City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, who are we missing here?

I think there'll be more opportunities. John and Dave. Dave's not here. Okay. So we're ready to go. okay we will call our regular city council meeting number 2026-19 on tuesday july 7 2026 now 501 p.m so julie would you beat us in roll call please steve montine here dale gary here john agosta here dave barnes is absent michael pacino here amy dixon there and brian swintek here okay let's rise for the pledge of allegiance back in the back of the room 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 indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right welcome back everyone i hope you all had a good 20-day respite from this. So to start tonight, we have some proclamations and Kim Weber. Do you want to come on down?

evening council kim weber finance director i would like to introduce a new employee our new controller scott simonen he came to us from st louis he came with his wife and three boys for ski vacation in december and loved it and never left and to our benefit he has uh 15 years of public accounting experience an additional 12 years of private accounting experience or yeah private accounting experience and so he started in june and we wanted to introduce you to him so welcome welcome glad to have you that's awesome yeah welcome aboard forward to working with you

i'll bet i'll bet welcome scott okay julie you want to come on down and you have an introduction tonight

yeah hello julie baxter water resources manager um i am very pleased to introduce you to jenny fritzen she's our new water quality and conservation specialist i know she's a familiar face to many of you um she's been a steamboat for 30 years originally from north carolina she actually worked for the city many years ago just for a year in the general services department and And then she went and got her teacher's certificate and taught science at the high school for six years and then was at Friends of the Yampa as the environmental programs manager for four years, where she managed the Yampa River Scorecard Project, helped us also with some in-stream temperature monitoring on the Yampa. um and so this is a brand new role um in the water resources division um it's funded out of the water and wastewater utility and one of um the priority actions in our water conservation plan in 2020 was to hire a water conservation coordinator so we're we're finally doing it um more than half of her job is going to be on the water conservation program that's the joint program with mount warner water and mount warner water is reimbursing us for 25 of the cost of this position so we're thrilled to have her well welcome back jennifer exactly and if anyone wants to know all about beavers in our rivers and how they're actually good for our acre if anyone does you're the experts

Okay, Rebecca.

Good evening council, Rebecca Bessey, planning director. I'm pleased tonight to introduce you to Avery Globe. She's our new administrative assistant in the planning department. She joined the city in May and has been a great addition to our team so far. Previous, I should know Avery was born and raised here in Steamboat Springs and previous to joining the city team, she has nearly 10 years of experience in real estate and education. Fun fact to share about Avery. You've all probably seen her as a child cast in bronze out in front of the historic courthouse. Avery is the child in the mining hat and boots on the teeter-totter in the Steamboat Legacy sculpture, which I also just five minutes ago noticed there's a drawing of out here on the hallway by the bathroom. So kind of a fun fact.

I hope you're still getting royalty payments on all of that. welcome avery welcome avery okay great it's always great to see new faces okay we'll move on to city council reports who has a council report tonight

I'll start. I don't really have a report. I just really enjoyed the festivities of the holiday weekend. I know, Tom, a lot of us were gone. The parade seemed like it went off without a hitch. I didn't hear anything negative on it. And the first time I went to the jumping and jamming, And that was really, really well attended by our community. And the food trucks, Brian Krill was out front, saw him getting donations and everything. And then went to the concert afterwards. And I just want to say is that even without fireworks, for me, this was really a great 4th of July. And I think that was one of the concerns I was a couple years ago with not having fireworks or drone shows. And I really enjoyed it. And you know what? There was a ton of people everywhere we went, and they were really enjoying our town. So I'm curious to see how some of the key data is for some of those areas as we can come up and see how many people went to different places. But wow, great week. Super. Thank you.

Councillor Dixon? I will go. Okay. So, first update. Someone from the lodging community reached out to me. And remember back in March when Ski Corps, SSRC, acquired Resort Group? And we all thought, okay, great, I guess. and why um i think we all probably figured why um but here's what's going on the resort lodging community today um so resort group has rebranded as steamboat hospitality It's on now the website steamboat.com. And since the acquisition, the lodging community has received formal notice that Steamboat Central Reservations is terminating its subscriber agreements with independent lodging partners effective July 31st. um is anyone aware of this am i repeating old news to folks no i i i assumed this was going to happen yeah i do too yeah yeah okay are you going to explain what that is i am i have like impact yes thank you counselor smintak um so what determination notice means for local lodging operators So currently, properties listed through Steamboat Central Reservations can be property management companies throughout Steamboat, not just Ski Corps. and so what this notification has done is that um the steamboat central reservations will no longer list any lodging that is not part of their in-house program so amble this new um steamboat hospitality they've rebranded And this is a steamboat.com is how you get there. So it's a great place for people who are visiting to go to one location and find all the options for lodging and their deals. So what this practically means is that small, local, independent property management companies lose access to a marketing and booking relationship they've had for years. Yeah. Yeah. and um so i mean again i bring this up um i don't know we're going to talk about the parking um but this just again reinforces this pattern um that we continue to see from ski corps um and now we're seeing a consolidating control over lodging marketing and distribution on the mountain um favoring properties uh that they own that that's in part of their program um And so then there's a real incentive for homeowners to move away from small local properties, property management companies, and list exclusively through SSRC's in-house program in STEM. So, I mean, if there was ever a group I thought SkiCorp could not anger, it's the lodging community, and here we are. And I would say I think what we're seeing, though, is... folks are unwilling to speak up and speak out about it because of fear of possible um retribution implications um if they complain about it um so anyway this just goes back to um death by a thousand cuts as i would say with our relationship and partner with ski corps um so when we talk about the parking we can talk about whether this is something i'm i don't know um president if you are working with rob and meeting with him or if i should reach out i mean i don't think there's anything we can do but it's just yet one more thing so there's that that's the update on that one um counselor swintech and i met um attended the senator hickenlooper meeting last thursday i can't remember last Thursday. It was a small group of folks, and sorry I have my back to you all, and the people that were in attendance, City of Steamboat Springs, Kelly, thank you if she's here. No, she did a great introduction for Senator Hickenlooper. We had Route County Commissioner Macy's was there, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Steamboat Resorts, the Rob Perlman was there, local business owners, the owners of Backdoor Sports talking about their rafting and tubing business right now. It's an extreme drought. Gosh, we had the Colorado Department of Natural Resources there, Friends of the Yampa. Your sister. My sister from Arizona was so excited to attend. And the Colorado Cattlemen's Agriculture Land Trust, we had a wide variety of folks that attended. It was really great. Everyone talked about the impact that we're seeing with the severe drought that we're facing right now. And so just some points that came up that I actually, yes, fact checked. I did not believe it, but I wanted to go in and look. So at the end of March, when we averaged across 115 stations in Colorado's mountains, the snow water equivalent was just 38% of 1991 and 2020 average. And the snow water equivalent is the amount of water stored in the snowpack. so this is not just a oh it's a off year this is a massive change in our climate and this represents the lowest snowpack in more than 40 years and they were saying possibly ever um one other um error that they we talked about um is that um people have said oh we've had low snow years in the past like 76 and 77 80 and 81 The big difference was the temperature. The temperature was not as high as what we're seeing, what we saw this past year. And with that, per data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which goes back to 1895, nine of the 11 warmest years in Colorado occurred since 2012. So this is a major issue that we're grappling and facing. And we can also talk about the wildfires that's raging across the West. It was actually quite a somber event because the three wildland firefighters had just been killed the week before. And so that was weighing heavily on lots of folks there. so this is not only impacting tourism but agriculture the farmers and ranchers they spoke about low crop yields higher cost of feeding livestock so this is a big issue I think we're going to be talking more about at our retreat as well so it was a really good event really not very kind of discouraging okay my last update is on um let me find it and i'll be quick um stagecoach mountain ranch so the letter never went out um to the county planning department and um so i wanted to highlight some things that were in the letter that unfortunately none of you ever saw um since we ended up not sending it um so in the traffic study from the applicant it shows quote the proposed development is anticipated to generate approximately 5 800 daily weekday vehicle trips not sure if anyone knew that um the applicant's own traffic impact study assigned 75 percent of the development external vehicle trips east of county road 14 so towards sema on 131 75 percent And their traffic study studied County Road 14 and 131, but yet they ignored our request to respond to Highway 40 and 131. Yes. Now we know 75% per their own traffic study is coming and going in that intersection. What else? Water. Did you know they are... projecting to use 90 million gallons per year from Sagecoach Reservoir. I just, we talk about that Sagecoach Reservoir is already experiencing hazardous algae blooms from excess nutrients. We see what's happening this year with a low water year. And while this may be okay with the Upper Yampa Water District, is it really okay? 90 million gallons of water for snowmaking for a private ski area. And then we want to go into how are they powering that? I mean, like there are so many. The last thing I'm going to highlight, and I will be done, In the applicant's plan development plan we all know about the 481 full-time equivalent employees does that number sound familiar to folks they have been saying it's 481 full-time equivalent employees that is not bodies so do you all understand that what they are doing is you've got some seasonal employees i'm going to do some part-time employees and their hours are going to add up to one fte so you can have four people four bodies that's one fte or you can have two they work part-time or seasonal so they have come up with a great algorithm to make this work so they can hit their affordable and employee housing requirements per the city or per the county apologies per their own traffic study they will need almost 1,500 employees for their ski community. How do we reckon that? And sure, they can say, well, we're meeting the county code of 481 because these employees are seasonal. I just want that to sit in for a second. 1,400 employees for their private ski area. Where are those people going to come from? We already have a shortage of local employees where they're going to live, and this is exacerbating it. So, I mean, these are the things that we should be talking about. And if people don't think it's our business to chime in, fine. Next time it comes up, I want everyone on council at the dais to say, I support Discovery Land Company's proposal. I'm out. Fine. But say it at the dais. because I will be sending letters, and those that want to join me, I welcome you to. That's it for my updates.

Okay, thank you. Who wants to follow Councilor Dixon?

Yeah, good luck.

I'll follow Councillor Dixon with some great news on the RTA front. So we have chosen a executive director company to help us search for executive director. We actually had 14 applicants and it was like 14 strong applicants. It was tough to whittle it down to one person, but our criteria was somebody who understands transit, understands government, had some Colorado presence, understood about, you know, and had experience with building up small regional transportation groups and had good references. And we chose GMP consultants out of Washington and um really excited working with them because they actually you know some of the people on their staff actually came from rtd and cdot um so that that was um really good so we're excited um we're gonna you know kick off the discussion with them tomorrow and we're moving forward with that in in addition um by friday we should have we should we expect to have selected um a company to help us with polling for um you know help us understand um how we're going to fund the rta and so we're going to we're hiring a polling firm to you know to help us understand some of the trade-offs and what the what the community is looking for in that space and so we're going to kick that off and we actually hope to have some feedback certainly by early early august and that's important because We did file with the clerk to coordinate an election for the RTA. Now, I caution people, we filed knowing that with you know basically whether we go to ballot depends upon the polling the results of the polling but because of the process and how long it takes we had to actually file our intent today we have till august 20 25th to really decide whether we go or no go so it's all going to be focused on the um results of the polling that we end up doing and last thing is we also got a number of of our rfps back for an accounting firm to help us you know manage our our funds um and then lastly we're chasing a number of grants right now um and so um i'm not going to bore you with all the little details there but you know we we have some opportunities in that front so um that's it oh good news thank you counselor agosta okay counselor gary

all right we want to move on to slate creek but first like yeah don't move on here no don't move on yet not to slate creek yet okay all right okay whatever else um i don't have any other reports other than the slate creek on but i do want to just say thank you to counselor dixon i appreciate the fact that you went through all of that um what you could in terms of the information that was the updated information or the next set of round of filings from the discovery land group because i do think you know it's important to stay abreast of what is happening and dig and it looks like need the need to dig deep in terms of okay what does this really mean right because 5 000 daily um visits traffic And whatever we want to call it, the traffic study with the 5,000 daily trips is significant. So thank you. Okay.

I'm sorry, President, I have one other super quick update. I apologize. I met with a school board director and they want to, school board wants to partner with the city on looking at ordinances around the vaping shops and the problem with minors and vaping. And so Gail, Councilor Gary and I are going to work with them to then bring something back to full council. That's not gonna happen probably till the fall, but just FYI, they are very interested in working with the city.

I think that was part of the group that came to the high school and spoke. They're really making an impact of getting the awareness on how bad vaping is. More importantly, the products that are being sold at the convenience stores are drugs. They're not regulated because of some other stuff, but the youth has figured that out.

Okay. Counselor Swintek, anything from you?

I have a bunch of updates as well. So I went to the final wrap-up for our Citizens Academy. I don't know if you know, but the police department, they had a Citizens Academy. It's a seven-week program with about 12 individuals. My Matt, my husband Matt, actually applied and was a part of it. So I got to hear every week how awesome it was. They went over things like self-defense tactics. They actually got to drive a cop car and do a test driving thing, shoot some firearms. They talked about ethics, how they handle cases and how they handle everything. It was really inspiring to see the passion of our police officers, how much they care, how genuine they are. And what was really impactful for me was hearing from the participants how they changed what they thought of law enforcement, especially in Steamboat. And I don't think it's special. I personally believe the majority of police departments are this way, but that it's special here, that these are people who really are here to serve our community. They want the best. They are not bad guys. There's not any of the typical... and negative assumptions about bad stuff happening in a police department. It really is a group of individuals who are here to serve our community. So I'd like to thank our police department. So I'd highly recommend if when they run another one, if you know of anybody who might be interested to apply and participate in the program, And I will use this as a personal plug to highlight the fact, especially after the 4th of July, seeing that our public safety, police, and fire are woefully underfunded. The more events, the more things that are happening, the more people who are coming here with what we do, they will always be here to serve with a happy, smiling face and say they can do it. But we do ask a lot of our police and fire. For other updates, the farmer's market, I heard comments about illegal parking on Burgess Creek Road, which I believe I emailed staff about. We heard that from Bill Jamison. Another asked for a sign on the bridge on the core trail to point that it's not going towards Dream Island. She said that she's been here seven years and it's never happened. There was one idea talking about trying to incentivize productive use of land. Someone came up and said that in Denver, they were able to create some fee structure where if a property was considered abandoned or not maintained, that they would be able to assess fees and it would escalate to repossession. The whole end point of this was to create productive use of property. I don't know the mechanics of how it would work, but it was an idea, so I'm sharing it. and oh we did get feedback about slate creek that the feeling was that it was disingenuous renaming brown ranch to slate creek is simply just repainting the story and that really it is the same thing and feeling that it's disingenuous to the public that it's some new project and they raised the fact that of what the brown family has done for the community that renaming it away from them felt a little disrespectful as well we did get some feedback around that so i wanted to highlight those points One item from my meeting with the water team that I think is worth just flagging to you guys as counsel, we have gotten, I don't know if it was in the, I think it was Mount Warner Water, has gotten their first application for a wildfire mitigation system for a private residence. Think of it basically as sprinklers on your roof that would go off in the event of a wildfire to prevent your home from catching on fire. we don't really have a process or plan for this. And so staff is coming up with a recommendation. The initial recommendation is that it shouldn't be hooked up to the water system, but it should be its own, you know, if you want to store the water to do it. And then there's discussions about the potential use of chemicals, like fire suppressing chemicals, whether that's allowed. So I just want to give you a heads up. You don't need to form an opinion yet, but that staff is going to be coming to us with a recommendation for how we should address these applications, because likely they will be coming more and more as wildfire becomes more prevalent. Oh, wait, another idea from the farmer's market was on Highway 40, trying to do it so that lights are on for cars both ways, then completely off four-way pedestrian traffic, and then cars moving everywhere. There were fears that with the lights being alternating with pedestrians the way they are now, that you have increased risk of people turning, in a vehicle and hitting someone who's walking through when it's busy. So the idea was floated that on highway 40, could we do it so that it's the lights are on for vehicles, no pedestrians, and then the lights are off for all pedestrians in all directions. And then that way it's safer. I will leave that to John and staff to figure that one out. Um, I have heard a lot of concern about the Campbell property and being involved in the process and making sure that everyone's voices are heard. We've gotten some emails about this and I've had people reach out individually. Just to reassure the public, as Kelly had presented, we are doing a large public outreach process for this. I am meeting for a coffee with a couple of people. I would encourage anyone from council, if someone wants to meet and speak to you, definitely feel free to meet and speak with them, share it with me. michael um so we can incorporate that but just to reassure the community this is not happening in a vacuum and if you think you care about this most likely you're on the list of people to be spoken to So my last thing that I really want to, it was a very impactful experience for me. I went to the screening of No Country for Mothers. I believe it was last week. I went into it as I'm not the demographic. I am a man. I'm gay. I don't have kids. I'm young. I don't have kids. Like I don't relate really to anybody in the room. And it was really, really impressive to me walking in with that mindset of a policymaker and that this is a policy problem and I care about it, but I don't really get it, to when I left, it totally changed how I view it, that it is not a policy problem. It is whether you, no matter how you think of it, whether it's something that I want to stay at home and care for my kid, or we should have the availability of childcare, we as a society just need to come up with a way to support mothers, because we all come from a mother, and moms are the backbone of our world and all this is is asking us as a community to support our moms and that is the only ask is the time before school and after birth and before school how can we support moms whether they want to stay home and that's what they proposed they were like if you want to stay home with your kids Why couldn't you get a stipend for that unpaid work so that you're able to, because we can't really live on one income anymore. What if you got a stipend so you were able to stay home with your child, care for your child, and that's what you want to do? And the inverse would be, if you want to work, Can we provide daycare that you're able to afford so you can work and fulfill that for yourself? And anything in between. Maybe you're a mom where you want to work part-time or drop your kids off a couple days a week. It doesn't need to be a one-size-fits-all. It doesn't need to be a policy decision. It really is just a societal... shift of like, how do we just support our moms? And it is a win for all of us. It isn't just the right thing to do from an economic point of view, which is largely how I think of this. Like, it's a win. I mean, if we can get people into the workforce, moms supported, families feeling safe and secure, to raise kids in our community, to then provide the services that we need, it's what we desperately need. So I would really encourage you to consider watching it. I have a link that you could watch the documentary. It is very, very well done. I also am going to work to find a couple clips to share with you guys so that if you don't have the interest of sitting and watching an hour-long documentary, totally understand. Maybe you could watch a couple of these clips that hopefully will resonate to help you think of this slightly differently like it helped me. shifted it from as a policymaker and this is a policy to oh this actually it's weird that it's a policy thing and it really is a win for us so that was the final thing i wanted to share hear that leak yeah well thank you for sharing that

Thanks. I mean, I think that's great feedback, right? I mean, because we have the early childhood education group that is meeting and certainly hopefully we got the presentation, right? And we encourage everybody to read the Thrive by Five, but to the extent that the film really resonated with you, I think that's great feedback that we can give to that group.

