City Council - Regular Meeting

Once we're done.

All right, everyone, we're going to get started, if that's okay. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to City of Steamboat Springs City Council regular meeting number 2026-22, Tuesday, August 4th, 2026 at 5 p.m. So, Julie, can we do roll call, please?

Steve Mantine.

Here.

Gail Gary. Here. John Agosta.

Here.

Dave Barnes is absent. Michael Baccino.

Here.

Amy Dixon? Here. And Brian Swintek?

Here. OK. Thank you. And will everybody rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? We have a flag in the back and one up front. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. OK. A couple things to get started tonight. We will have general public comment, which is on any topic that is not on the agenda tonight. We will have that either at 6 p.m. or whenever the city manager's report is complete, whichever one is sooner but no later than 6 p.m. And we will also have public comment on items on the agenda when those items are brought up. Public comment is three minutes long, and when you do come down, if you're online, please raise your hand. And we will give you up to three minutes and just state your name and address, please. So with that, let's move on and talk about city council reports. And Councillor Swintek and Pacino, please just kind of raise your hand and we'll try to keep an eye out to make sure that we call on you throughout the evening. So who would like to go first?

I go for a ghost in RTA update. So basically, we are finalizing tonight, actually, the executive director profile for the hiring, and that should be posted for applicants by Friday this week. So we're on a roll here. In addition, our RTA hired a polling firm to help us, you know, guide us for whether we want to have a ballot initiative for this November to help fund the RTA. That polling was completed yesterday. I believe yesterday, and we should get preliminary results of that polling in two weeks. So that polling is complete. And lastly, we have an RFQ out for a marketing firm, basically to help us put a website, put our logos. We've had... I think we had like 30 applicants, and they were really good. We can only narrow it down to seven at this point, and we're actually doing interviews, which is actually a great thing to have. So that's an RTA update. And then I went to another session in the community this week or last week for 988. So does Council know what 988 is?

You know I do.

Does everybody in the audience know what 988 does? If you text 988. Well, very few people actually know what 988 is. And what 988 is, is basically how you reach the crisis suicide hotline for mental health. It's our mental health hotline. This is a new initiative for the state. It basically started funding just two years ago. So we're working through the processes in the state to stand that up. It is actually funded by your wireless bill. So actually look in your wireless bill and that's, I think it's like about 30 cents a month, somewhere around there. and um and so yeah you know so the bottom line is um that's an initiative um it's you know not all communities across the state you know has 988 um operational uh it is operational in um the route county and seaboard area um but it there is some you know we're we're actually going through some hiccups too but the bottom line is um The 988 we do have working for the community is basically to help connect those to a live person and live resource in the community, such as the Hope Initiative. At this point in time, unlike other communities, you can actually call 911. Our 911 operators are trained to either handle and redirect to the rights to resources like Hope Initiative or to back over to the 988. And so we just need to start getting people familiar with 988. And, you know, when you say, you know, and it's not just a resource for those in crisis, it's also a resource for the friends and families of those in crisis. You know, many times, you know that there are things that are not right, but you don't know how. what to do about it. Just calling 988, they can help direct you to people to understand how you can help proceed and help that person if they're not comfortable to call. So anyways, that was a really good session. The 988 program manager, project manager, marketing people were in town last week and basically helping educate the community about and talk with people like the Hope Initiative to figure out how to best connect with them. So anyways, look forward to that service being a vital link for their community.

Thanks. Councillor Dixon. No update from me. Okay. Councillor Geary.

Yes. So kind of primarily going to update on what we heard at the farmer's market on Saturday. Counselor Augusta and I were there and kind of started out slow, but quickly got busy in terms of comments. And we did have the opportunity to have a conversation with Lisa Popovich of Main Street. And she provided some good news that they were granted a... some monies to basically buy some bike racks for a bike corral as part of the farmer's market. And that should happen in the next couple of weeks. So that will, I think, be pretty beneficial to everybody and give people an opportunity for a place to park their bikes other than... chain them to trees and up and down the street. In terms of kind of comments, lots of different comments, we got a couple of comments regarding the, you know, the E kind of motorcycles, a problem and, you know, what can we do about those. Also, Got some questions about Discovery Land Group, and again, concerns from the community about that. Lots of comments about affordability of homes, support for affordability, and kind of, again, trying to do what we can to make sure that there are more housing options for our workforce. Got questions about Slate Creek. and concerns about the large developments that are happening on the mountain and one comment about a support for vacancy tax. So I'll kind of write these up but that was generally the highlights. So that's it.

Good. A couple of things I did want to mention on that bike corral since I was at the Main Street Steamboat meeting this morning, it's on the side of BMO where the gravel is located. So if you're looking for it in the next few weeks, it's on the side of the building where the gravel, there's a gravel area that's like 75 feet long on the side there.

That's along 6th Street or 5th Street?

5th Street.

Sixth Street, right? On Sixth Street. On Sixth, right? Between the alley and Yampa Street.

Yeah, yeah. And what else besides that? A couple things. Went to the... Navigator and 20 Under 40. And Councillor Gary was also there. It was very well attended this year. They combined them both into one. And I think they did a very nice job. You know, the chambers involved in that and whatnot. And I thought it was very well done. Also, the farmer's market, we do need some more signups here. This Saturday, we have Councillor Pacino and myself. But if you'll go in there, you'll see there's still lots of opportunities to sign up. If you're interested, there is a lot of interest for city council and the city manager to be judges for the chili cook-off on September 26th. Now, the good news about that is in order to judge the chili, you have to eat the chili. So that's the good news with it. And it's September 26, and it's from 11 to 1.30 at the most. And they're looking for as many of us as who want to participate, and they're looking for the city manager to participate as well.

I don't need to do it virtually.

I don't think that would work. So I'll send out a note about that and we'll see what goes on. We also had a meeting with Ski Corps, a first meeting on this strategic alliance and the long-term vision and strategy of how we can work more effectively together. And basically we kind of had an introductory meeting and we agreed that as we move forward here we're going to look at all the agreements we have and just to get grounded in where we are and what different agreements we do have. And the question I think that we need to answer very quickly and when we do hopefully We'll have an answer for all of you is what does success look like here? So as we go through this, what are we looking for? What is the outcome we want? What is the success for both the city and Ski Corps? So we'll keep that in front of everyone. And that's all I have. So I don't see Councillor Swintek or Pacino's hand up. So I will assume you don't have anything to add at this point in time.

No report. Thank you.

Okay.

I think that's a... Yeah, that was a thumbs up as in I don't.

Okay, good job. I don't know how to do what you just did, Brian, but it was definitely nice. Okay, so with that, we'll close off on... Council reports, and we'll move to agenda review.

May I just ask a quick question? Apologies. You're meeting with Ski Corps. I know they put together a plan for communicating out the parking that they're going to do for this coming winter and signage. So I've received emails from HOAs on the mountain asking, what's the plan? And so at this point, I'm just going to direct them to, like, Michael M., Because I don't want to sit on these emails, nor do I want to be the middle person trying to navigate all of it. So unless you have any other guidance for that?

We just know that... was just about ready for release i believe several weeks ago so um we'll follow up though and find out where it is and at least yeah i'm still gonna perform because i've been like waiting yep i think if there's an hoa or somebody that wants to know about science it should definitely go to michael mann okay but we should also get a copy of of that plan out to everybody at council so they should yeah

Thinking back on the Saturday market and questions that we got for Saturday market, there was someone who actually came up and said, we need more signage on the city property to identify where people cannot park, especially Mount Warner Circle. And that there really is no parking, you know, or very few, you know, if any, you know, um signs and so i don't know what um the plan is there for the in terms of the city sign city signage is that part of the the plan with ski court or is that just that we need to you know identify that and

Yeah, that'll be a process that we'll need to identify in areas. If areas become problem areas and we don't have any signage, we're going to have to talk about whether we allow parking or not. Particularly in these neighborhoods, it's difficult because On the one hand, you want to put up no parking signs. On the other hand, then the residents come in and say, what do you mean I can't park in front of my own house? And the answer would be no. I mean, there's no parking or there's no parking. What we might have to do if this becomes an issue is move to a residential permit system, which is a whole nother program that we would need to start up, which would require resources and time and effort. So we'll have to evaluate that this winter as we move forward.

May I tag on to that though? I don't think what we're asking for is no parking signs in residential areas right now. That's not what I've heard. What I have heard folks say, and I have videos and pictures from last year, is the cars parking up along Mount Warner Circle. So we need to make, that's not a residential, but people, this is a residential area that I think we forget. And so we need to make a decision whether It's okay for folks to park there. So it's not about residential areas. It's these more, I'm going to say major thoroughfares around the mountain area. We did that along Village Drive, I think a couple years ago, because people were parking there. And so now there are no parking signs.

On Village Drive, there is no parking. On Mount Warner, parking is allowed within the right-of-way, as long as you're not blocking the travel way. the moment that they park in the travel way, they will get ticketed. And last year, it wasn't really an issue because it was a low snow year, so we didn't have big snow berms, and they could park there without blocking the travel way. until they are blocking it. We have the same issue with sunlight, right? We've heard complaints about people parking on that road up there, but they're not blocking. You're allowed to park in the right-of-way as long as you're not blocking it.

I fully understand that. I think the question is whether we, as council, say... you cannot park there. Like I get right now, there are no, we don't have signs saying you can't park here. So I think we need to make that decision and be clear because right now we get comments from folks who are unhappy about it. And so we need to either say that's allowed and maybe show up at public comment because you don't like it. Or we make a decision saying, okay,

we do want no parking signs there but i think that's all that we're asking for but what i heard what i heard and i think i feel comfortable this time around is basically you you can park in right away and so basically if you can park in the right away safely then we're going to allow you to park in right away safely and we'll be evaluating it this this winter um and seeing whether we need to make those no parking but we will be evaluating it this winter

I think we're going to evaluate any impact that comes as a result of this new program. OK, that's fair. OK, thank you for that. Any other thoughts before we move on? OK, let's look at the upcoming agendas. First one is next week, August 11th. You can see we have a work session scheduled around communication and engagement, strategic plan update and airport operations and revenue. We will also have an executive session that night to talk about the purchase of the CDOT property. So that will also be on the agenda for next week. next week. Then we will be off until, any questions on the work session? Okay, then we'll be off until September 1st. You can look at the agenda for September 1st. We also have a couple of reports there. One from the Economic Development Partnership. John Bristow will be giving his annual update and we will also get the results. And John, you just mentioned 988. We'll get the results of the Community and Provider Mental Health Survey, which was put out by the Community Foundation and the Health Partnership. September 1 as well. You can see we have a couple of first readings of ordinances and a couple second readings, but the agenda is fairly light at this point in time. If no questions on that, we'll look at September 8th. Work session.

Actually, sorry. Let's back up to September 11th. Yep. It's September 1st. Yep. It is basically just, you know, basically connected with the community. So we know that we will get a community town hall on August 28th around Flock. And then we, you know. 25th. the 25th yeah sorry so august 25th we have a town you know town hall and on flock and then i you know we can expect that the community was would like to understand the council's position um and when and the right next meeting after that is september 1st so i'd just like to you know publicly understand what's our process because we know that the community is going to you know want you know council to to weigh in here

I think where we came out on that, and that's why when I was talking about September 8th, which we have a work session, and if you look at that, it's basically the six-year capital improvement program. That's all we have on the agenda for that night. So we were going to use that night as to kind of summarize the feedback from the August 25th meeting, and since you brought that up, We should again re-emphasize the fact that there will be a meeting on September or August 25th right here at 5 to 6.30 to talk about the flock cameras. The police department will be here and lead that discussion. They will give you all the information about the reasons behind it, the benefits, and the we want questions from everybody in the community around concerns that you have and so that they can be answered and then the plan would be on the 8th is for us to debrief that have some time after the 25th to get some input from the community as a result of that meeting and see where we are so we are not going to forget that that would be um on that agenda great thank you

Right, and one of the things we talked about too is, you know, potentially having kind of a report out on what other communities are doing, you know, as part of that. So, not kind of taking a holistic approach and look at the issue and having, you know, as a work session has the opportunity to have, you know, the conversation.

So I was going to do that for my personal benefit to understand this. Is there somebody in the staff or somebody that is actually going to do that for us?

Yeah, the police department will be working on that. We can work with Mark, Chief Beckett, on that.

I mean, I don't think it ever hurts us from doing our own research, right? I mean, in terms of listening to the council meetings or, you know, what other else information you want to gather, because I think it'll probably be pretty high level in terms of what community... I have no idea, but I think that's the expectation, is what are communities doing, what have they done, have they changed their policy, have they changed the vendor, the various things that we're seeing going on in the different communities.

So please, everyone online as well as in the room, reach out to your friends and whatnot and mention the 25th. We will obviously be communicating and messaging that, which we already have, but we'll continue to do that. And it'll be right here at Centennial Hall, 825, 5 o'clock. And then as far as the agenda... for the following meeting, September 15th. You can see on there, it's fairly light at this point in time. On the community reports, we have added every year the chamber comes in with their budget request for the year. So that would be on September, has been added to that particular agenda you also have a couple of second readings of ordinances and a resolution around the local marketing district operating plan for 2027 as well and then after that we will have an ssra meeting updating a project activity plan and a preliminary 2027 budget so that's September 15th, and that's as far as we go at this point in time. Any questions on upcoming agendas? Okay, hearing none, we'll turn it over to Tom for the city manager report.

Thank you, President Muntean. A reminder for the community, the City Manager's Report can be found on our website, steamboatsprings.net. You can scroll down and go to City Manager's Report. Tonight's report and all previous reports are in there. Um, so, um, as you know, the report is organized by our strategic plan outcome areas and starting off with our thriving community outcome. I just want to, I know this has been in the news, but just again, a congratulations to everyone involved on the purchase of the Slate Creek open space, the 187 acre property, um, which is, uh, adjacent to, uh, the Bob Adams Airport and just north of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority parcel, formerly known as Brown Ranch, now known as Slate Creek neighborhood. About 131 of those acres will be permanently protected under conservation easement held by the Colorado Open Lands, which really significantly increases the city's inventory of open space. Land for passive recreation opportunities, hiking, biking, wildlife viewing. So this is a really, really big purchase for the city. 56 acres will be designated for active developed recreational uses, such as ball fields, playgrounds, picnic areas. And then there is a six-acre area that will be identified for future indoor recreation needs. So obviously, this is a long-term project, many years of planning ahead. But just congratulations again to everyone involved in that process. I am keeping my report a little bit shorter tonight, just in the interest of time, since we have a long agenda, and I'll move on to connected and engaged community. There's a lot of good information on all of the city's community engagement efforts, including our social media posts, newsletters. Um, note that the Steamboat Springs Police Department with assistance of Communications Department and in partnership with Steamboat Digs Dogs is kicking off the Leash Up Steamboat community engagement campaign focused on educating the community about off-leash issues and creating safer trails and open spaces. So, um, Dogs off the leash continue to be a problem in this community. And so we are trying to really engage with the community and sort of inform and educate about the issues associated with that and the problems that it causes. So thank you to Steamboat Digs Dogs for partnering up on that. Moving on to healthy environment, I did want to give an update. Staff hosted a meeting with business owners at the 800 Lincoln block to discuss management of that shared waste enclosure and the containers to be secured within. Main Street Steamboat has agreed to work with those businesses and help manage those shared services for 60 days to get a sense of what the management of those services will require. um we are working with them on a revocable license for that management and once that executed the dumpsters and used food oil containers will be moved inside the enclosure main street's duties will include managing access codes for the users communicating any issues to the city and businesses and keeping debris cleaned up inside the enclosure so thank you main street for again partnering on that um we're glad to see that and hopefully that's a partnership we'll continue um in the future The Route County Wildfire Mitigation Council City Steamboat Resort in Savitree are teaming up for another community event to provide free chipping of tree debris. Community residents, not commercial operators, community residents can drop off tree debris to Steamboat Resorts Meadows parking lot between 9 and 1 on Saturday, August 22nd. So we have held that event before and it's been very, very popular. So another opportunity to drop off all your yard debris 9 to 1 on August 22nd. And there's information in this report on kind of what will be accepted. Under high-performing government, just again, kudos to the IT and HR and risk team for launching the City Hub, the city's new internet, providing employees with a unified hub for internal communication resources and policy access. This provides employees with a one-stop access to policies, forms, news, tools, and services from both desktop and mobile devices. So another great internal tool to help our employees stay engaged and connected. Let's see, moving on to safe community. Just the Steamboat Springs Police Department continues to focus on e-bike and e-motorcycle enforcement and safety. provided you counsel with a memo today on some of the updates that the police and the Parks and Rec Department have taken on that. This topic continues to evolve and we continue to evaluate tools and looking at successes in other communities. And the Parks and Rec Commission will be holding their meeting on the 12th to kind of talk about that effort so far, any next steps and metrics to measure success. And again, the police department will be hosting the first biannual police department town hall here on the 25th from 5 to 6.30. We'll be talking about license plate reader technology, also known as flock cameras. Flock cameras is basically a brand of that and how we use that data, dispelling any myths around the technology. So please come to attend. It will be open to the public. We will be recording it. We will not be having a Zoom link, but we will be recording it so people will be able to see it afterwards if they're interested in that. And I will conclude there. That's my report. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Yeah. Well, I'm on the city council for five hours.

Michael, you're not on mute there. Okay. Any questions for Tom? Comments for Tom?

It's only a comment. I also meant to mention that Lisa did a specific call out to Parks and Rec on the bike corral and specifically drew to say thank you for all of the collaboration and coordination in terms of making it happen. So I wanted to make sure that got on the record. Okay.

other comments i would say thanks for working with a main street steamboat with the trash enclosure um this is a problem there are bears in the downtown area because they're getting into dumpsters and there was a bear stuck in a tree um a recent saturday during the farmer's market. It's really sad. And it's clearly because they're getting into trash, is why they're around that area. So thanks for prioritizing that.

