City Council - Regular Meeting

okay everyone we're going to get started welcome to our city council meeting regular meeting number 2026 dash everybody's talking 18 tuesday june 16 2026 it's now 5 p.m julie would you honor us with roll call please steve montine present gail gary here john agosta here

Dave Barnes. Here. Michael Pacino. Here. Amy Dixon. Here. And Brian Swintek.

Here. OK. Let's all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. There's a flag up in the back and one up front. 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. Okay, before we are going to... adjourn and move into our liquor license authority before we do that i just want to announce that there will be public comment on any subject not on the agenda tonight uh it will be either at around 6 p.m or after the city manager's report whichever comes first and then of course we will have public comment on items on the agenda as they come up so with that i would ask for someone to make a motion to adjourn and reconvene as our liquor license authority

I make a motion to adjourn and reconvene in our liquor license authority.

Okay. We have a motion from Councilor Gary.

Second.

Second by Councillor Barnes. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. We are now in our Liquor License Authority regular meeting number LLA 2026-09. We have two things on the agenda tonight. One is a public hearing on a liquor license. And we also have our approval of minutes. So with that, we'll jump into item one on here. And this is a public hearing. the Liquor License Authority of the City of Steamboat Springs to determine whether or not the application of Steamboat Hotel LLC to be located at 3300 South Lincoln Avenue, Steamboat Springs, Colorado for a lodging facility liquor license should be granted or denied. This hearing is conducted pursuant to the laws of the State of Colorado and the rules of the Liquor License Authority of the City of Steamboat Springs. The purpose of this hearing is to receive information, data, and testimony by interested parties in order to enable the City Council to make findings and reach conclusions required to be made by state law as to whether or not the liquor license applied for should be issued. A record is being made of these proceedings so that those who desire to be heard must identify themselves by name and address. Interested parties are residents of the neighborhood under consideration or owners or managers of any business located in the neighborhood. The neighborhood has been preliminarily established as follows. The relevant neighborhood is Highway 40 corridor. any challenges to members of council conducting this hearing must be stated at the onset of the hearing the burden is upon the applicant to satisfy the council that the reasonable requirements of the relevant neighborhood for the kind of license applied for are not presently being adequately satisfied the burden is also upon the applicant to show the council that he or she is a person of good moral character entitled to hold a liquor license Is the applicant ready to proceed? Okay. Please come on down and identify yourself for the record by giving your name and address.

Brandon Maher, 3280 Village Drive.

Okay. Brandon, would you raise your right hand, please? Do you swear that the testimony you're about to give before the council is the truth?

Yes.

you wish to make a statement regarding your liquor license application no okay julie does the city have any exhibits to introduce yes we have exhibits a through g documents required by the colorado liquor enforcement division okay is there any objection to the admission of the city exhibits a through g nope hearing none cities exhibits a through g will be admitted julie does the applicant have any exhibits to introduce

Yes, they submitted a petition containing 15 signatures in support of the application Exhibit D. Okay.

Are there any objections to the omission of applicants Exhibit D? None. If none, Exhibit D shall be omitted. Are there any other interested parties who wish to be recognized? Okay, at this time, the council may immediately make a decision, provide for public discussion of consideration of documents or testimony or table this matter. Any motion to approve or deny must contain findings and conclusions. The city attorney has prepared an outline of findings to assist in a motion to approve or deny, which is in your agenda packet. so with that i would ask for is there anyone who would like to make a motion to approve the lodging facility liquor license for steamboat hotel llc dba holiday inn express and suite steamboat to be located at 3300 south lincoln half motion to approve We have a motion by Councillor Barnes to approve. Second. Second by Councillor Geary. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 7-0. Brendan, good luck.

Thank you very much.

You got it. Okay, second item on the agenda is to approve the minutes from our regular meeting on June 2nd. Are there any comments regarding the minutes? And if not, I will ask for a motion.

Move to approve the regular meeting minutes from January 2nd, 2026.

Okay, I have a motion from Councillor Geary to approve the June 2nd minutes. Do we have a second? Second by Councillor Dixon. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Minutes are approved 7-0. Okay, with that, we will ask for a motion to adjourn from our Liquor License Authority and reconvene in our regular City Council meeting.

Move to adjourn.

Second.

okay we have motion council of bacino second by councillor dixon all those in favor say aye aye opposed okay we are now back into our regular council meeting and we'll go into our next item which is city council reports who has A city council report for us.

I can start.

Councillor Swintek, welcome back.

Thank you. I wanted to touch on what I heard with the D.C. fly-in. So our chamber and other mountain chambers organized a fly-in to D.C. for us to hear from our representatives and speak to them and also get an update from the U.S. chamber as well. I have a summary. I didn't provide it as a rainbow, so hopefully we can provide it as a rainbow afterwards. We have printouts, and I also emailed this out. This goes over the biggest topics. I'm gonna start with the most relevant to us, which is water. it's not looking very likely that the states will come to an agreement. They had one, but Arizona was very specific. They didn't want to negotiate, and so it fell through. Still trying to work on it, but most likely it's looking like the states will not come to an agreement. That's the general feeling. If it does end up being a federal decision at the federal level, we will need to advocate for what we need. So that's a thing to keep on the radar. The other two big topics we heard from everybody was around housing and affordability and then permitting reform was actually the biggest thing we heard about. The permitting reform is a push on both sides of the aisle to try to minimize the amount of time and ways in which permits can be issued, and this is for everything from energy to big projects, everything and anything. It's pushed on both sides of the aisle because under President Trump, he revoked the permits for those wind farms off the East Coast when so much capital was already invested in them. And then there's frustration on the left when, or on the right, when Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone Pipeline when there was so much capital already invested in that. And so there is a big push and there is a lot of, optimism on the hill that they'll be able to push a pass a bill that will reduce the amount of time and make it so that the goal of the permitting process is better aligned with the intentions rather than using it to slow the process down and this was a big thing around national security uh seeing rivals like china being able to build things very quickly and things taking an extremely long time here as well as just more effective capital deployment in the u.s housing they are looking to pass a bill to change lending rules on community banks and other certain things like that. If I'm being honest, I don't think either of these are really going to be of much benefit to us specifically. I think that they might help a little bit. I would say the big theme from being in DC is no one is coming to save us, and it is up to us to make decisions for the community that we want. nobody is going to solve our problems. And that goes on to the next thing, and this is a big thing that I do think we need to have a conversation about, is around data centers. It's not an if they come, it is when they come. And at the federal level, no one wants to touch it or get involved in it because they want it to happen, because of geopolitical risks and this Cold War with China. It's a national security issue, and so we need them. At the state level, states don't want to touch it because it's politically toxic to have to deal with that. And so they're pushing it down to the local level. And so it really is falling on the local electeds to make the decisions. So we should be having a conversation with our county commissioners, about because we have these transmission lines, which is a rare thing, like what is our plan for if and when data centers come? I would personally recommend you think of it as like the telephone or the car or the internet. If at that time you had said we are just not going to allow cars or we are not going to allow internet looking back on it you would laugh at it and so i would recommend that we look at it assume that data centers are coming and there will be investment and how do we want to address this and there was there were comments that it's neither as bad or as good as the media likes to say that they are um but we need to be proactive because it's going to happen and it's better for us to be prepared what do you think was the biggest fear

from the state and the federal when it comes to why do they not want to address data centers? Is it because the resources and infrastructure are too broad?

There's no fear. At the federal level, we need data centers as a country. It is a matter of national security and maintaining our position in the world and competing against China and India. At a state level, no state politician wants to handle this because their electorate will be pissed at them and vote them out of office. And they have the ability to pass it on to the local locality. So the states don't really want to put in rules or make it weigh in on that. It's a huge political risk. So it flows downhill to local. And so it will fall on the local jurisdictions to decide how we want it to be in our community and how we want to handle it when it comes.

wouldn't mind another follow up question to that. Yeah, it is. In REL County, there's you cannot, there's no use by right for data centers. I mean, you can't you can't because based upon their land use restrictions, you can't have data centers. So but is it conditional?

Yeah, use by rights, one thing. Conditional is... It's a conditional use. And it really is more on the county side from a data center size?

Yes, but it is a problem that like our... I mean, here, I actually thought of this. I am here, let's say 10 years ago, and I'm telling you that Stagecoach Mountain, whatever that is, is coming. And don't we wish we could roll back the clock 10 years and put in policy so that when it came, we were able to get the housing and we don't get that email that was like, well, we gave you enough housing, it matches the code. That's what I'm saying is like, I don't think it's not coming. Like we have these power plants right here. Those transmission lines are critical and like the infrastructure is here. And so I think just saying it's a county issue or just saying like, well, they don't, I really think that we need to work collectively, us and our county commissioners to proactively educate ourselves on the facts of data centers. How do they work? Like, what are all the, like, I know it uses water, but like, I actually, if I'm being honest, like, I don't know the details other than seeing loud headlines. And I think it would be valuable for us to start at like a joint meeting with our county commissioners, maybe have someone come in and teach us about data centers. Like what does it look like? Yeah. And then we can say, what do we want this to look like in our community when it comes? Not really. If it comes.

One of the challenges we have in terms of infrastructure is, is we don't have the fiber into our area and it's actually, it's really difficult. I mean, we couldn't figure out how to bring fiber in from the top of rabbit ears.

so they had to go you know south of town so that you know just a data point yeah I'm sure there were big horse advocates back in the day who said that horses never run out of gas and look where we are now so I'm just saying like I I'm warning I'm I've written it down as a uh potential for a discussion topic at our upcoming commissioner council meeting so And then the last thing, I should have started with this. For anybody who's actually listening, the thing that really sticks in my head was the most cynical lobbyist in DC. He could have been cast in the show Veep. But the one thing that he said that really stood out to me was that people do not advocate for themselves enough. And when they do, they do not advocate correctly. So advocate for yourself. Not enough people do it. And the way to advocate effectively is to root it in your story. That is what's memorable. It's not data points. It's not, and I think we'll hear about this actually in our community reports with Steamboat for All, but rooted in your story, like the why, that is what's memorable and follow up. Make a note, follow up in six months or follow up after your meeting, maybe with a PDF of what you talked about and follow up six months afterwards. And no matter who you can talk to at the local, county, state, federal level, like people do not advocate enough for themselves. And I actually agree with that. I think everybody who has served on council would agree people do not do it enough. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Councilor Swintek. Very informative. Yeah.

Appreciate having the opportunity to go. Yeah.

Who else has a report this evening?

Well, I'll go. My only update is I sent an email out about the GTC shuttle meeting. So that was last week. So I sent a PowerPoint out that you all should have received. So just an update on the work that's happening with the, I've asked staff, Gates, at our last ERAC meeting to not call it a consolidated shuttle system anymore. because it's not um we're not asking for shuttles to be consolidated so we're now asking for shuttles to have um some self-management and regulation on how and when they utilize the GTC to ensure that they're not bogging down that area and causing traffic issues. So it's in your inbox, so please take a look at that. And if we do talk about data centers, there's a huge environmental impact. So whoever you get your presentation from, clearly a supporter, but I think that's a big part we'd have to talk about as well. So that's all I have.

Any other reports on this end of the table?

Any highlights from the farmers market?

Yeah, I was going to say, I did my first, you know, farmers market. It actually went really well. I enjoyed doing it. The most popular question that came through was, where is XYZ? I can't find it. So I see Lisa up there, and I go, Lisa. we had something called ai we could actually put something together really quick it would be good if actually um if we had something that we just look up on a um on your phone and say hey you know because i know it's very dynamic i'm sure of who's in different places but that's the most popular question be great oh at the market

Where is the salmon guy? Where is the salmon guy? Oh, yeah.

Okay. Well, good. Anything else?

I don't know who it took. We had a list of questions. I don't know if it is a summary of Yeah, I'll get it out.

Everybody. I've got it. Okay. I do too. Okay. Anything on this side of the table? Anything else?

Well, we had the opportunity to meet with a group of young leaders from Taiwan yesterday. So that was really fascinating in terms of, you know, we should probably forward around their backgrounds and just the collection of folks that were here. It was part of Representative Lukens as part of an international youth leadership program and so she hosted the group um and they visited i think with mayor johnston in denver they also stopped in vale and talked to vale then what we then they had a day here at the city so we just kind of kicked it off um counselor montine tom kelly and i in terms of talking just a little bit about city council in you know and council and city government in 20 minutes so and and entertained a few questions uh so that was you know really as i say very fascinating and kind of as you think about what we what our problems are and when you think about kind of what they're faced with it really adds an interesting kind of perspective so um always something to keep on the forefront And I don't know, I think Tom, you responded. We had gotten some questions about Larry the camel and the suggestion and opportunity, an offer from the Lions Club. So were you gonna get back on that in terms of where that stands?

I responded to a question from Councilor Dixon. Parks and Rec is working with them. They're meeting with the Lions Club to try to find alternatives.

Oh, good, okay, perfect, okay. So they should know that, okay. And then just a heads up to everybody that we do have our, what is slated to be the final meeting of the Slate Creek Steering Committee starts tomorrow afternoon and runs on Thursday morning and will conclude at that point and have some decisions to make. So if you have the opportunity to take a look at the packet, it's in the rainbow. So everybody should have it and you have any sort of comments or feedback you want to get to us before let counselor burns and I know, otherwise we will report out at our next Council meeting.

Okay. Anything else? Just that the fire district and us, I'm in the oversight with Dave, and we met last week, and we kind of have a different cadence right now with the fire district just to be available. So we will be reporting back maybe a little bit more if something changes, but right now we're just in that investigative response.

Good. A couple of quick things. Farmer's Market this Saturday. I will be there along with Councillor Barnes. So if anybody else wants to stop by, feel free. thing i wanted to mention about our about the housing authority two things one is we have started to interview the search firms we have one more to go on monday and then we're going to make a decision on which search firm to use to find the new executive director and we are uh very pleased so far with uh the interviews and and the process so hopefully that will be done uh by the end of next week and recommendations gone to the full board uh coming up at the next meeting i also wanted to mention to everyone in case you hear this out there that that the board has had discussions about their upcoming um one mill levy which uh would go to a ballot in november of 2027 and one of the options some people have floated around is to reduce that to 0.511 and fund the difference out of str money I just wanted you all to know that there is no agreement to that, but if you hear about that, that has been floating around as a potential option in the process. So I just want to make you aware of that. And the final thing is that Tom sent out the retreat agenda, just kind of a... potential agenda for our retreat july 17th so if you take a look at that and if you have other things that you want to talk about or put on it or you think that some of the things on there are not the right things to talk about please um put forth your comments so sorry

And then I think just one more point, were you going to mention that?

Well, the SSRC? Well, we have a meeting coming up this Thursday with SSRC, and we hope to finalize many of the details of that and be back to you with that shortly thereafter.

You met last week?

No, we met before the last meeting. I kind of gave you a readout last week, but no, we haven't met since the last meeting. Not since our last meeting.

Councilman Timo will counsel be able to weigh in on those decisions of those decisions.

Of course, of course. Yes. okay anything else then let's go quickly i think we can go rather quickly through agenda review if you look on july 7th on the agenda for july 7th you will see on there that we have a couple of resolutions around development plans around the jump complex and western resiliency zillion center and a couple other things um and then some second readings of a few things but uh right now the july 7th meeting is not fully baked shall we say so any questions on that Okay. And then on July 14, if you look at that, it's our work session, we have three things on there, the marijuana local production requirement, multimodal transportation initiative update and fiscal sustainability. So those three things will be there. And then on the 21st, sorry, I'm going too fast.

No, it's good. Tom, what are you what staff thinking for the presentation on the transportation initiatives, the multimodal model?

Yeah, that came out of primarily a lot of your requests. What are we doing to improve pedestrian and bicycle improvements, safety throughout the community? So John and his team have put together kind of a presentation of what's in our pedestrian master plan or mobility master plan. What are the projects that we're undertaking, some ideas that we might have and gain feedback from council to see if there's anything further you feel we should do.

Awesome, that's what I was figuring. And I just wanted to flag it because others in our community are interested. So I just wanna make sure they're aware that we'll be talking about it. So cool, thank you.

Okay, good. And then on July 21st, you'll see we have a couple of community report council discussion topics, State of the Police Department with Chief Beckett. And Kim's gonna give us an update on 2027 sales tax projection. And we have several resolutions on there as well. any question on that and then on august 4th not much on august 4th at this point in time we do have a community report from northwest colorado health on their senior home service but it's pretty wide open at this point in time any questions on agenda review all right then we will move on to the city manager's report tom

Great, thank you, President Muntean. As a reminder to the community, the city manager's report can be found on our website, steamboatsprings.net. Scroll down and it's got tonight's report as well as all the previous reports on there. So starting off with our outcome area of thriving community, a lot of information on all of the summer recreation programs, including softball leagues, volleyball, town challenge, summer camps, summer adult hockey enrollment, all of which is to say that the summer activities are in full force and the uh parks and rec crew are are all hands on deck um making sure all of our facilities are ready for all of those so um kudos to all of them it's great to see all the activity i was at the um farmer's market this weekend um with counselor gary and um uh augusta and barnes and it was uh there was a lot of stuff going on i mean it was the rodeo it was the triple crown it was the farmer's market so It's great to see that the summer activity in full force. Allison Hill received noxious weed treatment. I know that's a concern of a lot of folks with contractors focusing efforts on the alpine areas and the jump complex. Primary target species included white top houndstongue in yellow and Dalmatian toad flag. So we had a fair amount of rain in May, and so those are all popping up and that crew is out there trying to manage those weeds. um as uh slate creek park land acquisition project is preparing for a july 20th 26 closing staff is preparing the due diligence submittals that are required for each of the grants the city has received so glad to see that moving forward um as mentioned the next two sessions of the new slate creek steering committee are scheduled for wednesday tomorrow and thursday the 18th During those meetings, the group will review and revise perhaps key elements discussed in the previous meetings, as well as the annexation roadmap, communication and engagement strategies, roles and responsibilities for key activities and overall project leadership. So as Councilor Gary indicated, those will be the last two meetings and will result in some recommendations to council. In connected and engaged community, I wanted to make a note that the public works and communication staff work together to develop a one pager on drought restrictions and water conservation measures. In your report, it says attached, wasn't actually attached, but we did give you to a rainbow. It's up here. So please take a look at that. We are trying to promote that in terms of asking and giving tips about being drought ready in water conservation efforts and resources available for the community clearly is going to be needed this year. Under healthy environment, the parks division in coordination with the city's water department has activated all park irrigation systems for the summer. Operations will follow established water restrictions with a targeted 15 to 20% reduction in overall use. So some of that smart new technology that we're putting in there is paying off. Haymaker Golf Course, I wanted to mention, is preparing for its recertification with Audubon International in late June, aiming to maintain its prestigious designation as a signature sanctuary. I didn't know if most people knew that, but there's a lot of effort to maintain that signature sanctuary certification. um it reflects the course's ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship wildlife habitat protection and sustainable golf course management by continuing to meet the audubon's rigorous standards haymaker demonstrates its dedication to preserving natural resources while providing an exceptional experience for golfers in the broader community i just mentioned that because i'm not sure a lot of people know the effort to both balance the natural environment with our recreation needs so that's just another example of how we do that High performing government. In May, I just wanted to mention that parks foreman Timothy O'Malley earned his certified irrigation technician's credential. This is a nationally recognized certification issued by the Irrigation Association that confirms his expertise in installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting irrigation systems. He also, along with Parks Foreman Erica Renner and Stash Kropinski, completed in-person training and testing to earn their certified playground safety inspector credential, which prepares professionals to safely design, inspect, and maintain public playgrounds. So I bring that up. It's just there's a lot of effort and a lot of continuing education that all levels of this organization undergoes to make sure that they are adequately trained and on the top of their fields in their respective expertise. So thank you. to those folks for continuing your education. Safe community. Utility operators carried out valve exercising and maintenance along Lincoln Avenue in the downtown core, performing the work overnight to avoid traffic impacts. This routine maintenance is critical to ensure reliable isolation and flow control during emergencies. Again, making sure we are prepared and our infrastructure is up to speed and the staff is prepared in cases of emergency. In May, the city published this 2026 consumer confidence report on the utilities webpage. I did go check a look at that. It is on there. So please take a look at that. It's a report on the, basically the quality of our drinking water that was sampled last year. A link to that report is being included on all customer billing statements in June to meet the Colorado Department of Public Health and environmental notification requirements. And it was all thumbs up on that quality sampling. in reliable and resilient infrastructure outcome. The airport division began construction on the terminal airport improvements on May 4th. Initial work included setting up traffic control, temporary fencing and staging areas for materials and equipment throughout that month. Additional work included removing trees and asphalt and excavating for both the new access road and the dedicated fuel truck parking area. That's another important improvement for the airport. I'm glad to see that moving forward. West Steamboat Trail preliminary construction has started. That included staking limits of disturbance, marking trees for removal, erosion control setup, and clearing and grubbing is underway. So glad to see that project move forward. And that will continue on through 27. A lot of information on various construction projects in the report, some information on transit and the status of transit. And then just a note that staff has advertised for an RFP for the installation of a new irrigation system at Emerald Park. I'm going to continue to reference this because it is going to have a big impact on this community. Construction is currently anticipated to begin in the fall, this fall, or potentially spring of 27. This project will result in the closure of ML Park sports field for the entirety of 27. I'll just continue to keep the community informed about that, but we are trying to find the contractor for that project. There is a list of all the upcoming meetings and events, as well as some data in the back on airport operations. And that concludes my report, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay.

Thank you, Tom. Lots of good things going on in town. Any questions for Tom? Councillor Agosta?

Tom, Walton Creek Confluence, it looks like you got a $50,000 grant for the design of that. For some reason, I thought that work was supposed to start an hour ago. The Walton Creek and Yampa Confluence?

Yes, the work was going to start.

Well, if you recall, we were in line to get a $5 million grant for that project, and that grant fell through. So we did not get that grant. There was also an inquiry about that earlier. So we are... we are looking to uh to backfill that with other funding um sources we don't know if we'll be able to find that but we're uh we've got our grants and team looking at all possible funding sources for that project that is a very very important project so we will keep at it i just have a quick question tom um where are we with leasing the building out the airport i've lost track well we're continuing to market that we've got randall hanaway as our agent to try to find a tenant for that we do have somebody that is very interested in it um we have our fingers crossed they're looking closely at it um we just they just haven't they didn't haven't made a decision yet but they're they are looking closely at it okay great thank you any other questions for tom

All right. Thank you. Actually, I'll just follow up on the closure of Emerald Fields. I know I thought the last time we spoke about it, staff is working with the user groups to try to find alternatives.

