City Council - Regular Meeting

We go ahead and get started and council member bird is going to be out this evening. His daughter's graduating. Anything from you?

No, thank you.

Yes, we need to cancel the executive session tonight on the Quebec street overpass. The parties have narrowed the issues, but we're still negotiating on that. And so we need to get E, 470 a bit more time. to take a look at what's the latest proposals. So hopefully we'll have an update for council next week. Good. Thank you. Sure.

All right. Let's jump into briefings. We have an update from the Thornton Assistance Funds.

So unfortunately tonight, Jalyn Sattler is not feeling well. So Jessica is going to be pitch hitting for her. And so as a council is where each year through the budget, you allocate funds. through a competitive process award to community partners in some key priority areas. So with this, I'll hand it over to Jessica, and she'll recognize the committee members, and this will be a joint effort between staff and the committee members tonight.

Sandy, good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and members of Council, Jessica Prosser, Assistant City Manager. I keep messing that up. So I am joined tonight by the TAF committee, and they just want to acknowledge these members of the community that have done a lot of work. taking time to read applications, review them, score them, deliberate, and put together this presentation for you tonight. So I will ask that they each introduce themselves as we pass down the line. And they're all very excited to present. So rather than just one or two, they all really wanted to have a part in this. as we move forward. So the purpose for tonight, as I said, we'll review the funding recommendations, Also just wanted to show alignment with the strategic plan as we have been in a couple of different areas. They will go through the different funding categories. There's four of them, provide some recommendations in each of those areas. And then I will wrap up at the end with some opportunities for improvement, some ideas around kind of moving things forward for future years, as well as an exciting opportunity for the community to contribute to the Thornton Assistance Funds in the future. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to continue the presentation.

Good evening, Council. I am Sarah Tidwell, the Chairperson and Ward 2 Representative. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to serve on this committee. There were 41 applications submitted for the Thornton Assistance Fund this year. 38 of those applications were funded, were found eligible to move forward to the 2026 TAF grant cycle. Each organization provides a valuable service to our community and we were charged with the enormous task of deciding how to distribute 314,264 to these nonprofit organizations. The total amount of requests from 38 organizations was 679,559. We made our recommendation based on council's charge, the 2026 priorities and and by the following process developed by the committee. Overall funding recommendation. On this slide, the chart outlines our overall recommendation. The first column shows the four categories of the funding based on the council priorities. Housing and homelessness, food, human services, and health and medical. The second column shows the number of organizations were applied for funding in each category with a total of 38 organizations. The third column is associated amount requested by the organizations in each category. The fourth column shows our TAF committees recommended funding in each category. The recommendation gives us $2 over the allocation for the rounding process. Finally, the last column reflects the number of organizations we recommended for funding with each category. There are 22 organizations that met the charge and scoring threshold that we recommended for funding in 2026. I am now going to turn it over to Michelle Lopez, right? Or no, no. I turned it.

Oh, yes. I'll just go to the next.

Oh, okay. Sorry.

Okay.

The committee began by recognizing and align all funding decisions with council's priorities for this year. The priority served as a fundamental framework for evaluating the nonprofits that applied. Council priorities, housing and homelessness, food, health and medical, human services. Council priorities also include accessibility, nonprofits that offer the most accessible programs and services, such as those with close proximity to public transit and those that provide in-home or delivery services with prior tourism. Percentage of residents served. Nonprofits that served a larger percentage of Thornton residents of overall number of people served by the organization were prioritized. Collaboration with other nonprofits, nonprofits that actively partnered with other nonprofits to address service gaps and enhance community impact were prioritized. Do you want to keep going?

I think the next slide is confused.

You're good. I think just that this is the other pieces of the evaluation criteria that were part of the review process. So numbers one through five give an additional criteria overlay that you all use there. Oh, okay.

So I think we're good there.

Okay. You're ready to go? Okay.

So we just want to be clear that we looked at the different priorities. And the first one is the housing and homelessness. Okay, you're good to go there. I'm Lisa Pernboa, and I represent Ward 4 in the housing and homelessness category. And we had six nonprofits apply. And out of the six, we found four were eligible to be awarded with the resources. One was disqualified for not following through. with application processes and one was bound not to serve enough Thornton residents to really make it impactful. And so, as you can see here, these were the six who applied and the descriptions range from rent to mortgage to utility assistance. We do recognize that in the community, many nonprofits have closed their doors due to lack of funding. And so unfortunately, we only had six applicants for this subject area. And so these are the four that we recommend funding for. Bear with Care, Brothers Redevelopment, Almost Home, and Sunshine Home Share, which we have found to be wide reaching and impactful to our Thornton community. They total $77,298. And in fact, we funded three of them at 100%. And then Almost Home, we met them at $30,000, which is the minimum that they were willing to receive to be able to carry out the work. And then the other columns are just other funding sources from previous years. And I'll pass it off.

Hello, my name is Michelle. I am your Ward 2 representative in the food category named a priority by Council. The total amount requested was $245,601 for food, storage, delivery, weekend food bags for students in school food pantries, nutritious and culturally relevant food options at food banks, and delivered medically tailored meals for those living with severe illness. The committee recommends funding six of the 11 organizations to provide hunger relief to Thornton residents experiencing food insecurity. The total amount recommended for food category is $95,984. For each organization, we recommend funding the 2025 TAP award as shown within the chart. Outside of TAP, other city funds were not directed to any of the organizations within the food category.

Mm-hmm.

Good evening. My name is Heather, and I am the vice chairperson for this committee, first time representing on this committee, and I represent Ward 3. My category was human services, which I was, it was a heavy category, but I think we did a good job. In the human services category, there were 17 organizations which applied for a total of $240,800 for staffing, general operating support, tuition assistance, transportation, employment coaching and various supplies. The committee focused on the human service organizations that provide direct services and care to Thornton residents. We recommended funding nine of the organizations with a total of 108,984. These nine organizations would provide services to child victims and their families, tuition assistance to low and moderate income families so they can access early childhood education, low cost automotive repair for single mothers, and resource navigation and basic essentials for the disadvantaged and or persons with disabilities. For each organization we recommended funding, the 2025 TAF Award is shown within the chart. Outside of TAF, other city funds were not directed to any of the organizations within the human service category.

Good evening.

My name is Francesca Mays, and I'm from Ward 1, and I represent health and medical category. Health and medical. The four organizations that applied within the health and medical category provide an array of programs and services, including comprehensive healthcare visits at school-based healthcare centers, walking crisis resource centers, navigation and public benefits and integrated medical and mental health and mental health care to residents. The request cumulative amount of this category is 45,860. We recommend funding three of the applying organizations. The total amount recommended for health and medical category is 32,000. Is that right? Okay, thank you. To support health, care, visits, staffing, and security. we're going to shift gears and look at these three years of funding recommendations.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you, committee members, for going through each of those four categories. I know you all took a lot of time to look through those. So this slide just represents year-over-year funding in the different four categories. You can see the percentages have shifted slightly, but not significantly. And so just kind of showing the increase in funding slightly there and then the different categories. The next piece is just that there's been some identified process improvement opportunities, both by the committee, by staff, by the applicants to make things more streamlined in terms of what the application requires, what the evaluation process looks like. And so for 2027, you will see some recommendations coming forth to make this process more streamlined. In addition, some recommendations regarding percentages and funding categories based on what the committee and staff are seeing as outcomes coming from these. Again, review of the application process, the required documentation to apply, and then looking at opportunities to leverage other funding to put into the TAF process. In addition, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, starting a housing strategy and program assessment for the community connections group. So that will be coming forth to council during 2026. And some of that process will inform the TAF process as well. And in addition, Chris is going to pass around some flyers, but staff has worked to put together a Give Where You Live campaign that can really involve the community in providing funding to these projects. different agencies that provide much needed services in the community and deliver services beyond what a city can provide. And so this campaign, this is a draft flyer. So working on and exactly what the graphics and everything will look like. Communications has been helping with that. But you will start to see this at events this summer, as well as in our regular communications channels. We would love to have you all help share this out on social media and in your different networks. And so this would be an opportunity for the city to really as individuals or businesses, community members provide funding that we would be able to allocate through this process in the same way. and infuse into that process. So more to come, but that's a sneak peek for tonight. Thought that the QR code would work well for that. And it will be up on our website. And so- Or you move on real quick, Drew.

Yeah, just a quick question on the Good Neighbor Fund. Is that like a charitable write-off for people that donate?

I have to get back to you.

Is that finance? Yes, sir. That's what we're trying to create. That is deductible. Okay. Can you tell me more about the funding structure of that? If you can share that right now.

Let's get with finance and we'll get back to you. I know we had some preliminary conversations about setting it up so that people could give it as an actual donation and they would be able to receive that. And so We'll follow back up with you in exactly what the wording will be on the website when someone gives, you know, like when you normally donate to something, it gives you a little signature.

I think it's a great, great idea. I love the idea of a fund like that. But it would be really neat if it could be taxed as well.

Early phase. Go for it.

Yeah, we were hoping to debut it at Thornton Fest in a few weeks. And so we wanted to give council the first sneak preview of this before it shows up on the screen there or any yard signs or things like that. So the question for council tonight is, do you support the recommendations of the TAF committee and recommend moving the recommendations forward to a formal meeting?

Yes, I have a quick question.

Justin, hit his button first, then we'll come back to you.

Okay. First of all, I just want to thank you, the TAF committee, for all your hard work. This is one of my favorite updates that we have every year because we get to hear about all the results of all the hard work that you put in. I know you have to make very difficult decisions when it comes to who to fund this year. But the fact that the city of Thornton offers over $300,000 annually to our nonprofit community, I think is a very good sign, signal to all the members of our community that we are really thoughtful and caring about trying to help them in any way that we can. And that's all thanks to your work. I think it's great to have community input and not just rely entirely on the council. So thank you for all your work. I absolutely am going to agree with the recommendation. I think that the work that you did and the process is much more clear to me now as it was two years ago when I first started. And I appreciate the efforts to improve the process, Jessica. So thank you all for all the work that you've done, including our staff, our community boards along the way. I'm in agreement of this, and I just wanted to take a little time to thank you all for your work.

I'll second, Council Member Martinez. I love that you guys are here talking about it, briefing us. I do have some questions on allocation. versus our priorities and the biggest one being housing and homelessness. So we, this year we set it as a priority that this was kind of the most important thing to fund. And yet it's number two or three, number three in terms of actual funding. I know Catholic Charities requested 40K. And by the way, what is the max amount we can give to an organization?

So there is a max amount set, but our organizations did identify an amount they would like to receive and a minimum that they would be able to accept to continue the work.