That bear was probably in the tree because there was over 100 people standing underneath the tree looking up at the bear. Yeah, he couldn't get away.

They had to rope off the area. Parks and Wildlife was there.

Yeah, we were there at the booth when that was going on.

Yeah, we need to get this resolved. Yep. Okay.

No? All right. Thank you, Tom. We appreciate that. And with that, we're moving to public comment early tonight. So this is public comment time. For those of you who have wanted to make public comment on a subject not on the agenda for tonight, you will have up to three minutes. So if you want to come on down and state your name and address, come on down.

I'll go first. Jeremy Brown, 650 Pamela Lane. Tonight I get to talk to you as a storyteller ambassador for Steamboat for All. Obviously sharing our story with you guys, with anyone listening out there on the interwebs about our stories and to inspire change and encourage people. So my story begins back in 2022. It's about how not only is it hard to live here, it is hard to get here. My wife and I had accepted jobs. She was a nurse. I accepted, obviously, a job here in the planning department. For all intents and purposes, very important jobs to our community writ large. We chose to leave the known for the unknown. We packed up our entire life. We left our family, our friends. We took our 18-month-old daughter and we moved across the country. And Steamboat could not offer us housing or daycare, pretty much. Two of the three things you need to move. You need a job, housing, and daycare when you have a kid. So we moved to Craig. We commuted two hours every day back and forth to try to make it happen. With this, we put a time limit on our time in Craig. We said, if we can't get into Steamboat in two years, we're going to pack up and we'll head back to the safe, familial, very affordable Midwest. So about six months into our lease, I started looking feverishly at apartment listings in Steamboat. You look on Facebook, you look on Zillow, you talk to everyone you know. Once an hour every day, you take 30 seconds to see if a new posting came up because if you weren't first, you were last. And fortunately, this is sort of a success story, we found a wonderful place. We found a local, Ed, our landlord now, who was a local and who wanted local workforce to live in his place. Now, is it inexpensive? No. But is it attainable for us? Yes. It worked out. It's a great success story, but it was a little bit of perseverance, a lot of luck, and a very benevolent person. So we don't, not everybody has a house in Steamboat and the capacity to be benevolent landlords to persons, but it's one story of us succeeding and how we were able to make it and pulling together as a community is really what's gonna keep us thriving into the future. I think we need people. We know communities are dynamic. People come in and people go. We need new people coming in all the time. We can't shut the doors. The community is what builds us. There are people like myself and my partner that are excited to be a part of the community, and we hope we've contributed, continue to contribute, and stay here. We hope we can help make that opportunity for other people and that this little story also inspires others. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Jeremy. That is a good news story. Come on down.

All right. Colleen Garrett Conley, 1660 Mid Valley Drive. So good evening, council. I was raised in this community and I'm fortunate to work for Route County Public Health and be a member of Route County Tobacco Coalition focused on tobacco prevention and cessation. Our coalition is made up of law enforcement professionals, school staff, youth serving organization, public health leaders, and community partners. Steamboat Springs took the lead in tobacco prevention in Colorado when we became the first municipality to pass a non-cigarette tobacco retail license in 2011. Since then, the marketplace has changed dramatically with the tobacco industry introducing new products with higher amounts of nicotine and new tactics to addict the next generation of nicotine users. Tobacco product evolution and a statewide tobacco retail licensing law that passed in 2019 means our local law needs an update. Since Steamboat Springs led the way, 43 Colorado towns, cities, and counties have adopted a tobacco retail licensing program. 15 of these communities prohibit the sale of flavored tobacco products. They also include other provisions such as restricting how close a retailer can be to a school, limiting the number of retailers in the community, and even prohibiting the discounting of tobacco products. To demonstrate the scope of the problem, here are some facts. Almost 90% of adults who smoke tobacco every day start before the age of 18. Alarmingly in Colorado, three fourths of high school students who attempt to purchase tobacco or nicotine products in stores were not refused because of the age. According to the most recent data, 61% of high school students in Steamboat Springs felt it would be easy to get an electronic vapor product if they wanted to. And 92% of students who use electronic vapor products used flavor products in the last 30 days. Federal and state compliance data shows that just five retailers in Steepo Springs have accounted for more than 75% of sales to minor violations since January, 2024. We need to do more to protect our community from an industry that uses predatory marketing practices to attract and hook a new generation of users and keep those who want to quit from quitting. While education, cessation services and other health programs play an important role in reducing tobacco use, one of the most effective ways to protect our community is through local policy change. That's why we're asking for your help today. Our Tobacco Coalition is requesting a study session to discuss ways we can improve our existing tobacco retail licensing ordinance. Please let us know the best way to move forward. Thank you for your time and attention to this important issue. I'm available anytime for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Come on down.

Hello, my name is Abigail Elliott. I live at 1870 Timothy Drive and I recently graduated from SSHS. What if the next young person to become addicted to nicotine isn't a statistic, but someone you know, a neighbor, a student, a teammate, or even your own child? As a member of Route County Tobacco Coalition, I have seen firsthand that youth nicotine use isn't an abstract issue. It is happening here in Steamboat Springs. Behind every statistic is a young person whose health, potential, and future are put at risk by products engineered to create addiction. The tobacco industry has changed its packaging, its flavors, and its marketing, but the goal has remained the same, to create the next generation of customers. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to ensure that our community is not part of that business model. The question before you tonight isn't whether tobacco and nicotine products are harmful. We already know that they are. The question is whether we are willing to do everything within our power to keep them out of the hands of young people. Leadership isn't measured by the problems we acknowledge. It is measured by the ones we choose to solve. By strengthening protections and holding retailers accountable, you can make it harder for youth to access addictive products and easier for them to grow up healthy. I urge you to choose protection, courage over convenience, and the health of Steamboat Springs young people over the interest of an industry that profits from addiction. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening.

My name is Angie Teeters, and I live at 225th Street Court in Yampa. But I currently serve as the substance abuse prevention coordinator for the Steamboat Springs School District, which is a position supported through grant funding. Over the past year, I've had the opportunity to work directly with students around nicotine and other substance use, not only through prevention education, but also individually with students who are already using these products. What I've learned is that our students are not all in the same place. I work with students who have no interest in quitting yet. I work with students who are beginning to wonder whether their nicotine use is a problem. And I work with students who voluntarily come to me because they're ready to stop and don't know how. Our 2025 Healthy Kids Colorado data helps put those conversations into perspectives. At Steamboat Springs High School, 8.2% of students reported using nicotine pouches in the previous 30 days. That's compared to about 3% statewide. More than half of our students said that nicotine pouches would be easy to obtain. And among students currently using tobacco or nicotine, almost 20 or 52% of them reported trying to quit during the previous 12 months. That last number is especially important to me. The same survey shows that many of our students are experiencing significant levels of stress and anxiety. That's consistent with what I hear directly from the students I serve. Some students describe nicotine as something that helps them calm down, manage their stress or quiet the emotions they're feeling. These aren't simply young people making a choice to use nicotine. Some are using nicotine to cope and some are trying to stop using an addictive product while living in an environment where they tell us these products are easy to access. Quitting is difficult. National research published in 2025 found that among adolescents who vape nicotine daily, 53% of those reported an unsuccessful attempt to quit. They're trying to overcome nicotine dependence while growing up in an environment where nicotine use can feel normal and where, according to our own students, these products are easy to obtain. Wanting to quit and knowing how to quit are not the same thing. In my position, I can educate students, I can help them understand nicotine dependence, and I can give them cessation tools, help them work through the cravings, and support them when they're ready to make a change. But I cannot change the environment they return to when they leave school. That's where I believe our community has a responsibility to. We are asking our students to make healthy choices. I think we also have to ask whether the environment we've created makes those choices unnecessarily difficult. I'm asking city council to take action on this issue and create the opportunity for a deeper discussion of solutions that can better protect Steamboat's young people. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to make public comment tonight? Please come on down. Okay, is there anyone online? Please raise your hand if you'd like to make public comment. Okay, seeing none, we'll close public comment and we wanna just address for a minute before you run off there, Jeremy, or you're just moving to the back. I love your story and I love your persistence. And I hope that maybe some other people hearing your story will reach out to you and get some increased confidence and courage to have as much persistence as you have. So thank you for that. As far as the coalition, we have had several discussions on this over the course of probably the last three to six months, if not longer. I know some of us have been to the school to hear from different presenters talk about this. And I believe... dan that we i would like to talk a little bit about this and and get from you we have the ability to make policy on this and to change policy on this could you just share with everyone so we're grounded in what actual policy decisions we can make around this around vaping and around sure you have a

You have a great deal of authority pursuant to your police powers to regulate in the interest of the public health safety and welfare. And so when we talk about nicotine and underage use, there is a very, very clear connection. So your authority is pretty broad. I'd say most recently, the activity in this area has been with the banning of flavored products. And there's been a recent court challenge to that. And the trial court upheld the Denver, City and County of Denver regulation. And so that's just an example But I think your authority is pretty clear, and you can really do almost anything. Okay, including fines and penalties and all that. Sure, and just briefly, the way we are currently structured is we have a licensing regime, and so we can regulate via the licensing process. We don't typically... independently pursue things in municipal court. I think that we're really set up to do this as a licensing matter, but yes, we do have the option to sort of expand our enforcement practices.

And can you, we should ask, give us an idea of what the enforcement, what the fines are?

So if there's a licensing action and it's determined that the licensee violated the provisions regarding sale to minor, fines are relatively small. It's, I think, $100 for a first offense. And they gradually increase. And if there are three offenses in a year, then we can revoke licenses. So I think that is, with our current regulations, that's sort of the ultimate penalty is a license revocation.

Go ahead, Councillor Dixie.

I have a question. So Denver has banned flavored tobacco, and I think they did it through a bill. You all probably know better than I do. Yeah, okay. Does that, if Steamboat Springs was to look at outright banning flavored tobacco, could we do that from a policy perspective, or would that have to go to the voters?

No, that would be an ordinance. I mean, you could refer to the voters if you wanted to. And I actually believe that Denver might have referred that to their voters. But no, you would not be required to do that. But you would need to adopt an ordinance if you wanted to have any sort of ability to enforce with fines. And we could change the level of the fines if we so desired. You can, so the current fines are in the licensing context. You could also have a situation where individuals are cited to municipal court, and that would mean that the judge, if the violation were sustained, would have the power to impose a fine of up to $2,650 per violation. You can, as a policy matter, give the judge directions as to how the judge determines the amount of a fine to impose. or you can just leave it up to the judge. And for the most part, that's what we do is it's the judge's discretion as to what sorts of fines to impose if there's a violation of municipal code.

I mean, I was going to say, I'd like to see us move forward with an ordinance. So what's your suggestion in terms of if we can give you direction now, you come back with the draft ordinance, do you want to have, we give you some direction and come back if there's support amongst the rest of council to have a discussion during an attorney's report?

So we had previously discussed having an attorney's report. I since have had a meeting with internal staff with the chief and the deputy city manager. And I think that we were leaning towards bringing it to you as a community report. But it's really kind of up to you as to what your next step would want to be. I could bring you an ordinance, but I would be operating a little bit in a vacuum as to what it should say. And I... I think that, you know, unless you really think this is urgent, we need to get it done in September, we'd be better off having a discussion as to what it would look like.

Would you, in your attorney's community report, would you share options? Would you share what other communities are doing? Would you?

Well, sure. We would start with materials that we've received from community organizations. They have suggested a draft model ordinance. and a number of what they've characterized as sort of best practices. So I think we would probably start with that. PD and staff have not gotten to the point of having reviewed all of those and evaluated whether it's something we can do or want to do. And I think that probably ought to take a little bit of time. When do you think we could have this report?

well i think that the next opportunity would be in september would september work yeah and also i just want to remind folks that um well one i think we all agree we need to address this i would love to involve um our public health experts here in our community to make sure that we are addressing all the issues and not just going after like the flavor tobacco. If they see there are other things we should be doing, let's bring it all together. And Councilor Gary and I will be meeting with the Steamboat Springs Board of Education members because I had a meeting with them, with one of the board members a few months ago, and she brought this up, super concerned, and wanted to partner with the city, and so Councilor Gary and I were going to meet with them this fall. And so I would love to involve Broward County Public Health, the school board, and whatever information Dan brings back.

I was going to say, this sounds like a work session before we do an ordinance.

Well, at a work session, we can invite guests and involve others as well. How does, Counselor Swintek, you have your hand up. Go ahead.

Hi, I'm not trying to be like pro big tobacco, but just a lesson learned from the snow melt thing when we move fast on stuff that there can be unintended consequences. So is there some other alternate side that we should be engaging to make sure there isn't some unintended consequence that comes back and bites us?

That's where, Councilor Swintek, I totally agree with you. That's why I'm really suggesting that we involve all the appropriate stakeholders. And I wonder, I would be more than happy to meet with our friends at the Routt County Public Health Department. I don't want to voluntold. I'd do it. That's okay. But since we'll be meeting at the school board, would you, and if other council members are okay with that, I wonder if,

You two have been involved, so if you two are willing to take that on and move that forward and then work with Dan, too, on putting together whatever the time frame is around recommendations or moving forward on a discussion.

Is that okay? No, I'm absolutely okay. Obviously, I'd like to see us get something done sooner than later, but certainly, again, agreed that we've got experts in the room that can help us, guide us through the process.

Let's do it right.

Yeah, 100%.

Well, sorry, just for the record and for my own ego, too. I am supportive of pursuing this. Just make that clear.

Of course.

And we haven't heard from you, Councilor Bruchino. Are you OK with moving this forward?

Yeah, no, this makes a lot of sense. I was the one that was at the attending the event. The high school, and I think we just need to kind of keep tracking where this goes. Yeah.

OK, anything to add, Tom? Are you good?

I'm good.

Okay. So we have a path forward. Thank you. And we'll move with a sense of urgency, but also to make sure we do this well and correctly.

Okay. I do think somebody else walked in. Yeah, I did.

I was going to ask, are you here for public comment? Okay. We started a little early tonight. So if everybody's okay, are you okay if we reopen public comment for just four minutes? these ladies here so if you'd like to come on down and uh... state your name an address and you have three minutes please

My name is Kathy Connell, and tonight I'm wearing the hat as president of Steamboat Dig's Dogs. I just want to say thank you so much for doing the right thing about Whistler Park. We are thrilled. And some of you may not know the history of Steamboat Dig's Dogs. But that's a park that we got open. There's some part-time dog use out there. We presently have installed already four poop bag dispensers in locations and take care of that. Just a side note, we spend about $20,000 a year on poop bags in the city, and that's us. That's not the city, so I just want to let you know that. We are thrilled to work with the city on the future planning of that. And Steamboat Dig's dogs that I represent is willing to be engaged financially with the city. As you know, with Rita Valentine Park, we did all the infrastructure there. And we look at Whistler and we say, oh, boys, that kiosk has been. Could we do a shade structure, et cetera? So I just want to have you invite us to be partners with you as you look at that. I do believe and I'm not speaking for the neighbors, but I'm one of the neighbors being a part of that, that since we're now released from the burden of one point eight million, we certainly see a way that we could collaborate. financially get together and help as far as some of the aesthetic improvements of the park so please involve us we're so excited and thank you again for doing the right thing we appreciate it my one last thing i have a minute 31 is thank you city for doing all of the tearing down of the dead trees up there near where i live valdez here it makes me feel good at night in the early morning even though i don't like it seven o'clock the chainsaws i'm going yes that's great So thank you so much to help us with the fire mitigation again. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Okay.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who's arrived who would like to make public comment tonight?

We were expecting potentially one more.

Well, that's right. Exactly. Well, we'll close public comment and we'll see what happens. Okay. Is there anything, Dan, that you wanted to say regarding, you know, working with the city at this point? No, we're good. Okay, good. Thank you. And we'll take that under advisement as we move forward. Good.

Thank you, ladies. Thank you.

Have a good evening. Okay, we're going to move on. And we're now into our community reports session. Council discussion topics. We have three on the agenda tonight. First person up is Steph Einfeld to talk about home services campaign update. Come on down, Steph. All right, thank you. Do you need to share something, or is it already?

