City Council - Regular Meeting

Ready to go? All right. Council Member Ruttel should be online. Chris, can you hear us okay?

All right, Chris, we're getting started.

When you can hear us, just unmute and let us know. And then Council Member Punto just texted me and said he is running a few minutes behind, but he will be here shortly. Are there any questions on the update agenda? All right, for the formal agenda.

I have a motion. I'd like to move 10A, the question that'd be removed. 14A. 14A, removed and returned to a future planning session to go over the scoring sheets and committee decision-making documentation that was sent over. I think there's some significant questions that need to be brought up regarding that.

So when I asked for Thursday changes to the agenda, my bird's going to bring that up. I don't know what the pleasure of council is. Are we okay with doing that?

I don't think we need to do that. I don't think we need to delete the TAF funds. I'm okay with having the discussion for next year's cycle, but I need to do that for this one.

So he'll still make the motion or he'll say, make a change to the agenda. I'll make someone make a motion for the amended agenda. If it passes, it will move. That item will move. If it fails, then we'll have to do a motion on the original agenda. Does that make sense? Yep. Just from a procedural standpoint. All right. Who would like to do the land acknowledgement?

Jan, one quick thing. Yep. We're going to add the resolution. You want to add the resolution, right. Yeah, recognizing National Waste and Recycling Workers Week.

That would be item 13, or sorry. at all of the things we have to do. 7B. So Devin will make, will say that he wants to amend. You will also say you want to add item 7B. Let's just after we'll do it at the same time because it's amended agenda. Again, if it fails, you'll ask to include 7B and then that one will probably pass. I don't know if the first one will pass or not. We'll see. Is that correct, Tammy? Did I get that sort of operations correct? Okay. Or do we do a motion for each? Just do it all at once, make it easier?

Well, they'll each require a separate motion.

Not just, we can't do one amended agenda?

No. I think both of these issues need separate amendments, yeah.

So then it would be approval of the agenda as amended with item 7B and then with 14A? Correct. Okay, so... So you'll go first then? And then Devin, you'll go next. All right. Who would like to read the land acknowledgements? I can do it. OK. And then we have 7A, which is Juneteenth. Chris read it last year.

I can do it.

Yeah.

Or Justin. Justin wants to do it.

I'd be happy to do it.

If Chris is online, if he wants to do it, we should give him the option, I think.

He's not here.

He doesn't want to read it. Then Justin.

He's online. I just don't know if he can hear us.

Hey, Chris.

Yes, I can't hear you guys. I had a mic issue earlier, but I was just waiting. But yes, I can still read it.

And then I'm assuming if you wanted to add something, you would like to read it as well.

Sure.

And then we have a quasi-judicial hearing. There is a motion on 10A. Would someone like to take point on that?

We can do it.

Okay. 11 is legislative hearings. 11A is the Thornton Code update for EV-ready and solar-ready compliance.

I can do that.

Okay. Actually, wait. No. 11A is a second reading, so that would be Roberta. Because you made the first one. Sorry. And then we have on 14. If 14A is removed, it's not a problem. If it's not removed, Justin, do you want to make that motion? Yeah. And then 14B is a second reading. So that would be Chris Russell. All right. Thank you. Jump into a briefing. Thornton Planning Academy.

Really quickly, before the first item, I did have one quick item to get council direction on. I did email the council and email from the Board of Commissioners. It's a letter of support for the North Metro Transit Coalition advancement of the North Metro line. So this is a letter that would go to the RTD encouraging some partnership between RTD and the cities that would be impacted by the inline extension, encouraging a path forward to coordinate around things like governance, design, cost estimation, things like that. So everybody got this in their email. I do think they are looking for pretty quick turnaround in terms of support if we would like to. are trying to get formal RTD approval this month.

So I was chatting with the mayor of North Glen this afternoon. Actually, they, of course, got a similar request. What they're going to do, I'm going to forward it to everybody now, just so you can see what I'm talking about. They have a much shorter letter, I guess the letter that the Adams County manager sent to us is very specific and detailed, and we have not had the time to talk through those details or understand the implications to staff. And so my suggestion is we follow North Glen's lead, do a much condensed one, say that we support the concept, but not necessarily to the detail that they had in there. And if they want more than that, and you can talk about it at a future meeting, if council's okay with that.

