City Council - Regular Meeting

was going to go ahead and get started. Fix it. So recognizing the weather is what the weather is. We have a light agenda tonight. We're going to keep an eye on it. If it tends to get worse, we're going to go ahead and push things off the agenda so that everybody can get home safe tonight. But we only have a few things. And so I think we can keep it focused and get going. Anything from you, Tansy? Tammy. All right. Let's kick it off with response. Hey. And it is a little bit ironic. So Emily is going to kick us off. It's good. Oh, kisses. Oh, it's all good. Hey. Well, good evening, mayor. Mayor Pro tem, city council members. We're the Parks and Rec department's got a couple presentations tonight. We'll start off with drought. The drought response. Emily. Emily Hunt, the executive director of utilities and infrastructure, will kick us off with current conditions, specifically outside. And then Bob keys, we'll talk about the parks department response, and then we'll we'll finish up with Doug Fisher, who's the superintendent of Thorne Creek Golf Course, who I don't think you guys have ever met. So Doug will finish this off with the Thorne Creek response. So with that said, Emily, let's get started. That's great. So just just quick recap of how we got here. As council recalls, back in March, you issued a stage one decked out given water supply conditions and projected store of the Devils. We implemented water use rules and regulations effective March 15th, and our goal this year is to save 10% of the 25 usage. So on the right side of the slide, you'll just be kind of the highlights of the rules and regs that are in place right now. We made it to May 1st. We asked our customers not to water, not to turn on their lawn sprinkler irrigation systems. Parks did the same thing. Now that we're in

May, customers are limited to two days a week watering. Obviously not during the hottest signs of the day. Continue to to want to have customers save their trees, their perennials, annuals. Those can be watered as needed. We are issuing permits for folks that need to install turf or new sod or seed. Large properties can apply for a variance if they're not able to comply with those two day a week watering schedules. And similar to parks, they're still required to save 10%. They just have a little bit more flexibility in how they do that. Get a lot of questions about pools, hot tubs, fountains, that sort of thing. As long as they're using recycled water, it's fine. And we're encouraging folks to limit car washing to one day a week at home. Try to use commercial car washes that recite water that. So lots of other rules and regs. But these are the highlights of what is in place. And these are mandatory not discretionary at this point. So quick check in. You know it's been a month and a half. Our current reservoir storage is where we would like to see it. Right now 79% of average or 79% of capacity. Sorry. Which is good news year to date water consumption. We're actually even better than this right now because we just got our our April numbers in. So we're around 3% below 2025, which is fantastic. And I did just want to take a quick note. We had a regional drought call last week with all of the various water utilities, and there was a bit of an around the room on how folks were doing. We were the only utility who saw a decrease in consumption over 2025. Not everybody reported out, but a lot of utilities reported out increases over 2025, so Fort Collins reported a 6% increase. Highlands ranch is 12% year to date, higher than last year. Long months 8%. Parker was 15%.

And South Adams, who provides water to Commerce City, was 5%. So just great job to our customers, to parks. The fact that we're below last year's consumption is completely having to do with the fact that council acted quickly on this and we had a thought, had a feeling that we'd be over last year if we didn't act. And the way that these other utilities are showing up kind of demonstrates the need to act early. So I just wanted to highlight that our June 30th, 2027 projection still continues to be lower than we would like to see, which is why we're on restrictions right now. The drought conditions across the state like two hours ago, they weren't improving, but now we could probably say they're slightly improving. So that's good news. So everything is on track where the plan is going according to the plan. And we don't recommend any changes at this point in time in our job response. So before you move on. Justin. Yeah, so I have a question about the the monitoring of the sprinklers. So we're in May now. Sprinklers are allowed to raise. A week before that they were not was hand watering lawns permitted when you're not using the time? We were really encouraging people to not turn our sprinkler systems on. A lot of folks did get out there with their hoses, hand water, dry spots, and that was fine. We did that. We did not issue any warnings or citations. I think they're like not being. So the feedback I have from residents or several residents actually, who have been concerned about this, because this is actually a really big you know, I've got a lot of discussions already. What did you do? And one of the big pieces of feedback that I got was that there was unclear on hand watering because some people were told, like, as you said, they were encouraged not to do it. They interpret it as they're not allowed to do it.

And then other people didn't get that same feedback and they talked to each other and they well, why did why did they say this to you and not me? And it has caused some frustration when they call the the department. So I think that we should at least have a plan for that, or be prepared to maybe even just decide to be consistent on what we tell them. No matter. No matter what. Not going to allow and water and we're not going to allow it. But I don't know how that could work into our policy. And that's just what I'm getting. Getting it surprisingly to me, actually, there's a ton of people reaching out. So yeah, it makes sense though for that feedback. So just kind of a reminder of how we're trying to get the word out. We do have a direct mailer that went out on Friday to every thought residents, so that you should be receiving those. Your constituents should be receiving those this week. They do have a lawn watering guide. The recommended number of minutes for different types of sprinklers. We continue to do social media posts, water, smart messaging. That's our customer portal. We've got multiple, you know, each city voice. We've got articles in there, bus shelter ads are out. There will be a Thornton Fest. We do have physical pamphlets at the rec centers, that sort of thing that have actual rules on it and don't just send people to the website. So, so that people can get information directly. So lots of communication. And this, this is kind of what our customer response looks like to date. You can see our phone calls are way up. The emails that we've been receiving are way up. My Thornton is also up. We really asking people to report any water use concerns or violations through my Thornton? That's the most effective way to do it. So if you have constituents, if you could direct them to my thought

for those concerns, that would be fantastic. The water smart community conversations. Again, those are kind of back and forth messaging that we get through our water smart portal. So those are up. We have been issuing warnings. We have been issuing violations. Some of these are leak, leak repair violations and warnings. Some of them are water use rules violations. Now that we're into the May restrictions, we anticipate these to just keep lines. And then just as a segway into the park's presentation that's coming up, I wanted to give Council a little bit of context for just how much water parks uses compared to the rest of our city customers, and so you see our overall usage citywide, all of our customers, just around 24,000 acre feet a year, parks uses about 17,000 acre feet. So they represent about 7% of the city's whole demand. So parks water usage is a really important driver. But you can see that our residential customers are really the big users. And so it is important that parks in the golf course do their part. But it's it's just a part of the equation there. So and you'll also see kind of Thorne Creek's usage compared to the rest of the city usage. So that's just a little bit of background and speed of where we're at right now. And I'll turn it over to we move on. Drew in quick question. So with the residential usage, 74% of the total usage is from residential. But I think I saw in your stats that is it 50% is irrigation. That's right. Of that total use okay. That's right. That's not residential like interior use. That is 74. It's the combined inside outside use for residential. Yeah. So doesn't sorry. Just I had a thought on the last I did when you were talking about customer response, I thought that was the most, the easiest way.

But if there are other ways to report violations, okay. Folks can email water at Thornton Water. They can do it anonymously. We would keep people in. Probably a phone call is the best way to do it. And honestly, yeah, no, I just there are some people who are a little worried about making reports, whether it's code or water, because their neighbors have actually come to their door threatening them. So yeah, I'll let them know that phone call is probably the best way. Yeah, they can get to us either through the utility or through utility billing. Sorry. All right. And council member, my thought you can also you can use that anonymously to you don't have to put your name in there. So that is another opportunity for them if they're concerned with that. So so I'll jump in here. Thank you for the opportunity to sit and chat with you tonight. A little bit about our parks and open space response to stage one drought. As Emily mentioned. Look, our goal is to save a minimum of 10% of our water usage over last year's 2025 usage. And that includes our model and non-potable systems. You know, part of the metric for evaluation is primarily based on potable irrigation. But we are also our goal is to save at least 10% of our non-potable as well, because we believe that that resource may be limited also. So as as Emily mentioned, you know, our our goal in parks and open space is that we'll continue to prioritize our trees, shrubs and our sports turf, which we also call programed areas or functional turf areas, goes by several different monikers.