There was a presentation sent, but I'm more than happy to do it without it. If it's not ready and available, that's fine. No, I don't. So, no, I will talk. No presentation. Yeah, which is totally fine. But thank you for having me. I'm Steph Einfeld, CEO of Northwest Colorado Health. And tonight I'm just going to do a really broad overview and do a lot of storytelling and education around home health and hospice and give you an update of where we are because we have been in front of you before talking about this. And it's a very... very important infrastructure of our community. So before I start, I'm gonna level set. It is, this week happens to be National Community Health Center Week in the nation, and we are also a community health center. And so I just wanted to take a chance and lift up our community health center team. Community health centers, if you don't know, were started out of a civil rights movement 60 years ago as a part of the war on poverty. And it started with the idea that every single person in a community deserves access to primary care, dental care, behavioral health care. And that's what we do in this community. It's one of the things we do. We serve around 6,000 people in our clinics. And a couple of years ago, we expanded school-based health. So we are in eight schools in this county in three districts. doing dental health and behavioral health free to anybody who needs those services, including those kids. So I just wanted to highlight it's Community Health Center Week, which is exciting for us. And, you know, nobody needs to be highlighted more than our staff. They're just absolute unsung heroes. So... Beyond that, I think most of you know what we do as an organization, but it's always worth just saying the high level, our mission is to provide care to everybody in the community and not leave anybody out. So anybody regardless of disability pay, we obviously do that in our community health centers. We also do that in home health and hospice, which is where we're rooted today. And then of course we have the Haven Assisted Living, Casey's Pond with Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Skilled Nursing, and a slew of preventative services for women and children in the community, even things like WIC and youth resiliency in the schools. And so throughout our entire organization, we serve a third of the community members, which is pretty vast, and it also speaks to the needs in our community. So that's the high level. I'm just gonna dig into home health and hospice. Y'all stop me if you have questions and I'll get going. But one of the biggest misconceptions as we've launched, we've done a lot of education last year. And I think a lot of people really think of home health and hospice as something for the aging population. And that's a misconception. We serve every single age from birth to 105 plus. And one of our patients, I'm just going to share a story, but our hospice team recently cared for an infant and walked alongside that family through one of the most unimaginable experiences any parent could face. Hospice was not about giving up in that situation, or it never is, but it was about surrounding that family with that expert medical care, emotional and spiritual support and compassion during their hardest days. This baby was well cared for by us, by their primary care, by children, so it was a very complex case. you know, we do as much as we can to make sure that those parents and that family enjoyed that baby as much as they could and that the baby was really safe and comfortable in its last days. So it's not simply senior services. Yes, 80% of the people we serve are seniors, 55 and plus, whether you like that definition or not. Some people do, some people don't. But they're community services and it's very clear that at some point we are all going to need them or somebody that we love is going to need them. So when I'm talking about community, I'm talking about serving the entire community with home health and with hospice. I talk about this a lot and I think I make the assumption that people really understand what those services are. So I'm gonna dig a little deeper than I normally do into what the actual services are. So home health, and they're separate, but as an organization and in rural Colorado, we do them together because we do them with the same staff. So I talk about them together, but if you know healthcare as much as maybe Councilor Dixon does, they're normally separate. but we do them together, so I'm gonna separate them. So home health is skilled medical care that's delivered in a person's home. The team is nurses, physical and occupational therapists, speech therapists, home health aides, medical social workers, and CNAs, which is, yeah, that's the robust team. Our team travels between Route and Moffett County because that's what they need to do. That's where our staffing levels are to meet the needs in our community. They help people recover after hospitalization, chronic illness, regain strength, prevent falls and remain safely in the home. So our patients are newborns with complex medical needs, children recovering from serious illness or injury, adults recovering from surgery or trauma, people living with chronic disease and then older adults who need our support to actually stay in their home. And in a lot of cases stay in the valley because there are other supports For some of these people it's Casey's Pond or it's the Haven. Those are full and they have been for all intents and purposes full. For the Haven it's been since COVID, for Casey's it's been since we built back up the census. So when those are filled, the other support and those other services are home health. Or it's the hospital, but nobody wants to live in the hospital and the hospital doesn't want you to live in the hospital. So that's home health and I'll give a very specific example. So last winter we cared for a patient who experienced a sudden decline after being diagnosed with Parkinson's. He lived alone, he had no family nearby, he couldn't shovel his sidewalks well enough to leave home for medical appointments. So he was isolated and he was becoming weaker. So his primary care provider hooked him up with home health and our home health nurses began visiting him at home. They reconciled his medications. They coordinated his care and worked alongside our physical therapy team to regain his strength. They also recognized that his greatest challenge wasn't medical. It was isolation. It was not having a community. It was not having people care for him. So we also had our volunteers go in and we assigned him one volunteer that we knew that they would kind of connect. And this volunteer went over and started shoveling his walk. And still, like, I wish I could say we could shovel right now. This seems so far away from us. But he still goes over in the summer because they've become friends and that has combated his isolation. And that's the unintended consequence of providing these skilled nurses services in the home is that we also have this robust team that is connecting people to what they need to thrive in the community. So that's home health. And then hospice is something that most people are more familiar with because most of us have had somebody who's gone through hospice, myself included. Um, and hospice is specialized comfort oriented care for people who approach end of life. And I think the key here is it's not necessarily about giving up. There is, there is a lot of stigma in entering hospice and saying, that's it, I'm giving up. But that's not what hospice is about. Hospice is about, um, Basically helping people live their life as comfortably as fully as they can while they are still here and guiding families through the process of that. It's also about caring for the families for a year after with bereavement services to help manage just what's going on in their life and what just happened. So there's a lot of social work. There's a lot of bereavement care, spiritual care that's going on. and just comfort and safety for the actual patient who's passing. So again, I'm going to share a story because that's my theme tonight is just give you guys a picture of what we do. But a longtime steamboat resident with a very wry sense of humor and countless stories about the Yampa Valley turned to hospice as his ALS progressed. He had driven airport and ski shuttles, regularly skinned and mountain biked up Storm and Emerald and helped build and grow the Yampa River Botanic Park. His wife said she had always associated hospice with death, but came to understand that it was really about her husband's quality of life. The team provided equipment, caregiver support, nursing, social work, therapy, and volunteers, including volunteers who helped in his garden. And actually before he passed, he said this about his experience. Hospice has been so wonderful in this whole process because I never knew we'd talk about death so much, but it's not scary like it was. To me, that's dignity. And that's what we do is provide dignity in the end of life in some of the most challenging places. Obviously, hospice doesn't change a diagnosis, but it just changed the experience. So that's kind of why I describe home health and hospice as essential community infrastructure. The important thing is without them, the needs that people have don't disappear and the costs don't disappear. They get shifted. They shift to families, hospitals, ambulance services, dispatch, adult protection, and local government systems. We don't have a backup in this community for somebody who's going to come in and do home health and hospice. If it goes away, it goes away. Nursing staff is one of the hardest staff to hire in the country right now. And so that's where we're at. And I've presented here before about why the payment structure doesn't work and I'm happy to go through that as well. And it was in the presentation that I didn't share, but hopefully you all have have and see, but I could talk about payment structure all day long, but the heart of it is how do we take care of our community and helping everybody understand that it's absolutely part of the infrastructure. So, I'll get to the exciting stuff. We launched a campaign in October of 2020. I get my year so mixed up. 2026. And we launched a 3 million, 2025, sorry, 3 million three-year campaign for home services. And it gives us a bridge to provide the services at the same time that we are building for a more sustainable future. So the solution is not only fundraising, but fundraising has to be part of it because you'll see in what I've provided in the past that providing home health and providing hospice in a rural area to anybody, regardless of their ability to pay, has to be supported by community. It has to be supported by fundraisers. And my mission in this campaign was to lift these services up to the community and say, do we want these? And just help people understand and give them education around why they're so important. Because again, you don't know about them until you're needing them. And so that's part of the hard part about this campaign. However, we've made a lot of meaningful progress. So I'll give you a little quick update on numbers. The first year our goal, and we launched in October of last year, the first year our goal was to raise a million dollars. And we launched that with $100,000 matching gift. And right now, the numbers that are in your presentation are a little outdated, but we are close to 800,000 for the year. The more exciting part, which is fabulous, and our team has just worked effortlessly to do that, another exciting part is that I just, on Friday, we just solidified this, so I'm just announcing it tonight, but we received a new challenge grant and every dollar raised between now and the end of this year will be matched dollar for dollar by up to $300,000. So every dollar is $2, every $10,000 is $20,000. And we will exceed our goal by the end of the year if the community steps up to that challenge. So that's very exciting news. That wasn't part of my original presentation because we just solidified that on Friday, but we're excited about it. And, you know, other than that, I think I've said my piece on why these are so important. And so I'll just open it up to questions for you all.

OK, thank you. And we did all receive your presentation. And I know we all read through it. So we understand that. And thank you so much. What questions do we have for Steph or comments or thoughts?

So Steph, thank you. This work is so important. And you're right, it's about keeping people in their homes. Because if you weren't here, they would either be in a different community, they'd be in a facility, or they'd be in the ER and the hospital not knowing what to do with them.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Or they're living unsafely in their homes and quality of life diminishes, falls increase, and they're not cared for the way they want to be cared for. Their loved ones want them to be cared for.

Yeah, and there are some really awful and sad stories when we don't take care of folks. That's happening today. So the $3 million over three years... How, is that going to be, are you looking, is this for capital, for operations? And is that enough money? That's what I'm trying to get at.

It's enough money for three years. No, that's great. That's great. It's enough money for three years. It is basically to support operations for three years to continue to provide, you know, 6,000 more visits in Steamboat each of those three years, but also for us to provide a glide path into other creative solutions, whether that's partnerships, different funding sources, different revenues, different service lines that can bolster the losses for us to be able to serve everybody. A lot of what's happened across the state is that home health agencies or hospice agencies have simply said, well, we're going to carve out certain parts of the population and not serve them anymore. So there's some that have moved to only private pay. There's some that only take maybe 50 Medicare patients a year. So they're really just... controlling their revenues and their payer mix by carving people out. And that's not what we want to do at all. That's not our mission. That's not who we are. And that's not what this community deserves. So that's where we're trying to just lift it up to the whole community. But that three years is strategic to try and get us to a, to a more long-term sustainability because we're in it for the long game, right? Yeah, totally. And not,

I'm not trying to get political here, so I'll be careful on how I word it. Did you all... I'm assuming with HR1, that then immediately put the state into a fiscal crisis the day it was signed. I'm assuming that impacted you all and these services as well?

It will. Not as badly in home health and hospice. Part of... how we've been able to subsidize home health and hospice in the past and part of why the gap is so great now is because we have had service lines who have made money from patient revenues, from billing, Medicaid, Medicare, primarily the clinics. And those are the revenues there and the cuts that we're seeing at the state and federal level really affect the clinical revenues. They will also affect skilled nursing revenues. They don't affect home health and hospice as much because our primary payer is Medicare. And there's not HR1 cuts with Medicare. Medicare is just, for all intents and purposes, flat. I think we're actually getting a 2.5 increase this year, which is exciting. But the HR1 specifically is really going to have an impact with our clinical revenue. So we've already done some numbers and... out of those 6 000 people about a third of the people we see on medicaid which medicaid is where our bread and butter is we see about 4 000 people on medicaid about a third of those people will be cut out of medicaid based on hr1 and the work requirements and so that's a huge impact to those people's ability to access any other services outside of ours. And that's also a big impact to our bottom line. So that's, thank you for asking the question, because it's something that should be highlighted and brought up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. It's complex at best.

I have a question for you on Casey's Pond, which is now is full, but I also believe it is financially sustainable and stable and on its own.

It is. It is operationally firing at all cylinders. It is full for all intents and purposes. There's always, it is a fluid community and there's always some, but the modeling worked operationally. Yes. It's supporting itself. Yeah. I think part of what has been really great about this community was not only saving Casey's Pond with the capital dollars that were raised, but also, if you remember, there was a fund at the Yampa Valley Community Foundation of about two and a half million dollars that was for operating for us to get going. We just did a capital reserve study on Casey's pond. And we, that is the part that is operations are not going to fund a capital reserve. And so that's kind of where we're launching into is what does that look like in the future for the building? So as we're starting to assess, how can we bring more AL and IL online, independent living and assisted living online by, potentially relocating staff that live there how can we bolster revenues to then produce a capital reserve for casey's pond that was yeah that's where we are do you see any opportunity out there to build more casey's ponds oh that's a loaded question yeah absolutely um

I mean, financially viable, not one that had to go through what we had to go through.

We'd build it exactly the same, I'll just say that. There are some things that we've discovered and we've done a lot of due diligence and work on industry standards for continuous care communities.

And I don't know that the demand is there right now for our community, but it may be in the future.

I will say we are very, in all of our research, we are so unique. There's not another continuous care community in any resort rural regions that we can find that offer all of what we offer. So that's awesome in itself and there's a lot of potential there, but I'm not sure.

So what you're saying is that more people would rather stay in their home than potentially move to a facility like Casey's Pond if it was available?

Oh, that's such a personal question. I don't know if it's yes or no or more or less. It's so personal. It's just what depends on what people want and what people want for their loved one.

Yeah.

Other questions for Steph? Anyone?

Jess, thanks for your work. Oh, thank you.

It's really important. It's so important. Councilor Pacino, go ahead.

Yes, thank you very much. This is extremely important to take care of our elderly and Steph, I'm just so proud that we are so much part of Casey's Pond growing and being in your care and seeing how it's happening and recognizing that hospice and home services are equally as important for our whole community. I'm currently obviously in Sun City, Arizona, taking care of mom. And we recognize what that really means. And, and, you know, it's not a burden, but we have to have it for some people that like that lonely guy you were talking about. And I could totally see how that would be with just her friends that live in this area. Yeah.

Some people don't have anybody.

So it's important that you're doing it. So keep it going. I really appreciate it. You have my support and you will get it.

Appreciate that. Thank you. Hope everything's going well with your mom.

Thanks. OK. If there are no other questions, thank you so much. Thank you very much. We appreciate the update. Thank you. Thank you. OK, we'll move on to linkage fee program. Rebecca, do we have anybody else? I don't think anybody's arrived. Anybody interested in making public comment online? Raise your hand. No, I don't see anyone, so we'll just move on. Rebecca?

All right, good evening. Rebecca Bessey, Planning Director. I also, we have Brian Dufny and Rachel Shimon from EPS, our consultants online. So I'm going to do the presentation. I'll try to answer questions, but if I need to punt to either of them or Brian and Rachel, if I get anything wrong, please chime in. And... sorry wrong screen let's see Note to self, never try to talk and navigate screen share at the same time. All right. So we're going to go ahead and walk through the presentation. We are making staff recommendations tonight, and we are looking for some... sort of thumbs up or clear direction from council because our next step, if directed to do so, will be to draft an ordinance to bring back to you for consideration and adoption. So the format of the presentation, rather than saving all of the questions and feedback for the end, I have it set up so we'll kind of pause at each slide, provide some feedback and then do a recap at the end. As you know, this topic relates directly to one of your goals, which was to develop and adopt an inclusionary zoning and or linkage program. It directly addresses one of our strategic objectives around affordable and attainable housing. And it is called out specifically as initiative 1.4 in the city's strategic plan. I know you all know this, so I'll run through the next couple of slides rather quickly, but just a recap on what we mean when we talk about a linkage program or linkage fee. So linkage is primarily a fee program. We refer to it as linkage fee, but you may also hear us talk about it as affordable housing impact fee. And as an impact fee, the revenue from that fee has to be utilized to fund affordable housing or directly related capital costs. So it is going towards capital costs to offset or mitigate the impact of the development. It can apply to both residential and non-residential development. And then lastly, just a quick reminder, when we started this study and when we hired the consultants, we were looking at both inclusionary zoning and linkage. Earlier this year, council gave clear direction to sort of suspend further development of the inclusionary zoning option and focus primarily on linkage. So how does a linkage program or linkage fee work? It essentially looks at new development and applies the employee generation rate per square foot that that land use or that development would generate. And that employment generation rate is what we got out of the Nexus study. So that is rooted in facts and analysis. When we apply that employment generation rate, we determine the employees that would be generated in our community per square foot from that new development. We then apply a mitigation rate, and that's essentially what percent of the jobs that are generated from that development are you trying to offset or mitigate with this policy and this fee. And that's really a policy choice. There's a... a set of questions that we'll walk through, but where you set that mitigation rate is really your choice as the policy makers here. There's obviously a maximum fee that we can defend and justify, and that's established in the Nexus study, but anything below that is really your choice. We apply that mitigation rate. We then apply the affordability gap per employee. So what the gap between what those employees can afford and the cost of housing here in our community. And again, that comes from the Nexus study. And when you run through that formula, you get the affordable housing impact fee. So at a high level, what the consultants have presented to you sort of in a preliminary fashion earlier this year and what we're here recommending with final recommendations tonight would be that we develop a program that applies to both residential and non-residential development, both new development and what we would define as substantial additions. We propose exempting any deed-restricted residential units, so both affordable and workforce housing, and we would also recommend that we allocate 3% of the fee revenue to cover the administrative costs. You'll see on this slide, and you've seen this before, it is in the NEXUS study, but this is really sort of high level what we're recommending. So that top line of this table illustrates the maximum fee that could be defensible under the NEXUS study. We obviously are not recommending that we assess the maximum fee per square foot. But you'll see that recommended mitigation rate and it varies. We're recommending that we apply this to residential as well as six categories of non-residential land uses as you can see there. You'll see the recommended fee as well as the geographic applicability for the different land uses. And we're gonna run through this in more detail in the additional slides. So as we go through this, those policy choices that I talked about or referenced earlier, those relate to the different attributes. We can craft this program in a number of different ways. So we're going to walk through applicability, some proposed exemptions, implementation phasing, and then finally the mitigation rates. And just to be real clear, I'm looking for some direction, consensus direction. We'll then go work with... with legal, put together an ordinance, bring that back to you. There can still be tweaks, but I really kind of, I don't want to waste time and write an ordinance that isn't really meeting the direction that you all want to give. So we'll walk through these tonight, but of course there'll always be room to adjust and fine tune. So starting with applicability, as I already mentioned, staff recommends that we apply this to residential development citywide and to new non-residential development in the mountain area. And we'll talk about how we might define mountain area in a later slide, but just generally the concept would be that non-residential uses would only apply in that mountain area, not citywide. The specific land use categories are listed there. As I already mentioned, there's six non-residential categories as well as residential. So I'll just pause there and ask you all, as I'm sure you've looked through the presentation, we'll kind of fine tune this and get further into the details, but is there general consensus or agreement that we're looking at the applicable land uses?

I do have a question about, I think the kind of the mountain area and the justification behind that, but I think, I don't know if that's, we want that question now or I want to bring that back to a discussion at council.

Yeah, we can save it for the later slide or if we want to chat about it now, it's either way. Are you questioning whether there's even a need to differentiate or just how we would define that area?

How we define the area. Okay. And I understand, I know we're going to talk about that from the perspective of the, you know, specific to the mountain area, but I guess I'd love to have a broader conversation amongst council as to the justification and agreement on not considering applicability downtown and west.

Don't want to do that now. Or do you want to focus just on the categories of land use? Are we going to get back to that later? Rebecca?

Why don't we move ahead? Because I think then we can, we can talk about the geography all in one that works for you.

Perfect.

Okay. Any, any other feedback aside from sort of differentiating between mountain area and citywide? Are we comfortable with the land use categories?

I'm not. But I have lots of questions. And so we could... I don't know if you want to get through the presentation or, you know...

I think Rebecca wants to stop at each point here and try to resolve it. And that way, when we get to the end, you have clarity around...

If it's easier for you, we can run through it. If it makes sense to see the whole thing as one. I just didn't want to get to the end and have so many questions and have sort of a disparate conversation. So...