They are. Yeah, they're working closely with all the user groups and trying to make sure that they all have a place for their activities next year. So that's an ongoing effort.

Okay. And so are we feeling pretty confident about finding alternative fields?

I haven't received a status update on that. I'm happy to follow up with you and let you know kind of where we are with that. That'd be great.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Tom. We'll move on. Our next staff report is the 2027 budget guiding principles. Kim and Sarah. Sarah.

Good evening, Council. Kim Weber, Finance Director, and Sarah Briones, Deputy Finance Director. So we are kicking off the budget process for 2027, kind of hard to believe. And we establish guiding principles that we send out to all of the departments when we start the process. in the past several years we've established those with the city manager and send them out we felt it would be good to have you guys weigh in on this before we start to make sure that we've captured what your expectations are so i don't typically read off of slides but i essentially took the guiding principles and took put it on to multiple slides And for this, the words are really important. So I want to actually read this. Looking ahead to 2027, elevated oil and gas prices are driving higher inflation and are expected to continue putting pressure on the national economy. As operating costs rise, maintaining a balanced budget will be increasingly challenging, especially with revenue growth projected to remain flat to the 2026 budget. important word there, national consumer confidence continues to decline, which may also have a negative impact on our local economy. So I guess a little bit of sneak peek to July's presentation before we do a full analysis is right now we're looking at potentially projecting sales tax at what we're at right now with 2026 budget 2026 actuals are trending five to six percent below budget so that would be an inc assuming an increase in sales tax for 2027 so keep that in mind think about that um And I'll go through these and then get any feedback that you have. So the overall guiding principles would be to our staff to build their operating budget 2% below the 2026 budget. That is because we assume personnel costs are going to go up, insurance costs are going to go up. So when they're looking at their operating budget, we're going to ask them to build it 2% below. And that includes everything that they need to increase for fuel prices, for inflation.

So they aren't going to be able to do everything that they have budgeted for 2026.

focus on providing quality services versus quantity. What I've seen in the past is when we do budget cuts, they want to continue to provide all the services. So sometimes you skim off the top. that's not always the best approach proposed budgets that prioritize the strategic initiatives evaluate and justify all costs to achieve effectiveness and efficiency and consider current research resources to ensure completion of projects basically don't budget for anything that you don't have the staff to complete revenues, we talked about the sales tax fees should be adjusted periodically to align with rising annual expenses. With inflation going up with expenses going up, these should be if we maintain the same cost recovery goals, these should be going up as well. Looking at expenses, account for the increased costs, fuel, utilities, insurance, other supplies. Consider current vacancies and recruitment and retention challenges. Those have not been as bad as before, but take that into consideration. And then, of course, any new FTEs must be justified. We have a formal process of requesting FTEs, and we have a formal leadership team evaluation of those full-time equivalents. And then be prepared to evaluate potential compromises and present uh well-reasoned alternatives so with that i'd love for any feedback anything that you would like the staff the leadership team to focus on any thoughts you have as we move into the 2027 budget process all right thank you kim

What questions or comments do we have for Kim?

Your expense of the previous slide, bullet point number two, you were just talking about recruitment and retention challenges before adding new FTEs. I just kind of want to highlight that a little bit more. I think that right now in today's culture, retention is saving us money versus all new FTEs of any kind. and um so to me i'm i'm going to want to have our department heads consider that really wholeheartedly and and i don't know what that means when you say retention challenges to me i'm also looking at that as retention opportunities more so not in the negative side of a challenge but like what could we do to make sure that we keep our people happy i like that you know so more on the positive side as opposed to the challenge inside i like that okay good

I have a question for you. Have you been able to look at our percent increase in expenses, including wages, versus the inflation rate of the nation? Because I sense that when we look at inflation at 3% to 4%, depending on month, are we tracking with that in our expenses or are we exceeding that?

I would need to look at that and evaluate it. In some areas, we may be exceeding it. In some areas, we are below it because we've reduced some services. So as a whole, I don't have a good answer for you. Okay. I hear in expenses versus inflation.

And Council Martin, the other thing that I'd say is that inflation rates are different depending on different sectors. Certainly the construction inflation rate has been double digits, 15, 20% in some cases. And we experienced that with our capital project.

So we need to look at both sides. And that's why I wanted to look at it because I don't think we're, shall we say, typical to the average U.S. town, so to speak, in terms of our costs up here in the mountains.

That's correct. Mm-hmm.

yeah so if you're talking nationwide inflation versus what we're experiencing in increase in cost it's different for sure yeah I just think it's very I mean when we hear about inflation running three or four percent a year and then we see our prices going up 10 20 30 percent I mean it's just It's like AMIs up here. It doesn't make much sense.

When our revenue is going backwards or staying flat, what I call the lines cross, the expenses are now exceeding the revenue if we held our services the same or increased them. I think there's desire to increase transit services, so another piece of the pie will have to shrink.

Give me a notice we didn't call it healthcare expenses for the city specifically. It mentions insurance just as a big increase coming in healthcare this year as well, or what's anticipated.

I imagine there will be an increase. We've been putting in programs to try to keep the costs down because we are self-insured. So our HR and risk department is doing a great job with educating our staff as well as we put in a high deductible plan, an option which helped keep our that wasn't the purpose of it, but it did help keep our costs a little lower. So we aren't seeing the huge increases, but I anticipate that 5% to 10% increase. But not what others are seeing, but it is a huge cost for the city.

A quick question, Kim. Why do you budget based on this year's budget versus this year's actuals?

So we budget based on this year's actuals, like that's where my baseline is, is what it's actually coming in. The reason I am comfortable at this point in time, I mean, it is only June. At this point in time, looking at 2027 being four or 5% up from 2026 is because January, February, March, we're way down because of the snow. I don't anticipate the same snow year. So I anticipate things bumping back up. And then sales tax is based on purchase price. Groceries are going up. Utilities are going up. So it's not great news for our consumers, but that bumps our sales tax some.

Yeah. Okay. And I believe this year you budgeted in a vacancy percentage. I can't remember the amount. 15%. How much was it? 15. 15. I would love to know during the budget process what where were you on track with that? Was it truly 15% or was it 20 or was it 10? So as we're looking at the budget for this coming year, should we adjust that some? Because that could help with cost savings too.

It could. I don't anticipate that there will be a lot because we kind of took that in 2026. So If we stayed with 15%, we'd be flat. But we will follow up on that vacancy savings. Maybe we'll try to put it in the next quarterly report as well.

yeah and i'm hoping everyone saw the email or the colorado sun article from vale resorts since altera does not publish their financials that's the best we have so that's what we'll have to go off of and they saw a 10 decline in pre-season uh lift past sales for next year so

i ask one question the is staff going to come to us with recommendations to cut quantity of of services to maintain quality or is that decision to cut going to rest on us and this is more of a question for us to mentally prepare or if we need to be the ones who are asking to do that

staff typically does that staff does that through the budget process it's in our financial policies that the city manager will bring you a balanced budget so we will prepare those reductions in services for you to consider okay thanks any other questions or comments for kim

I was just going to add on to that. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the past, typically what we get from staff is not just the cut recommendations, but it's also what was put forth and then was kind of clawed back so that we as a council have the opportunity to take a look at the decisions that were made and recommendations and ground them.

Yeah, and I will say we've changed our approach a little bit because what we had done in the past was just ask the departments budget and propose what you need. And then we would go through this process of having to cut back, you know, in many cases, millions of dollars. And so we've sort of changed the approach a little bit to say, you know, we know you need these things, but we know we're not going to be able to achieve it. So propose what you think is a realistic budget, given the projections that we have. So you might not see such a significant sort of clawback that you've seen in previous years.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, that did cause some struggles in the last budget because we did ask to have you come in at what you needed. And then when we did provide a list of some of the things that were cut, I think it wasn't fair because it didn't include everything. I hadn't planned on sharing a list unless we go through a comprehensive process of what do you need versus what are you budgeting, which would be a significant process.

And certainly any proposed cuts to significant services, we will highlight, and that will be a policy decision by council. So you'll certainly have a big voice in that. And I just want to state, council had requested a little more sort of information and data and the ability to weigh in on the budget process this is one of those attempts we will continue to try to bring things to you as the year progresses so you feel like as we get to that october budget hearing you've got a lot more information going into that day so hopefully this is helpful

Yeah, I appreciate hearing that. I mean, I do think there's a balance, right? I mean, in the sense of understanding and focusing in on policy decisions and decisions that we think will impact the community and having those be vetted up here. Kind of in a transparent and accountable manner.

Any other thoughts? As always, Kim, we appreciate your proactiveness and staying on top of the numbers for us. And I think you can stay up there because I think you're gonna give us a little CIP scoring matrix.

Yeah, so kind of the same principle. However, we have been bringing this to council for many years. So we asked departments to submit their capital improvement programs. and projects ahead of the budget. And then leadership team for the last 14 years has used a scoring matrix that has essentially stayed the same for those years, but we do ask for city council's feedback. So we received last year over 100 projects were submitted as part of the budget process. We scored and ranked 60 of them against this criteria, and then we ended up funding 31 of them. So we don't always score all of them because it already takes three sessions of over three hours for us to rank them but we do want to be able to have some criteria to rank against so these are the six different categories that we're proposing it's changed a little bit from last year which i outlined those we combined a couple of the categories moved them around a little bit in order to avoid duplicating the same score, which is what we were finding we were doing before. So each one of these categories is ranked a little differently, and it's ranked zero to five. And so the first one, satisfaction, illegal, contractual, this is typically either a zero or a five. Either we are legally obligated to do it or we are not. And very few fives, very few things that we are legally obligated to do. Health and safety, there's a few more scores on this one. And this one, many of the scores that score higher on this are like stormwater water efficiency fire police those ones score a little more anything that is maybe a safety risk it is not health as in recreational health we are specific on that one Maintenance and protection of existing city assets. We found years ago that we were any of our deferred maintenance weren't ranking very high. And that's part of our strategic plan is to stay up on that deferred maintenance. So this is things like any HVAC systems, any roof replacements, sidewalk repair, pavement repair fall into this category. We moved up adopted plans at what adopted plans was in community benefit. We put that with our strategic plan and adopted plans and listed some of the specific plans that are associated with that. So again, zero to five. We're also going to take, when we start this, we're gonna talk about if it's in multiple plans, What scoring does it get? Because as we move through, by the time we get to the third day, sometimes we aren't ranking exactly the same as the first day. And so we're going to make some rules on that. Community benefit, community benefit, we did have a category called equitable access, and that was geographical equitable access. And really the only thing that was ranking in that was anything in West Steamboat, anything else. So it's still incredibly important, but it's part of that community benefit. And we found that we were... doing the same for community benefit as equitable access. And we are kind of doubling up on the scores. And then private funding is pretty straightforward. It's the one category that's actually easy to rank. And it's either zero or five depending on the amount of private funding we have. And grants do not count as private funding in this. So this is just an idea of what our timeline is. We're starting out with our CIP. We'll be back in front of you in September with a draft, and then you'll adopt it in October and November after some changes. So happy to have feedback or answer any questions.

All right. Thank you again. And we'll open it up to questions to Kim or comments.

right lord dixon i of course have a comment thanks kim i appreciate all of this um i would really like to see i get combining equitable access to community benefit fine um what i would really like to see is that we still maintain the word equitable so right now we've just gone with community benefit could it be equitable community benefit because those do mean different things um and i think it's important to call that out so that would be my suggestion and my second my question for the private funding does that include um ura dollars how does that fit in

it's been a while since we've had anything that had URA funding. Um, but I would, I would consider that as part of private funding. It's not contingent on a grant. We do exclude other governmental agencies. Um, So that would be, I would have to think about that a little bit. And keep in mind, after these get ranked, we have that opportunity to say, you know, three quarters of this is going to get funded with the URA money. It makes sense to put are that portion in but but i i hesitate a little bit to have governmental funding in as private funding it's more um a private group comes and says we'll fund a second sheet of ice okay thanks kim

I wanted to follow up on the equitable access piece for a minute. I'm just trying to understand that when I think of that, it's kind of like leveling the playing field for marginalized groups and whatnot. And community benefit is really the benefit to the whole. So when you put equitable access in with community benefit, how do we ensure that the community's benefit doesn't always override the benefit to disadvantaged groups?

And when we did equitable access before, it was very focused on the geographic area, not the marginalized groups. So it could have been a missing sidewalk link in Walton Creek, or it could be that there isn't a bus stop somewhere on the south end of town. So it was really about this specific service or this specific option isn't available in this geographic area. So it wasn't marginalized groups, and it was really about is this in that area? And I would consider if that is not in that area, that is the whole community benefit.

So do we address marginalized groups in this at all?

We don't. Okay. Not specifically in the ranking. There it's probably in the whether or not we put forth a CIP project, but it's not in the ranking addressed anywhere.

I feel like what Kim saying is they were tried to do incorporate this equitable aspect, and it was failing and its goal. And I don't think we've found a good solution to incorporate it effectively. Do you guys have ideas? Because I adding equitable, I think we'll end up in the same end result that Kim saying that it wasn't it wasn't achieving the intended out outcome.

I mean, I know much of our, so many of our projects are like a bathroom at the base of house and Hill or HVAC in the transit facility. And, um, it, it, most of it was getting zeros like most of our projects were getting zeros unless like west steamboat trail or bear river park those are in our strategic plan so you have that addressed in our strategic plan so it really wasn't it wasn't providing much guidance on where to rank projects

i mean i can support combining them i'm just i i'm concerned we're missing a piece about equitable access because community benefit doesn't hit on equity and equitable access for our community gail sorry

No, that's okay. I was going to say, I also, when I read this, had those same concerns. I mean, but I certainly defer to Kim. I mean, if you're having trouble using it as a criteria and it doesn't seem to make sense and you see it as redundant, I guess I think just from the lens here, it doesn't feel redundant, right? I mean, it feels like it is something different. So absolutely support using the word equitable. And maybe it makes sense as you look through it this year, again, to use that lens. for sure in the perspective i think adding that make a difference because bear river park is exactly what came to my mind right i mean and i think it's been about it's been um moved up the cip list because of and now you see i hear that can be geographical right um as well

Yeah. And so that we would always rank high in equitable access, community benefit and strategic plan, which is great. But then that was like the only projects that were ranking in that. And so trying to combine them, I love the idea of calling it equitable community benefit and then adding descriptors in the, in the description to look at it through that lens.

That'd be great. Okay, any other questions? All right, thank you, Ken.

Thank you for your feedback.

You bet, you bet. yeah we're going to go into public comment here and then one other thing we want to talk about after public comment and then we'll jump into our community reports and the legislative update but city council will make no decision or take any action except to direct the city manager during this public comment this public comment is based on items that are not on the agenda tonight and those addressing city council are requested to identify themselves by name and address And your comments should not exceed three minutes. So is there anyone in the room who would like to make public comment tonight? Come on down, Noreen. And please state your name and address and you have three minutes.

Can you hear me? Okay. I'm Noreen Moore and my address is variable. I go from Yampa all the way up to here. Right now I live next door to my daughter who lives in Fairview because of health reasons, which has brought me to the podium, my health. No, no. Anyway, it's a new subject for you, but an old issue. And this old issue is affordable housing for seniors. We are very, very shy. And the main part of it is that while we do have some facilities, i.e., you know, this is the other part of aging. Can't remember the names. But we have some facilities, some are unaffordable, and some are not building anymore. so we've gathered a group together there's a few of us here we were supposed to be all gray hairs but not but for those who are on this committee so far would you stand up so that they know at least we have a few we have more than that thank you all now some of them you notice stood up quicker than the others anyway so what this is about is basically we started a group and the group is addressing affordable senior communities because we need things that speak to each other places front porches a lot of the high rises that go up don't do us because of the simple reason an elevator doesn't take the place of a person that you can say hello to almost daily so we have some ideas architecturally there's a bunch of different ideas but one of the things that's really important right now is that we get on your agenda for any affordable housing ideas, discussions, whatever. We are not represented well, and we plan to change that. The faces may change due to our age. I now call it the revolving door leadership. You know, one of us can go up and one of us can go down. But believe me, it's the same issue. let's see we we have lots of ideas on how to do this we have looked at some city land some lots the nice thing about us is we don't need a big lot we do not need a big big place eventually we'll be able to say what a minimum might be we do wish to be in steamboat because of the hospital and the transportation uh i guess other communities as they get bigger they they too might have some of those kind of things attached to them so while i'm not asking for money now i understand you might have some money it's on the street and so um just really really the big thing is to be present to be press top of mind And also that we physically can be there just to remind you that we're here. Some of us, like myself, would like to see something happen much quicker because my runway's not that long. So consider that too. And I thank you for the time very much. And whatever you give us. Thank you, Noreen.

Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else in the room want to make a public comment tonight? Come on down.

Good evening, councillors. My name is Craig Fritzen. I live at 1147 Pine Street and I'm the former president of Route County Riders. And I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to City Council, the City of Steamboat Springs and their staff for all the support you show our cycling community. We appreciate that you recognize the importance of bikes in our local culture, and we are grateful that you support so many initiatives, programs, and projects that benefit the cycling community. We at RCR place great value on the partnerships we share with the city in the name of improving cycling here in Steamboat Springs. With that, my term as president has ended. And we have passed the torch to some extremely capable new leaders who will faithfully carry our mission forward. And it's my pleasure to introduce our new president, Ian London, and our new executive director, Rob Peterson, who would like to give you a quick update on RCR and things spiking that may interest you.

Thank you, Craig.

Ian London, I live at 801 mountain vista circle here in steamboat springs and have for almost a decade, and this is.

Rob Peterson 2597 abbey road and then 33 years almost in the Community. And thanks for having us.

And we wanted to take a quick moment, not only to introduce ourselves, but also to reflect on some of the successes that we've had working closely with the city. I'm going to list off a bunch of things here. This is just the stuff that we're working on the city with. Obviously, there's a lot of things out in the county and with the feds and things like that. um these are just a few things so first of all the uh rabbit ears trails which as you know are funded with the 2a tax dollars we broke ground on those trails with the forest service last fall the idea is to make sure we're using those 2a dollars as uh conservatively as possible and we are trying to do as much as we can this summer using volunteer hours. In any given year, we marshal about a thousand hours of volunteer trail work around the county. This summer, a lot of that energy is going specifically to the rabbit ears complex. um the forest service foundation is hiring professionals for the bulk of the trails the request for proposal went out on june 11 the bids are due july 10. we may see some professional machine construction start this fall but more likely it will be next summer so look at that Second thing is our street smarts program. For the last five years, we've been teaching school children about bike safety, e-bike safety, which I know is a hot topic, helmet wearing, and things like that. Every year, we meet with about 200 students per year in both Hayden and Steamboat. Third thing is our bike match program. This is our transportation justice initiative. We lend out bikes and spruce them up and give them to people who need transportation. Since its inception a few years ago, we've now given out 850 bikes. We've given out 150 plus helmets, and we also maintain the bike fleets for the Boys and Girls Club. A few other programs with our remaining time, we administer the city's trail ambassadors program. That was also about a thousand hours of volunteer work last year. And we anticipate something similar this year. We're involved with grooming the fat bike trails on Emerald, administering the city's trail counter program. And also this summer we'll be out at the free summer concert series, educating folks about bike safety and specifically e-bikes. So thank you for your support. We look forward to partnering with you, not only this summer, but many summers to come and we couldn't do it without your help. Thank you.

You bet. Congratulations. Yeah. Thanks. You bet. Okay. Amy, come on down.

Hi, Amy Charity, 281 Locust Court. Good evening, council members. It's me again. I know you're getting very excited to see me every time. I promise this is the last public comment before SBT gravel. I just had a couple of updates that I wanted to give you. We are fully on track. Our teams are working very closely together and we are set to welcome in just under 3,000 riders along with a couple thousand other spectators, sponsors, vendors into town. You'll start seeing them early next week. We have some of our team members going to the Hayden Airport to greet people who come in. Most of the flights will be filled with SBT gravel riders. You'll also see signs throughout town welcoming the riders. One very important update, we visited every residence that we were able to that didn't have a no trespassing sign and we had neutral to positive with every single one of them. That is a big change from previous years. So that's a massive effort and we're feeling really good about it. lastly i wanted to personally invite you there are a lot of activities happening that kick off on friday the 26th but the ones i'd really like to invite you to are we have an an ag fest that's happening with art and ag in the park um we'll have a little bit of a petting zoo going on there and some other fun games and signs with old town hot springs and a junior panel that happens simultaneously That's at 1230 on Saturday. And there will be a lot of other vendors there. And secondly, we'd love to have you come down to the finish line. That's at 6 PM on Sunday the 28th to welcome our last finisher. It's our team rule that everyone drops everything and welcomes them in. Steamboat Dance has put together a few moves. And so we're gonna have a little flash mob dance party to welcome in whoever comes in and celebrate all of the riders of the day. So thank you again to the community. Please come out and join. And we really appreciate your support. So thank you for helping us get there.

Thank you. And we look forward to 5,000 or so people in town. Exciting. Exciting. Is there anyone else who wants to make public comment on a subject not on the agenda tonight in the room? Okay. If not, is there anybody online who would like to make public comment? Please raise your hand. see none we'll close public comment and uh there was one other subject here that we wanted to bring up before and then we'll bring up uh senator roberts and representative lukens so hang in there for a minute um and that was on the request we got from the county um for more comments regarding land discovery and as we all know we made comments what couple several months ago whenever it was maybe longer And so I guess the question is, how do we want to proceed in responding to that request? Any ideas, Tom?

