Remarks by Dave Donelson
131 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 3 of 6
“Yeah, thank you, Madam President. And so I have the privilege of reading this resolution, this month, and Angela Seals is here from Copper to speak on it. And so I'll get started reading it. And before I even read it, I just want to reinforce that Colorado Springs was really a city founded, in a way, unlike other cities. Most were founded for economic reasons, a port on an ocean, a big river, the Mississippi River. crossings of railroad, main railroad lines. When General Palmer came here, what he really noticed was the beauty of the land and felt that this would be a perfect place for a city…”
“Yeah, thanks again, Madam President. I think it might be interesting for the citizens here today and those who watch this online to know that one council person can't bring a resolution to be voted on. It takes at least five to say okay. One may have the idea, but then it goes out and there has to be the support. Sometimes things don't get the support. you know i i agree with what was just said about uh you know um it's it's very good that council continued this um 13-year tradition now of having this resolution and from again from the founding colorado springs and the our founding father…”
“Well, sure, Madam President. I'll have a few comments. I don't see Lisa in here. Is she in here?”
“All right, so she's not here. But Lisa's a former city councilwoman from more than 20 years ago. 90. What?”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“Yeah, thanks, Madam President. I would recommend that since there's still some things being changed in the minutes that we just, I would make a motion to postpone this just until our next meeting. Then we've all had a chance to look at what we're really voting on, which sounds like gonna be a little different than what we have in our packets. And I don't think there's any issue with just being sure that we're voting on, that we've actually read what we're voting on. So I would make a motion to just postpone this until our next meeting.”
“My question would fit in 8A, so I'm happy. I don't know if Sarah needs to read it into the record or whatever. Or item eight, which is utilities business.”
“And Madam President, my question actually pertains to the minutes, but it's a utilities question about these minutes. Could I ask that now? Yes. Okay, thanks. So part of the reason, or a big part of the reason, in my memory, that the Council voted to postpone a decision on Project Taurus was to allow utilities time to receive a, an application from Radin for a large load study. And that would determine, and then at that point, Radin would declare how many megawatts power they want. CSU can go out and start getting the pricing on that much power. And it also would help council, that's why we…”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“Okay, thank you, and Madam President, I just wanna point out, it's been a month, and that's why that decision was postponed to allow this to happen, and apparently there's been no progress on it, so thank you.”
“Well, can we have some discussion before we vote, Madam President?”
“Kim, can you remind me, without this amendment, what does it say now as far as rent abatement until when?”
“And just remind me, it already has a sunset clause in here. The renovatment is extended until when?”
“That is my colleague's request to add that in. What does it say currently or else I can just read it.”
“Okay, good. And this is the heart of what I'd like to have the discussion about right now. It may happen that in April, there are new circumstances and we think it's appropriate to extend it for two more months. I agree with the pro tem's view that hey, this is on record, this is our intent. I don't think we need to lock it in with an amendment. I don't know if we can even, can we even do that? Is that an attorney question? Can we limit the future council to never extend it?”
“Right, because the next, you know, in April, a council could come along and vote to override that and extend it. So, and I appreciate my colleague's concern about, hey, we just can't kick the can down the road indefinitely, but I think Many of us are still gonna be here after April of 27. And so we know what was said today. I just don't think we need to amend this and make it more difficult when that month comes if there's a desire on the part of council that, you know what, we need to do this for an additional two months because construction took longer than expected or unforeseen…”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“Yeah, Madam President. I just want to express my appreciation to the pro tem for that action. Thank you.”
“Yeah, thanks, Madam President. I think the original ordinance, is it an ordinance, Mayor Wayne? Yes. Strikes the right balance, and the balance is between being fiscally responsible to the taxpayers, right, so that we're not just saying, hey, everybody free day off. versus we we do allow that we do allow our valuable city employees to either continue on and take the day off without pay if they would like to do that to do that or they can take the day off and be paid if they use a leave day or they can come in and work and not and get paid and come into work so It's easy to be generous with…”
“Yes. Thanks again, Madam President. You know, there are a lot of citizens out there struggling with the price of gasoline, small business owners with a tax burden that is on them. So it will strike them as council is very generous with their dollars, with their taxes. The option that was brought before us today, before it was amended, the ordinance gave employees, hey, if you want to work that day and not have one less day of pay, you can do that. If you want to use a leave day, you can do that. If you want to just take the day off without pay, which is what you were probably originally…”
“It was an amendment, so yeah, we still have to vote on the ordinance.”
“Thanks, Madam President. I just want to clarify with either Michael Montgomery or Sam, are the recordings of the different hearings and our council sessions, are they edited in any way? Do we clip pieces out or is it just a continuous recording of the hearings?”
“The Project Taurus hearing, is that if citizens notice, hey, it stops and then it starts again, what was cut out?”
“okay thank you and i hope that that helps if there's a specific question you have i think sam might be able to uh like review it with you and then bring it to our attention if he thinks there's something i think any human could see it was muted so i i just i don't know it's a long video do you mean the sound yeah like people would speak and then you know there was a lot of disruption after each speaker it was muted or how come you're not hearing any of the disruption throughout the entire thing i watched the whole thing there's like no disruption And I think at that hearing, like once…”
“Well, yeah, it's not misrepresented. That's what happened. They muted. If you went over three minutes, they stopped you at three minutes. We couldn't hear you either.”