Yeah, as long as the letter is still supportive.

It's still supportive. And I just sent it to you, so it should be in your inbox now. I sent it to SLT as well. And it's just, it's in the body of the email. It's not an attachment.

Okay. Yeah, that's fine.

All right. So we'll follow that approach. We can modify it obviously to, to the Thornton language, but.

Great. Thank you. And then just to clarify where as council members are free to write our own letter as, as we see fit. Is that correct?

As long as you're not putting the city in a position of having to do anything, you can be generally supportive. Yeah.

OK, our first presentation, so going to ask the planning. Can I ask about that?

About? Sorry, I'm sorry. Go ahead. How do we, I'm curious, how do we write letters? Is that like a Thornton logo, like letterhead? Is that just something? It's just using your name and title. OK, no letterhead. Okay. Cause I mean, that's a great idea.

So they'll probably going to do is have a website where they put names on there that are supportive as well as cities, but this lot will be from all of council. So it basically says we support the concept. So that's what we're allowed to support. So.

Oh, no, that's fine. This will be a pretty brief presentation. I think we have had previous conversations with the council just about increasing engagement opportunities. and outreach and recognition of the complexity of the land use development process. So we're just gonna update you on an upcoming effort that is attempting to address all of those things all in one. So with that, I think Mike or Martin's gonna kick us off. Thank you, Martin.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Burtem and members of council. This evening, we'll be talking to you about the planned Morton Planning Academy. And we'll talk through several items, including the mission statement and learning objectives, the topics that will be addressed in the academy, the Urban Land Institute offering that we will provide. We'll tell you who is eligible to apply and what promotion work we are engaging in currently. The mission statement is to empower individuals to confidently participate in and contribute to the city's planning and development process and influence the future of our community. And the little bit more finer grained learning objectives include learning about the profession of city planning and planning specifically important, including the role of the city council and the role of the planning commission. for them to have a basic understanding of the functions that are ancillary to the planning profession, and we'll talk about those in just a little bit, to have a better level of understanding of how to interact with the city in regard to planning and development issues, and hopefully to become advocates and help others understand how planning and development processes work in the city over the course of time. So here are the topics we're planning to cover over the seven weeks. Long-range and career planning and development engineering, traffic engineering, landscape architecture and water supply, building inspection and fire prevention, housing economic development, code compliance, and finally some legal issues related to planning. And at the end, we'll provide the opportunity for the attendees to attend the urban plan, which is a one day. It'll happen on a Friday, probably in late October or early November when the academy is winding down. And this is a workshop that enables the participants to play different roles in a scenario that is a redevelopment project, a mock redevelopment project, to solve problems, to work together, to negotiate, and to ultimately present their proposal to a group of people who are acting in the capacity of Planning Academy or City Council. And with that, I'll pass it over to Kira for the remainder of the presentation.

Thank you, Martin. So looking at who can apply, we have decided to open this up to anyone 16 years of age or older who either lives, works, or attends school in Thornton. Anyone under the age of 18 would have to provide a parental waiver to participate, but we did see some value in having youth be able to partake in this as well. Our target class size is about 25 individuals. That could fluctuate up or down a little bit depending on the interest that we have. And right now our application window is looking to open this Friday and be open through July. So in terms of promotional efforts, we already had a booth at Thornton Fest this past weekend to make people aware. There will also be some outreach at the Juneteenth event next week. We have a publication in City Voice later this month, and we'll have outreach on a number of social media platforms. We also have a number of handouts that have been put at various city facilities. We also have A stack here. If anyone wants to take some to pass out to the community as well. And then we have our website that will direct everyone to to go through the application process and get a better idea of What we're looking to do there. So this is a Snapchat of the web page. Again, we have application information there. And this doesn't open until later this week. So right now we have the option for folks to sign up for a waitlist and they'll be contacted once the application opens to be ahead and go ahead and submit their application. The mission statements and learning objectives that we already shared with you are on the web page. The class schedule, breaking down exactly what course topics will be covered on each evening are also outlined. And then prep materials, the idea is that we will have kind of a small amount of homework for folks to do ahead of time where They will just read or watch videos kind of related to the topics we're going to cover at the next class. Not anything that they're actually going to have to hand in to us, but something to kind of get some exposure to the items ahead of the class actually occurring. Those will all get posted on the web page ahead of time. And then our intent is also to post the slides that we go through in each session after each class wraps up. And then we have a promotional video that got put together. And so Kristen, if you're able to play that for us now, that'll give an overview.