We will continue to prioritize our irrigation repairs over all other non safety related repairs and maintenance requests that come through will continue each day to ensure that our irrigation systems are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible. One of the ways that will accomplish that task is part of our levels of service is that we normally check our irrigation systems one time a week. Each parks worker for their areas once a week monitors the irrigation system, runs. It checks the heads to make sure everything is functioning properly. Now we're going to try to do that two times a week, three times. If we have old systems that are cantankerous and in one of the ways that we're going to limit that water usage during that check is normally it takes about nine minutes a zone for us for it to cycle. And that's primarily so that the parks employee can see and make sure that that the rotors are operating full and the spray patterns are effective and efficient. I have put the I don't want to say mandate. I've suggested that my staff try to cut that down to five minutes per zone. That's going to make them move around a little bit more, and hopefully we can keep connection with our devices. But that's one of the ways that we're going to continue to realize that 10% water savings. Also, we're going to utilize our non-potable water sources whenever those available. Our current existing non-potable irrigation systems are Grange Creek Park, woodland Brook Shire, Cherry Park, Riverwalk, Ball Fields, the Thornton Sports Complex, Carpenter Park, one other one that I can't recall o Community Park, but that one's not online yet.

That one's part of a grant proce So that's those are some of the ways that we're going to continue to realize that. And then we'll also monitor kind of real time data with our army. That's the automated metering infrastructure. We work with Emily's team and getting that data. And it's like up to the minute if we've got a break, it lets us know instantly that there's an issue. We have an email program that all of our parks employees are part of. They monitor it regularly, and if we miss it, or team reaches out to us and says, hey, Grange Creek Park or wherever you, it looks like you may have a break. So we'll continue to utilize that. Next. This slide just is kind of some of the things that you might expect to see in our parks as we are going through this stage one drought response. Right. Parks are going to look a little different. Our right of ways, our medians, all those things are going to look a little different than we're used to. And that's really so that we can realize that 10% water savings, we are part of the goal is, is maintaining that and realizing a 10% water savings, but also realizing that we have significant infrastructure investments that have made in our 70 year history that if we abandon, we have tremendous impacts to us. So that's kind of a secondary goal for us. So we'll continue to water those high use turf areas, including those high use, high frequency visited parks like Margaret Carpenter and trail and trail winds. As I mentioned, you're going to see parks watering during the day outside of that 6 p.m. to 10 or 10 a.m. window. But that's so that staff can monitor and make sure that we're that the systems are working efficiently and effectively. So if you get a resident that's asking, hey,

I saw them in Carpenter Park at one in the afternoon. Watering likely. That is what's going on. We're either making a repair and fixing that or ensuring that the systems are operating effectively. We are decreasing our watering times so that we're we're limiting any amount of runoff. We're making sure that our heads are, whenever possible, not hitting any hard surfaces. It's not always possible. But that's part of it. And we are those low frequency areas. And if you'll notice, like out in front of Carpenter Park out of Colorado, that is kind of desert brown right now. Right. We consider that a low year, low use nonfunctional turf area. And we're going to continue to decrease that water on there. Those are the ways that when we're water in our sports fields, and if we have to water our sports field at 90% or 95% of our normal use, so that that sports field is safe for play, then we've got to make up that somewhere else in our system. And those are the places that we're going to be making that up. Right. So you'll see an impact to those areas. They're going to be browner. Then you would typically see them. Right. And then as as Emily mentioned, we have drought response signage that her team helped us with and developed. So we're going to strategically deploy that signage out in our parks to just continue to get the message out and educate folks. This is why you see what you see. Here is another slide that just talks about some of the noticeable changes that nonfunctional turf, our right of ways, detention basins, low traffic use areas. Those are going to stay dormant and dry and desert like. We will continue. And you will see staff out hand watering trees and shrubs. That way we can make sure that that's kind of point source irrigation.

We're getting the water right to the plant that we need it. We're going to continue our naturally Thornton process of converting high water, use plant materials to low water and native use plants whenever that's a viable option, and will include hard scaping as part of that. Also, part of our noticeable changes that you will see too is we're going to reduce our turf mowing frequency. So we have a group of employees that now are going to have some time available. So we're going to redirect that that staff normal schedule to start doing some additional native vegetation management things that we just haven't been able to get to in the past. And healthy native vegetation is fire resilient and is water wise. So we're going to continue to utilize that staff to do that. Justin. Question. Yeah. So when when you guys are going to naturally Natural Gordon program, what's the priority in terms of areas like do you already have it prescribed. This is the next right of way area or is it determined in a different way. So it really right now it's it's based on opportunity for impact. Right. We had in many years ago there were trying to be kind here. We weren't really successful in our naturally Thornton Installations Council member. So we had to learn and step back and learn what we did wrong as a as a community, as a city. And now we are going back to those areas. Grove Park is a prime example. Margaret Carpenter Park is a prime example that we are fixing those things.

We have a revised our management plan and process to get that native vegetation established. So really our priority now is going to those about 70 acres that were killed off bluegrass prior and getting those back where they're healthy and they are good representation of naturally Thornton. And then we'll start to work on prioritizing the next areas, whether that's right of ways, really detention ponds that don't have any programed activity. You know, some of our detention funds might have a playground in them, but some don't. So those are easy places to get in and have an impact and reduce the water. Okay. Yeah. I recall seeing a presentation a couple of years ago about the transition phases from like the Kentucky bluegrass to we expect to see it kind of look like it dies out and then but can you go a little bit of background and what you mean by where we failed in some areas in the past? What kind of failures like the vegetation died or we got pushback from the community. What do you mean? I think I think it's a multitude of missteps. Right. I think on the park side, we didn't do a good job of educating and getting the information out there and doing a good job to say, here's what you can expect to see in year one, two, three, four, five, because really, these establishments, to do them well is a five year process where you really start to see these things pop. So that was one of our failures. Another failure was that we didn't do a good job of mitigating the grass and the weeds going in, so we had a lot of pressure that out competed our natives. So that's just two examples okay. And then we also we tried to add compost and all kinds of things that you think bluegrass needs that our natives don't. Yeah okay. Thank you for that. And then on the communication side I'd like to, you know,

maybe in the follow up meeting, get an update on what kind of changes that we've made in the communication side of that and how it's into the overall communication strategies for the for the parks department in the city, because I think there's a lot of moving pieces there. I just like to see how what kind of different efforts they are and how we can help us council members, because we have great relationships with the community itself. And, you know, where a lot of us are really trying to communicate with them. So let us know how we can help as well. We'll do. Thank you. Yeah. So back to our slides. This are just some of the current conditions that you'll see out there in the parks. And we'll likely see through stage one drought response. Our community regional parks like Margaret Carpenter and Trail Winds. These areas that are nonfunctional are going to stay going to stay brown and dry. Our neighborhood parks, those are things like Homestead Hills and a few others like that that are a park larger than five acres. Those also are going to stay. They're going to stay brown if they're not programed. Turf our pocket parks, Aspen Park, Loomis Park, all those small, little, very tight pocket parks are going to look just just like you see them here. Unless we get many more days like today, they're going to look like this. And then here are some examples of our sports fields. And you can see the and I was kind of hard to tell in the one that says sports fields how green the sports turf is as opposed on the other side of the walk. And that's bluegrass turf that is just allowed to stay dormant and dry. So that's where that kind of stark difference of sports fields and those program spaces, what they're going to look like while we're in stage

one drought response and our trail corridors, even the irrigated ones, are going to be dry. And if you'll notice in that open space picture below, that's a non irrigated open space. And you see how green that vegetation is. That's just an example that native vegetation does well in a drought response. So of our ongoing strategies that we have been utilizing for the last couple of years to continue to move to a water wise and water efficient system, are we use soil moisture, moisture sensors in our irrigation systems, micro drip irrigation when appropriate, weather based smart irrigation controllers eat based irrigation programing, transpiration a big word that basically means you water to the demand. We always we're trying to improve our soil moisture retention. And we do that through a couple of methods with soil deep time aeration. And we try to improve that soil structure. Also sub irrigation for all of our annual pots and containers that you see. Those are very, very similar to what what it says. Right. Very self-explanatory. It's a basin in the bottom of those containers. Staff fill up and then the water is drawn up through capillary action to the roots of the plants. You don't have anybody spraying a hose. So the water is right to the plants where it needs to be. Super efficient way and terra seeding of our sports and natives. That's a new process that we started last year. It was developed by a local company to do non irrigated native installations, and the terra seating provides soil,