Okay. So it's not 20,000. It used to be a number, but now that's not. Okay.

No, that was a grant for BTAC.

Okay. That was different. That's different. Perfect. 25,000. I know that almost home when they briefed us before requesting money, they mentioned that Catholic Charities is one of the organizations that they partner with. So with that being said, I'm wondering if there's a way that we can reallocate money to support Catholic Charities because because of that partnership with Almost Home. And so we know that they're serving our residents in some capacity. But also, the thing that I ask or I hear about the most in terms of immediate needs is usually rent assistance or mortgage assistance. So I feel like we need to put more money into that bucket so that people can actually get that support they need to fill that gap. So the fact that we're not fully funding them You know, I would say I'm not happy with that recommendation. I would like to see a change. And so I'm opening up to the council for that.

Just for clarification, specific to Catholic charities.

I would like to see the homeless. I would like housing homelessness, that priority to match the amount of funding that we're giving this cycle, because it is. It is something that we've expressed as a priority and it's usually the most important thing that we can do for people in terms of immediate assistance when they need help with rent, utility, mortgage. So by not funding that, we're hurting ourselves. We're hurting our residents who are looking for that right now.

And I completely understand the concerns you brought up and anticipated this question. And so I did prepare some data points, Catholic charities did request $40,000 this year. They received $18,000 last year, and they were only able to serve 42 Thornton residents. And when I looked at their budget, only, I want to say 74% of their budget went to operating expenses versus to directly to families. And so that was part of our discussion of whether we would fund Catholic Charities or not.

Can you repeat that?

What percentage? 74% of their operating expenses went towards personnel expenses, actually. So they provided us with their budgets. So this comes directly from them. And as professionals in the community who make direct referrals also, looking at the 42 residents served with the 18,000 that the City of Horton awarded them last year, just did not sit well with the team. And also looking at the different funding streams that Catholic Charities does have access to, we felt like not funding Catholic Charities would not impact the overall work that they provide to the community at large.

I mean, that's great, great information, but 42 residents in Thornton alone, a lot. So to say only 42, I don't know if I would agree with that. And I'm happy to hear from other council members, but it feels like a large number of residents that are being served. And again, going back to the priority for housing and homelessness, we're not hitting that mark. So I'd imagine there are 42 or 50 or 80, who knows what the number is. We'd probably get that from the hot team. Um, um, how many people might need that assistance, but I think we're missing a big opportunity to make a bigger impact. And have we done the same analysis with every organization regarding, um, personnel overhead that you can share in percentage that goes to people, which is a very normal thing to see in a company or a business that is interacting with people. You need people to do those jobs, just like we have in our hot team. The majority of what we pay our hot team is personnel, but they're doing good work. So again, I will say we need to look at readjusting that application to fund Catholic Charities so we can hit our priority in housing and homelessness for this cycle.

So I'm going to go to Chris, but real quick, just as a point of data, the applications that we receive for housing homelessness is also smaller than for the other categories. And so from a percentage of that, it may have been our priority, but it doesn't seem to match the priority of the community asking for the dollars. So just to keep that in mind.

That's a great point. I figured that would be a part of it because you can only give so much that's being asked for, right? I would say that if we determined and we were like, absolutely no, Catholic Tributaries, we will not do that, then I would say we should hold money and go find another organization that's serving homeless and housing here and set that aside so we can provide that to that organization, give them an opportunity to apply if they didn't already. So we only think creatively on it, but I don't think we're hitting the mark on housing and homelessness, and I just wanted to share that. But I do thank you for that information you provided.

So my question was going to be more about the scoring, which you definitely helped with touching base on. And I did share some of the same sentiment that I would have liked to see a little bit larger portion go to housing and homelessness, because it's something that we were very much approached about and talked about. But based on the information you shared for his questions, the 18,000 that we gave them last year only 4,680 actually made it to residence. When I divide that by 42, that comes out to $111 average. So I agree with you that their overhead is pretty high. Doing some quick research, the sweet spot for nonprofits is 20 to 25%. They're three times the cost of overhead. So some quick math and some quick research, I'm in line with you. So I'm not going to agree with Catholic Charities because something seems off there and $111 going to each resident, that's not significant enough, I think, to really help with housing situations given the cost of living in Colorado. If there were an opportunity, though, to what you're saying of earmarking the money maybe for another housing partner or allocating more, to the ones that did apply, perhaps that's a better breakdown, because I agree. I was going to ask about the rubric and the scoring, but I think you kind of went into that because I was going to see on housing, like how many households in Thornton were served, because I saw like Adams County not on there, but that's being spread across the whole county and not in Thornton. We want to prioritize Thornton residents first. So at this time, I would agree. with your recommendation, if other council members or others can weigh in on maybe how we can shift a little bit extra into housing, or maybe that's just supporting one of the other applicants a little bit more that has lower overhead, I would also be in support of that. But thank you for your presentation, your information, and preemptively knowing the questions that we're gonna ask. That's very sharp on your end.

Others. John?

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. Great job as always. But yeah, you know, and I'm more into the food category, obviously, with my past experience. But still, you know, I agree with both my colleagues, Drew and Chris, on this. You know, we do need to emphasize housing homelessness more. I agree, you know, with Chris's assessment. If there's a way, I mean, the overhead, that's a thing a lot of nonprofits do have that situation. I mean, it's not just me, Catholic charities, obviously, but still, if there's any way we can possibly, what Chris recommends, you know, so we can allocate like to the other ones, you know, whether it's Almost Home, whether it's Brothers Free Development, I'm definitely on board with that. Overall, I'm very happy with the presentation. I will say that. Otherwise, I fully support this, but still, I do agree with Drew and Chris that we should look into this further for the housing analysis. Thank you.

First, I wanted to say thank you for this. I think this is the strategy we need to look at moving forward is you know, considering other ways to fund TAF, because as we've seen has caused, you know, a lot of questions on council of like, how do we get more money into this, into this program to help more organizations, but kind of what's become clear to me looking at this is like, and hearing what you all are saying is that there's really not a ton of infrastructure in This area of the region that has programming to help homelessness right so like. How do you find things that aren't really existing or they do exist they're not existing in a way that is really putting a bigger dent into the problem um. And so that's like a bigger infrastructure issue, right? We can fund and fund and fund organizations, but if it's not, if the money's not going where it's needed, how is that really beneficial to anybody, right? I mean, and that's kind of like where I always get into the question of do we do mutual aid or we do charity, right? Because organizations, we've been in the news, the things that kind of happens with these organizations and money, and how things can be misused, right? And I'm not saying any of that's happening here, but that's kind of where people get like kind of leery in the infrastructure. This is kind of a play. But I agree that we need to put more money into it. But my question is, is like, where do we find the organizations to put more money into it if they don't, if the infrastructure's not there, or if it's there and it's not running on all cylinders the way it should be, how do we, do that and i think that's like a million dollar question right so i agree um but i would be okay with the way the funding is now given that i just don't know where else you all would put more money what other organizations unless we were to somehow do another call out and find some other magical organizations that could do more for this problem um but i don't think like Again, like my philosophy is not like taking money from other things and just giving it to one. I don't know that that's going to really fix any of our issues. It's more of like, how do you have an organization that's really strategic in solving the problem? And that's kind of where we're stuck in this conundrum in general in our country. So that's where I'm at.

Before I come back to you, Drew, I'm going to let others who haven't spoken yet to have an opportunity to speak. Dave or Cherish?

I agree with all the organizations that you guys picked. I'm glad that you guys did so much research into this. And I appreciate you guys coming forward and giving this to us. Dave?

I have my concerns, but I'm seeing Drew.

Back to you, Drew.

Yeah, a couple of questions. Let's see, can we get a breakdown of, for those 42 residents that Catholic Charities served last year, how they served them?

I suppose we can ask Catholic Charities.

It'd be great to see what that impact is. What has been submitted in terms of, you know, quarterly reports and things like that. And when you're asking, just to clarify your question, like how they were served, like, Rental assistance, food assistance, like what type of assistance? Okay.

And the other thing I would like to know, and maybe we can just be part of the discussion, is if we haven't yet done a breakdown of what percentage in a nonprofit goes to admin and overhead versus like actual services, we'd love to see that for each organization. Because We should maybe already have it, which would be great if you could share that. I think that would help because if we're making a big deal about the overhead percentage for Catholic charities, I'd love to see what the other organizations are comparing, how they compare. Because I know there's, I think there were a couple of organizations that we funded or that you're recommending funding. that their entire request was for operational support or like operational overhead. So I'm getting a little bit of a mixed signal on how we're judging, you know what I mean? And making recommendations. So I'd love to, if you could, provide that and make sure it's equitable and fair across the board. And so I understand a little bit more in council.

can get back to you was how it was evaluated this year. And then I think that was also in the criteria for additional evaluation. Usually you're looking at direct versus indirect costs. And yes, that 20% cap is what I'm used to seeing for, you know, these agencies when you're looking at individuals and families being served.

And that would help me make a decision on how to recommend or to go with the recommendation or to you know, make a recommendation for a change. So that's where I'm sitting with that. Those two questions, please.

Yes. Yeah, I can totally relate to Drew's concerns about trying to understand the process better. In fact, I recall last year, I asked for some of the exact same things that you just asked for, Drew, a better understanding of the scoring mechanisms and the breakdown of overhead and versus actual services. And I know I asked for all of that last year. Most of you were here. And when I asked for that, like to be in the packet for this presentation, but we didn't get that. So we're asking for it again. And I know we've got a new leadership here in charge of overseeing our community programming. So I guess it would be great to have that to help get a better landscape of what how we came to these decisions. I'm not really trying to question the decisions, it's more of understand. And so I can explain to the residents of Ward 1 and Thornton, because they're gonna come asking when we do make our final decision, why did you do the 30,000 to almost home? And why did you do this and that? And having that kind of process is really good backup for us. to say, okay, there's this whole process and it was actually very solid. And I know that's true. We just don't know the details. And we asked for it last year. Unfortunately, we didn't get it this year. So I'd like to get a follow-up on that and then make sure that we include that in subsequent years because it seems to be a recurring theme where we want to know because we all are accountable to our residents and we all have to answer these tough questions and it's just really difficult to do when there's a lot of moving pieces going on in the background that we're not aware of.

So to kind of bring us all back to the conversation, we do have consensus to move this forward for the vote next week. I also agree. I think the work that you guys do is really hard and very difficult. heartbreaking at times. And I really appreciate the amount of effort that you put in there. Please don't take the questions as a sensor to what you're doing. It is exactly that it is trying to understand so that we can defend and support in the way that matters. Um, I think you also heard for future housing, huge concern of the council. So if we can't get enough applications in, how can we manage that in the future? to be able to bring the right organizations in with the right metrics that go with that to support the residents of Thornton. And then so as you're working through the process for next year, I think we're really excited to see what that's going to look like, make it a little easier for everybody to understand. But there is consensus to move forward. So thank you very much. All right, federal legislative review.

