City Council - Regular Meeting

Council meeting of August 24th, 2026. Members of the public are invited to attend in-person meetings in council chambers. Public access is also available by telephone by using the call-in numbers posted on the meeting agenda. AND TONIGHT'S MEETING WILL BE BROADCAST ON THE CITY'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL ONLINE. WILL THE CLERK PLEASE CALL THE ROLL.

MAYOR LIGHTY. HERE. MAYOR PROTEM. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER BURNS. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER SIEVERS.

HERE.

COUNCILMEMBER CONDO.

HERE.

COUNCILMEMBER ROPER. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER GOFF. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER NOWICKI.

HERE.

COUNCILMEMBER LIGHTY. HERE. THANK YOU.

PLEASE JOIN ME IN THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Acting City Manager Loveland, are there any responses to resident inquiry?

Nothing this evening.

Thank you. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda? Nope. All righty. Moving on to 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 tonight?

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

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

Well, hello to North Glen. Hello to you in front of me. It's good to be back here. My name is Tom Lampo, 3951 Jackson Way. I'm here to lift up North Glen to the Lord in prayer. So please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, we invite you here tonight to be with us. North Glen is your city, and you are always welcome here. Your word in Psalm 139, 7 through 10 states, Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. We'll keep you to your word. We want to be in your presence wherever we are and in whatever situations we are engaging in. Help us to be mindful of you. We lift up the kids of North Glen to you. They're back in school. The new school year has begun. There's new activity and a lot of it in our schools. There are students and parents whose only focus is to arrive at school before the first bell rings. Their focus might not be on their surroundings. Drivers will need to be more conscious of their surroundings. Most need to get to work, and their focus might not be on the surroundings. So for everyone, we ask that you make us mindful of Philippians 2, 4, which states, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. Keep everyone safe. Help everyone to think outside of their own situations. and to be mindful of what is transpiring around them. Help us to get outside of ourselves and to think of others first. Keep our little ones safe and bring clarity and understanding to their minds. There are many adults who have contact with our kids while they're in school. This includes the school resource officers. They've become part of the fabric of our schools. They have a unique and challenging role. Because of their unique situation, we give them Proverbs 2.11, which states, discretion will protect you and understanding will guard you. give our school resource officers discretion and understanding. They will be challenged during their days and to make quick decisions and to assess a multitude of situations. A situation where they are needed can come up out of nowhere and progress quickly. Their minds need to be sharp. Their actions can make the outcomes of those situations an ultimate positive for all involved. YOU ARE OUR GOD AND WE ARE YOUR PEOPLE. IN JESUS' NAME WE PRAY. AMEN. THANK YOU, GUYS. HAVE A NICE NIGHT.

THANK YOU. NICE TO SEE YOU.

THE NEXT PERSON ON THE LIST IS CHRIS BAUM.

WELCOME. PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS OR WARD AND PROVIDE YOUR COMMENTS TO COUNCIL.

hello mayor and council my name is chris baum i'm in ward 4 and i just want to express the fact that the proposed bond issue of 100 i think it's 123 million i just want to make sure everybody understands that that means we're all paying twice because by the time the interest gets paid and the principal gets paid off it will have cost 265 million or whatever so i just want to say please take that into account i think we're all taxed heavily enough thank you thank you the last person on the list is tim long welcome please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council

Tim Long, 1066-1, Utrilla Lane, Ward 4. My business tonight that I'm addressing you about has much to do with the budget. Four things struck me at the budget presentation last Monday evening. I think the first thing I'll share was the last thing provided by Councilmember Nowicki when he said, directing his words to the directors that worked so hard on coming up with the budget, it's a real bummer. Thank you for letting us know so we can refocus with clarity on our responsibilities when it comes to these financials. And he appreciated the work that went into this. I applaud Councilmember Nowicki's observation. My observations picked up the number 17 The number 23 and the words RFP. RFP being a request for proposal for an upcoming bond revenue, revenue bond issue. 17 had to do with the number of years that have taken before we've now at this place where reductions were forced in everybody's budget across the board. This was stated by our deputy city manager. acting city manager. And I wanna share the fact that 17 years, finally you came to the understanding that you have to reduce your spending and expenditures. 23 have anything to do with the millions of dollars that you're gonna try to get forward for your public works. But there are five other things that came to my attention in terms of criticisms and concerns. of which there are five. Significant increases in tax burdens and debt, If you take the entire budget that you're showing, roughly $104 million, I'm going to be guessing as close to what it will be, dividing that by 38,000 people in North Glen, you're looking at $2,700 per person in North Glen. If you take 2.7, which is the average size of a household in North Glen, you're looking at a hit of $7,500 that every household would be accountable for when it comes to tax revenues. leadership turnover and loss of experience. When 10 department heads came forward, I saw three that only had been here a year ago. The others are secondary, not that they're not talented and expert in what they're doing, but they don't have the senior leadership and the subject matter experts you once had. You're forcing cost reductions and budget cuts. You made the attempt, they made the attempt, came up with $840,000 in savings. Unfortunately, when you take the net of what they need to replace their other assets in their various departments, the net effect is $116 million, and regrettably, When public work stood to the podium, it was a 2.2 million dollar infrastructure repair that's needed immediately. The fourth thing is a net neglect of infrastructure and maintenance. You're prioritizing all of your pet projects and your biases that you carry to this body. Celebrations and net zero initiatives that just seem not as important to me as the infrastructure repairs that are needed. And when it came about, it was described that there's a 20-year-old public works truck that's been kept operating. Everybody thought that was wonderful, but some of us in the audience thought that was tragic. And lastly, the tax revenue increases that you have been portraying for the last three years did not come about. But that's not because of the gentleman that was keeping track of the numbers. It's something you as policymakers made sure that would show up in all the presentations made to the general public. And when it comes to talking about bond, Revenue bonds, I know something about that because I've done those myself. You're going to have to go through jumping through hoops. First, you're going to have to find an RFP for an underwriter that will support you. An underwriter is going to do an audit for all intents and purposes. I've worked with people like Oppenheimer Funds to do that. Secondly, you're going to have to find a bond rating agency that's going to have to come and rate your bonds to see if you can find investors. Those bond rating agendas and differences come about with Standard & Poor's and Moody's. Again, I presented to all of these people. And lastly, The bond clearinghouses are gonna have to find investors, someone like Nuvine out of Minneapolis and Chicago that would make an investment in such proposition as yours coming up. $23 million, and I dare say you don't know anything about what I just shared when you talk about underwriters, bond rating agencies, and bond clearinghouses. And I would implore the people out there watching to please come to these meetings so you can see for yourself what's taking place with this August body. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the audience who did not have a chance to sign up that would like to speak to council at this time? Come on up. Please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to council.

I'm Beth Vieira. I live on Ural Lane. And I wanted to compliment whoever came up with their That Niver ditch is right behind me, which is a fire trap. And I did see one of the city's vehicles out there at least picking up the dead fall branches. Thank you. Now, when and what are we going to do about all the dead branches? Because I see piles of kindling. And I don't expect to answer this, Dan, in a second. But I've... Bugged Steve Odorizio about it. I bugged our congressman for District 8 about it of climate change is climate change. Does it all the time. But leaving piles of kindling and dead branches and dead leaves just sitting there is inviting trouble. And I don't know if you've come up with some plans to help mitigate this or not, but I think it would be a good idea to provide a lot less fuel. Anyway, thank you for what you've done. Do more. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience that did not have a chance to sign up that would like to speak to council at this time? okay and i do not see anyone on the phone all right we are going to move to presentations august 2026 waterwise yard and magnificent tree so i would like to invite council to join me down front along with our community outreach coordinator jenna gregg and we will present these awards

Well, hello, Mayor Lighty, council members, and everyone else joining us this evening. Council, you've heard this before, but we have members in the audience who are new to this program. So I'm going to explain it all again. My name is Jenna Gregg, and I am the community outreach coordinator for the city. Thank you all for this opportunity to present the awards for the North Glen Neighborhood Beautification Program this evening. 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 through each street to determine that month's winners. Winners are chosen by judges in June, July and August. So here we are at the end of the summer. They receive a large lawn sign to display for a month. Our city council then recognizes the winners at the summer meetings and winners receive a framed certificate and a keepsake garden sign. This year, in alignment with the city and state's drought status, North Glen residents can receive an award only in one category, which is our Waterwise Yard of the Month. Awarded in accordance with our citywide water conservation efforts, these yards use less turf, more water-tolerant plants, flowers, trees, and shrubs. Waterwise Yards also tend to include additional use of rock, mulch, and other landscaping materials. THEN TONIGHT WE ALSO HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF RECOGNIZING THE 2026 MOST MAGNIFICENT TREE WINNERS THE MAGNIFICENT TREE PROGRAM WAS ESTABLISHED IN 2006 TO HONOR THE BEST TREE IN THE CITY EACH YEAR WHEN THE CHOSEN TREE IS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY THE OWNER IS AWARDED UP TO A 100 CREDIT ON THEIR NEXT WATER BILL This year, however, the judges decided to recognize two neighboring trees, and you'll understand why when you see them. Their canopies combine in a most magnificent way. So each tree owner will then receive up to a $50 credit on their next water bill this year since we are sharing the prize. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to present the seven July winners of our North Glen, sorry, August winners of our North Glen neighborhood beautification program and two magnificent tree winners. So if you weren't one of the four who have joined us in person today, please come on up after I call your name and we'll present you with your certificate and have a photo with council. And then after all of the award winners have been announced, we'll ask that everyone join us for one final group photo. So let's begin. Our first Waterwise Yard of the Month goes to Lynn and Rob Shore at 11864 Claude Court. They were not able to join us this evening, but let's celebrate them. Next up, we have Jeff and Peggy Bolduck at 11958 Keough Drive. They also were not able to join us this evening, but let's recognize their efforts. Our next winner, and these folks are here, we have Ashley Seward and Eric Fisher at 10664 Downing Street. Come on up, friends. Let's celebrate you.

Come on up.

is happy to

This was a multi-year effort for us.

At least three years.

This is one year in right now. So this is exactly one year afterwards. I worked very briefly. I'm in marketing. I worked very briefly in a landscape design firm. And we were able to work with some designers and kind of do it with a smaller company, not the bigger company that I used to work with, sort of a side project. And we got a good deal on it. What really helped out was the boulder placements. I think that was something that we didn't really understand before we were getting into it. Sort of like how you're supposed to angle everything and put everything in specific ways. And so that was really interesting. And they also, most of those boulders are twice the size and they're buried to make them look more natural.

And we bought our house in 2022 when it was really crazy, but love North Glen. It's a wonderful municipality. But we, first-time homebuyers, our yard was not good to begin with and just continued to get worse after that. We did not have a sprinkler system or anything, and we had the worst yard on the street. It was the ugliest yard on the street. And so we are very proud to have a pretty yard on the street now. Yay!