Well, you previously, and I included that as an attachment, submitted a pretty lengthy comment about your concerns and asking them to address those in their application. They really admittedly from the Routt County planning staff didn't address anything other than the housing comment. They, you know, when I talked, I actually talked to County Manager Jay Harrington, he said, you know, a lot of the comments um didn't pertain to any of their code requirements so the applicant didn't feel like it was they were sort of required or needed to address those so it's really a matter of whether council wants to re-emphasize those points leave your letter as it is or or bring up any new items that you feel are germane to the application and the deadline is the 26th so okay

i would love for dan to weigh in on discovery land companies response to um the only um issue that they actually addressed was of workforce housing it seems like a lot of legal jargon in their response so can you break that down for me so i i don't know what the true facts are

but what is stated in there is that they meet the minimum requirements and that that's all they have to do and that a city request that they knew more is not legally binding on them or the county okay which we know um so all of their jargon around um steamboat may extra jurid statistically usurp county authority like there's a lot of words in their statement that are not making sense sure and I mean you're not making a decision you're commenting pursuant to the uh agreement between the county and the city that that uh they'll ref the county will refer Landy's questions to us so I you know I I think that that's um a little bit overblown and um maybe alarmist

That's how I read it.

So do you have any path forward that you

um absolutely it's not a surprise to anyone i think i don't think you two were on council when we talked about this um that um i feel very strongly that we continue to submit our concerns to the county and yes i understand this development is outside our lines of the city there will be impact to our city And we laid those concerns out. And once again, Discovery Land Company shows their true colors and they could care less about our community. While they tout, oh no, we're going to invest and we're going to make a positive impact. No, haven't seen it once. so um absolutely we need to respond back we can since we don't have much time um we can stick to our same talking points um but i i i would like to say i'm shocked by this but i'm not they continue to show who they are we've seen it in other communities up in montana and now we're seeing it here We all know how I feel. Go ahead, Gail.

I was going to say, I absolutely support you, Councillor Dixon. I do believe that we should weigh in, whether as a council or as individual councillors. I would be willing to support and sign a letter for sure.

yeah you know with all due respect you guys i think that it would have to be an individual uh letter and not by council as a whole um in the last letter that we wrote there were some inconsistencies for example helicopters flying from there to there that's not even in the purview but we put it in our letter there's things that we just i mean if you have an issue please write it send it in but i don't want us to have something we could sit here and try to vacillate the support or failures of discovery land corporately in all their other areas what they're going to do locally if we're going to pick apart and sit there and talk about discovery land's impact i totally want to make sure that as a councilman we involved in that but in the same regards, the impacts are both positive and negative. So if we're just gonna focus on the negative of the impacts, then you're gonna hit me with a bunch of positives that I'm gonna come out because it may not be on the same aspect of it, but it's a compromise that any development that comes on into our community has both positive and negative impacts. Colin Kelly's building at 12th and Lincoln, or 12th and Yampa. There was impacts there, whether they were positive and negative, everyone has their own opinion. So if we sit there and just focus on the negative side of what Discoveryland does, based upon the behavior of Montana and some other things, I get that. But I'm also going to be looking at it from the positive side. You know, I support Discoveryland and what they're doing.

so i don't know how they're going to process this and go through it but i have a hard time going through and putting a corporate letter together that's going to be one voice of city council okay what why don't um counselor dixon feel strongly about this and i assume you would take the lead in writing up something that your fellow counselors if they wish to sign they can sign does that

i think i mean i guess i'd like to get a record who's going to sign i was going to say that's what that's what well i think we need you don't want to see the letter first but i mean yeah they can see the letter by right here counselor pacino is not signing so i i agree with you as long as it doesn't use staff time because i mean i agree but i think it's we're screaming into the void but if you're writing it i'll happily sign it i just don't want staff to waste time on this because it's not It will change something.

Thank you, Brian. At the beginning of your... One discussion at a time here.

Please, go ahead. Councillor Dixon, I will go ahead and I would like to read it this time and give us the opportunity that if there's some inconsistencies to offer that up.

Okay, why don't we have Councillor Dixon take a crack at that and I think that what you're seeing is an open mind by council.

i would like to ask dan how this is going to work because last time we actually had two um city council meetings so actually the draft came back to all of us not youtube because you weren't on yet um and so we reviewed it and wordsmithed it we don't have that opportunity because it's due the 26th yeah before your next meeting so i will commit to staying on the same talking points and raising the same issues we talked about work for shortages water supply water quality the impact to hayden regional airport emergency services and we also talked about transportation that our community members are driving these rural roads that are not designed for high volume traffic so we will stay on those same talking points but dan how do we do this now because we're not going to be able to have a conversation about it before the 26th you want to have individual council members each sign this document so you could draft a letter and then leave it in at city hall and whoever wants to come in and sign it can sign it and otherwise not can i email it

um you can email it but you can't discuss you can't discuss it via email okay counselor dickson okay yep all right um before we move on i wanted to say to our senior community here that on monday i believe that kelly deputy city manager is going to have a meeting and that several counselors are going to also attend. And so as soon as we find out the location of that meeting, and then we wanna learn from you exactly what it is that you're looking for, what's important to you. There may be differences depending on who you are as to what is important to you. So that is the first step in the process here. So we have committed to that on Monday at 9 a.m. So we'll see you then. Okay. You bet you bet. Okay. We're going to move on and we're going to have our two esteemed guests sitting back there. Senator Roberts and representative Lukens come up and give us a 2026 legislative update.

Thanks for coming to you guys. Yeah. I like the belt buckle.

uh good evening everybody uh great to be before steamboat spring city council thank you for the invitation uh and great to be here with my colleague representative lukens um i think we all know each other but thanks for everybody who's tuning in here in person or or virtually i'm dylan roberts honored to be the state senator for route county and senate district 8 which includes 10 counties here in central and northwest colorado And really appreciate this invitation and connecting with local governments across our districts is something that's really important to us. We always value when we can go to a city council or a county commission and give an update on what we have been working on. And importantly too, I wanna make sure we leave enough time for any feedback and comments from you all. Now that we're not in the legislative session and thinking about what comes next, often some of our best ideas come from folks like you who are connected to the community here. So we'd love to leave time for that. But we were asked to come, and thank you to Kelly for arranging this, to come give a brief update about what happened at the Capitol this year. We adjourned our 2026 legislative session about a month ago. We got done on May 13th. Every year we meet down in Denver at the Capitol for 120 days where we consider bills, bring forward ideas ourselves, vote on those bills, and do the business of the state. The big kind of overarching theme of this past year's legislative session and something that we just heard you all talking about a little bit is our budget, our state budget. We are just like you constitutionally required to pass a balanced state budget every year. Our fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30th. So every legislative session, we have to consider our state budget for the upcoming fiscal year. When we walked into the doors of the legislative session this January, we were facing a requirement to cut about $1.2 billion from our state budget in order to achieve a balanced budget. There's a variety of reasons why the state, and we've been in this position for the last couple years and anticipate to be in this position for at least one or two more years, potentially longer. is a variety of reasons, but the main things are, one, we've seen a significant decrease in federal funding support under the current administration in Washington, D.C. We're also going to see further cuts due to the passage of the H.R. 1 or the Big Beautiful Bill that Congress passed last summer. That's impacting every state across the country. Colorado, for a variety of reasons, has also seen some specific targeting in terms of the loss of federal funding. We are also, the biggest part of our state budget right now is Medicaid. delivering health care to lower income individuals as well as our aging community the cost of delivering health care has significantly increased over the last few years much higher than regular inflation medical inflation far outpaces that and so that means colorado's medicaid obligations have significantly increased And then we, of course, in Colorado have the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which puts some calculations and formulas within our state budgeting process that we have to abide by. So those three main things, as well as a lot of smaller other things, have led us to this point where we have to cut a lot of money from our state budget in order to balance the budget. But we did. We passed a bipartisan and balanced state budget this year, did see significant cuts to Medicaid programs as well as other areas of state government, but also we're able to protect, and Rep Lukens can talk more about this, protect K-12 funding and some other important priorities in our state budget. Other than the state budget, though, we considered over 600 bills this legislative session. Every legislator, there's 100 of us, 35 senators, 65 representatives. Every legislator is allowed to bring at least five bills of their own. So you get to 500 pretty quickly. And then the additional bills are mostly related to the state budget, as well as some additional late bills, as they're called. And about 450 of those ended up passing all the way through the process and went to the governor's desk. But about 85% of those bills had bipartisan support. A lot of them don't make the newspaper headlines or the news, but our general ideas and nonpartisan solutions to some of the problems that we're hearing from our constituents. I'm gonna talk a little bit about a couple of bills that I worked on that I think are relevant to you as city councilors and to this region of the state and Rep Lukens will do the same. And then we'd love to hear any questions you have. Senate bill number one was my bill this year. Really excited about that. This is a housing bill. This was a bill that we actually worked on with county commissioners across the state, as well as municipal governments across the state. Your partners at Colorado Municipal League were very helpful in this bill. This clears up some red tape that counties and municipalities were having when they're considering workforce housing development projects. allows counties to use ad valorem tax dollars that they already generate to build workforce housing it also allows municipalities to sell acquire or lease land within your municipality to build that the municipality owns or wants to own to build workforce housing so hopefully that's a good eliminating some red tape and helping you focus on your housing needs bill There was also a bill that we were not the prime sponsors of, but is relevant certainly to city councils. House Bill 1, so that was Senate Bill 1. House Bill 1 was referred to as the HOME Act. Is that right? Yes, the HOME Act. You may have heard about this. I imagine you had a discussion. This creates a slightly expedited process for nonprofits that want to build housing on their property. This was a bill that was introduced last legislative session did not pass i think we heard from several of you about that bill this one is a similar idea but is pared back a little bit the nonprofit needs to have a history of developing affordable housing in order to qualify for this expedited process and also have a few other requirements but it is aimed at trying to speed up some of those entities like school districts like other non-profits that want to build housing on their land um get through that process uh so that's something to note we're happy to take questions on that um i also um have heard a lot from constituents here in in route county and across my district about road safety worked on several bills related to road safety including increasing penalties for folks that pass on a double yellow line or people who are repeat speeding offenders so two tickets within a year three speeding tickets within two years they're going to start to see escalated penalties just trying to keep our roads and pedestrians safe also pass a bill that we're really excited about senate bill 141 which is going to create a permanent source of funding for wildlife crossings and wildlife infrastructure along our roadways this will allow drivers when you register your car every year to contribute five dollars if you want to it's not required it's an optional fee but if you want to you can pay five dollars that will go to this collision prevention fund and will be a partnership between cdot and cpw to identify areas of roadways that could use wildlife fencing or maybe even an underpass or overpass so maybe not within your municipal boundaries but certainly around steamboat we know that that is an issue that we want to keep our roads and drivers safer I'll also just touch on some big priorities or another bill in the housing space actually two bills in the housing space that I was a part of that I think are relevant to municipalities. One is House Bill 1065 and this relates a little bit to mountain rail as well. This is a bill that is going to allow entities to create transit and housing investment zones around these transit hubs including the mountain rail stops that could potentially be here in the city of Steamboat Springs and in our region this will allow you to do TIF financing or tax increment financing if you would like to do this and work with the state government to generate revenue to improve infrastructure around the transit hubs as well as get incentives to build housing near those transit hubs and then also House Bill 1224 want to give a shout out to the Impa Valley Housing Authority on this one they helped us with this this creates further protections for mobile home park residents who are seeking to purchase their lot if and when they come up for sale it creates some more financial disclosures and tries to put those mobile home park residents on more equal footing when they're trying to make an offer on the property and we know we've seen that successfully happen here in this community and hope that it can happen more so that bill will help with that And then for me, as the chair of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, very cognizant of our water resources and our agriculture community with this drought and terrible winter that we had in terms of snowfall, we are very cognizant at the state level about everything that's going into that. We did pass a very healthy water projects bill. We pass this bill every year. It's uses money from severance taxes and sports betting to help fund the Colorado Water Plan and conservation efforts, including municipal water projects, agriculture, conservation projects and a variety of other things because we fund water, not from the general fund that was spared from our budget cuts. So thankfully, we're still putting the resources into water. Well, not everything we need for water, but a strong investment into our water future. And I know that's going to be difficult for all of us this year in our mountain communities. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rep Lukens. And again, thank you for the invite and look forward to the discussion.

Hey, hello, Steamboat Spring City Council. Thank you so much for having us this evening. Before I go into legislative updates, I want to just do two quick fun things. One, I have the privilege of representing four counties, 22 towns across these four counties. But I am your constituent. I live here in Steamboat. So I just wanted to say thank you for all the great work that you do. As a constituent, I'm so pleased and very grateful for the hard work that you do. And then the second thing that I wanted to say that's more of a fun item is I have the privilege of being a part of a program called the American Council of Young Political Leaders. And in Steamboat this weekend, we hosted a diplomatic delegation from Taiwan as part of this program. and yesterday was completely dedicated to city of steamboat springs day and so i wanted to say uh thank you to deputy uh city manager kelly romero heaney uh for organizing an amazing program wanted to say thank you to uh president montine and president pro tem gary and uh city manager leeson um thank you so much for coming to speak to the delegation we got to see uh We were here yesterday. We went to the fire department. We went to Howlson Hill. And there are a lot of Taiwanese bipartisan politicians that are on their way home right now wearing Steamboat Springs fire department shirts. um so it was uh just such a fun day they compared and contrasted the federal government they started in dc then we did the state legislature in denver and then the city level was city of steamboat springs so thank you so much seeing the city yesterday was such a highlight so this legislative session as senator roberts mentioned the big question throughout the entire legislative session was the budget And that was certainly looming over everything that we were doing this legislative session. So one of the big questions in the education space was how are we going to fund our schools? Are we going to continue funding them at the rate that we are, or are we going to have to cut them? Before getting elected, I was a social studies teacher at Steamboat Springs High School, and I now have the privilege of being the chair of the House Education Committee. And so I had the privilege of sponsoring the School Finance Act this year. And I'm pleased to announce that we actually increased funding to our K-12 schools. It was one of the few categories of the budget that we can say that. And so we increased funding per student funding by $440 per student, bringing the average to $12,300 per student. And a specific amount of that will be added to our rural schools under what's known as the rural factor. as part of our student funding formula. And so this is a huge win for our schools across the state of Colorado, including our rural schools. But there is so much more work to be done in the education funding space, which is why I sponsored another bill that actually refers a proposition to the ballot this year So it will ultimately be in the hands of you all and the voters of Colorado. Proposition NN, when we were passing it through the legislature, it was Senate Bill 135. This places a ballot measure on the ballot that asks voters if the money that is allocated under the excess TABOR revenue. So any money above the cap can instead be sent to our K-12 schools. And so that will be on this November's ballots. We did pass that through the legislature and the voters will get to ultimately decide. a few other bills that i want to highlight i am the chair of the ems sustainability task force so i worked on a bill that designated ems as essential services so this especially supports public funding for our ambulance providers i also worked on a bill in the environment space the colorado outdoor opportunities act we we did a lot of stake holding with the colorado municipal league and colorado counties incorporated um to on this bill as well and so this bill strengthens our outdoor recreation wildlife and conservation planning we know that we have a historic level of people that are recreating in our outdoor spaces and we need to make sure that we are protecting our outdoor spaces from being loved to death while also recognizing that they have a significant economic benefit to our to our entire state but especially our western slope and so this bill especially partners with colorado parks and wildlife in management of the the increased level of visitors that we see on our on our public lands uh and then in addition to that um i i also want to highlight one of the bills that senator roberts and i oh actually i'm going to talk about one more bill and then go to my my coal transition bill One of the bills that I passed this legislative session that is the best name of all the bills that I worked on is in regards to negligently luring bears. We know that bears are a huge problem, especially for our local, but also for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. And so the statute before said that law enforcement had to prove that people were intentionally luring bears. And so for those neighbors of ours that were, or especially tourists, that may have been continually having problems with bears, law enforcement was not able to actually enforce the law in that space. So we lowered the standard there and also increased the penalty for repeat offenders because it is such a problem and we have seen a massive increase in human-bear conflict and often that leads to bears having to be And then the last bill that I will highlight is in relation to supporting our coal transitioning communities. Senator Roberts and I also represent Hayden and Craig. And so this supports our coal workers as well as allows local governments to invest those coal closure settlements. So that's just kind of an overview of some of the bills that I worked on. As Senator Roberts mentioned, we... do ultimately vote yes or no on all bills that come before us. But I also wanted to just say thank you. I talked with a lot of you throughout the legislative session on your opinions on bills or working to get amendments on the varying bills and also just articulating how these bills could impact Steamboat Springs. And it is just so valuable to hear from you during the legislative session. So just wanted to say thank you for your continued engagement. And

i'm happy to answer any questions okay well thank you for that great update and before i open it up to questions i also wanted to thank you both for your support in getting that c dot land deal done so thank you very much for your help with that really noticeable yeah yeah all right what questions do you have anyone It's a great opportunity.

Okay, I'll go. Quiet. So I appreciate all your work. First of all, thank you both. I mean, I always think like our jobs are hard, your jobs. So much gratitude and appreciation to both of you. So we talked about affordable housing. I appreciate all your work. Some of us were advocates for a vacancy tax here in SEMO, which I was an advocate trying to push that through. What I see missing from the conversation around affordable housing is short-term rentals coming in over the years and i equate it to being like sand you go to the beach and there's a little sand over here next thing you know it's like everywhere um and that we see folks now i appreciate to the counselors who put together our short-term rental tax and the boundaries that we have now that was a game changer um it should have happened sooner but I appreciate all the work. What's missing in the conversation is that second and third homeowners are coming in and buying up housing that our workforce used to live in. It's raising, you know, it's raising the cost. And so what I feel like that's the piece that we're not really honing in on, that that is a part of the puzzle as to why we have this challenge of affordable housing. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yes, I can start. So I just want to first touch base on the vacancy tax bill and then talk about the broader question. So the vacancy tax bill that you are referring to was unsuccessful in its first committee hearing in the House. So this was the I believe it was the housing committee. the transportation, housing, and local government committee. And so I actually never had the opportunity to vote on this bill because I'm not in that committee. And so what I did hear from some of my colleagues that had hesitancies with that bill that ultimately led them to vote no is there are colleagues on that committee that represent the Front Range and a lot of their constituents have their second homes in our areas. and so they are are working to represent their constituents too um but then i also heard uh um i heard from them because i did ask you know this was uh i know this was a priority of colorado association of ski towns uh and and so i did you know inquire as to what the reasoning was And I think that they also found that there are already a lot of local governments or local areas that have different regulations, and they felt that leaving that to local control was more beneficial for that space. And so they felt that because there were certain areas that had these different regulations, it didn't make sense to pass this at the state level. That being said, I do know that this legislation would have just allowed city councils to have the opportunity to ask the voters to implement a vacancy tax. So that was part of their hesitations. Sometimes with any bill in this nature, it does take a few years. One thing that I do want to highlight is this next year we will be seeing a massive leadership change in the state at the state capitol most notably we will have a new governor our governor governor polis is term limited so we will have a new governor this year and i do know that colorado association of ski towns is very organized around this topic so i would certainly encourage encourage conversations with the governor, but I also think that in order for something like this to pass, we have to bring in our front range legislators into the conversation because obviously we certainly understand what it's like to have second and third home owners in the western slope, but it is also something that we are just, I'm one vote, Senator Roberts is one vote of the 100 legislators at the state capitol. So I think that it's a worthy topic to keep discussing, but I also understand why my colleagues felt the need to vote against it for their individual constituents. That makes sense. Yeah.

Is there anybody? Oh, sorry.

Oh, I was just, thanks. I just gonna add on the short-term rental conversation. Two years ago, there was a bill proposed to increase the property tax categorization of second and third homes from residential to commercial as a way to both generate revenue for affordable housing development, but also maybe disincentivize the purchasing of homes that used to be long-term rentals for locals. That also did not progress past its first committee hearing. As you can imagine, there was significant pushback on that from a variety of folks. I think the tension and conversation that we have at the State Capitol on this issue, whether it's vacancy tax, short-term rental, property tax, anything, is should we have a one-size-fits-all state law? Or should we let every municipality or every county come up with rules and taxes or regulations that fit their specific community? I think a lot of and, you know, Steamboat's a good example of of going to your voters for a short term rental tax and other ways that you've regulated that type of housing, but there's definitely a divide between folks. And our current governor was more of the mindset of we should let the locals decide what's best for them. He wasn't, I don't think, supportive of any of these bills, even if they had made it to his desk. Yeah.

Thank you. Thanks.

Is there been any talk about bringing back the real estate transfer tax into legislation?

Yeah, that was another example of Colorado Association of Ski Towns was spearheading that work. The governor made very clear that he would veto such a bill if it got to his desk. And so that one has never been introduced. I think as Rep Lukens noted, with a new governor coming in, whoever that is, there might be some more openness to something like that. As you know, there are already 12 towns in Colorado that have a real estate transfer tax because they put them in place before tabor was adopted in 1992 um and so there is you know and as far as in you know city of aspen for example has um generated significant amount of funds that they've put into affordable housing development through that so i think that that conversation could come back do you know what paul's reservation was on cancer tax he said that um it would increase the cost of housing and um you know i think car associated ski towns uh tried to work with him and maybe makes and he was making an argument that it would increase the cost of housing for everybody when housing is unaffordable um the case was made well what if we put um a minimum sell uh sale price you know one million dollars two million dollars so you're not putting a transfer tax on the first time home buyers or lower income home buyers or, you know, but he still he couldn't get there.

Other questions.

Just a question for you both. As we continue on the topic of affordable housing and we struggle with the AMI and how do you think we can best communicate that? So again, kind of back to your point about the vacancy tax and needing to take time to educate the front range legislators in terms of the impact. How can we get our story across a little bit better as it relates to AMI?

Well, actually, one thing I would point out, or success that I would point out, there were two bills this year that made some reforms to Prop 123 that have created, and they were both signed into law, have created more flexibility on the AMI front for rural resort counties to access $123 at a higher AMI level. So that was multiple years in the making. And it took several years of kind of telling that story and talking to our front range colleagues about how even though you think places like Steamboat and Aspen and Vail don't have affordable housing challenges that we actually do, and they're very acute. And so I think we're improving in that regard. But we'd love to hear if there are specific changes in state law with regards to AMI that you think we should pursue.