We've been spending a lot of time on state legislative matters, and now we're going to pivot right and turn to the federal agenda. So Kevin Forkett is coming forward. We do have our federal lobbyist online as well. So Kevin's going to walk you through. I'm buying him some time. I'm going to walk you through the upcoming approach to our federal lobbying efforts.

Thank you, Tansy. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. As Tansy mentioned, I believe John Acini from our lobbying team is online. John, can you hear us okay?

I can hear you loud and clear. Can you hear me?

Yes, great. Thank you.

Super.

All right. So for this evening, as Nancy mentioned, we will provide with a federal DC lobbying trip coming up here just in a few weeks. I want to provide some background information on the plan for the meetings and then just go over some topics and hoping for some assignments of talking roles as we get into the meeting. By way of background, earlier this year, City Council adopted a federal legislative agenda that would provide both the lobbyists in D.C., staff and elected officials some direction. It is also a great foundation for our lobbying trip and for the meetings that we set. This year, we will be hosting meetings on Thursday, June 4th, and Friday, June 5th. The HBS is actually in the process of scheduling those meetings. As we've known in the past, that scheduling sometimes runs right up until that week. We're excited to get those on the agenda. In terms of preparation for the trip, staff is in the process of finalizing some briefing packets that will provide talking points, and we hope to get that sent out later this week. Additionally, starting next week after you've received the packets, of course, staff wants to make themselves available to meet with any council members if desired to go through any of those talking points or if there are any questions on any of the topics or any of the meetings. And finally, staff will also develop, we're in the process of developing some leave-behinds. So we have some collateral to leave with our federal delegation and with our federal agencies.

Technical question.

Oh, there we go. Oh. There we are. Okay. So just getting into the actual agenda itself, John will provide us a bit of an update here in just a few minutes, just on kind of the progress that they've made. But of course, on Thursday, we do plan to, we often meet with our congressional delegation. Typically, Congress goes out on Thursday night, so we do try to make that a priority if possible. So we will, of course, meet with our two senators or hope to meet with our two senators, Congressman Evans. And then we will also include some requests to our neighboring congressional districts as we work closely with them as well. We will also be scheduling committee meetings with a lot of the departments that are aligned with our federal legislative priorities, many that you've recognized and that we do each year. I will also mention now that we have a section on older adults, we will be also reaching out to the Department of Health and Human Services to make sure that that priority has been joined. In terms of actual logistics, on Thursday, we can expect a full day. So we will plan to pretty much go right in the morning all the way through the end of the day. Friday, we are asking to not have a meeting past one o'clock. So hopefully that last meeting will be at one o'clock and that will allow for travel. I believe many are getting in at different times on Wednesday. So there will be no formal programming on Wednesday. but we'll get started right nice and early on Thursday and it's usually a pretty long day. We are planning to try to have a dinner, a group dinner on Thursday night as well. John, can you just provide a quick update here on your progress so far?

Sure. Thanks, Kevin. Hello again, Mayor and members of the Council. Good to see you again. We have so far scheduled meetings with Senator Hickenlooper, Mr. Evans, Mr. Crowe's office. We've also put meetings on the schedule for DOT meetings. doj working through times with fema and epa still working on some of the other meetings including congresswoman peterson's office with hud and with hhs but so far we're making great progress so we're going to try to get as many of these meetings put on the schedule as the schedule will allow considering that we have about a day and a half um to conduct all these meetings. We may not be able to get all of these meetings on the schedule. We'll try to get them as best we can. In addition to the meetings that you see in front of you, we'll also be doing a pre-brief to go through some of the issues of the day and the top priority issues that you'll be discussing during the fly-in. Just as a casual overview without getting too in the weeds, we'll be talking about the surface transportation reauthorization bill, which was actually released on Sunday. The Transportation Infrastructure Committee in the House will be marking up that bill on Thursday. We'll also be talking about the congressionally directed spending requests that were submitted by Senators Heckenlooper and Bennett and also the earmark that was submitted by Congressman Evans yesterday. and then discussing PFAS-related issues with EPA. A lot of these issues have been very quickly moving over the past couple days, so apologies to Kevin for clogging his inbox with all these updates, but you all are arriving at a perfect time to discuss some of these priority issues. I know that there are some grant requests that we have put forth to the Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation, so we'll also be discussing that with our members of Congress. And of course, with the relevant agencies that will be receiving those grant requests. And then one final thing, the AFG and the SAFER grant NOFOs went out today. So we have, again, reached a perfect time to discuss those with FEMA. So I'll hand it back over to Kevin in case you guys have any questions. Happy to answer them.

Before we move on, Chris has a question.

Yeah, two things. One, understanding that there might be some time limitations. I wanted to just ask the rest of council, as far as the committees and agencies, if we wanted to take a moment and maybe prioritize some of them, just based off last year, EPA, I think we would all agree was a difficult or maybe less productive meeting. So if we were going to prioritize and we find ourselves with some time limitations, perhaps that's the one that we would collectively agree that we'd miss that one just based on last year's conversation. But I want to open it up to council and ask, you know, How do we if let's let's plan on time being an issue because it's very congested schedule. And with that in mind, would we have preference over some of these committee meetings?

And maybe it's less about the departments and more about the primary topics, which is the next slide. We're going to figure out who is going to own those topics for the conversation. We can prioritize based on topics, which then leads to the agencies.

Yeah.

Is that OK?

OK. And then the second thing for the delegation, I just kind of had this feeling that Congressman Joe Neguse might be somebody just because he's a neighbor directly to the west of us. And Brittany Pedersen, amazing woman, but she's southwest and kind of across the metro area to some degree. So given Thornton's locale and we're kind of the gateway between the metro area and northern Colorado, perhaps he might be somebody that we would fit a meeting in just because of proximity and locale to Thornton. Again, I want to open that up to council and see what your guys' thought are getting congressional representational meetings with those that are closer to Thornton.

Well, I know Pedersen was on the list because we used to meet with Ed Perlmutter when he was our representative and the Rocky Flats area was in his district, which is now in Brittany Pedersen's district. The goose has our water project in his district. And so there's opportunity there too, but it's all a matter of also time, right? So those are prioritizing topics. Maybe the topics that align with those leaders can determine which ones make the most sense. Because Rocky Flats doesn't exist. Like the commission doesn't exist anymore. The issue is still present and available, but maybe it's a lower priority now than our water project.

I agree with that.

Keep going. All right. That sets us up great. So as the mayor mentioned, we are looking for some assignments today for talking at the meetings. And so typically we do ask for both a primary and backup for each of these topics. I know John did provide a bit of a preview of some of the sub areas that we will prioritize. And so making sure that we... just cover those. But here we've listed some of the topic assignments related to the federal legislative agenda. So we'd open it up to council to see if there's any volunteers for any of these positions.

I would love local control. I think we have an opportunity with Bennett in particular to talk about this. And I think it's a great opportunity to remind all of them how important that is.

I usually do public safety and housing, but we have some new council members. I'll take one of those. If you want to do lead on HUD or housing, I'll be your backup. Those are things that naturally come to us.

Okay, so public safety, housing, and then backup for each other?

Yeah, I don't know if David's going or not.

No, I have Cherish, Chris, Drew, me, and Justin. I think that's correct. Go ahead, Justin.

Yeah, I think I would like to do transportation and older adults. So, I mean, that aligns with all the boards and stuff I'm on and I'm also happy to do sustainability.

I could be your backup for sustainability because we usually do that with water anyway. Okay. Okay. Cherish, is there one that you want? Older adult.

You could also be the primary if you want.

We decided in advance because we have all the talking points. What else is available? It looks like that would be it. Do you want older adults? I was going to take water, but if we don't meet with the EPA, it's less of a conversation unless we meet with the goose. Excellent. Okay. So just to make sure that we're on the same page, Kevin, I have Cherish has older adults with Justin as a backup. Chris has public safety with Drew as a backup. Drew has housing with Chris as a backup. I have local control and water and everybody will back me up on local control. And Justin and I will share water and sustainability, but with sustainability being Justin's primary and transportation is Justin's primary. And then I can back you up on transportation as well. So that's good.

Thank you. That's all we have for you. And if there's any logistical questions in the meantime, please do reach out.

So as you're looking at the agencies to what Chris's point was, obviously EPA was a bit of a challenge last year. Part of it is because they didn't have their offices set and their funding was cut. And so if there is something that we need to talk to around PFAS specifically related to our grants, I think it's still worth meeting with them, even if it's a shorter meeting. And then I think DOE was the one that was really a waste of our time.

DOE.

Janet Callahan- Or because they but they also moved everybody to online and then argued with me about what energy was The background. Janet Callahan- I mean, they were given our bios. They obviously didn't read them.

That's great.

Yeah, I had, it was the backup for older adults and Justin just got it. Thanks.

Is that all you needed? That's all I needed. Nice. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Housing choice.

Planning is coming forward. This is kind of a two-part update. We know that housing choice is a priority for the council, both from affordable housing and sustainable housing perspective. Presentation tonight is largely focused on year-term actions related to Prop 123.

we'll give broader uh broader check-in about other actions as as well and with that i'll give the floor to mike harris good evening mayor mayor tim council members mike here at plenty director uh with me on the team is josh olave with areas and associates zach knows with city planning and then ty robbins along with the city development um As you've been going through the courts in the last eight months, talking through housing choice with our consultant and with council and the community and the commission, of course, we're kind of going to, as we talked about last time, we had 12 significant strategies that we're going to be looking for from near term to midterm to late term. So the next couple of years and what we'll be bringing council for consideration next week are two of those strategies and the near term strategies for consideration for a resolution for fast tracking of affordable housing projects and the other ordinance that would adopt new regulations when it comes to our abilities to fast track them through the code amendments processes themselves. From that, I'm going to hand this over to Zach. He's going to go through the lion's share of these slides and we're all available for questions to be able to go on.