compost, fertilizer and seed in all in one application. And we started to do it on our natives last year and on our sports fields this year, and we found a tremendous amount of success with that. So this last slide for me is just something to show some of those potential impacts that we talked about, that not irrigating and not watering is simply not an option, right? The city over 70 years has invested too much in our tree canopies and in our turfs to turn our backs on it. That's why being efficient and effective is super critical. Currently, we have a little over 18,000 trees that have a value to the city, and would cost us about $27 million to replace those trees of our in our parks, we've got about 2600 acres and simply the cost of the seed to replace them. That's not labor. That's nothing else other than the cost of the seed is a little over $6 million to replace it. So you can see simply by looking at that, that turning our backs on our irrigation and not doing a thing is simply something we can't do. We just have to be effective and efficient and and continue to work towards our shared common goal of water savings. John. Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. Chris and Bob, great presentation as always. You guys do an absolutely amazing job for making our parks one of the best in the Front Range. I also want to give thanks to you both as well because at Mayor Pro Tem Island eyes were two community meeting last Thursday. We had situation in Brandon Place Park and Cherry Lane neighborhood mine where Kevin Collins messaged me and then he sent email. He is the president of Cherry Lane, mentioning about the right by the bridge there where water was running nonstop since 1 p.m. last on Thursday. Right.

And luckily, you know, he wasn't there. But we were. So we started going to work right away. You know, you reached out to their contractors and I was reaching out to Kevin to to because he was he was getting upset about we're in a drought aren't we? Why is this running right. But I was able explain to him that valve was broke. We're getting the contract. We fix it first thing you know, by next morning it was fixed. And also explained to Kevin what you told me last week. It was a learning experience for me that, you know, we're still. We had water in Brand Place Park right now because we put new sod in because with the improvements. So that has to be done and we're going to lose that investment, right. So I explained to Kevin that as well. That is the reason why, I mean, but we are managing the rest of the city to ensure that we are staying at that 10% threshold. So gentlemen, once again, and Emily, also thank you for your work on this. And I haven't heard back from Kevin since. Obviously, you know, we we handled it very well. And once again, teamwork makes the dream work. Thank you. Yeah. Comes up again. Council member just let us know okay I will thank you. Okay. I'll give you a little background about Thorne Creek. Thank you for having me here tonight. Thorne Creek, we have about 100 acres of irrigated turfgrass. We have a unique pump station that has both potable and non-potable systems in it, which is pretty rare in my industry. 90% of our golf course is water with non-potable water, 10% of its water with potable water. The greens, the green surrounds, the driving range t the clubhouse grounds, so much less is used for for the potable. Our management plan here is very similar to parks. We're looking to save 10% on the potable side. On the non-potable side, we're not actually under restriction,

but we're trying to save 10% to do our part. Okay. So we do have we do have ways that we can save money on on the nonvolatile side as well. This slide showing, you know, our goal is to try to keep the golf course playable. The non-playable areas are where we're looking to save some water. You can see on the the left hand side that's a long 100 and 136 in Washington Street. That's not part of the golf course. So we've reduced it 50%. You can see another picture looking at the golf, the golf course clubhouse. Again, it's that's 50%. You can see where the guy in the white golf shirt is putting down. Below him is the driving range. T and looking out west is the driving range fairway. The driving range fairway. We've again taken that 50% reduction because it's not really in play for golfers. The the picture to the far right shows number 18 fairway. And you can see a little bit of a stressed area off to the left because it's in the rough and we've restricted some of the water in the rough. It's early in the year right now and it's hard to get really slides that really are showing what our philosophy is going to be this summer on the golf course, but that gives you a little bit of an idea down on the bottom where the yellow flag is. That's just that's a normal looking golf green fairway. That's that's just normal healthy turf there. Which shouldn't change if we don't change any more of the restrictions. I wanted to take a minute to just share a few of the things that we do at the golf course, similar to what Bob mentioned, to conserve water and have healthy turf. One thing that's important I don't know. I know a few of you golf. I don't know if I don't think you all do, but

we have nothing to gain by having a wet, soggy, soft golf course. Golfers like firm, fast conditions. They like green, but it doesn't have to be wet and soft, so we don't want to decrease the enjoyment of the golf course for our guests. We're not interested in having a wet golf course. We're always trying to conserve water. You can see in the top picture there we have an on site weather station, and that weather station gives us a lot of data that we use every day. When we talk about programing nighttime irrigation. I'll come back to that in a minute. It's tied into the event ET evapotranspiration number that we get from that we use on the bottom left. We use what we call wedding agents. I don't know if any of you ever heard of a product called revive that some people buy to use in their in their yard. That's an example of a wedding agent. It helps water go deeper into the soil, gets through the grass. If that's the soil and goes deeper down where you can get more water to the deeper roots and get healthy, healthier turfgrass. So what we do is we buy wedding agents in 250 gallon drums, and we inject it into the main line of the pump station. So it's going out over the whole course and it really works well. We use 2 to 3 totes a summer. So that's that's been a great tool to use. You can see a picture on the left hand side of one of my guys with a moisture meter. And he's checking a green. We check all the greens almost every day, some fairway, some teas. In general. We use them on the green. So the slide, the picture next to it, you can see that number 9.2. So that means the volumetric water content of that green is 9.2. So we have a special number that we use normally it's ten. Anything below ten usually triggers us watering the greens.

We only water the greens 2 to 3 times a week. They don't get watered every night like a lot of the rest of the course. So the moisture meters are a great tool to use. Also, we area at the golf course twice a year and aeration relieves compaction. You get better root growth that allows water to go deeper into the soil I brought. Our area is a little different though. This is an area time from the area that we use. It's solid. It's not hollow like you might see somebody come to your house and do a little 1 or 2 inch plug, but this goes like eight inches into the soil. When it's when it's all the way down, it kicks and then it comes back up so fast you can't even see it. And our machine has 18 of these on it, five feet wide. And that fractures the soil and allows the water to get down deeper into the roots. So it's something we do twice a year to the hole golf course. Back to the event of transportation. So it is is what we live and die by every day. When we decide how much water to apply to the golf course, it's basically made up of two words of apparition and transpiration. Evaporation, obviously, is water evaporating out of the soil and off the surface and not being used by the plant. Transportation is a term used in botany, where a plant takes water in to cool itself down, and then it releases it as a vapor. When we when we're hot and we drink water, we perspire. Plants go through a transfer instead of a perspiration process. It's just a little different. But there's a calculation that you use to figure out how much water did we lose in 24 hours? And that's what we look at every night when we go to program the irrigation, we get the ET number from our pump station, and we typically water. We never water at 100% of typically in a golf course, you water 60 to 65% of ET. And so that's what we do each night. We also

have the ability to have the weather station communicate with the computer irrigation central. And we can set it up to where it's always going to water at 60%, unless we want to fine tune it each night, which a lot of times we do. So these are some areas where I just want to show that we're, we're we're water conservation minded always happen. This won't ever change. We've we've been doing this for years. And we'll continue to do it through the drought. So this is how we're going to achieve our 10%. It's pretty simple. Our portable system, we have the ability in the pump station to turn off the portable system and fill it with potable water instead. And so basically if every 10th time we use the potable system, if we turn it off and use potable instead, that's going to save 10% right there. Even as an added savings, we've decided to take the water around the clubhouse and 136 and reduce it by 50%. And so we're getting a little additional savings there on top of the 10%. As far as the non-potable system goes, we've identified about 280 sprinkler heads out on the golf course. Well, in areas that we call the far rough. So those are going to be away from the tees, away from the fairways, away from the greens, kind of around the edges. We have almost 2200 sprinkler heads, so 280 of them we have turned down now to to run at 50% of the program. And that's going to help save about 10% of that non-potable water. So what that's going to mean is we're going to look a little drier around the edges, around the clubhouse, the driving range, these areas should come back once we get back to a normal moisture. It's probably worth mentioning there is a fine line between, like Bob shared, some of the seating costs between less green grass and dead grass.