Yeah, because my questions are more around just why are we differentiating so much between the different types of properties, different categories? Why are we distinctioning the mountain area versus non-mountain area? Why are you distinctioning downtown area versus not downtown area? I think there's just the overall premise in general of why the categorization and why the differences across the board.

Okay, so I think let's take the geography one when we get to that. In terms of why are we differentiating different categories, I think that's gonna come to light when we talk about the mitigation rates because different land uses have different employment generation rates and they also have different development costs. And so when we get to the mitigation rate, I think that might be where we can talk about the different land use categories, if that works for you.

Yeah, because I have questions on the mitigation rates, but I don't want to ask them now. I think what you're really asking is simply, are these categories the right ones? Are these land use categories the ones that we want to use?

Correct. Okay.

So basically the part that's bullet two of the slide is what you're looking for, not bullet one at this point.

Sure. And I just saw that Brian raised his hand. So Brian, do you have anything to add before we move?

No, I think, wait, me, Brian? No, I think that was an old hand raise.

No, I see Brian Duffany. I'm sorry. Oh, okay.

So does, is everyone okay with these specific seven categories?

I am. So this is saying that the linkage fee would apply to hospitals and healthcare based on the land use?

Yes, correct, in the mountain area. In the mountain area. Is what we're recommending.

Okay. I think my audio is working right now. Sorry about that. I did want to answer the question about why help answer the question about why the differentiation between land use categories. it's because. Rebecca alluded each land use category has a has different characteristics in terms of how much employment they generate and the wages associated with those types of businesses, so the nexus study needs to establish needs to establish those differences, so that to satisfy the. the legal requirements of essential nexus and rough proportionality. So the fee is proportional to the intensity of the impacts of the land uses.

Thanks, Brian.

Okay. And so we're not talking about location now, because that was your mountain versus non-mountain. I still, I'm struggling with the hospitals and healthcare. To me, that's a whole different category of that. And I get the impact. But to me, that's completely different than a retail or a hotel and lodging. That hospital and healthcare are part of what we provide as a functioning society. So that's, I don't know.

Would it be easier to go back to slide six and look at it from slide six and see that from the NEXUS, what if I read here is the NEXUS study is giving us the maximum fee, the very first line, and that is the recommended fees per category. So those are coming out of the NEXUS study?

Right, so the top line, so going back to this table, and we'll dive into the mitigation rates in a little more detail in a future slide, but just so you understand, the NEXUS study identifies and documents the maximum fee that is defensible to mitigate 100% of the impact of the employees generated by that land use per square foot. So the maximum fee that we could defensively charge or apply to a hospital or healthcare use would be $470.95 per square foot. Our recommended mitigation rate for that land use, you can see there is 10%. So not trying to mitigate 100% of the impact, but trying to mitigate through this particular program 10% of the impact.

and that that land use generates and and my understanding is as council we can decide whether for health care we want it to be some other rate it could be zero i mean if you had a zero rate we would we would just eliminate that that land use category correct

I guess my question then is, is this normal to have hospitals and healthcare within a linkage fee program? Do other communities incorporate hospitals and healthcare in land use?

Yeah, Brian or Rachel, can you address that based on your experience?

It's fairly common. Some of the mountain towns have older fee programs, though, that just kind of predate more current practice in this field and have a much more consolidated set of categories. So I think they're including it in broader general commercial categories. I think this way is better to be more specific. In quote normal impact fee programs, you know, like road, park, facilities and fire impact fees, those kinds of things, it's common to have a pretty wide list of land use categories so that you're making sure that the fees are differentiated and proportional to the intensity of the use. So this is a little more best practice than what some of the current fee programs around the state and other areas may have.

So you said something that made me raise, how many other categories potentially are there? I mean, you just selected, two, four, six categories. So when you go to pull a permit, how many other categories have someone says, Oh, I'm going to, you know, I want to build an airport, but I'm going to call it, or I'm going to build industrial park, but I'm going to call it an airport. So, you know, so I only have to pay for it. What, what other categories are there? I mean, because basically you're, you're defining what, the categories here on the dispositor. What other categories are there?

So these are pretty broad categories that would encompass a good number of the non-residential land uses that are allowed per zoning in our community. but it wouldn't be everything. Like you're not gonna, we don't see on here say religious institutions. We don't see utility uses. We don't, so these are pretty broad categories purposefully we aren't breaking down every type of industrial use and applying a different rate the nexus city didn't go to that level um so this is lumping a lot of cat a lot of different specific land uses into bigger buckets but certainly it's not every use within our community is going to fall in one of these non-residential let me ask the question a different way would every um permit that gets pulled fall into one of these six categories You're gonna force every- No, I do not believe that every land use would fall in one of these categories, no.

And then, so the question I have is what type of, what types of things would not fall and would, you know, into these categories?

Well, as I just mentioned, I think a religious institution would not fall in here. Some utility type land uses may not fall in here. Those are the two that are coming to mind, but I'm sure there's more.

I think it's going to be pretty rare that something's not going to fit into one of these categories. And we can have provisions in the ordinance to address special cases for things that don't fit into these categories. They're either exempt because of a negligible impact or if they feel that they differ significantly from what's in you know, what's in these employment generation rates, et cetera, that they can provide an independent analysis to show why they're different and then be assessed at a different fee. So there's a little balance.

Would it be fair to say, Brian, you've done, I mean, this is your area of expertise, correct? Yes. It's a rhetorical question. The point I'm trying to make is that these examples you're using for specific land use categories, the mitigation rates that you're coming up with, et cetera, et cetera, are all what you would consider to be pretty much best practice. That's what you've seen out there in the marketplace. Those are the ones that have been effective. I mean, this is your recommendation, correct? Correct. So if there are categories, you're saying that the bulk, 90 plus percent of all land use is in one or more of these categories. Would that be fair? Yes.

Okay. I would agree with that as well.

So I just have a real problem with hospitals and healthcare, especially coming off of Steph's last presentation. Hospitals and healthcare is a broken system in our country right now, and it has been. And that they are different than a retail where their reimbursement rate is either set by the government or third-party payers like UnitedHealthcare. And they have very little room to pass these costs on to the consumer. And so for a healthcare provider that relies primarily on Medicaid or Medicare, they can't negotiate these linkage fees into their reimbursement rates for the services they provide. So I'm not sure, I just, unless I'm missing something, I'm having a hard time with just that category right now. Those are not optional services people are accessing, where hotel and lodging pretty much is, so.

Can I take a different swing at that? Sure. I don't mind. In fact, I would like to have that category there. And then when we go to discuss recommended fee, make the recommended fee 0%.

But Rebecca just said, well, I have it then as a category.

Well, why? Because I also think, or in my mind, it makes it easier for me to think about is that other category of religious institutions and utilities that we actually have those categories also set to 0%. I guess I feel I want completeness in the communication and identifying those are the types of developments that are happening and those are not getting charged. And so just because it's zero doesn't mean it does not list it. That's the way I'm thinking about it. Okay, well.

I was gonna say, I hear what you're saying, Councilor Dixon, but I think there might be maybe some bifurcation that needs to happen in the sense of kind of the traditional health care versus, you know, in our hospital versus maybe some more privatized services. So.

Let's hear from our other two counselors who are online. Where do you fall on this specific question around applicable land uses?

Hey, so, Amy, I totally agree with you. But my like hospitals have an impact on housing just like every other of these services. And I understand healthcare is a necessity and some of these aren't, but I, I worry that if we start carving out certain things because they have a hard pricing thing, I feel like experts in any of these fields would say, I can't, or I am unable to, or, you know, lodging it's real. I have to pay really high wages. I can't get, you know, so that's my concern is there is a housing impact with healthcare and hospitals. And I understand that the system's broken, they can't pass these costs along. But I mean, they had to build housing, like they do have a housing impact, just like all these other areas. So I would support keeping it in. But Amy, like, I hear you, I get it.

Thank you. Thank you. Then let's include religious institutions. Say that again. Then let's include religious institutions in here as well.

Councillor Pacino. You're on mute.

Sorry, I've gone through it and I'm actually. I don't have a problem with these categories. I like where we, I mean, I really don't. Rebecca, you can continue. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I don't want to carve out a whole lot because to me, it's a pretty robust system and we're really leaning on some of our consultants and professionals to kind of get us where we need to go. So at this point in this, I had a question later on, which we'll get to, but right now I have no questions. I have no problems with the land uses.

Okay, so we basically have, you don't have any problems with them either?

I mean, I absolutely hear what Councilor Dixon is saying about hospitals and certainly about our hospitals and our system as it is today. So, and I hear you when you say, I think we look at 10%, right? And I just know we've got, I guess I don't, I'll side with Councilor Dixon on this one in the sense, I mean, but I look at SOCIE and I see SOCIE as like, and maybe I'm wrong, right? But I see SOCIE as kind of a different cost structure than I see UC Health and our medical structure.

And maybe I'm wrong.

So how do we, it helped me educate me on that in terms of, can we somehow bifurcate that?

I won't go into the problems of our health care system. They get higher reimbursement based on the acuity of the services they provide. They're also negotiating their reimbursement rates with Cigna and UnitedHealthcare.

So you would just say a blanket to health care?

It just feels off to me, but I think I'm out voted here so we can move on. I mean, it just feels off.

How about if we agree on these categories, we're gonna get later on to talk about mitigation rates and whatnot. So do we have a majority of council who's okay with this land use categories? If we're gonna come back and look at mitigation rates or whatever, which we will do.

I'm still on the side of I want completeness. I don't know how to get off that.

I think we can address that. As Brian mentioned, we can have in the ordinance a mechanism by which if there's a land use that comes forward that would apply that doesn't neatly fall in one of these categories that we can have a process to evaluate that land use. determine whether a mitigation rate and fee would apply or not it's almost like another category yeah brian did i get am i representing that correctly yes i didn't know if you saw my thumbs up okay I thought this was an easy slide. So I think we can get in. I think we'll kind of continue to come back to this and touch on it as we move through. Okay. If we're okay moving forward. And I apologize, Councilor Curie, I interrupted you.

I want to chime in on the other thing. If we're doing that off of one counselor's whim that he wants to see completeness with all due respect, I actually disagree with that. We have two experts here that we've hired, and they're saying that these are the standards. And just because we feel it would be nice to have a full puzzle, why do we know more than what's been proposed? So if we're actually going to be doing that, then we should be getting the pulse of all counsel. I don't really want to be messing with this.

Okay, well, I think we're at the point, I mean, we have to be a little careful here as we go through this, that we understand that there's six of us and the viewpoints may be different. So we're going to have to look at a thumbs up kind of situation here. I don't think we're going to get necessarily consensus on every single detail on this. So are we ready to at least look at this one and say, do we have a thumbs up on these specific categories? And I'll throw that out there. And Of course, you two online, we got two thumbs up online. I'm a thumbs up on this category. Do we have another or not? I'm fine with the category.

There'll be a lot longer discussion in the recommended fee. And I'm comfortable with Rebecca's comment of we can cover those other areas. We have a way to cover those.

Well, I'll be a thumbs up with further discussion on healthcare.

Okay, we're moving on.

Okay, so the second piece to the applicability would be what types of development would the fee apply to? Our recommendation is all new development. Now, we're going to talk about potential exemptions in the next slide, so keep that in mind, but all new development as well as substantial additions, which we recommend that is defined as adding 50% or more net increase in existing gross floor area so just looking to council to see if that type of applicability and definition of substantial addition feels right to you what slide are you on nine slide nine and you should look at ten obviously to see what the exemptions are because that probably answers a number of questions yeah we can jump ahead and then if if that makes sense so um Let me go ahead and cover the exemptions and we can take those two points together. So staff and consultants would recommend that we keep exemptions pretty narrow and that the only land uses that would be exempt would be residential units that would fit within our existing CDC defined terms of affordable housing. and workforce units and that to qualify for an exemption there would have to be guarantees such as deed restrictions so that we know that it's either in perpetuity or for some specific timeframe that's acceptable to council and that we are truly only exempting the units that meet those definitions. So again the question would be should this apply to all new development with these exemptions and are you comfortable with that substantial addition definition?

Can you elaborate a little bit more on, so the second exemptions require guarantees, right? Affordable pricing, income limits. So kind of back to this issue that we've been talking about in terms of if we've got something that's deed restricted, it needs to be affordable, right? I mean, so how do we cap and make sure that the rates remain affordable for rental units, right?

Yeah, so that would be, we would have to agree to some typical deed restrictions, but what we're, and I don't want to get too far into sort of the specifics of what that would look like tonight. It's certainly, it would be something that we would finalize before implementing this program. But what we're suggesting and recommending is that we stick with the current definitions that we have. So our CDC currently defines affordable housing as that which is affordable, you know, hitting that 30% of income mark of 120% of AMI households making up to 120% of AMI or less. And then the second category would be anything that would qualify as a workforce unit, which you, I believe, know you can qualify for, for the workforce unit, either through the income qualification or the local workforce qualification. So being employed and working for an employer who has a physical location here in Route County. Did that answer your question?

Well, I think it's the second part, right? Back to the affordable pricing and the income, the affordable pricing. So more from the perspective of back to the rents that are paid.

Yeah, and I think that those would be the specifics that would be detailed out in those deed restrictions.

Okay. Thank you.

Any feedback on the substantial addition definition? Does the 50% feel right?

My only question on it was that if you have a 2,000-square-foot home and you add on... you know, 1,200 square feet to it, you're going to pay the 50%.

You're going to pay a fee on the 1,200 square feet.

On the 1,200 square feet. If you got a 5,000 square foot home and you add more than that, let's say 2,000 square feet to it, you're not going to pay anything.

That would be correct.

That's my only concern is that, you know, for, did you get that?

No, repeat that, sorry.

Okay, so let's say you have a 2,000 square foot home and you say, okay, I'm going to put a 1,200 square foot addition on it. So I'm now at 3,200, but that 1,200 is more than 50% of the original 2,000. But if I got a 5,000 square foot home, and I add 2,000 square feet, that's only 40% more, so I don't pay anything, even though obviously I can afford to pay a lot more. That was my only concern about the bigger homes, which they'll add on more absolute square feet potentially, but their percentage would be less than 50%. And I don't know if Brian has any experience with that or how to answer that. Sure.

Just a general comment. That's a valid point. I think a general comment with fee programs like this is that no fee program is designed to cap you know to capture every single case you know you it's hard it's hard to develop policy like policies like this that are going to you know absolutely capture 100 of the cases that come in there's always going to be you know some some little little things that kind of squeak through um and that's it's just kind of a reality of of of this you know of growth and development policy um and so we're you know overall we're trying to design this to to kind of address the majority of land use cases, the most common types of impacts that we're gonna experience. So not really an answer, but maybe some context.

Yeah, and I would add to that. I agree, it's a completely valid point. There has to be a threshold. We have to set it somewhere. And so 50% sort of felt right and reasonable to staff based on recommendations from the consultants and what we see in other communities, but it could be something different. But I think if we're trying to really like game out every scenario, there's just not really a way to do that. We have to decide on a threshold and set it and live with when it applies and when it doesn't.

knowing that I'm going to get the wrath of my fellow council members of throwing out solutions when I was listening to policy. I looked at that and I went, why is threshold based upon the current size? Why couldn't the threshold be, you know, above 1,000 square feet or something like, you know, anything above 1,000? Or there's some type of grace versus based upon, you know... you know, a large house and you're just adding, you know. Anyways, yeah, you know, I see the kind of flipping it is basically give them a grace of so many square feet and then anything above that gets taxed or feed.

Well, then I guess I would ask Brian, I don't know in terms of when you look at this and Rebecca, I mean, I think what I'm struggling with and I think what you've pointed out too is that we certainly don't, and to some extent with the healthcare too, we don't want to overburden the people that this is intended to help, right? So to the extent that we're trying to increase affordable and attainable housing, So do you ever do something like anything under 2,500 square feet or something like that is exempt? as opposed to like a 50% more net increase to the existing gross floor area. So looking at this more, taking into consideration the size of the house. So to Councilor Muntin's point, about 2,500 square foot home. I mean, you know, now if they're going to go to 5,000, that's a different story, right? But versus the 5,000 square foot home and, you know, anything over 5,000 square feet, no matter what the addition is, should pay a fee.

provide you my perspective on that and then I'll offer Brian and Rachel an opportunity if they want to add to it. So I think certainly we could set just a minimum threshold when it doesn't apply. I would recommend that we rely on those exemptions, the workforce and the affordable deed restricted units as being those exemptions. And the reason why I say that when we're talking about residential in particular is that it exempts them from this additional cost and it ensures that that benefit, that lower cost to develop that additional square footage doesn't just benefit that first owner, the person undertaking that. It benefits the future owners because that is now a deed restricted unit. We know it's gonna serve the workforce or it's gonna be capped at some affordability rate. So just saying anything under 2,000 square feet is exempt. That's really great for that first person to have a lower development cost. They're gonna turn around and sell that at full market value, which means that we as the community didn't get any mitigation for the employment generated by that addition or that new home. And that was only cheaper then for that first owner, because it's not gonna sell for anything less than market value in the future. based on that not applying the fee to that minimum square footage. So I would recommend we rely on the exemptions to sort of hit that mark that you're speaking to rather than trying to decide what that magic minimum threshold is.

Okay, that's a good point.

Okay. Councilors Pacino and Swintec, are you okay with what Rebecca just said?

My only question, is this set in stone, or would we be able to test the 50% and see if all these fringe cases we're worried about, see if they're happening, and then be able to tweak it if we were seeing that?

Well, I think generally we can always amend policies. We can evaluate, see how it's working, and make changes through ordinance. But again, I just want to remind you that we have to set a threshold somewhere. wherever you set it, you're always gonna have some folks who are gonna come in right under it purposefully. You know, we can lower it and they'll come in purposefully lower again. So, you know, the answer to that, Councilor Swintek is yes, we can always evaluate. I think it's a good practice to, when we adopt a new policy to let it, you know, implement it, see how it works, come back and evaluate it and make any changes that we think need to be made. But I just wouldn't want to be trying to tweak it to hit everything that, you know, might make it through.