Yeah. And send us all the link. I think that would be super.

Yep.

Okay. I wanted to add a couple things. Kelly and I attended the CML conference The other week, it was a good networking opportunity, a lot of interesting discussion. One of the things that I found very interesting was the session on home rule municipalities and the recent trends towards state preemptions and state mandates and how when there are what is called like mixed concerns where the state and municipalities both have a concern, the courts are really leaning to the states now. so you know home rule municipalities like us are coming under quite a bit of uh attack from a control perspective. We don't have as much. I thought that was a very interesting discussion. There was a lot of other discussions around data centers and AI and quasi-judicial stuff. It was a good use of time. Speaking of that, the CAST conference is 8.27 in the afternoon, 8.28 in the morning in Carbondale. Right now, I believe I'm going. I believe Councillor Geary is going. our city manager and a deputy city manager are going and maybe a couple of staff are also thinking of going so we're going to take over Carbondale for a day or so so if anybody else is interested in going it's um leaving on the 27th coming back on the 28th um so uh talk to Myra and register if you're interested um And we're also looking at visiting a potential affordable housing project on our way down there, so that would be fun, too. Housing Authority Board approved the ED Search Firm, so that is all starting up now. They're getting to work. They also, you may have received this, I believe, information on the Cottonwoods redesignating 12 units from 140% AMI to 120 AMI. so they're lowering obviously the unit pricing for these units and getting more of 100 and 120 because those are the really sweet spots so that is going on for 12 units which are outstanding now you also probably got communication from slate communications confirming an interview time between 7 22 and 7 24 so i trust everyone has signed up for an hour for their meeting with Slate Communications and we all want to just again reiterate the Police and Fire Department did an unbelievable job over the 4th of July and I think the other people really did an unbelievable job was the entire community because it was total silence where I lived and a lot of other people said it was total silence where they lived and all the dogs were happy and everybody was happy with that so the community really stood up and was diligent in making sure we had a safe fourth of july so thanks to the entire community the other thing i want to mention is for those of you who are here for public comment tonight not on a subject on the agenda we'll be taking that right around six o'clock or sooner if um uh the city manager report is completed but it will either be six o'clock or maybe a few minutes before so with that i'll turn it over as a counselor gary who's going to talk a little bit about the steering committee update for slate creek counselor montine can i just add one element um to your update on the housing authority buy down of the cottonwood units i talked to elliott lawrence about that and i think it's important for you to know

that there was just a miss, there was sort of a misconnection between the buyer pool and the units they had. The 130, 140 were looking for sort of a different set of units. When I talked to him about it, I said, so, you know, you're buying down to further to 120 and even lower on AMI in many of these units. What happens to those buyers now that want to buy something? They're at 130, 140 AMI. What options do they have? And he said, actually, a lot of them are shifting over to our deed restriction program. And we have 50 applicants now for that. We've already given 13 qualification letters. So just so you know, that program is now serving the need that was amiss on the Cottonwoods. So I think that's a really good point.

And the other thing to mention about the Cottonwoods that some of the units that have not sold are a lot of the one bedroom units and what we're finding is and you know this is a learning experience because the first time they've had you know homes for sale is that people don't want to get a one bedroom unit because they're thinking of the future they're going to have ownership now and they're thinking about either getting married or having kids so the interest in our demand for one bedroom units is lower than anticipated so good thank you for sharing that

council of gary okay all right thanks for that um update and i just wanted to quickly touch base on the slate creek steering committee meeting i think everybody hopefully got a copy of the minutes from our last meeting on july i'm sorry june 17th and june 18th and anybody in the audience that didn't get to see the minutes they we do have them in rainbow back there on the table kind of behind this row of seats over here. And so again, really just wanted to point out some highlights because hopefully everybody had a chance to take a look at those meeting minutes. And I certainly think I'm kind of well aware of a couple of things that happened there. But when you look at the minutes from the meeting, I think it's important to point out the way that they're structured in the sense that at the beginning, we've got the key decisions. And then when you go a couple of pages back, it talks about and goes more in depth in terms of the conversation. But I think it's... important to focus on the key decisions because again civic canopy and community builders has done a great job in terms of facilitating the discussion and really working toward bringing kind of consensus and collaboration and what um and so you know, through that it's a process in the sense of allowing everybody to state what the original thoughts are in terms of response to a question, but then really working toward trying to bring consensus so that you've got a group consensus when you have disparate opinions to begin with so you know again kind of where we've landed um in terms of this phase is that we did decide on a purpose statement together we will create a path for this lake creek neighborhood by providing homes for our community prioritizing affordability feasibility and community support We also talked about principles that needed to be balanced in the decision making. And you can see that we have 10 there in terms of houses for our community, affordability, making sure that it's community driven, diverse housing options, part of a bigger solution, welcoming and inclusive. And there's kind of a little bit more in terms of descriptions under each one of those principles. we also spent times talk talking about roles and responsibilities um so what's the role of the housing authority what's the role of the steering committee and then you know what's the role of council and that yvha board as well as the as well as the board of county commissioners so as we kind of work through a timeline and a project roadmap which you can see on that page six we kind of further went and looked at what are some of the major items at a very high level that have to be done and so who's accountable so what's the one entity that's accountable who's responsible maybe multiple units who gets to be consumption needs to be consulted right So that's back to that conversation that we had as a council, what needs to be brought back to council from a governance perspective and who needs to be informed. We did talk about YVHA being the primary project manager, you know, with the likelihood that additional contractors will be needed. We talked about the Slate Creek Steering Committee, again, providing the overarching direction. And as I talked about, you know, providing input on project goals, planning and budget, timeline for planning, selection of major contractors, identification of stakeholders, advisory group design. And then, you know, again, the project manager YVHA will make certain decisions, but bring them back to the steering committee for further kind of direction and refinement. We also... talked a little bit about kind of the communications plan. And as I mentioned, if you haven't, take a look at the roadmap to annexation that we talked about that basically gets us to a November 27 ballot initiative. But there was some discussion too that it's a potential to get it and then I think as we're all well aware, there was kind of at the final hour of the discussion, the topic brought up about, should we be looking at an annexation for this November? And again, just to be clear, it wasn't the recommendation of the steering committee to take it to a vote in November, but to bring it back to our governing bodies to see, is this something that we wanted to vet? But I think, you know, again, because it was at the final kind of hour, Tom was, you know, texting with Dan to say, as I think John, as Councilor Agosta mentioned, in terms of that we all know from a ballot initiative perspective, there are really specific timelines that have to be met. And so... As I say, I think as that kind of reality was discussed, I think that might, and obviously we had the YBHA board make the, was the first one that had to make a decision in order to actually start moving down that path of an accelerated annexation.

He clarified that a little, because I thought I heard that the board rejected going to bring it to ballot.

Say again? They said, they basically, I don't know, said, why would, well, right, not moving forward with November 26th.

Yeah, okay, I did not, okay, I did not hear that. So let me clarify, they were not, the board decided not to go forward.

Because they actually had to file a petition they had to be the ones to file a petition in order to get everything started and had a week to do that. There really wasn't adequate time for them to do that. The other thing that I forwarded out to everybody, I think just at the end of the day, was information that Community Builders shared with us in terms of work that they and Cascadia did with with Jackson Hole when they were looking at some of their development in Jackson Hole that really talks about kind of what they did from a scenario planning perspective. So I would encourage you to take a look at that because what they did was basically, okay, this is, you know, the scenarios that we want to look at if we, and what are the trade-offs? If we talk about single family homes, what's the impact of that as it relates to cost per unit, water usage, various different criteria. So I think as we've talked about it, I think that's one of the things that has been something that we wanted to look at and have talked about from a community engagement perspective that we want to fully vet each one of the various different scenarios and understand what that has to do, what the impact would be on economic feasibility, water usage. I mean, they look at even kind of transportation, vehicle miles traveled, various different things like that. So I guess to wrap it up, we did agree to meet again on July 13th at 2 p.m., Because we didn't quite, as I say, think we were ready to bring it to a conclusion. But with the kind of last minute look at an accelerated annexation, the thought was, let's get back together on the 13th and determine how we move forward.

May I ask a quick question on that? I would like, I heard through the grapevine how the annexation piece came up. But I would love to hear, since you were there, how that happened and transpired.

Okay.

Yeah, well, I mean, as I say, we were, you know, we had spent, what, most of the majority of the first day and then the second day, and really it was during the last hour that Councillor Barnes brought up the idea of having an accelerated annexation path to bringing it up on the, bringing it to a ballot in November. And so there was discussion at that point. And again, from the whole role of, are we gonna have consensus and collaboration on how we move forward? We had a long discussion in terms of, the first question was, do we wanna bring an accelerated annexation agreement or does the steering committee wanna recommend an accelerated annexation agreement for the November? 26 ballot. And there was not consensus on that. I was one of the dissenting votes. There were three of us that were dissenting votes. And so the process then kicks in to say, okay, let's continue. What are your concerns, right? And so... ultimately ended up where it was like, okay, let's allow for this to be discussed by the various governing bodies, right? Us bringing this back to council, YBHA bringing it back to their board, the commissioners bringing it back to the board of county commissioners. But as I say, It was literally, right, Tom, the last hour, maybe an hour and a half.

Yeah, and just to add a little context, I think the reason it came up at the end was there was starting to be a conversation about the need for a development partner as part of the process. There was actually a developer that was sitting in. He was asked to provide his opinion on this. He just said, well, for my opinion, a project that's already annexed in the city just allows for a lot more assurances and would be better from a development partner standpoint so that that's the context that it was brought up and then that's when counselor barnes brought up well what if we just did an accelerated annexation we didn't zone it we didn't do anything we just annexed a portion of the property so that it gave assurances to any development partners and and that was the basis of that conversation yep thank you for that clarity did it have kind of a consensus or was it like a split vote in that conversation with that what they just said i mean

Yeah, no, there was not consensus on bringing it to a ballot in November of 26.

Early.

Well, again, it didn't allow for the community engagement aspect of it, which is, I think, you know, and I know a lot. I mean, there are a lot of people in this community that are frustrated, including a lot of us up here in terms of wanting something to move faster. We know that every day we wait, we're digging a deeper hole. but i think also we learned right that we need to slow down right and make sure that we've got community engagement and we've got community buy-in and that we are bringing to market something that the people want and will live in and what you know again back what are the trade-offs and what are the balance you know what are the trade-offs um from literally that but i think the experience we're finding out with cottonwoods right you know the what is the product that they're going to bring to market And then what we didn't have the opportunity really, as I said, Tom was texting Dan to basically say, okay, what's the timeline, right? And I think she brought it, I mean, in terms of when we had the opportunity to work a little bit longer on the process and kind of what needs to happen. I mean, there was a lot that needed, not just the ballot language, but we spent months on an annexation agreement that was how many pages long? um so this would have been something that was very abbreviated and you know and probably not a lot of time for uh thorough review so does that answer does that anything else that someone wants to know brian just to swing tech share what i feel like the community feels is like that paper is what this feel i appreciate there's work being done but it just feels like a lot of

hand signs and talking about job like roles and stuff it just seems like death by process like that's where what it makes sense why counselor barnes raised that it's like let's just let's do something so my question is like when are we doing something with this yeah and to me this is a it's a really challenge because you know been part of this process for so long um that

when we as this seven of us up here buy the campbell property right i mean that's what we have full control over and it's like the housing authority property that the money that was loaned all these good good intentions just come with a very complex process and i've learned to just love the slow process because as much as it's frustrating, to get this annexed in for the right reasons and all that goes with it,

us buying the campbell property gives us controlled at least what we can do for our community ourselves not there's no housing authority there's no county commissioners what you're not saying how loud is is the fact that the housing authority is involved in the brown and brown ranch is slowing this down is that what you're saying no access to slowing it down we we did something in 23 right we had an annexation agreement we spent the time doing the annexation agreement and we right as a council adopted the annexation agreement and move forward and there was clearly a portion of the community that didn't feel like they were engaged right so lesson learned that we're going to take the time to and and i and it just not ahead to your point though to your point

I think I sent out a memo from John Schneider. There are three water projects that have to be completed before we can do any building out of Brown Ranch. Two of those three are not totally funded, if at all. The earliest they will be done suggests that it's probably 2030 by the time that you could give somebody a key to a unit out there. So as we sit here today, one of the questions is if you annex in 2026 or 2027, does it speed things up by annexing in 2026? The answer is no, it doesn't speed things up because the water infrastructure issues have to be dealt with first. And maybe it's good for a developer as a potential piece, but as far as getting shovels in the ground, the expectations we have to have right now with the community is that, you know, we're not going to be able to deliver units at the very best, maybe late in 29, but early in 2030 or something. And that's just the real story there.

So maybe my pain point and what I would ask for you is can we agree as this whoever as a clear communication that Slate Creek development is not happening until X date and make it far in the future, like 32. So when I'm standing at the farmer's market, I'm able to explain this is a long-term housing solution and we're working towards a delivery of 2032. because I feel like that's where this rub is coming in. There's this talk of we need to move faster, and then there's this talk of we need to move slower, and maybe we just need to change this topic of saying this is a slow process now, and we're filling our pipeline. We have short-term, medium-term, and long-term, and this is a long-term. That would be my ask as a counselor. That would help with minimize the frustration with the community and manage expectations.

And that's what we need to do. And we're going to talk about this at the retreat. We have this on the retreat thing, so we don't have to solve this tonight. But I think your point is well taken. We need to communicate realism to the community. And it's easy to say, well, let's do this by this date. But until you understand all of the infrastructure needs and everything else, it's...

It's just not going to happen. Short comment about annexation. And for me, it's not about annexation. It's about annexation is turning the crank. For me, it's about what is the community that we're going to build out there. And I need to understand what is it that we're building and what type of community, what type of community services. And then as part of that, process as you annex land to support that so i'm stuck on you know what is the product that we're trying to and what's the experiences that we're trying to you know bring to this community and i'm and annexation to me is just as i said just turning the crank piece i want to understand what we are really and so does the community in order to vote on annexation

okay um i would just like to make one comment about process um i was shocked honestly to hear that at the end it's unfortunate counselor barnes is not here which i will talk to him about if we're going to talk about the retreat shocked to hear that that even came up at the 11th hour while we had had we all sat up here two days prior And that was not brought up as a possibility. And what if the housing authority would have said, yes, let's move on it. It would have come back to us tonight. And we would have had to sit up here wrangling, are we now going to go against the housing authority on whether we're going to annex? When that was a bad decision to even say we should annex come this November. So process-wise, I think we need to understand what are our roles. We're not going alone when we sit on these committees. We represent the entire council. So I was shocked when I heard that.

okay thank you for that um a couple things here um as far as and then we'll go to public comment uh the steamboat scheme resort winter parking program update we have that scheduled for executive session tonight because we are going to share with you a mou to get your direction as to what you want to do in terms of proceeding and we will share all the pieces of that during that discussion so if you're okay we'll hold on to that and share that and get your direction as to what you want to do in terms of next steps with Ski Corps.