I'm happy to help try to rethink this.

All right, I'm going to keep us moving tonight. Our next Yard of the Month winner is Desiree Sutter at 544 Muriel Drive. Desiree is here with us. Would you like to come on up?

Thank you.

Alrighty. You're welcome. Our next three Waterwise Yard of the Month winners, we're not able to make it, but we'll celebrate each of them individually. So we have Ron and Sherry Zangane at 1165 Claire Lane. And our judge in that neighborhood was very appreciative of this yard. She's been watching it for a while and said she finally wanted to recognize it. So let's celebrate their work. Next, we have Katie Disser at 1513 West 103rd Avenue. Katie did want to join us this evening but got pulled away to a business trip. But let's celebrate her work. Then finally, we have Steven Skeeter-Finger at 971 Fred Drive. Let's recognize their work as well. All right, now on to the award of the year, as it were. The 2026 Most Magnificent Trees. go to Jim Dawson and John and Tammy Wolbrink. So they are at 10978 and 10988 Patterson Court. You'll see on the right is a linden tree and on the left is an ash. Our city arborist provided the scientific names for us. I am not going to read those, but Jim, John and Tammy are all here this evening. So we'd love to welcome you all up.

A great one? You do. OK. The tree on the left in the picture came to us as a gift from the city of North Glen. In 1989, it was a dead dry stick. And I stuck it in the ground, and there you go.

Thank you.

You get to hang this on your tree.

And then once you make your greetings, please stay up here, and we'll have our remaining winners come on up for a group photo.

No, don't worry.

One more congratulations to all our winners, Mayor and Council. Thank you. We'll see you again next summer.

All right, we're moving into council communications. I will start with Councilmember Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Congratulations again to all of our winners, especially this entire summer celebrating Water Wise Yards. Just how many there are in North Glen during the drought has been awesome. So very excited to see that. Congratulations again. IT'S BEEN BACK TO SCHOOL AND VERY BUSY. THANK YOU TO OUR POLICE OFFICERS. I'VE BEEN SEEING MANY PEOPLE PULLED OVER ON GRANT BY THE STUDIOS SCHOOL FOR SPEEDING IN THE SCHOOL ZONE, SO APPRECIATE THAT. I WALK MY KID TO SCHOOL THERE, SO PLEASE DON'T HIT US BECAUSE THE SIDEWALKS ARE TINY. WOULD LIKE TO REMIND EVERYONE OF THAT. THAT'S IT FOR ME. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER LIGHTY?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. As someone who recently spent a lot of time walking with a stroller on those sidewalks, I would have to agree with you. That is a real thing. It's been a couple of weeks since we had council communications, so I have a few things. I had the opportunity to attend Sabor which is an annual event that is hosted by the Colorado Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. It's a great event to attend. It is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate Hispanic culture, communities, the incredible businesses and leaders throughout Colorado that continue to make an impact. It's so fun. I also just had the opportunity to support our Excel area manager, Andrew Holder, at his Denver Dancing with the Stars. It benefits Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, who comes up to our theater every so often. Cleo Parker is a huge, huge figure across the entire nation, but most importantly in Colorado. And so they got to celebrate their new building that was just... I mean, it wasn't just built, but they get to celebrate their new building. And then we were also, it's an amazing way to just see their dancers and see all the great things that they do in the community every single day. So that was really, really fun. But other than that, that is all I have.

So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Nowicki.

Nothing for me tonight, Madam Mayor. Thank you.

Council Member Seavers.

I'm also going to keep it brief. It's been a few two weeks since we had communications. I just want to highlight the job our police department did in the Irma event and recent events. EB Reyes, Jr. The excursion into the lake. I'm sure that was fun. And thanks for Thornton for also helping us out and the district attorney for catching the bad guy. Thanks.

Thank you. Council Member Goff.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a few things. So on August 11th, the DICE Board met, and we're working on events for the remainder of the year. We are a sponsor or co-planner, whatever, Breast Cancer Awareness Walk on October 3rd, so I encourage everyone to come out to that. And there'll be more information coming out on some Dia de los Muertos events. August 13th was the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. And I just kind of wanted to remind everybody that the rec center is closed this week because they are cleaning. All our staff are busy at work, not on a vacation, cleaning and making the rec center good for the next year. August 17th, the North Glen Senior Organization met, and I just wanted to let our seniors know that on September 4th, there will be a celebration with a potluck. And if you're not aware of it as a senior, if you come in in August, you can earn points towards getting a T-shirt. So they'll be giving out T-shirts at that. Also at that meeting was very informative. We got the Adams County Aging Network sponsoring their Senior Resource Fair here in North Glen again this year. And that's September 23rd, so there'll be probably more information and things posted around the rec center for that Also, I just wanted to point out that our city is a proud member of Colorado communities for climate action and as a member for that I get information about important COMMISSIONS AND DECISIONS BEING MADE, AND I DID GIVE TESTIMONY TO THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION, AND THAT WAS ADDRESSING THEIR REQUEST TO GET AN 11% RATE INCREASE, AND I DID SPEAK ON BEHALF OF OUR RESIDENTS THAT THAT WAS GOING TO BE A BURDEN ON MANY OF OUR RESIDENTS, AND THAT WAS TOO MUCH OF AN INCREASE TO BE HITTING PEOPLE WITH. And the Public Utilities Commission just approved Excel for about a 5% rate increase. So there still will be an increase, but it won't be quite as much. And a lot of that is through the work of advocacy groups such as CC4CA. And just be on the lookout for that if there are more opportunities to give testimony. They love listening to anybody. But I got the information. I DID GIVE THE TESTIMONY. AND THAT'S IT FOR ME. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. COUNCIL MEMBER CONDO.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Busy weekend for me. On Saturday, I did a ride along with Officer Atkins, female officer who had been on the force for two years and was on the swing shift. It's quite interesting. I think she is only one of four officers that have successfully completed the drug recognition expert training, which is actually one of the most rigorous and hardest courses to pass. in the country for doing this sort of work. And all of this was sponsored by North Glen. I understand that not all police departments have DRE rated people. So it was quite an eye opener for me. And unfortunately we did. encounter a person who was engaged in some narcotics. I can't really give specific details, but I will tell you it involved fentanyl and it was really shocking that there are some novel ways of ingesting it now, more than just powdered form or injection. And in fact, when I walk my dog every day, I pick up trash along the Greenway Trail, and now I'm starting to become a little bit more thoughtful about what I'm picking up because of that experience. Nonetheless, I will say that the professionalism of Officer Atkins was quite impressive for me, and I always really appreciate that opportunity to attempt to ride in their shoes and understand the issues that they face every day. Earlier that day, I also participated in the powwow event that occurred over at EB Raines, which is one of the events that the outside agency funding had sponsored. I felt like it was an obligation to go and see how exactly that unfolds and how that works. So that was really quite a privilege to see that. Earlier that week I took a tour of the Adams County Clerk and Recorder's office. What was interesting to me, given everything in the news about how reliable or unreliable our elections are, I am feeling a lot more comfortable that our elections and the way that things are done in Adams County, at least, are up to snuff. Now, I'm not an elections expert by any stretch of imagination, but I will tell you that the 14 full-time staffers and the thousand people that they ramp up every election season, as well as the equipment, the processes, and the training is very rigorous. It was very impressive to me as a former Navy nuke to kind of see all of that in action. I know many of you were not able to make that trip. However, Miss Evelyn Guzman de Leon, I know that's a long last name, but all of you were on that email, has extended an invitation for you to go and tour one-on-one, if you'd like, Monday through Thursdays. And again, I just want to thank Adams County, Josh Seigelbaum, who is our county clerk and reporter. He actually was part of that tour, and it was very insightful, and I learned a great deal. Finally, thank you to Council Members Sievers and Nowicki for allowing me to sub in as your proxy, so to speak, for both the ADCOM and CCPP meetings. That was very useful for me also to get some exposure there. And lastly, I did attend the MLA, the Municipal Leadership Academy workshop in Alamosa, which was almost two weeks ago. And the one thing that was a takeaway for me Alamosa obviously sits in the San Luis Valley, southwest Colorado, and it sits on the Rio Grande drainage, is that the drought not only has affected people along the Colorado River, but also along the Rio Grande, and for the first time, In history, the farmers there have had to resort to drip line irrigation, so it's not the traditional canal and ditch style of irrigation. Water is so scarce now that they actually have to run pumps and push water through pipes to be able to irrigate the fields. So I really appreciate that opportunity, really, to go and learn from municipal leaders in a different part of our state that have really, really, how should I say this, challenges, significant challenges that they're facing in their areas. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Councilmember Roper? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have a couple things. We had historic preservation commission, and for that we had a hearing regarding a property in DESA states that they want to return to its original state. And so that means taking off some of the additions that were made and so really returning it. And so we had a hearing about that. Then we also had the Youth Commission last week. They are working on a movie night to support some other young people in the community, have them come out. And that is going to be October 9th. And that is all I have for today. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I visited my mom. AND THEN I HAD THE NERVES BURNED IN MY NECK, SO I MISSED A BUNCH OF THINGS. SO MY REPORT IS VERY, VERY SHORT. THE ONLY THING I ACTUALLY HELPED HOST, A FUNDRAISER FOR ROLSTON HEALTH, WHICH IS A CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER THAT HELPS ABUSE CHILDREN FREE OF CHARGE. THEY PROVIDE WRAPAROUND SERVICES, FORENSIC INTERVIEWS, AND MEDICAL EXAMS. AND RELY 100% ON FUNDING OUTSIDE SOURCES. SO I WANT TO THANK NORTH GLEN POLICE AND NORTH METRO FOR SHOWING UP AND PROVIDING THEIR VEHICLES FOR THE KIDS FOR KIDS SAFETY DAY. THE KIDS GOT TO DO A MEET AND GREET, AND THEN ROLLSTON HOUSE PROVIDED SOME TIPS FOR THE PARENTS ON HOW TO KEEP THEIR KIDDOS SAFE, WHICH IS NOT A FUN THING TO DO, BUT KIND OF UNFORTUNATELY A NECESSARY THING TO DO. SO THAT'S ALL I HAVE. THAT'S IT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

I HAVE JUST A COUPLE OF THINGS. STANDARD MEETINGS, MILE HIGH FLOOD DISTRICT MEETING, THE ADAMS COUNTY MAYORS MEET WITH RTD REPS ONCE A MONTH AND IT WAS A PLEASURE THIS TIME BECAUSE I GOT TO MEET WITH FORMER MAYOR JOYCE DOWNING WHO IS SITTING IN A TEMPORARY POSITION ON THE RTD BOARD. Learned a lot about what they're working on, just collaborating with Adams County. And then I'm just going to kind of double down on what Councilmember Lighty shared about the Dancing with the Denver Stars. As you know, I had the opportunity to participate, which was so great. But our Xcel Energy friend, Andrew Holder, was very nervous, and he did an incredible job. He rocked it. It was very fun. And then just highlighting the work that the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company does in our city. The fundraising gala that we went to supports arts and education, and so they work directly with students in North Glen in our schools. and they do an incredible job and so just wanted to highlight that and then their new building opened in january and it is called the cprd center for healing arts and it's a beautiful building so i encourage everyone to check it out because we know they do perform in our parsons theater every february But just a reminder that they are accessible to all of us. It's a wonderful organization. And that is all I have. So City Clerk Small, how are you?