Got it. Thanks. Yeah, the only question I was going to ask Rebecca, make sure I'm on, is when we come to drafting an ordinance or resolution, probably an ordinance. Can we at least give me some, what I'm going to be looking for is some examples, examples of what is defined 50% of the net increase. So are we talking about a 2000? I mean, if a 2000 square foot properties bill, what does that actually equate? I know we're looking at percentages and kind of numbers, but I want to know what the actual dollar amount is that we're potentially charging the developer. and how this fund can grow in the future as well. So is that part of your plan?

And I have that on a future slide. So we're going to get there. I have some examples for you. Never mind. And we can always come back with more.

So can I ask whether Brian, the consultant, has anything to add to this? Brian, do you have anything to add to Rebecca's recommendation?

Nothing at the moment. I think I agree with Rebecca's recommendation.

So is everyone then okay with the fact that the fee will apply to all new development with the exemptions that were talked about around affordable housing and workforce units and the 50% net increase to existing gross floor would be the addition that it would apply to? Are we okay with that for now? Yes.

I don't know if I heard you say that correctly.

Okay, did you hear me? It's basically slide nine.

We're ignoring the bullet two.

Bullet two. Bullet two is a strike, right? Where are we? On page nine. Nine? I don't see a bullet two. Where do you see bullet two on slide nine?

Substantial additions. Oh, that's second dash.

Yes, define as 50% or more. We're sticking with that definition.

I thought I heard the recommendation is we are just, the only exemption is.

This is for an addition. This is not for new development.

I understand. So my understanding is that basically we'd exempt the.

What's the next slide?

Workforce and deed restriction. Yes. But if it's not, if they don't have that, then they're gonna pay based on that second dash up there.

Correct.

Okay. I thought we were basically, they're going to, my understanding when I heard that was that we would charge as if it's new, any addition would be as if new development. That's what I was thinking I was hearing. Is that we don't have, we are not putting a threshold in there that And that the only exemption is you're going to get is basically that's defined the CDC for workforce housing and affordable housing network.

Staff's recommendation would be that we define substantial addition. So if you don't meet that 50% threshold for an addition, then you would not pay a fee.

So basically it is as nine and 10 state here. Correct. That's what we are agreeing to. Okay.

We have,

And that's where I think we had a majority agree to that, correct? Two thumbs up?

Four?

Five?

I'm still not comfortable. So I'm not comfortable with the substantial addition component. And maybe we can talk that through to help me understand a little more. Or if you are anxious to move forward, you can override me.

You are welcome to ask a question about it.

I thought we were trying to solve the problem of you have a McMansion and you're adding a large addition to a McMansion. and that you are not going to get paid any fees. I thought we were trying to address that issue, and I thought we were addressing that issue as basically saying that any addition is going to be taxed, not just 50%. That's what I thought I was hearing.

I believe what Rebecca said was that we have to pick a threshold, and there's always going to be exceptions. People will come in at 49 if it's 50. They'll come in at 39 if it's 40. But no, we are not suggesting that. We are saying that the 50% would apply to any, whether it's a 5,000 square foot home or a 2,000 square foot home.

Maybe this is a case where I need an example because if someone's coming in with a 2,000 square foot house and they add a 1,000 foot addition, they fall within the category, correct? But if someone has a 5,000 square foot house and they add a 2,000 addition, they do not. And that does not feel comfortable to me.

I mean, I was thinking about that from the perspective of you've got an 800 square foot historic house downtown and they want to put on a 400 square foot ADU. And I think what I kind of swayed, my objection is that you can be exempt from the fees if you de-restrict it to workforce housing.

In perpetuity. In perpetuity. Which will benefit every homeowner subsequent to the existing one.

Yeah. Guys, I just worry that this is like treading into the kind of death by committee that STRs did. Like we're carving this all up. The reality is, is this policy is going to have negative unintended consequences along with the positive consequences. We're not going to have a perfect plan where we can develop precisely the projects that we want to develop in okay and then apply it on the ones we deem are not okay. I feel like we as a council need to be comfortable with that is what I'm highlighting, that this will not be perfect.

No, it won't be perfect, and we aren't the experts on it. But I think it's important that if we have a majority who want to move forward, we need to move forward or else we're not going to get through it. But it's important to have the conversation so everybody understands it. I wanted to share that example because it'll happen. You know, it's going to happen.

Yeah, I mean, there will be developments that will not have a fee applied that we may wish it would apply. And I think we can evaluate that over time and decide if we set the initial thresholds at the right place and make some adjustments if need be, up or down, either way. Because I agree with Councilor Swintek, we can't foresee every situation in advance and we are going to learn as we implement this. Okay. I see that the clock has stopped, which is a good thing. So we're to the really easy one now, the geography. I want to be really clear. I'm not expecting us to draw lines on a map tonight. So that is not the expectation. And I don't want to get too far sort of into that because I think we, what I'm looking for from you tonight is high level direction on whether that kind of back to that broad question about what applies citywide, what may apply only in the mountain area. So that's sort of that big question. picture applicability question, and then talking a little bit about maybe where you see the right places start in terms of mapping that mountain area if we go that route. So I've provided some maps in your packet. I'll talk you through those in just a moment. So I'm not asking for anyone to say this is the map, but just to give me some direction on the starting point, what sort of feels right for you, and then we'll come back and further refine that a little bit. Big picture, again, just to remind everybody, the recommendation of staff and consultants is to apply this to residential development citywide, and then to apply it to those non-residential categories in the mountain area only. Jumping ahead a slide, what I provided in your packet are larger copies of these four maps. So when we talk about the mountain area, I think we all sort of generally know what part of town we're talking about, the area around the resort. We have a number of geographies that have already been identified for different purposes in that area. And so we felt that was kind of a good place to start to get everyone oriented. So what you have in your packet are, and what's on the screen here, the two maps on the left illustrate the mountain area zoning zone districts. So we have a Gondola one, Gondola two district. Those are generally, mixed use and commercial high intensity zone districts right around the base of the resort. And then a little bit further out, you have resort residential one and two. Those again are very resort centered zone districts. And then you also see in sort of those shades of pink up along Highway 40, those are generally community commercial districts that are also in that area of town. Overlaid with those zone districts, we have the boundaries for both the SSRA mountain plan area boundary, what you generally sort of refer to as the URA boundary. And then on the second map, we have or I might have those reversed, I'm sorry. One of them is the URA boundary. One of them overlays it with the boundary that we use for the mountain area master plan. So that was another sort of geographic line we drew on a map to differentiate or identify the mountain area for that planning purpose. So that's sort of one set of examples. And then the other one that we've talked about potentially as a starting point would be the STR overlay zone A or the green zone that occurs in the mountain area. And you can see those I've provided that zone district as well as the B zones or the yellow zones that surround that, overlaying those again with the URA boundary and the mountain area master plan boundary, just to give you some context. So looking just again, high level direction, do we agree with this concept of citywide for residential, mountain area only for non-residential? And then if so, any initial feedback on that actual geography?

Can you start with the overall premise of why you chose it to apply to these two categories?

Chose it to apply to the two categories of?

Residential development citywide and non-residential development mountain area.

Sure, you may remember several months ago when Brian and Rachel presented the preliminary, the NEXUS study and sort of their preliminary recommendations, we talked quite a bit about this. So I'm gonna respond to that and again, throw it to Brian or Rachel if they wanna chime in. But the idea of what we're trying to do here is address the impacts of new development of certain land uses, but doing it in a way where we're not impairing the market so much that the development doesn't occur. Because that's really, then you get no fee, you're not mitigating anything. And so there's kind of a fine balance there. The mountain area is a different market than the rest of our community in a lot of ways. The development that occurs there has different economics. And we believe that it can sort of adjust to this increased fee a little bit differently than land uses in other areas of town. We also recognize through our community plan that we want a diverse economy. We need a balance and a mix of land uses throughout our community. And so looking at some of the non-residential uses in other areas of town and exempting that, them from this program is an effort to not impair that market, you know, and not discourage those types of uses where we want to see them and where it might be harder for them to absorb these additional development costs. And I will throw it to Brian because I'm sure that he can speak to that probably more eloquently.

I'll say basically the same thing in different words. You know, throughout the comprehensive plan and other work that that we and other consultants have done in Steamboat. There's still a very strong theme and desire to support entrepreneurism, to have a diverse economy. And we were a little bit of a double negative. We're trying to not disincentivize those other types of development and land uses that can contribute to economic diversity because it is different than the resort economy. So the resort economy and the tourism economy, doesn't need a lot of economic incentive, it's happening anyway. It's the other parts of the economy, the professional services, manufacturing, small local businesses, things like that, that's what we're trying to encourage. And maybe just rounding the loop on that most of most of those other types of businesses and development don't occur in the mountain area you know it's more the West West side of steamboat oak street downtown those other areas those other areas they're fundamentally different than the than the mountain than the mountain base.

You do you plan on expanding these geographical areas over time.

i'm not I mean. I don't think that there's a plan for that. I think just like any other parameters of the program, it could be adjusted. But no, there's not like a plan that this would exist.

Okay, so this isn't a sequential rollout.

And I certainly understand trying to, the incentive aspect of it, but these businesses do have an impact, which is what I'm struggling with, right? And, you know, could we guarantee that it's going to be all mom and pops or, you know, is Tumbleweed going to put in, you know, a growth facility or, you know, or something like that, right? I mean, so again, right, it's the trade-offs from a policy perspective, from a public policy perspective. Are we willing to make those trade-offs? for kind of the downtown west end of town.

I'm feeling rather dense here for some reason. So we're proposing that we're going to apply the impact fee to residential development citywide, and then in that citywide zone that is not the mountain area, those other six categories don't apply at all?

Yes. Correct.

Okay. So, and then just the mountain area that we define, we're not going to tax any residential development that there's like those $5 million or thousand square foot places. We're not going to tax that at all, but we are going to tax putting those other six categories into the mountain area. Is that what's happening?

We're talking about a fee. And residential applies citywide. So mountain area and non-mountain area. Citywide. Residential applies everywhere.

Overload of that. Then our non-residential development in the mountain area. So that's where...

That's where those other lanes.

So the other categories, but those other categories only apply to the mountain area.

Correct. So if you open a hotel west of town or anywhere outside of the mountain area, that fee does not apply to that hotel.

Okay.

So that's what I'm struggling with.

I get it, the mom and pop scenario. I just feel like Steamboat is no longer that community, that we are having the growth outside of the mountain area. We're seeing high-end projects go in downtown. Hotels are being built outside of the mountain area. So I'm really struggling with just applying this part to only the mountain area. And I also wonder by the time this goes in, there's already a lot of development going on up there that we will have missed the boat on the linkage fee. And I think about the mountain area and sure there's still some vacant lots, but for new developments, I don't know, I'm struggling with only having it for the mountain area. and struggling to where I'm not sure if I can support.

Well, clearly the mountain area, to your point, we've missed a lot of opportunities over the years, but there are quite a few parcels over there that are sitting there with maybe a parking lot right now that will turn into something.

Agreed, but if it was citywide, it would still apply.

Yes.

So I'm not saying we would take them out. It would still apply. I'm just seeing where our growth is going from a city perspective, and people are building high-end stuff for tourists outside of the mountain area, which is great. Good for them. I love it. Good for them. That was not negative, but my point being...

yeah they want to like there's been talk about trying to put a hotel in in downtown and then this would not capture that this proposal would not capture putting a hotel in downtown where that would have a huge impact to the downtown area and the city okay let's

We may need a little IT help up here. We're going to shut down in seven minutes.

We need to wrap up?

We might need to take a break. Why are we shutting down in seven minutes? The computer is about to restart. Emily, thank you.

Okay. Do we, do we all agree on the residential piece? Yes. City-wide. City-wide residential. Are you okay with that? City-wide residential. Councilor Spicino is okay. Councilor Swintek. is okay. So everybody agrees with that. So what we're left with here is the non-residential side of the equation. And right now it's Mountain. And the other option, Rebecca, would be quite frankly citywide. Is that the two choices?

No, I think that there could be other geographies that you could look at. Obviously, I would prefer that we don't overcomplicate the program, but it's not a binary choice. It doesn't have to be citywide or the mountain area. If you wanted to apply it to development in the downtown, we could look at that. or we can expand that sort of mountain area to capture more of the commercial corridor along Highway 40, if you're interested in that. That's sort of that high-level feedback I'm looking for you tonight on what that, if we are going to map an area for applicability purposes, what you all might want us to look at.

So the growth over the next 20 years is going to be west, right?

Brian, did you have thoughts to add?

Just building on what you said, there are a lot of different combinations we could look at, and we're trying to keep it simple. I don't think it's to anyone's advantage to have a complicated fee program. We could, if so directed, look at removing some of those exemptions in certain areas, like hotels. It could apply to hotels citywide, for example.

something like that it's you know it's a trade-off again it just gets it makes the program more complicated okay so where does everybody else stand on um leaving it as is with just the mountain area or expanding it to include downtown okay so

I will give feedback to Rebecca that you all can take. I don't agree with just having it for the mountain area. I will be okay with you all coming back with a recommendation on um extending it west on highway 40. so i don't know if i'm necessarily sold on it must be city-wide um if something would make sense west on you know highway 40 where we would we would potentially have a hotel or high impact developments that would be a ripe location to be i would be okay with that so you would exclude downtown No, it would make its way through downtown, whatever you would see as appropriate.

So you're saying basically the city limits then?

No, I'm not.

I'm trying to understand if you're saying downtown and the west side of town, what are we leaving out?

But what I said to Rebecca was, as we move through downtown, Highway 40, west end of town, I am okay with capturing those areas around Highway 40 in Lincoln and excluding anything farther off of Highway 40. Because I would believe that's where we would have higher impact developments popping up. I could be wrong, Rebecca. But, like, not Copper Ridge.

Well, like...

Right. I mean, the other question I had is, so certainly that's one option. Would it be an option to lower the mitigation fee? Would that be a workable option for a lower, say citywide, but a lower mitigation fee?

Yes, I believe we could have the applicability citywide and have differing mitigation rates for different areas. Because essentially what we're saying is it's a zero rate outside of the mountain area now. So we're making that differentiation. What you would be saying is we want to mitigate the impacts at a different rate depending on where they're located.

Right, because, yes. So still provide an incentive because the percentage is less, but recognizing that there is still an impact.

Brian, is that a normal procedure to have mitigation rates in different areas of a town?

Every community kind of does what works best for them. I think it's fine to consider that.

Okay, Councillor Swintec and Buccino, where do you stand on this? We got a couple options here, leaving it as is, potentially extending it on the Highway 40 out through the west of town, potentially changing mitigation rates for outside the mountain area.

Well, I think we have to stay focused on You know where is the development land, I mean we're we're talking a lot of time about the whole area, and I think we need to have some plans for future redevelopment. But when it talks to residential development and non residential at the mountain area, those are the only areas that we actually have land left. to see some development. And so we wanna make sure that the map covers the areas that have the highest potential. When you're looking at some areas back in the sanctuary and some other residential, I think we need to have a blanket response to our inclusionary zoning rules, but we have to be realistic. Like, is it really gonna be, are we setting rules that are not gonna generate any money? Where's the development gonna happen most predictably? And that's what I wanna focus on when it comes to geographical area.

I'm just taking a step back of what's the goal here. I mean, the goal is to provide affordable housing. And when I think about one of the solutions to being able to afford housing is to get a better paying job. And excuse my French, but around the resort, they're crappy, low-paying jobs. They typically are lifties. They're not jobs that can provide benefits year-round. year-round uh work career opportunities to move up and like build a solid middle-class life so in my mind i'm like i would love to encourage businesses to develop here and higher paying businesses to to come to town And that's why I'm supportive of this as it is, because in my mind, around the quote-unquote mountain area, they're the tourist jobs. They're the people that there isn't much career advancement. They aren't high-paying jobs. And elsewhere, the hope is that it would provide that. I feel like we're taking a guess, thinking that maybe around 40 it won't be that, but I don't know. So in my mind, I support this just when I think about what the goal is.

Okay. Thank you. All right, gang, where are we? We got Councilor Swintek supports what's recommended here. Is there anybody else who supports what's recommended here? Just go with what is the recommendation. Okay, you got a thumbs up from Michael, Brian. I will support this existing recommendation as well. That's three. What are the rest of you like to do?

I'd like to see some options come back regarding the non-residential, how we can address what we've talked about in terms of growth on the west side.

Different mitigation rates potentially?

Either different mitigation rates or limited to the highway 40 corridor rate, you know, or kind of the down somehow.

Is that what the two of you also would like?

Yes.

That's one of the two.

You're looking at me?

Right now we're at three to two on the path forward here.

So what happens when our big hotel comes in at Wells Fargo?

I'm not comfortable. It won't be because it's not by right.

uh counselor ghost you have a final comment on this from your perspective i'm just i'm not no i'm not comfortable with where we're headed um where we're i think the bigger i mean but i think bigger discussion is going to be around yeah the um mitigation rates but it all comes back to what you know why are we doing this why are we doing the linkage fee Or why are we doing it? Yeah, I know why we're doing the linkage fee, but I feel like what we're implementing here, I mean, we're doing the linkage fee to understand the affordable housing impacts. And I look at the numbers and... I look at the numbers that we're trying to bring in here, it's basically barely scratching the surface of what the impacts to our affordable housing is. I feel like we're missing, to me, we're missing, the numbers don't add up.

You're a thumbs down?

I'm a thumbs, oh yeah, I'm a thumbs down.

Okay.

Yeah, right now.

What are you recommending? There's two options. And we're three to three on those two options. Sounds like it. It sounds like it.

So, I mean, I know we don't have majority direction, but it sounds like we want to see some options, and this is probably a point that we'll have some continued discussion on. Would that be fair?