How can I help you?

Hi, there's construction currently happening near my house. Can you please tell me what is being developed on this lot? City of Thornton Planning Department. How can I help you?

Hi, thanks for taking my call. It seems like traffic is getting really, really bad around here. What is Thornton doing that can improve traffic? I'd really like to know and answer this question.

I just bought a property in Thornton. Now I can do anything with it, right?

Good morning. I would like to know why Thornton thinks that every open site in the city needs to be developed.

Yeah, I'm curious about something. One of the reasons that we bought our house was for the view of the mountains. What can the city do to help us maintain them?

If you are curious to learn about city planning, the City of Thornton is putting together our first ever Thornton Planning Academy. It will begin in September of this year. The classes will take place one evening a week and cover a range of planning and planning related topics such as landscaping, transportation, and building inspection. For more information on how to apply, please visit gocot.net slash planning academy. Anyone aged 16 or above who lives, works, or studies in Thornton is eligible to apply.

We look forward to seeing you.

Everyone involved in making that video was a Thornton employee, by the way. But the calls were real.

So that wraps up our quick overview of things. So we're open to any questions and discussion at this point.

I love the idea. Thank you. I mentioned the urban plan program a few months ago, or maybe that was last year, and I just can't advocate for it enough. It is such a cool program, and I'm glad that we are partnering with them. I think it's going to be very enlightening for anybody who participates, and I think they'll have fun, especially at the end if the urban plan is kind of like a good capstone. So Great job, team. And thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you.

Any other questions? How much activity did we get on Saturday at Thornton Fest?

A lot of people. It was busy, especially in the morning. And several people signed up as being interested. We had a paper sign-up form and handed out dozens of these. So hopefully that generates interest. And I'd be happy to provide these to you this evening or as you wish. That's great.

One other question. So if we don't fill the whole class, I know that that limits what you can do with every plan. You need to have like a certain number of teams or people to fill the teams. So hopefully we can fill it. And I guess my question is, if we can't, would we be able to open it up to people from our neighboring communities as well. I know we want to prioritize Thornton, but I think it would be helpful. I mean, if like someone lives in Northland and the class is at full, I wouldn't want to turn them away either, but That's just my opinion.

I can answer that question because I was contacted with urban plan. So there's two levels. There's a 15 person group and there's a 25 person. So we could scale it back to 15. We anticipate, we're being optimistic, we'll hit all 25. We have the entire summer essentially recruit folks for this open, at least for the URL price. There's a price associated with that. so it's actually cheaper per person if we go with the 25 percent than it is if it's 15 just for context it's not that much different price wise but you get more out of it if you get the 25 percent all right let me know if you guys are getting close to the deadline and you don't have enough people and i will round up people and force them to do us we we are providing a meal that means a difference i think i mentioned the mayor on saturday as a As an option. So you could let them know that as well. So they won't go hungry if they come to learn.

Should we encourage the planning commission to participate in this as well?

Certainly.

Might need a training for them. Yeah, I think you should.

We'll note that.

There's nine people right there.

Thank you very much. All right. Next is to review Council Policy 4.2.

Yeah. This is a follow-up. So we spent part of your meeting last week talking about your policy guidance. The Mayor for Tim made a request to take a look at Council Policy 4.2. We did find that it had not been updated for many, many years. And so We do have some recommended changes, frankly, to reflect just today's current practice and remove some references to past practices that don't exist anymore. So I'll give it to Rob. We know that we do have a long evening tonight. So depending on the level of interest in discussion, we do have an executive session still. So there's the possibility that we might do this in two parts, depending on the level of discussion.