Thanks, Mike. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, Zach Noyes with Orange Planning. We're here to discuss two items required to establish an expedited review process for qualified affordable housing development. So this includes a fast track resolution, as well as a limited set of amendments to Article 2 of the City's Development Code. Additionally, we're going to provide a brief review of Prop 123 and an overview of the housing choice project recommendations overall and the timeline. So the timeline for the housing choice code, I'm actually gonna start back in 2024 when Thornton was allocated $160,000 made available by the state and proposition one, two, three, that kind of unlocked the funding needed to commence this project, which began in October of last year. In March, we presented staff's recommendations from the housing choice project to the planning commission and the city council planning session similar to this one. We've been working through April on the materials necessary to implement an expedited review process, which was our first near-term implementation step. This was presented to the Planning Commission on May 5th, a couple of weeks ago, who recommended approval of the items we're going to review today. And next week, we are on the agenda for a public hearing regarding tonight's presentation on an expedited review process. For the rest of 2026, we'll be working on drafting additional implementation items from the housing choice project. These are all recommendations for implementation in the near and midterm. And then next year, we'll explore the long-term recommendations from the housing choice. And before we get into those recommendations as a brief overview, we'll provide a review of Prop 123. The Colorado voters approved a grant fund in 2022. This is dedicated to funding land banking and local planning initiatives aimed at increasing the state's supply of affordable housing. In 2024, the city applied and was awarded a portion of this funding, $160,000. We matched it with an additional $40,000 matching fund for the local planning capacity grant. Since then, we've utilized this funding to upgrade our permitting software, which was actually completed last month. And then much of this grant is allocated to creating recommendations on increasing our supply of affordable and attainable housing. Ayers and Josh have assisted in reviewing our development code and internal procedures, as well as conducting community outreach in what we've been calling the Housing Choice Project for the past six months. The grant we received through Prop 123 has enabled much of the work we're presenting tonight and we'll discuss in a couple of slides additional funding opportunities through Prop 123 to support the ongoing implementation of this work. Before we move on, are there any questions on Prop 123? PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Thank you, then.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I was gonna wait till later because I think you talked about it, but yeah that's good time okay great can you remind me how much money as a city, we get through that.

Yeah, so we were allocated $160,000 from the state for the local planning capacity grant, an additional $40,000 commitment. We have a potential to unlock an additional $45,000 with some of the steps we're going to talk about tonight. And then as far as land banking funds.

You've applied twice for land banking. We have not received funding for land banking at this point. These are general. the funds we've received so far, Prop 123. But we continue to apply as new grant opportunities come before us.

Sure. And how much would a grant for land banking, what do those look like? You said two that you've applied for?

Correct. That was through our housing. Which was that? That number, I don't know exactly that number. We can get back to you on that.

What I'm getting at here is I'm trying to figure out with the time and investment that we're giving as a department and as you're looking at the building a team that focuses on that 100%. We're getting $120,000 a year, but putting in personnel that's 500 plus a year in terms of salaries or whatnot. I'm just looking at it like, is the investment of Prop 123 and what we potentially get from it or that. So that's where I'm coming from as I'm looking at this.

I might reframe that. Certainly there is funding available through Prop 123. Our work on affordable housing isn't driven necessarily by the availability of Prop 123. So the adopted strategic plan, the comprehensive planning are Our housing needs assessment all kind of prioritized the need for city efforts to try to incentivize and support affordable housing. So I would say that these grant programs sort of assist in that priority. The availability of those grants didn't create the priority, if that's helpful.

Yes, it is. And I would agree with that. I would say my impression has been that we've been moving down this direction to get things for Prop 123. So that's why my questions are coming out, because of the impression I'm getting from planning, based on the work we've done. But I also understand comprehensive planning-wise, yes, absolutely. We want to achieve some goals with the type of housing or variety of housing in the market. So that's my question for now.

Let's keep going. Thanks. Great question. Back to the recommendations we presented in March. This is a summary of them. Land banking would fall into the leveraging publicly owned land. It's the second from the bottom. It's a long-term policy consideration. But as you can see, there's many other aspects of the housing choice project. Not all of these involve utilizing Prop 123 funding. Just about all of them do involve staff time and working with our consultant to actually implement some of these code amendments and other policy considerations. So there's a lot that's coming out of this housing choice project that is outside of the sort of land banking initiative as well that we believe is gonna move the needle on both affordable housing and attainable housing in the city. I'll get into both of those in a second here.

And we have one more question before you move on. Yeah, of course. Justin.

Yeah, it was about the land banking. So we have applied for a grant a couple of times for land banking. Is that grant? Is that the grant that we applied for go to like studies and research on how land banking could work or actual implementation of land banking? Just could you explain a little bit more detail what the what it was we applied for? So

THE IDEA WAS NOT NECESSARILY PLANNING FOR LAND BANKING BUT ACTUALLY WIRED PROPERTIES FOR LAND BANKING OR GETTING THEM UP TO PROPERTIES ALONG THOSE LINES. SO THERE'S REALLY THAT STRATEGIC ASPECT IS ACTUALLY STARTING TO PUT THE MOTION IN PLACE SO THAT LAND CAN BE GIVEN TO OR SOLD AT A REASONABLE PRICE TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPER TO DEVELOP ACTUALLY LAND OR LOTS, WHATEVER THE CASE MAY BE ON THOSE CASES. BUT VERY COMPETITIVE FOR THOSE TYPE OF GRANTS. THOSE ARE MUCH MORE COMPETITIVE THAN THE PROPOSITION 121 FAST TRACKING THAT WE'RE DOING ON THIS PARTICULAR PROJECT. Here's Josh Harris. From your perspective, do you have any experience with other communities?

Yeah, with the land banking, it is the way the state's been distributing some of those funds has been very targeted and specific based on communities of highest need and some of those that, you know, based on how they have to allocate their budgets and funds. So we tend to see a lot more of it kind of outside of the Front Range specifically, especially Western Slope and some rural areas as well. but ultimately it is to help you acquire the land, set up that program, so then you can use that to leverage, as Mike said, with housing developers to help bring down those overall costs. I foresee that that program and those programs will continue to be around depending on overall state budget fluctuations, but that's something the state's committed to is continuing looking at those different strategies. So like some of the ones that we listed on the next slide that Zach showed, Like a lot of those strategies, there's different funds, different programs that help you work towards different ones based on your community and your context and what your needs and goals are. Thanks.

Thank you.

All right. HAB-Jacques Juilland- i've mentioned, these were these, this is a summary of the strategies and recommendations from the housing choice project that were presented in March. HAB-Jacques Juilland- The implementation of an expedited review process which is highlighted in red it's the first one up there is tonight's presentations main focus, as well as the subject of public hearing next week. HAB-Jacques Juilland- If you think back to Marshall remember that the recommendations we presented. Gareth J. address strategies for increasing the supply of both affordable and attainable housing projects where affordable housing is typically deed restricted and limited to a lower income threshold. Gareth J. and attainable housing is intended to serve around the median income in Thornton not typically deed restricted starter homes. While most of the recommendations shown address both attainable and affordable housing, the expedited review process right now is focused just on affordable housing as it's defined by Prop 123. On the next slide, we'll get into sort of the timing of the expedited review process, but I do want to speak briefly to some of the other items on this screen. So in coordination with theirs, we have begun drafting language for the recommended code amendments you see here for consideration next quarter. And additionally, we've started working on the scope for a housing strategy, which on this slide is titled Housing Policy Framework. So we are working on many other things. But tonight's presentation on the expedited review process is tied to a deadline to acquire additional funding, which is why you're seeing it as a standalone item next week with the resolution and ordinance.

Justin? Yeah, quick question. So I remember in March when you all came in here, we talked about a couple of things. One being the changes to fee structures, mainly TAP fees. Where does that fit in these Is that fit in any of these categories?

Yeah, fee structure and TAP fees is under affordable housing financial incentives. And we have already met with different agencies to start kicking the tires on that.

Okay, well, great. And then the other thing that we discussed and showed support for was research into revolving loan funds as a fund. As a strategy, is that included in any of this?

It's also a long-term strategy. That one is not as simple. We don't have as much experience.

But it is included in.

Yeah, it would be included in additionally financial incentives or publicly owned land, even though it's not cleanly fit in there. Those were the sort of, this is a breakdown of the topics we presented, but revolving loan funds would fit one of those too.

Perfect. Well, I just wanted to make sure, so I don't, I'm talking about something that's already on the list.

And specifically, we do have a next steps slide at the end of this presentation where we dive in specifically to a couple of these that we did have a bit of conversation on to development standards and small scale homes. And so we'll prioritize the next bulk of the presentation on the expedited review process. But we do have a slide to address the next steps at the end of this presentation. Great, thank you.

Chris? This is a request that I think might be helpful, at least for myself. Yeah. If not, I won't be offended. Instead of like the green, yellow, and orange circles with near, mid, and long-term, in other presentations we've seen, it's like a horizontal bar graph. It might be like June through October of this year, and it shows what items we're working on. I think that might help us get a better forecast of priorities. And then, you know, it's not definitive, but at least then, you know, to Justin's question, you know, affordable housing financials, we could see that's in the time range for fall of 2027, if it's out that far. Perhaps a slide like that maybe will give us better direction on expectations of when those projects or when you guys plan Yeah, that's just my request.

That's helpful. And for multiple reasons, I'm not going to tell you to kick rocks. But yeah, we'll change that for the next week.

Yeah, in the future. Then that way, I think we have a little bit more visual of like, all right, well, we don't have to ask all of next year. And maybe we follow up summer next year instead of asking for timelines now that may or may not be the

All right. Thank you.