We don't want to get to that point, especially with our non-potable areas not really being restricted. But again, we're trying to do our part and it's a daily kind of a daily thing. We look at it every day and we spot water where we have to and try to achieve that less green look around the edges and we should be able to contribute the 10%. Just wanted to share a little bit. As as have been mentioned, there's a lot of coordination between the utility and parks, not just on water usage but on communication. And so these are some of the signs. The poster on the left is what you'll see at Thorne Creek Golf Course. Right now. The two signs on the right are our signage that will be at various city parks, whether it's a sports turf and we're watering it, you know, to stay green or if it's a less a less an area that doesn't have as much demand when we're under watering it, we'll have signage out there just so that customers can understand what parks is doing and and also learn more about the drought. We've been coordinating a lot on social media between the utility and parks, communicating what our plans are. We'll continue that throughout the summer. Obviously, lots of website activity, and then we will start advertising just parks as drought response through more of the traditional parks communication channels, whether it's recreation websites, registrations at the various events. As I mentioned before, we do have fliers at the rec centers that talk about all of the different responses. We'll have some videos out there where they're describing what is actually happening at park. So trying to have a coordinated message between the utility and parks so that customers want understand that parks really is part of the community and doing the same, the same effort that the residents are to save the water. So to share that and then

just, you know, to the extent we've got so many resources available for residential customers, commercial customers, hose to save water. Here's a lot of the efficiency resources that we have lots of support for commercial and large properties in terms of reducing their water, whether that's irrigation efficiency checks or actual landscape conversions. As I mentioned, we've got a watering guide out there. We've got landscape conversion so people can start to remove some of their high use, high water, use bluegrass and and transfer it into more native and water wise landscaping. So lots of lots of programs out there to connect customers with so that they can save, save some water and save some money as well. So I think that's all we have. I did just want to thank parks, been a great partner and appreciate their support. So I have any additional questions. Thank you all. I know it's not easy. Right right of way. Streetscape and entering monuments. We're going to do a slight change out with some heart staff. So this is part this a heads up about some actions that have already happened in terms of right of way standards. And then we are going to ask for council feedback on some future investments in the city. So I give this to to kick us off. Yeah. Thanks, Tansy. So I think you all council you remember our Hendrik Wyman? He was here a couple weeks ago with the McAlester master plan. He's going to take the lead here on the Rights of Way streetscapes and monument update. And I think, as Tansy said, we're we're going to ask you for some input here at the conclusion. So you take it away. Thanks, Chris. All right. Good evening, Council, as you mentioned, I'm here to provide you

with an update on the newly rolled out streetscape palette, as well as request your direction on some proposed entry monuments for the city. Just a simple agenda showing over to be covering tonight. We're going to start off by looking at the streetscape stuff, and then we'll move into the proposed entry monument concepts purpose real high level here. We think it's important because right away is create first impressions and are often one of the most visible parts of a community. Support to develop standards that enhance safety and are consistently applied, use resources wisely and portray the community in a positive light. We're here tonight to go over those updated right of way materials and then receive feedback on the proposed entry monuments. We want to make sure that those two things tie into one another, but there's good alignment between the two, and that council is supportive of the overall greater vision for Thornton's right of way is moving forward. A lot of folks are familiar with the idea of a right of way already. But just to cover what we're talking about here specifically tonight, right of way are basically the corridors of publicly owned, publicly dedicated land that allow for essential infrastructure in place, such as roadways, utilities, things like that. They're built and maintained by a variety of public and quasi public public agencies, including the city itself, but also hose developers and others. What section drawing that you see on the screen there shows a typical cross section of an arterial level right of way here on Thornton. So think your Colorado boulevards, your 120, our larger streets here in town, more specifically the areas that we're talking about tonight are really these areas highlighted in green. So we're talking about the landscape areas, side paths or sidewalks, the medians and tree lawns. Some things to

keep in mind as we're going over this presentation here. Not all streets have city owned or maintain right of way. So it's not necessarily something we can control or maintain throughout the city. That's something that we still strive for. Oftentimes we see a lot of utilities in these areas. So that can sometimes limit our ability to make surface improvements. Obviously, while these are important, these improvements do have to be considered alongside other city priorities such as parks, stormwater improvements, utilities and other public services. And just because of their sheer scale, just the number of miles of right of way that we have here in the city, there's really significant or can be significant cost to renovate, install and maintain these types of spaces. So the challenges that are really being addressed here by rolling out these new standards, you can see on the screen there, right of ways in Thornton have developed alongside the city. Right. So it's happened over the last 70 years and currently without strong standards in place to to guide their design, we find ourselves with inconsistent applications, aging infrastructure and substantial hours spent maintaining these spaces. So this is really what we're trying to address here. We wanted to think about before we started looking at new standards. Kind of guiding principles don't help make sure we're on the right track so the updated standards will improve safety and access. They will use our critical resources, such as water, more wisely. It will provide consistency between both publicly and non publicly maintained right of ways. And additionally, we hope that they will go to support a unique visual identity for for it and help differentiate us from our surrounding communities. So here are the updated streetscape standards you can see on the screen there. You really pull a lot of inspiration from the surrounding context and landscape of this location. Here on the Front Range, there's big focus on using durable and local materials wherever possible

to help reduce that ongoing maintenance needs. Just want to point out these are updated standards that will apply to both CIP projects that the city is operating, as well as private development projects around the city. Another point to mention is that the newly created Transportation Department, which is part of the citywide reorganization process, is going to be working over the coming months to define levels of service and create prioritization lists for right of way throughout the city as they are created and and work towards that. So that's the palette that we're working with. You can see here on this next slide, some pictures of what that streetscape starts to look like when it's actually installed. These are a couple locations around town, you know probably familiar with some of these already. And next we're going to move into entry monuments and kind of tie that into the streetscape palette. So monuments the city currently has continue the question about the street streetscape design standards. How much are these all going to be incorporated into the Washington Street Streets project that's being rolled out in two years? Yeah. So once we get the design standards kind of in place, and we were working with our partners in infrastructure and city development to make sure that these new standards are part of that development package. Yeah. I had a question on that as well. Are you incorporating any native trees in the right of way? We're looking at native adaptive trees for the most part. Native trees really down here on the Front Range is pretty limiting. Right? So we do want to have trees that are water wise and drought tolerant for these types of years that we're in right now, but we also want trees that that look nice and aren't high maintenance, aren't soft

wooded, aren't gonna be dropping a lot of branches. So we'll continue to work with our forestry team, who has a great selection of trees that they feel like are very hardy and do well in Thornton to come up with a final tree list. But there may be a couple natives on there. But but really, that that list is likely to have some cultivars that come from other places, but do well here in the Colorado climate. That'll be like ponderosa pine as an example. That seems to be here. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Some some evergreens that could be incorporated into that, you know, deciduous. We have to think about the maintenance implications. Certainly don't want to be dropping fruit and things like that or creating any kind of hazards. But yeah absolutely. We want it to look the nicest it possibly can with requiring the smallest amount of input possible. And that's just been feedback that I've received from residents. We've asked about, you know, these right of ways and seeing kind of the the zero being happening and losing trees or adding trees would be preferred. Create shade. And just for. Purposes. So it's good to hear that you're incorporating that because I didn't really see it on the streetscape. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's more that's good news. Yeah, absolutely. And we want to be mitigating that urban heat island effect as much as possible. Right. With those trees out in the shade, like you mentioned, obviously along roadways is a big aspect of that. So we'll do that. Wherever possible. Occasionally we do run into a situation where there's so many utilities alongside the roadside trees, and their root systems are difficult to find, areas to plant those in. But outside of that, certainly in medians and wherever else, we're very proud tree as well, other parks. So we'll definitely be looking at all those options also. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Good. Anything else on the same stuff before we move into entry? Monuments. So entry monuments tied directly into streetscapes. Currently, the city has 14 large entry monuments around the city. These can primarily be found on the west and south sides