We'll target 10 minutes.

Got it. On the clock. Thanks for the introduction, Tansy. So on our agenda tonight, we're just going to provide a little bit of background information. We did, as requested, conduct some best practice research. We'll share our findings in that area. And then we did... We did go ahead and draft a policy for your consideration. The presentation covers some key components of it, but we do have kind of draft language in your packet as well as the original policy or the current policy, I should say. Then looking for your discussion and direction. So, again, as background, reviewing Council Policy 4.2, that was a request of the May 5th planning session. As part of that, there was a request to cover peer cities and best practices. I won't steal Kevin's thunder. Kevin's going to cover that. But we didn't get a lot of peer city. feedback, but we will share our best practices. And just as a reminder, I know we just covered this with the travel policy, but city council policies are mostly resolutions. There's a couple that are ordinances, but are mostly resolutions adopted by council that really outline your agreed upon policies and procedures kind of between yourselves and help provide in certain this is direction to staff. So as I read council policy 4.2, it was originally adopted in 2005. I wasn't here. I'm not sure anybody was here doing what we're doing now. Kristen and I looked, we think it was updated in 2010. So some of the language is actually relevant to some of us who are around, but really reading it to me, the purpose is providing guidance on discussion and direction that you're planning session updates, outlines a process to provide clear direction and what the next steps are coming out of these discussions. And there were references in that policy, if you read it, to the work plan, which at the time, I know the mayor remembers, really kind of functioned as our strategic plan. Yes, it was quite long. unglorious. But in my mind, it did, you know, tried to tie that this policy direction should be in some way relevant to, to whatever councils decided is the strategic priorities of the city. And then, again, my interpretation, it outlined a fairly detailed, you know, multi step process for for introducing discussing moving ideas forward, researching, etc. Um, and so at this point, um, we, in drafting the policy, um, we, we didn't reference a lot of the charter provisions, but the charter, these charter provisions were the foundation of, um, kind of what we included in the draft policy. So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Tammy to talk through these.

So the first one cited there is the form of government. And as I know you've all heard many times, it's a council manager form of government. And that means that you have those authorities and duties given to you by the city charter. 4.1 is the section that states indicates that you are the legislative and governing body of the city that gives you legislative responsibilities to adopt ordinances, resolutions, and laws basically by ordinance. And that you deem that are proper. And so you have these legislative powers and any other powers associated with those. So if you adopt a code on land use, for example, and you also indicate in that that you're the final decision maker on land use matters, that gives you that authority to sit in a quasi-judicial position. capacity then and make a final determination on a land use matter. So again, you are the legislative and policy making body of this government and you have such powers that are delegated to you that you delegate in code to yourselves. And the next section is 5.4 on the city manager. That's an extensive section. It gives the city manager many duties and largely as the chief administrative officer of the local government. He is responsible for the efficient administration of all the departments of local government. And I won't read the entire list, but also the city manager has the duty to make sure the laws and ordinances are enforced to appoint to appoint such department heads that are necessary to carry out those directives. And she has to recommend an annual budget to city council and is responsible for the implementation of that budget. And so the city manager's duties are very detailed and they are administrative in nature versus your legislative and lawmaking duties. And finally, it's important to note section 5.6. This is the relationship of the council to the city manager and administrative services. And the charter is specific around this, and most charters are. And in fact, it indicates, except for purposes of inquiry, the council and its members shall deal with the administrative service solely through the city manager, and neither the council nor any member thereof shall give orders to any subordinate of the city manager. And I know council knows that, but your directives go to your three appointees and to the city manager, and then the city manager carries those directives out through her staff. This does not completely eliminate interactions with staff, obviously, but this policy puts exactly that in place, a process for you to communicate through the city manager to get your policy initiatives carried forward.

So as I said, we completed some some research, we did send out an email to the city manager listserv about similar policies and didn't get any, any response to that policy exists. It doesn't mean they don't have one, but we're just unaware of one at this point. And I think that I'm going to hand over to Kevin to talk about kind of his research and the takeaways from that work.