I'm doing well. Thank you. I do not have any reports tonight.

Okay. Thanks. Interim City Manager Loveland.

uh thank you mayor and council uh one point of clarity just real quick from a conversation that was happening earlier with the public there was a comment made about 123 million dollar bond issue it was later corrected it's a 23 million dollar revenue bond consideration that we have for 2027 and that project is specific to our wastewater facility and upgrades so i just wanted to clarify that

Great, thank you. City Attorney Hoffman?

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council. I do not have anything to report this evening.

Okay, thank you. All right, moving on to the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve? So moved.

Second.

Please open the vote. The vote is open. Please vote. Or please sign in and then vote.

I WILL CLOSE THAT VOTE AND THE CONSENT AGENDA PASSES UNANIMOUSLY.

THANK YOU. WE HAVE ONE ORDINANCE TONIGHT, CB 2041. WILL THE CLERK PLEASE READ THE TITLE?

A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE REPEALING AND REENACTING SECTION 17-4-2 OF THE NORTH GLEN MUNICIPAL CODE REGARDING PERMITTING OF CERTAIN EVENTS IN CITY PARKS.

Approval. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So we have Director of Parks, Recreation, and Culture, Amanda Peterson, to provide a summary. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. This amendment to the Municipal Code would provide definitions and requirements associated with organized community events in our city parks. So if approved, a permit would be required for an organized community event that is open to the public and held on city property. Permits would be limited to one every two weeks, not to exceed 26 event days in a calendar year. That would allow for multi-day events, but would still have a limit of 26 total days per year. If this ordinance were to move forward, staff would develop a permit process similar to what we have in place for amplified sound, vending, or off-leash dog events. Those permits would be reviewed and approved or denied at the staff level based on the criteria that's established within the ordinance that you have before you all. the language that's in the proposed ordinance is in alignment with the proposed settlement agreement that we've been working through and the organized community event permit would not be applicable to private events that are happening in the park so things like birthday parties so school gatherings or family reunions that have a defined invitee list would not need to apply for those permits they would apply to those who are actively inviting the public to come join the event With that, I'd be happy to answer any question that you may have about the proposed ordinance on first reading.

I don't see hands yet, but I had a clarification. In the memo, it refers to 26 events per calendar year, and you clarified days.

So it covers both. So if you in the ordinance language, it identifies that multi day events could be would be allowable, but it's a total of 26 per year. So 26 events, whether that's two per month, or sorry, every other week, which would allow for up to a total of 26 with those five week months, but also would take into consideration a multi day event would still have that cap of 26 days.

Okay. I just was trying to figure out where that's clarified.

And if I, I'm going to look to Corey as I flip into the page that says. So section four. Okay.

That's exactly what I was going to say. In subsection A4, it specifically talks about the number and references every other week not to exceed 26 times per year. And so that is the 26, it cannot, the reason that language is a bit awkward is because of the five days in a month. Sometimes if you're using every other week, And so the language was agreed upon with the assistance of the federal magistrate that makes it no more than 26 times per year. But you could have one permit application covering all 26 days in concept.

okay okay my clarification i think is because i heard events in days be interchangeable and it doesn't sound like we're talking about 26 days because if they had an event that was a two-day event and they did that a few times they could still do 26 times that could equate to more than 26 days no more than 26 days per year looking at the language together I'm not seeing it that clear.

In context, in the last section of subsection four, where it talks about every other week not to exceed 26 times per year. Yes.

Times and events go together. Days are different. So if my event is two days long and I do that 26 times.

You still cannot have in context any more than 26 days per year.

So I think the word days has to be in here. It's not clear.

We can move to it. We can do that with an amendment. It may impact the federal settlement, but we can certainly do that.

Well, I just wanted to be super clear so that we don't get pushback because it doesn't say days anywhere in here. So if I have a two-day event on my permit and then two weeks later I have a two-day event?

Let us talk to the federal magistrate.

Okay. I JUST, THE WORD DAYS AND TIMES DON'T MEAN THE SAME THING. SO THAT'S JUST A CONCERN I HAVE ON FIRST READING.

COUNCILMEMBER GOFF? THANK YOU, MAYOR. SO MY ONLY, I GUESS, COMMENT ABOUT THIS IS THAT I FEEL LIKE IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO PUBLICIZE THIS BECAUSE WE HAVE EVENTS SUCH AS THE POW-WOW, AND FROM MY READING OF THIS, NEXT YEAR THEY WOULD HAVE TO APPLY FOR A PERMIT TO HAVE THEIR EVENT. IS THAT CORRECT?

They would. They're already applying for various permits with us. Our hope is that we're able to really streamline that process so that we have a single form that will indicate all of the permits that we have available and that will help us identify in a more cohesive fashion. If you're applying for an event, for a community event permit, it'll also note, are you going to have vendors? Do you have a... Do you have amplified sound? So there will be a series of questions. Staff have already started putting that together in preparation, and we'll roll that out when the time is appropriate.

All right. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other comments or questions from council? Okay. All right. Thank you. Please open the vote.

The vote is open. Please vote. I will close that vote, and CB 2041 on first reading passes unanimously.

OK. Resolution CR 109. Will the clerk please read the title?

A resolution appointing a Ward 2 member to the Diversity, Inclusivity, and Social Equity Board of the City of North Glen, Colorado.

Move for approval.

Second.

I WOULD LIKE TO INVITE JONATHAN HICKS TO COME FORWARD. HE'S NOT HERE? OH. OKAY. YOU MUST NOT BE JONATHAN HICKS. OKAY. WELL, HOPEFULLY HE WILL COME BACK BECAUSE I THINK WE NEED HIM PRESENT TO APPOINT HIM. SO WE'LL JUST MOVE ON. DO WE JUST COUNCIL THIS VOTE? CITY CLERK SMALL?

Ah, we made the motion. Would you please withdraw it? I withdraw the motion for now. Thank you.

Are we good, City Clerk Small? Okay, excellent. ALL RIGHT. A BIG DISCUSSION ITEM TONIGHT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR. WE HAVE OUR COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING ASSESSMENT UPDATE NUMBER THREE. SO ACTING CITY MANAGER JASON LEVLIN WILL INTRODUCE THIS ITEM.

