the demand outstripping the amount of available spots for you to take in animals, is part of the increase in this fee in some measure to be able to build additional capacity.

Thank you for your question. Council Member Condo, are you talking about if we need more shelter space to build and add on?

Correct.

Yes. That's an excellent question. One that Alicia asked me the other day. I don't think that we're there yet. I can say that we do meet with our counterparts, other shelters up and down the Front Range. And while Intake numbers are continuing to go up. We saw, I almost dare not say it out loud, but we saw just the slightest bit of leveling in some areas. And so we're hoping maybe the peak is coming soon and we can level out a bit. We were taking in around that 6,000, 7,000 animals before we came in. moved into our new facility. So we anticipated that money. It wasn't quite as low as you mentioned. And so, We are really strained for space and capacity and it is difficult right now. But I think we need a few more years to see if this is gonna continue or foresee some leveling off. And we've had no discussions within county senior leadership about that being something we're pursuing at this time. I think it's just too early to tell.

So really what you're saying is the fee increases to cover

uh the inflation and operational costs whether it's direct labor material cost of medicines etc etc yes and staffing you know there are certain formulas that we have to follow a certain amount of staff for animals coming in so we've had to add staff over the years but just it's just the more animals that you take in for all those reasons from food to medical care to staffing all those things move in sync

And if I recall from my tour, your goal was to have four vets, I think, instead of full-time. So is that where you're at today?

You remember so well. We have three full-time vets on staff, and then we do rotate in what's called some relief or temp vets to help with that. So we're not at four at this time, but we're very fortunate that we have three veterinary positions.

Gotcha. They are busy. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I would encourage other of my councilmates, if possible, to go. I don't know when the next open house is, but I was very much impressed with your facility and definitely appreciated the partnership with our animal control to make sure that they have everything they need to safely bring animals in, as well as take care of themselves.

I appreciate your feedback, and thank you for taking the tour, and you are all welcome anytime we can set something up.

Thank you. Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, ladies, for being here. Thank you for Riverdale for existing. I would say I can't bring my fiancée there because she will want to adopt. I was like, oh, maybe she can volunteer, but she does bed care now. I have enough... uh animals attempted to be brought home uh but two months ago we celebrated our one year anniversary of adopting our dog from Riverdale his name was Chimelo at the time his name is Ozzie now and we're super lucky to have him he's a great dog and I don't know why someone got rid of him at 10 months their loss is my gain um so we appreciate it and The other thing is, I would say is like last few years, the state has passed a lot of veterinary related regulation and more regulation equals more costs generally, and ideally better conditions for the animal. And I also know, again, she's in vet care and so, I know vets make a lot of money, the doctors anyways. I wish she had gone to school. Dang it. But also the last thing I would just say is it'd be cool, I know that you've got enough numbers to crunch every day, every hour, every month, but to see maybe where more of those volunteers are coming from, like what cities, what municipalities, stuff. If one city's contributing a lot of volunteer hours and some other cities aren't just to be able to promote that maybe you guys already do i don't know but that's it thanks

That's an excellent point about volunteers, and we could provide that data so we can definitely put that together. Thank you also for your feedback, and you are not the only one I've ever heard that keeps family members away from the shelter so their family size doesn't increase. So you're in good company.

We came for the dog. She didn't even want the dog. I said, what about this one? And she was, like, crying. She had to have him. I was like, whoa. All right, I guess we got a dog.

Thank you for adopting as well.

I love that. Well, first of all, thank you for being here. As you can imagine, most of us are in the budget season and this caught our attention. And so we appreciated the full breakdown, the why, the background behind it. I think a lot of us are familiar with the organization and we appreciate the work you do. But just to kind of increase our fee by I think it's at 103%. I think it just warranted a conversation. So thank you for coming out. And we really appreciate your time tonight.

Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it.