Just to add on to that as well, I just wanted to highlight a few things. First of all, the Yampa Valley Housing Authority is very involved in letting us know what is working and what isn't working in legislation. And so I just wanted to give them a shout out. We did successfully advocate for an amendment on one of the bills related to down payment assistance to ensure that folks in the Cottonwoods actually qualify for the down payment assistance. And so we were happy to work with the Empire Valley Housing Authority to advocate for that amendment. And I understand that it's already going into successful effect at the Cottonwoods. Senator Roberts and I, as well as the other Western Slope legislators, do often try our best to communicate to our Front Range colleagues about our housing challenges on the Western Slope. One of my phrases that I often use is that basic supply and demand doesn't work in our rural resort communities because we have never-ending demand for housing. And so we do our best to communicate that but I do know that a lot of you have testified in committee and I just wanted to say that is extremely valuable to what we are saying to our colleagues on the House floor because then when you all do come and explain what it is like for our rural resort communities it is very powerful and our colleagues certainly let us know when you know they'll say, oh, I heard your city councilor testify on committee. And it was very, very interesting perspective to understand what it is like in these communities. So that is always really helpful as well. And we do have remote testifying. So that does help.

Thank you. I have a question on, as you know, in Steamboat and Rowe County, the biggest growing demographic is seniors. And so we have some in the room here. Of course, I guess I could look at myself too, but anyway. Great hair. I'll try not to. And then we look at home health services and the fact that we have a lot of seniors who are shut in, who are depressed because they don't have any interaction and all that. Is there anything going on or any creative, innovative kind of thoughts going on around what we can do up here to better address those issues? because there's a lot of seniors too who you know would maybe like to downsize but it's almost impossible to do it and uh that would free up some inventory as well so i'm just trying to think creatively is there any talk going on

Yeah, a few things that come to mind that the legislature has been involved with, and it's good to see Noreen and her group here. And we talk often. I think when we're talking about affordable housing, we also want to make sure that's inclusive of senior housing, senior affordable housing. Most of the grant programs and loan programs at the state level can and are available for senior specific housing projects so i'm interested to hear how the meeting goes on monday and you know if you ever get to the point where you're applying for state funds for a senior specific housing development or project um please keep in mind that that that is available at the state level um to the extent that funds are available of course but prop 123 is there um we have done some things in the affordability front for seniors when it comes to housing a couple years ago we made the senior homestead property tax exemption portable so it allows us before the law change you had to be in the same home that you had been in for at least 10 years to qualify for the exemption and then if you moved you would lose your you would restart your 10-year clock now you can downsize or move to a new address within colorado and keep that that slight property tax discount it's not um all of your property taxes, but it is, it is some relief, uh, for seniors. Um, as far as the mental health aspect and the cost of care, that was one of the really difficult conversations we had this year when we made cuts to Medicaid is, um, you know, Medicaid is typically, or Medicare is typically the healthcare for seniors. But, um, if a senior is in a long-term, uh, care facility that's funded by the state, that's the Medicaid department. And so we have had to made some difficult cuts to provider rates, uh, and others that, that are going to impact, um, our senior population. I hope that with the new governor coming in, as far as behavioral health goes, we do have the Behavioral Health Administration that was stood up at the beginning of the Polis administration. That department, I think, is well-intentioned but needs serious reform. And I hope that the new administration keeps that in mind and especially is helpful for seniors. But yeah, keep us posted if there's anything locally that you're trying to do that you need help from the state. We're happy to facilitate that.

you any other questions just have one more on the mobile home park resident protections has there been any talk about putting a cap on what park owners can list those properties for sale it seems like they've come on the market recently at egregious prices that you know no commercial investor would pay to sort of goad park owners into getting you know foundation money to help them out and buy their parks

Yeah, so the current law under the Mobile Home Park Act is that the residents of the park are entitled to put in an offer that is at market value or fair market value. How that's calculated, I'm sure, is up for debate and maybe could be more clearly defined in state law. There would obviously be some pushback on that idea in terms of government getting involved in real estate prices. Those types of ideas or legislation usually don't make it very far. But I hear absolutely where you're coming from is that If the price is inflated from the start, the residents can't put in a realistic offer. So yeah, like Rep Lukens has said, we talk to the InfaValley Housing Authority often. We would love to hear from you too. If you're seeing examples of that happening that seems egregious, there are current protections in law that either the Attorney General or Department of Local Affairs can enforce.

Okay. Well, thank you so much, both of you.

Thank you.

Yes. Thanks for coming.

I think you all have our contact info. Please be in touch anytime. Always happy to hear from you as we get ready for next year. Okay. All right. See you around town.

Thank you. Thank you. It's about five or seven. We probably should take our 10-minute break here, and we'll get back at five after seven. Just for everybody in the audience to know, what we have coming up is... uh stop uh the stockbridge campus housing project and that will be somewhere around 30 minutes and we have steamboat for all which is um allocated for 30 minutes and then after that we will move into the chief theater um resolution so you're looking at what time we may be doing something that hopefully helps you right thank you

That's the kicker.

Good job. Good to see you again. Say hello.

I know that was fun. I'm worried about you. You're spending all this money on therapy. I'm worried about you. Okay, everyone. Who are we missing here? Councillor Geary, Amy, anywhere? Here she comes. Okay, we're gonna move on. to our second report here, and that's the Stockbridge Campus Housing Project overall development plan update. Kelly, take it away.

Thank you. Good evening, counselors. Kelly Romero-Heeney, your deputy city manager. I'm joined here tonight with Keith Meyer with Townscape Advisors. Keith is our owner's rep on this project, and so people he will be presenting the majority of the slides this evening and this is also a great opportunity for you to get to know him because he is going to be guiding us on this project for hopefully a few years So this evening, we wanna run through a few things. We'll provide council with an update on the process for the Stockbridge Campus Housing Project. Of course, we'll do introductions, and then we'll chat a bit about next steps, schedule, and then answer your questions and have any discussion that you'd like to have. I'll also note that tonight we'll be asking you to appoint two council members to serve on the advisory committee for the Stockbridge Campus Housing Project. so the way we are structuring this process is we've got myself as the project manager with a lot of support from our facilities and construction services manager eric freeze who you all know and then as i noted um we've got keith who is really you know as an owner's rep really helping to expand our capacity and frankly our capabilities so that we can get this project moving on on fast track as council has directed us to do both in your council goals and in the strategic plan that you adopted last week we also have this internal work group so this is our city staff work group that includes finance planning city engineering some support from the city legal team and then our transit you know from Jonathan Flint from our transit director Oh, and I just have to caveat this by saying, I asked Keith to talk a little bit about his background, because I want you all to have confidence in the team that we built. And I'm just gonna say Keith is kind of a big deal. And he is mortified that I'm asking him to talk about himself. Keith, take it away. Big deep.

It's very true. good evening council members thank you for having me um kelly's exactly right i do not like talking about myself so um i will do my best with the slide and you can certainly ask questions about my background and i'd be happy to answer those um i've been doing this for 33 years i'm a registered professional engineer in the state of colorado I do have this cross-section experience of municipal, city, and county government. I worked in my career, I worked for them for about 15 years, and then all the rest of my experience is in the private sector. I actually have been a land developer. I've developed projects in the Front Range and have acted as a developer and a financer of those projects. And across my experience managing infrastructure projects, well over a billion dollars in projects delivered um some outside the country some in the western slope and most on the front range they span water wastewater utility infrastructure projects buildings and site development aviation one of my first projects when i graduated from college was working on dia when it was being first built and then transportation and transit so again i don't like talking about myself so i prepared a slide but i'm happy to answer any questions about my background if if you all have any

Okay, well, maybe we'll get to some.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah.

Make some good ones up even, and I'll answer them. So project status, where we are today, as you all know, the Campbell parcels have been purchased. Those were closed on April 27th. Currently actively working on the acquisition of the two CDOT parcels. Appraisals and things are underway, and we're hoping to have a closing on those parcels in September of this year. um a little bit about an overall development plan an overall development plan outside of your community development code is a tool that can represent a vision of the property really and that will be an effort that that we're going through to hire a planning consultant to help the community capture that vision and then bring it into a reality in a planning document that then can also be immediately implemented So the RFPs for that planning consultant and development team was issued on the 12th. Proposals were submitted here just recently. We did get proposals from 14 different interested firms, so good response. We're expecting a kickoff in July or August, and part of that will be a community-based design charrette where we can gather up, again, that vision for the project coming out of that charrette. A little bit about the scope of work that that planning consultant and development team will work on. I mentioned vision a lot already, but really gathering stakeholder input to understand what that vision is for the overall project. Focusing on the components that we know are important to the community now, but affordable, attainable housing, childcare, and services for the aging community. um as well as maybe others that come out of the stakeholder engagement process the land use plan that comes out of this the overall development plan really needs to be connected to feasibility and funding so development of a capital stack of of project funding if you will that is reasonable attainable and can actually deliver the project that the community envisions um okay let's see next slide A little bit about the stakeholder engagement process. We have a communications plan draft underway. We'll finalize that with all the engagement strategies with both city staff and the planning consultant once they're hired. Kelly mentioned council engagement, certainly service on the advisory committee. And we would like to, as she mentioned, leave today with the understanding of what representatives from council will be serving on that committee. but you'll see monthly updates coming through the city manager report. We'll certainly be coming and giving updates at work sessions. There's public meetings and then formal adoption of the plan at the end of the planning process. So a little bit about the advisory committee. Right now we're targeting members on that advisory committee from city council, CDOT, Rob County, the SOAR group locally here, the Housing Authority and Community Foundation. Okay, a little bit about our schedule. Just to compress schedule, I mentioned that we're working with CDOT right now on acquiring those last two CDOT-owned parcels through September. We're selecting the development team this month and maybe into the first part of July negotiating contracts. and then really the scope of work from there is all about collecting data what is the existing um makeup of the of the land if you will the city's already if you happen to drive by there you'll see flags out on the on the property we're doing utility locates we're doing existing condition surveys already so that we can turn that product over to the planning consultant be a little bit ahead of the game but there'll be some data collection and transfer, understanding the land use planning process, how it fits into the community development code, or if there's variances needed. All that time, stakeholder engagement is also occurring with ultimately a refinement of three different alternatives. We're asking the planning consultant develop the vision through that stakeholder engagement recommend three different alternatives for the project or for the overall property distill that down into one ultimately one recommended alternative that will come to council at the end of the planning process and so that's what we're looking looking at and having and having that complete in the first quarter of of 2027. So I know I went through those slides relatively quickly, but happy to answer any questions you may have.

Okay. Thank you, Keith. We appreciate that. And what questions do we have?

I have a dumb question. What's an owner's rep, and what's the difference between an owner's rep and a project manager?

In the context of what it is in this particular project, an owner's rep in my mind and the way I look at it is an extension of your staff. So I have a unique skill set that I'm bringing to the table that helps the city deliver this project in a way that managing the overall components of it. And then you have an internal project manager as Kelly kind of overseeing my work and all of the consultant's work, and then coordinating all the work within city staff and making sure we're on target. So really view me as an extension of your own internal team.

Thanks.

Yeah, you bet.

Other questions?

Yes. What's the status of the Timberline furniture lease?

Yeah, good question. Councilor goes. So we, we took over the current lease that was in place. And so at this point, that renter continues to pay rent to the city for the use of that property. We'll continue to work with them on the kind of the term of that as we go. Yeah.

Okay um the other question is is what is the general funding model for the sock bridge I mean I mean yeah so I'm not clear on we're going to design something and ultimately be building something but you know obviously you have to have some funny model be sitting behind this whole thing.

Right, yeah, that's a great question. I mean, currently the funding in place through your capital plan is going to fund the consultant to perform the planning services to develop the overall development plan. Ultimately, the funding package to implement the actual project and the various component of it, that is going to be complicated. That's what I referred to earlier as a capital stack. It could be some tax credits, could be private financing and debt, could be, you know, supplemented with STR local dollars. It could be a whole host grants. It could be a whole host of things that develop that capital stack, and that'll be determined through this planning process. There'll be a financial plan essentially tied to every alternative that is evaluated and ultimately the final recommendation to council. Sure.

Just a side note, we also, so Senator Bennett was able to secure a congressionally directed spending for this project. So we've got about 1.6, I believe, million already to initiate site work when it's time. Good job. Wow.

Fabulous. Did that answer your question? That did. And then the last question is a pretty darn loaded question. uh yvha i mean what you know how was the decision made that we're going to do this we're going to project manage this we're going to you know matt you know manage this and put this and put the deals together and do it versus yvha which is the you know group and allocated for the for the county and the community for doing housing so

i can answer part of that and kelly might want to step in but um the the project we're pursuing currently is a planning effort um the option for the city to play develop or or play a housing authority is is is potentially an option that could come out of this but not a predetermined um answer The role that the city ultimately plays in the project is gonna be one that is a recommendation coming through the alternatives analysis and then ultimately the recommended alternative to council. You might play nothing more than role of a land owner that has a long-term land lease on the ground and leases it to a third party.

And I'll just add that we are excited to have Elliott Lawrence from the Impavelli Housing Authority serve on that advisory committee, because obviously, like the Housing Authority brings a lot of expertise, knowledge. And then frankly, some of the funding buckets we may go for, we'd likely have to work through the Housing Authority as well. So we're excited to kind of collaborate on this project with them. But you know, what direction it has, as Keith noted, is yet to be seen.

okay dixon um i would like to know what the time commitment for council because i think you said you would like to have two city council so what what does that look like you get to watch us raise and lower this microphone you're a fun team

Um, what we're envisioning right now is, um, for that, um, advisory committee to be an advocate for the project, certainly publicly at local events, but then also a minimum of a one month, once a month meeting, participating with us, um, kind of, you know, making the sausage, if we will, looking at the project and how it's being developed with the planning consultant. And I would expect that to be a one to two hours, um, a month type meeting.

Other questions?

Oh, question on that lease? When is it over? Or is it just month to month? Sorry, I should ask that as a follow up when we have extensions, a little bit complex.

So there's a current term that goes through February of 2028. And then they have a five year renewal term, we're currently negotiating with them on that.

So more to come on that. Wait, so we could literally have to wait until 33 to build this?

No, we'll work through that.

There's great space at the airport. Available.

But that means we can't build this until they're out of there, right?

They're a very small component of the infrastructure.

it's not yeah the the the actual timber lines um furniture building is a very small component of the overall project from us from a land allocation standpoint so it wouldn't necessarily hold up the project okay no any other questions okay but um before we answer your question i just want to open it up to uh public comment and see is there anybody in the room who would like to make a public comment regarding this

Noreen Moore, twice in one night.

I have to identify myself again. Yes. Noreen Moore. questionable residences. I'd like for us to be on that group so that when we get there, we can talk about the specificity of housing. The Impaveli Housing Authority will of course be there for housing. Most of their work has been centered around workforce housing. uh soar is will center itself they don't do housing and their questions will center around the services in the building that they have and how best to keep that going so i don't see anybody yet on that group that can speak for us so would you be willing to put one of put our category on that

okay thank you that's it well do you have more to say no i want you to say yes we would that's what i want you to say comments we hear you noreen is there anybody else who'd like to make public comment if not is there anybody online please raise your hand see none we will close public comment and bring it and bring it back to council to answer the question about council representation on the Stockbridge Committee. And I just want to make one comment here. Councillor Swintek and I have been on the Housing Subcommittee for a year and a half, I guess, or whatever. And as a result, we spend a lot of time on housing and on all the different things that get vetted and filtered through to the ad hoc and then to the city council and everything else. and so i feel strongly that um we bring a lot to the could bring a lot to this committee just from our experience with this and managing and all the variables that are associated with all these other things and the str funds and everything else so um i certainly would like to be on i think counselor swintec would like to be on it as well um so i'm just throwing that out there it's up to you all of course

I'd like to throw my hat in the ring. I was on this housing way before you guys got here and been handling housing for six years and four years on planning commission. Okay. I think with the planning background and six years on council, this could be my last hurrah before the November 27 ballot and giving up the RTA to our constituent, Mr. Augusta. I do have some available time to fit this into my schedule.

Okay. Okay.

does anybody else want to throw their hat in the ring i would love to but i'm not going to i think now that we have three um i feel i have very strong opinions about this which i know is shocking so as long as i can share them um with whoever's on the committee i would greatly appreciate that so um i will step back and we can

side so i would also like to be on that committee but i would also be willing to step back because i do trust that you know the two of you of you know taking that role um but if you just so decided that you didn't want to take that role i wouldn't mind stepping in any other comments from anyone else

have any i i would support counselor patino um being on it i i agree counselor but you know took a step back from the rta which is which was a big part of the work that you did and i agree you've been part of this for many years and on planning commission and i think it'd be good to have your voice so

i'm happy to not be on it so you you're able to be on it i guess my only question is would there be value to keeping president montine on as like the housing subcommittee person on this or should we completely shake it up and have councillor dixon and kuchina's no i'm okay with not shaking it up okay that much right cool i appreciate that

think steve's you're on the housing authority board right no thank you what was that thank you amy oh um you guys can't do that on the golf course though yeah we talk about his three putts okay Okay.

Well, that's, I mean, you have the steamboat for, I mean, as we know, I mean, councilor Swintek, as we look at the presentation from the perspective of kind of the steamboat for all potential perspective, just thinking about that too. I mean, I appreciate and respect kind of the knowledge base that's coming out of the housing subcommittee. So certainly keeping one member makes some sense, but I just wanna make sure that we've got kind of diverse representation from council on that.

I'm just trying not to ruffle feathers. I'll happily serve on it or not. Yeah, I would be happy to or not. I don't know. Can we decide? President Mateen and I speak offline, and can we just decide? Sure. I don't know how this feels really awkward. Can we just have a conversation and decide and then come back to it? Perfect. Cool.

I'm okay with that. Are you guys okay with that?

We're writing a resolution here, right?

No. Hopefully not. Yeah. Um, and then, um, and what we'll do is, um, you know, the other person will still be on the housing subcommittee. Okay.

When you're both still on the housing subcommittee. Yeah. Well, that's what I mean.

That's what I mean.

Right. Okay.

Um, wait one other thing. The advisory committee, why isn't first impressions on there? Sorry. I thought of this last minute.

That's a great question. So route county right now the plan is they will also represent first impressions. But I do want to clarify that, while we're keeping the advisory committee relatively small and nimble, we're going to do targeted engagement with with different groups, that's going to be a really important component to this. Sounds good. Thanks.

And do you have a perspective on source? Focus?

Well, yeah, I mean, they're particularly interested in their current use of the community center, which they're kind of outgrowing. I don't want to say they're outgrowing the actual footprint of that facility, but how they're allowed to use it. So they also need that. a facility to help meet the needs of the aging population in Route County and provide meals and activities and rides and whatnot. Right.

And I absolutely understand the desire to keep the advisory group small, but what I'm struggling with is, you know, and we know that we have a lot of different subcategories of groups people in our community that are impacted and would love to have a voice on this advisory committee so how do we make sure that those voices are represented because again we've got yampa valley housing authority um but as we say we know that there are other kind of subsets out there

Yeah, Keith spoke to the overall development plan process and how we'll have a robust community engagement component to that. And that's not just like blasting out information. Not only is it public meetings, the original kickoff charrette, we'll do council meetings, but I really wanna emphasize that targeted engagement and whether it's us going and having coffee, with our guests here tonight, or meeting with individual groups, I think that's going to be really important. But again, at the end of the day, we welcome your input on that.

I do question what is what is the role of route county in this?

Yeah, that's also a really good question. So, um, you know, you may be familiar with the project that the city had been pursuing the childcare workforce housing project on the CDOT parcel that's there in the drainage, which, um, you know, we just weren't able to make that feasible. And then of course we had the opportunity to acquire the Campbell and CDOT parcels together. Routt County had invested in that project and they have a particular interest in, or they may also invest in this project. Again, it just depends on how all of this turns out. So I think they'll both be wearing the Routt County hat, but also representing the interests of first impressions. And of course our need to fill the childcare gap in Routt County, which you all had a presentation on a few weeks ago. Does that answer the question, Councillor Barnes?

I know you want to keep this group on the smaller side for keep it nimble and be able to move relatively quickly. I guess the question is that as you see that developing over the course of a few months, there may be opportunities to add to that group and John Pimentel, Community engagement, obviously, is critical to the success of it, but it may even turn into that you want to take some of that Community into the group potentially down the road, a little bit would that be fair.

yeah and i and i will say like as we get into this project if we're finding that there really is like a subject subject matter expertise or a community interest that we're missing or not able to capture then certainly we can revisit adding somebody to the advisory committee but remember this is going to happen really fast a q1 2027 delivery date might sound far away but it's actually going to be boom boom boom so part of what this advisory committee will be doing for the project is helping to communicate it out to their respective stakeholder groups, but also like build some political social will to move this forward. So our hope is that everybody kind of takes ownership for the outcome and really helps to shape that vision.

Okay. Any other comments or questions for Kelly or Keith? okay thank you thank you thank you counselors thank you okay thank you our last report tonight is an introduction to steamboat for all are we gonna have a band come down andrew or not

and i'm just going to do a very quick uh intro brad calvert uh in the planning department uh and mostly to mention uh i don't want to mess mess with lauren's messaging but i want to like characterize this correctly they're they're introducing themselves as a partner but but the city and steamboat have all been partnering for quite some time very specifically um they have been interested in how and what way they can accelerate The actions that we're taking that are identified in the housing strategy and action plan adopted by Council in 2024. Three examples of those partnerships are noted in your communication form with one thing that happens when you write something a week ago. It says the forthcoming affordable housing dashboard, the affordable housing dashboard is actually live. And so I just wanted to mention that because that is an important word change that we got another item to the finish line, much to the credit of Steamboat for All as a partner in that project. So with that, I'll turn it over to Lauren as she is probably hurriedly joining the Zoom, or there she already is.

All righty. Thank you, Brad, and good evening to council members, staff, everybody in the audience, everyone listening online. I am Lauren Duke, and I appreciate this opportunity to introduce Steamboat for All. A few years ago, a group of residents who each watched as critical workers in the valley struggled to afford living and working here, they gathered under the Yampa Valley Community Foundation to understand the problem and the path forward. Andrew Wolk, a social entrepreneur and philanthropist who has partnered with more than 200 foundations, nonprofits, school districts, and agencies, turned those early conversations into Steamboat for All, funding and seeding it as a place-based initiative of the National Finding Common Purpose, which is working to support systemic change around affordability issues impacting our community. In January, Andrew brought me on as the organization's first executive director. See if I can navigate this. Steamboat for All exists because the people who power this community are increasingly struggling to build a life here. There are teachers, our healthcare workers, our first responders, service workers, parents, nonprofit employees, small business owners, their staff. It's the people that you represent and that you talk about often in these chambers. They are essential to the life and the character of the Yampa Valley, but many of them are facing impossible choices around housing, childcare, and the livability of staying rooted here. The affordability gap has grown over the years, and the decisions that will widen or close that gap are going to be made now. So our mission at Steamboat for All is simple. We want to preserve economic diversity and sustain a thriving workforce in Steamboat so that the people who make this community vibrant can afford to work, live, and thrive here.