THANK YOU, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. BEFORE WE GET STARTED, I JUST WANT TO TAKE A MOMENT TO SAY THANK YOU TO COUNCIL AND TO ALL OF THE CITY STAFF FOR THE TIME AND INPUT AND EFFORT THAT WAS PUT INTO THE PROCESS. THE FEEDBACK WAS VERY VALUABLE. WHICH OF COURSE THE TEAM OF CONSULTANTS WILL SHARE MORE ABOUT AS THEY GO THROUGH THE PROCESS. BUT I DID WANT TO TAKE A SECOND TO THANK EVERYONE FOR THEIR INVOLVEMENT. AND WHILE THERE'S NO ACTION BEING REQUESTED OF COUNSEL TONIGHT. I just wanted you to know that we do look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts on the presentation. And so thank you again. I will turn it over to Jessica McCarthy and the Joy Riot team to present. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Hello. We're so excited to be here. This, as the interim city manager has said, was a very collaborative process, and so really looking forward to sharing all of this with you. um this today is an overview a very high level in terms of our findings and recommendations as you probably saw in your packets there's also a more detailed written report and an even more detailed 450 something page detailed findings document about all of our findings and recommendations including very detailed roadmap on next steps so today we're going to start with kind of reminding everyone what this project is and why we're here we'll then talk about tactical organizational and brand findings and recommendations um because we have so much to go through and we're going to try to go through it really quickly we will open it up of course at the very end for discussion questions any thoughts in this matter All right, so jumping right in to why are we here? The goal of this project was to provide a comprehensive review of Northland's communications, marketing operations, and to develop strategic recommendations to guide future efforts. All of this was really grounded in Northland's broader goals of building trust and transparency, strengthening community identity, increasing engagement, supporting economic vitality, and improving organizational efficiency overall. To do this, we took a look at all of your communications, all of the ways that you're interacting with all of your different audiences. We, of course, spoke with you all. We did interviews and focus groups with staff, stakeholders, and council. We also looked at peer organizations, which we'll talk about in a second. and looked at best practices and all of this really helped to lead to a gap analysis of where you are now and most importantly, what is realistic in terms of where you should be based on a city of your size and the resources that you have available. Just a reminder on the peers, so these were the six peers that were selected and approved. These, as you would recognize, some of these are direct neighbors. Others are communities from across the U.S. They were all chosen for different reasons. Of course, there's no copy and paste of North Glen, so we looked at a variety of factors such as similar populations, similar demographic breakdowns, similar communications needs, proximity to urban centers, factors like that. In the written report is a roadmap. So basically taking all of the things that we're going to talk about today and providing concrete next steps, including ideal prioritization, and ideal timeframes for when these things could feasibly be accomplished for again, a city very much like yours. All right, jumping into the tactical findings and strategic recommendations. Some of these initial ones you will find look very familiar. We've talked about these in the first two updates. But now that we have completed all of our research, we'll get into the actual findings here. So overall, as we talked to council and staff, there were a lot of shared perspectives. The biggest one being that there's this perception of an internal versus external perception gap. Those that are in North Glen, work with North Glen, know and love North Glen, find it very welcoming, family friendly, strong community, very much a hidden gem. Versus externally, people outside of North Glen may not really know it exists or may not have awareness of what it has to offer. They see it more as a pass-through entity. Additional consensus items, definition of what communication should do, making sure that it is something that informs, educates, builds that transparency and those relationships between the city itself and the community it serves. There was also identified a problem of timeliness. Council noted that the symptom is that, hey, things are being shared outside of a window of relevance. Staff talked about this in the form of having limited capacity, especially with several vacant positions in the communications department. Overall, though, there is a shared desire for improved systems and tools and a desire to improve overall and make sure that we're getting to a place where we're filling in some of those gaps that we talked about. Some challenges that we uncovered, the biggest one being that there was no unified messaging framework or communication strategy. Very much related to that is undefined priorities, expectations, and success metrics. The good news is through this process as well as with hiring a new communications director, this is very much already wheels in motion in terms of how do we get to those next steps of defining these things. There was also a lot of discussion about siloed departments and inconsistent processes. Another good piece of news is that even as we have been going through this project, a lot has been made in order to make more adjustments to better these processes, particularly with the internal marketing committee that was recently created. Something that is not unique to North Glen, but of course came up, was serving multiple diverse audiences. That is something that a lot of government entities have to deal with. You have diverse audiences that need their communications in a variety of different ways, and how do you make sure you're connecting with all of them? And finally, we live in a world where communications are constantly evolving. I bet you that seven new social media platforms are being developed as we speak. And with this evolution, making sure that we're keeping up with the demand of how people want to consume their information, where they physically are, and making sure that we are connecting with them in the right way. So the communications resourcing hasn't necessarily scaled to accommodate all of those things. another thing that a lot of people are dealing with. Something else we're keeping in mind are our four key rules of public communications. Of course, you want everything to be timely, accurate. You need to make sure you're having the right frequency, making sure that you are remaining visible without overwhelming the audience. And then the big thing here is really the consistency piece, consistency of messaging, of branding, making sure all of your assets and everything that you're doing is working together to create a halo effect for your brand. This next section, I'm going to go over things that are going really well, things that need improvement. You will also find in our detailed findings document our start, stop, and continue format of things that you can start, stop, and continue doing to help fill in some of these gaps. So in terms of communications policies, and we'll see this on the next slide too with strategies, the big theme here is a desire to have more definition and documentation of policies, strategies and processes. So what's going well here, your commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility is, probably one of the best I've ever seen. You are doing a really great job there. Your efforts to continue to increase cross-departmental coordination is also going very well. Where we need some improvement is, again, that formal communications policy, establishing some of those citywide standards and expectations, you know, making sure that we have clear roles and responsibilities, particularly as we talk about cross-departmental work. AND CREATING THOSE POLICIES FOR DIFFERENT CHANNELS AND OUTPUTS. IN TERMS OF STRATEGIES, RIGHT NOW THERE'S A LOT OF INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENT STRATEGIES THAT ARE GOING REALLY WELL. THE BIG THING HERE, THOUGH, IS THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS THAT WE WANT TO SEE. GOOD NEWS IS THIS NEW COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR SHOULD BE ABLE TO BUILD ON THIS AND REALLY create that foundation to continue the work that's already happening. Ideally, we really want to formalize the communication strategy, make sure there are shared goals, audiences, success metrics, and that the communications are tied to that broader strategic plan. For the external communications evaluation, this is where we actually have our proprietary 50-point benchmarking framework. There are 10 evaluation criteria within five of the categories, which are listed here. Clarity, accessibility, user experience, brand, action, and engagement. Based on the different categories that I will get into of how we kind of bucketed your communications, some of these have slight adjustments, but overall these are the key themes that we are going for. The total score is 50. Not only did we evaluate your external communications, we also looked at your peers to, again, find where those gaps are and see where you are in comparison. Overall, when we total up all of the total categories, Northland is falling below average. However, when we look at the median performance individually, there are some areas where you're far exceeding your peers, such as newsletter, printed communication, and website. But video and social media are falling behind. It makes sense that these two kind of fall together because there is so much interconnectivity there, but something just to note. So jumping into the newsletter. The newsletter is, again, one of your best performing things. For this particular category, we're talking about all of your e-newsletters as well as the printed connection, basically all of the recurring updates that you send out to people. like I said, they're timely, useful, have strong calls to action, where it could use some improvement. Sometimes the content can be a bit dense or hard to scan. And there were some mobile readability and accessibility issues on some of the newsletters. In print, this is where we're talking more about flyers, direct mail pieces, things that you're physically printing and putting out into the world. Overall, the materials feel very professional. They're generally very helpful. Where we could see some improvement here is making sure we have more consistent calls to action, next steps, and making sure that cross-departmentally the print standards are on the same level. This is actually something we talked a lot about with staff in terms of how we can make sure that those standards are again documented, but also having templates available to make it much easier for staff to do this. website, another one that you're doing really well, really strong resident usability, clear navigation, quick links, service pathways, contact information, really strong accessibility posture. Where there can be some improvement is really about the brand storytelling. The site feels more functional, which is a good thing, but also needs to have that brand show what North Glen really truly is and feels like. There's also some technical accessibility issues, but they're pretty minor and can be updated pretty quickly. We also would recommend that the search functionality better support plain language resident questions versus relying more so on very specific things. There's different plugins and things you can use, but it should be a relatively easy fix. Event communications, very thorough. The digital event calendar is regularly updated, which is great. General details are prioritized and clear in digital materials. But where we recommend some improvements is making sure there's a little bit more consistency in terms of the events that you're putting out, the information that they have. making sure the purpose or audience value is very clear, and having things, especially for recurring events like post-event recaps that not only talk about how great this event was, but getting excited whether it's for one next year or something recurring more frequently. Signage, overall generally functional, feels pretty professional. There is some inconsistency in some areas, particularly around different departments and locations. Some signs need some better type and hierarchy to be able to fully understand them. YES. VIDEO, SO OVERALL THE TOPICS ARE GENERALLY CLEAR. THE MAYOR'S MINUTE AND CITY PLATFORM VIDEO LENGTHS ARE GENERALLY PLATFORM APPROPRIATE WHICH IS GREAT. IT NEEDS SOME IMPROVEMENT AS THERE'S A LOT OF INCONSISTENCY IN TERMS OF THE PRODUCTION VALUE OF THE VIDEOS. THE BRAND EXPRESSION IS ALSO VERY INCONSISTENT. Definitely need to make sure that these videos have clear takeaways. What are you wanting people to take away from this video if it's not an action or some other type of next step? And the law enforcement video links frequently exceed best practices, but we'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. Social media, again, very interconnected with video, but overall, large audience, many of the posts share useful updates. Some accounts are maintaining regular posting and tabling information, which is really helpful when we talk about algorithms and how your content is being consumed, as well as if there are instances where you want to do paid social, all of that is very important. The PRC short-form content drives sustained growth on Facebook, so again, really great there. Where it needs improvement, and we'll talk about this in a second, there are too many channels and we're drawing people away from too many different things. Again, I'll talk about that in a second. The brand identity is also fragmented, not just across the departments and profiles, but within them themselves. It kind of looks all over the place. The other thing to know is that the police and particularly the kind of crime or enforcement content can dominate the perception and disconnect from broader city positioning. We're definitely gonna talk about this in a minute, but part of the consideration here is again, thinking about how the algorithms work, how people are now seeing this information, even if they're not following North Glen police, all based on what is being posted and the engagement of the people who are following it. This is your current social media structure. Again, a lot of different profiles in a lot of different places. What we are actually recommending is reorganizing this by audience need. So what you'll see here is a much more streamlined approach. This is also something that a lot of other municipalities kind of lean into. What I want to point out here particularly is Parks and Recreation and North Glen Arts. Again, thinking about the audience need, we separated these two, but see a lot of cross-promotion opportunity between the two for big events, camps, things like that. We also consolidated the event profile pages to all come under Parks, Recreation and Culture. part of the recommendation here is that you are able to create event pages that are not event profiles that ladder back to the parks and recreation profile. I know it can be confusing sometimes. Um, and what the importance of doing that is so that someone comes and enjoys one of your events. Now you can start talking about all of the other wonderful things that you have to offer. So you're drawing them in and able to cross promote within the same profile. I talked about cross-promotion. Here's some examples of some recommended content routing. The first column is the content type. We also list the recommended primary owner of that content. And then there's some examples of where there may be some secondary owners or cross promotion opportunities. This can look like collaborating on a post. So it shows up on both places, but is only technically posted once tagging each other, sharing content with maybe a little more information that's specific to that audience. So a lot of ways that we can kind of tell that whole picture at once. The police social media was kind of a hot button topic and a lot of the conversations that we had. So we thought that it was worth kind of digging a little bit deeper and at this time as well. Overall, we want to make sure that the police content pillars are really reinforcing the safety, service, and trust that they are striving to do. There's already a level of this in the content, but there is an opportunity to apply these strengths more consistently across all of the public touchpoints. The big thing here is a balanced content mix. Now, that's not just the content streams or the types of content that they're posting. It's also about the format that that content is in. Again, going back to the algorithm thing, video performs extremely well. It's passed around a lot more as well. In addition to that, we know that people create a bigger emotional connection to video. So that is something to keep in mind in terms of what types of information go out in what types of formats. We also want to make sure using a consistent steady voice, showing the human side of all of this, which I'll talk about in a second, and really keeping the enforcement piece in proportion to all of the things that the police department does. We also notice that there is some content that is more people-first content, and we want to, again, expand on that. We want to give the department a face, show that service in context, and really create perspective across the content. Why are we showing this? Why is this important for people to see and understand? We also have some examples of some short form content streams. So things, again, giving them a face, meet the MPD, behind the badge, things that talk about some of the training opportunities. Of course, nothing proprietary or giving anything away, This is type of information that shows the preparedness and also can be used as recruitment content, safety in 60 seconds, quick hits on, hey, what are some of the things that we're seeing in terms of the latest scams or other ways that we can make sure people are staying safe in the community? And then, of course, showing the officers interacting with the community as well. When we think about the crime reports, what we're actually recommending is expanding the website report, putting more detail on the website that's very easy to find where you can get more information, including additional context around what people are seeing, whether that's embedding a video and explaining, hey, this is a video that's showing a particular tactic that is really important here, and other information for residents who want more transparency. And then having more of a short form social media report that's no more than one to two minutes and really highlights the key activities, statistics, prevention tools, and public safety takeaways with a direct link for more information if people want it. I know that was a lot, but I'm going to turn it now over to Rick to talk about the organizational findings.

Thank you.

Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here again. I know this is a lot of information, so we're going to try to be as efficient as we possibly can. Organizational structure. So you find in municipalities basically three types of structures. The centralized gatekeeper, the decentralized, we called it the Wild West, and the hybrid network. And the centralized gatekeeper, everything is really run through the communications department, right? They approve everything. They usually develop everything. There isn't a communication that doesn't go out without talking to them. In a decentralized sort of Wild West, every department is doing their own thing. And in the hybrid, you kind of have this hub and spoke situation, right? Where the comms department is sort of governance on top and is managing all of the different departments. So this is kind of repetitive. So North Glen utilizes a loosely structured hub-and-spoke framework, routing central brand authority through the city manager's office or the comms department. And some of your departments have specialized communication nodes for key services. In the hub-and-spoke framework that we are recommending, we're really recommending that you formalize this structure so that everybody understands what their roles are going to be. And we'll talk a little bit about how those roles kind of play out. In the central hub, the communication team serves as the city's strategic anchor, right? They're the brand protector, organizational enabler, We don't want them to micromanage daily operational tasks, but it focuses on governments, high-level strategy, executive support. And by executive support, we mean the leadership and the council themselves. There are things that you need, and it's up to the hub to make sure that you're receiving those services. And maintaining quality control across all municipal channels. We'll talk a little bit about that, but at the end of the day, there has to be somebody who understands that what goes out is accurate. For the operational spokes, the departments are responsible for real-time program service content creation, right? So, they're out there. They're on the front lines. They draft their own posts. They build flyers. They use the pre-approved templates, and they capture the day-to-day realities of their field work, right? They're the people doing it every day. For the central hub, their team functions are strategic governance, brand integrity, executive media, and crisis management. I do want to make a note there. In some cities, if they have a small police department or they have a small team, sometimes that's done by the comms director. Usually there's a public information officer such as you have here, but that coordination between the hub and the police department has to be very close. That has to do with the specialized communications that the police department or fire department or public safety in general have to do. Again, quality control and content creation and departmental enablement. This is making sure that the people in the departments have the skills they need to create the content that everybody wants to see. So, whether that's training, whether that's making sure they have the right equipment that they need, that all has to be directed from the comms department, listening both ways, right, from what the department says that they need. Again, for the departmental spokes, They have to create their own content calendar, which feeds directly upward into the master citywide calendar. Now, Recreation, Parks, and Culture, they have a content calendar. It's very robust. We were incredibly impressed with how they did that, and we would like to see that spread out through the entire city with one master content calendar that the departments help feed, but is maintained and governed by the comms team. Oh, one other thing, it's important. Sorry, backwards. It's also important to understand that the departments have a role to play in making sure that everything is accurate, timely, and consistent, right? They have to be first level to make sure that what they're saying is accurate. that the times are accurate, the days are accurate, the location is accurate, and that they're using the pre-approved templates that the comms department has put together. And then once it goes back to the comms department, they can make sure that, okay, this is our final check. It's ready to go. Staffing structure. With the budget pressures that North Glen is dealing with, just like many of the cities throughout the country, we're not recommending adding communications staff centrally or within the departments. Instead, it's focusing on equipping existing teams with the capabilities systems and support needed to manage a modern public-facing communications program, strengthening skills, making sure that they have capabilities in strategy, content development, accessibility, digital engagement, performance measurements, create clearer roles, workflows, and standards, templates, and tools that can reduce duplication and streamline execution, and expand capacity, enable existing staff to communicate more efficiently, consistently, and strategically across the city. We did a comparative budget and personnel look at the other cities within our scope. North Glen has six full-time employees whose role are fundamentally about communications or marketing. They're spread through police, recreation, parks, and culture, and the comms department. And for the amount, for your general fund budget, the amount of communications that you do, we think that's adequate. We just need to make sure that they have the skills that are necessary there. Our key takeaways from looking at the other cities, larger ecosystems with a little bit more resources. They can segment their communication resources to specialized roles. They have graphic designers, multimedia content creators, marketing analysts. Some places like Farmer Branch dedicate close to half of their communications and marketing workforce directly to parks and recreation and that sort of thing. And integrated frameworks, mid-size systems like Erie leverage combined administrative and marketing CMO structures to eliminate departmental barriers. That's also what you see here in North Glen in a lot of ways. There are people who aren't in that six full-time employees who do a lot of communications work. They pick up the slack where necessary. You have a wonderful team that's really willing to make sure that the city is always seen in the best light. So we're really impressed with how they're willing to step up. Staffing training and resources. Considering the size in the budget, you have adequate staffing, although you have some positions that need to be filled. And I think, you know, the city's in a time of transition. You are in your communications department as well in city leadership. This is a real opportunity for the council to make sure that their desires are understood by the incoming leadership of what they expect and to make sure that that is passed along to the comms director to make sure that not only the city's needs, but the council's needs are being met. Our question really is, do the staff have the skill, training, and resources to implement and manage a modern communication landscape? Skills that we feel you need are really under content creation, photography, video production, digital assets, video editing, and social media management. Needed resources, again, an annual citywide content calendar. And that's really important because communications is one of those services that You have a steady cadence of what you do every year, but emergencies happen. You know, you live in a world where it's not, is there a fire today? It's which one is burning brightest. And so, when you have the content calendar in place, everybody understands when things are due. That does give you the ability to deal with whatever issue, fire, drought, whatever it is that in that moment you have to deal with on that day, you can have the foundation is there so things don't get lost when staff have to deal with something that's urgent. A MORE ROBUST MONARCH PHOTO AND ASSET DATABASE AND CLEAR SOCIAL MEDIA RESPONSE GUIDELINES. WE LIVE IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD. IT CAN BE VERY HARSH. WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT THE STAFF KNOW HOW TO RESPOND SPECIFICALLY TO THOSE TYPES OF SITUATIONS. TRAINING AND POLICY IMPLEMENTATION, MEDIA TRAINING, WE'RE RECOMMENDING THAT THE CITY DOES some resources into training not only the administrators and making sure the police pio has all the training that they need but also elected leaders you are the face of the city um you know most people don't want to call someone in public works they message the mayor right they that's what they do it's hard to go get your dry cleaning right they all come to you with the with an issue so we want to make sure that you have that training as well Again, these are not, these are just kind of examples of the type of training that you can do. There's not really specific to what we say you need to do, but if you have heated council meetings, for example, and you're getting questioned by journalists out on the steps, how do you deal with that, right? You know, there's scenarios that you could practice that you could learn how to deal with that sort of situation. For city administrators, they deal in technical jargon. They understand their field. Public works, you know, filled with engineering people who really understand the processes that they go through, but does that translate to your constituents? Can they understand what, can they understand things in a way that really either give them a call to action or help them understand what the city is trying to do? So giving that training to administrators is very important. Police PIO, again, it's a special type of communication. They operate under some strict rules. But understanding how to deal with large incidents, how to balance public demands for, say, body cam footage with your process with the district attorney, how to deal with an active scene control, all of those things, you want to make sure that it's not just the PIO, but the chief and the deputy chief, they all have that ability to be trained in best practices. And again, for leadership, including yourselves on camera, hot seat drills. This is where you go and you practice being on camera and trying to answer questions. How to deal with a broadcast environment, how your body language really either can be a detriment or can help while you're in these situations, and getting feedback so you can learn. It's one thing to think intellectually about having to do this. It's another thing when you actually have those lights shined on your face. Again, we think you need to have training on an annual basis with CORA, which is the Colorado Open Records Act, and understanding how that works and understanding how your communication and the city communication works, working with your city attorney. First amendment social media training, understanding what the public forum, viewpoint discrimination, profanity, libel, actual malice, moderation, these are all things that elected officials and city administrators have to deal with. It's constantly changing and it's, it's unfortunately becoming more and more something that people have to deal with. So having that on an annual basis, and especially when new elected officials come to the dais, making sure that they have those resources. Again, there are a lot of different training frameworks that you can look at. ICMA, the NAGC, all of these, FEMA, NIOOA, they all have resources that when you hire your new communications director, they can either look at doing this training outside or internally. They can come up with their own internal training programs for you. Brand recommendations.

Thank you. Thanks, Rick. So I'm going to bring it home. This is our final section, brand recommendations, the fun section. So we're going to talk about where your brand is now, where it can go. But mostly, along with everything else today, it's a roadmap for how to get there. So the good news is we talked about start, stop, continue. We don't think there's a lot you need to stop here. We're not going to come in and tell you to replace the logo. In fact, we've come in and gotten to know North Glen, and we think that a bright, vibrant, colorful logo does match what we've seen here. So what we need to do is add to this. Create a robust brand guidelines document that's comprehensive, where we have all the templates that we need, where we define the value proposition, the key message, the look, feel, and voice. where we say, here's how we treat photography, here's how we treat digital assets, here's how we treat wayfinding. And we recommend about every 12 months, this is dealt with as a living document, meaning there's some sort of committee that gets together, looks at it and says, Is this working for us? Do we need to add to it? Usually it's working for you, right? A good brand will last you five, ten years, hopefully, but you may need to add to it. So let's say that there's a new development somewhere in North Glen, there's a new roadway, and there's signage there that you don't have templates for. Okay, add those. One of those seven social media platforms is developed. You want to use it. How are we going to use it with our brand? So what's our strategy going to be? First up, defining a clear story that is authentic to North Glen, right? Creating a surround sound approach. So we've talked about this. Coordinating our brand messages across all of our departments so we're all speaking from the same playbook. Strengthening connections with our target audiences. Those three audiences, you're going to hear me say this over and over, you're going to have it memorized, are residents, businesses, and visitors. And then encouraging a two-way street, right? It's not just us talking to them, it's us hearing from them and reporting back, letting them know they're heard. So principles as the brand is built out. Consistency is key. Ever since branding began, ever since the first cattle rancher branded cattle, right? It's got to be consistent. You know, that cattle belongs on that ranch. That's the main thing here. Putting our audiences first, residents, businesses, visitors, and tailoring communications to them. Being authentic to the people and places in North Glen and staying action oriented. We've talked about this, but yeah, letting people know why you're receiving this, either what we're now doing about it, what our next steps are, or what the calls to action for them are. So let's start the process of defining this brand. First up, we'll talk about the value proposition. So what is a value proposition? It is a message, a statement that shows the benefits of our city so people understand its value. So it should be distinctive to North Glen, ownable by us. It's focused on benefits, centered on those audiences,

RESIDENTS, BUSINESSES, VISITORS, AND FOUNDATIONAL.

BECAUSE THIS IS AN INTERNAL STATEMENT. DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO HIDE IT FROM THE PUBLIC, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT IT'S FOR. IT'S FOR ANYBODY COMMUNICATING WITH THE VOICE OF THE CITY TO SAY, OKAY, IS MY COMMUNICATION REFLECTING THE VALUE? WHAT ARE WE RECOMMENDING? THROUGH WORK, RECREATION, AND CIVIC INVOLVEMENT, OUR COMMUNITY GROWS TOGETHER. So through work, recreation, civic involvement, our community grows together. What does that mean? Since 1966, we've been on the upswing, and that's continuing. So as we continue to ascend, we want residents, businesses, and visitors to feel they can join us, they can grow personally, professionally, and this is some and parts, right? As they grow, we grow together. What's the look, feel, and voice we're recommending? The look is based on the brand that you have right now, the logo. It's bright. It's vibrant. We want to make sure that we're maintaining clear hierarchy and intentional white space. I know that sounds technical, but it just means that we don't want to send out impenetrable blocks of text where people go, I don't have time for this right now. We want to make sure that it's scannable. If you have to, you know, Do a couple of posts on one topic. It's fine.

Break it up.