Okay, up next is our City Council quarterly agenda planning with City Manager Heather Geyer.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm here this evening to present the quarterly agenda planning for the public's benefit. This process is intended to assist myself in the agenda management process, specifically figuring out what to schedule and when in alignment with City Council's requests and goals in terms of timing with items. So tonight we're going to review the tentative future agendas through October 26 of this year. And we're also going to review a meeting cancellation. This is an opportunity for any of you to provide feedback on any of the agenda items that you see listed by date and to request to have any of those items reprioritized. I mentioned that we're moving through October 26. We do this on a quarterly basis. And so when we get to the October 26 session, we will share what 2027 dates look like. We do have a holiday coming up, that's Labor Day holiday, so there will be a meeting cancellation for that evening. Otherwise, at this point in time, there are no other meeting adjustments proposed currently. So for the first set of meetings in August, we have the August 3rd discussion on drone delivery. We have received a request from Walmart to be part of that presentation and to make a specific presentation to council in addition to the staff presentation that is allowable based on the fact that they have not submitted a formal application to the city. So wanted to let council know that that's not only a staff presentation, but you'll also be hearing from Walmart and Wing, which is the company that operates the drone delivery. On August 10th, we have a pretty full agenda that's shaping up. Not only will we be hearing the second reading and public hearing on the automated speed enforcement cameras and speed corridors that you heard this evening, we'll have a proclamation for school safety month, as well as a presentation on the police department pro patria award, which the department just received LATE LAST WEEK, REALLY EXCITING RECOGNITION FOR NPD. WE'LL HAVE A JUNE FINANCIAL REPORT ALONG WITH A RESOLUTION PERTAINING TO THE 2026 COORDINATED ELECTION. WE'LL ALSO HAVE A RESOLUTION FOR SLATE COMMUNICATIONS, A CONTRACT AMENDMENT THAT REQUIRES BASED ON THE DOLLAR THRESHOLD THAT I BRING THAT TO COUNCIL FOR YOUR APPROVAL. And then we'll have an executive session for personnel matters regarding my quarterly performance check in. On August 17. As you've been aware, this session is dedicated to the proposed 2027 budget specifically hearing departmental budget presentations along with the CIP presentation. August 24th is somewhat light at this point. However, I'm keeping it light for the purposes of bringing forward the presentation and recommended findings by Joy Riot, who is the third party that is completing our communications and marketing assessments. As I've shared with the mayor and others, the final report is well over 400 pages, so I'm sharing that with you in advance. to know once we get through routing and vetting the report internally by staff i'm going to try to get that to council as soon as possible i can get it to you in advance of the typical packet date i will given the lengthy nature of the reports as well as just really trying to break it down beyond their executive summary and their PowerPoint presentation. So there's three components that they've included. But there's a lot to digest and the thing to know is we're probably going to need to have additional discussion beyond the August 24th session. The fun piece of that evening will be the Water Wise Yard Award and Magnificent Tree presentation. The Magnificent Tree happens once every summer. and is always really fun to see the beautiful trees in North Glen. On September 14th we have a proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Month along with the July financial report as well as an executive session regarding the city manager performance review process. I have shifted this on the agendas due to the fact that I've prioritized getting you the communications assessment findings and recommendation report as well as some other priority topics the September 21st meeting right now is dedicated to a presentation on the 2027 proposed budget that as you've heard deputy city manager Loveland explain is required by our city charter and so that's a topic that we cannot shift off of that meeting date And then on September 28th, and certainly these lighter meetings, as you know, will fill up in the weeks ahead of us. Right now it's an executive session regarding the city manager performance review debrief. For October 5th, we are planning a discussion on data centers, as well as a comprehensive transportation mobility kickoff agenda item, along with, on the 12th, a proclamation for National Arts and Humanities Month, Substance Abuse Awareness Month, a presentation for Good Neighbor Awards that may shift, but right now we're tracking to have a couple Good Neighbor Awards. um presentations august financial report and then the public hearing for the 2027 budget is scheduled for this meeting for october 19th fairly late at this point it's a discussion on the final draft of the 104th subary plan and then October 26th we hope to have the youth commission quarterly report one change that I didn't mention earlier on is this evening we're supposed to hear a youth commission report we will shift that and fit that into an August meeting date and then we'll have the resolution for the 2027 annual budget adoption along with quarterly agenda planning as i mentioned earlier as well as an executive session for the city manager performance check-in that typically takes place post performance review timing in order to check back with city council in in regard to performance goals set for the year ahead so that is a summary of agenda planning at this point happy to take any questions and comments mayor pro temp

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have one quick question. The first legislative committee meeting we have slated is after the deadline that CML needs for the CML potentially initiated legislation. So I don't know if that needs to shift sooner for us to meet and talk about that.

I think it does, Mayor Pro Tem. It's on my list to figure out tomorrow. I need to talk with City Attorney Hoffman. Some of this is being driven by the notice that we just received about our lobbying team, so we need to pull our heads together and figure out the best approach. I was generally thinking of adding a possible legislative committee meeting next week, which would be well in advance. of the planned start that we have on the tenant of future agenda. So I'll try to get an email out to the committee tomorrow. We can work on calendaring and get that all figured out.

Okay. And that.

Thank you. Yeah.

Behind you, there's quite a lightning storm.

And so every now and then we see a big, big light up sky with that cool window we have. Any other comments or questions for City Manager Guyer? No, okay, thank you. All right, moving into public invited to be heard. There's nobody left and there's nobody on the phone. Prior to moving into Executive Session, there was an item with communications that I forgot, and so I wanted to add really quickly. I will be attending the Leadership Exchange one more time this September with the Denver Chamber of Commerce. As the Metro Mayor Vice Chair, I got a discount. As the chair next year, it will be completely covered, which is nice, but that was gonna put me over. And so Council Member Gough graciously is agreeing to let me use her funds. So just wanted to let you know so that everyone is clear about that. Okay, going to executive sessions. I will entertain a motion that the City Council hold executive sessions. one pursuant to section 4.5E of the City of North Glen Home Rule Charter regarding pending litigation, specifically A, Baca et al. versus City of North Glen et al. And B, cities of North Glen and Thornton, the state of Colorado at all. And two, pursuant to 4.5A of the City of North Glen Home Rule Charter for personnel matters regarding the city manager's employment.

I move we move to executive session.

I'll second. Any discussion? Any discussion? Okay, please open the vote.

The vote is open.

I'm trying to find my thing.

Councilmember Condo, how do you vote?

Yes.

Thank you. Councilmember Roper? Yes. Thank you. I will close that vote and the motion to adjourn to executive session passes unanimously.

We will now adjourn to executive session.