Great. Thank you, Rob. Good evening. And as Rob mentioned, yes, staff did conduct research on our peer cities and other local jurisdictions on council policy direction. Generally, what we did find is we didn't find many standalone policies out there that on the topic of council policy direction, but we did find many jurisdictions did reference the topic in either their council rules, rules and procedures, or their rules and regulations. Additionally, we were able to find some best practice recommendations from ICMA and from municipal league resources, and there were some common themes that we found throughout those resources in the local administration. So first, we did find that many jurisdictions do utilize working sessions, planning sessions, study sessions, they all go by a little bit of a different name, but to informally discuss issues, ideas, new concepts. We also found that these forms are often used to provide direction to staff when there is a council consensus position. Most of the jurisdictions that use these forms limit it to just or a formal vote at these types of sessions. And then generally speaking, it has been more focused on council discussion. So we didn't find many jurisdictions that use these sessions as an opportunity to provide public comment. Those are typically reserved for more formal council meetings. So, you know, again, some common themes, didn't see many standalone policies on this, but often some pretty common themes throughout the jurisdictions.

And then, as I said, we did go ahead and draft a policy for your considerations in your packet. It's just a draft, not a lot of price and authorship at this point, but we did put a lot of thought into it. So happy to talk about it. So kind of three sections, the purpose, the process, and then it's not on this slide, but on the next slide, talk a little bit about requests for information and requests for services. So The purpose and our intent was to really focus on three things like why have a policy about council policy direction, what's important. And to me, it's important that you get clear direction. Like everybody's clear what we're trying to do. It's actionable. We know what the next steps are and that it's three supported by the majority of city council. You know, you don't want to go chasing off on a policy that the balance of the body doesn't support. And all of that so that, you know, something can be done, that direction can be implemented. So that was kind of the first focus of the purpose statement and the draft policy. The second one was again, tying it to, you know, some sort of strategic planning document that that really is the foundation of the work that we're focused on and, and really recognizing the priority of those and that, you know, time is finite. And so, you know, if in theory, the strategic plan should reflect the priorities of the council, as far as what we're focusing on, if there's something new, things change, the world's a dynamic place, it should be recognized the priority of that new thing in the context of the plan and what might need to be adjusted or pushed aside for a moment. From a process standpoint, again, just summarize it. And if you compare the two documents in our draft, we whittled back the process quite a bit in our version. But really provides a process where you would introduce these issues at a planning session or an update. We suggested, not a requirement, but suggested that advanced notice might be something you want to consider. Again, maybe not a requirement, but something that would be beneficial to have without creating a meeting via email that is subject to public meeting court and that kind of thing. So once an item is introduced, provide an opportunity for city council to discuss the issue. And again, coalesce around some majority of support for whatever action or direction is identified. Again, this is not about planning sessions. These informal study sessions can't be about, but we do again, want to make sure that there is as broad a support as possible for an idea so that you don't waste your time on something or staff doesn't waste their time on something that doesn't have the support of the balance of council. We also included an opportunity for the city manager to advise or clarify on an issue. And particularly if it's like a complex issue, which we've done this in past to say, you know, here yet, like give us, give us a week to go back, do some preliminary research. You know, we weren't prepared to talk about this. Let us put our heads together with some subject matter experts and come back with a, with a more thoughtful plan that includes like a, a scope and a timeline for how we would approach, how we would recommend you approach it. And again, differentiating the policy outcome from the administrative implementation. So in harkening back to some of the things that Tammy shared that are in the charter. And then have the policy recognizes that there should be some process for staff to track council policy direction, particularly if it's outside of the strategic plan. So Right now, I think of that as a CTL, but it's evolved over time. We tried to write the policy in a way that reflects the ideas, noting that the particular ways that we or the council may want to approach these things might change over time. So that's the broad process. So this last section, we did include a provision referencing request for information and service. And so as Tammy shared and charter provision 5.6, council has the right to inquire and provide, get information. We recognize you need information to do your job. and that any direction needs to go through the city manager and the direct appointees. So we included just that council communicates to the city manager prescribed process and included a provision that provides an opportunity for the city manager to elevate individual council member requests that have significant policy implications. So, hey, here we are, but I think really the balance of council needs to talk about this. And so that, again, the policy is written general in nature. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what we think of as kind of our current prescribed process. So, you know, the city manager or the department directors, I think, has been our practice. And there's certainly exceptions. You know, there's things you're going to have to get through HR, whether it's benefits or payrolls. There's things that you're going to have to get through our administrative staff for travel stuff. I mean, we recognize that trying to identify that Those are the exceptions, but generally, this is where the communication can come through. Then we'd recognize that we've established a process, council action request, CARS, as we all know, to provide a system to collect, route, track, and ensure action or information. or service requests are followed up on. So that seems to be in prior discussions with council. We've talked about this at a couple of retreats. It seems to be a process that works well for you. Certainly from our standpoint, it's a way to keep track of things. And for you, it's a way to know that your request isn't gonna get dropped through the cracks or it's gonna get routed to the right person. So that's kind of how we view the prescribed process. And then the last point I wanted to make on this slide, outside of the council policy, The city manager has a number of administrative directives, which are directives from the city manager to staff about how we do our work. And there is an administrative direction about council communication, and it basically mirrors this policy that you all have the right to inquiry. There's no prohibition to interacting with you, but staff should not take direction from individual council members if there's any of that issue you need to you know, running up your chain of command. So all I would say with this is, you know, I don't imagine that administrative directive to change all that much, but based on this discussion, but we do want to make sure that whatever goes into your policy talks to the administrative directive and that they are complimentary. So. I mean, that was like 15 minutes. Sorry. So again, you know, similar to the travel policy, we threw out a draft policy, but again, are more looking for council to talk amongst yourselves and give us some direction on what you're looking for. I did throw some kind of key policy questions to try to, you know, if you needed some kind of prompts to how you wanted to approach this discussion. But at this point, I'm happy to answer any questions and I'm looking forward to your direction on this one.