Does it have to be an executive session? It's just the community is a community problem and for us to sit in a room looks questionable. Once again, is this a negotiation now? Like I don't remember entering a negotiation with the resort.

well after discussions with dan and whatnot it was felt it was appropriate i will say this though the plan is uh coming out of this session and whatnot is to be very transparent as to um what was discussed and what comes out of that session and there is some information that will be shared with the public it's not you know this was done simply because of advice from counsel

I know I'll be in the majority, but I do not support going into, that we are turning this into a negotiation with the resort, and while we are rebuilding that relationship with them, this has not ended, I feel, in our favor when we've gotten into this.

Well, I guess I would just say, and I would appreciate, if Tom or Gail want to chime in here, is that this MOU, you know, is... We would like to share that with you and get your direction on whether you want this to be an agreement or whether you want to change it. And so given that it is quote unquote a negotiation when you look at it that way.

And I, Councillor Swintek, I mean, I asked that exact question earlier today. Do we really need, you know, what are the, do we really need to do this in an executive session? Because again, you know, absolutely agree. We need transparency and this is for the most part been a collaborative process, but there are some points that we need clear direction on and feel like it's better if that's done in an executive session.

But that will be, I mean, it will come back.

They will come back for a public, it will be an agenda item.

Well, not only that, we are to come out of executive session and we can discuss and we can as a group decide what we want to do.

can move on i know i'm in the major minority i just want to make it clear that's how i feel we understand and we are constantly looking at executive sessions as the last resort we do not want to hold executive sessions um the final piece and then we'll go to public comment uh the housing subcommittee report rebecca put that in uh in your packet is there any questions on anything in that report that rebecca put together anyone have pretty short that was that was really good because it gave us an update of what's coming in the pipeline and everything so i like that report good job okay with that it is now six o'clock so we'll open it up for public comment on any topic that is not on the agenda for tonight so if you'd like to come down and make a public comment you have three minutes and if you would state your name and address and come on down is there anybody else oh this is hard to make sure this might be oh if this is excuse me is this in regards to something that's on the agenda for tonight arms court arms court then that will come up when we get to that agenda item this part of public comment is for anything not on the agenda tonight so um hopefully your seat's still out there

um so john bristol would you like to make a public comment tonight but if there's nobody else i'll i'll do it so uh good evening council uh john bristol executive director of the route county economic development partnership uh at that time of year come in for uh q2 update so you know i like to pop in and just give you a little quick uh insight in what's going on with the partnership um especially around our programming. So first part of programming, right, is our Yampa Valley Entrepreneurship Center, and that consists of two components, an ongoing business incubator, as well as an accelerator program. So the incubator over this, so far this year, we've got 30 year-to-date individual counseling sessions, not individual counseling sessions, but counseling with individual businesses. or new startups. And then the High Country Accelerator, we just completed our fourth cohort on that. And that had seven new founders and seven new startups. And they presented their business pitch at Boat Launch a couple of weeks ago. And we had 80 folks there present watching. And one of them stole the show. And so hopefully you saw that in the newspaper, a high school student who is developing a watch company. So if you haven't checked that out, please do. Super proud of him and his work. Then our mentor network, we're continuing to grow that. You know, we've got a wealth of business expertise in this valley. And so what we're doing is we're being really organized and engaging with potential mentors and seeing how they can work with folks locally that are interested in starting businesses. And by and large, they're retirees. So I'm really grateful for their time and volunteerism in doing that. Our business retention expansion program, targeting primary businesses, those that are exporting their goods and services and bring new dollars into the community. 22 year to date so far, and we're on track for that. and we'll double that here by the end of the year. And one workshop I wanted to mention here was business succession planning that we did recently, specifically thinking about business retention and expansion, right? As we're looking at the aging demographics and the baby boomers retiring, us as a community needs to be thinking about how can we ensure that we are seeing succession planning and retaining these businesses as folks are looking at selling and moving on so uh really great uh business uh succession planning session um let's see i think that i will leave it at that and just say thank you and thanks for public service and thanks for letting me pop in and say hello thanks john thank you appreciate everything you do out there yep totally

buy one of those watches will you okay is there anybody else in the audience who would like to make a public comment on any topic not on the agenda for tonight okay seeing none is there anybody online who would like to make a public comment uh raise your hand who do we have there who we got to enjoy at the farmer's market bill can you unmute and give us your name and address please and you have three minutes Bill, we see you. You are muted. Try to unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Okay. Bill Jamison, Burgess Creek Road. I appreciate Councilor Swintek bringing up the parking issue at the Crawford. The Crawford is a new development on the uphill side of Burgess Creek Road at And it's got a sidewalk. They seem to be using the sidewalk as their parking lot. As far as I know, sidewalk, there's no parking allowed on sidewalks. People are, when they park on that sidewalk, they're forcing the uphill traffic into the downhill lane, and it's a clear safety hazard. The city needs posted no parking. on that sidewalk and enforce it. It's a daily occurrence. We came down this afternoon at four o'clock and again, there were three cars parked in the sidewalk. When we came back up, there were two cars parked there and they were half into the driving lane. A sidewalk is not a parking area. And as far as I know, that's a sidewalk. It may not go far, but as a sidewalk, it needs to be strictly enforced. So I would encourage you to take this under serious consideration. I sent the city manager a note, an email. I know he was on vacation and I know Mr. Councilor Swintek sent a note. So I would appreciate this being addressed before we have a head on collision with somebody because of this situation. Appreciate your time and have a good evening. Thanks.

Thank you, Bill. Okay, is there anyone else online who'd like to make a public comment? Please raise your hand. Seeing none. No one in the audience who would like to make public comment?

will close public comment and tom i assume that um you'll address bills yes we have we we appreciate his uh letting us know that i know the police have been up there um evidently this even came up during the development review process of that project um so we've sort of were aware that it might be an issue um clearly it is and uh we're we're addressing it through enforcement okay

I'm going to take a wild guess that those are possibly short-term rentals.

and so is there a way that we can check that and then they are that we have um some leverage um with their license yeah i think there's a lot of latitude during the construction phase but going by it every day myself like bill clearly the cars there with the out-of-state license plates make it feel like those cars that are on the sidewalk are visitors and not construction vehicles an assumption but observation observed

i'm assuming i'm assuming it yeah well so yeah okay so we've closed public comment we'll move on next item on our agenda is the agenda review we'll quickly go through that um if you look at your packet on july 14th next week we have three work session topics on there the marijuana production requirement multimodal transportation initiatives and physical sustain a fiscal sustainability funding strategy okay July 21st, you'll see there that we have several community reports or topics there around the State of the Police Department with Chief Beckett, 2027 Sales Tax Projections with Kim, and the Climate Action Plan Collaborative Update will be next two weeks away. And yes.

The State of the Police Department, is that like truly how are things going and needs?

Yes, and it's a little bit of a description of some of the issues the police department is dealing with in the community and for an awareness standpoint. So Mark felt it was important that he communicate that to you and to the community as well.

I just politely ask Chief Beckett, I know that you're here to serve, but if you could please emphasize to us the problems and don't make us think they're not big problems. I feel like you often say, you know, we will make it do the best of our ability, but I feel like that diminishes the problems and then we don't take it to heart. And I just would like to ask Blunt, direct, tell us the problem.

And really, honestly, that's one of the purposes of this presentation is to present some big sticky issues that this community is dealing with that may not be fully aware of.

Thank you. You're great. It's not a personal attack.

Okay, and then we have a couple of search and rescue resolutions and a couple second readings of ordinances on that date. Moving on to August 4th, you will see that there is... shall we say, a couple community reports, Northwest Colorado Health, and we'll also have the linkage fee final recommendations. Not much else on that agenda at this point in time. And August 11th is a work session, and we will have the update from the Lane Slate Communications piece that we're all talking to them about. And Josh will also give us an airport operations and revenue update. Any questions? I'm sure some of these will fill in a bit between now and then. With that, we'll turn it over to Tom for the city manager report.

Thank you, President Muntean. City Manager's Report. Just a reminder that it is on the city's website, steamboatsprings.net. Scroll down, you can find tonight's City Manager's Report as well as previous City Manager's Report. It is organized by our outcome area. So starting with our thriving community outcome, just an update on the Stockbridge Campus Housing Project. continue to make progress um on that project the land bank and the parcel assemblage uh baseline engineering was hired to complete existing conditions and alta survey this much this month which will inform both the upcoming overall development plan as well as complete a due diligence step in our acquisition of the cdot parcels the city did receive 14 proposals from planning and development firms And we have an internal team that is evaluating those proposals to develop a short list with the plan to interview and select the most qualified firm. And that's being done sort of this week. So good news on that. And of course, as was brought up, that will also include a very, very robust public outreach process. So the community will be very engaged in that project and we'll be getting that public outreach process notified. So everyone's aware of upcoming meetings. uh second sheet of ice the project team did receive um seven qualified proposals for the second sheet of ice for the uh design build contract it is now evaluating those responses um the shortlisted firms will be interviewed early this month with a contractor selection expected shortly after the interviews are completed so good to see that project moving forward as well Under our connected and engaged community outcome area, a lot of information on all the social media and media releases that the city has been putting out lately. Continued monthly city corner column in the Steamboat Pilot with a June edition focused on housing, turning housing strategy into action. If you got a chance to read that on the pilot, it was well-written and kudos to the planning department for putting that together. the city connection newsletter continues strong engagement with june editions achieving 63 and 62 open rates reflecting sustained interest in the curated city updates and storytelling content so glad to see that people are enjoying that and actually accessing that that newsletter I think this was mentioned, but just a reminder that we were honored to welcome a delegation of emerging leaders from Taiwan as part of the American Council of Young Political Leaders, their international exchange program, which was hosted by Representative Megan Lukens. Participants explored how local government operates in a mountain community through tours and discussions focused on municipal services, emergency response, housing challenges, infrastructure needs, climate impacts, water conservation, and stewardship of the Yampa River. That was a great event, and it was great to see those delegates from Taiwan here, and it was an honor to be part of that. A lot of information on the Steamboat Springs Fire and Rescue and PD outreach efforts. Moving on to healthy environments. I won't read all of this, but there's a lot of information in here about the community waste and recycling survey that closed in May. There were over 200 respondents to that that answered questions on... uh sort of whether they were interested in more organic diversion options whether they would support requiring haulers to offer volume based pricing some demographic information there was there was some pretty good information received from that many residents would like an option for free or inexpensive yard waste diversion while many compost their own yard weights in the backyard with respect to volume based pricing most respondents would support requiring volume based pricing if their rates went down um and so there's some information in here about uh some local solutions for to reduce organic material from the landfill um i also wanted to do i think this was brought up earlier as well the city of steamboat springs was awarded a 2.7 million dollar grant through the colorado energy's local impact accelerator program providing critical funding to advance local housing sustainability and climate initiatives That funding will support a set of integrated initiatives focused on housing production, land use policy modernization, and municipal decarbonization. So you can see the list of the projects. They're extensive. They include land use code updates for housing production, the regional housing land assessment, geothermal system and feasibility in the Parks and Rec campus in Howelson Hill, arena and decarbonization planning with the mechanical and electrical design for the HVAC electrification at Halison Ice Arena. So we're really honored to get that and will really help us move forward with some of our goals. In high-performing government, we launched, I think it's exciting to say that we launched the Steamboat Springs Learning to the organization. The Steamboat Springs Learning connects what we call our learning management system in Workday to an external learning content provider, which is Skillsoft Precipio. to provide employees with on-demand access to training and development. The Steamboat Springs Learning provides thousands of courses across safety, compliance, leadership, professional development topics, and it offers these through video courses, books, audios, and even AI simulations to assist employees and managers in their roles. This has taken well over a year to achieve this in parallel with a workday implementation activities last year. So it's a real significant milestone for this organization. And a big thank you to HR, RISC, and IT team for putting that together. I think that's a great step and something that we've needed for a while. So kudos to everybody working on that. So thank you. Let's see. Oh, this has also been a goal particularly of mine for a while. The city-wide strategy management solution continues and the team is aligned on ClearPoint strategy as the vendor. as the leading vendor on functionality, municipal alignment, and existing familiarity with leadership. They bring a long history of aligning city goals, strategic plans, and data. The follow-up work is starting with departments on validating performance metrics, confirming data ownership, and preparing supporting information to ensure the dashboard can be populated once procurement is complete. But this has been a goal to align the metrics with our strategic plan, have a public dashboard so we can show council and the community how we're achieving our goals. And if we're not, why? And through data. So this has been a really important goal and I'm glad to see that moving forward. So kudos to everyone that's working on that. Steamboat Springs Police Department will be hosting a pinning and award ceremony tomorrow at 5 p.m. in the Cleff Community Room, so everyone is welcome. Just a reminder, that's a great event. um in under safe community um steamboat springs fire rescue along with three other departments in route county celebrated the graduation of the first regional fire academy the academy saw four steamboat springs firefighters one firefighter from west route two from north route and one from oak creek fire department the entire program lasted about 10 weeks and covered all things fire and hazardous materials so congratulations to all those that participated It is that time of year. The fire department sent a type three wildland urban interface engine to the Red Rocks fire outside Dubuque over the weekend on June 27th. That crew maintained at the fire and is expected to be deployed to Utah to assist with fires in that region. seasonal wildland fire crews continue to make great progress on creating a fire break and hardening our ingress egress on enel mountain i don't know if any you've been up there i was just up there on my bike the other day there are piles everywhere so it's great to see they are primarily working on prayer flag road and you can as you said see the piles really starting to accumulate and those will be burned over the winter months Deputy Fire Chief Ian Satterfield has been deployed as the operations branch manager on the Cottonwood Fire outside of Beaver, Utah. Deputy Chief Satterfield works with a complex incident management team and has brought a depth of experience to our department. Deployment is a great way to continue to maintain proficiency in large incident operations. So kudos to him and hope all of his team is safe and doing well out there. So we appreciate that deployment and him helping other departments out. Steamboat Springs Police Department officers participated in crisis entry and hostage rescue training this month. And this training is critical because this is such a high risk and low frequency incident. So it's good to see everyone continue with those training efforts. And that completes my report for this evening. I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay. Any questions for Tom?

John? A quick question. Is there a 30 or a 60 second geothermal update in terms of I know there's a number of test wells being done around the city. Do we have a sense of how those are going?

There was the most recent test wells that I think were done were at the base area. I don't think we've done any test wells yet at the Parks and Rec or the public works facility yet. Not yet. So as we get that information, we'll share that with you.

yeah i mean the western resilience center did test a test a borehole downtown and then obviously the community foundation has an actively working geothermal system and then i think something on the mountain so i think there's probably we're getting close to getting enough sites out there to get some information but every every site is unique so we you need to do the testing we just haven't done them on our projects yet so yeah

It's not a question, but I just would like to raise this to council before we're like in our camps and it's in front of us. But the survey about specifically the pay as you throw, I really worry about the unintended consequences of implementing this policy. I wholeheartedly agree with the goal of trying to divert more towards recycling, but I really worry that this could create a issues if we don't have ways to address them. Examples might be people would be less willing to pick up trash or go around and pick up trash because they don't have a larger trash can to throw it out in. Or you might have increased dumping of garbage throughout town and we don't have a way to enforce it or hire people to be picking up litter off the streets if people aren't incentivized to do it. I just really worry that it could be like why we have SUVs on the road. It was like good intention policy to reduce fuel emissions, but then it ended up spurring SUV development instead. And now we have roads filled with SUVs. Like I just worry that it's like good, good intention policy that has accidental consequences. And maybe could we just think about ways to address those things or maybe like a funding source to address those things? Because right now we don't have any of that. I just really worry about it. So just if I could plant that kernel for everybody to think about for when it comes back to us.

i had a question i can uh i mean just so just so you know that's kind of why it's been put on hold right i mean an ordinance will come back before council for full um consideration and um and um you know you know discussion so you know as you know it was actually was supposed to be on the agenda for july but i think certainly with things there's a lot happening in the recycling mark um world today, you know, in terms of extended producer responsibility and things are changing. So, and to your point, we certainly don't want any unintended consequences. Okay, thanks.