So the main topic tonight. We're going to focus on the subject of next week's public hearing at the city council meeting, which is the expedited review process. To implement this process, we've prepared two items for your consideration. The first is a resolution affirming the city's intention to implement a review process in accordance with Prop 123. The second of which is an ordinance, amendments to Article 2 of the Development Code, which is Chapter 18 of the City Code. And this is to enable the adoption of the Fast Track program. The catalyst for bringing these items to you today is a deadline for acquiring additional Prop 123 funding approaching June 30th of this year. And so implementing these items prior to this date does enable us to receive an additional $45,000 to further our housing choice initiatives, the sort of the planning component of it. I'm not sure that this is eligible for the land banking component, but it is for the planning initiatives. And then before we move into each of those items, I do wanna clarify generally what we mean by an expedited review process. So this has a limited application, specifically a 90-day review window for site plan applications eligible for administrative approval, which currently is primarily the development plan application that the city development reviews. And I want to reiterate that annexations, zoning amendments, these would not be eligible for the 90-day review period due to the fact that these go to public hearing for the city council to vote on. This is specifically administrative items. And the development plan does not require a public hearing under the city's development code, which was approved in 2025 last year. But it does require a neighborhood meeting to be held and public notice to be issued. These items that we're seeing next week will not take away these important requirements. There will still be public notice required for qualified affordable housing projects. There will still be a neighborhood meeting. HAB-Jacques Juilland, So I just wanted to highlight that before we get into the specifics of the resolution versus the ordinance. HAB-Jacques Juilland, So the fast track resolution, this isn't the packet for next week's meeting it affirms the city's commitment to a fast track permitting process process for affordable housing um. So there are exceptions for special circumstances, but generally this commits staff to prioritizing review in 90 days. And this piece of the expedited review process deals specifically with staff review protocols, which these are rarely documented in the city's development code, which is why we're bringing this portion forward as a resolution. Um, this will help, uh, prioritize applications in the review timeline and communicate to applicants, um, uh, what our timelines are, um, as well as, uh, Adola who would be administrating the additional grant funding. That's a brief overview of the resolution, but that's just about all there is to it. And then moving on to the chapter 18 amendments, there are four sections of chapter 18 development code. They're all in article two, which deal with review procedures. And these are really to get sort of our review processes in alignment with our intention of a 90 day review process. So the first and the third bullet up here regarding application procedures and development plans. We are proposing the requirement of a pre-application meeting for a qualified affordable housing project using the fast track process. Just to be clear, like 95% of our projects, I would say, actually go through the pre-application process, but it's not a technical requirement. We're just documenting that if we're going to go through a 90-day review process for affordable housing projects, we do want to require that pre-application meeting beforehand so we can get all of our ducks in a row and be on the same page with an applicant team before they actually submit to us. making sure that we can get our reviews right out the door a little bit quicker. We offer pre-applications to everybody. This just makes it a firm requirement in the development code for these types of projects. The second bullet regarding public notification, neighborhood meetings currently are a requirement for development plans only at the discretion of the planning director. And additionally, they can't take place until after the first round of review by staff. But because of this expedited review timeline, we're proposing to make a neighborhood meeting a requirement on all fast track applications. And additionally, we're proposing to amend the requirement that the neighborhood meeting take place after the first round of staff reviews. and moving that up and allowing a neighborhood meeting to take place after submittal of an application. This is just because if our first round of review takes two, three, four weeks, we want the applicant to be able to meet the neighboring community during that timeframe, just to speed up the process. And then finally, our last bullet regarding preliminary plans. We're removing the requirement for a preliminary plan only for qualified affordable housing projects. Preliminary plans are intended to give a high level guidance to land uses, site access, and site orientation prior to a developer spending time planning out the details of a project. However, to accommodate the 90-day review process and speed up the process, we're proposing to eliminate with the amendments the requirement for a preliminary plan only for qualified affordable housing projects. Think of the preliminary plan as a very high-level site planning document. Sometimes multiple uses can be accommodated in it. But for these affordable housing projects, we're really focused on one residential use type and see less of a need for the preliminary plan. And so this just lowers the cost for developers and speeds up the process even further. And with that, that's an overview of the ordinance that you'll see on next Tuesday. So we can move into considerations. This includes directing staff to present the fast track resolution and chapter 18 amendments next week in city council. At the beginning of the month, the planning commission reviewed a very similar presentation to this and unanimously recommended approval of both of these items. Additionally, we could table this issue for another time, but this may jeopardize our eligibility for additional prop one, two, three funding opportunities.

So what kind of applications 18 apply to? For example, do they apply to applications for zoning changes or annexations and stuff like that, or is it limited to a smaller scope?

It's limited only to administrative site planning applications, which includes the development plan if we weren't exempting the preliminary plan it would apply to that but because these projects aren't going to need preliminary plan approval which is also an administrative review it's just going to be the development plan and occasionally we do have administrative review of special use permits in a specific overlay zone this would apply to that per the state guidelines on this but that doesn't actually include housing, to my knowledge. The SUP, the special use permit, is applicable to things like different industrial uses. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, of course. This will impact zoning and annexation. Just want to be very clear about that. Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks for the info. So far, a couple questions and maybe you can help me walk through a few here. How do market rate homes that are considered attainable fit into this process?

So that's a good question. And when we're looking at a 90-day review process, we're looking at a lot of commitment from staff, a lot of commitment late nights, so to speak, actually getting these projects through. And so right now, we're only focused on enabling this 90-day review procedures for affordable housing projects, which are defined by Prop 123 as rental or sorry homeownership opportunities for individuals making 120 of the area median income or rental opportunities for people making 60 of the area median income and so this application the expedited review process is specifically focused only on affordable housing projects um that said many of the other housing choice recommendations center on attainable housing as well

I think in the presentation, you mentioned affordable and attainable as the expedited process applying to that, but you're saying it's not in this case applying to that.

Maybe I may speak on my part. I meant to highlight that the expedited review process at this time, the way the language is written, is only applicable to affordable housing projects.

When do you anticipate that including market rate, attainable projects,

So the expert review process specifically. We hadn't discussed that at this time, but many of the other housing choice recommendations are focused specifically on increasing our supply of attainable housing things such as a small scale home. John Pimentel, typology and different development standard amendments would be focused on targeting the attainable housing stock, rather than simply the affordable housing stock.

Caroline Miller, A little stronger there, I think, if the if the Council wanted to set a goal to accomplish the review times. across the board that would take serious, pretty significant revision of our code requirements to simplify the code requirements or pretty significant additional staffing to be able to. So I think the reason we can accomplish that this for affordable housing projects is as I think Zach shared, they typically aren't as complicated in terms of other kinds of uses and regulations, and they are fewer in numbers. But if the Council wanted to set a goal, an aggressive goal like this, I think there'd be pretty serious either financial resourcing perspective HAB-Masyn Moyer- Consequences or or frankly pretty significant code simplification kinds of things right so just prop 123 include attainable housing in the metric.

So attainable housing is actually a definition that the city is using to frame these projects. The big distinction is around whether or not a housing type is deed restricted. So in the deed of sale, whether or not there's going to be somebody reviewing to ensure that income thresholds are met. Attainable housing is a bit more relaxed in those enforcement mechanisms, and it's targeting more of that 100% to 140% area median income as far as income requirements go, whereas affordable housing is looking at lower income thresholds than that.

Sure, so Prop 123 is specific to 60% AMI properties.

For rental projects. And then 120% on for sale projects.

But it doesn't require that they're, but it does require that they're de-restricted for Prop 123. So even though there are projects and developments, like I think you mentioned, Mike, that there were some market rate that kind of fit the criteria and it was counted in, or ability to be qualified for Prop. 1, 2, 3 right now, like a couple of meetings ago. Those are market rate products, not income restricted. but you mentioned that they fit into the guidelines and helped us count as meeting the criteria for Prop 123. So did that change?

So yeah, we're going back even further in time when we opted into some of the programs, which was one of them was our commitment to deliver affordable housing, affordable housing types, which is rentals and new constructed houses. As we're exploring, we haven't, Stepping back, we haven't had that much way of new construction of apartments, certainly for affordable attainable apartments, and we have not had what we thought was our price points for housing for sale. The state clarified that the city of Thornton's affordable housing exceeded $600,000 for a purchased house. uh so that put a lot of our homes that are under construction actually under that umbrella but it didn't have to it was a different equation it didn't have those didn't have to be deed restricted for that account so it's a little bit different numbering how the system how the cities states counting are the projects and the products are being delivered so how many products that are actually what they consider affordable are or are not de-restricted. But in this case, they have to be de-restricted. That's the difference on this particular grant application versus our opting into the state programs for assistance, shall we say, when it comes to grant, future grants for different types of projects. They're really gearing for affordable housing projects.

Okay. Um, during the, the housing choice, uh, meetings that I went to and saw you guys a couple of times and you had a really cool poster board and you had the types of houses that people put little markers on in the show, like what they like the most. Um, do you, can you tell us about like what people work is what they like the most?

Yeah.

A little bit. There were the top three were, um, cottage housing and, and actually, uh,

Scott Luxenberg- Factory built homes is how we've reframed it so prefabricated modular homes. Yeah.

And then accessory dwelling units and small scale homes, which is kind of an umbrella for all three of those Scott Luxenberg- As far as like this process goes over trying to improve with affordable housing. We have community interests that says we want this, and we have a process that's going to create more of a certain type of product, I think, in the short term. Apartments. The process, in my opinion, is geared towards creating more apartment complexes. But maybe I'm wrong. Or are there product houses, ADUs, smaller footprint properties that are in the pipeline right now that would be considered affordable housing that are being done by affordable housing developers that fit this metric? Because again, I'm looking at it, what are people are asking for and what are people not wanting? and what our processes are designing and creating more of. And so that's my fear.

Can you reframe that question? Because are you speaking specifically to this ordinance and resolution or the broader housing choice?

Well, it will start with this. Okay.

this process which is geared towards affordable housing right but when we were talking about housing choice and what people are looking for and affordable things that people can actually say i just want to make sure the question is really clear when you say this process again the housing choice plan and study is a single process it's happening in phases so when you say this process you mean this this specific resolution and ordinance that is coming immediately.

Because this is related specifically to the Prop 123 requirements. I think you're talking long-term strategy related to housing, which are two separate.

They're all two separate parts of the project.

Who is in process right now that would immediately benefit from this change?

This particular change, nobody's ready.

We're going to have a 90-day timeline. These guys have applications. Let's bump them into our priority list, and let's do it.

We do have people in our pre-application process that could potentially go down this path.

Can you tell us about those?

I mean, it doesn't have to be all of them.

They can't because they haven't been determined if it's an actual project or if it's a public hearing project, so they can't go into the details of the specifics. How about type of housing?

We do have interest from affordable housing developers. They've been inquiring over the past few months. Yeah, no specific location, but there's interest. But I don't think we have any active affordable housing projects at the moment.

And I don't mean to cut you off, Drew, but we're looking at this today is just related to Prop 123. So a requirement of Prop 123 is to have this resolution. and to look at these updates to Chapter 18 to do a fast track just for Prop 123 funding. What you're looking at, I think, is a strategic look at housing in general, which is a future conversation related to the choice housing discussion.

Well, I mean, it could be both. I mean, if we, what I'm saying is like what's on the table here is that we don't have to create a fast track process for Prop 123. We can create a fast track process for the type of units that people have indicated that they want to see.

Yes, it could be both. But this step has to happen now to meet the deadline of the state requirement, where what you're talking about takes more time and effort, which is part of the plan, the strategic plan related to housing. So it's a both and conversation. We have to do this in order to get that funding. We also want to do that as part of our strategic plan.

Do you agree with that? I appreciate it. And that goes back to my original question. It's a lot of effort for how much money are we talking about? So again, it goes back to my original question. I will need Prop 123 to do all these things when we could be doing all these things for our own market rate attainable projects in our city that create the things that we want to see. We can have this 90 day fast track process that invites these developers now to create those things. But I get where we're going, and I think you were going to say something, Zach.