of the city, at major entry points and along arterials. Of these existing monuments, three have been identified as high priority for being replaced or installing new entry monuments. You can see those on the right hand side of the slide. Our initial focus is to build a monument at Thornton Parkway, on the east side of I-25, to go along with the recently completed median work. The Transportation department, once operational, will also be exploring if there is need for additional entry. Monument locations at other areas around city. Once they're fully formed. They have lost my connection. Is there. There you go. So the two families of entry monuments that are going to be presented tonight are really the refined version of about 16 months of internal city stakeholder input and concept development. We're currently contracted with a local sign design and manufacturing business, Arapahoe Sign Arts, to finalize the site specific designs and construction level documents based on council's feedback tonight. The first. First concept family of entry monuments shown here use the durable and unique materials that complement build off the streetscape materials presented earlier. We have tall Corten steel pillars with built in changeable LED light elements. Those sit firmly on top of a base of rammed earth. We also have black painted steel that's used to capture the thought and lettering on the side there, and also provide an illuminated logo box for easy legibility at night. These materials are also carried over into a smaller version that you see there on the middle part of the slide, and can also be used in a more horizontal type signage to make sure that we're creating

that unifying character across locations. Here's a render showing that taller pylon option. If it were to be installed out on Thorne Parkway and the medians there, you can see this location in particular is really well suited to a tall vertical style sign. Here's a nighttime render of that same look at the side. So you can kind of get a sense of the lighted elements. Concept two here. So concept two Family Assigns is a bit more contemporary style holds colorful inspiration from the city's new branding and logo, a playful painted or dyed acrylic angular structure hugs a tall black steel pillar which holds the thought and lettering. These elements are once again anchored to the rammed earth base, which creates a canvas for an engraved city logo that you can see there. You can see how this style can once again be interpreted for a smaller structure in the middle, and also more horizontal type installations. Do you want to point out that when we presented these two concepts to pose, and that this concept family was a very slight favorite over concept one any time render showing that taller pylon out there at Thorne Parkway in the medium. And the nighttime render showing the lighting elements, we think we could also light that acrylic structure from the inside if that were to be desired. So really, what we're looking for this evening is to capture any feedback and comments that council may have and really look for direction for how to proceed with this effort. We could either go with concept one, concept two, we could certainly go back to the drawing board and recommend that additional concepts be developed as well. And otherwise, I do want to point out cost wise at this point, costs are very similar for both of these styles of signs, both from an installation and an ongoing maintenance perspective.

Not a big change in cost. And we're here happy to answer any questions that you might have before collecting feedback. And Chris, I thank you both. Pushed your buttons. Is that correct? Your light didn't let it, but I saw you both go for it. So I'll have Roberta then. Kristen Cherish. I like pumped up to the most I've had. I've heard a lot of feedback about both, but I like concept two. And one of the interesting things is this looks a lot like the piece at trail One's called aperture that was selected by Tash. So I think it's kind of super cool that like it's coming back around to the same style that piece is specifically is was and it could be kind of cool just to look and see because I don't remember the artist's name. I remember working on that many years ago, but I don't remember the artist's name, but it was lit from the inside. And that specific artist did a lot of work throughout the country and different cities, and I think Las Vegas and quite a few cities, but it looks very similar to that. And so it's kind of cool and whimsical and something that I really enjoyed for the front of trail winds. So it's kind of nice that it's coming back around as far as like a style. I'm not sure how this company or is this like a company that's doing it? Yeah, they're kind of a design build firm, so they're kind of interesting because it'd be it'd be kind of cool to see how they'd be able to light it from the inside, as opposed to the reflected light, but either way, it looks really good. And we'll be happy to reach out to Lisa and her team and see if we can get that artist's information to. Yeah, yeah, it was it was close to five years now. So yeah, I do like once that councilmember just brought up and how it does tie to trail wings. However, given that we've already started some of the installation of artwork

right here in front of City Hall with that call that aged metal or that weathered metal. Corten steel Frost, we call it patina. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah. So that's why I'm going to go with concept one is just I think that would conform kind of what we already have. And Thornton Parkway being our stable roadway in front of City Hall. And I like conformity to I don't not like concept two. But I'm going to try to go for the cleaner look. So my votes on step one. Concept one, except for I would like to see the lettering go down. Yeah, we've had quite a bit of feedback on that lettering, so I think we'll definitely address that if that were the concept, we moved forward. Yeah, I, I like both designs. They're both very cool and love to see either one. So but I did reach out through next door and I know you did as well. Tone of responses. And I think there was a what I could tell a majority of these people liked one. So in regards to go with one, because they both look great. I can go with either one, but that's what I hear from from around town, all different parts of town. Leaning towards one. But I'm curious about costs. Can you dig into that some more with specifics? Yeah. So right now we have order of magnitude cost put together for the tallest pylon option up there for both concepts. So that is likely the most expensive of either families. Three signs right now the cost all in. So this is with traffic control and materials labor all that.

That tall pylon is somewhere between 150 and $175,000 to install. In the second one, we don't have cost, but together, for any of the smaller elements, we could assume that the price will go down. But to what extent? We don't know exactly. Right now, I think. Are you asking the it's are you saying 175 for each of the tall ones? Yes. Each one tall ones would be in that ballpark question. Yeah. Both in concept one and concept to the two tallest ones would be about in that same ballpark. Yeah. And where is the funding coming from? The funding for this particular project is from funds that were remaining from the median improvements project. Again, to clarify, that's the only funded project at this point, just that one. It's not a great funded it's general fund. Yeah. Follow up to general fund or capital improvement fund. It is capital. But the general general capital. Capital. Yeah. Is there a is there a way towards one. But I'm also totally fine cutting that thing in half and just having like the bottom section where it's literally just the black sign logo and in the word Gordon. Yeah. Is there a way to analyze like what that price difference would be? And if it's if it's significant because I do want to balance, you know, we got a lot of comments. I think we had around 500 or so between the two of us, which is really interesting to see. But yeah, I think, you know, there were a few people that are like, why in the world are we spending money on this? So I think trying to find a balance of like, hey, we want something nice, but also saying this is probably the most cost effective version. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely I think there's a bit of cost with the sheer height of it, with changes, the stuff

that you can't see right below the grade as well. So we can certainly work with our partners over on Arts to see if we can take that concept and kind of right size it and bring that cost down a bit. That would be my recommendation if we could look at that. Sure. Yeah. All right Dave. Took my questions on cost, but I'm fine with one. John. Yeah. Thank you. Great presentation. Thank you very much for that. Yeah I love both concepts. I was I checked out some of Drew and Justin's you know, on their next door posts as well. And it's kind of like you know, there's a lot of folks like concept two or a lot of folks like concept one. But, you know, I do tend to agree with mayor of Concept two, like with the compliment to trail winds, but I kind of also like something a little more cleaner, if you will. No cost doesn't have to do with it in this case. But I do think maybe with concept one, I'll go ahead and say that, but I'm not sure. Like the Thornton lettering, maybe we can take that out or not. I mean, if it's not much of a difference, then doesn't matter. But I do like the the logo on the bottom. I like that and it's very prevalent both day and night. So that would be, you know, obviously would be our Thornton, you know, without a Thornton, obviously I would like see maybe we can do without the the Thornton lettering on one, but I can live with it too. So if, if it's a significant difference and maybe take thrown out, but if not then we'll probably keep it. But I'd like to see like both. Yeah. Thank you. Just have to think about because I know that there's posts on social media and people have a lot of opinions and they see this stuff and they think about cost. But keep in mind, like over the last two years, I've been on council for a lot of complaints about signage and how crappy it looks around town. So it's going to get money, it's going to cost money to replace it and make it look better. I know from traveling