Yeah, just if you could, Tom, on the dumpsters behind the alleyway, give me kind of more of an update. I see what you're putting in here. The question that I have is that when did we finish this thing a year or so ago, if I'm not mistaken, and these dumpsters are sitting on the outside of this dumpster enclosure? And at Farmer's Market, there's people that had made it seem... that it was very idiotic, that dumpsters were sitting on the outside of the dumpster. And I know we're waiting for the business community, we're trying to do an MOU or try to manage that. When we did the development of that dumpster enclosure, what was the anticipation of the neighborhood businesses there at that time?

What were they expecting? What were we expecting by building it? Well, we were expecting cooperation from the business owners to participate in the funding of the trash collection, utilizing our facility. And that's still the intent. And whether that's done through an agreement of just those property owners or another mechanism, like a business improvement district that could help manage that, or a property manager that is hired that could help manage that, that's the intent. We, in hindsight, I think, you know, one of the reasons we built that quite as quickly as we did without having the full sort of program established was we had a timeline on the easement. That easement was going to expire, and if we didn't get that built, we were never going to be able to get it built. So there was a bit of a risk, and we're admittedly scrambling now to try to figure out sort of how to best organize that and make sure that the appropriate property owners have access to it, they can utilize it, that the trash containers are in there. You know, it's a little bit more complicated than just putting them in there, and that's what we're trying to work through.

So it was brought up during the farmer's market. Someone took some pictures of it. They came to me saying, did you go down the alley? There's a bunch of trash strewn all over the alleyway. By the time he went back, I said, go take a picture and send it to me. By the time he went back, someone had cleaned it up. Don't know who it was, but some business owner, Good Samaritan, did a community service by picking that all up. But we know that that's an issue about whose responsibility it is. So yeah, noted. Thank you.

OK, I have a quick question and actually probably more of a request. So, again, recognizing I'm one of seven, I don't want to direct Tom's work. So I would like to hear if you all would agree. So thank you, Tom, for the update on the fire and the work that's being done, the mitigation up on Emerald. at the meeting counselor swintech and i attended with hickenlooper i spoke to lots of experts in the area around drought and wildfire and one statement stuck out the person said it's not a matter of if but when we have a fire emerald um up on buff pass that threatens our town um i would love for our neck especially right now this summer um with the extreme drought conditions and this wind that we're having um i would like to have a more detailed report on what what we are doing as a city to prepare um are you for example are you working with ski core are there um snow guns fired right now i don't remember when they they do that do we fire up the guns on emeralds on howelson um all those things i just read today that california is sending support to the aspen fire that's what it's called down in pueblo and so what does that look like from a statewide resource perspective if we do have a fire like these are all the things that at two o'clock in the morning i'm like and i know you all are doing this but i think it's important for us to understand that Is that something you could do? Is that okay with the rest of council if we ask Tom to put together a report?

Is it a heavy lift?

Well, there was a lot to that. So I think that we could probably put something together in terms of all the efforts that we're working on. All those things that you mentioned, our conversations that we've had, certainly Chief Sarasoli, Chief Beckett, you know, anybody that's responsible for emergency response, those are conversations that we've had. We have had conversations with Ski Corps. We put together that emergency operations plan. So would we could we could either schedule it as a work session you know by the time we get something scheduled as a work session it might sort of be a beyond the the season we can provide you with a memo on all those things i don't i don't know what i mean you would like a verbal update as maybe your next um manager report would be fun i think that for me the intent thank you uh counselor dixon because what we're looking at is is just

reminding us as leaders of the community what the rest of the community is doing, what Ski Corps and you and everyone else is, so that when we're at the farmer's market, when I'm running into someone at Safeway, that we can sit there and say, hey, there's a few things that I know that it's not in the back burner, it's pinned right in the front. And I think sometimes we hear the fire stuff going on and we're scared, and I fail to remember, okay, what are we doing? And I think that if I have that, forgotfulness maybe reminding us so that we can be part of the communication it's more than just a ci cip yeah no well let me uh let me get the team together and have a conversation about what we can provide um and both to counsel and to the community but you're right it's time it is kind of time sensitive it is yeah yeah yeah so i don't i i don't want to make a heavy uh lift for you all i i'm sure you're already doing this work and just be good for us

Do you hear?

I think a memo of what's been going on, just kind of like work with you and your staff on that to get it to us, just summarizing where we are, sending it out, and then maybe doing a PIO for that as well.

Okay. That's good. Thank you, Councillor Dixon.

Thank you.

Appreciate that. Okay. We're going to move on to our community report, city council discussion topic, and tonight that is our 2026 Howelson Hill Statistically Valid Community Survey. Okay. so come on down brian is that going to be you and stephanie both andrew andrew anybody else pickle

zoom delay good evening council drew pickle deputy director parks and rec this evening we're going to be discussing the statistically valid survey that's centered around the community's engagement about a potential youth facility see if we can get this going

Wow.

Success.

I'll be presenting on some of the history and then how we formulated the survey. Brian Krill from the Winter Sports Club will give an overview from the club's perspective. And then we have asked Sonja Wintek from Polco to go deep into the survey findings and to give us a quick summary on some of that data and why it's statistically valid. 2021 is when the Sports Club first approached Council and wanted to discuss the expansion of the footprint around Howison to accommodate a youth sports facility. That progressed through 21 into 23, and then we started engaging in some feedback about parking feasibility, placement, massing, how we could get all of those details together and tie that into the Howison Park charrette. What came out of that was the traffic study showing that we could accommodate, need to make some ingress, egress accommodations. Some of that is in the initial proposed design. And then in 25 is really where we started to take further action and came to council In March, Brian and myself spoke with you. You directed us to have a statistically valid survey, get the community's opinion on this proposal, and then take it to Parks and Rec Commission, have them review the findings, and then to provide you with a recommendation. And that's why we are here this evening. So the survey, Brian and I worked diligently through the winter to get the survey formulated, shared with their board, shared internally within the city, had a lot of feedback and review, wanted to get an unbiased snapshot of where the community is right now on the concept of adding this facility. Out of that came the recommendation last month. We presented the findings, Polko, Brian and myself also presented at that time, reviewed the data, the survey that you were provided in the packet and had some deliberation about a lot of the written comments and they selected the motion that you see before you. i will hand it over to brian in just a moment he's going to give you some more detail about the winter sports club position on the need for this facility the proposed location per your direction in 25 and where we are to date with that process you can just click right here okay great thanks drew

Thanks, Drew. Thanks, Council, for continuing to look at this project with us. I'm just going to take a few minutes and put this in context. The partnership between the Winter Sports Club and the city goes back decades, long before either ultimately formally existed, represented best by the 113th Winter Carnival that we just celebrated. Winter Carnival is a celebration of this community, winter, kids, athletics, and we're really just more than anything, Caring on that tradition in the place where that's so special to so many people. The picture here. The picture here. represents events like Spring Meltdown. This is just the party we have at the end of the year with hundreds of families, hundreds of kids celebrating all the things they've done at Howells and throughout the winter. Um, just a reminder, I, I have updated council, uh, within about the last year, but just a reminder of the, the scope and scale of the partnership. And I, I want to make sure that I say that every time that, that we're everything winter sports club is doing is done on a daily basis with, uh, parks and rec staff and, and city partnership at the, at the greatest, uh, city park in the world, uh, Howelson Hill. We currently serve about 1,100 athletes. That's age four to 20. That represents about 50% of the kids in this community, probably more like 70% fifth grade down. Almost half of those participants are on some form of need-based scholarship with a scholarship budget of $650,000. That was $100,000 10 years ago. We serve 100% of the kids in this community with programs like ski town USA that can only be done at a place like house and hill where every second grader comes to experience skiing and we do other programs like that i'm just highlighting a few. In the last few winters, we've brought back steamboat cups, which are a free competition for all the kids in the community. You do not need to be a member of the club or in a program currently. We've had hundreds of kids come to those events. We did 17 this last year, all at Howelson in every sport that the club offers. And then in addition to that, we also host local, regional, national, if not international level competition at Howelson. So the point being that through this partnership, we, the Winter Sports Club and the city, serve an enormous spectrum of users through what we do in our programming and at Howelson Hill day after day. And the proposed facility is an extension of that longstanding tradition, the need. Uh, we currently make use of every square inch of the current strength conditioning center that we have, which is goes back almost 30 years, if not more. Um, it's 1100 square feet. Um, we, the, the proposed facility would take as, as you see in some of the pictures, that facility is full with about 15 athletes. Um, any size, and we're often overflowing into the parking lot with even groups of 15 or 20 athletes. We're out in the parking lot, out into the fields, just bursting at the seams in the current facility. As we've posted throughout the survey period, the new facility is designed to accommodate as many as 100 kids at any one time doing a variety of activities, up from, like I said, 15 more than filling the current space. The physical development of our kids in this community is more and more important every day. And I'm not talking about becoming Olympic athletes. It's just enjoyment of the sport. the changing demographics of this town where maybe mountain sports aren't as understood as traditional sports. So they're looking for that more traditional experience. And in every one of our sports, including free ski and snowboard, the need for these kids to get involved early in physical literacy and physical conditioning is more and more important every day. And that's what the facility is designed to do. As you'll see from the survey findings, one of the overwhelming feedback in that survey and what many other surveys have said puts any more indoor recreation space at the top of the community needs. We are not proposing this, to be clear, as a rec center. This is not a field house. This is the scope and scale of what fits at Howelson for the primary uses that have been going on at Howelson. and in that it dramatically increases the indoor recreation options at that sacred location. Drew did a historical overview of this project and the steps we've gone through essentially over the last three years with the current proposal. Keep in mind that, honestly, that discussion, I think, goes back decades before 2023 in terms of some form of facility utilizing partnership between the city and the club, but it goes back even before that history. But what I want to represent for the current process is that we, I came in three years ago, July 1. I started working on this project right away. I was thrilled there was going to be a traffic and parking study, even though everybody looked at me with a squinted eye. And I was thrilled that there was going to be a community user group charrette process so that we could listen and that we could learn about what would the community like to see, hope to see, how is the scope and scale going to be appropriate for this location, how can we serve our core needs and the community's needs. So I really want to represent that that we, and by we, I'll introduce the whole team that's present. Gene Makowski, our Director of Communications. John Nolting, our Chief Operating Officer. Dave Stewart, our Athletic Director. Blair Seymour, our Director of People and Sport Development. John and Dave in particular took part in every one of the user group meetings over three years. Travis Mayer is our board president here tonight. Todd Givenish is online on our board. Brian Adams is our architect that's worked on the early part of this process. So when I say we, that's the we I'm talking about. All of those people have been engaged on this project for over three years, if not longer. And I have demanded since I came in that we have to listen. We have to design this around the processes that we've been asked to go through. And I believe that ultimately the community saw that when you see the community survey results, you'll see that the community really felt like this project was answering community needs as well as serving sswc needs we are uh definitely aware of the feedback not only that came through a lot of the narrative uh of the survey but also what parks and rec emphasized which is that we we need to make sure we continue to uh verify and specify the additional uses and how that would work. As far as tonight is concerned, I want to make sure that we can keep moving forward with the next steps of the process because that's where that will get answered in even more detail. Let me just point out with everything I've said by way of background, kind of the key aspects of the project itself. Because I think another way of saying we've gone through three years of process with this, I wanna make sure you as a council and the community as a whole that we're not necessarily going back on things that we took a lot of time to consider. So first and foremost, the current location we're proposing, would be right on top of the current facility and replace it. We believe, again, through lots of consideration and negotiation with many partners that the space, the footprint that we're proposing replace not only replaces our current facility but there's lots of dead unused space in that location that's not parking it's not traffic it's not recreational space we're basically proposing to fill that space with a larger facility that does largely what this the facility there does today um It is one of the first things we looked at with that location is building it into the outrun as much as we possibly could. We looked at the cost and feasibility of that relative to building it on a flat site. We believe that that will be an added expense for the project, but we believe that's the right place for it because it mimics the grade of the outrun and causes almost no effect to the historic sight lines at the facility and doesn't even affect the incoming lane of traffic coming down the throat lot into the inner lot. The project as proposed also incorporates the replacement of the big bathroom big cinder block bathrooms out at the at the corner, if you will, of the throat lot and the large parking lot. So this facility would have four season public accessible bathrooms replacing that what that also does is our conceptual plan and talking through this with. The city is to then also look at how can that space, where the bathrooms currently sit. be transformed into additional parking and an addition and an outer drop off so that you didn't if you were just dropping off for an event or for training or such you wouldn't have to come into that inner lot you could drop off at that at that outer lot um this facility would also incorporate the temporary building that currently serves as the city of hall city of steamboat springs house and hill ticket office that's a temporary building that sits in the parking lot that would be in this what on the picture here is in the lower left corner essentially about where it sits right now as a temporary building it would be built in this facility and then there's three other temporary buildings that that uh outline that parking lot uh they have been mentioned many many times through many other surveys and feedback that things like that should go those temporary buildings that have been there for 20 years should should go away so that's what these other storage areas and usable storage are in this facility all those temporary buildings including the ticket office would be incorporated into this building And of course it has the primary spaces is about 3,000 square feet of strength and conditioning, traditional strength and conditioning space, and about 5,000 square feet of indoor multi-use recreational space. Really expand those spaces would be continuous. So really expanding the ability to do lots of different activities for both SSWC and other offerings. And then one of the more exciting aspects of the project, which we would love to get more specific on as we go into next steps, would be to design the, it's a one-story building, both sides, but it has a lower side and a higher side to match the grade of the outrun. We believe and there's a lot of support and excitement for the possibility of making that low side a usable deck space that would extend out into the jump flats and create not only a space for us to use, but an event space, a community event space, a vendor space for when events are hosted on the jump flats. So as you as you'll hear from polco the Community survey was statistically valid, we are again, I was very pleased to be able to go through that process, because we have we have data that is specific to this project. 86% support 60 or strongly supportive. But the comments about access, we hear and see as well. And so we asked to advance the project to the next stages so that we can get very specific about that. We did, knowing that's one of the bigger issues that we want to make sure we're being clear about, we went through our programming and mapped this usage, conceptual usage percentages out. And as you see, we feel like this is a tremendous opportunity, especially on the weekends, all year long, to add 75% of the time allotted. We're working with a benchmark operating hours of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., so 14 hours of operations. That's what these percentages are driven by. Would we consider going from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.? Of course, but this was just a way to start getting accurate percentages laid out. And what this shows is obviously we have a huge need to use the facility for our primary programs that we do there every day. One thing to really note and be clear about in these numbers showing our current programs and envisioned programs Every one of those kids is coming to Howelson today for those programs, just not to this facility. These aren't thousands of new kids coming to new programming. It's kids coming to programming in an adequate indoor rec space and strength and conditioning center, not outside and in the parking lot and basically anywhere else we take them. So I wanna make sure those top numbers are clear that again, those are local kids, doing what they already do at howelson and then those additional numbers are the the um an area where we would like to work with other community sports groups which we've been in contact with over this the whole development in this project we would like to offer some more programming to the community, such as, as you see on the weekends, there's ample opportunity for Winter Sports Club to offer low-cost, low-commitment drop-in strengthening and conditioning or ski conditioning classes to the community with 40 or 50 adults at a time in the multipurpose room. We'd like to use the space in some of our additional offerings to offer physical literacy to the youngest kids, like kids that are too young to even be in our programs, which we could schedule around kindergarten or pre-K type hours, which the hours, if we can do that, there's plenty of access for programs like that. So I'm sure there might be questions about this because this was one of the main things we wanted to clarify. But I'll go into next steps. We simply ask tonight that you follow the recommendation of the Parks and Rec Commission and the city staff to clarify approve the continuance of this process with the land use negotiation that my understanding that that land use negotiation would be simultaneous with us completing plans for this facility in engineering, exact square footage, exact location, so that the two would inform each other through that process. Almost every question that I think we're coming up with anymore is, well, I'm not sure the answer to that question until we design this in its final form and know exactly what we're working with in terms of the agreements with the city to use the land. So that's all we're asking for tonight. another big reminder on this project is that we are not tonight or or really at any stage of this asking for the city to fund this this is not a funding decision other than what may come out of the negotiation of the land use agreement which which could be associated infrastructure with the project and things like that about who's going to pay for that. But there's a fair amount of give and get with the facility as it's designed with city space in there and things like that. So it's not a funding decision tonight. We're not asking for any city funding. We're asking to move forward with the planning process, and we're asking to negotiate that land use agreement and finish plans in final form for this project. Thanks for your time.