Uh...

Okay, so our focus is on increasing the number of workers in Steamboat that pay less than 30% of their income on housing and less than 14% of their income on child care. By focusing here on this work, we believe it will lead to the greatest need that we have now in our community, which is maintaining or hopefully increasing the number of 25 to 45-year-olds who are living in Steamboat. The numbers in our community are staggering. Currently, the average working household is paying nearly 50% of their income for housing and 24% to childcare. Our workforce cannot afford to stay in Steamboat. Rising costs threaten the community character and the economic vitality of our community. Housing livability, both the cost and the stability is the number one barrier. And I'm sure many of you already know, only about 8% of the homes occupied by locals in Steamboat carry a deed restriction that keeps them affordable to the workforce. That's against roughly 30% in comparable Colorado mountain towns like Aspen and Breckenridge. Childcare and housing are intrinsically linked. The federal standard for childcare should be 7% of income, but steamboat families are paying roughly 3.4 times more than that. And shifting to our goal of 14% is still double the federal amount. For many families, childcare is like paying an additional mortgage. So we want to help that. We want to help change that. We aim to coordinate across multiple fronts so that 25 to 45-year-olds, the bulk of our workforce, remain in the valley. And we applaud the work that's already being done here. We were incredibly excited to see the announcement today of home-based steamboats. Congratulations, Brad and everyone, of doing exactly that, of trying to increase the deed-restricted stock in our community. So we see Steamboat for All as a trusted resource, a convener, and an implementation partner. Our role is to build capacity in the ecosystem. That's through community trust, storytelling, coordination, funding alignment, and capacity to move promising ideas from concept to implementation for us to reach our agreed upon outcomes of paying less than 30% on housing and 14% on childcare. We do that through three main inputs, educate, advocate, and accelerate. For education, we translate housing, childcare, and cost of living data into clear, easy to understand information for residents, employers, and partners. For advocate, we organize and convene community voices behind workable bipartisan solutions and existing public priorities. And for acceleration, we fill the ecosystem by identifying necessary capacity gaps and then funding them. who we are. These are the champions who are behind our cause. Our advisory board is made up of locals who are passionate about keeping Steamboat livable for our workers. They include Jason Lacey, Counselor Swintek, Sarah Jones, Colin Kelly, and our founding funder, Andrew Wolk. Each of these individuals brings a unique perspective, decades of work, and a desire to move our mission forward. We are also community members. We are storytellers. So numbers explain why the workforce is squeezed, but stories explain who livability impacts, why our goals of 30% for housing and 14% for childcare matter, and what we as a community can do about it. A core part of our approach is called narrative storytelling for change. So data defines the problem, but the stories help people understand what's really at stake here. We're building a circle of storytelling ambassadors. These are real people who are impacted by affordability in our valley, workers of all ages, demographics, backgrounds, and struggles, as well as community members who can afford to live here, but are impacted when workers can't. This ambassador model matters because affordability conversations very quickly become abstract. They is a gray blob somewhere over there. And our goal is to shine a light on the they. They are our neighbors, our friends, our community members. We're focusing on real people with real stories about cost of living barriers so that we can come together on real solutions for shared outcomes. We aim to deploy our ambassadors into the community to share their stories through friends and peers, as well as letters to the editor, city council meetings, county commissioner meetings, and public forums. We know how powerful narrative storytelling can be, and we're working towards an art meets social issues exhibit we're calling Dear Steamboat that will invite the entire community to learn, engage, and act. As we confirm details about this free interactive art exhibit, I will be sure to update the council. We are also creating opportunities for our ambassadors to learn from local leaders about the issues impacting affordability. Last month, Brad and Kaylee spoke to our ambassadors about the home-based steamboat down payment assistance program before it launched. And it was incredibly impactful for our ambassadors. One ambassador has already been working with a mortgage broker ready to strike when the program was launched. I actually just called him to see if he had put in an offer. I haven't heard back from him yet. But we also have two other ambassadors who have identified friends and peers who are ideal candidates for this program. So we are incredibly excited about this deed-restricted down payment assistance program, and we know it will be a game changer for our community. So who we partner with is a really important part to our approach. In the few short months that we've been running as an organization, we've already built really strong relationships and partnerships with key leaders and organizations already working on affordability issues and the businesses impacted by livability issues. These partnerships, this is exactly how Steamboat for All succeeds. And these are our commitments. This is how we show up. This is how we work to create systemic change, and this is how we want council, our partners, and the community to evaluate us. We are nonpartisan, we are data-driven, we are partner-first, and we want to be held accountable. And if we ever drift from these four commitments, I invite you to hold us accountable. So while we are not program-based, we are bringing this work to life through partnerships, education campaigns, and other actions that are already in motion. Housing is one of our main focus areas. So we have convened the Regional Housing Partnership, which is a group of local employers looking for collaborative efforts to help their workers find appropriate housing. With short-term and long-term goals, this group has the ability to bring together public-private partnerships, assets, and ideas to move the needle. We are also really excited about the work that we've been doing with staff to fund and create the affordable housing dashboard, which clearly outlines our current housing crisis, why it matters for our community and the path forward. This transparent accountability tool will be incredibly useful to keep us all moving in the same direction with the same goals, as well as providing the insights and information that our community has asked for. We're also excited about supporting and funding the chamber on an upcoming housing initiative to eliminate barriers for renters and owners, but I won't steal their thunder. I will let them speak to that. Childcare is our other focus area. So similarly, we are working with First Impressions to fund and create a childcare dashboard, helping bring the data to life to showcase our community's specific needs around childcare supply, cost of family, and educator wages. Access to quality, affordable childcare is a community issue because it's an economic issue. And that's why we're also proud to be funding and supporting the Thrive to Five initiative, which you heard from earlier. this month and next week we are excited to collaborate with first impressions as well to host uh the american motherhood tour which is a movie screening at wild horse cinema on june 25th it's a documentary about what motherhood really looks like in america today and this opportunity is not just about watching a film it's about being in a room where we can say the things out loud that we've been feeling quietly and know that we're not alone this event is free but does require registration which can be done at steamboatforall.org So the reason that I am here tonight is to be a partner. I'm here to ask if we all agree on the outcomes of workers spending less than 30% on housing and 14% on childcare with the desired outcome of increasing the number of 25 to 45 year olds living and thriving in Steamboat. We see a very clear alignment between the work that the city is already doing and planning and how Steamboat for All shows up. We are familiar and clear on your housing strategy, and we look forward to aligning with common outputs, goals, and outcomes. Because understanding the baselines for housing stock, housing needs, deed restricted units, et cetera, that allows us to move forward and towards the same outcomes together. We've already had a really productive relationship with the city, and we look forward to continuing that. i'm also here to offer support to your efforts through our storytelling through our ambassadors through our capacity building we are here to partner with you so thank you for your time and for your interest i'm really excited to partner and continue to do this work together and i welcome any questions that the council may have okay thank you lauren appreciate that what questions or thoughts do we have for lauren quick one yes the access to the dashboard You access the dashboard when it officially launches soon.

I thought you said you didn't launch it.

If you go to the steamboatsprings.net main site under departments, go to planning. I'm giving you the long version of this. If you just go to steamboatsprings.net forward slash housing, you get to the primary landing page, which has a link to the dashboard as well as a link to the home-based steamboat program that was just talked about.

I just jumped over the steamboat for all, so you're not going to post it there also? No.

No, so the exciting thing about this dashboard is that we helped create and fund it, but it will be a city dashboard. It will be maintained and managed by city staff.

Other questions?

So on that topic, is the best way to think about you guys is you're a connector working in the background. So you aren't front and foremost, you're not like a front stage, you're there to elevate. I guess, can you speak a little bit more to that?

Absolutely. We recognize that there are so many incredible organizations in our community working on these issues. We are here to be a capacity builder. We want to help them succeed and figure out where we can come in and fill the gaps that exist and that are preventing our community from succeeding. So we will hopefully be behind the scenes of many things and not out front, but putting our fingers on all the things that we can do to help.

Love it.

Yes, Counselor. Yeah. So, yes. Yes. Your question. Are we on board? Lauren, one partner that strikes me as missing is Ski Corps. What do you think? you think?

That's fair. So we do partner with Ski Corps. They are part of the regional housing partnership. We actually have Altera and Ski Corps involved in that partnership. But as we roll ourselves out, I think there will be many, many more partners and there will likely be a lot more opportunities for us to collaborate with the ski resort. Perfect. And I think I know some people up there. Probably.

Just a few.

Any other thoughts or comments? No, I mean, right now I'm very excited about you guys getting together. Thank you for doing this and getting started. I'm just encouraged to see how this next six months go. You know, as we really roll out and see how this STEAM Up for All kind of morphs into what the community needs and how you guys pull it together. So good place to land, Lauren.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Yeah, and just underscoring that, I mean, absolutely appreciate the work on the dashboard. I think it's really going to help us from the perspective of understanding what, you know, what progress we're making and particularly what initiatives are helping us move the needle forward. So look, again, I appreciate all the work that has been done on that and appreciate all the partnerships. And I really am looking forward to and think that having ambassadors will absolutely make a difference in the sense of we think, you know,

we think we know right but when you have those conversations there's a lot that we don't know so um understanding the realities and the perspectives will be critical and i think will help us make better decisions absolutely i think it's really important for all community members to understand livability impacts all of us whether it's at a minor level or a major level and when it impacts our community character and our community and our economic vitality that's absolutely the future And I am really excited about both dashboards, the childcare and the affordable housing, because it provides so much data, which again, back to my presentation, we know that numbers are one thing and the stories are really what hit home, but having that data accessible and people being able to clearly see it and understand it, I think will also help with STR funds and allocations and things like that.

One more question. Remind me how many ambassadors you have?

So we currently have 14 ambassadors. We did a cohort in January. We're actually going to do a second cohort of ambassadors here in July, and we're hoping to have another 10 more.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

I just want to say one thing. You know, I've known you forever, but I've known Andrew for over a year. think something like that and i really like the passion that you're bringing to this this organization and the passion you all have because that that's really what we need here we need a lot of passion and drive and that self-motivation and i can i can hear it in your voice thank you it's exciting

I have to say I'm incredibly fortunate after trying to be amongst you to be on this side to have linked up with Andrew and to know how many community members are incredibly passionate and caring and empathetic to the livability issues happening in our community. And I'm incredibly inspired by the opportunity to help move the needle, but really the collaboration that is out there that's already existing and that people like all of you want to see move forward is very, very encouraging.

Well, we look forward to all of the partnership opportunities that are before us. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Resounding.

Thank you. And I'll just ask, is there anybody in the room who would like to make a public comment regarding this? If so, you can come on down. If not, anybody online wants to make a public comment, please raise your hand. if not we will close public comment and we're going to move on to the consent calendar items on the consent calendar may be reviewed and commented upon in the same manner as other agenda items any member of the council or the public may request withdrawal of any item from the consent calendar for further discussion at any time prior to approval if items are not removed they may be approved with a single motion tonight we have three items on the consent calendar i'll just read through the three and then i'll ask council if you want to pull any of those items for discussion and we'll also ask the audience and those online if they want to pull any item first one is a resolution approving a development plan conditional use major variance pl20250340 the chief theater the second one a resolution granting an appeal pl20260083 of the planning director's decision of legal non-conforming use abandonment related to PL20220343. And number nine, third one is the fifth supplemental budget appropriation ordinance of 2026. Would anybody from council like to pull any of those three? Number seven. Number seven. Number eight. Number eight. Is there anybody in the room who would like to pull number nine? Is there anybody online who would like to pull number nine? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, we will leave number nine on the consent calendar and have a motion to approve the consent calendar. move to approve agenda item nine on the consent calendar second okay we have a motion by councillor pacino second by councillor gary any further discussion if not i'll call the vote all those in favor aye aye opposed okay number nine passes seven zero we will go back to number seven a resolution approving a development plan condition to use major variants pl20250340 the chief vieta Caitlin, it's going to kick us off.

Good evening, members of the council. Today you will be hearing about a development plan conditional use and major variances for the Chief Theater Planning Application PL20250340. This project includes four variances building height parking average plate height rear setback as well as a required approval for conditional use for an indoor event venue. Staff recommends that this project meets the development plan conditional use and variance criteria for approval and staff recommends approval with the suggested conditions. Just a quick review, this is a little different than some of the development plans that have come before you, given the sense that it is reviewed first by the Historic Preservation Commission Staff began working with the owner and applicant in August of 2024, believe it or not. So this is about two years in the coming. The Historic Preservation Commission did hear the project and provided a recommendation for approval with a 4-1 vote. Planning Commission also provided a recommendation for approval with a 5-1 vote. This project is required to meet the Code of Federal Regulations, Secretary of the Interior Standards for Rehabilitation, as consistent with our Community Development Code, Section 111. The Secretary of the Interior Standards for Rehabilitation are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 36, Subsection 68.3 , specifically Standard 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, and 10. The conditional use does accommodate the continuation of a historic use and therefore staff has recommended the marquee with changeable messaging and vertical sign to be evaluated along with the conditional use. The alteration to the historic resource does require four variances and it does meet the Secretary of the Interior standards and CDC section 111 D1, which requires that all alterations to historic resources shall meet federal standards and local guidelines. Again, the four variances are parking, off-street parking, CDC Section 302, Table 301. The standard does require 86 vehicular spaces and 18 bicycle spaces. Toby's going to go into more detail about parking as well as the applicant and owner during their presentation. Building height, Section CDC, Section 217B requires... a 28 maximum for commercial old town zone district without residential on the uppermost level this project proposes a 38 feet height at the rear 37 feet 6 inches at the front of lincoln meeting the co zone district standard for buildings with residential however the variance is required as residential is not provided similarly average plate height requires a variance due to the variance in building height and then a rear setback variance the building currently stands at zero feet from the property line as it was historically constructed and it requires a variance to increase the volume to allow for the uppermost floors i'm going to turn it over to toby who is going to speak more towards signage and parking thank you

Evening, counselors, Toby software senior planner. So a couple of larger items of discussion at Planning Commission are the parking variance and the marquees the proposed marquee sign. So just briefly about the parking. The parking requirement for an event venue is 200 spaces for 800 occupants. And that's when this building is at max capacity. The CDC does indicate that for changes or expansions of use parking shall be provided for the net increase required in parking. The current project benefits from a 10% parking reduction for proximity to transit, which brings the requirement to 180 spaces, including the previously approved 1994. Sorry, I skipped one of my points. So the Chief Theater was last approved in 1991 with 368 seats and a parking requirement of 94 spaces. including that previously approved 94 space parking variance and the transit reduction the expanded theater is required to provide 86 vehicle parking spaces and 18 bike parking spaces the parking variance request is only for large events for all other uses other than a large event the 94 parking space variance from 1991 accommodates the indoor event venue and the restaurant use the applicant is proposing to mitigate parking impacts by providing off-site parking areas and shuttles for large events a condition of approval requires the parking a parking management plan to be finalized prior to insurance of a temporary certificate of occupancy Regarding the sign, the proposed sign was reviewed as part of the conditional use and it supports the historic use of the theater. The design is consistent with what is expected from a historic or a modern theater. The sign lighting is similar to other signs and uses in downtown. Sign brightness can be adjusted and portions of the sign will be turned off when not in use. The shape and the area of the marquee, the vertical sign and the changeable message area is similar to many of the other historic marquees that have been on the Chief Theater. The applicant is here. They are prepared to give a brief presentation and we can all answer questions for you.

Okay. Would the applicant like to make your presentation?

we doing good can you give us your name and address adams 29455 flying diamond trail Hello, Council. I'm here tonight to present the chief application to you guys and really appreciate everyone being here. Again, my name is Trace Adams and I was born and raised here in Steamboat Springs. I'm a third generation local with deep family ties to the valley. Like my family before me, community legacy runs deep in my blood and I hope to continue that with my vision here for the chief. Like many locals, I grew up going to movies at the Chief, and ever since I was a young teen, I've had a dream to create something special at this venue. It has been a strong passion of mine to bring this iconic downtown venue back to life as a flagship place for music, arts, culture, community, and vitality. At its core, this project is about reactivating an important historic community asset. And over the past two years, I've worked closely with music venue consultants, theater design consultants, city staff, and preservation professionals to thoughtfully shape this vision, which brings us here today with our application and the variance requests. Historic preservation is not about freezing a building in time and hoping it remains unchanged forever. It's about preserving what matters while thoughtfully adapting these places for current and future generations. Change is part of that process, and in many cases, variances are a necessary tool to make preservation viable. The Chief was once a cornerstone of this community, and sadly today it is something very different. I told this story at planning, and I'll repeat it here today. As I recently had to file a police report, as I went into the building and the door was cracked, there was a window broken, there was more vandalism, and there was a couple of meth pubs sitting around. Cops came, filed a police report. And unfortunately, this is kind of the reality of what the chief has been the last four or five years. This is not the place I grew up going to movies in. It's not a preserved landmark serving our great community, but it is more so an abandoned and vulnerable structure in decline. This is not a new problem as the previous owners have dealt with repeated break-ins, significant vandalism, and ongoing deterioration of a vacant property. What should be valued in our community as a historic asset has instead become a magnet of neglect and criminal activity. It is an eyesore to our downtown corridor and essentially the skid row of Steamboat Springs. That is exactly why action is needed. If this project is not approved here tonight, then when will it be? How many more years will we endure a vacant space in the heart of our town? My goal is to change the current narrative, and I believe I'm the best candidate to do so. I strongly believe the plans we have put before you are the best chance this town has to save the chief. With your support, we have the opportunity to restore the Chief as a vibrant asset, one that serves community through concerts, family outings, weddings, corporate gatherings, community events, and partnerships with local arts, culture, and nonprofits. It will be a place for salsa nights, for country nights, to watch the Broncos game, sporting events, for your high school kids to go to their dance, opera, theater, ballet, comedy shows, and beautiful sunsets over the sleeping giant. Now before we begin I also want to recognize this, the meetings that came before this, and all the hard work that's put in by Caitlin and Toby and city staff. This decision making, there's been a lot of time and deliberation and put into this, and I want to acknowledge that historic preservation staff approve these plans via four to one vote, as well as city planning department via five to one vote. I appreciate their efforts and contributions and helping me shape this into a great community project. I also want to recognize you as council members here tonight. The work that you do is never easy. I know this is it never comes easy as your decisions are often subject to significant public scrutiny, no matter the decisions you make. I want to thank you for your time and your service and your thoughtful review of this project. With that, I'll turn things over to Tom from ESA and walk you through our presentation. And I'm happy to answer any questions at the conclusion of our presentation. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Trace.

Good evening and thank you. My name is Tom Davis. I'm project architect. I've been working with Trace Planning Department for the last couple years on this project and really excited to be here before you. Such an integral part of our community that's lied dormant for some years, as we all well know. I've asked the host if I can present briefly. And access was denied. So I'm going to ask again. Okay, I simply wanted to let you guys know that we are available for questions, and hopefully there's a lot of questions that come out of tonight, walking you through the graphics and how we arrived at where we arrived with the Chief Theater. There are many influences to a project of this size, scope, and complexity. Not only do we have to adhere to the Community Development Code, but we have the opportunity to look into the future as to what this community is striving to become as articulated through both the Community Canvas Plan and the Downtown Plan. All that needs to work in concert with the historic preservation plan, which is newly online and evolved during this project. So it's an exciting time to set a precedent for what preservation can be. Preservation, I actually specialized when I was studying architecture and historic preservation, and one of the most exciting things of preservation from my perspective is the notion of adaptive reuse. The most green or sustainable building is a building that's been reused before and recycled. And what we're recycling, of course, is the front facade to be historically significant relative to the heritage of the Chief Theater for the last century. But more importantly, what we are preserving is a cultural hub and really the core of vitality for this town and chief theater has been. touted centuries ago or a century ago as being the brightest light between Denver and Salt Lake. And we are really striving to put Steamboat back on the map in that sense. One of the most important things looking into the community canvas plan and the downtown plan is a diversification of our local economy such that we can thrive and move forward not just relying on the seasonal flux between the ski area tourists coming in and peak summer venues everything at the premise of this project has been focused on creating a structure that can accommodate multiple uses so not only do we have a restaurant tavern function that can function autonomously but we have the capabilities within this structure to accommodate multiple uses simultaneous which provides the great opportunity for you know plays concerts local events potentially weddings And this can all function simultaneous. Obviously, when we start getting into the variances, which I'd love to dig in and dive in on those as to why they've become, a lot of those are mostly triggered by... the notion that we really want to accommodate as many different functions, but primarily how this space functions at maximum capacity. So the Chief Theater, everybody thinks, wow, 800 occupants here in downtown, and the alarm bells sound, and it triggers things like parking concerns and things of that nature, which we have addressed. But most importantly is understanding that these peak events are really going to be orchestrated and to some degree controlled through planning measures and city council and conditions of approval as far as the impact such as our parking plan. But to understand that these events are not occurring every night. They're going to happen throughout the year as the business plan comes together. And we're hoping in the future there are more and more full capacity events. So the seating capacity is greater than Strings Pavilion, greater than anything here in town. And we feel it's appropriate to have that at the very core of Steamboat Springs. We are a vibrant town, and the vitality that is allowed and encouraged by the code actually allows for greater height. When you look at how the CDC, the Community Development Code, is written there's this idea that buildings can be taller if they allow residential at the uppermost floor. Now at the very core of that philosophy from my perspective reading through multiple codes is that that idea is to bring vitality into the downtown. You want people for downtown to thrive. You want people to come through and purchase stuff that you want people to eat. You want to increase your tax revenue. So in that vein, if you look at what a variance is. A variance can be an opportunity to actually exceed or enhance the code. So when you look at our average plate height and our height, just from that simple linear perspective, we are enhancing the code because we are providing vitality. Well, of course, we need to justify why that is, and why do you need to go up to 38 feet for a performance venue? Well, there are many reasons, and I'd love for you to ask more questions on this, but when we're designing theaters, we have to accommodate for all the rigging, all the lighting, all the sound attenuation. And in this perspective, to accommodate the 800 people and to have the variability within the plan to have multiple functions happening simultaneous and being able to partition off different components of the structure, we need that height such that we can get up to three stories where there can be independent bar functions and functions contained within the same structure. So when we look at the impact because i'm running out of time i'll just zoom through on the parking and I suspect, this will probably be a big topic tonight and we'd love to talk more of this, but the idea and written within the Community canvas code and. The downtown plan is this notion that we really want to encourage people to not necessarily drive into downtown, especially for events such that we can use the multimodal transportation that's allowed for us. That's written over and over again. in town and i don't know how it's conceivably possible to park uh for the overflow of people on a lot where you're required to go to zero at the front and ideally 10 feet per the cdc at the rear and you want a zero setback side to side so there's no physical way that you can park So to solve the solution and to or to create a solution that can mitigate the impacts, we've been working with private entities for off site shuttle services that can bring patrons in from the outside spaces and we're hopeful that this can work also in conjunction with some of the underutilized parking resources that are also under the city's scope you know the stock bridge parking which happens to be at a bus hub across the street people could walk from halison but as we were working with planning department it became very evident that we have to accommodate for all the parking overages off-site so we've been working together and contained within the packet our letter of intent from the ski area as well as ace parking and we have two years to continue well theoretically i mean 18 months however long it takes if we were to get approvals before we are ready to get our temporary certificate of occupancy to iron out the details on the parking plan and during that time we hope to accommodate and incorporate more private entities to help us with the parking plan codified within that condition of approval will be How is anybody going to know, right? So if you buy a ticket for one of these large-scale events that requires the parking overage contained within the website, and as part of the parking management plan, we will provide maps and wayfinding such that people can find these transit hubs. Everybody that's lived in Steamboat long enough knows how the wintertime works when the condos fill up at the ski area and people want to come downtown for dinnertime, right? And you come onto 8th Street and there's a line of transportation vans that are coming from the ski area. Very much... a great opportunity where people have used a private service to get people into downtown and we're simply glomming on to that mentality as a viable solution in some of these underutilized spots that when you look at the uh how these parking places are being used on a daily basis they primarily empty out during the day our venues magically happen in the evening time I've rambled on a little bit about the variances. We can get into the rear setback, but the one, and as we are putting our narratives together, we have to go through all the conditions of approval. And one of the biggest condition of approval is the conditional approval for an event venue in the first place within the zone district. I don't know if I need to stop.