in and out of Thornton in different directions, I. One thing I'll say is like on 120th, for example, there's a very huge sign that says, like the city of Thornton, it's big. It's very big. I mean, if we replace it with something puny, people are going to be super disappointed. And so they'll come at us now with cost complaints, but then they'll come at us with cheap doubt and it looks like crap complaints. So we got to take all of like what's said in the moment with a grain of salt, because people will start to have different ideology once they see something in place where we decide to go cheaper on the cost. And then it looks sad. Now, having lived in living in a neighborhood that has very old neighborhood signage, I've been one of those complaints because our signs don't get replaced by an HOA, our signs get replaced by the city. And I've seen, you know, the work and care that goes into that. I've also seen people crash into them. Then they have to be replaced again. And that's really unfortunate. So signage has been an issue, whether it's on for the city of Thornton or for the different signs around our city, for neighborhoods, businesses, everything. It's just something to keep in mind, because I think I did see the folks complaining. A lot of folks on Next door will have different complaints. They will end different social media outlets. But if we replace a big, huge, monumental sign like the white one on 120th with a little weird thing, people are going to get sad. So just something, just something to put out there. All right, I have Chris and Justin and Chris. It's an idea to help with cost for Drew's comments. That black post with the black Thornton lettering, if that's steel fabric fabrication and welding. I know we were having some of our others are being done by Future Forward. Is it possible just to have them build that black pole with authority letters and something that we can add to it gives the students a project.

Definitely lowers costs as well. In steel fab is you iron railing and stuff. It's insane how expensive that stuff is. You know, maybe that's that's an area where we can shape a few dollars and kids can then contribute to the signage process, and we save money in the process. So just an idea, Justin. My question is about so we've got 14 of these monuments. Do we have a plan to replace all 14 of them or if one one potential Wayne we're talking about cost is no replace all of 1414 times 175,000 talking millions of dollars on welcome. I don't know if I, I could justify millions of dollars on welcome monuments. I like having Malcolm monuments, but 14 of them is a lot. So I like what don't necessarily want to cheap out on them. And it's interesting, you know, using child labor to save costs. But it's not excuse. Just kidding I get it. You could. So I like I actually like that idea. I just couldn't help. But yeah I just want to know like what the what the rollout plan is all 14 or are we going to do. It's over several years, stuff like that. So Martinez. Yeah, I'll try to grab this one. So I do think Kendrick shared, we will be coming back to you at a later date with sort of a more intentional approach to planning for streetscapes across the city and prioritizing that. I think entry signs would be part of that. So certainly I think we do recognize we've got a lot of deferred work

in terms of our streetscapes, and it's going to take years of sort of capital planning to do that. I think some of the goal with these concepts, and I think in that process we could determine where are the places we really do. We consider as major entryways into the city where we want to do that branding. And I do think the intent here, with this flexible pieces, that we could use lower cost methods in certain kinds of places. So I think some of that that would emerge as sort of what's the right kind of signage in the right context of the right cost. So we don't have that yet. But I think that very much is an intent in terms of approaching streetscape and right away projects going forward. Hopefully that's helpful. Yeah, I think the idea is that the concept that we're looking for that blends with the ideas that we have. So this may or may not be what it actually looks like. When that is ready, I'm sure it will come to council, but the concept between these two and right now, concept one is in the lead. I have drew and then John, and then I think we'll wrap up the conversation because we have so many. Yeah yeah yeah. Great points. Do you like your idea Chris. See how we can incorporate that. If that's even a possibility I won't I won't echo adjustments about that. But I would say that I mean I size wise I don't sit besides should be proportional to what's there. And I understand that. I'm just I'm saying like the Black Bart, like the word. And the logo actually is very nice and clean and attractive, and it was just that I would be okay with that. And I think that sets a good standard. It's simple, it's timeless and classic. And yeah, so I think that would be ideal. And I would hope that without all the steel

would be a lot cheaper. And I'm happy to draw it out to that if that helps. I think that's a lower level than we as council need to be at. I mean, it would be fine. I can picture and I think and that's the nice part of both these concepts, is they have these kind of kit of parts, if you will, that you can kind of piece together and make first site appropriate and cost effective. Different types of signage like Tansy was a construction guy pointed out to me that the the panels on the coloring, the one like the Minecraft one on the left, and then like the call, like the caterpillar on the right. He said that the the sun is going to wear down, that that material very quickly. So very quickly it'll be replaced. And so that's an anticipated maintenance costs will be thrown in. That'll be they'll add to it much more than just the basic black sign with that kind of stone background. So something else to consider. That's my in the future, if we got rid of the colored element and just had the steel and we had children helping build, you know, maybe there's a good balance there to assist and. All right, John. Yes I'll be quick. So obviously I want concept one. But you know, I envisioned it without the Thornton on the side as to plane. And it's kind of cheap. I mean, Matt Mayor pro Tem brought up a point there. So I think we should just keep like it is, I like that. I'll pertain to the monument sign, though, that Roberta and, you know, concerns about why make sure they're big concept one that monument sign seems to be will be bigger than concept two. So I'll wrap up on that. So we have consensus on concept one as we move forward to figure out what to do with it from. They're awesome. Thank you very much. Good night. All right.

Organizational review. Hey, this is me, and I'm between you and a snowball fight or something, so I'll try to move quickly through this. So I did want to just take a chance to connect with the council. Over the last month, we've done a lot of specific outreach to specific individuals and work groups that are going to be impacted by the next phase of implementation of the org review. And then last week, we had an all in play call. So I wanted to take an opportunity to make sure that the council is in the loop with those. We will briefly hit background. There's lots of materials that are available for the public in previous presentations, so won't go into background extensively, but we'll spend most of the time talking about where are we in the current evaluation and implementation. And then we'll talk briefly about next steps. I won't spend much time on this slide. We've condensed some of the background information that you've seen in the past. But ultimately, just as a reminder for people that the council and people that might be plugging into this for the first time, we did have a third party consultant that gave us some recommendations last October. We came to the council in January with an implementation recommendation. That broader study really talked about how we could realign the city's organizational structure to align to our priorities. And then the implementation plan was tried to lift out and sequence our implementation in a way that advanced strategic plan priorities. Those two bullets is where I'm going to spend the bulk of my time tonight.

There were other things in the report around culture, policies, procedures, role clarity, things like that that will continue to work on as well. So this is the future department organization chart. This does have some slight refinement from the original recommendation of Black Line. But this is the organization chart that we are moving forward into the future. This slide you did see these evaluation phases in the January presentation. So phase phase one through four you saw what has been added to this slide is demonstrating sort of how we are moving forward in a more intentional way with specific department. So again, we're sort of working through the detailed organization structure, our detailed communication plans and smaller pieces so that we can be really intentional with that specific design. So you'll see that under phase three that chart will show that the functional alignment. So that's essentially what bucket of services go in the department. We have completed that for most departments the two outstanding. We've got a few decisions to make with regard to allocation of services between finance and the Engineering and Capital Projects department that are still ongoing. On the bottom you'll see under phase four. So again, our quarter two implementations, we do have those detailed org charts and employee impacts identified for those. And then we're continuing to work on those things that are going to be moving forward in quarter three. There are

there is one change that you'll see here for transportation, and you'll see this reflected on another side. We are not going to try to make changes to right of way alignments during this significant growing season. So we have pushed that into the kind of quarter three, quarter four to to consolidate our mowing and other kinds of operations. So that will those will stay in parks until we get to a place that makes more operational sense to make changes to that department. The other change you'll see here is now we are reflecting phase five, which is implementation, because we are now moving into phase five and implementation for some departments. At this point, we do have a better sense of what are actually on the ground impacts of some of the changes that we are looking at. So we have started to identify places where we might have references in policies or other things that are out of alignment now with the way the structure is looking. So a good example of that is we have positions that are classified as either career service or excluded. Now that we have changed the organization structure, those definitions no longer really work. So it's things like that that we're working on as we're doing that, as I think, you know, we have some offices and some departments, we're going to define some of those terms more clearly to serve us going forward. In terms of employee impacts. To date, we are going to have quite a few employees that are going to be impacted by either a new supervisor, they're going to be directly working for a new supervisor, or they might be aligned to a different part of the organization structure within the department, or they may be moving from one department to another.