Thanks, Brian.

Thank you, Brian. We will end with some Q&A, so we'll make sure to take time to circle back if you have questions about the community access. Next, we're going to have... Sonia Wendick from Polco, who you all know from our community survey contract. And she's going to go into some of our findings and give you a little bit of insight on data. So I'm going to stop sharing and let her jump in.

Oh, Drew, I thought you would continue sharing.

No problem. I'm happy to do the slides.

You might guess what I need to advance, but if not, I'll tell you.

Got it. Sounds good.

So thanks for inviting me. Hopefully everyone had a chance to look at some of the survey results, but I'm just going to take a few minutes to walk through the methodology and then share some key findings, including some context on what the residents wrote in their own words. So to start with the methodology slide. So the goal of the survey was to get a representative read on what the broader registered voter community thinks about Howelson Hill and the proposed facility. And so we pulled a list of steamboat registered voters from the route county clerk's office and randomly selected 3000 households from that list. The sampling was systematic, meaning that every nth household was selected, so that we would get 300 3000 and no group of residents was deliberately over or underrepresented. We used a two contact mail approach on March 11 households received a postcard invitation to an online survey. that they could do on their smartphone or computer or tablet. That was followed by a survey packet with a paper questionnaire and a postage paid return envelope for anybody who just prefers to do it on paper rather than online. The survey was open for seven weeks to give people a lot of time to do it, and especially for those doing the paper to get it through the mail to us. We received 498 completed surveys, 297 online, 201 on paper, And that's about 17% response rate, which is very good for community surveys, especially topical ones like this. And it's more than sufficient for statistical validity. With those 498 completed surveys, the margin of error is plus or minus 4% and a 95% confidence interval. And in plain terms, that means that if 76% of residents say park conditions are excellent or good, there's a 95% certainty that the true community figure is between 72 and 80%. So after data collection, we also weighted the responses by gender and age to match actual registered voter population in Steamboat Springs. So if younger voters were underrepresented among respondents, their answers were mathematically up weighted to correct for that. That's the best practice in survey research and younger folks do tend to respond in large numbers. So it does make small difference in terms of the overall results. So the next slide on to the interesting stuff, the key findings. So first we asked residents about their use and what they know about House on the Hill. So residents use the Hill regularly, about 35% visit weekly, not 29% visited several times a month. Virtually no one said they never visit. And most used facility is the trail network. 76% of respondents use it. The Alpine and Nordic ski facilities are next at 47%, followed by the lodge at 39% and the rodeo area at 33. So high usage by your residents. Overall, 76% of residents rated Howelson Hills condition as excellent or good. 23% said for fair and 1% said it was poor. We also asked them what would bring them to use the house and hill more often. And the top answer at 40% was adding a multi-use indoor recreational space, which is clearly directly relevant to what's being considered. And then this was followed by better parking and more events. So then moving on to the proposed project, about half of respondents had limited awareness of the proposed facility project at the time of the survey. They had heard little or nothing. The other half had heard something or were quite familiar. Not surprisingly, familiarity was higher among people who use that park more frequently. We asked about support across six specific dimensions of the project. On average, across these six dimensions, 86% of registered voters support the project. And notably, the strongly support category alone averages 60% across the six dimensions. So this isn't just a slim majority. It's quite consistent. a substantial supermajority. The six dimensions were sharing the space between the Winter Sports Club and the city, expanding youth programming for all youth organizations, expanding gym capacity from 15 to 100 athletes, the proposed building location, the city and sports club collaboration on this project, and the proposed time allocation between the sports club and public use. So they were very supportive. And we also asked the residents what their priorities for the project design and planning. The top priorities, both at 90% important or very important, were a parking and a traffic site plan that addresses potential increases in use, additional indoor recreational space open to the general public, and vehicle and pedestrian access were also important. Residents were also asked to assess the expected impact on various groups, and a large majority of voters expect a very positive impact on sports club athletes and participants, other youth organizations, city recreation programs, and general public use. So on this slide I'm showing, we had summarized public or open-ended comments. There was a question where folks were allowed to just kind of say whatever they want. And so before I walk through the themes, just a little important context, 44% of respondents left a comment, which is fewer than half of the folks we've surveyed. And of those who opposed the project, 84% left a comment. By contrast, 37% of supporters did leave a comment. This is a very common pattern as people with concerns are motivated to write. So while the themes I'm about to describe are definitely worth hearing, they do skew a bit and won't reflect the distribution of sentiment across all respondents, but it's going to give you a flavor of what people are concerned about and what people are happy for. So there were some strong endorsements. People simply said, build it. There's genuine excitement about what the facility could mean for youth sports and steamboat and appreciation of the club's legacy in the community. People love the character of Halston Hills, the ski jumps, the open views and the historic field. Multiple comments ask that building designs respect and integrate that character. People reflected that there was a real need for a, Just for broader, there's a broader lack of indoor recreational facilities and Steamboat Springs. People want a place to do more indoor recreation. And there was quite a few comments that were an interest in a second sheet of ice. So people were very supportive of expanding youth programming as well. And then there, of course, there was also some concerns. So next. So one thing was public access is non-negotiable. A dominant theme was conditional sport only if it's truly open to the whole community. People want to see real meaningful public access built into that facility's operating model, not just on paper. Closely related, many comments raised concerns about the winter sports reputation for being expenses or serving primarily wealthy families. They want to know that kids who can't afford club program fees still have access. And they want that guaranteed, not aspirational. The Fifth Street Bridge and the existing parking situation came up repeatedly. People were worried that if you're bringing 100 athletes to a facility that currently serves 15, you have to solve parking and access problems first. As I mentioned before, the historic character was really important to folks to make sure that that was respected. And again, the public balance of time allocation was a common theme. And there was some concern about, some residents raised a specific concern about whether the ski jump outrun area, which is a cherished public space, could be impacted by the project. In terms of, a handful of folks also said that the building sounded too large, and several just really wanted to see renderings before they fully formed an opinion. There was a small thread of skepticism Not hostility to the project, but a show me mentality based on past experiences with partnerships that didn't deliver public access that was promised. And these residents really want accountability mechanisms built in. Cost and funding questions appeared fairly often on who's paying, will fees go up, will this have a tax increase? So they really need transparency about funding, the funding model before they're signing on. And as I said, there's this mentioned by multiple respondents was the idea of a second sheet of ice. So to summarize, the survey reflects the views of a statistically valid representative sample of registered voters in Steamboat Springs, weighted to match the community's actual demographics. The results show strong, consistent majority support for the proposed facility across every dimension we tested. the same time the community is saying that they want it done right with meaningful public access equitable pricing real parking solution and a design that honors the hills character the open ended comments reinforce all that so but this really seems that the city isn't really divided on whether to do this it's a community that largely wants to move forward but with their concerns addressed in this upcoming process thanks

Thank you, Sonya. Sonya will be available for questions as well if you have some specific data or analytics questions. Backcasting really quickly for you. So you received the request from Sports Club. We went and conducted the survey, represented that last month, the Parks and Rec Commission, and then they posed a motion to share with you, and that's where we are today. Our options are before you, and we can open up to Q&A and then hear what you have to say about your options.

Okay. Thank you, Drew. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Sonia. What questions do we have for any of our presenters? No questions.

Okay. I will. Maybe for Brian.

Hi, Brian. Hi, counselor.

I get that you can't do a design really until we start moving into the next phase. Is that right? But right now you're looking at one story where the current facility is and not moving into where um we have excuse me that gazebo so that would stay or how far like where where exactly are you thinking so the the the current footprint that we proposed would be again from about where the temporary ticket office sits

uh to the dumpster wall do you know where the dumpster wall is um that that would be the footprint it would go back into the outrun uh you know again just matching the profile and it would be set back um again this is the conceptual plan but it would be set back enough that there would be in front of that facility there'd still be a lane for pedestrian ingress and egress into the park and the current traffic lane so that the current traffic lane coming in from the throat lot would would remain a continuous lane into that parking lot and then a pedestrian walkway and then the front of the building um but but from about the ticket office to the dumpster wall okay thanks

I have a question for you. Yes. On the hours, fees and use types, once an agreement is reached, are those flexible in terms of what experience you receive from the community as well as from the Winter Sports Club use?

you know uh thanks councilman tina i think i think that absolutely we we would want to make a very strong and uh transparent commitment with teeth but also um hoping and assuming this is a 20-year with 20-year renewable type agreement we we would i would believe both parties would want some flexibility in what does that look like five years from now or 10 years from now while still maintaining a commitment.

I'm just concerned from a community perspective, if the community needed a higher level of usage, that there would be opportunities to discuss that within this agreement.

I think that's the nature of the discussing and negotiating the agreement. So, yeah, I mean, our answer right now is yes. But I think... Our hope is to be discussing that with simultaneously finalizing plans, because if it's even 500 square feet different this way or that way, that would affect what we can commit to in terms of serving how many people at how many times and things like that. That's why we would be anxious to answer those questions for the community and our own operations. But it needs to be based in reality, not concept, I guess, at this point, because that's what we'll be negotiating. Let me be specific.

I guess what I'm saying is if you find over time that the community isn't able to use the facilities based on their demand, they have more demand than they have hours of use. Would there be consideration to changing that? I think yes. Okay. Any other questions?

No questions. Sure.

I'll ask the question.

Currently today during Winter Carnival, kids, you know, hang up on the top of the hill and slide down the hill onto the top of that little workout facility, you know, and, you know, terrifying the parents, but, you know, kids are having a great time and kind of concerned about losing that feature for the kids.

At least it wasn't the marmots that a few people have expressed concerns about, which I love the marmots too. There, I guess, John, I would say there are plenty of places kids will find to slide around in a house and no matter what we do.

For you too, John, if you need a place. And adults. Okay, are there any other questions? Okay, if not, I'll open it up to public comment. Is there anybody who would like to make a public comment regarding this topic? If so, come on down, state your name and address, and you have three minutes. Okay. Drew, would you mind having it so we can see this? Seeing none, we'll go online and see is there anyone online who'd like to make a public comment? Please raise your hand. not at this point seeing none um maybe what we should put up are the well you took it down now but um as far as bringing it back to council to answer the options there um Let's have some discussion.

Thanks, Brian and team. Good job. Thank you very much. I've been part of this Tourette process, the desire to get something to honor our Olympians and our Winter Sports Club. It's such a successful program that we have that we are all so proud of. as i look at the facility and i see everything that we've done as a community the one thing that we haven't seen is a increase in a in a weight training or a facility for our kids on the inside that's controlled and uh you know we just need an indoor facility for our olympians and i say that because the four-year-old who's here learning how to ski jump like my son did could be an olympian next year And we just need, or down the road. But that's the one thing that I've always been surprised in is when we look at Park City and Lake Placid and even Vail, those facilities and these Olympic facilities are just so amazing, right? And then to look at how we have so many kids that come out of our program nine olympians pretty much came from steamboat springs seven home homegrown uh in this last olympics and you guys have been able to succeed in that with a dated facility and for me i've been here for six years and i just i want to give the winter sports club the honor it is for the product they're producing They're producing Olympians. And it could be that not everyone's going to be an Olympian, but everyone gets to enjoy this winter in Steamboat Springs and growing up to it. So going through the process, we went through the Surratt process. Brian came. Sarah was running it for a while. He's here. And so I'm glad we went through this slow process. And I think about how long it's taken us to get to this point. and respect the process because we're just doing that now with Slate Creek and community builders. Yes, my patients were out more than once on some things, but even in the report that we got from Slate Creek, it was very good, very successful. And with this report, I think that for me, I can't see anything more than a yes, we need to go to the next step. We owe it to our kids in this community that aren't using it right now, the ones that are being born right now, because they're going to be using Winter Sports Club. And we know that, and we need to keep it. So the other thing that I have to say, though, four or five years ago was the amount of scholarships. The one thing that happened for me when I first got into city council was recognizing how much we were trying to keep it for the regular person. You know, any high school student or any middle school that wanted to go. And in the last five, ten years, you've went from $100,000 to $650,000 in scholarships. That shows to me, without us demanding it, I mean, any city council didn't say, if you don't, we won't. no no they just came up and said we want to make sure the city is involved and gets the kids can be part of this regardless and so we have we can't lose sight of the commitment from the winter sports club to our local community who are not the wealthy but can still participate like they did years ago so i would encourage all of us to vote yes on this okay thank you counselor pacino

Other comments?

Yes, I'll just I'll just add on that. I mean, obviously, in addition to what Council Merchino said, I mean, again, applaud the process. It has, I think, done a great job in terms of taking a step back and really working to get kind of community engagement and community input. And I think you know have landed in a good place in terms of not only does this benefit winter you know obviously kind of the core winter sports club but there's a huge community benefit and i think certainly you know the opportunity in terms of maybe helping out with a little bit of the traffic flow making it a little safer there um you know as a you know as a potential obviously all of those details have yet to be worked out but i think there's a vision there that will um not only kind of honor kind of the historic aspect of Halison Hill and also, you know, continue to serve the winter sports club athletes, but also brings in more community, more community benefit. So I also support moving forward with this.

Other comments.

I won't repeat, I agree with Councilor Pacino and Councilor Gary and Brian and for the rest of the club staff and board members, thank you so much for your commitment to recognizing the community involvement with this process. And also recognizing that people love Howelson Hill even if you're not using it and so the view from when we're downtown being able to look out and see house and recognizing that when you're thinking about a design as well um it's just so refreshing to have you all present and really have that lens so thank you so much and i support okay

Yes, councilor diddle and everything else um and I also appreciate that I feel like the right sizing of the complex and the design of you know right into the hill that also takes advantage of the you know the end run um area and tying that you know nicely into um the facility hope I know that how it has to be designed and you know hopefully that'll all work out But I think that's a really thoughtful design and also thoughtful around the traffic flows and because that's actually a hang up today. And I think that would greatly improve upon that. The other piece I really appreciate is the sharing of the workout facility with the community, especially the underprivileged or those who just don't want to do skiing to that level. but they still have access to the ski training programs and other types of programs that the full-time athletes have on a less committed scale. And I think that's a really good venture benefit. So thank you. I fully support this.

Any comment from you, Councilor Swintek? i agree with everything thanks okay and i think that this is a long time coming and uh it's really needed and it's exciting and i think you can see you have an energetic council so i'm going to ask for a motion i move to uh well yeah i make a motion that we continue with our option one option one yes Okay, we have a motion from Councilor Pacino, a second by Councilor Swintek to continue with option one. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 7-0. Thank you, or 6-0, I'm sorry.

And Drew, thank you for all your work. Appreciate it.

Okay, it is 7-17. We'll take a 10-minute break until 7-27 and come back and go through our consent calendar agenda. I love the design of the belt too.

Yeah.

okay let me get to where we are um okay everyone we're going to get started here so and get everyone back in the room that would be great Okay, we are going to move on to our consent calendar motions, resolutions, and ordinances. Items on the consent calendar may be reviewed and commented upon in the same manner as other agenda items. Any member of 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. We have on the consent calendar five items i will read through the five and then i'll go back and ask council if they like to pull any of those items and then i will ask the public if they would like to pull any items items that are not pulled as stated prior will be approved with a single motion so with that item number eight is a resolution approving a development plan conditional use major variance pl20260065 steamboat springs winter sports club steamboat springs resort corporation voodoo water ramp jump complex item number nine is a resolution approving a development plan major variance pl20250395 western resilience center Item number 10 is a resolution approving a preliminary plat major variance PL202600601377-2. Item number 11 is an ordinance rezoning lot one, Hilltop Mobile Home Replat from Manufactured Home Zone District to Residential Neighborhood Two Zone District, PL20260102. Item number 12 is an ordinance vacating a portion of a utility easement located on lot one, Jackson-Dytroni Subdivision, PL20260100. With that, I'll ask, is there any of those items that council would like to pull for discussion? Pull 11, which is the 600 harms. Number 11 is pulled. Is there any other item that we want to pull? Hearing none, I'll ask- Hang on.

I think I would like to pull, I think number eight.

Number eight? Okay. Anything else?

I'll just say that I'll need the record to reflect that I would recuse myself from the vote on item number nine. I sit on the Western Resilience Center board and as such have been part of the conversations regarding the building and the development plan.