Yeah, well, and I guess I have a couple of points that I'll respond to. So the expedited review process is agnostic to use type. So we're looking at the affordability of the residential unit, whether that's a cottage home or an apartment unit. The procedures are ambivalent to that. And in addition to that, We are looking specifically at the review procedures that staff are utilizing and our prioritization internally. These products are either allowed or disallowed in different zoning districts in the city already today. So we're not looking at the zones or where certain product types are allowed with these applications. these items next week, we're simply looking at is staff going to prioritize reviewing these faster for the benefit of the applicant. But these units ostensibly would, we also have the ability to reject an application in that 90 day review period as well, if it doesn't meet the criteria of the code. So we're not changing any of the criteria for approval. or just changing the procedures that staff are using to shorten the review timeline, that's it at this point.

And to be clear here on considerations number two, take no further action, would be forgoing the Prop 123 benefits of doing, of prioritizing this action. So that is the option two here on the slide.

I don't want to lose what you're saying, Drew, and Roberta's pressed her button, so I know she wants to talk as well, but This is like an initial step, which does not preclude doing 90 days for everything else. This just has a timeframe associated with it that we have to meet in order to get potential funding from the state. We can also update it and address it as we learn more through the rest of the process to look at the strategy on housing overall.

Okay, then I would like us to see, or I would like to set a target date for that fast track process applying to market rate attainable, not income restricted. I think because it is, because frankly, it's like we don't, the amount of work that you're putting in to just manage the affordable housing side will be, as Kansi mentioned, like it's a ton of work. And so we'll never get to the attainable side to fast track.

Yeah, I want to really be clear about expectations here on 90 day fast tracking. If the council wants to expand categories that are eligible for 90-day fast tracking, we will need to come back with you on an evaluation of what that would look like to target. I can say with no hesitation, we do not have the staffing necessary to manage all administrative permits within 90 days. And so if the Again, there are other strategies that we have identified to encourage attainable housing. Fast tracking really wasn't one of those strategies for, this is a mix of different strategies for different purposes. I think it would be better for us to come back in a future setting to talk about if you want to expand the goals around fast tracking, what that would look like if you wanted to do that universally, what that would mean for staffing. and would be significant, or if there are other targeted areas you want to address. And I will just remind you there is a next step to remind you what are the other housing choice things that are meant to address attainable, to encourage cottage housing, to encourage small lots. Again, all of that is included in the housing choice plan that you got previously and will be addressed in the next steps.

So your points are taken and noted as a future discussion, but should not prevent us from moving forward with this request at the same time.

Yeah, you clear up some things, thank you.

Roberta?

I'll just go with number one, direct staff to bring forward a fast track resolution.

I'll just ask the general question, is there objection to option one?

No.

Okay, so the consensus is option one, so let's talk about next steps.

Yeah. So next week we will have a public hearing on adopting the fast track resolution and chapter 18 amendments. And then Josh will go over some of our amendments that we're working on regarding small scale residential housing and design standards. And then we can talk very briefly about our housing strategy. Sure.

You're doing so great. Just keep rolling. Yeah, we're currently working with staff. We've looked at the code, as you all saw before when we were here two months ago. We identified some potential areas to look into to understand what could those adjustments look like. And Per your direction and what we said we do, we'll bring that back so you can understand, like, what are those different levers that you can pull and adjust to create opportunities? Again, the goal here isn't to make things more restrictive or just open the floodgates. It's to make that box a little bit bigger for the creativity of the builders, developers. And it goes to a lot of the conversations we had over the last six months with the builders. the home builders associations with various developers and builders that are outside of this region and not building in Thornton as well, which gets a little bit to kind of the point you were bringing up a little bit earlier about how does the process fit for what types of product types? just because we don't tend to see a lot of these other product types maybe in some of the front range communities or down in the metro area, but they're being built in some other areas. So that helps to create some of those opportunities by adjusting a standard here or there that opens that door for those opportunities. So we will be bringing all that forward with kind of identification of where, what that could look like, and what are maybe AB options for council to kind of consider and provide guidance back to staff. And as it says on the slide, things such as setbacks, what does that lot coverage look like? Because as we get into smaller lots, smaller homes, that tends to not fit with traditional zoning requirements, but Honestly, a lot of the work that you all did and staff did last year and the years before with your code update already started moving the needle quite a bit. It was actually really hard to kind of go through and try and find things in your code that we could adjust because there's a lot that was done already that really helps a lot. And what was great through the overall process, just kind of recapping some of the things is that when we were out talking to the builders and the developers and those outside the region and the residents, we were able to also showcase a lot of this work that has already been done because not everyone sits and reads code every day and sees what happens in code. So we were able to say, It's already allowing some of these things if, you know, you come into town. So that was pretty exciting to kind of hear some of those conversations and some of the feedback received. So those will be some of our next steps. So what we'll be doing is working with staff probably over the next month and a half to kind of flesh that out. And then we'll be looking at whatever that date is probably next. later summer, I'm assuming, just based on everyone's calendars in summer to come back before you all get your feedback and then be able to turn that around for some set recommendations, ordinances for you to consider.

Thank you. And I think strategy looking at drafting a scope for the overall strategy document. And this includes pulling in the kind of different initiatives and the comprehensive plan, the housing needs assessment, which is being updated this year, I believe, the strategic plan, which was approved last year, and then work programs under Community Connections over in Park District and Community Services. That's it. That's an overview of our next steps.

So much more discussion to come is basically the underlining point of that. Yeah. Excited. Drew's going to prep his questions in advance. Any other questions? Thank you all very much. Very much appreciate it. This is also Drew's favorite topic. Can we take a five-minute break real quick before we move on to e-bikes?

Yes. We might be able to.

All right, you ready?

You guys?

Yeah, so this is kind of a long awaited. I think several council members have made requests related to this council member algae at one point. That's number more. So maybe that several folks in terms of public comment. So we're going to address some recommended changes to code and next steps to try to address challenges that the community and Council has been experiencing with. the motor, like the electronic motorized motorcycles, and then to differentiate that from positive appreciated activity on e-bikes. So with that, I'll hand it to Brett Henry to kick us off.

So good evening, Mayor of Airport Tim, Council, Brett Henry, Assistant City Manager. With me up here is Kent Norman, City's Transportation Engineer, Kylin McTagg, Public Information Officer, and then Deputy Police Chief Paul Hawkins. So yeah, I think councils receive feedback during council meetings, one-on-one contacts. We received them at our community meetings. Staffs received them coming from various departments. But really, we're trying to look at changing our code to really balance the residents' concerns as far as there's a desire to increase mobility on our trail systems by having public, uh, pedal assist bikes, but also as everybody also pictures, uh, to try to clamp down on some of the other higher powered two wheeled vehicles that are out there that cause damage to our parks and open space are dangerous because of their speeds on our trails and sidewalks and such. And so On top of all that, we also realized that we had conflicting code language that we had to try to address as well. And so multiple departments, obviously, police was already pretty proactive in trying to get some public communications out on our code, but city development, infrastructure, parks and recreation, communications, probably leaving out others. City clerk probably was somehow involved. I don't know, being here tonight, but... But basically worked pretty quickly knowing that we're coming into the summer months here. Obviously, bicycling is increasing and we want to make sure that we can at least clear up our code language and continue to work on our public messaging. So we work through that and we have the code language proposed here tonight that is in on the agenda for next week if everything sounds good to you. The last thing I want to mention, and we're going to address it somewhat towards the end, we realize we can make all the code changes we want, but the critical part of this is still going to be the public messaging and the information that gets out there. And so we'll touch on it here at the end, and certainly we can answer additional questions on that component as well. So with that, I'll turn it over to Kent.

Thanks, Brett. Kent Moorman. As Brett said, we've had concerns raised from residents and council and even our own staff about conflicts of these e-bikes and the motorized vehicles that are using our trails and using paths. And some of them are deciding to go across their playing fields in their motorized bikes and motorized motorcycles, etc. I live by a park and witnessed that myself. We also have concerns about the e-bike regulations are restricting the movement of our active adult group because they do use these e-bikes to get around. And then finally, when we went in and looked to see why there was some confusion, we realized that We had a few, as Brett said, a couple of sections of the code that were conflicting with each other. We adopted the Colorado Municipal Code that said, yes, we want to have it, and Colorado Model Traffic Code, that is. And then another section, we said, yeah, you can ride your e-bikes, but you can't have the motors on on trails. So we hope to address that tonight also. Just examples of e-bikes and what we're talking about. All of these are e-bikes. By the model traffic code that we've adopted, we have class one and class two that are allowed on our trails. Class three is one that goes a lot faster. You have to be 16 years old or older to use it. And some of these are getting faster than 28 miles per hour now. On the other two, the motor actually ceases to exist on Class 1 and Class 2 at 20 miles an hour. It cuts out. So these are just some examples. You'll also notice that there's a three-wheeler there also, and our code also allows that right now. So to address some of the damage and everything, as the group... talked about what are some of the issues and what we can do. We thought that the best thing would be to amend Section 38.523 additions and modifications to the model traffic code that we adopted in 38.521. And highlighted in yellow there are the additions for really careless driving. And it's more than just, it's really to help enforce behavior, if you will. pedestrian traffic. We added pedestrian traffic, users of trails and bike pedestrian paths, unpaved surfaces not designated for wheeled traffic. In other words, if they're running across that all field, we really want to be able to have some enforcement. So we call it careless driving. Per the other provisions that we have, assisted riding a bike or assisted bicycle, if you get a careless driving, you don't get points on a driver's license if you have it. And that's per state code. So that's change number one that we see to address some of the issues. Change two is to remove a section that prohibits the use of the electric motor on an e-bike using a bike or pedestrian path, and we change it to an electrical assisted bicycle that has operable pedals, not just looky-look pedals, which some motorcycles and e-bikes have, is approved for use on a bike or path, and we limit the operating at or under 20 miles per hour. And it's also subject to permissible uses of power-driven mobility devices by individuals with mobility disabilities that's found in another part of our Code 4644. This change brings it into compliance with Section 3521 that I talked about earlier, our adoption of the Colorado Model Traffic Code for Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes. It also allows flexibility for those that do have disabilities and other mobility devices as we move forward, again, trying to address both. As we made all of these arranged suggested ordinance changes, we also check back to 4644 of our code because we have a several prohibited uses in there in our parks area. That's such a covered parks. We made sure that we were not conflicting with that and that we're confident. We're adding another. proposed ordinance change to Section 3841, adding a C, if you will, another paragraph, that an electric assisted bicycle that does not have operable patterns may not be within this bike path or pedestrian path, except an e-balance bike for children six years to age or younger. I learned something as we went through this. I thought I knew most of the things on e-bikes and found out there's an e-balance bike And the reason we chose six years of age or younger is that's the smaller one, less powered one. When they start to get seven or eight years old, they're stretching up and they're now want a larger bike. The motorcycle shown on the left up there doesn't have pedals, it's prohibited. And that's what we're hoping to do with this change on the ordinance. We're also looking at Section 38645, the operation of motor vehicles and recreational vehicles generally as follows. And we wanted to add a Section D to our code that it's unlawful for any person to operate a motor vehicle, bicycle, scooter, motorbike, or other motorized mobile device that has a combustion powered engine on a trail, bike, or pedestrian path. or sidewalk except for on duty police officers and authorized personnel. And again, this gets back to, and I'm sure several of you seen it, the person that now has a gas scooter going up and down our trail. And so this is what that tries to accomplish. So with that, I'll turn it over to Kaylin because she can probably can address this one better. But we believe with all these ordinance changes, we do need to message it to the public. And so Kaylin, our police department can talk to the slide a little more.