So those kind of impacts are fairly common to our employees. We are going to have some individuals based on the changes in the structure that are going to either move from career service into excluded or from being excluded from the career service into the career service. So we will have some of those impacts. That's less common in terms of an impact. And then we will be reclassifying quite a number of positions. And so in many cases that's what we're we're considering a lateral shift. So somebody might have some slightly different job responsibilities. There might be some piece of their job responsibilities are staying the same. Some are changing. Some people might be shifting into sort of a different area of focus. But when we say lateral we essentially are meaning we have generally the same level of responsibility. They're relying on the same level of skills. And from a market pay consideration perspective, there's not a compensation impact. So when we say lateral that's what we mean. We do have very rare circumstances where people are taking on additional responsibility or moving into a position that would have a different market pay impact. So under our code those are considered promotion and then some will be considered demotion. So again somebody might end up with lesser responsibility, or they may be moving into a role that when it comes to the market, would have a lower market value in terms of it. When we use a term demotion. And we've been really clear with our organization, these are not performance based changes.

So these are structural changes. And so the term is really a class of occasion. But some individuals will have either their future earning potential or in very rare cases they're at pay reduce as a result. All of the reclassification is a very rare circumstance. And when we talk about the quarter two changes that are upcoming, we have already engaged with all of the employees that will be impacted by our reclassification. So those individuals that will be impacted in that way know that that's coming before you move on. Yes, I have Justin and then Roberta on the under the reclassification for. So you do answer my questions that they're there. Their pain will change along with the title as well in very rare circumstances. So our code actually allows us if, if somebody is is demoted. But it's not for a performance reason. We do have an allowance in the code to pay somebody up to 7% outside of the range. And so some individuals will get some protection in terms of their existing pay, because they'll still be in that 7% buffer. Now, in those cases there still is an impact because as we do pay increases in those kinds of things, we pay those out as lump sums. They don't add to the base and sell until they get back into the range. So it will be a very rare, minimal circumstance. Somebody that actually loses pay. So they their pay range would they're actually their actual pay would have to be more than 7% above the range that they're going to. But there are circumstances where we expect actual pay impacts. But those are going to be very rare. Okay. And then

my second question is, so you did mention there were there were no reductions in roles and or or elimination of roles as part of this. Is that right? At this point, we have not identified any layoffs. So no. And we don't perceive that that will be the case going forward. We again, we haven't worked through detailed org charts for all of the departments, but given what we know at this point, we don't anticipate any layoffs. And it is worth noting the reclassification impacts to this point and likely going forward have impacted managerial or program manager kinds of roles. So we have not identified those kind of impacts for more frontline service providers. Was that just out of scope from the very beginning, or was that something that you analyzed and determined that, no, we're not going to do that? I think a lot of it is just the nature of the kinds of changes that we're making have more impacts on those work groups. So, you know, we're not changing levels of service or service lines. Some of this is about opportunities for for more visibility, for more collaboration or coordination, recognition of sort of work groups that make sense. And so in that way. Some of the functional work that is happening is still going to happen. It's just happening in a different alignment. So it didn't impact as much those individuals that are frontline service providers. Okay. When you actually have the numbers of people who are affected by this, can you just let us know the number of people that might have? I'm more concerned about the demotion and rare circumstance. That's just that's just an impact of people's,

you know, pocketbook for the household or whatever. And then secondly, you said there were no riffs, right? There wasn't going to be as far. If that does happen to occur, would you let us know? Absolutely. And again, because that that kind of stuff really gets to triggering the community and, you know, the workforce and you can lead to huge morale issues. So just yeah, and at this point and we did share on the all employee call that there, we we have not identified any. And the quarter two implementation changes. And don't into any based on again we don't we don't have the the final work for those remaining departments completely worked through here. But we started to get an idea and I feel with a fair degree of confidence to say that we won't have eliminations of of employees. Oh, I had one other question. Was there a change in the overall FTE numbers? As you said, there were some that were that you said something about those type of job classifications. Was there a change from FTE to we haven't completed all of that yet. So I think we shared with you in January. We had accumulated 12 vacant positions to allocate towards the implementation of this plan. The value of positions is different. So our commitment to the Council was to try to make this first phase both cost neutral and position neutral. And so we're still working through that. But yes, we won't we won't be adding positions through this process. Some of the positions that we were holding, we are replacing with higher value positions. So it may not be a one for one or so. I think the concern with people in labor usually is

is that like you change the organization, I would say there's a certain organization I'm thinking in my head right now, they change it and then you end up with more admin people, but less frontline workers. And so it makes a shift of like, oh, we lost a person at the front desk. And, you know, we need that customer facing support because it's a rough day. These are the people that get paid the least in the whole organization. Yet they're busting there. But but you have two more really high paid administrators. So can you also let us know when you end up with this? If we end up losing any FTE on the frontline work group type of area and then gaining if that what that looks like as well, we can share that the positions that we held for this conversion, I think they are fairly well distributed through different kinds of departments and different kinds of functions. And like across the scope from frontline workers to admin. Okay. That's right. Okay. I'm going to jump back forward here and we will provide that information about demotions. I guess just a clarification. Is that a touch point that the council would like at each phase or when we get through with the completion of the entire project, completion would be useful. Welcome back to you. Okay. Is that all right with council? Yeah. Right. John. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, ma'am, city manager for the presentation so far. Yeah, I'm your mayor pro tem. I always comments as well. We need we need the organization, the reorganization. But we want to make sure that the frontline workers are not the ones that are going to be the most negatively impacted by this. Thank you for clarifying that. There won't be any rips or layoffs. That's that's very important to me.

So but as I will mirror once again, Mayor Pro Tem, please keep us informed on how the process is going. Thank you. And so you have seen this chart before in January. So this is the implementation plan. Just a reminder about what you're seeing. The chevrons that run across the top. That's our priority prioritization in terms of recruitment and hiring. And in every case you're going to see recruitment and hiring leading and then structural changes happening behind that. So the goal of that is so that particularly for the new department, we can get those leaders in place and they can help manage that implementation and change management. As we start to put together those departments. There are a few changes on this chart from what you saw before, or one I already pointed out to you. So you'll see now in that Q3, Q4 item that we have included, that right of way we have deferred. The other is finance. We previously had anticipated that we might make some realignments in the finance department in quarter, and that has been realigned. So quarter three, again, we still have some decisions to make in terms of alignment there. The other piece that has been added to this chart, you'll see for 2027, we are starting, I think one of the things that we have shared with you, we do intend to bring the 2027 budget to you, reflecting these new departments. And so as we work on the budget, we will be moving these constructs into play and reallocating those resources in that way.

And then we are beginning to understand other back end systems. So everything like internal controls, how our internal systems reflect that organization structure. And so that work will continue. Pause here. All right. So we're going to spend a little bit of time just on where are we with those quarter one and quarter to plan. So quarter one we have now completed. So the recruitments that we intended to do in quarter one, we have completed. So Brett Henry and Jessica Prosser have stepped in to assistant city manager roles. And you have gotten lots of FaceTime with Kevin Forget who has stepped into our strategic initiatives position. And we have actually accelerated quite a number of the student advisory realignments in the city manager's office. And so all of the departments that you see listed in terms of supervised supervisory realignments have shifted to direct reports from the city manager to a deputy or an assistant city manager, to both distribute the workload a little bit and provide a little higher level of support and assistance to the departments. In terms of quarter two, we are ready to go. So I think I shared with the council, the community program director has now been posted. So that is an active recruitment at this point. We did do a solicitation and considered outside professional recruitment services for all three of these services. We have all three of the searches we have calibrated based on our internal resources and knowledge,