Break up flyers and multiple pages. Fine. No problem. The feel. So friendly over formal. There's only two guys wearing ties in here tonight. I mean, this is not a super formal environment. I think we can be friendly. Welcoming. Make people feel comfortable. We'll talk about that a little bit more. And hands-on so it grow together right encouraging people to get involved which you guys do very well the voice so Down to earth limiting civic jargon and we've talked about this a little bit, but you know just because we are the city We're communicating to you Let's not overwhelm people with civic jargon civic jargon. Excuse me Let's meet them where they are right speak to them as we would on the street Be action oriented again Here's a piece of communication. Here's some news. Here's what we're doing about it. Here's what you can do about it. And positive. This is a very positive place. That's what we've seen since we've been working with you. We've got a lot of reasons to be positive. But also, communications from your city should be positive, even when we're talking about a tragedy, right? This happened, but here's what we're doing about it. Things are going to happen, but you can rely on us. Next up, we'll talk about our recommended key message. So what's a key message? We already had a value proposition. Why do we need a key message? It's a little bit different. So this is also internal, but it's a touchstone. And it's foundational. Am I, in my communications, reflecting our key message? So it's internal. It's not a tagline. People don't need to see it out there. But all of our communications should follow this ethos. It should be easily remembered and repeatable by anybody who's working with our communications. Councilmember Condo probably knows Reef Points from the Naval Academy, a 300-page book that had to be memorized by plebes or else they have to drop and give you 20. This is not that. It's just one statement, and it's short. You'll see it. It has to be relevant, obviously, to the city of North Glen and to all of our residents, visitors, and businesses, and usable across all of our departments, right? So what is it? North Glen welcomes you to the next opportunity. North Glen welcomes you to the next opportunity. So where did this come from? What do we mean? I've already spoken about how welcoming you are. But I mean, really, in small and large ways, we had somebody tonight who won an award and talked about moving here in 2022 and how happy they are to be here. We're on the cusp of the Broncos season, and you have a Packers fan up here. And he has equal voice to anybody else who's here. But no, in more serious ways, you've welcomed a large Hispanic population that's grown to 36% of the population of North Glen. an increasing amount of a recent, I should say, population of refugees from Afghanistan that you guys have welcomed and gone out of your way to say, hey, let's make you feel like you have a home here. So Northland welcomes you to the next opportunity. It's part of being positive, the next opportunity, right? Because again, we're on the ascension. It's forward momentum. One of the ways to test one of these statements is, the phrase we use, is does it have legs? Does it feel like it can get up and start walking and doing things by itself, right? Good example of this, maybe you've heard this before, it's an external statement. The state of Virginia has had the same tagline since 1969. They've tried to beat it, they can't. Virginia is for lovers. And why do I say that has legs? Virginia is for wine lovers. Virginia is for beach lovers. Virginia is for mountain lovers. So whoever in the state is trying to promote something, they can use that. It has flexibility. It's foundational. How does this work for North Glen? Those of you who've done the homework have already seen it. Across departments, right? Let's say a police department has a recruiting drive. Next opportunity to protect and serve. Parks, Recreation, and Culture, next opportunity to visit Parsons Theater. Economic Development, next opportunity to grow a business, start a business, relocate, access funding. And you can kind of play a game here. You can keep going on and on. By the way, we're not saying this is a formula. Nobody has to write, North Glen welcomes you, next opportunity to do this. That's not what we're saying. It's just, again, it has the ethos of this kind of feel. How does that break down across our audiences? And who are they? They are residents, businesses, and visitors. We'll start with residents. So we should maintain an always-on social presence because we want people to know they can rely on us for any communications they need. They live here, right? We need to tell them what they need to know. Close the loop after engagement. So after meetings, after surveys, after any kind of input, report back. This is what we heard. This is what we're doing about it. Make participation easier, so across all our channels, promote events and opportunities to engage with us, right? And then, I really like this one, turning residents into storytellers. So we've known forever in advertising that people trust testimonials over whatever the brand has to say about itself. Let's, as much as possible, get the voices of our residents into our communications. for businesses. So creating clear audience pathways for businesses to discover how they can start a business, relocate, grow, anything they need, access funding, right? And proactively outreach through all of our communications channels to those businesses, creating quarterly networks, roundtable events, ways to interact, highlighting business momentum. So highlighting economic development wins, right? We got somebody to move to the city of Northland, establish their business here. But also, let's celebrate our local businesses that are already here, right? We see what you're doing. Next time that I'm a resident, I'm driving by, I go, oh, that's the business that I saw, right, in the connection. And make economic development more visible across all of our communications platforms. So Jessica talked about cross-promoting. That's part of this. Let's cross-promote economic development so it has as much visibility as possible. And then visitors. Let's package experiences around planning moments. So let's think about the questions they have. What is there to do this weekend? What's going on in North Glen, in Adams County? Then divert them to North Glen. What should I bring? Let's answer the questions that are on their minds. Curate reasons to come back. So you came here in the spring. Well, you're going to love the winter, the fall, and what did I not say? Summer. This is a four season city. Let's get people using it. Make social more experience-driven. So using everything available to us, short-form video, event photography, seasonal guides, staff picks, all these different ways that we can engage attention. And then reach out to partners. So regional tourism organizations, influencers, local businesses say, hey, you're trying to promote yourselves. We're trying to promote something. Let's work together. Again, rising tide, community grows together. Let's make it happen. Thank you very much for everything, you know, not just tonight, but I remember when I saw your RFP, I brought it to Jessica. I said, I think we've got something good here. We brought it to Rick. He was excited. We had a great pitch meeting with you guys. It felt like it was five minutes, and it was way longer than five minutes, but we didn't know that until we left. And then our engagement throughout meeting, everybody in the room, everybody who's not in the room, we've really enjoyed this. We hope you find the roadmap helpful. you know, usable. We hope it agrees with your expectations and we open it up for feedback.

Thank you so much. Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Ms. McCarthy, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Amarito. A lot of material here. And one thing I was doing was watching your body language. And I noticed that most of you had crossed arms, so I feel like you're being very defensive when you're being in here. So I'm wondering, except for you, because you were doing most of the talking at the podium, I'm just wondering, you know, the last time that you were here, your performance was lackluster. And I think that really hurt your credibility with me, personally. But I do want to try and square up one thing that came from that first presentation, and that was the finding from the staff interviews that they felt like they were significantly under-resourced. What exactly did that mean? And given that you have this recommendation that we maintain six FTEs, as well as your recommendation that the hub-and-spoke model should be what we implement here in terms of an organizational structure, A, is that the right number of people? And B, at what level of priority do we need to fully staff six FTEs? So if you can answer those two questions. And then finally, the closure question that I'd like to know is, why did you under club it and have a junior person come and present the last time you were here?

Sure. I think when we had our first, my apologies. When we had our first presentation with you at the beginning of this process, we had talked about making sure that we brought something to you that was affordable for the resources that you had, that we couldn't promise you a Rolls Royce when that was just not realistic. And we also understand that there are budgetary restraints. So, we think that you have good people. We think that you need to develop some resources or skills that those people have to kind of meet the moment. And that's doable. We also think that when it comes to, I just lost my train of thought for a second. When it comes to who you're going to hire first, we think that the comms director is going to be the key position. I think you want that person to be able to hire the people that they feel can do the job. They're going to live or die with those people, right? And so they should have the opportunity to pick those employees that they feel have the skills that they need. I think that's the most honest answer that I can give you. We understand that those budgetary pressures would Most departments like to have more people, absolutely. I don't know any city that the departments don't want to have more resources, but you have to work within your means.

Um, regarding junior staff, you know, it was an unfortunate situation that it came across that way, but we were all young months, you know, we work on training our, our people. Um, she has presented many times before you guys are intimidating group and the nerves just got to her. That's, you know what it is, but we, we, um, are continuing to train that. And I apologize for losing credibility because of that.

I appreciate the being contrite about that because it really did bother me a great deal. I was not in the room obviously I was participating remotely but as I sat there and I watched and she struggled it just for me I felt for her very badly and I didn't think that you all supported her very well. So then it just kind of caused me to think what is the quality of the work that we're paying for here. So I wanted to share that with you because I think that's feedback that you all can take back. Thank you.

Councilmember Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you all so much for being here. This has been a ton of work for a really long time. And I know, you know, things can feel dicey. I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE PRESENTATION TONIGHT. I WOULD LOVE TO, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR, OBVIOUSLY THIS IS A GIANT DOCUMENT. I READ THROUGH THE MAJORITY OF IT, INCLUDING The plan, I completely support all of that. I highly recommend everyone especially dive into the slides that are the keep going, start and stop was very helpful. I think like very easy to read and like laid out really well. And there's just so many great tactical items that the team can take with them moving forward. I really appreciate just the sheer amount of like data and everything that went into this. Everyone knows I'm going to be obsessed with slides 27 and 28. There's just sheer reduction in points of communications that we have on our social media channels. And thank you so much for bringing up algorithms and that sort of thing because all of this really does matter in today's society. So I am very much on board with these recommendations as well. And I think, you know, I agree. And I've had a lot of thoughts, you know, around the siloedness of our comms for quite some time. And so, I think, like, having a sort of hybrid model makes a lot of sense for the city. I would, I do think that the comms needs a strong leader in place. We've been without a comms director for a while. And we need somebody who's very forward thinking. And we are very much looking forward to the hiring process of that. And I know they'll be able to take this document and run. And then from A brand perspective, I think this looks great. I feel really jazzed about this. I'm going to speak to my DIAS members that this is a jumping-off point, a framework that's being recommended. We are going to hire a comms director. We don't need to, like, talk about every word on the slide for this this evening. We do like to wordsmith sometimes as a group, so I'm trying to lay the playing field out for that. that that's not really what this is about this evening. And I'm just really, I think the, but I do think like look, feel, voice, the taglines, everything is feeling great to me personally, but I'm not the comms director. But I feel the recommendations coming out of this feel just like tangible, doable. We can move, this is a great place to move forward from. Yeah, that's all I have to say for right now. I'll let everyone else speak. Thank you so much again.

Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you all for being here. It's been a journey already just with this event. I will say I think it's a great foundational piece of data and a thoughtful process put together that has to be and should be a good base for our next comm director. And I am also very excited to see that process start now that we have this back. And I think there's a lot... I appreciated the... TIMELINES FOR ACTUALLY INTRODUCING DIFFERENT PARTS. I THINK THERE'S LIKE SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT OF THEM. THERE'S A LOT. WHEN I FIRST READ IT, IT'S A LOT OF INFORMATION. I TOOK A STEP AND I'VE COME BACK TO IT A FEW TIMES. SO I THINK IT'S APPROPRIATE THAT, YOU KNOW, YOU DON'T HAVE TO FULLY FEEL IT'S 1,000% FLUSHED OUT BECAUSE, AGAIN, AS COUNCILMEMBER BURNS SAID, hopefully we're going to hire a very good comms director, that this is a great game plan. But they're going to call audibles. They're going to find things that they don't like or they don't think works with the situation. But it's definitely a strong start for them to get going. And I think there's a lot in here that I appreciate. So I'll just say, you know, this is not the end of the story. This is literally the beginning of the story. So I think it's the right step, and I'm excited for the next. Thanks.