Thank you. Yes. So this can obviously be confusing and differs across many different municipalities. So we really want to try to simplify it to the best of our ability. We have done some messaging with the ordinance as it stands already and have that available on our website and through some materials that we've shared across different departments. However, we knew that some changes might be coming. So our current ordinance as it stands hasn't been messaged very widely across social media and all of our platforms. up until now. So if this were to go into effect, we would definitely look at all of our ways to reach people and really promote safe and responsible behavior in all shared spaces. Ultimately, it's that behavior change that we're looking to see. Obviously, careless, reckless, or unlawful operation of any wheeled device is subject to enforcement and citation. Our city attorney's office has been really helpful and we want to really emphasize that that can be up to $2,650 and parents and guardians can be held responsible. So these are some of our key messaging points that we really want to emphasize with our community members and breaking down everything that Kent said, simplifying it to the best of our ability with basically saying, E-bikes with operable pedals are permitted on designated bike and pedestrian paths and trails at speeds up to 20. Obviously no riding any wheeled vehicles of any type in our prohibited areas, like concrete areas in front of rec centers and things like that. And then the following are prohibited. So breaking that down into a few bullet points, speeds over 20 miles per hour always are gonna be prohibited on bike and pedestrian paths, trails and sidewalks. And then those non-pedal electric bicycles, motorized devices. We obviously also have seen electric motorcycles, regular gas-powered motorcycles that are being driven by younger members of our community in unsafe ways. So it's really that behavior focus that's going to be the core of our public messaging and trying to break down the rules of this ordinance as simply as possible. And we would obviously do that through all of our channels, social media, video, making some graphics readily available. Right now we have the table that kind of breaks down what is allowed and where. So we would modify that and make sure that it's available to you all to really try to help educate our community members as best as possible. And of course, any materials that you need or might see useful to you, we'd be happy to help create those as well, so.

So really like to have our discussion and next steps. Staff is recommending amending Chapter 38 of the City Code to eliminate the conflicting code language that we have, clarify legal multimodal options for residents, restrict unsafe equipment that could cause harm to others, and add some additional definitions to careless driving. Our next steps is we do have the schedule for next week at council for consideration of adoption. We would then also start an educational campaign and coordinated through Kylan here. And then staff will continue to evaluate changes because this equipment is changing. If you recall, it used to look like a bicycle with a little electric motor on it. Now some of these look like motorcycles almost. And the wheel sizes have changed. The tires have changed. The ridership, people riding them, the ages have changed. And so we would continue to evaluate changes in equipment. And if there were any unintended consequences to people with adaptive needs might also from this ordinance change.

All right, questions. Justin. Yeah, how many violations have we had in the past that hold ordinance?

So it's difficult to put them all into one bucket because depending on what the vehicle was or what the behavior was, they were cited for different things. They weren't specifically cited necessarily for E-vehicles because the ordinance wasn't as clean as it needed to be. So we looked at it as... Most of the time it was for the behavior. We wrote them for the damaging property or for careless or reckless driving because it's much easier for me to categorize that than it is for me to try to figure out whether it's a class 1, 2, 3, 7 bicycle kind of a thing. So that's what we were working on. But it's been difficult to actually do. We're hoping that this cleans it up a lot for us to be able to go out and do that enforcement on a regular basis and then be able to get you some solid numbers.

Okay, has there been deliberate initiatives on enforcing Bad behavior on the trails?

Yes. We have our e-motorcycles that we take out. We have our razors that we have on the trails. Obviously, with the summer months coming up, we'll have the SROs with our bicycle patrols that are out during that time of the year. And obviously, during the summertime is the heavy time during the use. In the wintertime, it's less because the weather just being what it is this year was kind of an anomaly. But we do get out there and try to do that on a regular basis.

Okay.

Thanks.

Drew, did you press your button? I did. Okay. So I have Drew, then John, then Chris.

I want to say first, like, thanks to staff and police for responding so quickly to, you know, proposing these changes. Because I know it's kind of been building. And I think actually it kind of started when police published, like, here's our rules around e-bikes and bicycle use on pedestrian trails. And then it just became like this kind of melee of responses from the community of like, whoa, wait, I can't write my pebble assist on a trail. Like what? You know, so I just started that. And so it's been great to see how quickly you guys responded and created something that I think it answers those questions. So now it makes active adults not criminals on our trails, which is great. That's a big win. But it also creates some teeth for the police to enforce some things. But my question really, so I'll say I'm in agreement with those recommendations. That's great. Love it. And I look forward to seeing it change. But then when it comes to signage and enforcement, and really tied to the education piece, Is there a plan to do something like a, you know, when you have like your kind of summer DUI push where it's like, we're going to kind of do this big push over reach kind of thing where we're going to be like everywhere for like a short amount of time, just to kind of remind people of what the rules are and, you know, and educate in that process. Is there anything like that planned?

We do have some different ideas. I'm not going to throw them out there right now, but we do have some saturation kind of messaging or operations that we're going to try to do. A lot of it also revolves around where we're seeing the issues. So we're working with parks specifically because they're the ones that are bringing a lot of information to us. It will go out and saturate heavier in the areas where we're seeing the majority of the problems. Doesn't mean we won't be in other places, but that's where we'll start.

Okay, great. Yeah, well, thanks again and appreciate the recommendations. John?

Thank you, ma'am. Great presentation, as always, and great work on short notice as well. Thank you. You know, this kind of, for me, came up like, you know, in my park, Grand Place Park, there's been kids, you know, riding there, doing their thing, right? At least they're wearing helmets. So I will give credit for that. At least they're keeping safe on that. And they're also being told to ride on sidewalks because it's safer than being on the street and getting run over by a car. But anyhow, I talked to my wife about it. And then during our – Devin, Drew, and I's orientation sessions, one of the topics was that. And it started jogging my mind saying, hey, we need to do something because it's kind of – seeing the origins as they were it's like uh there's kind of some gray area here right so i kind of got a little gung-ho about it so you know in the end of march um roberta and i had a war ii meeting at carpenter and I was inadvertently rubbing some people the wrong way, some of our neighbors, because they felt I just wanted to crack the whip. I just punished people to do it because it did sound like I was doing that. So, you know, I had to backtrack, you know, fairly quickly on that. And it was really a good learning process for me because then I started having some serious conversations about e-bikes with the folks there. Then also with Drew finding out Drew rides an e-bike. My good friend on the active adult board, Dale Scholes, we've had really interesting conversations. excellent conversations about that. And it was a learning process for me. And that's what, no, that's what we need to do. We need to like educate and I mean, punish those that need punished, but we're not, we don't want to punish for the sake of it, you know, and, you know, especially the active adults, you know, cherish and I are in that group and, you know, that's a name of the method of transportation for them, not just in Thornton, but, you know, probably throughout the country. So we definitely do not want to criminalize or, you know, put folks down that are actually have to use e-bikes to safely transport to go from one place to another so this has been a great learning experience for me and i'm very grateful once again to my colleagues to our neighbors and to you as staff um so i will be definitely supporting this and voting on this next week so once again um kudos and i thank you all right chris

Um, yeah, likewise, appreciate you guys. This has been probably nearly a dozen emails in just the last week and a half or so long on it. So it is become a very high discussion, um, topic. My question is community based. And I was asked to ask this, um, a lot of the issues. channel or someone that... individual offenders is it something in the my thought now like we do with the shopping carts or something that we could is there they they do it's the same individuals that rip through the parks and they do it at least weekly and that's where all of us of this age uh you know they want to complain to someone they don't want to like call the police department is there a method or a way that you could maybe recommend or implement to where like all right we've got an individual offender we'll report it and it brings attention to that because no one really also wants to, you know, get a kid in trouble, but we don't know how to steer the behavior any other way. And they just don't care because they're young. I relate to that too. So what would be your suggestion on how to someone, how to get people to try and engage with you for some enforcement? What would you prefer the community see? And that's what I'm going to tell them.

I would always recommend calling dispatch. It does a couple of things and it's not that it's an emergency or anything like that, but it allows us to track the calls and have some history and we can kind of develop some patterns from that. Without that, if they come in through some of these other methods, it's a little more difficult for us to develop patterns and track and be able to go out and do proactive enforcement for some of this stuff versus if I see a lot of calls coming in for a particular area We're able to kind of heat map that and then prioritize that. So they call it a non-emergency number. Yep, non-emergency number and come in through that way. It doesn't mean they can't come in through the other methods, but that's always going to be the easiest for me because it allows me to develop some patterns and some tracking and some history to be able to say we responded to.

I'll help me address their need. Thank you. I think we can add that to the presentation next week. And correct me if I'm wrong, because I did Google search it real quick. But in case if somebody was listening, it's 720-977-5150 for the number. Yes.

We also have a traffic form on our website to submit a traffic concern. So that is another avenue that they would be able to use that comes directly to us and goes through our traffic team as well. Do you think that's a good option?

It's not a bad idea. It's just that sometimes those are a little delayed. So if something is happening at the moment, dispatch is always the fastest to get our attention.

Yeah. And I would say if it's a repeated pattern, same times and areas that are being noticed, then the form is maybe a good option to give us a heads up, like, hey, we're seeing it at this time on these days pretty often, because then we can plan around that.

Yeah, I think during the school year, that would be really good, because we know it's at our school, and we can almost clock the hour within school release that they're out there. Summer, I'm sure it happens all day.

We'll make sure these points of contact get included in the communication plan.