Evan?

Thank you for this. I appreciate you guys in both the new and the old too. So I was able to redline a lot easier that way. Under the current policy, the city manager states and confirms the policy direction after council discusses things. The proposed policy shifts that responsibility over to the mayor. What was the rationale for that change?

I think in my mind, that's just been the practice that we've evolved. My recollection, there have been previous planning sessions, the city manager was more engaged in facilitating the meeting and providing that policy direction. The mayor has really stepped in and taken on a lot of that role. And so that's really it.

It could be both or either. I mean, mayor or city manager, just as long as somebody is summarizing.

Yeah, currently it states that the city manager does it, but I was just curious on why the change was there. The next question I have is in steps 5A and 5B, the city manager's discretion to determine that a policy matter needs additional research before council can give direction. What criteria is the city manager going to be using to make that determination? And how is that going to be transparent to council?

Yeah, I mean, I think that is a little bit of a case by case. I can only think of a couple of circumstances where that has come up. And so I think a good anecdotal example, I think there was at one point a discussion about how to handle like civil unrest and protest kinds of activities and we didn't have prior notice that that was coming and so given kind of the scope and magnitude of that at the time I said to the council I'd like to come back with kind of a proposal framing out the scope of the issue and sort of the timeline and I think In that circumstance, I think the council agreed that that would be a helpful tool to make sure that everybody was on the same page in terms of the nature. And so I think a lot of times through discussion, we're able to make sure that we've got clear direction. I do think there are circumstances where the nature of even clarifying the scope of a topic could be pretty big and complicated. In that particular case, it was, there's a big topic that, so I can't actually recall another time that that has happened since I've been here. I don't, others could speak if that had ever occurred prior to my time.

So, Tansy, one thing I've seen is like, You know, the first question is, can we do this legally? Or if we know that, what are the parameters around that? And then bring back a policy discussion. I've seen that happen several times over the years.

To follow up with that, if the majority of council feels that a matter is ready for direction, but the city manager feels it needs more discretion or time or review, what kind of recourses council have to be like, no, we've already established we're ready for the direction to take place?