Mayor Pro Temp. Thank you, Mayor. I like that, Councilmember Sievers. It's a starting point. And that's exactly how I'm looking at this as well. So thank you, first of all, for putting all this. I did look through all 575 pages. I can't remember everything that's on there. And then I tried to summarize it with AI as well, so to kind of refresh my memory. But I think, you know, I'm not really shocked by the findings. I think it's all the things that we've been seeing and we've been talking about. you know, throughout the course of at least a year, maybe longer. So I think there's definitely some validation in there in terms of, well, the important piece is that now we have some steps, some actionable steps to take. And I think maybe that was obviously in the gap analysis, things that were missing there before. But as was mentioned, you know, having that comms director is going to be key. And I like the idea of them having this roadmap to kind of... I GUESS START ON THE RIGHT FOOT, YOU KNOW. I THINK IT'S SO IMPORTANT, AND I DO APPRECIATE ALL THE FINDINGS. I THINK THEY ARE PRETTY RELEVANT TO OUR CITY. AGAIN, JUST REPEATING THINGS LIKE THE BRANDING AND THE STORYTELLING, YOU KNOW, STUFF THAT WE'VE BEEN SAYING THAT WE'VE BEEN REALLY WANTING TO SEE FOR A LONG TIME. I appreciate that. I do have a question. What is our approximate timeline interviews for communications director, just overall? If you don't have the timeline, I mean, it's just an ish curiosity.

So, the position closed on Thursday, and so we're going through 130 applications, so.

Okay, nice. That's excellent. That's great news.

As quickly as we can go through those, then we'll get things set up, so.

Yeah. No, that's exciting. That's exciting that we have such a great pool of applicants So one thing I can't remember if there was in here, was there anywhere where it's like, I think you did say like a 12-month check-in or something like that, but is there like a recurring piece in here to have like a quarterly report on like KPIs or roadmap progress in here? I might have missed it.

Yeah, it's buried in there. But yes, there were recommendations in terms of ongoing metrics discussions as well as basically annual audits, so to speak, in terms of, you know, all the policies, strategies, what's working, what's not working, and how do you continue to evolve those things.

That rings a bell. Now that you said the audits, I'm pretty sure I did read that because I think that's important just for all of us to do those check-ins and make sure that it is going, you know, according to what we're hoping it will do. So I'll leave it at that. If I think of any other questions, I'll chime in again, but thank you.

Councilmember Goff. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for coming to present to us. I really appreciated, like, the vast amount of data that you collected and put together in such a way that, you know, we can digest it. And the recommendations. I overall support the directions and the recommendations. I like the key message. and the framework recommendation. So I think this is great to move forward. I like the cutting down on all the different social media pages and hopefully this makes things easier for our staff because I don't want some whole new thing where everybody has to start figuring out a lot of extra, you know, learning or training or work. So I hope we get some support or at least some feedback from staff on this. And I do think that hiring a communications director IS GOING TO BE A KEY AND THAT PERSON OR THOSE POTENTIAL FINALISTS OR WHATEVER GET A CHANCE TO LOOK AT THIS BECAUSE I THINK IT SOUNDS LIKE, I MEAN, WE HAVEN'T HEARD FROM EVERYONE, BUT THIS IS THE WAY, THE DIRECTION WE WANT TO GO, JUST EVEN GENERALLY. AND IT'S NOT LIKE IT'S, LIKE YOU SAID, WRITTEN IN STONE OR ANYTHING, BUT I LIKE THE DIRECTION. THANK YOU.

COUNCIL MEMBER NOWICKI.

THANK YOU, MADAM MAYOR. THANK YOU, Y'ALL, FOR THIS WORK. I do think it lays out a really good roadmap. A few comments and then just a couple talking points here. You know, I think there was one where you kind of laid out the bar graphs and the sideways, I don't know what it's called, sideways bar graphs. But, you know, the narrative that stands out to me is kind of going from this kind of old media to kind of this new media, you know, and North Glen is in that transition, you know, and I think hiring a comms person will really help to solidify that. I think you've given us kind of a preliminary roadmap to help that. So I do appreciate that. Also, thank you for saying not to throw out the logo and all that stuff, because that would have been a huge, expensive process. And I actually really like the logo. Someday, maybe a tattoo of the logo. We'll see. That's commitment. Maybe a brand instead. Also, you know, I did like the recommendations for PD comms and then additional comms training for, you know, new council members coming in. I think, you know, I know those things may require money down the road, but, you know, at least kind of knowing, you know, I'm sure, you know, there's some basic stuff we could probably do. I also like the idea, and I've thought about this quite a bit, YOU KNOW, ESPECIALLY FOR US, BECAUSE WE ARE A SMALL CITY, I THINK IT CAN BE ONE OF OUR STRENGTHS IS REALLY TURNING THE RESIDENTS INTO THE STORYTELLERS, RIGHT? KIND OF FEATURING THEIR STORIES, THEIR LIVED EXPERIENCE, YOU KNOW, I THINK AT LEAST IN MY WARD WE'RE STRONGLY WORKING CLASS FOLKS, YOU KNOW, AND I JUST SEE PEOPLE COME AND GO AND EVERYBODY HAS, YOU KNOW, THEIR OWN THING, THEIR OWN LIFE, AND I THINK IT COULD BE I, to some, I mean, it would seem mundane, but I think there's really interesting things in that, you know, people going to work and living their lives, and I think that's what we can build on in North Glen, right? I also really, really like the value proposition, right? I found that really inspiring, and I skipped away from my screen, otherwise I would read it, but I mean, that, in a nutshell, kind of felt like you know, like kind of why I ran and why I live here and all those things. A couple of questions and then one kind of talking point here. I am interested and because I know there was some discussion around this regarding resident input on some of this. I know we had to make some cuts and kind of figure out. So I think maybe that was one of the things that kind of got maybe left out a little bit. And again, I'm not putting that on y'all. I understand, you know, we had to look at a package and figure out what was what. But going forward, what might that look like to kind of bring that resident voice in? Is this something, obviously you've given us a lot that I think we could take and it would absolutely improve the communication, but how can we also kind of get that resident input and then kind of integrate that?

Great question. So everything that you saw here is based on best practices and industry standards as well. The resident input, I think, would be a great step at some point in this process. What the resident input would be able to provide is what is specific to the North Glen residents. You know, we talked about making sure you're in all the right places. I think being able to You know, for example, from our perspective, looking at the social media platforms that you're currently on, we looked at your resident demographics to say, okay, yes, based on typical demographics and the typical demographics of these platforms, these make the most sense. don't know your your uh you know residents may surprise you and be on one of these new ones that i just talked about that we haven't heard of yet because it just came out today um and so those are the types of things where being able to focus in some areas or eventually expand into some other areas based specifically on what your residents need will be important I'm really confident in what we have just, again, based on best practices, a lot of cross-referencing into the demographics and what's typical use there. But that's something that, you know, whether it's some additional focus groups or a very short survey, literally just like how do you get your information might be something to consider in the future.

Yeah.

Adding to that, you know, we also mentioned at one point closing the loop after engagement. Those are good opportunities to, you know, you have just taken a survey or had a meeting, right? So just asking the residents, like, hey, you made a really good point. Do you mind if we put that in the next newsletter? They say, yes. You know, like, awesome. So get that in there. And the more you do that, right, then it just kind of like builds this credibility of they're not just telling us what they want us to know, but it's a two-way street.

Right.

Right.

Okay. And I guess, again, this is not my background, so I'm new to all this stuff. That's theoretically someone that comms director kind of coming in would understand that would kind of integrate a lot of that. Right. Okay. Excellent. Like I said, value proposition, awesome. Talk to me about the key message because I was actually not a big fan of that because it didn't feel specific to North Glen. I feel like I could have put Thornton welcomes you to the next opportunity. Westminster welcomes you to the next opportunity. It didn't feel specific to North Glen, but maybe I'm missing something.

Yeah, I think that... We've worked with a lot of municipalities, and I'm not going to name any names here besides North Glen, but this is a very welcoming place. Not all places are. There are a lot of places you can go where there are gatekeepers. There's a lot of unwritten codes of behavior. You're incorporated in 1966, as I mentioned before. It's pretty new. And that part goes to both. This is growing. We're still defining North Glen. There are a lot of places, especially in older parts of the country, meaning places that have been around a lot longer, that can't make that kind of claim. And unfortunately, there are a lot of places that, through nothing they did wrong, don't have a lot of opportunities. That is just a fact. There are a lot of places I could show up with that kind of statement. And they'd be like, hey, man, have you driven around? We're trying to. You guys have a lot going on. So when we say that it should be distinctive and ownable to North Glen, I'm not saying, I mean, how many municipalities are there in the United States? We'd break AI if we asked. There's a lot. I'm not saying only North Glen can say this. But I'm saying... Can North Glen say this, pull it off, and does it feel like it belongs here and it's an ethos that we can follow? And, you know, that's for you to answer, but I think it does.

Yeah. Okay. And, okay, that was, I appreciate that answer. Just one correction. I think we were incorporated in 1969. 1969. Yeah.

Did I get that right? Yes. You did. Well done.

I paid attention. But thank you very much for your work, and I really appreciate kind of the roadmap here.

Council Member Lighty. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for the work that you guys put into this. This is clearly not a nine-to-five job, so thank you. I also, because it was brought up, I just wanted to specifically highlight the fact that you gave an opportunity to a younger associate to do the work that... the big kids do. So thank you so much for doing that. As a younger person, that is something that I constantly look for, especially in spaces that we don't always get a seat at the table. So thank you so much for giving that opportunity. We are very intimidating. Trust me, I've had to be down there before. It's scary. I totally understand. So again, thank you so much. I also wanted to highlight, I loved that you guys were talking about PR training and the training around Quora and Honestly, just making sure that we know what the First Amendment is is huge because that is something that we deal with a lot. So thank you so much for highlighting all of those things. When I first looked at this packet, I was like, oh, my gosh, so many pages. And then I kept going. I was like, oh, so many pages. This is so great. So thank you so much for all of the work that you put into this. And again, thank you for giving opportunities to everyone.