All right, thank you for that, Councilor Gary. Any others from council perspective to pull besides items number eight and 11? Okay, is there anybody in the audience who would like to pull any other item besides item eight or 11? Is there anybody online who would like to pull any item besides eight and 11? Okay, hearing none, we will pull items 8 and 11. And I would ask for a motion for approvals of items number 9, 10, and 12. A motion to approve those. So moved. Second. Okay, we have a motion from Councillor Pacino, second from Councillor Agosta. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 6-0. We'll go back to... item number eight a resolution approving a development plan conditional use major variance pl20260065 steamboat springs winter sports club steamboat springs resort corporation voodoo water ramp jump complex thank you toby floor is yours

uh would you like a presentation or just have some questions i think um i would love to have just a quick presentation okay um i can do that and the applicant is here as well so they can also um speak to this um so toby software senior planner so this is a project within the greenhorn ranch subdivision it's near three ski runs and a bike trail um it's at the base of the current freestyle complex and within the big air run out there are not any built structures in the area the winter sports club will move its ramp jump training program to this location the project includes building a private access road and parking constructing a ramp a deck with four trampolines and three support buildings the facility will be used in the summer and fall for sports club athletes there is not any public access The project includes two variances to parking standards, one for parking surface and the second for the amount of parking. The use is an outdoor amusement use, which is a conditional use in the open space and recreation zone district. The future land use district for this area is recreation, open space, trails and natural areas. An outdoor amusement use is part of the vision and character of that district. This use will contribute to the general planning and long range considerations of the district. The use will mitigate their impacts by limiting access to the facility and limiting use of the facility to the summer and fall seasons. Offsite parking will be managed by the Warner Sports Club to ensure that the public trailhead parking is available and not impacted by the use. that athletes and coaches use the required shuttles there are some other facilities that support ski activities near this area that are similar in character this facility will add some structure to an area that has a greater level of development in the winter so we find it to be consistent with what is expected regarding the variances The code requires an asphalt or a concrete surface. However, there is a section that allows an all-weather surface in the OR district, so we find that providing this all-weather surface is equal to the standard and that it furthers other standards. Regarding the parking amount variance, two purposes of the parking standards are to prevent a shortage of vehicular parking areas and that parking is designed operated and maintained to ensure their usefulness the proposed spaces will serve this use and allow the public trailhead parking to continue to be used this development is providing less parking than required but the applicant has indicated that they have provided enough parking and the use will be managed and operated to serve a limited number of users for seasonal use whereas the typical outdoor amusement is for public use. So with these considerations, we think that the parking will be operated and maintained to meet the purpose of the standard without strict application. So we approve or we recommend approval of this and planning commission recommended approval as well. And like I said, the applicant is here and can answer more specific questions about the facility.

okay great thanks toby um my only question is i saw the planning commission um had quite a bit of conversation around um the removal of trees and then i saw i mean it was kind of hard to track where they were landing with it but i saw one commissioner asked for another survey or a different surveyor where did we land on that

So we have a requirement that trees that are of a certain size, so I believe it's over 12 inches or more, those trees in caliper, so that's the size of their trunk, those trees need to be preserved at a 50% amount. And anything that's, I think, 23 inches or more in caliper, those trees need to be preserved at a 75% amount. The standards are to preserve those trees as much as practical I think the CDC says so the area obviously is quite large the property is quite large where this is so there is a boundary for this project within that boundary there are a certain number of trees I think it's about ten trees that meet those standards And I believe that they are removing some of those trees for their improvements and preserving some of those trees such that they do meet the standards. So I think it was the discussion was they were sort of questioning and they talked about like, oh, you could just expand the boundary or change the survey and find something to meet the standard. I don't think any of That was the intention of this project, so in our review of that we did have them survey the large trees within the area so. It shows some trees and some areas of trees that are going to be impacted, but those are not necessarily the trees that are required to be preserved, so you can remove trees. And again, we found that they are. preserving some trees and removing some trees that meet that standard. So we were satisfied by the analysis and the plans that they provided.

Okay, perfect. Thank you, Toby. That was it.

That was it. Does the applicant want to make any comments?

Since you're here, we'll see snakes.

Gavin Malia, Steamboat Skiing Resort Corporation, and Brian from Winter Sports Club. We don't really have anything to add, but this is a great project, similar to the conversation you all had earlier this evening about the great partnership and support of the club. I can tell you that the resort is behind that support as well, and we love seeing this project go forward and support this facility for the community and for the kids. If you guys have any other questions, we are here.

I'll add one quick thing just for context. This is a facility that has existed on private land for over 20 years. It was built as a temporary facility some 22, 23 years ago. That family has been enormously gracious with that support over that time. They're building their homes. One is about 100 feet from the ramp and one is about 300 feet from the ramp so that was that's what precipitated you know finding a new venue um we have worked closely with uh ssrc going back almost two years on this um and it's an ideal location and it is the park smalley freestyle complex that that whole area it's at the base of where the old aerial uh facility was where the big year was built this last season uh just adjacent to the travis mayor voodoo free mogul course so it's it's really it's it's um you know we we did a full tree analysis as as toby said and uh we're excited to move forward to make sure we keep a facility that has existed in steamboat a long time uh going uh and we're excited that it's in a more visible uh place that that can bring a little bit more uh attention to what we're doing with the facility uh at the resort in the summer and fall months

Mayor Mrakas, Okay, any questions for either Gavin or Brian. Mayor Mrakas, Okay.

Mayor Mrakas, A curiosity questions by Toby, that is how how far up the hill is city property, I mean I would have went if I looked at this, I would have thought Oh, this is for service, but are, but we go up to a certain point i'm just curious.

In this area, it's hard for me to say. I think it usually goes, I think the boundary is about to the Christie midpoint, I think. And so maybe sort of across there, but I don't know those boundaries exactly well.

That's about right, yeah. Because I asked that same question, so I pulled it earlier. Yeah, it's above.

Yeah, obviously. It must be above if we're going through the view. Around Christie midpoint.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay, with that, I'll open it up to public comment. Is there anybody in the room who would like to make public comment? Please come on down. Seeing none, we'll look online and see, is there anybody online who would like to make a public comment? Please raise your hand. Okay. Seeing no one, we'll close public comment. Bring it back to council for deliberations and or a motion on number eight.

so i would just like to say the reason why i pulled it was not because i had concerns i think this is a really big deal and that we had you all here and so to be able to just like recognize this um as such a big deal and thank you gavin for the partnership um it's huge and so i'm really excited to see this move forward so that's why i pulled it okay i move to approve agenda item eight

second okay we have motion from counselor pacino a second by counselor gary all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes six zero build it build it and they will come right build it thank you guys we'll be excited to see it yeah two good topics for our winter sports club yeah thank you okay moving on to item number 11 an ordinance rezoning lot one hilltop mobile home replat from manufacturing home zone district to residential neighborhood two zone district pl20260102 back we come to toby

Maybe before you begin, I just want to make a disclosure. I was up there doing a site visit, and I did run into a resident, and we did have a conversation, but it was about process. Okay. So not anything about the merits.

No content, okay. I was up there. I didn't run into anybody. Okay, fine. Hopefully we all did a fly-by at least. Just FYI. I think we're okay. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Next time you need to run, not walk.

Right. Just walk, run through. Right. Well, I was kind of obvious that I was there.

Do you want to give us a presentation on this one?

Sure. I will give a brief presentation. Then the applicant is here and would like to give a brief presentation as well. Okay. So the subject property is adjacent to the Hilltop Homes PUD. It is not part of the PUD. It is across the street from the high school. Nearby properties are zoned MH, RN2, RE2, RO, and OR. This request is to change the subject property from MH to RN2. The amendment is consistent with the purpose of the RN district. It allows for general residential development that is compatible with nearby areas. We find that the type of development that would be permitted in the RN2 zone will be compatible with the surrounding area. The current zone district only allows one dwelling unit per lot. The proposed district allows two dwelling units per lot. So in that way, we believe that the zone map amendment adds density that is consistent with the long-term planning goals for this area. When we consider the neighborhood character, we look at the surrounding area and the adjacent properties. This area has a mixed character of large and small lots, large and small homes, and that is representative of the mix of zone districts that are within the area. The Canvas plan future land use district for this area is compact residential. The vision for this district is to have a mix of housing types and to add subtle residential density by allowing accessory dwelling units. one specific long-range planning consideration for this district is to add new residential units to existing neighborhoods the proposed amendment furthers this goal and the zone map amendment prepares this lot for additional development that furthers the community plan staff recommended approval of this project but as you saw in your packet the planning commission vote was split okay thank you toby would the applicant like to come up and make a

Presentation. You come down and state your name and address, please. Good evening, everyone.

Adam Wright with Craft Architecture Studio as the applicant representing the owner. I just need to share my screen. I just wanted to touch on a couple important points related to the application. I'm not going to go through a full recap of the application submittal. Toby's presentation covered that. Following my talk on a couple things, the property owner has joined virtually and he was going to make a short statement. The first piece I wanted to cover that relates to this is to ensure that as part of this overall picture of what could be on this lot, that we're considering the average plate height, which is a standard within the code in addition to overall height and other things. On the screen here is a clip from the Community Development Code that aids in understanding how that's calculated. And this may or may not be helpful, but I wanted to pull it up as a way to reference what the standard gets at and, you know, As a way to distill it somewhat, you effectively on every elevation of any building, you look at a potential lowest amount and greatest amount of the top wall plate that defines the highest roof to an existing grade. And so when you have, say, two different measurements from a low and a high, like you see here on a slope, you add those up, average them, and that's your average plate height. It turns out that the MH zone and RN2 actually have the same average plate height maximum, which is 28 feet. In this diagram here, same drawing, but I added a couple notes to help bring this into the context of the subject lot and also touch on overall height. For starters, this lot is relatively flat, as are a lot of them in the neighborhood. So just to help and easily conceptualize this, I drew a red line, which is just a flat lot. So forget that there's any slope. But in this case, if it is flat with a plate height, average plate height max of 28 feet, Effectively, you can say that both your measurements say on either side of the building are gonna be 28 feet, add them up, divide it by two, you've got 28 feet. So that's important because on a flat lot in this area, in the MH zone, you can build up to that because coinciding with the average plate height is the overall height for that zone district. meaning they both equal 28 feet. You can build up to 28 feet in max height and you have an average plate height of 28 feet. So it's conceivable that you could see a box like what's drawn in a dashed line where you have a 28 foot tall building and the average plate height doesn't actually come into play, again on a flat lot. IN THE RN2 DISTRICT WHERE THE OVERALL HEIGHT IS 40 FEET, YOU EFFECTIVELY ARE ALLOWING ROOM TO ACCOMMODATE A ROOF WHEN YOU KIND OF DISTILL IT DOWN. AND SO BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH THE OVERALL HEIGHT IS HIGHER, WITH AN AVERAGE PLATE HEIGHT OF 28 FEET, IT IMPACTS THE MASSING which is the point of the average plate height requirement is it brings down the scale of a building by putting a limit on your maximum wall height for the roof. So I just wanted to make sure that's clear when talking about this, the components that go into this application and the considerations for what may or may not be developed. And then the second piece Relates to just how I believe it's important in talking about neighborhood character to not To consider the broader neighborhood and I don't mean all of Old Town necessarily, but just the high school area And and that part of town and not it's not simply based on a street by street basis so Now you can see up on the screen is the land use exhibit, which is in the packet, the application. And so this, my point here is that in looking at the slightly broader context, at least in a map format this is why we're showing or wanted to show the json zoning and how they relate and how this particular parcel aligns with or extends or however you want to describe it some of the adjacent zones and then to that end the the subject parcel is ultimately being evaluated in the context of maximum possible development. And that's fair. I wouldn't dispute that. But I think, again, if you look at the broader map here, that would mean that all these other properties should be evaluated in the same way if we're making some sort of comparison. So while the community has homes or it could be said there are various homes in this general neighborhood that are smaller than what could be or currently smaller than what could be developed. any of these lots in the RN2 district specifically, I'm thinking of to the east, someone could come in and take them down and build a larger home, given the standards and the metrics of the RN2 zone district. So to take that one step further, because frankly, I was curious, this is the same map, but I added information, which takes, I'm gonna zoom in here. These numbers are simply looking at what's the lot area. And then given the lot coverage allowance or maximum of 35%, what the footprint could be on some of these adjacent lots. So 435 could have a footprint of 2,744 square feet. I don't actually know what it is at the moment, um and you go one lot over to one four four five uh it's actually 0.38 acres sixteen thousand five hundred square feet that could have a footprint of potentially of five thousand seven hundred ninety four square feet um again we're just we're looking at kind of the general maxes that are allowed which i think is has been part of some of the discussion on the subject parcel so uh you could then take it one step further and say that well if these footprints were maxed out again considering potentially other standards such as side setbacks etc um which is not being evaluated yet um and it's a tutorial structure you could double the slot coverage number so that That starts to create houses that are, again, allowable and characteristic, at least per our code, for R and 2. So I think it's simply wanted to clarify and make the point that neighborhoods evolve, and there's no saying that the look and feel that you currently see driving down, say, Dabney Lane or Maple Street could not change and be very much, much different in the future. and finally just to to confirm too or clarify too that again in rn2 these numbers that you're seeing or any redevelopment is entirely used by right currently so while we're looking at obviously a zone zoning map amendment and and there's consideration for what that means for the standards these are already in place for these other homes so there's no no review there's no um consideration of the potential that it might change the neighborhood or someone might not like how it looks and feels in the neighborhood so those are the items i wanted to talk about um at this time i just i wanted to introduce chris mckee who's the lot owner and he was going to make a brief statement so i think chris you need to raise your hand potentially

You need to unmute. Yeah, just unmute, Chris, and introduce yourself.

Yeah, it wouldn't let me unmute there for a second there.

And he needs to start his video. Put it on video, please.

Okay. Yeah, sorry. It's a little dark here. We're over in France visiting my wife and her family's kids with our kids. And so we're eight hours ahead. 3.55 a.m.

Okay, well, we appreciate you being on at that hour. Can you just introduce yourself, though, with your name and address, please?

Yeah, yeah. So my name's Christopher McKee. I'm owner of 600 Harms Court. And, you know, I have a brief statement I could read here for you, but just wanted to, you know, say thank you for the opportunity to speak, but I'm happy to go ahead and move on and read a brief statement if it helps.

Go ahead.

Okay. All right. So, you know, I have deep roots in the area. I've lived in Laramie, Wyoming, Fort Collins, Colorado for the last 40 years. And so while visiting, staying in Steamboat regularly over the time, and for the past six years, I've enjoyed staying at 600 Harms Court, you know, the Butcher Knife Creek in downtown and walking downtown to the various restaurants and skiing and enjoying the area. I'd say that 600 Harms Court has always been a single family dwelling, as the city's own records confirm from the 2001 Hilltop subdivision. It was separated as lot one, has never been a part of a mobile home lots. The existing home is very old and in need of replacement. And like many of my neighbors, I want to build a reasonable, well-designed, modern mountain house that aligns well with the community. And even at approximately 4,500 square feet on two floors, that's roughly 2200 square foot footprint. And that represents a little less than 10% of the lot coverage. So leaving the vast majority of the property open, pristine space. that respects the site's natural character and creek views. I'm working with Craft Architecture Studio, it's a well-respected local firm, and trying to just do a thoughtful design that's sensitive to the slope, open to the views, and using natural materials and allowing a generous outdoor living space there. The home itself would feature an accessory dwelling unit above a detached garage. This would result in two housing units and only one less than the maximum that could be achieved if three lots were created. under the current zoning. So I'm not a developer. There's no intention to subdivide the lot if the zoning is changed. My intent is to develop a family home for long-term ownership. You know, the property sits at the end of Harms Court, not in the middle of a dense residential block. There are comparable larger scale homes nearby, including an adjacent property, just one street to the west. And in response to concerns from my neighbor there, Averon Feinberg, his own home is tall and prominent on its lot. So my proposal aims for a balanced scale that complements the neighborhood rather than overwhelming it. still while preserving the generous open space and viewing corridors. Rezoning for an RN2 allows for a reasonable single-family home plus one ADU, consistent with the access utility easement that was amended in 2019 to allow two units on this lot. This approach aligns with the neighborhood's evolution since 2001. matches the planning department's recommendation. It adds housing in a controlled way without the greater impacts that could come from subdividing the property into multiple smaller parcels under current MH zoning. So just concluding, I'm committed to being a good neighbor and contributing positively to the Steamboat's housing mix with a quality home and an ADU that adds long-term value. I always welcome dialogue with the neighbors and happy to share more details on the evolving design. So just thank you for this opportunity to voice my thoughts and respectfully request your support for the zoning.