Finish your thought. All right.

Conditional approval, right? So we have to justify why an event venue is appropriate in a downtown, and it seems fairly self-evident. But the big takeaway from my perspective is that we're carrying the torch of a centuries-long use of the Chief Theater, and we hope to bring it bright into the future. So thank you for your time, and please ask questions.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I wanted to make two comments. I forgot to make this earlier, but I should have, is that since I am the city council representative on Main Street, there was a letter that came from Main Street's theme about supporting the Chief Theater. And I just want everybody to know that I had no knowledge or no input into that letter. So I just wanted to make that clear. The second thing is, and Councilor Dixon brought this up, is that there seems to be here four major variances here, parking, building height, average plate height, and rear setback. And the thought was maybe we take these one at a time and ask questions about a specific one until we're done with that one and then move on to the next, rather than bounce back and forth across all of these things. Does that make sense to everybody to try that and see how that works? With a caveat. What's the caveat?

The caveat is this is a historic architectural feature of our community. And I do want to talk a little bit about that.

The overall. The overall, yes. OK. That's fair. That's fair.

so i i'm and i'm in agreement with the other piece but i think there's a couple of caveats in there of course and if you we won't cut you off if you have one variance and you say oh wait nope you're done i just just reading yeah just being the planning commission um minutes it was it was really helpful and they stayed on topic they hit parking they hit the sign so i felt like if we could do the same it might help

Do you want to start with the variances or do you want to start with the more historical overview perspective piece?

I would like to start with the historical overview perspective because, you know, three people talked about this project coming in here. And I think I heard the word or implied something about historic twice. And so I want to really, you know, this is an historic feature within our community. And so I want to hear a little bit more about that, about the heart of that. What is, so I guess for staff, what is historic? What is it registered and what does that really mean? And then for the applicant, it's more about how are you maintaining that and progressing that in your new designs?

Well, I very much appreciate being able to start off with a little in detail summary of historic preservation in the Chief Theater. So thank you, Councilor Agosta. So what is historic? And we're just going to go back to the basics really quick. The term historic basically means anything over 50 years of age. Where it gets to, is it important or not? We have certain criteria that not just a structure, right? It could be an object, a sign, a property, a landscape has to meet in order to be considered an eligible resource for potential designation to our Steamboat Springs Register of Historic Places. That criteria is, architectural importance so the actual style of the architecture the features the character defining elements historical importance so that could be a place that hosted a significant event or may have been the birthplace of someone or potentially uh an important person lived there in the in the past right like buddy warner's house which sadly i don't think is around anymore um and so our program is uh owner operated that's a pretty easy way to approach that concept in which it requires an owner of a property to historically designate an eligible resource and so back in i believe 2014 um the owners of the chief theater placed the chief theater on our local register what that does is it prevents it from demolition there are four different treatments when it comes to historic preservation you have reconstruction so you're reconstructing a feature that's no longer there or it's too degraded right you have restoration which is kind of like a repair of something that's already there and then you have preservation which means that your structure is perfect and we're just going to keep preserving it in its perfectness and we're not going to alter it too much and then you have rehabilitation which is what our code allows for and that is a mixture of all of the treatments of historic preservation so rehabilitation there are 10 standards under that and this project meets they are outlined in your packet standard one three five six nine and ten which is specific to continuing historic use which this project does provide and then it allows for the alteration and expansion through an addition something we look at in historic preservation is is this reversible and that allows us to meet the code of federal regulations SOI standard 10. so hypothetically in the future if a trace did not own this structure someone could purchase this building and maybe they don't want a theater or they don't want you know the indoor event space that is being proposed this project is reversible in the sense that that addition could be removed Where the preservation and reconstruction and restoration portion of the treatments come into this project is with the preservation of the facade. And so the facade has changed multiple times, sometimes three or four times in just a singular decade. Same with the variety of the historic marquees. We can date this through records, mostly through Colorado historical newspapers and pilot articles, Routt County Sentinel, as well as historical photographs. In 2016, there was a facade investigation which revealed the blonde color brick and a lighter red brick, which we believe dates back to 1947 to 1950 based on photographs. And so this is a true rehabilitation project in the sense that you're continuing historic use, expanding that use, modifying the structure to accommodate for that use. the actual physical change happens in two parts the height growth right to accommodate for that historic use and then you could consider it the repair and bringing back of that historic facade and so it's really unique we have a very unique project here not just for steamboat not just for colorado but nationwide in the sense that every single time they have changed the facade they have left a piece of that original facade and so to be able to take off the brick that was constructed in 1986 to 87 and bring back that period of significance back to the late 40s when we really did see that boom in population growth growth and tourism associated with post-world war ii is a really beautiful thing to have I'm happy to answer more questions if you think that that provided a sufficient summary. Yes.

I believe the question was two-part. Would you like our perspective, please? Okay. Thank you. Really, with preservation, there's this notion and a key component that echoes through what is historic preservation and its significance, right? What is significant about the Chief Theater? And I think the primary reason that it's on the National Register and that structure itself is not on the National Register, but the Chief Theater is a contributing element to the commerce of Steamboat Springs. So the Chief Theater facade and the Chief Theater is under the local register, and you can help me with some of these semantics. But the most important part is the significance that the Chief Theater and how it functions in time. Now, movie theaters are pretty easy to accommodate in potentially a one or two story structure, an event venue, which is a continuation of a use as the evolution of experience has happened in time. Most everybody here in this room probably has their own movie theater in their living room. Movie theaters are, unfortunately, a thing of the past in the sense but the use of the chief theater in the theater application is where people come together to be entertained so very much uh from that perspective that's been a driving force to our project Now, when you look at the building components that are contained and significant to the Chief Theater, as Caitlin had mentioned, this structure has changed multiple times over the last century, most notably the marquee, which I'll cycle back to, but the facade that people have come accustomed to experiencing over the last 20 years. In fact, I moved to town in the late 90s, and it's always been there since I've been here. is not even the significant facade, that there's a gem that's hidden behind that that our project is hoping to reveal, which is significant from the time in which it was originally constructed. so as people experience structures of course when you zoom out and you're across the street you may think of height and shadows and that's very important as we're designing i'm not not trying to dismiss those concerns but as structures are experienced they're primarily experienced at the pedestrian level and we're doing everything um per the secretary of interior standards for rehabilitation to bring back the historic facade so when you come to the idea or uh you know it's been a lot of discussion through our multiple meetings if you've read through the minutes as to the marquee and how did we land in this place and time Well, if you look at the history of the Chief Theater and the Marquis in particular, it has changed sometimes multiple times within one decade. It's changed over 20, 30 times. It's changed a lot. And so part of the story is the change of the Marquis. But one of the key components to the Marquis and one of the things that we're excited to bring back is the vertical sign that has no longer is no longer represented there. And so if you look at some of the historic photos of the Chief Theater, that vertical sign that's behind the pedestrian level marquee, that's very much of the same geometry as historically was present in time. And so the actual marquee itself is a fresh new interpretation of marquee and a continuation of the story. So that's how we're honoring the preservation. And with the Secretary of Interior Standards, there are many components to that when you're designing a structure. But it all tethers back to what is significant about the structure. And what is significant about the chief is how it contributes to the local economy by bringing people into a gathering space to be entertained. And that's how we're honoring history.

you a very quick question what's the setback on the second floor the second level uh the setback is required per the how how long how how what what how many feet yeah 15 feet yeah which is what we're doing per the community development code

And maybe before you sit down, kind of again addressing, sorry, the historical significance, can you just talk us through, sorry, easy for me to say briefly, what's being demolished and what's being saved?

Yeah, I mean that's really a pretty straightforward question with a very straightforward answer. What's being saved is the front facade and the structure that contains the front facade and some foundation components that we need to use for the structure. And what is being demolished is what is behind the front facade, primarily out towards the alley.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Councillor Gery, may I follow up on that question? May I provide a follow up on that question? Absolutely. per building code if this were coming in with absolutely no variances and it met a height requirement on the architectural plans plan set you are going to have demolition on the interior of the space which is allowable from a preservation perspective we can't regulate over that but it would be a large portion of the roof is what is being removed to accommodate for the addition all right thank you thank you thank you

okay did that answer yes yours okay shall we move on to the variances do you want to start with the first one which is the parking okay what questions do we have regarding parking well i mean i just want to start off you know the

The minutes, this was one of the longer minute packets that we got from the Planning Commission, reading through all 36 pages. It really helped frame our conversation for tonight. So hopefully everyone did read that. But I think it's worth it right now to have the applicant at least explain what you anticipate the parking, scenarios to be and when those uses are because it seems to me that's only during large venues that it's required but you're still planning on doing it ongoing i guess but more importantly when i think of the parking i don't really have a problem with a shuttle service But what I am trying to understand is how you're going to implement your shuttle service when I want to go downtown and have dinner before the show, but I want to park my car at Ace, for example. And then I want to stay later and maybe go have a cocktail over at Primrose before I go back to catch the shuttle to my car. How do you anticipate those what-ifs?

Thank you for the question. I think with any music venue, with any concert, everyone in this room, we've been to a whole wide range of music, I'm sure. And how do you attend something? How do you get there? And it's going to be by bike. Do you Uber? Are you in a place where you don't live? Do you get a ride from somebody else? Are you going to drink? Are you not going to drink? There's so many levels that go into it. And we're trying to, as we get into our parking lots and the what-ifs, we're trying to accommodate uh the city and the need for you know the congestion of no parking as best we can and so with uh what we have locked in so far the loi with the meadows and with ace we'll have the shuttle from there i'm also exploring this is for the current covering the 86 but we're also looking into many more um exploring the high school the wells fargo the bmo bank lot and multiple others so we can essentially have our shuttle service acting similar to a bus service where it's out to meadows pick up here pick up here here and you know drive back to the venue and so i think with our parking plan that we'll have become uh that we'll have put together before our certificate of occupancy you'll see all the thought that's put in everything from bikes to pedestrians to where we're picking up shuttles and you know uh the the reason now is yes we want to address this but there's also an evolution of two years of construction and the next two years a lot of things could happen i would hope that we can all get behind a city supported parking structure downtown that's long been needed i think that there's so many levels of Things that are going to evolve and we're here to make it better. I don't want a venue that's just going to clog up town and go to the grocery store and get something thrown at me because people are so mad at me for the parking. I want something that flows and is efficient. And we are going to have large concerts, but we're also going to have small shows and local nights and dance nights and bingo nights. And it's going to be a place where you can go. You can go watch the World Cup right now or the The NBA finals, you know, it's something where you can get out of your home and your downtown and it's going to bring a lot of vitality. And our goal and everything we do over the next two years is, you know, the work starts now. It's been a long effort, but it's getting everything to construction and a plan is we will have that before you to answer every what if, if that helps.

No, I think, and good. First of all, I appreciate that because I think 18 months or longer, two years to kind of come up with the plan. I think what may hear from, I know I read in the planning commission packet was those what ifs. What if you don't have it by then? You don't get a TCO, which means you don't get to operate your business. Yeah. So we know that this is a very important issue aspect of this project. And, you know, from the council and from the commissioners, you know, I'm willing to kind of delay that only because I have confidence in our staff to hold your feet to the fire to make sure we have a solution to that.

And just so you know, I would hold my own feet to the fire. Amen.

But you could sell it to someone else and they could try to build it. Not that you would, but I'm just saying is that we have development projects that have gotten approval from city council and they're sold to someone else. Not that you would. Absolutely. You have to look at it from this side of the dice. Sure. And if that happened and they didn't follow through with it, what recourse do we have to a project we've already approved? See, that's my dilemma.

I think that that's something we'll come with our parking management plan in place really and working closely with staff.

so can i go ahead on that because because what i wrote down was the same thing i said we're talking about parking parking management plan but how do we enforce it how do we know that it's it's going to be good enough when when they actually put together so is there anything we can put into in terms of commission uh conditional approval around measurable requirements or measurable you know that something measurable that we can hold them to you know um

because once you go out of here it's you know we don't have something um defined then it's tough do you have an answer because i looked through the resolution and i didn't see anything that that would be able to hold us there yeah that um they will be held to um all their statements in all these public hearings and in their in their plans so their requirement is to provide 86 parking spaces and 18 bike parking spaces so at minimum They will need to provide 86 parking spaces and 18 bike spaces in an off-site manner if that's what is approved tonight. That parking management plan will outline how that will work, how the shuttles will work, or they'll drop people off, how they'll get people there and back, and how they will advertise transit and bike and all those things that the applicant has mentioned. I think we can hold them to everything that they've provided to us in their plans and said in these hearings. So we, as planning staff, review the projects that we bring forward. So Caitlin and I will be the people reviewing their building permit before it's issued and their TCO and their CO. So we find that a CO is a pretty big motivator. They will have just invested a... ton of money, they want to open and start making that money back. So if that plan doesn't have what we what we need, if it's not managing the impacts that we've discussed and prepared for, we won't issue that TCO, we have to physically click that.

What about what about the situation where they have an event that's only 200? But they're scaled to 800. And how do you know when they're going to have shuttles, they're not shuttles, they're And how do you hold them to make sure that they have enough?

We do anticipate that they would have to outline those details in their parking management plan. As noted, the smaller events that they have less than 800, really 368 people or less is already accommodated in our community. We've already sort of absorbed that impact from the chief theater historically. And I mean that in the short-term sense, not the long-term sense. So we've absorbed that impact. So we should feel like the same old steamboat that you're used to when the chief theater is operating at something smaller than 368 people. When it's larger, we would anticipate that they're going to have their plan in place because that's their new impact that they're bringing to this community that they have to mitigate through this process. So we hope that it adds some vitality and some life to our downtown that we've been missing since the chief's been closed.

um i will just add that if to your point what are the are there measurements behind this how is it measured it is a parking management plan it is a condition of approval and if it did need to be amended it can be amended to provide additional mitigation if that were needed in the future

so maybe just to follow up on that i mean obviously we can amend it tonight um but when you say it can be amended in the future what do you i mean before the tco or at any point in time you know to the extent that we know you know there's going to be changes probably at the meadows lot i mean there's going to be stock bridge i mean things are going to change so

right so how i interpreted uh counselor agosta's comment was let's say a year after tco we have a giant parking issue and our community and our council has tied that back to the operation of the chief theater i think that is a point in time in which you would look to amending a parking management plan i'll just add to um if

At any point, the parking management plan is coming up short for some reason. You know, none of us Understood the impacts when we were talking about it tonight, you know several years in the future. We we can amend that plan as caitlin mentioned and the plan how we do that, we can do that in two different ways. there's an administrative process called substantial conformance so that means that change that they propose to fix the problem needs to be substantially conforming. to their approved plans those changes are supposed to be minor so those are decided by the planning director if they are minor if there's something other than minor and there are some very specific parameters in the CDC that talk about what minor means if they're not minor then the project has to go back through the same process so you would see us all here again to explain to you why there is an impact and what we're going to do about it so We have this plan in place to give us some security now that we're not gonna have a huge impact when the Chief Theater opens, but it's not completely set in stone. We're gonna evolve, the theater's gonna evolve, the community's gonna evolve. We might have different parking solutions We might have those cars that drive around for forever and don't ever have to park. You never know what's going to happen in the next couple of years. But we have some flexibility, but we're hoping to provide with this condition of approval, the certainty that makes you feel comfortable with the change that is being proposed.

OK, any other comments on parking?

Yes, parking. If you wouldn't mind, I know you're going to be developing the parking plan, but what are your initial thoughts about bicycles? So I think it's 18 required spots. So what are you thinking about that?

So with the parking as well, and I didn't mention, you know, there is a big need for parking and I think that's another, you know, piece that I'm trying to take on it with what to do. I've already been looking at Lost Downtown and where we could be buying privately and putting a parking structure in, but obviously trying to work with the city on something of that nature. something like that works well with the way it looks and not just a big concrete you know structure downtown but also with uh nearby spots as well to acquire to build out like you know a solid I think two parking spaces and I don't know the exact number what amount of bike uh actually you can put in between there but we will have nearby parking for bikes as well

Okay, so you're not at this point anticipating have folks ride their bike to a separate lot and then catch a shuttle?

No, it would be a close by downtown lot.

Great. Let's encourage folks.

Yeah, absolutely. And so with the broader side of the email, when anyone gets it, you go to Mile High, you go to Red Rocks, it's a know before you go email. You know, bring a clear bag, this, that, and the other. And so a big plan of ours is to have it on our website, but also this is kind of the notion of what we're doing. When it comes to weddings and stuff, everybody has the shuttles. That's how we have it at our wedding business at the ranch. It's shuttles only. And so you meet at a hotel, different destinations and shuttle from there. When it comes to the large venue, it will be shuttle. There'll be biking routes to take. We will also present the public lots because Stockbridge is heavily underutilized as other housing and where you can go and optionality. Buying private lot looking at private spots for bike spaces all of this is all part of our our plan and and you know i'm holding my own feet to the fire because beyond this like this is the next step really you know the approval from here getting things rolling and under construction but also making sure that we spend the 18 month next 18 months and like we say anything can happen hopefully something comes up where we start doing more with the city structures and and there's a lot that can evolve but it's going to be our our next biggest effort to make sure that we solidify a solid parking for everybody um while on that as well with the know before you go uh congestion of people downtown is another topic that's come up and uh with the lines and the services we have uh i have a um bear with me one second um we'll be using the best class uh in class ticketing app where concert goers will just tap or tap their phone or scan their phone at entry they will also uh They get to know before you go for a smooth entry. We'll also be using a program called Open Gate, which is a fast and efficient security system walk through metal detectors and providing one of the most sought after innovations in the industry that has the highest throughput detection. And we'll also discuss with this how we'll manage the lines for example the sand building next door if it's first friday and you have people going in a line around the corner and however that is you we wanted people in the venue as quick as possible and all 800 people aren't going to show up at the same exact time you know the same way all 5 000 don't show up at the rodeo at the same time and there's a mile long line through town it's you know there's a little line in front of the rodeo grounds and if everyone checks their ticket and efficiently gets through. For the SAM building, we'll treat it somewhat like if you've ever gone to the mall and bought an iPhone, there's a mile long line through Cherry Creek Mall. But as the Lululemon entrance is, there's a gap and there's a person on one side and you're allowed to go through. So patrons can still go into the SAM building. And with First Friday and other large events, I won't get off the topic of parking, but while I'm on it is the integration of other events in this town, the Steamboat Gravel, the free concert series. As this comes, we're not just going to be another restaurant that has our specials on Friday night while Primrose has theirs and E3 has theirs. We're trying to integrate everything with the community. And when large events come, we'd love to have them have events at the venue. When free concerts play, we'd love to have an after party at the venue. a big thought to incorporate everything that comes to this town. And if there are Bigfoot traffic items, there's a chance where there's not an event and we have a big name artist and it's a big, great show for the community.

Can I have one more question? Do you mind if I follow up just on that point specifically? You know, to the extent that you talk about, you know, coordinating, I mean, that was one of my questions is, you know, I don't know whether you all spoke about, let's say, steamboat gravel with 3,000 people in town. It's very, obviously, heavy centric in terms of downtown. Would you consider... having your, checking your, coordinating your event schedule with kind of the city event schedule so that we don't have, we don't create situations where there's gonna be just, we're at total capacity with one event.

Yeah, absolutely. And we can work together on I mean, there's ways to also integrate, I think the busy is good in a sense as well. And you have to look how that involves. And I mean, if you can coordinate, but just not compete, I'm not gonna do a heavy metal rock show the same time as Steamboat Gravel are totally different, you know, thing and try and coordinate with those 3000 people being able to come and utilize the space as well.

Okay, thank you. I mean, I'd like to see that as a condition.

um okay so my last parking question so one more um this might be a loaded question for parking um i see visitors taking a shuttle for sure i see them getting on their bear claw shuttle like that's easy It's the locals, and I love my locals. I think that will be the biggest challenge to overcome. Have you thought about that, how to get your locals to drive to parking lots?