the use of those external recruitment resources. So given Jessica's background and network, we did choose to do the community programs with internal resources. We are not using a recruitment firm for that recruitment, or the transportation director will use a recruiting firm in a limited way to help with candidate sourcing, but we'll do most of the candidate evaluation and negotiation internally and with the CIO. Given the unique technical basis of that role, we'll be using recruitment partner for all parts of that process. We have selected our recruiting partner for these firm called Strategic Government Resources. They go by SGR. It's a national firm that is very well known. And so we will hopefully I think we've kicked off the recruitment with the recruiters for both the CIO and transportation directors. So I would expect getting information to you probably within a week or ten days of those positions will be in active recruitment. I have done a couple of programmatic alignment. So our wellness function has moved to human resources, and we do have an interim director in in place in our management services department. With that interim transition, we did take that opportunity and shifted Municipal court early to the city manager's office. So the municipal court administrator is now a direct report to the Me and the city manager's office. We do have some pending structural organizational changes that we think will happen still in quarter

to potentially bridging into quarter three. The information technology department will step will will become a department. Right now it is a function in management services. Once we have a CIO in place, that will become a freestanding department and that will shift and the CIO will be a direct report. We'll wait until that recruitment has has been completed in that person in his place and that change. And we had intended to move risk management to human resources in quarter to given the transitional period in management services. Want to leave some more leadership resiliency to support the interim director there. So we have deferred the change to risk management. Until we get that transition through, we'll give an example of some of the functional org chart. So these are the three departments again for which that is that change impacted the key over there on the right. This could be one or more of those impacts in our work group. So when something is green it doesn't mean that all of these things are happening. It just means somebody in that line was impacted in one of those ways. And so in this particular case, we have taken the opportunity to realign cybersecurity right now is managed along with our network engineering and our that is actually there's it's infrastructure and networks that also includes cyber. Right now we are pulling cyber out on its own. And so that will allow us to incrementally increase

dedicated resources for cybersecurity. Technical support right now is a direct report to the CIO. We wanted to minimize direct reports to the CIO in many other pieces that is managed, along with sort of the support system of the department. So again, where we have those impacts, it could be some of those individuals are just in a new realignment, working in a new work group. Some individuals are seeing reclassification in this area. The next couple of charts get a little harder to see. Everything is green because these are new departments. So virtually all of these individuals are moving from a different department into this department. So community engagement, volunteer and community connections now are all functions and parks that will come in to the community programs department. And code compliance is in planning. And so this is all green because all of these individuals are going to be in a new alignment. And we do have some individuals that will also be impacted by status changes. So career service and excluded changes and some impacts in terms of reclassification. And this has been new transportation department. And so again this is a new department. And so all of these functions are shifting parks planning or infrastructure. Similarly here most individuals are just being impacted by alignment. But we do have individuals that are being impacted by their status changes or via classification.

Of what's coming next. Again, we're continuing to communicate with the individuals that are being impacted by to changes in IT, transportation and community programs. Again, we're looking forward to starting the recruitments for those director positions. We're continuing to be aggressive with employee communication. So we have an all in play, call it an internet site where we are providing frequently asked questions, copies of presentations, those kinds of things. We are going to be working to complete those phase three and phase four evaluations. So that's again, those functional and detailed or charts and evaluation of detailed employee impacts. And we'll be preparing for communication for those quarter three and quarter four changes as we get closer to some of these departments actually standing up. We will then start to transition into public education about the how to communicate. Hopefully, you know, we do believe that the org chart going forward will be beneficial and potentially more intuitive for the public to predict who they might call for certain kinds of service requests. But we certainly will be putting together a public communication plan that I can answer any questions. What is the. New headcount that we're looking at? The short changes and new divisions are being broken into. None. Yeah. So we held vacant positions. We held 12 vacant positions. Again, we haven't finalized all of the details or charts, but the commitment has been not to add any new positions

through this process. So with the with the breakup and the division of everything that's kind of through there, do we feel that we have the expertise and all the new areas that are going to be needed in that, or the 12 headcount will be enough to be able to fill those roles. Specifically, when you think of things like the IT side that that's a very large difference in expertise and kind of knowledge base from technical support to cybersecurity or. Yeah. So for hopefully this will answer the question if not redirect me. So for all the direct the new director roles. So we have a number of individuals in interim appointments in director roles. And then we'll have a number of new vacant director roles. We will be doing national competitive searches for all of the director roles, so we won't be reclassifying existing employees into any of the director roles to ensure that we've we have individuals with the experience and skill sets to support the vision of these new departments. Other questions? I guess not. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Any board committee reports? Yes, yes. Thank you. Yes. So of course, Councilmember Martinez and I, we have our monthly NATO Board of directors meeting for April. So we as a board, we approve the Guiding Policies 2026 document. In addition to approving the March meeting minutes. Also, we at least Jones is no longer the district board transportation commissioner for CDot. The nominees now Carl Castillo, he is from Boulder, and he was introduced to us and he addressed the board in King. He had no specific agenda but to have a safe, reliable mobility for the transportation network.

And we'll look to build relationships in the long with pragmatic solutions. So I think this is definitely, in my view, a breath of fresh air for our board, because and I'm going to go to the next reason why the previous director was was contentious. We were briefed on bus tank funding and operations by Paul Rocha. He's the director of Division of Transit Rail for CDot. He indicated Mustang. Mustang funding is not, I repeat, not tied to the I-25 ten year plan. So that's a big win for us for for Neda, but also for the city of Thornton as well, because that's the that has been a very conscious topic this year. So that is a big relief. The I-25 and Colorado seven Interim Mobility Hub should be completed in July August this year, and DTR will activate the bus. Tank stops at the same time the air is open. Paul indicated his staff will work with a B2B flier startup to synchronize the times. Both the B2B flier and Mustang busses are at the mobility hub, and Paul briefly discussed possible mountain rail stops in the area, and I will defer to chairman to Chairman and Councilmember Martinez for the other part. About the about the clean, trans and clean transit enterprise. With that being take place. You covered all the notes that I have. Okay. Excellent. And Jason, in my apologies. Okay. That's that's all we have for then. Thank you. Yeah. Because we said it. Yeah. Anyone else? Chris. Highway seven. The Quebec important for Ward three guys. Next month they'll go into design for highway seven and Holly Street and Highway seven and Quebec Street design. So that's what's important. Here. Talk to people, give me some input back on me when it happens.

The AC rep committee meeting was canceled and the board of directors meeting. They are working on a strategic plan for the next few years. Some big things. All right. Any discussion items? Roberta, just to the first one is we did all of our main stuff, but I wanted to add Teacher Appreciation Week. It's this week, but we didn't get to do it. So if we do it next, any objections? Okay. And then the second one is. So yeah I saw that we have the item scheduled on June 2nd to discuss the city Council travel plan, following up on Councilmember Martinez's request. And I've been thinking about some other policies we want to revisit over the next year here. And I reviewed policy 4.2 regarding the city policies, direct city policy direction, and this one hasn't been updated since oh five. So while I think we pretty much follow the spirit of the policy, it seems like there could be some refinements made that would reflect our current practices and provide some better guidance to both the city staff and dealing with us and the members of the City Council. Similar to our work with the travel policy, I want to make learn more about our peer practices so the other cities that we have and what they do, and ways that we might be able to improve our policy in that area. Any objection? Just clarification. You're asking about the policy around how we give direction to staff. Okay. Yeah. Any objection is that for two because mine says five six. So I don't know if you're reading the old book, it might be one of them. I don't know the charter or from the code. It's from this from the I think you're referring to your council policy. Council policy charter charter redirection listed in five six as well. Yeah.

So this I think is the ordinance that we have for city council policies. And so I can well we can't change without a vote. Our rules. So city Council policy Direction policy 4.2 Legislative History CD 22005206. The purpose of this policy established process for determining the course of direction relating to issues, concerns, ideas, concepts that are discussed by city council planning sessions and council updates. I sounded like Kristen. So yeah, that one. All right. I'm not hearing any objection. We can check and see what other cities are doing and see if we can update the policy to be more current. Anything else? Roberta? That's it for me. Anyone else? Sure, Justin. Sure. All right. Any state legislative updates? Yes, I got an. There's another 13. All right. Thank you all very much.