That would be fair.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

We will take a break shortly here, Rebecca. If you think we need a tremendous amount more time, we could take a break now. But if you think we're within 10 or 15 minutes, we can finish up.

I think we can get through the slides. OK. We keep moving. So staff's recommendation with regard to implementation is to do a phased-in approach over three years. This is intended to allow the market to adjust. We know there's a lot of projects sort of already in the works. you throw a big fee at the development community and you're gonna likely have some unintended consequences slowing development to the point where this program is completely ineffective. So we have to be aware that the market takes some time to adjust and we need to be responsive to that. And that's why we're proposing the three-year phase-in We're also proposing that the fee would be paid at time of building permit and that any existing vested projects, meaning approved development plans prior to adoption of this new fee would be exempt at time of building permit. So the questions are, does that phased approach, does that timing, that three-year phasing feel right to you? And then also, are you in agreement that the vested projects would be exempt?

So a vested project but not with a building permit?

Correct. So if there was a development plan approved tonight and we adopted this program tomorrow, when they came in for their building permit, they would be exempt. And the reason for that is that that project was designed and approved and planned for and financed without consideration of this fee.

Okay.

And I think when we get to the next couple of slides and you start to see what these dollars look like, that'd make a little more sense as to why it's a pretty significant shift and that that phased-in approach, I think, makes some sense.

Rebecca, isn't this technically a four-year phased-in? Because you're not 100% until the fourth year.

Right.

Correct, Dave. It's really a four-year phased-in. Mm-hmm. Is that I guess to Brian question is that a typical phase in or is it typically a 3 year where you do 33% 66%.

I don't know that there's a typical Brian correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's 3 to all choice.

Yeah, whatever whatever what feels good to you.

I think we could let you know from a staff perspective. Three-year is, you know, it's a two-year, you're going 33, 66, by first day of year three, you're paying 100% of the fee. So it just, I felt like given the substantial fees and the impact on development costs and wanting this to be a successful program, that perhaps the three- or four-year phase-in was appropriate. But I'm

that's obviously a policy choice of council yeah that's the shared thinking between staff and the consultants and that's what we that's what we thought was was a reasonable reasonable phase in let's take a gut check how does council feel thumbs up on um a four-year yeah the phased approach has a lot of wisdom i mean this is what we should maybe have done with our

STR implementation. So of some way, so we know that this is really a positive step moving forward.

Okay. I see two thumbs up online, at least three here. That's five, six. Okay. Four years, Rebecca.

All right, and exempting vested projects, do we have consensus on that as well? That's fair, yes. All right, so here's the fun slide where we start talking about the meat of it, mitigation rate. So you've seen these numbers on the previous slide at the beginning of the presentation. This is illustrating those in a little bit of a different format, but you'll see here that we're recommending various mitigation rates specific to each of the individual land use categories. And the reason for that is again, this is a market approach and we're trying not to impair the market. We want this to be a successful program. So the goal here is to keep the overall increase in development costs to around 5%. Some of these land uses you can see have an increase that is even much less than that, one to 2%. And the reason for that is because we think that any more, any greater increase to that is going to sort of be counter to some of our other goals as a community where we wanna see those land uses occur And so we're recommending a mitigation rate that would keep some of those increases a little bit lower of those other categories. So sort of that fourth column over is the suggested or recommended mitigation rate from consultants and staff. the actual fee per square foot or for hotels per room, you can see what that actual fee number would look like. And then based on the analysis provided in the NEXUS study, you can see what we anticipate the increase in development costs for those different land use categories would look like. I'm gonna jump to the next slide, because I think it's really helpful to this discussion of the mitigation rates. So we pulled some real world examples for you all. These are five building permits that are recent. what the square footage of the developments were, the numbers of units, what the valuation of those projects are, and what their fees look like in terms of plan review, TAP fees, and what this affordable housing impact fee would be. This was something that I think Councilor Byron specifically asked for, and when we put the information together, we found it to be really helpful. So for example, we pulled two single family home permits, one of them, 3500 square foot I think that was a house up in sunlight and then a much larger home almost 8000 square feet. You can see what the valuation of those projects is and what that resulting fee would look like, in addition to the other fees that they are currently being assessed. The Central Park Hotel, that's a 180-room hotel in addition to their restaurant space, which would be subject to the fee as well. And you're looking here at over a $3 million affordable housing impact fee that would add to the cost of that development.

And Rebecca, let me ask that question. That was not imposed because it wasn't in effect. But that would be a question to ask the developer, would they have even built the hotel if there was a 3 million? That was the one category that still seems excessive. Now, Brian, online, what's your justification on that kind of volume, $79,000 per room?

It's a complicated question. Thanks, Rebecca. We are... doing our best to estimate, you know, the cost of building hotels, you know, generally and comparing what that fee is to it. And as we're showing here, it's about 4% of the, it'd be about a 4% increase in the cost.

Well, I understand. Yeah. All right. Well, there's more questions in this category, but keep going. I'll listen.

In Castle Buccino, just to clarify, the $79,000 fee per room would be the maximum defensible fee that we could charge. We are not proposing anywhere near that. So the per room recommendation for hotel use is $15,700.

Which is still substantially higher than the rest of them on that category, and it clearly pops out. I just need to understand how that impact fee is such, is it based, again, we're basing it upon employees that are going to be generated that are working at the hotel?

So I can also just jump in. So that fee per room, for a 400 square foot hotel room is $39.50 per square foot. So it looks really big because it's on a per room basis, whereas the rest of them are on a per square foot basis. But on a per square foot basis, it's pretty in line with the rest of the fees. And that's because it's based on that employment generation and then the typical wages associated with those jobs. And so what we see is that hotels and restaurants often have the highest fees because they have the lowest paying jobs. And so the fees are, as Brian said way earlier in this, proportional to the impact of the land use. And so land uses that have a greater proportion of low paying jobs will have a higher fee. But it does just pop out because it's a different basis just because hotels, most of what we do sort of in the development world with hotels is per room rather than per square foot, which is how most other developments are conceptualized.

Yeah, we need to keep it apples to apples, but I appreciate the explanation. We'll dissect this along the way, but thank you.

Rebecca, I just have a question because Brian was saying that for a hotel cost, it's about 4% additional cost, but $3 million is a 10% increase for a $30 million project. So I'm just wondering if that calculation is accurate.

Yeah, we can double-check that. The valuations that were... I mean, this is just what was provided in the building permit application process. So I put the valuation in there. It's not the actual development cost. So this is what this project is valued at, not the total amount that that... developer has spent on that project because this number, $30 million is not including all the money that is spent before a shovel even goes in the ground.

I think that's a good clarification.

Also doesn't include land and reiterating the building valuations are not the same as actual development costs.

Correct, yes, that's a really clear thing, a very key point to remember. I added the valuations here because I thought it was helpful. Like for example, I think at the last council meeting where we talked about the preliminary recommendations and the results of the Nexus study, there was some suggestion that perhaps any home under 3,500 square feet would be completely exempt. And I put the valuations on here because I thought it was important. Right now at 3,500 square foot home, the valuation of that that they're reporting in the building permit is $2.6 million. So it's not really affordable at that price anyway.

Yeah, and that's going to be lower than actual construction costs and market value. So that $45,000 fee is going to be an even smaller percentage of the actual cost and actual value compared to building permit valuation.

Correct. Can you talk for a minute? I know retail and restaurants are the two things I wanted to focus on. In town, most of the time, retail just takes a space that already existed. And restaurants, same way. But if you consider new development for each one of those, The margins on those businesses are very small, yet the percentage increase in development costs are the two highest on here. And I'm trying to understand why that's consistent when the margin in those businesses is small, yet the percentage increase in development costs, if you start from scratch, are the two highest on here.

Yeah, I think that's a really good question. And you'll see the suggested mitigation rate for restaurant we're proposing is only 3%. So it does result in a 6.5% increase in development costs, which is impactful. we can lower that. What it means is you're lowering that mitigation rate. So as is, as recommended, you're only mitigating 3% of the impacts through this program for that land use.

I understand, but I know the mitigation side, but to me, the key is the development cost increase. Because if it stops development, then we lose.

Yeah, and that's why we're really trying to keep it within around 5%, absolutely no more than 10. Because over time, we felt like that was absorbable. But I hear you. To lower that would mean we need to lower that mitigation rate.

Because it's a formula. Yeah, I get it.

And I think there's two different ways to look at that, right? I mean, it's certainly, as you say, from the perspective of it's an increased cost, but if the business is coming to town and is not mitigating its impact in terms of requiring more employees and more use than is actually being paid for or being kind of mitigated, I mean, that's the trade-off. That's the whole point here, right? I mean, I think Rachel kind of walked us through that.

I just don't want us to prevent restaurant and retail development because that's a big lift for them given their profit margins.

I think another, if I may, a couple more considerations in this is these are one-time upfront costs, so they're really not as closely related to the annual operating costs of the businesses. They do pure real estate sense. They have to be covered by the lease revenues. But I think another reason for our earlier recommendation, which we're still going to be vetting some more about the mountain area is that i think a lot of the businesses that are going to be built in the mountain area are going to be part of larger mixed use projects um you know condo hotels you know larger buildings where there's more opportunity to to spread these costs over a larger number a larger amount of square footage of development so what you're basically saying is that if a development has a restaurant on the first floor

They're spending a different mitigation rate on the restaurant square footage of that building than they are on the hotel piece of that or residential piece of that building. So you're spreading the cost out a lot more across a much bigger footprint. Yep.

Rebecca, do you agree with that?

If you look at the development that we recently approved at 12th and Yampa, that's a good example. That is good. Residential above, that would be, you'd have a fee associated with that versus a fee associated with the restaurant. And, you know, can that development absorb that impact? Yeah. If I may, I need, again, roll back a little bit. The maximum fee associated here, is that maximum fee the fee that is basically representative of the housing impact, or is it 50% of the housing impact for that development?

The maximum fees that you see on this table are the outcome of the Nexus study. So if you have a new residential unit built based on the employee generation rates that are identified in the Nexus study, we would have to charge $50.78 per square foot for that unit in order to mitigate 100% of the impact of that new development. That's the maximum defensible fee that we could charge. We are not recommending the maximum fee.

Right, so the full, that's how I'm understanding, I want to understand these numbers. So the maximum fee is representative of 100% of the employment impact fee for this development.

Yeah, and that impact is just the affordability gap of the employees who can't afford housing. So it's not the full cost of housing. It's just that gap, assuming that everyone pays 30% of their income for housing, it's just mitigating the gap between what housing costs and what those employees can afford. And yeah, so that fee is 100% of the impact. And generally speaking, no communities will charge 100% mitigation rate.

And I think the reason for that is there's two key things to remember. And one is that this is a market-based solution. We can't impair the market by charging. We don't want to impair the market by charging 100% or the maximum fee. But in addition to this, this is one tool in our toolbox. This is not our only solution for addressing affordable housing. And so, you know, that's sort of something to keep in mind as you're looking at those recommended mitigation rates.

And it's trying to find that balance, right? I mean, it's trying to find the balance so that we don't impede development, but also that we have the money so that we can have the employees who work in these various different places be able to live in our community.

Right. It's a balance, correct, between ensuring that development can occur, addressing our impacts, and also addressing our other goals as a community.

And this is what the experts are recommending to us. So I would like to try to close on this soon so we could take a break as well. Where are we on this? Because I think we've gone through, Rebecca, everything and really what you need now is are we okay with the mitigation rate?

Correct.

So I'll throw it out there. Are we okay with the mitigation rates after this discussion?

I still think that the hotel needs to be considered. And then really look, I see this, but Rebecca, you fully understand it. We just don't want to stifle any development. So I'd like to see an ordinance move forward and we can kind of address some of these issues moving forward philosophically and come up with a policy that I think will work for the community right now and in the future.

So correct me, are you saying that you want to just dig into that cost for the hotels a little bit more to make sure you're okay with it?

No, I want to talk about it when we, I would like staff to kind of relook at all those numbers. And when we come back with an ordinance, maybe massage them a little bit more. That's what I'm saying.

Regarding hotels?

Regarding all of those, but specifically the hotel issues, yes.

I think that's what Rebecca is requesting from us tonight, though.

I think specific input on this slide, numbers on this slide, on slide 14.

I had problems with the retail and the restaurants, but I understand the thinking here. So again, I think most of this is going to happen in the mountain area more so than elsewhere. And in places if we extend this into town Those gonna be mixed-use places. I think a lot too. So Counselor Swintec. Are you okay with this or where do you want to go from here?

I'm okay with this, but I just have one broad general feeling on this is now the time to share it Please So if I were to go just on my gut, I don't like linkage fees. I said that before. It's one of those situations where I'm going to trust that other communities have done this, that this helps the problem. I will support it. But if I were just to go on my gut, I wouldn't support it. And I just want to share, I've put a lot of thought into it. And the reason why it doesn't sit right with me is we are trying to make housing more affordable by making it more expensive. And my brain just breaks at that concept. And that one approach could be for us to change our zoning laws and our zoning rules to make... We don't allow for sprawl. We have our urban growth boundary. We have all these rules in place that limit the ability to build and build to let the market and developers build more that that would increase the supply and reduce the cost. And I know that that's, there's no appetite for that, but I just want to share that publicly that like, it just does not, the math doesn't add up in my head of making, making housing more affordable by making it more expensive. But, you know, I'm supportive of going with this. Other communities have done it. I'm on board. Like I am trusting that, that my gut is wrong and, this is the right path forward.

Okay, thank you.

Councillor Muntean, can I just respond to one comment? Sure. That Councillor Swintek made. In our work program for 2027, we actually have, we've received grant funding. We'll be kicking it off later this year, but primarily the work's gonna occur in 2027, but we are looking at our zoning code. our zone districts and trying to implement recommendations in our community plan. So we will be looking at things like density zoning, you know, different types of mixed use development standards in our zoning code. So we will be looking at that very thing.

Cool. Thanks, Rebecca.

Appreciate it. Do you feel you have enough from us on mitigation at this point, or do you need further clarification?

I, Did we have majority thumbs up that were comfortable with these? I felt like there was some... Yeah.

So... I'm not comfortable with this program. And what I'm comfortable with is the fact that we're trying to find additional funds for affordable and attainable housing. That part I get. And I get to that, okay, we're trying to find, I get the idea of, okay, we're gonna carve off five to 10% of new development to fund affordable housing. That part makes sense to me. All these things and trying to put up, I look at these categories and these numbers as a way to justify the five to 10%, but I don't see it as a way and we trying to tie it to, we're talking about pulling back 2.3% of the impact where's the other 97.7% of the impact? And so I feel like if you're truly trying to do this for attainable housing, I'm not seeing the connection. The only connection I can rationalize my brain around in this whole program is that, hey, we want to carve off 5% to 10% and put it to attainable affordable housing. And we have this mechanism to allow us to categorize and to divvy up the different categories on what their percentages are.

But I don't see it as a... What you got to recognize in this is that it's percentage rate, right? We're not going to, we can't make these. You just try to go from 5% to 90% on the affordability and try to help it out.

I didn't say that.

That is, I know, but that's just, that is so besides the whole, you're not, you're missing the point. Okay. This is trying to not make stifled development to where no one builds anything. And then we don't make any money. You're saying unless it actually covers more than four or five or 10%, you don't think it's worth it. I don't think you got your head on this one straight. I really think you're missing the point.

I think how it's being presented to me is basically, we're going to create a big impact on our housing, but this much development is just going to create more need and we're causing more and more problems with, I mean, bottom line, I look at these numbers and I go, boy, if we do all this development, we're going to be in a hell of a worse housing crisis than we are today. Now, as I said, the only thing that makes sense to me, everything that I've heard, is basically, hey, we want to carve off 5% to 10% of new development and to fund affordable and sustainable housing. That's the only thing it says to me.

Yeah, and I think it's back to what Rebecca said. We're chipping away at the problem. And I think if you look at this work that was done by the consultant, I mean, there's a lot of work here. There's a lot of justification. There's a lot of thought to this. We're not the first community to do that, right? I mean, a lot of communities have done different things like this, right, in terms of whether it's inclusionary zoning. um you know or kind of the fee in lieu or now as we have the linkage fee but you know when we look at some of our peer communities and the percentage of deed restricted units they have they have a lot more than we do so we know these programs work okay i mean we can go around and around on this but we owe rebecca direction so i have a question at the right time as well

What is the right time, Brian?

How about now? Well, it seems like there's a lot of, we've had a lot more discussion on the mitigation rates for the commercial slash non-residential. I'm interested in how people feel about the residential aspects of it, because I think in reality, most of the money generated from a program like this is going to come from residential development and probably more predictably year to year. um so you know if to not throw the baby out with the bath water i might you know i might suggest we can um i want to get some i want to make sure when we go around we get direction on the residential aspects of the program specifically as in addition to the non-residential before you go forward can you can we confirm what ryan just said in terms of do we have an idea of the past

three years, how much residential development dollars versus commercial development?

Yeah, so I think it's attachment two in your packet is the memo from the consultants with the final recommendations. If you look on the last, well, not the last page, page four of that, it summarizes the revenue potential. And then there's a table that provides that data. So you'll see there that- What attachment is that? I think it's attachment to the consultant memorandum.

It's page five of six, I think.

So looking at average development activity from 2015 to 2024, what the consultants have identified is that a 25% mitigation rate on residential development, which equates to that recommended fee of $12.70 per square foot, could generate $34 million over a 10-year period, or on average $3.4 million per year.

That's not nothing.

Do you have the same for potential commercial revenue?

We intentionally didn't forecast that because commercial development is so much harder to project out in a place like Steamboat. It's just going to come in big lumps when you have a big project.

But what you're saying is you believe that your experience suggests that well over 50% of the revenue generated here will come from the residential side. Yes. Are you thinking closer to 80%, 75, 80% in your experience? Yeah.

Rachel, if you have thoughts, feel free to jump in. But I think it's going to be the vast majority of the revenue is going to be from residential.

All right.

So I just have a quick question back to the hospitals and healthcare. Do the increase in development costs not analyzed?