And then took a shuttle. I think that we can only do so much in having multiple offerings and having a very big plan that shows you every single place to park, to ride your bike, to walk, to shuttle. And it's really up to the patron. I can't. Tell someone to I'm not going to over serve somebody, but I can't tell someone to, you know, make the decision to not get in their car and drive. Like these are things that come with any business, with restaurant entertainment. And I think that that's it's going to be on the person. But I think a lot of ways people figure it out. And I think that we'll work to, you know, work with the community the best we can to figure it out as well.

Perfect. And I totally hear you and agree. You can't force them. So I was just, as you're thinking about your plan, I would use the lens of how do we get locals on board? Again, recognizing you can't force folks.

and i think that i just wanted to follow up as an evidence of the locals figuring out how to get where they want to get yeah and and this is you know to what you're saying this is again a change behavior type of thing for many locals so is there have you thought about any way how you might either encourage or incentivize locals to take a shuttle i mean are these all free first of all yes So I don't know if there's any way to incentivize people to want to do that or not.

I mean, it's a free shuttle. If you're on the west side of town, if you're on the east side of town, we'll look for stuff central as well of where you can park your vehicle. We're even looking at lots of where you can overnight your vehicle. If you had too much to drink, there's a lot of consideration.

I'm just saying maybe think creatively about marketing ways of incentivizing people to take shuttles. Maybe it's... you know, I don't like to focus 10% off on an entre.

I don't know what it is, but you know, this is the opportunity for us to, oh, sorry.

Do you mind if I, I don't know about you guys, but I'm innately motivated. I don't know if I'm going to the farmer's market. I always bike. Like I I'm a little lost on you guys thinking if somebody is going to a huge concert and you live here, I I'm, I guess I'm lost on what this point you're trying to make is the motivation is intrinsic.

People love their cars.

Right, people love their cars, but if you're going to a large event and you've lived here long enough, you're well aware of the lack of parking and that parking is an issue. I guess I'm... Yeah, and I guess my question... I don't necessarily agree with all this line of questioning, I guess. I don't... Does no one else see the... I agree. There's an intrinsic motivation.

we need to my question is an intrinsic motivation as well yeah yeah all right all right if we they do have one okay one one more and then let's move on i have two i have a question for um trace and a question for toby um so i mean again i think it goes back to this heart of what we um how do we work together to improve our transit system so that you don't have to have private shuttles right yes um i mean to me that's that ultimately is the goal i mean the last thing we need coming downtown are more private shuttles we've got enough private shuttles you know second to housing are you know the major criticism that we hear is all about you know parking and it's about traffic so um so that kind of goes to my second question which i guess for toby and it sounds like there was a consideration for a fee in lieu for the parking but which would the money would have gone to um would have gone to a transit or

Well, the fee in lieu is very exuberant price, and to do something of that nature really handicaps the project altogether, and it doesn't solve the problem.

Well, that's my question. If it goes to transit, I don't know what our, I don't know what our flexibility is on fee and Lou and whether it's, I mean, the total amount, I believe it's like 28,000 a spot.

It was like 2.7 million dollars to cover 86 spots. And you, you can say it can go to transit and that's great. That'd be a great boost for transit. But is that really going to take care of all the parking that is needed? That's not my private shuttle service. That's just kind of, to me, that's putting a bandaid on the problem. And I don't know if you have any.

I'll just note that if a parking fee is paid in lieu, it is a specific line item that goes into the city budget as a parking fee in lieu. So it would have to go back into, perhaps John or Kim might be able to help me better, but it would have to go back into a solution that's related to that parking. I don't know if it necessarily is earmarked for transit. I don't think we can take fees like that with an earmark specifically for something. I think it generally has to go back into a more general pot of a public works improvement that would be a citywide benefit. So that's my best guess on how that could go. But we can't say, I don't believe that we can say that that fee

is going to go to build parking for the chief no but potentially downtown and then so the question the other question i had just for you is when was the variance for the 94 spaces what year was that 1991 the last um approval that we had for the chief okay thank you

okay yep sorry one more one more question um i always one one one thing i wonder about is the saturday market and it it closes all of yampa street yet it absorbs the parking you know down there can can i ask lisa to help me understand how does downtown absorb those losing that many spots when all these people are coming down

I would say that the population, to Brian's point, adapts to get down to the market about between four and 6,000 people walk through the market on Saturday. They all have to get there somehow. A lot of them, because the rodeo doesn't start until three o'clock, we can use that parking. There's parking behind the Wells Fargo building, which does not operate on Saturdays. So there's that parking that's available also behind the courthouse. There's a lot of parking already readily available downtown. to absorb those people. The rodeo also has a capacity of over 3,000 people and we absorb that parking without any real challenge. I think that if we want people to come downtown and we have, you know, we encourage people to use the bus. There are a lot of shuttles that come downtown. People still drive, they do park illegally. and do some kind of crazy things. But if we want people to use multimodal transportation, we have to encourage them to do that, perhaps by not, you know, we don't have a lot of parking. So it forces you to be creative. I'm not saying that we don't need more parking downtown, because we absolutely do. But I think that we can accommodate 800 people especially in an evening pretty easily, as opposed to myself trying to accommodate 6,000 people on a Saturday afternoon. I think that the chief challenge isn't nearly as big as what happens on a typical Friday or Saturday in the summer.

Okay.

Good job, Lisa.

Okay. We're moving on to variance number two, building height. And I just want to finish parking. The parking management plan is a condition of approval. We spent a lot of time talking about that. So that will be very important. Building height. Any concerns about building height?

Can I just ask a clarifying question, either one? Like rock, paper, scissors. So we're going up to 38.

That's correct.

Is that because of the rooftop deck? I got confused reading the minutes. And there was something about a structural issue.

uh we are using the rooftop structure but it's not because of the rooftop that we're going up to 38 feet and uh if i may i i believe we should be discussing height in conjunction with average plate height as well um just because the two are tethered together but the the rooftop deck is not what's creating the height but that's where we do measure the height from because that's the structure

Okay, will you talk about that then, about why we're going up, why you're proposing 38? What's causing that?

The functionality of a theater, when you look at what all is required for sound attenuation, lighting controls, and if it's not just music, but we're hoping to have theater performances. So when you calculate and when you look at, especially with a small stage that doesn't have the opportunity for backstage or side stage wings, they call, as I've learned, you need to have your sets that are up above the stage concealed behind a curtain that can drop down on the stage. So it very much is tied to theater design.

okay so essentially you would still have to ask for this variance even if you did not propose a rooftop deck that's correct okay yeah and the rooftop deck is uh very much encouraged within the commercial old town zone district okay thank you anyone else have a question

No questions on that one or on the average plate height as well?

Yeah, I'm good.

Okay. Then the last one is the rear setback or lack thereof.

Yeah, and to me, this one seemed more like a formality to me. And so I was just more like the current set I'm building is at the zero lot line. That's correct. Correct. And so going up, it's kind of already inherent with the existing structure. Why was that required as a variance?

Because it doesn't meet the zone district standards.

In the old building and the new, I mean, whatever we rebuild, correct, Caitlin?

That's correct. So variance is required because you're basically expanding the existing legal nonconformity of a zero foot setback because you're increasing the volume of the rear walls. Thank you.

It's kind of connected to the 38 feet. Got it. Okay.

So now that there's a rooftop deck out there, there's now managing the snow up at the roof deck. So how is that done? I was still with gas power so well.

yeah the safest way to control snow is a flat roof and flat roofs are very much encouraged in the commercial old town zone district. And that ties in with average plate height but snow essentially is mitigated through snow melt systems and drainage below the surface of the walking surface.

Any other questions before we open it up to public comment?

I have one question on the rooftop deck. So it doesn't sound like there's actually a restaurant up there. Folks can order food or drinks, you know, come from the restaurant within the building. Will you be having outdoor bands or music live on the rooftop deck?

during the day we'll have some some uh acts on the mount or sorry some acts up on the rooftop we'll have a small stage area there but it's not going to be something that pulls into the night is our night music events will be all indoors and i think you know like as as the question goes for noise um i think that you know we look at past stuff like ghost ranch and that was a building that was used to be the off the beaten path bookstore that wasn't built for noise and it had the house in place be built right next to it. So when there was late nights there, it just went straight across to the brand new apartments across the street. So I think as we consider what we're doing and being at that 38 foot height, noise is going to carry in a different direction for sure. A lot of it's going to go back towards Lincoln. I actually have a condo at house in place. And at night, I, you know, if you open the window, you hear some pies and you hear O'Neill's and you hear him tell two in the morning. And that's a typical Friday and Saturday thing. And I think that as we try to work with the rooftop, the goal is to have a great place to go up and have a sunset happy hour, have a drink. The venue is very similar to one in Athens, Georgia, at the University of Georgia called the Georgia Theater. and when i went and toured that facility a bunch of friends of mine who had went to university of georgia said oh go to the rooftop it's iconic and it's great you go up top and then you just see measly old athens georgia in a couple structures when you go to the top of this rooftop you're going to see sleeping giant mount warner house and hill strawberry park your sunsets are going to be unbeatable it's going to be a postcard you know item for this community in this town and we'll have uh uh bites and cocktails up there and and and you know acoustic shows and and nice music it'll be it'll be it's not going to be a raging concert on the rooftop okay yeah thanks as i saw um um there weren't specific um

which of course you know hours i think you you mentioned that it would be similar hours to other businesses well um my you know when we look at salt and lime it's a restaurant so they're closing down relatively early but we'll look at our um other more um some pies or schmiggity's um they're open later and so i was just concerned that that rooftop deck would potentially be open later causing more noise for the area

i think the noise would be no different than what you know the streets in front ice house or some pies or the the balcony at uh at o'neill's would be i'm or it's and especially that's like the higher level as well where does the sound carry okay all right thanks um what's the capacity per level uh so we have that kind of do you have or what's the capacity especially like the rooftop deck What is there not that we have 200 and?

The capacity of the rooftop deck would be specified by the IBC, which is the international building code which ties occupancy load with square footage I don't know off the top of my head, but it would be. Based on international building code as far as how many people are allowed to go up there and that's what we would design the structure of course around as well as accommodating mechanical units up at the rooftop.

Right so like a table configuration would have a lot less occupancy than standing room right, so I mean are you envisioning having tables up there just trying to understand if you have a show and the band goes on break at midnight if 300 people can empty out onto the rooftop to get fresh air.

Yeah, the vision is, and Trace, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the vision is very much kind of lounge, stand around, not a huge concentration of people, but a few cocktail tables and potentially a bar and a stage that could accommodate some small acoustical performances so as we are originally laying out our conceptual layout for the rooftop deck we had partitioned roughly a third of the space for a small acoustical venue and two-thirds of the space for dispersed standing cocktail and lounge seating with sofas and umbrellas for shade structure, if that helps.

And would you be opposed to putting time limits on the exterior deck for amplified music and or even closing before the venue closes?

Absolutely conditions of approval and we're very much willing to work with the Community on as we're putting our business plan together, which works with the parking plan as well.

Do we along those lines, do we have what's what's our note our our noise code.

We have a noise ordinance in the municipal code. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I think it requires quiet hours generally between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. unless you have a business that is open later than the NPM, like a theater event venue might have. So if they have an event that is over by 10, we would expect them to comply with the noise ordinance. If they have an event that is listed to go until

two or something then they would need to comply with your ordinance after 2 p.m or 2 a.m so so if that's something you'd want to do we'd have to actually put it into yeah yeah i mean if you think about how noise amplifies obviously noise that's up at 40 feet is going to amplify out in a much bigger direction than noise that's on a patio at street level um just voicing the concern that there is that opportunity for that noise to be out there for all the people that do live downtown in a much bigger way than you would probably hear from, say, some pies or something like that.

Yeah, that's the goal, though, is not to have any, like, long late night shows up there. I mean, if people spill out of the concert, I mean, the goal is to have a concert go towards a certain time and still be able to utilize the bar and the dance floor. You know, there's been some great music venues that when the show ends, you got to leave right away. And there's some that when the show ends, you know, some other music comes on and then some disco ball comes down and it's a fun place to stay and hang out and as we get people to go on the roof you know we can mitigate noise by certain amount of people that can go up there we're not going to have late night uh concerts on the roof it'd be more of a daytime afternoon item

be clear i'm fully i think it's an awesome project i i just uh it's a haven't been in the bar business for quite a while having four stories to manage in occupancy levels that will move in flux um you guys have a big project ahead and and managing that are you will the fire department make you have a counters for those floors and i mean to a to evacuate people in a in a fire situation

Mayor Mrakas, In a fire situation is we've got me never see the elevator and then to fire rated staircases as it goes out.

Mayor Mrakas, In the building will be sprinkled right right.

yeah just one thing to add and i don't know how much of all the meetings minutes you've read that we've had but a lot of the building form is dictated by building code and one of the most important things of designing a structure of this magnitude is life safety so that's the stair towers and elevator for elevators accessibility but staircases are means of egress

And with that ADA has been addressed, so ADA will be able to reach every aspect of the venue down in the GA. There's a pit where people go down into standing and ADA will be upright to the right side of it with a perfect concert view as well as elevators to the rooftop.

Councilor Barnes, I just want to touch on something that I think might have been missed in your question in regards to the fluctuating capacity based on organization of space. In my work, we have a lot of tenants, lovely tenants, some of them are here tonight, that operate out of our historic structures, and you are correct. If you have a seated event somewhere, um your capacity is going to go down and it's going to be lower than if you had a standing capacity and so it truly is up to the fire department and our fire chief to set that capacity as well as the ibc in terms of the actual count so thank you

So one proposal I threw out there is maybe, you know, because, Trace, you could sell this thing, and who knows what the next owner would feel like doing, is you could say the noise ordinance is in effect until 10 o'clock or the end of a venue, whichever is earlier, you know, kind of thing.

so do you have to write the ordinance anymore basically to say hey the ordinances you know starts at set you know so it gives them up to 10 o'clock or some other number important is the rooftop deck to the um being open as late as the main venue how important is that business

BEFORE I LET CHASE JUMP IN AND ANSWER THAT, I DO WANT TO CLARIFY, WE HAVE A NOISE ORDINANCE AND THEN WE ALSO HAVE STANDARD HOURS OF OPERATION FOR A BUSINESS, RIGHT? SO THOSE HOURS OF OPERATION ALLOW BUSINESS TO OPERATE UNTIL 11 P.M., I BELIEVE, ACTUALLY, NOT 10 P.M. AND THEN AS TOBY STATED, IF THE BUSINESS IS IN OPERATION PAST 11 A.M., THEN THE BUSINESS CAN CONTINUE TO OPERATE PAST 11 A.M. BUT 11 P.M., THANK YOU. But that is separate from our noise ordinance, right? And then I think it's also important to have the owner touch on what the typical timeframe for a large concert is.

I'm not concerned about how late they're staying open. I'm concerned about the noise coming off the road.

yeah and and that's something that you know i think is going to be similar to parking as an evolution as this thing comes about and what we do when we open the doors like we're there's going to be some things that have to we have a plan in place on how to manage it but i think it also can be governed as we you know go i don't want to open this thing and everybody off and and with that i don't want to be stringent on hey you have to close your rooftop at 9 a.m when or 9 p.m when i know what it sounds like at 2 a.m all the way down the alley at the other side of house in place from o'neill's and so like there's you know there's got to be some give and take there of if we do new noise testing even you know on what what it is and when people are on the rooftop um and how that compares with the rest of the old town pub outdoors or the or yampa street okay let's move on to public comment if we can

just want to add a couple clarifying comments about the noise so sorry we have misstated a couple things so that's where we get in trouble when I don't check the code so we do have a noise ordinance that applies from 11 to 7 so I think I was citing the lighting code and maybe Caitlin was touching on that too so ignore what we said about that so our noise ordinance applies between 11 p.m and 7 a.m and the municipal municipal code has specific decibel levels so the noise and it would apply to this use and every other use we have residential commercial and industrial standards in the municipal code so the noise level would have to be less during those hours and it would have to meet those decibel levels and the municipal code and the noise ordinance are enforced by the police

Okay, thank you, Toby. Okay, we're going to open it up to public comment. Is there anybody in the room who would like to come down? If you do, please come down, state your name, address, and you have up to three minutes. Lisa, I won't hold the two minutes you already took against you.

I was invited. Lisa Popovich, Main Street Steamboat, thank you for a great discussion tonight. You guys had some really awesome questions. I just want to say that when Trace gave his first statement, when they both gave their first statements, they said a lot of the things that I was going to say. It was like my words were in their mouth, and it was really awesome. I'm in favor of this project. Main Street Steamboat is in favor of this project. Seeing the chief restored to its... Just... Being back in the community and being a community resource, a place where we can get together and gather and celebrate and listen to music and go to the theater. We don't have a resource like this currently in Steamboat. This would really be the crown jewel for downtown. We would really like to see this project go forward and we would like to see you vote for it. That's all I'm going to say because we've said so much tonight.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, Lisa. Is there anybody else who'd like to come down?

Hello, my name's Kim Keith. I'm the executive director at Steamboat Create at the Historic Depot, 1001 13th Street. I am here tonight in support of the Chief Theater renovation, and the variance was requested to make this important project viable. As leaders of Steamboat Springs designated creative district, we understand the critical role of historic and cultural assets and what they play in shaping our community's identity, economic vitality, and quality of life. The Chief Theater is one of the Steamboat's most recognizable arts landmarks in Northwest Colorado, aside from the Depot, of course. Its renovation represents an investment in both our history and our future. Located in the heart of the Creative District, the Chief Theater has the potential to become a dynamic, creative, mixed-use space that supports arts, entertainment, education, entrepreneurship, and community gatherings. Projects like this create opportunities for year-round engagement. They strengthen the downtown vitality and contribute to economic diversification and expanding the role of the creative sector in our local economy. Communities across Colorado have demonstrated that investments in cultural infrastructure generates measurable economic activity while creating places where residents and visitors deeply value. The property owner, Trace, has demonstrated a long and strong commitment to protecting the chief's historic integrity while creating a venue with significant potential for public benefit. This project will strengthen Steamboat's cultural corridor, support local nonprofits and creative organizations, and reinforce the important role that arts and culture play in our identity and our quality life in Rowell County. I respectfully encourage you to approve the renovation and the request of variance.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Kim. Okay, anybody else in the audience want to make a public comment tonight? Come on down, Bill.

Thank you. Bill La Toza, 2170 Valdezir Circle, Steamboat Springs. Lighting here. I'd like to start off, I wear two hats. The first hat I'm going to wear is Historic Rowe County. Historic Rowe County has and continues to support the rehabilitation of the Chief Theater. as well as i do um we all think and i'm agree with the community that this is is needed um where we disagree is in some of the variances and those are explained in a lot of our letters um that you've all read in the packet i'm not going to go over them now i'm going to take my historic rock county hat off and put on my architect bill latoza hat and say that one thing that was touched on tonight, and I think it's the first time it's been touched on, is crowd control. I've done some research. I've also done a number of theaters in Chicago, so I have a little bit of experience, but we're looking at having 17% of the population of Steamboat come into this small area. According to the packet, the vans are going to drop people off on 7th Street, and then they're going to walk to 8th Street past SAM to get into the theater. Statistically, if there's an 8 o'clock event at a time, 265 people to 300 people will arrive between 6 30 and 7 30 to get into the theater 450 to 500 people will arrive between 7 30 and 8 if that's the time and i just made that time up i could be nine o'clock, it could be seven o'clock, but statistically that's what happens. If you have four or five megatometers, which I'm understanding are going to be there now, you know, you can get 10 to 12 people a minute through. Now, if it sets off, you've got to search their bags or one them or however they do similar to the airport, but My concern is how those people are going to queue up on the sidewalks. I came down, as you saw in my drawing, measured Lincoln Avenue towards Ninth Street at the bus stop is six feet wide. Eighth Street is 15 feet wide. it's this we're going to have lines um and how is that going to crowd control going to be handled people are going to be let off have to cross the streets um i i think it's just something that really needs to be addressed and looked at longer thank you thank you bill chris come on down

Chris Paoli, 55 Missouri Avenue. I had a bunch of really good organized notes in here and then my phone died on me. I guess you get my ramblings, but I just want to touch on the first variance that you guys talked about, which I think is absolutely absurd. We're talking about parking. Can anybody tell me what the parking requirement is for a restaurant downtown? Which we have all these big restaurants downtown. What's the parking requirement for restaurants in downtown? I don't think we actually have one. Restaurants can open. You can have a 4,000 square foot restaurant, and we have no parking. He's opening a venue to get people to come downtown, and all of a sudden we're talking about this guy having a parking requirement. We have an urban business that's trying to generate revenue for our community. Everyone's talking about where's our sales tax. We've like done a great job. And if we listen to, and nothing will build stats, but if we follow the stats like that, we just kick everybody out of town and we have nobody coming to town. We have no more events. We've got somebody who's trying to create vitality in our downtown corridor. should not have a parking requirement for him parking is our problem to solve as a community in our urban environment we should have paid parking we should build a parking garage it's not trace's problem it's our problem we've decided that we're going to live on sales tax so like stop using the stupid requirement in our code to punish somebody like trace right so we should just like throw that one out i mean like you've already heard like we got farmer's market with thousands of people we got a rodeo with thousands of people He's got 800, who cares? Like they'll figure out how to get here. And hopefully they'll come early and go to dinner somewhere and grab a drink and do a bunch of other things and buy stuff, right? Like we want as many people as we can in our downtown. So stop with the noise. Let this guy bring as many people as he can to town. We'll figure it out, right? And then the height and all the other stuff and the noise, I lived through Howelson Place and Mark Scully torturing the, whatever the place was over there. ghost ranch because some of his condo owners were mad about the noise at the ghost ranch well i mean there's a noise there's a noise um code in town and they solved it with a vestibule and also their stuff it's solvable like don't put that on him we already have a code for like noise issues let's just let that play out like you know i mean it's a business there's business hours there's hours of operation don't try to like over regulate let them run a business get a bunch of people to town and we can make revenue because everybody's complaining that our like revenues are down i wonder why we just keep telling everybody to not come and not you know do business here anyway that's all i gotta say thanks hey thank you

Andrew, I think I was going to speak tonight. But I just want to, Andrew Wolk, 1223 Clubhouse Circle, ditto to everything he said. But then, so I'm one of the guys that travels to all the ski town venues in Winter Park, belly up in Aspen. And I just want to say, I don't understand what the big deal is. This guy is going to bring, it's going to be a game changer for us. The tours that go through those towns all skip Steamboat if you're below 200 capacity, which is what OTP is, which Smiggity's is, so they don't come through here, right? Strings doesn't want the bands. They just started having a no-seat band thing, and that's still not that much of a capacity. When I heard he was going to 800, it's gonna be a game changer. The amount of revenue he's gonna bring in that's gonna have taxes on it is gonna be amazing. So I would just really encourage you to... And the amount of money he's willing to invest to bring this kind of music venue to this place is just astronomical. So just look at the other ski towns. We don't have this venue. Every other ski town does. Telluride, Aspen, Winter Park, they've all got a 500 plus and he wants to go to 800. So I would just sort of flip it on its head and ditto to everything he said and let him bring this business here. It's going to be a game changer for sure. Unless you don't want all these people here, which is what you'd be voting for. I don't want a lot of people here. So that's really a decision. Thanks. Thank you, Andrew.