Okay.

Thank you, Chris.

So, Council, do you have any questions for Chris, Adam, or Toby? Yes, Councilor Agosta.

So I think it's a question for Toby. So Toby, can this, this lot is currently MH. Do we know if they wanted to split the lot, what's the maximum number of lots you can get out of that? Is it three?

I don't know off the top of my head. Adam might know a little bit better. I think it's about 25,000 square feet. And I think the max lot size is about, let's see, it's 8,000 or it's, I think it's about 8,000 square feet. I don't have all the information, but probably about three lots. I don't quite know.

So, yeah. So, we don't know how many lots we can get, but it's probably three. Is that what I heard?

I think so. There's a lot of restrictions that would come into place when doing a subdivision. There's some limited access. So, there's actual physical limited access through the private access easement and the agreement that they have for two units. So, first and foremost access would have to be worked out between the property owners. We wouldn't do any subdivision before they had legal access. But even if they were able to get legal access, the actual length of the lot along the street is fairly short. So I'm not sure that it would work entirely for those requirements so there's a lot of factors to be considered in a subdivision and we we don't have a subdivision in front of us so a subdivision would be a different question i'm not sure how many lots could actually be built on that property there is a fairly large slope and a no build area that might impact the subdivision as well So it's really hard to say what a subdivision could be in raw numbers. I don't know if those would be actual numbers. Right.

You don't know. MH right now is maximum is 2,500 square feet, and maximum of square footage for this large lot of RN2 is...

I think you could have 8,000 square feet and a lot in RN2 and 16,000 square feet if you wanted to build a duplex. So that's an 8,000 square foot minimum lot size, 4,000 square foot minimum lot size in MH.

Okay.

There might be able to be maybe two RN lots, but again, a lot of constraints on that property. So it's really hard to say if it could be subdivided at all, if it would meet any standards, or if it was viable.

Yeah, you look at that detail. So a PUD was created. What does that cover? Once they create that PUD, what are the things that we have oversight or no longer have oversight in terms of the definition of what's happening with that PUD?

So again, this lot is not part of the PUD. It's just adjacent to it. It was an old PUD, meaning that it didn't entirely change all of the zoning as our new PUDs do but that PUD is quite strict there are building envelopes on each lot there is a maximum height so there's very little that we as a city can do and very little that the neighbors can do that are part of that PUD without an amendment to that PUD so very limited development. And that was intended based on the existing nature of that beauty at the time that it was a manufactured home development, and that the it was already a mobile home park and they wanted to give those lots to those owners. So The PUD was necessary to kind of keep the existing houses in place and fit all of those lots and create a private road. That type of subdivision, if we created a subdivision like that from scratch would require probably a PUD or a lot of variances. There's not any part of that that really meets our standards. That's why it's a PUD.

Okay, thank you. Okay, others?

Councilor Gary?

ahead and counselor can you ask why thanks why why are you trying to up zone this this is to the applicant yeah you want a bigger unit you want two stories an adu uh honestly the big probably the primary reason is to have a secondary dwelling in it for uh for first and foremost um but then also more flexibility in the overall size of the home Honestly, height is not something that is a factor we're really looking for or needing. So one of the biggest challenges with the MH zoning is that a secondary dwelling unit is not allowed. And so to have a lot of this size of the subject parcel and not be able to do a secondary unit when that's desirable seems at odds with you know, that size lot and what potentially it could be.

And is the size of the unit limited if it stays MH? Not the ADU, I'm just saying like the main.

There's a max dwelling unit of 2,500 square feet.

So you couldn't build a house that's bigger than 2,500 square feet?

Correct. Got it. Well, you can have a basement, which is not part of that square footage. Yeah.

Okay, thanks. Maybe just what's the size of that? What's the square footage on the house that's currently there?

That is good question. I think it's around 1500. Chris, what's the size of the?

Yeah, I want to say 15 1600 square feet, something like that. Yeah.

Thank you.

I was going to follow up with Toby on kind of this issue of the plate height. And I understand, right, you know, the 25 or 28, is it 28 and 42 limits in terms of average plate height versus the distinction between the MH, right, is 28 and RN2 is 40. But, I mean, in terms of what we saw or what was shown with the different types of roofs i mean you could go higher if you had a flat roof right i mean if you had a different configuration of a roof in terms of if you go to the rn2 right and you look at the average plate height uh so the

So for RN2, the overall height is 40 and the plate height is 28 feet. So that average has to be, it has to be an average. So you would measure the average off the highest roof. So if you had a higher, if you had a 40 foot roof, let's say, and it was pitched and that went down to 32 feet, you'd have to have some portion of that building that was a lot lower, 24 feet or something to get an average. of 28 feet. So as Adam mentioned, the purpose of that standard is to manage the mass and scale. In RN2, it's really to make sure that you don't have a 40-foot tall flat-roofed box. Right. You could have in either zone district, you could have a 28-foot tall flat-roofed box. So in RN2, that would probably meet the standards, and also in MH, it would meet the standards. right but it could be sloped like what we're seeing around town right i mean in the sense of right maybe i mean when i say flat it's just not i forget what's the term gabled yeah it could be sloped but again that main roof structure would have to have on a flat lot as adam mentioned there'd have to be some portion of that building that had a a a shorter portion absolutely so to manage that impact so it makes it a little bit more challenging on a flat lot to build a flat roofed thing and meet the plate height standards without um without requesting an adjustment okay thank you toby i had a question for you i'm trying to understand this it says in in the you say that the final criteria is that the zone map amendment needs to meet

one criteria for approval. In this case, it's the community plan. And you say the community canvas plan future land use district for this area is compact residential. And compact residential is a mix of housing types, including ADUs. Correct. So how big is this compact residential district?

It includes most of Old Town. So it's what we would think of as Old Town. And in this particular part of town, I can show you a map of it, if that'd be helpful. It goes from the edge of Old Town, which you would sort of think of as Old Town, to Amethyst Drive in this area. And down to Oak Street.

OK. Thank you.

I have another question. So in the criteria for approval, the one I'm getting stuck on, the advantages of the proposed zone districts potentially outweigh the disadvantages to the community or the neighborhood. Definition, do we define neighborhood?

I don't think we define neighborhood in the CDC. We typically look at the surrounding area. We look at the adjacent properties. So I don't think we have a specific definition. It's probably pretty variable from place to place in this city.

It would be subjective based on what we think the neighborhood is in the context.

Yes, our community plan does try to give us a little guidance on what a neighborhood might mean in that compact residential to help us apply things like these zone map amendments. So that's why it has some of that criteria, some of that other criteria to help give us some context on the character to weigh it out.

Okay.

Other questions for Toby or any of the other presenters? okay if not we'll go to public comment if there's anybody in the room who'd like to make public comment on this topic please come on down you have three minutes and state your name and address please

My name's Avram Feinberg, 435 Dabney Lane. Hi, Chris. Thanks for showing up. My family lives in Spruce Knoll, immediately adjacent to Harms Court, 600 Harms Court. Our neighborhood is showing up to speak tonight. Our public comments are about history, people, and neighborhood character. As you know, our community development plan is designed to, quote, achieve quality neighborhoods that are compatible in character and scale with the surrounding neighborhood. Compatible, character, scale. I'm not going to question quality of development here because this is about a zoning change, not the future potential development. The proposed zoning change is not compatible in character or scale of the existing neighborhoods. Property functions as part of Hilltop Home Replat subdivision. My neighbor Karen will give you a bit of history of this unique neighborhood. Other speakers will outline the existing easement and speak to neighborhood character. We're here to represent that this application clearly fails section 70, excuse me, 720B, the criteria around compatible with surrounding zone districts, land uses, neighborhood character, and will result in logical and orderly development pattern within the community. The application states the property is having characteristics more closely aligned with the adjacent zoning. You all visited the property, took a closer look. Physically, it is only accessed through Harms Court and Second Street. Physically, it is completely separate from RO and RE2 neighborhoods referenced. The character of Hilltop's home replat and spruce knoll the only relevant comparisons are currently 1,100 square feet to 3,000 square feet more or less single family homes attached garage generally under 0.38 acres this zoning change on this acreage opens up a 6,000 to 8,000 square foot development with detached garage and additional dwelling unit The application states that proposed zoning will not change the neighborhood's character. While the community plan encourages housing variety, policy H1.2 clearly directs the character of existing neighborhoods must be protected. The request for R and two is not the character of Hilltop home subdivision. We encourage you to question this after hearing our comments. this is not orderly development expanding a different zoning on hilltop homes is the opposite of logical development look beyond the application and consider the reality on the ground this property is part of hilltop homes physically and geographically the end-of-life structures can be redeveloped without zoning rezoning there are alternatives to ways to redevelopment housing density and maintaining neighborhood character uphold the intent of the Community Development Code and deny table or provide other options to the applicant. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to come down and make public comment? Come on down. State your name and address, please.

good evening city council uh karen vale 637 harms court i have lived in the hilltop community since 1996. wheeland and isla grace harms built the hilltop mobile home park in the 1960s and through their sweat and love over the years they created a community for low-income people to thrive in the valley they were gracious and passionate caretakers of their community By 2000, with their health failing, they put the land up for sale for $675,000. The Hilltop community decided they would not be shut out without a fight. So we approached the Regional Affordable Living Foundation to help us formulate a plan to purchase the land. Through months of hard work by many, many people, the generosity of many professionals donating their time and resources, on September 28, 2000, a contract for the land purchase was signed and the 17 trailers and Harms' house became the property of the newly formed Hilltop Mobile Homeowners Association, LLC. the mission statement of this llc is as follows quote to create and maintain owner-occupied affordable housing for singles couples and families to maintain a friendly neighborhood on this 3.2 acres dedicated to the working class in steamboat springs This statement is to encourage all members of this association to support and accomplish the goal of affordable living in Steamboat Springs, Colorado." Leland and Isla Grace were thrilled that their beloved land could live on through the Hilltop homeowners and sent us this letter a month after the closing in September. Quote, dear residents of Hilltop Trailer Court, congratulations and good wishes from Leland and Isla Grace. It was a very hard decision for us to put the court on the market as we had built it from scratch and it was the result of our life's work. Also, we knew that if somebody got it, they would probably close it down before too long and that would make a hardship of all of you. That is why you got the letter stating our intentions before it went on the open market with the hope that somehow you could find someone that would keep it as the court or maybe do as you did and put something together. It was also the reason that we offered to carry back some to make it easier to try for financing. As you may or may not know, we had two offers on the table just as soon as we signed the listing. And later, one came in with more money than the listing, all of which we held off on until we saw you folks, if you folks could put something on the table. now you should see some appreciation on your investment once again god bless good luck and thank you leland and isla grace thank you come on down sir state your name and address please and you have three minutes

good evening city council my name is john marin i'm the owner of 592 second street and one of the original homeowners in the uh hoa and i preceding that i lived there as a tenant of from leland and isla grace for many many years before that um so to leave to where karen left off um Basically, after completion of the sale, the mobile home park and 600 Harms Court to the Hilltop Mobile Home Owners LLC, which we formed in order to buy the whole parcel, the LLC put 600 Harms Court up for sale to recoup some of the expenses and costs and make it more affordable for its residents to own their individual properties. The property of 600 Harms Court was then sold on June 14th, 2001. In October, 2002, the City of Steamboat Springs approved the subdivision and the LLC was dissolved to form the Hilltop HOA. So as you can see from Karen's comments and my own, just our brief history, 600 harms court has always been part of our community access to 600 harms court is solely through our neighborhood i feel that 600 harms court is and will always be a part of our community and i strongly urge city council to keep 600 harms court zone mh for for the well-being of our neighborhood thank you for your consideration thank you thank you

okay is there anyone else in the audience who would like to come on down good evening everybody thanks uh thanks for being here um my name is allison kuzi i live at 523 harms court um which is in the hilltop homes subdivision um i just kind of wanted to talk a little bit about the rn2 zoning and some of my concerns about the size and the mass of this the rn2 zoning would allow development far larger than what exists in hilltop homes today 600 harms court is the only property in hilltop home subdivision not included in the pud and it can already be developed at a larger scale than nearby homes. RN2 would widen that gap dramatically, allowing up to 40 feet in height, which is double the roughly 20 foot limit that currently exists for our surrounding homes within the PUD. The mismatch in square footage size is just as striking. The average hilltop home is about 1,500 square feet. RN2 could allow development, you know, we were talking 6,000 to 8,000 square feet, more than four times the size of the homes around it. The easement agreement between the HOA and 600 HARMS court addresses more than one residential unit. and that should not be read as the HOA having support for the rezoning. I served on the HOA board during those negotiations. The agreement addressed road maintenance fees if more than one unit were built. It was not approval for RN2 zoning or for development out of scale with the neighborhood. The disadvantages clearly outweigh the claimed benefits. This rezoning would introduce height, massing, and intensity that do not belong in the Hilltop Home subdivision. I do support housing that fits the neighborhood and I'm certainly not opposed to an appropriately scaled ADU, but RN2 zoning is just not really compatible because as RN2 zoning is put in place, we lose any control and the maximums get a little bit scary for our area. It really is something far larger and taller than Hilltop Home subdivision was built to accommodate. And for these reasons, I'm asking City Council to deny the amendment. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, come on down.

My name is Jan Levy. I own 577 2nd Street, which is part of the Hilltop Homeowners Association. We are excited to have a new home at 600 Harms Court. We agree there's an end of life with the existing home there. But I hear all this conversation going on about ADUs and increased density, but nobody's talking about ownership versus rentals. By providing an ADU, all we're providing is another rental property. By maintaining it at... manufactured home we're allowing affordable housing and ownership not just in renting i think constituents are always talking about affordable housing they mean affordable housing to stay in steve and own and be part of the american dream not just be having an adu to rent um The Planning Commission was split on the decision. We were remiss. We didn't really show up during the Planning Commission discussions, and I wish that we had. I think that perhaps if we had let our voices be heard back then, it might have not been a 3-3 split. It might have been more of a denial that was recommended by the Planning Commission to the City Council. We'll never know, but that is just something we'll always have to wonder about. Gary Suter said Steamboat is losing its soul. Leland Harms is the soul he was talking about. Leland Harms is the soul of Steamboat. He gave the property to the people who were renting from him so that they could have home ownership and a stake in Steamboat. There's nothing wrong with MH zoning. It allows people to be able to stay in Steamboat and build a beautiful 2,500 square foot modest home.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

all right yeah good evening good evening hope you're having a good evening you may want to pull that microphone down a little bit sorry i know i'm short okay my name is lisa kamenicki i own a property in um in the hilltop pud 529 harms court I'm currently in the process of building a new home there. I am here to voice my concerns about the zoning change that has been requested. Per criteria two, the RN2 zone is not compatible with the established character with our Hilltop PUD. All of the homes in our neighborhood and the adjoining neighborhoods like Spruce Knoll are small to medium sized homes. four to six or 8,000 square foot homes. They just don't exist there. plus a footprint of six to 8,000 square feet. That's huge. A home like this would dominate our neighborhood and disrupt our long established scale. Criteria five requires the city to protect the character of established neighborhoods. The Harms Court open space functions as a natural buffer between RPUD and adjacent zoning districts. Upzoning this parcel undermines that buffer and introduces RN2 intensity where the plan envisions stable residential character. Because the proposal conflicts with the plan's direction for maintaining our neighborhood identity, it does not meet criteria five. I respectfully ask City Council to protect the Hilltop Pew Yeast established character and deny this zoning amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

How many additional folks do we have who like to make public comment? Can I get a show of hands? Three more.