Right. It's a highly specialized facility. It's sort of hard to get, you know, to sort of typify what a cost is going to be. My gut is that hospitals and healthcare facilities are quite expensive to build, probably more than a thousand bucks a square foot, but I am speculating.

Okay, so we need to give Rebecca direction here on this last point. We're kind of split. Three of us are okay with using these rates to get started here. The rest would like to look at a little more Analysis, what's the word that you want to give Rebecca? What do you want them to go back with around this particular piece? And I know, John, you're uncomfortable with the whole thing. But we have, you know, given direction that we wanted to pursue this. So I don't think we're at a point where I don't think that we're just going to start over. but I, you know, it's eight o'clock. We've been at it for quite a bit here. And I think we're kind of going round and round here.

I'll say one other thing is it goes back to, you know, Brian's get my head, you know, spinning. And that is I'm comfortable with the residential piece, I guess, in terms of where we're headed. And I'm wondering, do you, I mean, we don't want to stifle business, right? And do we want an impact fee on businesses outside of, let's say, a hotel? And we only do an impact fee on hotels and residential. But that's going in a different direction.

Well, it's not going in a different direction in the sense that you're taking the commercial piece only in the mountain area was the recommendation.

I would support that. hotels only citywide, otherwise no impact fee?

I thought we had talked about at least coming back with an option to expand it in addition to the recommendation. Am I wrong, Rebecca?

Yeah, I'm going to come back with some options for you and we can talk again about the individual land uses, I think.

I think what I'm hearing is like two outstanding issues, right? Potentially the health care mitigation rate. And I mean, I think, John, you maybe have problems or issues with the whole thing. But then did I also hear a question about residential and whether we want to... kind of where you were going with your line of questioning about the fact that the majority of the monies are going to come from residential and should that mitigation fee be or mitigation percentage be increased?

Well, but I go back to the original recommendation here was residential everywhere, mountain area, commercial. Mountain area is where the money is. Mountain area is where the value added is. buildings are going. So I almost come back to the original assumption and saying that, that, yeah, that looks pretty good to me.

I think I understand it. It's like, yeah, I get, now I, now I understand what the original proposal.

Well, I think, are we back to slide 14? Isn't that the one that you still need yes or no on?

Yeah, I mean, I think I'll just go to Brian's question. How do you feel about the residential recommended 25% mitigation rate? We can come back with some options on the non-residential categories. Yeah. But if there's any consensus you can give us, that would be great. If not, we will come back with options and have this discussion again.

If there's any way to quantify your recommendation on the commercial side for the mountain area, I don't know if there is, or if there's any way to quantify additional areas. Because, you know, we may be talking about, you know, the 90-10 rule here or something like that. And so...

Yeah, I think it's difficult. As Brian said, non-residential development, it's hard to predict. It comes in waves. You know, there's peaks and valleys in that. There's also, it's hard to predict when our community may see substantial redevelopment.

Yeah.

So I think that would be hard to predict.

Okay, so are you okay then with what you're coming back with? We're in agreement on the residential, correct everyone?

I might be one to argue for an increased percentage, but I can wait to do that for the ordinance.

Are most of us okay with the residential as is? Yes. One, two.

I need to look at the number here.

Okay. No, I needed it. Yes. Three, four. Three, four. So there's four. So we have a consensus majority on the residential as is for now.

Okay, so next steps, we will start drafting an ordinance. We will detail out a couple of different options for a number of these parameters. I appreciate your discussion tonight. I know it was difficult. There's a lot of policy choices and there's a lot of, I mean, there's, any number of ways that we can all go. So we'll get there, we'll start to, we'll put together some options and hopefully try to, you know, take them one at a time and get through them and hopefully get to a final ordinance. But we'll come back with some options and go from there.

Okay. Well, thank you. And thank you to your consultants too, online, Rachel and Brian, because I think you've done a lot of really good work here. And so we really do appreciate everything you've done. And we're going to take a break, but first we're going to see if there's anybody in the room who would like to make a public comment or anybody online, please raise your hand and make a public comment. Seeing none, we will close public comment and take a 10 minute break. See everybody around 8.15. Thank you. Okay, 30 seconds, everyone.

I can't see it, so I would not be a good judge. That's okay.

You know, they need a lot of judges because they say they have, like, all these chilies, but you can't. Once you've tasted, like, four or five, you lose your ability to taste it anymore. All right. We have everybody? Good. We're going to get started. Go to our third community report, State of the Police Department. Chief Beckett.

That's me. Good evening. Mark Beckett, Chief of Police. We are going to give you a brief rundown of what's going on with our city and policing. Before we start, I kind of wanted to go through the why. I've heard why we're doing this or been asked from a lot of people. And the short of it is, in the time I've been here, we've had a lot of contacts in the community. I've spoken to members of the council. I've spoken a lot with Tom, and it's very clear a lot of people don't know what goes on in our community, and it's also very clear to me that some of the things that are going on are really hard to talk about, and I think it's important for council to understand some of the dynamics of law enforcement and some of the crimes we're dealing with in our community. It really impacts a lot of the other discussions we're having. So as we move forward with a lot of what I'll describe as challenging discussions in the community, I think it's important for council to kind of know what we're looking at. So we're going to start with what we perceive as our current threats. And again, this is not just Mark Beckett. This is the entire department. We meet on this stuff constantly. Things that we see frequently in our community, domestic violence continues to be a struggle for us. I wouldn't say it's any different than other communities, but it is prevalent and it is very much linked to substance abuse disorder and alcohol. We struggle with drug trafficking and, again, substance abuse crimes, specifically DUIs. The things that we don't like to talk about, and we're going to get a little dark in this presentation, is ICAC and CSAM, which is Internet Crimes Against Children's Child Sexual Abuse Material. colloquially known as child porn. Unfortunately, this community has a problem with that. Sexual assaults, fraud schemes, we deal with a lot, as you all know, of juvenile situations in the schools and outside the schools. And then a topic that we've really spent a lot of time focusing on in the last few years is special events. And we look at events across the country. Commander Greg Griffin behind me has attended a lot of trainings. I have been to debriefings with a lot of different groups, so we've got a lot of background in that area. You... The council and a lot of other groups have heard me say in the past that we've struggled with our metrics and we really have. And the last couple months, we have really buttoned down and we've gotten into some numbers. And while we haven't, we can't, we don't have a ton of data, we do have some basic crime rate data finally, probably for the, well, certainly for the first time since I've been here. We know that our violent crime rate is actually significantly higher than a lot of communities that we've compared. There's an attachment in the document you guys will see. There's a table. We've compared ourselves to 22 other mountain communities that are similar to us. We are currently the fifth highest in violent crime. And you'll notice those if you look at the rankings year over year. Pretty consistently, the communities that are highest in that area are the resort communities. We think that that has a lot to do with people coming in. Again, the alcohol, substance abuse, things that are happening here from visitors. And we do know in our busy months and on the weekends, we have a lot of fights, things like that. But it's worth noting that we're the fifth highest of our Colorado mountain towns. And we're ninth highest in property crimes. We think generally the same reason that tourists are easy victims. I will say on a positive note, 24 to 25 in both categories, we have gone down. Our rate has gone slightly down. So the things that I really want to talk about, the next few slides, drug trafficking is a really hard thing for us to talk about. It's here. I've had people challenge me on whether or not it's a real deal. Three overdose deaths in 24 and 25 each. It sounds like a small number, I think, compared to huge metro areas, it is. But what we know in small communities is these are actually really impactful. They're impactful for my folks and they're impactful for community. We've also had significant drug arrests. I'll say both in 24 and 25, those numbers would likely be a lot higher, but our staffing has been such that the officers that we have that are trained in this area spend a lot of time supervising and doing patrol work. So, yes. And then DUIs. I have done presentations with our community groups and I have referred to the saying that we all hear that we're a drinking town with a skiing problem. I will tell you 163 in 24, 220 DUI arrests in 20, 25. If you consider that that's coming from a pool of at any given time, I've got two to three officers on the street, that is a significant number for our community. And if I put a hundred officers out there, we would have that number that much higher. On the weekends, we have a significant DUI problem in this town. So what we're doing, we've really focused on a couple areas specifically for drug interdiction. Our asset is our community partnership, the regional partnership that we have is all crime enforcement team. Really, they focus on drug investigations. That is a partnership with Hayden, Craig, Moffitt County, us, and Route County sheriffs. What I want to point out more than anything else in this slide, our detective, Christian Barnett, steamboat detective, is on this team. He has made five arrests in fentanyl-related overdose. He is one of the pioneers in the state. We have more arrests than any other agency in the state, including metro areas. We've got several convictions now. We are amongst the first that have prosecuted these cases. We call them a homicide. It's not a true homicide, but it's an enhancer for sales resulting in death, and it's a significant case or a significant criminal charge. We have... We've made arrests across the region. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. We've made arrests across the region. We actually sent Christian to California and did search warrants in California and made arrests there for people who were bringing the drugs here. So that asset has been a pretty significant resource for the department and for the city. And I want to point out that right now, asset consists of three detectives and a supervisor for the entire region. They're doing extraordinary work. Most of you have met Amon, our K-9. So we invested in our K-9 program last year, got it up and running. It's been hugely successful. Brendan Andrews, our Sergeant Andrews, is our sole K-9 officer right now. And unfortunately, he also is supervising. So again, much like the drug arrests, these numbers would be significantly higher and Amon would be busier if we were able to have Brendan working in that capacity. And we are on track for that. In the future, I'll talk to the city manager about bringing them on here. I would love to show you guys what the dog actually does. It's really impressive. But I will just say that canines are incredibly effective in detecting certain drugs. And the number, I don't remember. I'd be making it up. But it's insane what they can smell. They can detect a tiny amount of drug in a vehicle two weeks after the drugs were in the vehicle. So when I came here, I was, I'll say in my last life, in my last career, I did not, I was not real involved in the child cases, but I was around them enough to know that the numbers that we see here are disproportionate. These cases are, they're tragic. Five child porn cases in 24, 11, and 25. And then our sex assaults, they do occasionally make the news. What I may wanna point out to you is that a lot of these cases go unsolved. They're really, really challenging. The internet crime cases specifically are very challenging. They require a ton of work. I'm gonna talk about that in just a second. The sex assault cases, That almost every single one of them that we get is directly related to alcohol or substance abuse, specifically drugs. We do get a lot of allegations with some of our local bars. We have mixed results in prosecuting these. They are very, very difficult to investigate and prosecute. And fraud cases. So we believe that this accounts for a lot of our property crimes and the high numbers we have. We have a significant number of frauds. This is not necessarily unique to mountain towns. They are, I think we see more here because there's money in this town and we're easily targeted. We have had instances that I won't go into that, where these groups are targeting elderly. We've had people sell homes and give up titles to homes, give up the money from the sales of homes. We've had cases involving hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars from single victims. Unfortunately, most of these are originating overseas. Some agencies have success if they have the resources. We don't have the resources. So we generally, once we get to the point where we can determine that the cases are coming from overseas, we end up having to refer to the state. And if I'm being honest, not much gets done with them. which gets me to the why I want to tell you all this. When I stand in front of you every year and I try to talk about numbers and why I need FTEs, like sometimes the FTE just sounds like a plea to grow a department or, you know, it's hard to quantify the need behind that. We have this change in our community. So what historically 10 years ago, a detective or an officer could investigate a crime and it would be a couple hours, domestic violence, something pretty straightforward. These cases that we're seeing now, whether it's the drug overdoses, whether it's these fraud cases, whether it's the internet cases, These things take hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours. So Christian Barnett has been incredibly successful and each one of those cases requires hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours for just that case, just for him. So trying to investigate these things is challenging. What we end up having to do is prioritize the cases. We'll take violent crimes first. We'll take significant frauds later. And a lot of the ones, unfortunately, that we just know we're not going to get to, they end up not being investigated. That's not unique to us. I came from a very large police agency and it's not uncommon to do that. We have an internal expectations of ourselves that we want to deliver the highest product we can to our community. So when you hear me say we need to grow certain areas, this is one of the reasons why we need to do it. We need to be able to provide a level of service to our community, specifically in violent crime, but in all these investigations to make sure that our victims are receiving justice. Special events, it's kind of a little bit of a trigger for me, mostly because I have a lot of folks, especially after events, come up to me and they want to know why we have SWAT team walking around, why we have, in their words, snipers on the buildings. Our special events in this country and across the globe, we know over and over again, these are so vulnerable. They're not going to get better. I have sat through the debriefings of Aurora. I've sat through Columbine. I've sat through a lot of different debriefs with the FBI. And we know that in almost every single one of these incidents, the sentiment that people take away from is we never thought it would happen here. And when Gary was here and Thomas heard me the same thing or say the same thing, I am committed to never having to stand in front of the media and say, we never thought it would happen here. We will prepare for it. We will spend whatever resources we have to do so that we don't have to say that. And if something bad happens, at least we will know that we did the best we could. And we are very progressive as a police agency, especially in a rural area with what we do with these things. Although people see the SWAT guys and the armored vehicles and they think weapons, the reality is, especially for the special events we have here in this community, our number one concern is vehicles. So that's why you see the vehicle barricades, those big white things. That's why you'll notice our armored vehicles parked at either end of Lincoln. We just this morning had great news, and we found out we were awarded a grant, and it finally went through the state and the feds, and we just got awarded $180,000 to buy more vehicle, anti-vehicle barricades. So we really spent a lot of time on that. We spent a lot of money, as you know. on the special events, but we're committed to making sure that we can keep those as safe as we possibly can. And knock on wood, we have not had an incident here. And when we have had some suspicious stuff happen, we have had very quick responses to it that nobody has noticed, which is exactly what we're looking for. Again, early when I got here and we really started looking at this, this is not just a me thing. We as a city started looking at our special event matrix and we recognized the need to do this. So I think what's good for you to know when you hear from the community and when you hear from special event planners and they complain about, the money that they have to spend or the number of officers required. Just understand that we really, we break down a training matrix based on location, number of anticipated attendees, and all sorts of other things. We have committed, as you've seen, the more resources to our SWAT team. I would say probably the number one change that people, some people notice and a lot of people don't, which is great, is our drones. We're using drones on every single special event right now. I know there's a lot of talk in the community and nationally about AI and stuff like that. We are using drones that are piloted by people, not by computers, but the drones have been highly effective in helping us identify suspicious activity, helping us just even with technical things like routing, The detours and making sure our vehicles are moving as efficiently as we can, I think and hope everyone would notice that our detours have gotten significantly better over the last few years to the point where now people are complaining because the vehicles are backed up a half block, which is great. And we hope to continue with that. I cannot take credit for that. That is my special event planning team that handles that stuff and they're doing a phenomenal job. Each time we do that, we change things just a little bit. We add, we modify. Some of the most recent changes have included adding public works and transit to those discussions. We have now included the buses to our detour and provided ways to get pedestrians around and create increased safety for pedestrians. And then for me specifically, but for our department, our priority, no matter what anyone is gonna say, is always gonna be safety over convenience. I am fine with people being upset over being stuck in traffic. I'm fine with people feeling inconvenienced for parking. We are 100% focused on safety. So when we do that detour, What people don't necessarily understand is that detour, while it routes vehicles around us in a way that's efficient, what it actually is really doing is allowing vehicles to go, emergency vehicles to go the other way and have dedicated lane. We've had fire ambulances go from one side of town to the other more quickly than they do in normal traffic while there's a special event, which I think is great. Successes include, we've got our strategic plan implementation that is well underway, and actually we're getting set to do our 2027 second version. Culture change, I suspect everyone knows how hard our department's been working at changing our culture and improving, and I can now say that Instead of changing our culture, we're sustaining a culture and we're maintaining a culture. We have really got to a place, thanks to the folks behind me, more than me, that we are healthy as an organization. We are retaining our people finally, as much as anyone in this profession with young people is retaining people. We have really, really focused on our training. That was my number one thing when I came here, and I'm lucky to have a group of people that embrace that value with me. And thanks to some of our folks, including Jamie Malone and my record supervisor, Sarah Larson, we've finally been able to put our finger on data and metrics. And our hiring, God bless. We're at a hiring meeting today. We just had to remove one person from a hiring process and my hiring detective let me know we've got five more. We have twice as many applicants as we have vacancies right now, which is phenomenal. We actually, our biggest holdup is the background checks and trying to find academies to get them into. keeping in mind that from the day we start a process to the day that they're on the street by themselves is about 18 months. So it is not a fast thing, but we're on track to be healthier than we've ever been. Rich Brown and I talk about this a lot, and he will agree that we have not seen a department like this in recent memory. This is my bragging slide. So these are things that we developed on our own, specifically the special assignment unit and our specialized patrol functions, which is really special, SAU and our K-9 unit. SAU, you will hear me talking about more and more, especially as we get our officers on the street. Right now, our special assignment detectives are doing patrol primarily. One of them is acting as a sergeant. These guys, as we get our patrol healthy and we can get them assigned to their unit, this really is going to be a dedicated traffic unit. This is going to be the group that is working with asset. If you envision asset as being kind of an undercover group, these are going to be the guys in uniform doing the traffic stops, doing the interdiction. These guys are going to be a huge asset to this community and really utility squads. So when problems come up and when people bring problems to the council, these are going to be the group that I go to, you know. you're used to me talking about CSOs for, for the bikes and stuff like that. These are gonna be the guys that when you have, when you have other criminal issues, we're going to put them on it. Uh, and, and I know that they're going to be a huge asset for this community. Um, have I talked about the rest? Okay. The last, the last three thing, and I know I'm cooking through this, but you guys had a long session. Um, our mental health crisis, uh, President Monti and I sit on a lot of different mental health boards and that this is a real thing. We had our highest suicide number of suicides two years ago. I want to really emphasize that my officers see things at a rate that most officers in big cities don't see. I spent 21 years in a major metro area. I can tell you the number of suicides I went on, I could probably count on one hand in my entire career. I have an officer right now who has been on three or four suicides, was the first officer on scene for the gal that got stabbed, and has been on a ton of natural deaths. These officers see a grossly disproportional amount of stress because they are the only ones working. So when you're the only ones that are working and you see it over and over again, it takes a huge toll. We recognize in policing in general, and certainly in our community, the need to have adequate mental health resources for our officers. We have taken that beyond, and we've partnered with Rowe County Crisis Support, and we not only work on our mental health, but we provide financial health, we provide counseling, we do physical wellness, we work with local gyms for discounts, we have contractors that come into the building, we are doing a sound bath at our next training for our officers. We really are trying to focus on these different tools for resiliency. I can tell you my last career, I know healthy officers will stay and we need them to come around and to stay around. I also want them to have healthy lives when they're done because this is a very, very hard career. We generally retire young and unfortunately we know based on national statistics that officers die at a much younger age than the rest of the country. So we're really focused on wellness. So you'll see that and you'll hear that from me on and on. That was the main part of the presentation. I do also want to acknowledge that we have done in the last few months an extraordinary amount of work on the e-bike safety. I know President Montina spoke about that. We've been working a lot with Parks and Rec on the dog off leash stuff. So while these things are the things that I want to bring to your attention because we don't talk about them and I don't have a way to bring them to you that isn't depressing, frankly, we also are doing a ton of other work in the community that's great. outward facing, you know, in the schools, the different things that we're doing. So just wanted to take an opportunity to show you these things so that when we talk about other topics, you can have sort of a framework to understand the other stuff that we don't talk about very often. That is it. We allotted a lot of time. We were originally on an agenda early and there might be more energy. I'm happy to stay here as long as people have questions and want to talk.