Okay, I'm going to take a turn. I have a couple thoughts. I want to start by talking about the key message. And I believe it's, I'm going to disagree a little bit because I think it's great. I think it's very aspirational at the same time it is grounded, right? The North Glen welcomes you part is very much about who we are. So thank you for noticing that. But also the to the next opportunity is is it's so aspirational and it's just inspiring. So I appreciate it. I thought it was great. I also love the use of color in a lot of that work on those slides. I did have a question. So it came up a little bit earlier about the hub and spoke. strategy and i did wonder knowing that we're hiring both a new city manager and a new communications director did you have thoughts on like maybe best practices around that as opposed to reflecting back what we currently have i would say that in the most successful cities that i've seen that i've worked with

You have to have that central area that does control, have the quality control. But you have to empower the departments to be able to do the work, right? Like I said earlier, they're the frontline people. They're the ones who are dealing with whatever department it is, their specific function, how to do it. So it gives you oversight and flexibility, right? Which is kind of what you want. When you have the centralized, completely centralized system, you can really have a bottleneck. And it's not as responsive. And sometimes it's not as genuine as you can when you have the people who are there on the ground. So I don't think it would be controversial for a new comms person to come in and try to see that. For one, they can't do everything. They can't make every flyer. They can't make every post. They have too much to do, right? But they just need to make sure that everything is being done on time and being done accurately. So the recommendation stands, even with the new city manager coming in. It's just the hope is that they are both on the same page. They're on the same page with each other and that they have the full support of the council with the understanding of that you're all on the same because if they don't have that, it'll be a rough road.

OKAY. THANK YOU. I APPRECIATE THAT. THAT'S HELPFUL. THE OTHER THING I WAS THINKING ABOUT, I LOVED ALL OF IT. I THINK IT WAS VERY AFFIRMING TO NOT ONLY WHAT OUR EXPERIENCE IS BUT WHAT WE'VE HEARD FROM RESIDENTS, WHAT WE'RE STRUGGLING WITH, WITH TIMELINESS AND EVERYTHING THAT YOU HAVE IN HERE. AND GOING BACK TO LIKE WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE AS A COUNCIL, THIS IS REALLY NOT OUR ROAD MAP, RIGHT? set the policy council set the direction of hey we need an assessment now we have this beautiful body of work that we can hand over to the person that does the work that is boots on the ground and so Thank you, Councilmember Burns, for making sure that we don't wordsmith the heck out of this document, because that's not our role. But I am going to disagree with a colleague really quickly, because maybe it was because you were one out of nine of us that was online, because my experience in the room While it may not have been exactly where we were hoping it would land, my appreciation for it is that I listened to you and you said to me, trust the process, right? I got very frustrated and I wanted more and I wanted more too soon. And you knew that because it's your job. And I listened to you, and I fully trusted the process, and it was incredible, because everything I had asked for, I'd asked for research, I'd asked for best practices, all of those things that I wanted to quickly, you said, just hold on. Hold on. We got this. We're coming. Trust the process. And it worked out really well. And I think even in the most challenging of circumstances to be able to bounce back from feedback. Like, not once did I question your credibility. I think you're professionals and you have quite a body of work. But the fact that you took feedback from a whole bunch of different people, because it was us, plus it was an internal team that you were working with more frequently than us, and you were able to take all of that bounce back and pivot right because we did make a shift it really wasn't about finances uh councilmember nowicki it was council made a shift and it was due to timeliness and it was due to some scheduling pieces and so we made that change which caused you guys to pivot and that resulted in really good work. I mean, it's beautiful. And so I just want to thank you because I think you're very talented people. So, and I also haven't seen any defensive body posture. What I have seen, especially through your presentation, is that you are also inspired by this body of work and that you are proud of it. That is coming through and you absolutely should be. So I thank you for it. And I am fully willing to take this big passage of work or package of work and hand it over to staff and say have fun with this no i mean it's it's great it's it's the purpose of it and they're going to have a lot to dig into the new comms director and the whole team and i think they're gonna do great things so thank you um and we have a few more hands mayor pro tem Thank you.

Sorry, I thought of a follow-up question, but I don't know if it's a great question. So my question was actually around the implementation roadmap and the high priority that starts in, like, zero to three and four to six months, but obviously with missing key people. I'm assuming that'll start once those hires happen, right? Or is that something that somebody else is going to take ownership? In the meantime, to start the process is more just an internal thing going on.

Yeah, no, thanks for asking. I will say, internally, the team is very excited for this roadmap. And we have had small discussions throughout the process. And while we don't necessarily have all the staff and leadership in place at this time, there are some pieces of this roadmap that we can tackle tonight. And the team has an appetite for that. There's some small wins and some things like that throughout the large document that we've already identified. And certain people in their certain specialty areas are certainly excited to tackle. So while it may not be exactly what the roadmap has laid out in the big grand scheme of things, there's definitely work that's going to start now.

I love hearing that and I love hearing that staff is excited to do that. Like I feel like that is so important. That's like palpable. And the mayor said it like now, you know, our part's done now. It's all you guys. So that's great to hear. Thank you. Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I do want to add my reaction to the content that you presented. I do like the I do like the value proposition that you outlined i do also like your key selling message my question has to do with again just the whole notion that you're suggesting quality control needs to be centralized and then empowering people on the outer parts of the spokes I DID NOT SEE IN THIS LARGE VALUMIST DOCUMENT ANY KIND OF BOILER PLATE FOR COM'S OR BRANDING STANDARDS. DO YOU HAVE ANY BOILER PLATE FRAMEWORKS THAT YOU CAN OFFER SO THAT OUR NEW COM'S DIRECTOR DOES NOT HAVE TO CREATE IT FROM SCRATCH?

NEW SPEAKER CAN YOU CLARIFY? ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT LIKE IN TERMS OF STRATEGIES OR?

Yeah, boilerplate, like say for example, maybe it's a non-attribution or other best practices from other municipalities of some sort of SOP or brand comms guidance. Like for example, when I worked for Medtronic, they would have a brand and marketing guidance thing. This is the color that you use when you're or this is where you put the byline. Do you have anything like that that perhaps our new communications director can leverage?

Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of examples in terms of brand guidelines and different ways to use brand guidelines in that way. You know, in terms of the language in the report itself, anyone who has a marketing background should have a pretty clear idea once they read this of kind of where to go from here and how to implement some of the best practices in terms of different strategies and policies and things in place.

Okay, so I take it the answer is no, they're going to have to distill it from the 575 pages.

Yeah, what I would say is you're hiring a new comms director. One of the questions should definitely be, have you dealt with created brand guidelines before? Because that'll be a major red flag if they haven't. If they have, then yeah, I mean, there's a... It varies, but there's a general template that all brand guidelines documents follow. And we can send a general template, but I mean, they'll have it. And the other thing is, like I said, they vary. Your comms directors, the candidates, may have... different ones that they like over others, I would make that part of, I'm probably speaking to the wrong, I would make that part of the interview process. Because I mean, where you guys are and this roadmap that we give, that part of the job will be huge, right? And as far as the question earlier about, I think it was your question, you know, full-time employees who are working on this, if that person has a grasp of how to complete the roadmap that we set forth, excuse me, then that'll justify, you know, the amount of employees that you have and that meeting the budget, because that'll take a lot of the work off of a lot of the people that are already working here. But anyway, short answer is, yeah, those guidelines exist, and whoever you hire, I'm sure, will have guidelines that they want to follow.

OKAY. THANK YOU.

COUNCILMEMBER BURNS.

THANK YOU, MADAM MAYOR. JUST TO COUNCILMEMBER CONDO'S POINT, AS THE INTERNAL, AS WE WERE THE MARKETING CANDIDACY KICKOFF TEAM, WE HAD PURPOSELY DISCUSSED NOT INCLUDING IN OUR RFP LIKE BRAND GUIDELINES BECAUSE WE DIDN'T NEED ANY OF THOSE THINGS OR TEMPLATES BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE AN EXTRA COST. SO WE KEPT THIS REALLY TIGHT TO THESE SPECIFIC OUTCOMES. SO AS THE TEAM CORRECTLY MENTIONED, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT AMAZING ANSWER. A, we didn't pay for those types of things, like the social media templates and that sort of thing. And B, the people that we hire should have all, like should be able to take this and run. Like it is silver spoon status to whoever steps into this. I am not kidding when I say that. So thank you.

Thank you. I have no more hands. I think we're ready to wrap it up. Again, thank you for your work. We really appreciate it. It was a pleasure working with you. And I think you've set us up for success.

Thank you so much. And as you said, we are very inspired. Might be a joy riot North Glen office someday.

To your next opportunity. Thank you all so much. Well done. Yes. Thank you. All right, we're going to wrap up with another opportunity for public invited to be heard. This is an opportunity for public comment statements are limited to three minutes per speaker. Comments must be related to an item previously addressed by counsel during the meeting. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak to counsel at this time? All right, please state your name and address or ward and provide your comments to counsel.

Tim Long, 10661 Utrello Lane, Ward 4. I worked for the Sisters of Mercy for many, many years, and one of the things we always talked about in executive session was, they would always share with me, when you have no margin, you have no mission. I keep drawing your attention back to your financial status. And I would also urge you to have a review of maybe the exit interview that took place with Diana Wilson. She was an expert, and I had great respect for her. She left, and there's no understanding as to why or when. Well, we know the when. Earlier this year, I challenged you to Taun Hall meeting for resident input. We all circle up and have exchanges. To my understanding, that never took place. Also, I'm concerned with the fact that the community really has lost faith in you because of what happened with the pedophile housing. There's no real action that came out of that. And people, when I talk to them, they'll say, why bother? Why even listen to these people? They don't really act the way they should be acting. So they've lost faith in you. And we didn't really have a good resident interview, I don't think. Some of the choices that I read in the 575-page document that I just scanned, by the way, costing $73,000. That's about .75 FT of a police officer. The SWAT on pages 190 and 192, talking about the weaknesses and threats, I would definitely call your attention to that section. And also, the other situation is when it comes to what's going to take place with this 575 pages, I challenge you to get involved. I don't see you should put this onto the staff. It's really not, here, take this, you go. No, you're the policy makers. You should be adroit and understanding every step of what takes place and what needs to happen here. And I don't think you're doing that. So you can't shrug it off or delegate it or abrogate this responsibility, in my opinion. You are accountable for this and where we are right now in North Glen is not a happy place. And you really didn't interview all the residents. And there's some urban legends going around that if you stand up against you and generate a complaint, you get, well, you get cited for littering, putting gravel on somebody's driveway when they're trying to build a zero scape. And they're suffering now for having suffered a littering code violation. So I hope it's worth the value that you've spent on this. I hope you take the time to look at it. And don't hide the risks, which I think you've been doing. You've got some real viability questions. And a $23 million revenue bond issue is no laughing matter. And without it, I dare say I don't know what's going to happen to your wastewater treatment. Good luck.

Okay. All right. There being no further business, we are adjourned.