Okay. Is there anybody else? Come on down, Kim.

Hi, Kim Haggerty, 74 Park Place. OK, they just basically said everything I was going to say. This is such a big opportunity for Steamboat and for Trace to do what he's doing. I was on the chief theater board for over 10 years with Jim Cook. Do you know how much money we raised to do a project like this? Nothing. So it sat there and we just scrambled and tried to make money and did what we can. And then when it closed 2000, it was 2020. This is a gift. This is like a true, like to make him come in and invest this kind of money in downtown steamboat. So what happens in my world at Schmiggety's, I have these bands and then they blow up and they end up at Red Rocks. And just like he said, They're done in Steamboat. We can't ever have them again. So for us to be able to have like a stepping stone almost, 800 seating capacity is incredible. Like the venue could bring so many amazing acts to Steamboat. Like I am like beyond excited. When he called me, I was like, yes, let's do this. Because this is like a dream come true. Like being on the board all those years and now having someone see this like come to fruition, it's amazing. Please vote for this project. I tell you, it's going to be amazing.

Thank you, Kim. Thanks, Kim. I'm going to go online for a second here. We have Colin. Can you unmute? Colin Kelly?

Hello. Hello. Colin Kelly, 235th Street. I'm here tonight to express strong support for the redevelopment of the Chief. Whether it's council, city in its official capacities, the chamber, you name it, Main Street, we speak as a community regularly and with a tremendous amount of passion about strengthening our downtown, supporting the arts, preserving our history, and maintaining an authentic sense of place. Some of that language should be familiar to you. This project advances all four of those objectives. The chief is not simply an aging building occupying valuable space on Lincoln Avenue. It's part of Steamboat's history. It's ingrained in our identity. And today, however, it's been sitting vacant for far too many years. And as you know, it has experienced repeated vandalism and break-ins. Despite what a few opinions in our community say, preserving historic buildings requires a lot more than just protecting the facade. It requires finding viable economic uses that allow it to remain relevant, occupied, properly maintained, and be valued by our community. Trace's proposal restores significant historic resources while returning to the original role as a place where our community gathers. the proposed theater performance venue event space and food and beverage operations and the restored marquee would bring back activity to our prominent downtown property restoring it to its former glory and creating a cultural amenity that steamboat currently and very dramatically lacks I can't speak strongly enough about what I think this will do economically for the city. I know that the patrons of the chief will patronize all of our retail stores, art galleries, restaurants, and other amenities downtown. I don't have to tell you when our town is funded by sales tax, concert tickets generate a whole lot of sales tax. um the variance for the parking the ceo is all you need to dangle no one's going to spend this kind of money and not get their ceo people will figure it out they'll take an uber they'll take a shuttle they'll park up and down all the numbered streets trust me i live on fifth street the library, the house, and you name it. They're gonna figure it out. So the private sector always figures it out. Trace and his family have such a history here. For it to not be done by them would be criminal. We don't want Anschutz or AEG to do this. We want a local to do this. You know, we've got a historic preservation commission, we've got city staff, and we've got a planning commission. They've all approved it. I hope you do the same.

Okay, thank you, Colin. Thank you. Okay. Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to make a public comment? Okay. Come on down. State your name and address, please.

Gabe Selko, 74 East Maple Street. My phone also died, so a few notes here.

Must be getting late with all these phones dying.

I think so. I guess addressing a couple of the concerns that I've heard here tonight, and I think you made a great point that I think it's easy to get creative with the parking. There can be incentives around free code check, priority entry, loyalty points, service charge rebates. There's a lot of... a lot of ways that you can do those things. And then again, looking at some of the lines that could potentially be outside, it's really not a concern. You go to Mission Ballroom, you go to Fillmore in Denver, and they get people in there in five minutes. You're talking about 3,000 to 5,000 person venues. I have a little bit of experience in this. I've been producing live shows for almost 35 years all over the world. And I couldn't be more excited that this is happening here. And the scale of what he's trying to do is absolutely essential for you know, national touring acts for theatrical shows, you just have to have the height to have a fly system, to have lighting trusses, to have the capacity in terms of attendance to have, you know, the type of acts that, again, as they said, that would go to Denver, that would go to Telluride, that would go to Aspen. Now it makes perfect sense from a routing standpoint to go to Steamboat. Plus, now you've got a proper theater where you can rig from the ceiling, you can tie up, you can drill on the floor, maybe, right? So... you know, things that you can do, you know, from a theatrical effect standpoint that are really going to make a difference. And that's something that we simply just don't have in Steamboat. So I think it's really exciting. I can't wait, you know, for this to happen. And I really hope that you guys vote for it. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We have one more online. Can you, Chris, can you unmute? I think you have it. Could we have your name and address, please?

Betsy, go ahead.

Betsy? It's not Chris.

Wouldn't you love to mute me more, Steve? Anyway, so I'm Betsy Grasby. I'm executive director of the Steamboat Art Museum. And first I want to thank the city for their, I know your belief in the importance of the arts. You own the Steamboat Art Museum building and the way you support us we are an important amenity next to the chief. I would like to go back and say I was a founder of Strings Music Festival and a 26-year director, and I was the one responsible for building a different tempo series, the non-classical artists. And I know what is needed for a music venue in this community that Strings can't provide. And I think what Trace and his group are doing, they're local. I've known Trace his entire life. And I really think this is important for the community. I don't have to say any more. You've heard it from so many. At the Steamboat Art Museum, we are in support of one more important thing, building the cultural identity of our community. And Trace has done so much to mitigate so many of these questions. We've had a very good relationship and I feel that they have carefully thought out these congestion problems. So I look forward to having you approve this and working together for the vitality of our community.

Thank you, Betsy. Okay, is there anybody else in the audience who would like to make public comment? seeing none and seeing no more hands up online we will close public comment bring it back to council for deliberation and emotion right so those of you that had discussion modes now make your points okay well i will start so um

Parking is important. It's part of our CDC. And as Tom knows, I'm a stickler to the law of our CDC. And it has to make sense for me to approve a variance. And I fully support this. I really do. And I had to ask the hard questions about the parking. I needed to understand the height variance, the reasons why around that. But parking does matter. we have to look out for the entire community, not just our downtown corridor. But what I've heard tonight about your parking management plan and that it goes back to our city staff, relieves any concern I have around the parking. And I think folks will find a way to get there. I just want to make sure we're not negatively impacting the surrounding community. So thank you for all your work. Okay, thank you.

I would just build on that. I mean, from the, again, from the perspective of kind of the same thing. I mean, that's, as I said earlier, and we saw it in the community area plan. I mean, congestion traffic are, you know, second in terms of complaints to housing. So it's just a matter of let's work together to manage it. And yes, councilor swintak right i mean think about um the free concert tomorrow night and the bikes that are i mean everybody rides their bike downtown i mean somebody has a graduation party downtown you've got bikes everywhere so you know i hope that we can work together you know to be able to you have a spot, you know, so whether you, I know that that was mentioned big Agnes or whether it's on eight street, I mean, someplace, right. To have, you know, a place where people can, you encourage people to ride their bike. So, and they have a place to put it so that it's, they're just not, we don't have enough bike racks downtown to accommodate what will be in terms of the number of people that will take their, you know, their bicycles to the venue. And again, we talk a lot about the community area plan. We talk a lot about the downtown plan. It's all about making walking, biking, and taking transit a more convenient alternative to driving, which furthers the community value of a well-connected and multimodal transportation system. So again, I think from a staff perspective, as we work through this parking management plan, let's take the bigger vision in the sense of, again, how do we build that so that it serves our downtown? and not so that we don't have more private shuttles driving around and stopping and cause more people to drive around looking for a parking space. So I think the only other thing that I would think I'd like to put out there for an addition is back to this idea with the conditional approval you know in terms of really talking about mitigating any sort of negative impacts would be having some sort of coordination with the special event calendar so that you know again not saying that there can't be an event but it just we're not not drawing in another 800 people when we've already got 3 000 people in town so you know whether it's steamboat gravel or um you know winter carnival or you know whatever any of our other big events so that it's a coordination and services the people that are already in town and just not creating a situation where we've got more people in capacity than we can handle. So I don't know if there's,

What does that mean exactly?

Say again?

Like they can't have an event when gravel's happening. Is that what you're talking about?

I would say, yeah, let's coordinate with the special events, right?

Coordinate could mean let's host an event while gravel's happening. So that's what I'm trying to understand. Are you saying... They can or cannot host.

Well, how do we work that out? I think you said trying to augment or if you've got an event in town, drawing to that event but not trying to bring in

you know you know again like from a downtown capacity perspective was as i say steamboat gravel 3 000 people i'd push back on that yeah i do too i don't i don't think that works because for me when you have um bad maybe it's a bad example that you're giving yeah because steamboat gravel comes in 3 000 people 800 of those people may want to go to a concert at night when they're done with their bike ride You're not going to limit 3,000 people to their 800-people venue that evening from a 3,000. I think what you're really getting at the heart of it is it's conflicting at the exact same time. Like if there's, you know, Schmiggety's has a huge concert. Old Town Pub has a huge concert. There's 800 people going here and a rodeo and something else going on all at the exact same time. So I do not agree with the fact that you can't have multiple venues in our community. This town can handle 15, 20,000 people on a weekend besides the locals that live here.

What about summer concert series?

They can handle 15,000 to 20,000 more people come to this town on the weekends.

From a parking downtown?

Like having my teeny tiny ice cream stint though, like big events are like a good way to make money. So I feel like in a way we would be handicapping a business by saying, I mean, it would be great to put in there and say, you have to host an event when we have a bunch of people in town, but it would be horrible to say, you can't do this when we have a big event because we likely will be handicapping them. Like if I was running this, I would want to host something because I'd sell out. So I just, from a business point of view, I'm really not comfortable with doing that because we want this to be a success. We don't want it to end up as a meth den again in the future.

I don't know who would govern it anyway.

Say again?

I don't know who would govern it anyways. Who would look at the coordination and say this is good or bad?

Well, I mean, again, it's about mitigating the impacts to the community, right? So, I mean, I certainly don't want to limit business opportunities, but again, thinking about from a capacity perspective, I mean, that's where I'm coming from.

Um, I wouldn't know how to control that. Cause actually I think there'd be more cases where you want to, you would celebrate.

We have a special event permitting process.

Okay.

Okay. All right. Well, I seem like I'm the sole voice, so.

Okay. I just want to say one other comment that I think is missing out of all this. The parking we've talked about, and you're going to put a plan in place for that. You're an entrepreneur, and this is not without risk to you. I mean, I look at this plan and it's not, you know, there's a lot of money involved, a lot of capital involved. This is not without risk to you. So I just want to tell you, I think that this is the type of innovation and risk-taking that we need in this town. and we need to support it as best as we can to ensure it's successful. And there'll be things that happen that we need to adjust and you'll need to adjust, but I get the feeling you're more than willing to make those adjustments as things happen. But I'm really looking forward to this because I think what you're doing here is taking a risk that not that many people would take. so i applaud you for what you're doing here and we'll work through these things i believe but i look forward to whenever the opening when is the opening date if you if we approve it okay all right go ahead it goes for uh june 2028.

Okay, two years from now. And with that as well, I really would appreciate the city's support. We want to have a nonprofit arm to do fundraising for this community. Growing up here, I grew up in a more fun place. There was car races. There was Lincoln shut down all the time for big events. There was hot air balloon festivals that rivaled Santa Fe, and now we don't even have a hot air balloon festival. So in your response a little bit to yours as well, like we – We need to look at the larger events. I know that for a long time, being close family friends with the Romics is when there's a conflict of having a free concert the same night as a rodeo is there some crossover at the exact same time and the rodeo is a little bit drier than it would be if everyone was at the free concert. And so I think the bigger picture is the chief isn't going to just be a private business. I think there's a much larger thing here to involve the entire community to focus on big events to see how we can really you know have a big paid concert at the mountain have free concerts have rodeo have everything kind of exist with each other but bring in more events as well and we're here to support all of that thank you um

Are we ready here? I'll make a motion if I come in loud. Yes. I will make a motion to approve agenda item seven, a resolution approving the development plan, conditional use and major variance PL20250341, the chief theater. All right, we have a motion from Michael Pacino.

With conditions as presented by staff. And we have a second by Councilor Barnes. Any more discussion? If not, I'll call the vote. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 7-0.

Congrats. Next agenda.

Next.

Onward.

We're not done?

No, we're not done.

Thank you. Okay. Number eight. Resolution granting an appeal, PL 202-60083 of the planning director's decision of legal non-conforming use abandonment related to PL 202-20343. Councilor Gary, I believe you pulled this.

I did.

And what would you like?

um well i think since we had i mean i guess i defer to that since we had the two counselors that were missing that i i think going through kind of just high level what the the i think kind of the presentation well wait what you are in deliberations basically oh okay thank you we continue to reopen the public hearing unless someone wants to make a motion to reconsider well okay so i have question i mean i mean I mean, okay, so help me out here. I mean, I, I still, let me find my notes. Um, I guess, okay, so I oppose the, I oppose kind of the action that was taken and certainly support the decision of the planning director to decline the appeal. So when we say we're in deliberations, are we just back in conversation in terms of deliberating on the new ordinance resolution?

You're here to consider whether or not the resolution accurately reflects the decision that was already made at the last hearing. So we typically view this as not as an opportunity to reopen the hearing and take evidence and testimony as to the application.

Okay, okay.

Well, so I guess, again, I brought it back up because I do, as I say, still support the Planning Commission and the Planning Director's position of supporting the Planning Director's decision right in terms of denying the appeal and so again i mean while i'm absolutely sympathetic to the appellant you know again i think the if the intent was to comply with the sdr ordinance right there should have been knowledge by the applicant that this needed to be completed with it within 12 months right and so we heard from you know the applicant that it was their intent to apply and to adhere to all of the various different rules but again um the 12 months passed and she didn't reach out to the planning director so uh you know again i don't necessarily i don't support kind of the decision that was made to not um uphold the uh the denial and again just wanted to take the opportunity with the new council members that weren't part of the short-term rental debate and conversations that we had to remind everybody that the intent really was not only to address short-term rentals and the impact that they were having on our neighborhoods, but I think was, you know, what was pointed out before was that the purpose and the intent was also to limit the number and the extent of the legal non-conforming uses, specifically those in the yellow zone. So,

that's again why i don't support the i was reversing that to the point to that point that she had to cancel reservations that she had on the books she rebooked and that that period of time was eight months whether the fact That she actually showed the intent. I mean, when does the 12 months start? And so that's what we were showing the appellant was some latitude in the fact that they were showing every effort to rent that place and have it rented. And just the fact that the people didn't come and stay within the 12-month period.

That's one of the things. And we also add some more subjectivity and interpretation into things such as size and scale of this project and of whether 12 months was even a reasonable amount of time to do the repairs from what had happened here. And when there's subjectivity involved in it, that's why I voted to uphold the appeal.

So I was not, I had missed that session. And I, so I do have a couple of questions that, you know, but you want to finish your thoughts and I can ask some of the questions.

I don't know if we can ask questions.

I don't know, Dan.

We're in deliberation mode here, are we, Dan?

We're in deliberation.

We just extended the hearing.

We are picking up where you left off at the last meeting, which was voted to grant the bill and overrule the planning director's decision. And we have now taken some time to provide you with a written document to adopt. So you really should just be talking about the resolution.

so the question is is how can how can I vote on something that was not really delivered I did not I did not participate in the deliberations vote no on that did I miss a doc I feel like I'm like did I I have no clue what any of you are talking about like I read this but you guys are like I'm jumping in on like chapter 12.

Did I miss a document? Did I not properly prepare resolution on here?

I know. But was there an additional document where like I didn't even get draft minutes right for what you guys talked about last week?

That's not what we're talking about tonight.

That's why.

So they prepared what I understand is the prepared resolution was not what.

council voted on and so they had so they couldn't just right so you brought back a new resolution but we're like talking about we're picking up deliberation on something that i have no clue what we're deliberating i was not part of that conversation neither was i so i i'm not comfortable so if you yeah so you can vote on something if you did not attend the meeting if you've reviewed the uh i reviewed the material that i have but i have no idea what was covered last week

Yeah, so if you don't feel like you have enough information, then you should probably recuse yourself.

it just what did i miss with the conversation among everybody in in just in just a nutshell for if i can offer an explanation yeah a little bit this was this was in my opinion we're on opposite sides of this there was an appeal that came in and we deliberated the appeal went through in at nauseam um and it came to a 3-2 vote to deny or to uphold the appeal for the appellant. And it was a 3-2 vote. After that long deliberation, they did not have that in the resolution in the packet. They had the one to deny.

That I know, but the justification you guys were saying is because the construction and the timeline, it was unfair. That is the gray area I'm missing. What was the deliberation that...

I don't think we can cover it. I mean, because we're going to have to have Rebecca come down. She gave a whole presentation. You're just hearing their side of why they... Because then Gail and I are going to have to go into... We heard Gail's side.

why we supported rebecca's decision i feel like i get the why because it's aligns with what's documented what i'm missing is the opposite side of why are three people saying we should reverse what staff is supporting and what planning commission is recommending okay fair okay but so i would do you feel you have enough to make this information i would feel like i would need to recuse myself um because i feel like i want to deliberate this

And it sounds like I missed the deliberation. Yeah, I'll just recuse myself. I guess I will recuse myself. Does that mean I have to leave the room?

No, it's not a conflict of interest.

Okay, I recuse myself. You're both recusing yourself.

I think next time, maybe watch the video.

I guess the question is, does somebody want to make a motion here?

I make a motion to approve. Second. Second.

Okay, we have a motion from Councilor Barnes, second by Councilor Pacino. Any more discussion? All those in favor of upholding the appeal, which is the right wording, write down. Yes, granting the appeal. Granting the appeal. Say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Motion passes three to two.

And I just asked, was it documented somewhere that this is coming back to us? Like, how can I avoid this in the future? Can there be like a note that says like, Hey, we saw this last week, just as an FYI, if I'm not here, I am not looking at council stuff. So like, I would love just even a personal email note to be like,

fyi this is coming back to council so i know i should actually do additional homework or if anything read the previous packet that we had two weeks ago but i just told you when i think yeah no no no you're not there no no i get that i'm not gonna i understand in the actual write-up from staff the communication form it does say on so i missed that city council 33 blah blah blah

all right so i missed that i'll read more deep in more detail then i did not miss that and i did read planning commission and and um what you guys said i said follow-up questions so i that's why i accused myself so i felt like i needed to ask more questions so mine was user error basically dan when when you started deliberations and in this in any case like this then we just pick up where we left off

it is as think of it as though you took a five minute break while Rebecca and I ran in the back room and wrote up a resolution and brought it back to you okay I got you but it took it takes more than five minutes so it ended up being two weeks or whatever um but that's effectively where you would pick this up okay well you don't have too many of these all right better luck next time

All right, we're going to go move on to hearings, motions, resolutions, and ordinances. Number 10, second reading of an ordinance rezoning a portion of land as described in exhibit A, depicted in exhibit B, located at 1021 Merritt Street from RN1 Zone District to RN2 Zone District, PL20250388.

Toby, nice to see you. Toby Stauffer here for Jeremy Brown. I'll be real brief on this project. This is a zone map amendment to resolve a split zone lot. That's a lot that has two different districts. This lot was approved through an administrative replat process. The two lots are in Old Town. The northern lot is expanding by adding a portion of the southern lot. because these lots are also on the on between the Boulevard and Merritt Street because the lots have different zoning that northern lot ends up being split zone the CDC doesn't allow lots to have two different zone districts on one lot so This project meets the criteria for approval. The adjacent lots are RN2. The lot is already being used as an RN2 use. The future land use district for this property is compact residential, which is consistent with RN2 zoning, and we recommend approval.

Yes. Any questions?

I have one question, Toby, and sorry. came up when i was thinking later about it i don't understand why they're doing this it's i read that they want it like they've owned both lots and both homes or whatever is on there and when i was reading through the planning commission meetings i read something like they want to have a bigger yard for their primary home and they're going to take that from the home that they use for an investment property is that right like why are they doing this

imagine i mean i think the the purpose was to expand that northern lot it was a bit smaller and perhaps that that southern lot doesn't use that property i believe the properties are owned by family members so they're probably trying to adjust that accordingly

Okay, and this is okay for us to just, we did approve, we approve the replat.

So it met the subdivision criteria. So we've already approved that change of the land that replat is conditional upon this zoning of the zone map wasn't approved, then that land would have to go back. They need to both of those projects need to happen. But we did find that that subdivision was appropriate.

Thanks, Toby. Any other questions? If not, we'll open up the public comment. Is there anybody in the room who would like to make a public comment? Anybody online, please raise your hand. Seeing none, we'll close public comment. Bring it back to council for a motion. Move to approve. Second. We have a motion from Councillor Swintek to approve. Item 10. Number 10, PL20250388, and a second by Councilor Pacino. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Second reading of the ordinance passes 7-0. And then we're up to number 11, an ordinance authorizing the placement of a conservation easement on 131 acres of Slate Creek property. Does anybody have a question for maybe Matt? he's he's sitting figuring there won't be any i can tell hi i think you're right actually no questions no questions okay we'll open up public comment anybody in the room anyone online please raise your hand seeing none we'll bring it back to council for a motion thanks for being here all night yes to approve agenda 11. okay okay oh wait let's amy do it cool no motion by councillor pacino second by councillor barnes all those in favor say aye aye opposed passes seven zero dan do you have an update i do not no update motion to adjourn motion to adjourn