Thank you, Chief, and thanks for your people being here too and support. That's great. All right. Who has a question for the Chief?

I do. I'll start. Thank you so much for all your work. Absolutely. And while it's really hard to hear and see what's going on in our community, it's really important that we're raising that. And so people really understand what's happening in our community. A couple questions. The first one is, why does it take longer to investigate now a crime versus 10 years ago?

That's a great question. The technology, amongst other reasons, there's such a higher, it's not that burden proof, that's not it. We have to do things like write search warrants. We're getting into computers. We're getting into data that's cloud-based. We're working with these different providers. The amount that goes into that is a lot. Historically, these things weren't all on computers. We weren't dealing with cell phones. It's really technology has changed a lot of the stuff. When you're talking about wire transfers for the frauds, everything we do requires a court order now, which is relevant to the flock discussion that we'll have later in the month. Just none of it is easy. It just takes so much. In some of the cases, I will... I won't go into too much detail, but like in the CSAM cases, some of those cases involves, we've got one that involved over 6,000 images. And we have to go through, we work with the county attorney or the district attorney to figure out how many of those we actually have to look at. But we have to, our detectives look at a lot of that stuff. So we have to document it. Going through that just takes a lot of time. And in a larger police organization, if... Denver, Fort Collins, whomever, you'll have dedicated detective bureaus. That's all they do. Or they'll have a detective bureau for domestic violence, for drugs, whatever it is. They're very specialized. In my last life, I was a gang detective and a gang sergeant. All I did was gang work. Here, these detectives, and when I say these detectives, my detective bureau is a sergeant to detectives right now. They take all of it. They take the frauds. They take any of the domestic violences that require follow-up. They're working a child abuse case right now. They take everything. And it just takes so much more work. And when you don't have a specialization in an area, when I worked a gang case, I could work it much more quickly because I understood the ins and outs of that and I understood the processes. These guys have to do it all themselves. They don't have a dedicated forensic unit. They don't have a computer forensic unit. So it just, they're jack of all trades, but master of none. So it just, they just take a lot more time. The fentanyl overdose cases are worth talking about because you really, those really turn into an organized crime investigation where they have to identify a network. They have to work through phones. We're doing multiple, multiple search warrants. Sometimes they're doing more advanced things where they're monitoring phones. They just require a ton of work and it's a lot. And In 2026 and policing in our courts, the courts have an extremely high standard. I won't say we got away with things when earlier in our, you know, at a different time in life, but the reality is we've been scrutinized so much that in our court system, we have to make sure everything is buttoned up. It just takes a lot of work to make sure it's all good.

Yeah. What in my last question, um, Is there any area from a community perspective where you feel like we could be more proactive to reduce, I don't know all the right, like all the language, but to reduce these crimes? What could we be more proactive in?

If we're talking about the child crimes, I just really don't know. You're talking about crimes that involve a disease largely or often, and there's not a way around that. I don't understand why the numbers are as high here as they are, or at least per capita. There are areas where we certainly can improve. I will continue to point back to alcohol. I will continue to point back to our youth. I'll continue to point back to accountability. I think those are areas that feed into bad behavior in general. But I'll tell you like high level when you're talking about the internet crime questions right now, the social media and the internet specifically has changed so much that our society has not kept up with it. And these children have things at their fingertips that we can't even comprehend right now. When you're talking about instant gratification, when you're talking about pornography, it's all there and it's not regulated at all. And there is a thing called the dark web and it's very, very real. And these kids are much smarter than we are and they can find that stuff. So I think when you have access to those things, it opens... And when you're talking about young developing minds that don't understand consequences, that they don't understand these things, it's challenging. And I don't know that we as society, certainly in law enforcement, we don't understand all the whys of that. And I don't know if we will. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks. Other questions? I have one.

Bring it.

I think. You know, we kind of think we live in a bubble here. Yes. And so maybe we don't consider ourselves vulnerable. And my real question is around, do we have a false sense of security? And do we really appreciate that? the fact that, you know, people talk about, well, you know, you leave your house unlocked, you leave your keys in your car, you know, you do all this crazy stuff. But I don't want to say to you, tell me how many officers you need, because you're going to tell me you need more officers. I know that. But how do we communicate this false sense of security, if there really is one, or some vulnerability in a way that says we need to... support our police better than we are. We need to fund the police better than we are. And you can argue whether you agree with that or not, but that's where I come from. But I don't know how to present that in a real way. And I'm trying to think through that. How do you get the community to believe, well, wait a minute now, we live in paradise here and everything's fine.

Well, first, we do live in paradise. And everything is fine. I mean, we live in a special place. And I don't know if I would characterize it as a false sense of security. I think what I would encourage is the understanding that we don't have awareness about everything. And I think that's okay. Police departments exist so that society can live without awareness. I don't want everyone to know or see the things that we see. That's why we do our jobs. I can tell you in other areas there is more of an understanding or an acceptance that there are things like drug trafficking and there are organized crime and people see it a little differently and they understand that's really there. I don't know, people hear it in our community. I don't know if they actually believe or understand what it is. The reality is we have a major drug trafficking corridor that runs through our town. You wouldn't know it because you don't use drugs. But Highway 40 is the main way to move drugs from Denver to Salt Lake City if you want to avoid the federal task forces that enforce on I-70. Drugs flow through our town. Drugs stop in our town now. It's inevitable that they're also going to stay here. We originally, or I shouldn't say originally, but two years ago I would have told you that our biggest problem was coke, and everyone jokes about coke, but that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing meth, we're seeing fentanyl. So we have the same problems as other cities, and I think up to and including gangs and organized crime. We have that stuff here. You won't know, and I would not expect you or even want you to know, but I can tell you we've worked with CBI. We've done undercover operations in some of our bars. We've gone in there and we've seen people wearing cartel colors in our community. They're like, they are here. And I can tell you from my last life when I worked drug trafficking organizations that anywhere there's money in drugs, there is drug trafficking organizations. It's not a huge group. They're not running around looking like you would see on TV, but there's going to be someone here and they're collecting money for a Mexican drug cartel. So the stuff is here. How we handle it is really the question. So I don't know that I want you necessarily to know all that. I think I want you to trust that we know that it's there and that we are doing what we can to work on it. And there is no magic number. Like I couldn't come up with a number of officers I need right now. We're playing that by ear because we don't really understand that yet. But we are safe. If I'm like end on a positive note, the reason you should lock your doors at night isn't because someone's going to break in your house. It's because we got these insane bears running around right now that are breaking into houses like four times a day. So does that make sense?

Yeah, I just get concerned sometimes when we talk about, you know, are you resourced or funded correctly? And it's so hard to answer that question because, you know, you talk about the mental health and well-being of your staff and all the officers and patrolmen and women and everything. And that's a hard one for the community to grab hold of and

We have a vision of where we think we need to be, but it's, again, like we are just getting into the world of metrics and analytics for our department. So, you know, I would not sit here and tell you I need 15 people today. I don't know. I might need 15 people. I might need 30. I might need four. We are taking it off in bites. And each year as we grow, we'll understand that better and better. We certainly need more than what we have. There's no accurate way without bringing in consultant, doing all sorts of crazy work to understand how much we actually need. And even then, I've had conversations with the Durango chief of police. They did bring in staff and consultant. And I don't know that it got them any better informed on what they needed. They have very similar problems to us. They also have some very different problems than us. But Durango, when we look at a model, when we look at a lot of the things we're dealing with, we really look at Durango a lot because they are very similar to us in a lot of ways.

Counselor Swintek or Pacino, anything for Chief Beckett?

No, just thank you for everything.

Yeah, no, Chief, I just have to say congratulations. Been on council for six years, and when I was running against Jason Lacey in 2015, that's when we had a problem with the police officer, let's see, the chief police deputy chief, and then our city attorney all quit that year. So that was a lot. And what's happened with the department in the last... Six years that I've been on council, you've done a great job. I've watched it intimately with my son and be part of all these different departments. Looking at it from a layman, but also a city council, I feel safe in this town. And I know that having you on this, leading this group by example, is really kudos to your leadership. So I want to just thank you publicly and look forward to moving forward, watching to see what the next step is for all these ideas you have. And also the conversation next month about flock cameras.

End of this month. Yeah. End of this month. Thank you. It's easy when you have a good team. You know that. Yeah. Perfect.

All right. Well, again, just underscore what everybody has said and certainly in terms of the appreciation to you and to your staff and all that you do to, you know, keep us all safe. I thought it's worth maybe talking a little bit more about special events because that is important to our community, important to our community members. And I think, as you've said, you've taken some steps recently, you know, in the last couple of years, right, in terms of, you know, increasing security as well as I think as we still kind of work on the various different traffic patterns. What more do you have in mind?

I don't know. I mean, if there's, I'll say from a security perspective, I think we're actually at a really good place. We understand that our events, we have the same events year over year. Generally speaking, we really talk about the four big events that we deal with. So I think from a security perspective, we're good. The conversations we have internally right now are really, we would love to get to a place where we can handle the traffic management, the traffic detour without using, Traffic control companies, they're challenging and they're never perfect. In fact, they're barely ever good. So we really have talked a lot internally about how we can leverage other city assets, people in the department to try to get to a point where we can run an entire event ourself where... That is a numbers game. And it just is purely having to have enough people at each intersection in the different places to move people. So that's kind of the only area where we're trying to... We're really focusing right now. Our security model is pretty darn good. I think we... We continue to look at technology and how we can improve those areas. And these vehicle barricades are going to be a great asset. These are much different than the other ones. They're more mobile, but they'll still stop a semi-truck. And we have in the city's strategic plan and internally, we have plans. We're continuing to look at more advanced drone programs to look at how we can really leverage that and use those for special events. The drones are... The ability to put a camera 500 feet in the air and to have it move around a special event and to look at anything that you need to at any given time, it has completely changed the way we work these events. And I would encourage anyone to come into our command center whenever we're holding one of these events. You can see the drones going up and down. It's very impressive.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

I'd like to also add my, you know, comments of support. You guys do wonderful things. And the only thing I struggle with is actually the false narratives that come out of the social networks with full on, you know, misunderstanding of what our, you know, what you and your team do. And that's the part I struggle with is the false narratives and which overshadows the great work that you and your team are doing. So, but thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that.

There's always gonna be a false narrative. I've done this for 25 years. There's always a false narrative. We are committed to building, keeping trust with the community. I hope that as time moves on that what we'll see from that is the community trusts us. So there is a reason for everything. There was a time in law enforcement when I was a young officer where there was a lot of secrecy and there was a lot of things that we had access to that we did not talk about. We're at a different place now.

Okay. I have one more question, sorry. It's probably way out of your scope. So I have heard that... well, what I've heard, I'm gonna say young women, I'm sure men as well, but from my, what I've heard from young women is that they have felt like they have been roofied at bars in town. and I know some of them would have gone and gotten tested, and I think that window is really short. And I know one situation where it was the weekend, and so therefore then it was Sunday morning, and I think the only place they could have gone was to the hospital and the ER. And by that point, they were like, Screw it. But they were like, for God, I'm not going to go sit in the ER and wait God knows how long. And when I heard that, I was like, wow, we are failing big time. So I'm guessing that would help your investigations if we actually had the testing. So... I don't know.

You're talking about the, what you're talking about is shame. I mean, this is something that we've dealt with for longer than I've been on this planet when it comes to sex assaults and things like that, the shame of reporting. There is a short window. They should absolutely go to the hospital. The thing that some folks may not know, though, Patty Oakland, she does community engagement and she happens to be a forensic nurse. So she's very versed in this and she really tries to get this out in the community. You can go to the hospital and you can say that this happened and you don't have to report to the police and they'll do the testing, they'll collect evidence. They don't have to call us and then it's there. And if you choose to call later on, they'll send it to us. We also pick up, they'll send us anonymous kits that have the evidence in it. So we have it. And if someone wants to come forward with us, they have a number that's associated with it. We have it with us. There's state and federal law that requires the maintenance of those things now. So yeah, I mean, we've heard, we hear that. And to your point, we don't see it because we don't see the people come to us. We've had people come to us usually much after the fact and we can't prove it. And it's really difficult. And then people become discouraged because they think we don't believe them. I'll tell you, foundationally, anyone in victims' rights or advocacy knows you always trust the victim. You start from a place of trust and then you work from there. So, yeah, it's challenging. It would be great to get people to understand that they don't have to come to us, but they can take care of themselves and at least start the process if they want to.

I know, I just wish there was other places where folks, where people could go outside of the ER.

Yeah, we, this community resource is something we don't have. I know. The name is mental health. We don't have walk-in clinics and things like that. It would be great if we did, but.

Yeah. Okay, I could ask all sorts of questions. I'm not going to because I'm going to do that ride-along I told you I was going to do. Yeah, come on. Sign me up with someone that can deal with my talking and questions.

I've got plenty of them that will do just fine with you. You can ride with Sergeant Andrews.

He doesn't stop talking either.

You can play with the dog. You guys will have a great time.

Perfect. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Chief Beckett. Thank you to your team as well. And we really appreciate you coming here and sharing this with us tonight.

Absolutely. Glad for the opportunity. Thank you.

Thanks for your time.

We will do public comment. Is there anybody in the room or anybody online who wants to make a public comment? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, We will close public comment and we will move on to our consent calendar. Items on the consent calendar may be reviewed, commented upon in the same manner as other agenda items. Any member of the council or public may request withdrawal of any item from the consent calendar for further discussion at any time prior to approval. And if items are not removed, They may be approved with a single motion. We have four items on the consent calendar. I'll read through the four and then come back and ask if you'd like to pull any of those items for further discussion. Item number seven is a resolution acknowledging appointments to the Planning and Historic Preservation Commissions. Item number eight is a resolution adopting an IGA for sharing the cost of evaluating whether to transfer fire and emergency services to the Steamboat Springs Area Fire Protection District. Item nine is the first reading of an ordinance, which is for the sixth supplemental budget appropriation of 2026. And number 10 is the first reading of an ordinance of the City of Steamboat Springs amending section 12-511, seven of the Steamboat Springs Retail Marijuana Code pertaining to the local sourcing of marijuana by licensed retail marijuana stores. So is there anyone who would like to pull any of those items for further discussion? Hearing none, Councillor Swintek or Pacino, do you want to pull any of those items? No, I'm fine. Thank you. No. Is there anyone in the audience or anyone online who'd like to pull any of those items? If so, please raise your hand if you're online. Okay, seeing none, then we'll leave all four items on the consent calendar, and I would ask for a motion to approve items seven, eight, nine, and 10. Motion to approve consent. Second. A motion by Councillor Dixon, second by Councillor Geary. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. All four pass, 6-0. We'll go on to number H, which is number 11, which is the second reading of an ordinance vacating a portion of a utility easement located in Lot 16, replat of male property PL 20260166. Rebecca, is there anyone who would like a short presentation or discussion on this item? Hearing none, anybody online? OK. Then I will say thank you very much. OK. Moving on. Or excuse me. Before motion, I want to ask for public comment. Is there anybody in the room or online? Seeing none, we will close that. And now I will ask for a motion to approve item number 11.

So moved. I move approval of item number 11.

Okay. We have a motion by Councilor Gary. Second. Second by Councilor Dixon. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. Okay. Ordinance passes 6-0. And number 12 is the second reading of an ordinance amending section 2-541 of the revised municipal code relating to the departmental organization of city government. Would anybody like Tom to discuss this item?

I think we got a pretty thorough presentation.

I think we did too.

Reading of the first ordinance.

Okay, then I'll ask if there's anyone in the audience or online who would like to make a public comment regarding this. Hearing none, we'll bring it back to council for a motion to approve item number 12. I'll move approval of item number 12. Okay, we have motion from Councilor Gary. Second. Second by Councilor Dixon. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion passes 6-0. Item I, Commission Reports. Has everybody read the July 8, 2026 Park and Recreation Commission Report? And do we have any questions for Stephanie? None? Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. We will then move on to city attorney report. Dan? I do not have a report tonight. Okay. Then we'll move on to old business. Does anybody have any questions or revisions from the minutes from those four meetings or 15A, B, C, and D? If not, I'll ask for a motion to approve those minutes. Move to approve. Motion by Council Gary to approve the minutes. Second. Second by Councilor Dixon. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 6-0. Do we have any other business to discuss tonight? If not, I'll ask for a motion to adjourn.

Motion adjourned.

Motion by Councilor Agosta.

Second.