Court applicants, court applicant. The street is 17 feet wide and maintained by the Hilltop Homeowners Association. This narrow private street borders the property line of the applicant's property and mine. I'm in opposition to this zoning change and ask that you deny it. Leland and Ila Grace Harms owned the former trailer park and lived at the 600 Harms Court home. When they decided to sell, they sold the entire parcel to us as residents of the park at the time. It was their intent to preserve the neighborhood for the working class family that lived and worked here in Steamboat Springs. and denied selling for larger profit. The Hilltop residents sold the lot at 600 Harms Court to gain the capital to make the transaction and develop the PUD. With the current zoning and lot size, a more conservative dwelling could be built without disrupting the character of the neighborhood. Also please look carefully at the fact that the only access to the applicant's lot is through our private street, which we maintain. The PUD has more restrictions on building size than the general manufactured home zoning rules. Once again, I'm asking that you deny this application. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. And we'll come back to you two in a second. I just want to check and see if there's anybody online who'd like to make a public comment. I think we have one person, Catherine, I think that's you. You want to unmute and state your name and address and what animals you have with you.

absolutely hi steve thank you very much yeah sorry i just hopped off the spin bike um my name is catherine carson as i always say i'm involved in various local organizations but i'm speaking tonight on behalf of my cat my blind cat and the new little dog addition to the ham family i just want to first thank all the residents who have been speaking tonight for their commitment to local affordable housing in our community and also i just remind everyone there's a certain nomenclature going around that's been around for a while but they're using a lot right now in the affordable housing stratosphere and that's noaa that's naturally occurring affordable housing and our manufacturer zone neighborhoods are noaa's And we all know how hard it is to build. I missed the earlier part of the evening, but we all know how costly it is to create affordable housing. We need to preserve our NOAAs, and that is the Hilltop community. So thank you folks, and I would like you to encourage the City Council to, if anything, create more manufactured zoned neighborhoods. and uh not less and not chip away at it so as i said noah's are important let's protect them and thank you very much thank you catherine okay thank you we have two more would you like to come down

Hey, my name is Gwen Power and I live at 7 East Bruce Street, which is right down the hill from the lot in question. I am in opposition to this zoning change and would like you to deny it. Since the Planning Commission was a 3-3 split, I am not alone in being against this change. I've lived in my house for 27 years. I've seen a truck and a cinder block roll down the hill. Part of the hill slid as well. Being that I live below this lot, I'm afraid that a huge house would be more likely to have to make the hill unstable. And so I'm asking you to please deny this zoning change. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Come on down, sir.

thank you for this opportunity uh with all respect mr mckees could you just get started with your name and address please sorry my name is edward dexter 1708 copper ridge spur uh soon to be 529 harps court with all respect mr he's building intentions for the property are immaterial. As I understand it from my time on the BOA, Board of Adjustment, if zoning for the property changes, similar to a variance is always there, that decision is final and stays with the property. Nothing could prevent a future owner from developing the lot wall to wall. Therefore, Mr. McKee's plan, the approved reality it will be the approved reality only until he no longer owns the property. Then the sky's the limit. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, is that everyone in the audience? Okay, is there anybody else online? Please raise your hand. Okay, seeing none, I'll bring it back to council for deliberations. Who would like to start?

I'm sorry, may I ask Toby a clarifying question that came up? Sure. I'm sorry. I heard that Harms Court, that's a private road? Did I hear that right?

It is a private road. So it's a private access easement and a private road created with that development. So owned and managed and maintained by the owners and those who have access. to the easement, which includes harm's court, I believe, but the owners could probably specify or Adam could specify better.

Yeah. Okay. Nope. I'm good. Thank you.

I can start. Typically we ask the applicant before we go to the deliberation, we ask the applicant if there's any final comments they have based on the public comment. Do we offer that?

You can ask a question if you want. You have a question?

No, just, no. Okay.

So rooting this in the criteria for approval, I have to agree with the public comment. I'm getting stuck on condition two, specifically the height and massing of development would be compatible with surrounding zone districts and neighborhood character. And since we don't define neighborhood, I mean, I don't know how else you would define neighborhood other than saying this is clearly part of the neighborhood on Harms Court and Second Street. I went up there and saw it as well. It's at the top of the hill. It is the only way to access it through Harms Court. In my mind, that is part of the neighborhood. It's a small neighborhood, but it is a neighborhood. and it just does not fit in my mind i it doesn't make sense it doesn't fit that criteria number two i guess to root this once again the criteria it doesn't that height massing doesn't fit with the character of that neighborhood so i'm really getting stuck on that criteria for approval i'm personally not supportive of this zone bamp amendment i i i will second that um

I'm not even hung up on it. For me, this does not fit the neighborhood character. And my words, not staff words, this to me is zone creep this is up zoning um and of course you have zones next to each other that are different i live on the mountain we have our little duplexes we have our single home homes and we have condos right behind me like that's how zoning works um and To me, this does not fit at all with the community character and exactly what you're saying, Brian.

Okay, thank you.

Other comments? Well, I mean, I'll weigh in a little bit. The one thing that I heard that has not been presented, I mean... We've had emails that go back and forth. You guys have asked Planning Commission different questions about the zoning and specifically the ADU. And so the challenge that I have with this, when you call it upzoning, is it seems like that's the, besides a subdivision, which you would take the 600 harms court, subdivide it into three lots, keep them all MH, and put three smaller homes on it, right? Toby said that's not the application that's there. It would be quite difficult. There's some things that would come into that process. But the one thing that both heard from the applicant and also the neighbors and everyone was that there was a need to add an ADU, an accessory dwelling unit. And that is not acceptable on an MH zone. So initially when I went through this, I looked at it from that standpoint of we have a large lot that can put a small house on it. And if you're going to rebuild the lot or rebuild the house on there because it's end of life, then you're going to build something that's probably larger. So when I went up to the property today and I looked at all the homes that some of you guys may live in, They weren't trailers. They were two-story small homes. Think of a guy who built tiny houses. We know what those look like. And they maximized the lot that's there because they can only build so much on the smaller, let's assume it's an 8,000 square foot lot. I think they're smaller than that. But the point is, is that with the current owner having 600 homes court, They're not by code, if I'm not mistaken. Correct me if I'm wrong, Toby. They're not allowed to have an accessory dwelling in. OK. I have a 0.3 acre lot in town. I put an ADU under my garage. I've provided housing for 15 years to workforce here in town. And no, they don't get to own it because I rent it. It's my place. I want to rent an ADU. I built it specifically for workforce housing for people. In fact, I keep lowering the price or keeping it low so that I can have someone and not two people living there. The point is that that parcel as a zone, as a MH, does not allow any ADUs. So is that correct? Yeah. So the only other option would be to create three smaller lots at max with the asset access and the size of the land that's left that's buildable. So to me, it was more like, I don't think this gentleman, and I don't know if Mr. McKee wants to chime in on how big a house he's going to put. We've had 8,000 square foot. I think that's a little exaggerated. It can be built, but I don't think that's the necessary part because that would be overbearing for that property. But if he's going to build a 3,000 square foot house with an ADU, completely compatible with the neighborhood that's on the right-hand side or looking off of Dabney and down that road. so to me it was more like a function if i own the land and i needed to put something in there an adu would be a nice added to the extra land that i have so i looked at it specifically from the zone map of going from an mh which does not allow an adu to an re2 which the guy can build his house back just like a lot of people did in the mobile home park those aren't old trashed mobile homes there's some really nice places up there They were able to rebuild it, and then now you're saying that he can't rebuild it. So I think having the ADU would be the one reason why I would approve this zone map amendment.

Michael, just to move this along, though, you're making an assumption he is going to, and there's nothing in here that's guaranteeing the building of an ADU.

And I don't want to ask him to do that. I'm going back to the RE2.

Let's go back to the criteria for decisions, and the potential for an ADU is not part of the criteria for decision-making.

It's the reason why they're asking for an RE2.

Is that correct? A bigger home and an ADU. A bigger home and an ADU. We have no guarantee. This is only a zone map amendment. There is no guarantee an ADU will be built. There is nothing that prevents them from not building an ADU. You can't do a conditional use.

And Mr. Augusta wrote that in a question to Rebecca saying, is there any way we can put a limitation to this? We can't make any assumptions. Or you did that. Did you do that?

I asked if you could put a limitation, but you can't make any assumptions.

No assumptions on what is going to happen.

That's fine. No assumptions, but based upon the fact that this is a large lot and that if I'm looking not on any structure that would go up, I either going to have to go through a subdivision and build three lots. Or two. Or two. Or do an RE2 and not do a subdivision and build an ADU in a house. I don't understand why it's that big of a deal besides that. We don't have any control over it, and I get that, but here's a chance to get a second ADU in a neighborhood. and increase the density a little bit, we already have high density.

So what you're saying is the advantage of the potential of an ADU outweighs the disadvantages to the community?

Well, I don't agree with everyone saying it's going to be, because we don't know what the house... I'm trying to root this back in the criteria for approval.

What you're saying is the potential advantage of a potential ADU outweighs the disadvantages to the neighborhood.

The potential disadvantages of an 8,000 square foot home?

okay let's let's hold for a minute let's hear from some other people here let's hear from a couple others of you where you stand on this let me kind of jump in here so plant when this was at planning commission and i you know listened through that whole back and forth with them it it really came down to you know what's our code and and is how is this request to to the code and there was an argument there of of you know that uh people against it um could not You released the code, but if you look at this, I'm gonna go look at the code. So 720.B, item number two says the type, height, massing, appearance, and intensity of the development would be permitted in this proposed zone and district to be compatible. I don't see how, I have to admit, I don't see how changing this to an RN2 would be compatible to the neighboring units in that facility. just the massing of the building. And if you want, and then let me, before I go to that, item five says one of the following conditions, and you know, the condition five is the proposed amendment substantially furthers the preferred direction and policies of the community plan. How does allowing for a large structure take us down the path to furthering the direction of the community plan. I don't see how a larger unit does that. And so my concern is if you give them an RM, you're saying, well, what would they develop there? Well, we don't know what they're going to develop there. We don't. And they can say one thing today and do something else later on because there's nothing to hold them to anything. So once you open up that RN2 to them, they are free to do anything and there's nothing we can do about that. This is the, today is the time that we can control what can go there and what cannot go there. And what goes there today maxes out at 2,500 square feet. And I went up there and I went to the site and I said, oh my God, you know, this is a beautiful site. Beautiful neighborhood, y'all. I could see a beautiful big mansion just overlooking that valley.

Beautiful mansion.

And

So you wanna buy the property.

But I have to go back. This has always been an MH area. And so even when they created the PUD, it was a MH area. Historically, so it was always meant to. That's the intent. I want to look at what's the intent of the land use that we do, and the intent has always been that that is manufactured homes. And because someone decided at some point in time to pull off this one lot separate from that, it That really doesn't matter. And in the end, wouldn't it be beautiful to have three sites up there overlooking that valley? Absolutely. I don't deny that. And that gets you three units that are for sale instead of one unit and a rental.

Okay, are you, hold on a second. Let's hear from everyone. What I'm hearing from you is that you and Councilor Swintek and Councilor Dixon are nos on this. Is that fair? That's fair. That's fair?

I would add my name to, I would add my name. my name to that list as well for all the things that have been stated and and to just add on what we heard from what you know catherine carson in terms of naturally occurring affordable housing and i certainly think that uh staying with the mh zone is consistent with you know the neighborhood and the even the other criteria um you know if you go to rn then um there you know you do have disadvantages to the community to the community community plan neighborhood so and and i wanted to say one thing that i i've been struggling with this word neighborhood as to what is the neighborhood

and if i say the neighborhood goes to the east and there's bigger houses over there that's a different descriptor but i when i walked around up there i really felt that that was the neighborhood that road and and not and so it is and so i also felt that two units up there on that property which is doable i believe three is maybe problematic would make much better use of keeping that neighborhood consistent. And so I also would not support this. So I'm gonna throw out, somebody asked for a motion here to deny number 11, an ordinance resigning lot number one.

Motion to deny number 11 on the consent agenda.

Okay, we have a motion from Councillor Dixon, second from Councillor Agosta. Agosta, any other comments?

I think just based upon, probably just based upon the criteria, Dan, right, that it's not consistent with 72B in terms of the rezoning.

And you could be more specific. I mean, there's been discussions of advantages outweighing disadvantages or vice versa.

more specific advantages do not outweigh the disadvantage the advantages of a potential adu does not outweigh the disadvantages to the effects on the community right in the neighborhood neighborhood and the type height massing appearance and intensity of development you know that could be permitted under rn2 is not compatible with the surrounding zone district land uses neighborhood care or from primarily neighborhood character there you go

You okay with that, Dan? Yeah. Okay. All those in favor of denying number 11, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Okay. Motion to deny passes 5-1. All right.

Congratulations, Joe.

Thank you.

Okay, we are going to move on to public hearing motions resolutions. And we're at number 13, a second reading of an ordinance fifth supplemental budget appropriation for 2026. Kim, you want to give a brief review of that?

Kim Weber, finance director. First, I wanted to apologize that this came in rainbow. So there was one change from the first reading. We had the $125,000 for the Botanic Park tree and berm removal in the general fund. We've now moved it to the capital fund. And so the other than that there were no changes this is all funded from outside revenue with the exception of one that was actually in the 2025 budget so there's no new use of reserves happy to answer questions hey who has any questions for kim none none okay we will then open it up anybody want to make public comment

See nobody in the room. That's a no. Anyone online want to make public comment? Raise your hand. See none. We'll close it off. Bring it back to council for a motion.

Move to approve agenda item 14.

13. Motion by Councillor Swintek. Second by Councillor Pacino. All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion passes 6-0. Okay, commission reports. Park and Recreation Commission report. Did everyone have a chance to take a look at that? Are there any questions? Thanks, Parks and Rec Commission. Seriously, thanks you guys for the hard work. Yes. And do we want to make a motion to approve those? We don't need to. We don't need to. City Attorney report. Dan? I do not have a report. Okay, old business, we have one, two, three, four, five regular meetings, one work session meeting. Julie, you've been busy. Any questions for Julie on minutes? If not, we'll take a motion to approve.

Julie, do you need band-aids for the tips of your fingers from typing all these up? Okay. Move to approve.

Second. Okay. Motion by Councillor Swittek, second by Councillor Geary. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. The minutes have been approved. All right. We're going to move on to our next item on the agenda, which is executive session. Dan, a quick question for you. we read both of these at the same at one right after the other we'd have to take a motion for each one uh you should have a separate motion for each of the two topics so Executive session, the topic to discuss the topic set forth below the specific citations to the provision or provisions of CRS 24-6-402 subsection four that authorizes the city council to meet in an executive session are set out below. The description of the topics are intended to identify the particular matter to be discussed in as much detail as possible without compromising the purpose for which the executive session is authorized. CRS 24-6-4024 conferences with an attorney for the local public body for the purposes of receiving legal advice on specific legal questions. Mere presence or participation of an attorney in an executive session of the local public body is not sufficient to satisfy the requirements of this subsection 4. CRS 246-402-4E1 or I or L, determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations and instructing negotiators. And CRS 24-6-402-4A, the purchase, acquisition, lease, transfer or sale of any real personal or other property interest except that no executive session shall be held for the purpose of concealing the fact that a member of the local public body has a personal interest in such purchase, acquisition, lease, transfer, or sale. These items pertain to a lease of the Campbell property and negotiations with a tenant. So I'll take a motion to go into executive session to discuss the lease at the Campbell property and negotiations with a tenant.

So moved.

Okay. Second. A motion by Council Gary, second by Council Pacino. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 6-0. And then the second executive session, these items pertain, or excuse me, is for, I won't read the first part again. I'll go into CRS 2464024B, conferences with an attorney for the local public body for the purpose of receiving legal advice on specific legal questions. Mere presence or participation of an attorney at an executive session at a local body is not sufficient to satisfy the requirements of subsection four. And second there, second CRS 2464024E, I believe, or one it is, determining position. What is it? That's a Roman numeral one. Number one, good. Determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations, and instructing negotiators. These items pertain to Steamboat Ski and Resort Corporation's proposal regarding the impacts of the SSRC winter parking program. Motion to go into executive session regarding SSRC's proposal regarding the impacts of the winter parking program so moved second motion by council gary second by council of pacino all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion passes six zero we will now move uh have a motion to exit our regular meeting and move into executive session or do we need another one are we good you just did that we're good good which which room are you gonna be this

No, I forgot to bring the recorder back. OK. There you go.

OK. We have everybody? No. Oh, we can fill in for these others, Kim. Okay. The time is now 10.10, and the executive session has been concluded. The participants in the executive session were Steve Muntean, Michael Pacino, Brian Swintek, Dan Foote, Amy Dixon, John Augusta, Tom Leeson, Jennifer Bach, Jonathan Flint, John Snyder, and Weber, Kelly Haney, Sara Briones. Okay. For the record, if any person who participated in the executive session believes in any substantial discussion of any matters not included in the motion to go into executive session occurred during the executive session or that any improper action occurred during the executive session in violation of the open meetings law, I would ask that you state your concerns for the record. Okay, seeing none. So as far as... Executive session item one, regarding the lease at the Campbell property and negotiations with the tenant, we have given direction to the negotiators on the Campbell property with the tenant. And as far as the items pertaining to Steamboat Ski Resort proposal regarding the impacts of the SSRC winter program, we have given direction to the negotiators to finalize an agreement with Ski Corps