OK, thank you. Justin, yeah, those are great ideas. I mean, I normally just give out crisis. One last thing I had a, I just had an idea as a. Dr car representative, I'm always thinking about the way to go program and bike to work day. I think. If we can get this changes in in in time, this would be a great opportunity to. Distribute them to people who use the trails. I know we'll have some stations set up in Thornton, so maybe we can get some info out to the Bike to Work computers on Bike to Work Day next month.

I'm not hearing any negatives, so we're all good with the recommendation. So it'll be on the agenda next week. Thank you very much for the very quick turnaround. I know we kind of got inundated with emails there for a short period of time, so appreciate your response to that. All right, 84 committee reports. And the back committee didn't meet, so.

right any discussion items actually kind of like the previous one as well so uh tomorrow uh morning is our quarterly ams county airport coronet committee meeting um which i will be of course attending um i think the main thing that we're going to be talking about tomorrow we're going to be going over the ams county acc work plan about the aerotropolis the strategy and implementation framework so um next planning session two weeks i'll report back Council and to my neighbors what we discussed at the meeting and we are now starting to get revenue from Aerotropolis, all the respective communities. Thornton gets 5% of the pie. So it is my commitment to ensure that we continue to get that and that we stay on that board. It's very important for our city and for the region and of course obviously for revenue stream for us. So very supportive of the work ACC does and I'm looking forward to tomorrow's meeting and I will report back in two weeks. Thank you.

Sure. Just a couple quick items. I guess to follow up to the e-bike conversation, I've had a couple questions from residents where they asked if it was possible to explore like a bike park that e-bikes can be used at where kids can go out to and use their e-bike in a positive way. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Yes, I've been explored before or we. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Do we have the capability to explore that if it hasn't been explored so that's my question for the group.

HAB-Juliette Boone, So that would be a massive budget item that would have to be discussing the overall strategy. HAB-Juliette Boone, I think a better question might be of whether we could use the skate parks also that may be not the right venue, but it might be an opportunity to have a day of a month dedicated to he bikes there. But then that's not changing programming, that's not changing capital budget, that just gives an opportunity for usage.

Yeah, I'm open to all... all options to explore, but I guess my ask is, can we explore something and figure out what those options are? And it's not for like, maybe we want to install it this year, but, you know, something to add to or a mix of work and right options. And, you know, it comes back and it's, you know, it's $10 million over footed and bad idea. Well, then at least we know that, but maybe we'll learn something that can be helpful. And again, it's, a positive outlet, a place that kids with the motorized bikes can go that gives them a place to ride.

Is that something the council would be interested in? I'm thinking high level. And that would be talk more on strategy, strategic plan, and where that could fit in a future budget. Not necessarily a detailed estimate of where it could go. That's great. Is that okay with council? Is that doable by staff?

Yeah, I think we can certainly look to see if there are existing facilities that could accommodate that kind of use or already accommodate that kind of use. Generally give a scale of magnitude of time, effort, money for future consideration.

I actually have a question for you, Drew. When you say e-bike park, what do you have in your mind?

I mean, really, I'm thinking of like a dirt track where there's kind of like a skate park where you have, you know, jumps and different things, but it's not concrete. It's dirt. And it's in a field that could be called a park.

It's usually a cycle track. Yeah.

But it is obviously we wouldn't want to use combustible engine dirt bikes out there. It's truly like an e-bike specific.

Yeah. There's like a. What comes to mind is this place I've seen in Barbado or Broomfield, one of those two. It's like a bike track for mountain bikers. That's a great example.

If you're thinking of the one, and maybe you know where McKay Lake is. There was actually a dirt bike kind of pedestrian cyclist place right there. That's a great example. So that could be a model, we could call it, and it's just situated next to a bigger park and kind of like the McKay Lake reservoir.

We can certainly look if pump track or cycle track is in the Parks and Open Space plan. I'm not, it may be something that was already identified in that plan, but we could certainly come back with a high level assessment.

Cool.

Thank you. Next question. Chris said he sent out the farmer's market email. That was really informative and cool to see. One thing that came to mind when I read that and I looked at the list of vendors, a couple of things. I don't know if you guys have looked at that yet, but a great list of vendors, but I don't know if any of them are important. based. So that was one question. And that's not my, I guess that's not my question. That was just an observation. But as we look at, I know we, a few sessions ago, we talked about exploring how do we get food trucks and local businesses to operate at our public sites. And I think there was some movement on there, but I'm curious how like this programming in this event with the number of vendors they have is streamlined. And there's maybe some lessons that we can incorporate into our process that we're building to have food trucks at these public sites or publicly owned property like Hartman Park Traillands. Maybe we already have that, but can we I guess my ask is, can we look at how that process is moving forward and is happening for eight weeks in a row during the summer and incorporate the efficiencies that maybe they've implemented into our own system so that we can also allow our local food trucks and businesses to operate in an efficient way in a very easy application process? Something that mirrors that.

I guess, can you dig into that? I'm kind of confused about the ask.

20 vendors on this farmer's market that's coming up on June 4th. And they're setting up on Thornton property. And it seems like it's happened very easily and streamlined. So that process, I would like to see, can we look at what we can incorporate into our own internal Thornton process so that our food trucks and whatever type of mobile food bars, whatever it is, can set up as easily and as quickly and as often as we're allowing this farmer's market to happen.

So maybe let me mirror back and clarify. So we're not managing the food truck, the farmer's market. So it's a vendor that does all of that. So we have not... identify those vendors or arrange those vendors. This is a third party that came to us and already has relationships with those vendors. So I think that the equivalent would maybe be having a private vendor manage.

So I guess what I'm getting at is we're not managing it and it's happening easily and it's happening on our public property and we have local businesses operating So how do we mirror that with this food truck process that we're exploring?

Yes, I do think they're very similar, if that's the question. We're using the same construct, I believe. We'll follow up with a report on that.

Can we dig into that? Can we look and can we make some efficiencies there? Because my guess is with 20 vendors showing up that are being managed and being coordinated by an outside vendor, I get that, but the fact that they're operating on our public property shows me that it's possible to be done quickly and efficiently over a certain amount of time. And so like, just how do we do that internally for ourselves so that we don't make it super complicated for a Thornton based business to set up at our public sites where they can just go operate with this third party vendor, you go to other sites, you know what I mean? And now it's easier to operate outside of our city.

We can certainly look at parallels and differences. I think there are some parallels and differences. Again, I think the construct of being permitted to be at a place is similar. I think the difference is the farmer's market, we're working with one partner. and the food trucks were working with many, many, there's many folks that have come into that process. And so, am I misunderstanding that question?

We can certainly- I'd love to hear how that process has worked for them that they can set up so easily on our public property, whereas our process is a little more complicated, ultimately.

So I think there's an assumption made that they are that one is more complicated than the other. I don't know if we know that to be true.

And that's maybe that's pretty declaration. Yeah. Maybe they are exactly the same and we're just missing all of that work that's happened. Or maybe there are some lessons learned. So you can bring it.

So I'm sorry. I just want to make sure we understand the question is the question that that Vendors working through the farmer's market or the farmer's market coordinator working?

I guess it would be the farmer's market coordinator.

Okay. And maybe I can help too. The farmer's market has, let's say, 20 vendors. So that process of how they got into city property and manage it, yes, the vendor is working with those 20 different ones, but how those 20 different ones still have to follow the same rules and regulations, the same permit requirements. How is that being managed versus when we manage it and making sure that we're sharing lessons learned? Am I, is that?

That's right. Okay. Because my ultimate end state would be like, is it easier? Is it as easy as potentially they're having as a go? So- um yeah explore it and we just see what what comes back and it might come back and those vendors might say is an absolute travesty to operate with this third party vendor and we'll never do it and so now at least we know that but um i am i'm just i'm curious uh if it makes it easier on our end so again but i think what i just heard you i don't

Their experience with the vendor, I don't know that we'll know. So again, we don't have any relationship with the vendors of the farmer's market. Our only relationship was with the farmer's market coordinator who has a permit with us. So the equivalent parties here are the food trucks can get permits from us and the farmer's market person is getting a permit. We're not interacting with the vendors that are working with the farmer's market.

From a policy perspective, the council's role would be to direct staff to have clear and simple processes for food trucks to do business in the city. The staff would then figure out the way to do that and make sure that it is meeting the intent of the policy decision. And I know that's an in-progress thing that's been going because we've been talking about that for a few years.

We can compare the permit requirements for individual food trucks versus the farmer's market. I think that's maybe what you're asking. Okay.

And then the last thing was, I know we got an email from Thornton Chamber about MOU and some things they're working on. And so I wanted to see if we can get the Thornton Chamber to come present to us at a planning session in June.

It might be tight, but yeah, we don't have as many meetings. I know I had asked Tansy to look at options as well based on the email that we got, and I know we were still looking at those options.

Yeah, I do know Economic Development is facilitating a date with the Chamber. I don't think they've identified one.

I think sooner rather than later would be appropriate.

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of activities, I guess, happening this summer. And I know we just apparently disapproved a certain amount of money to the chamber. And so sooner rather than later, it would be great. I would ask that we do it in June. So it's before we get too deep into the summer.

And by May 2 as well. Yeah, and I've, Courtney Potter, you know, the head of the Thorne Chamber, you know, I've had conversations with her as well about that. So. I know it's tight. Well, yeah. If it's possible, we can do it next month.

We have two planning sessions, the second and the 16th. I haven't looked at the look ahead to see how busy they are right now.

Yeah. I mean, I know it's possible for us to schedule something last minute if we need to.

And make sure that those options might work for us as well.

There are only four items right now on June 16th. As I understood it, the goal was to have a future MOU ready that would be a multi-year agreement. And I think that was the goal to bring that in front of the council for consideration. And it was not my understanding that that was ready to present yet. But certainly if it was not ready, we could certainly speak to the 2020 MOU. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Six agreement, if that was the interest.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Maybe there's some areas on policy that the Council can weigh in on to. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Already.

HAB-Terry Palmos- That's great.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- So was the direction to schedule something in June. HAB-Masyn Moyer- If possible, I think that's HAB-Terry Palmos- Yes, I would be preferred.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Anything else.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Um, I just wanted to put it on like calendar for next for june if we do we have a meeting yes okay um pride month and juneteenth right and then i just wanted to make sure our pride flag is still intact for pride month i second that

I think it was already on our schedule. It is.

I don't think I know where it is. It is actually planned for May 26, the flying, the Pride Month, the resolution, and the authorization to fly the flag.

I can read the Pride resolution next week.

Roberta asked first.

I defer to Mayor Brookham. I stand corrected. I'll read something else.

John, was your button pressed for Drew?

It was for Drew. Yeah, it's already done.

Anything else? I'm a little afraid to say we are good for the evening since we're not having the exec session.

Please don't.