Well, I think the city manager reports to you, and if that's your position, you know, it's her job to go out and get the information as quickly as she can.

I'm just basing things off of the policy itself.

Yeah, no, I understand.

The biggest thing for me, for everything too, is the removal of the issues forum. The issues forum provided an open and unstructured space for us to be able to have conversations about lots of different things that come up, regardless of maybe a policy needing to be put in place for it, but more of a general council discussion time. Why was that removed and what kind of mechanism is going to be in place to kind of help with that from the council standpoint?

Yeah, thanks. Not a deliberate removal. I guess in my mind, that's what I view at the end of your agenda, the council discussion items. And so if that's, if council wants, we could, I mean, So we're taking your direction. We could easily add that back in to recognize that, you know, the agenda will include unstructured time to the extent that there's time available to talk about whatever.

Kind of been reframed as item one in the new policy.

Kind of, but here's the problem with that is the item one in the new policy states that everything needs to be introduced at a planning session, which the agenda is controlled. And there's been several instances where we've had discussions in here where we're like, I would like this to come before the planning session. And we get pushback that says planning sessions are full for the next two weeks. We'll try to do what we can, or we'll try to see what we can. But by that time.

New items can be brought up during unstructured time.

Correct.

Okay. I mean, that's a very simple administrative update. Did you have more or?

I can hold off and give other people a chance.

I'm also watching the time. We have an executive session, too. So do we want to keep going? I can give you five more minutes total. Or do we want to hold it and talk about this later?

That's fine. These are some of the key things that comes up. I'm sure we'll discuss it more as the draft kind of gets done.

Justin? Yeah, I think Devin was on a roll because I knew everything that he brought up there, in particular the issues forum. And I think it's important and scampy and understated And also it is kind of evolved over time to be something slightly different than what is described in our policy. I also share the concerns about the section 2.5 A and B where the discretion to determine the city managers granted explicit discretion to determine whether a policy requires additional definition or research before proceeding is very vague and also seems to go open the door to to have the flow of decision making in reverse or we're being led by the city manager when actually the charters very clear that the council is the governing body of the city. So I do share that concern as well. I guess my question then before we wrap it up is, according to the staff and your research, what are the major problems we're solving here with this draft because it's very similar to what we have now um i think if you were if you were to ask me what the problems are is not necessarily with the current policy but the fact that we're not really following the current policy um so question one is what differences did you see and also two how can we ensure that we actually follow the policy a new policy if we've struggled or failed to follow the current policy as it's written.

Well, to be honest, I don't see that much of a difference between the current policy and this, or that at least wasn't the intent. It was kind of, the intent was to shorten it up and reflect kind of the language that I think we've, this council's evolved to. But if there's if there's something critical like the issues forum or something else that in the in the new draft we missed happy to add that or i mean if we just i mean again it's your policy we don't want to update the policy we don't have to update the policy i'd have to look at what you know specifically i mean i'm not sure what in this policy we're not following other than they're like language to things that we just don't really do. Like we don't have a work plan anymore. We have a strategic plan. And so we have to think about how those actions get integrated into this process under our current strategic planning process.

So given the time, I think we're going to have more discussion on this in the future. If Justin and Devin could provide maybe some suggestions for language or areas of concern back to Tansy, I think that would help us for future discussion.

I can provide some of my other questions I have over.

That'd be great. And then we'll find another time to get this back on the planning in the future. Great.

Thank you.

All right. So I'm going to go ahead and call to order the special meeting of the council. Can I please get a roll call?

And if I'm here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Thank you.

Before I get a motion for an executive session, can you please give me the purpose?

Yes. So city manager and city attorney and Ms. Whitney have been talking with people of 70 and Hines over the last two weeks since we last met with everyone. And we'd like to provide counsel with an update as to the status of the negotiations concerning the Quebec Street overpass. Are there any questions?

Can we get the motion? Yes.

If counsel would like to go into executive session, the motion would be for an executive session pursuant to Colorado revised statutes 2464024B and E to confer with the city attorney for purposes of receiving legal advice regarding potential strategies going forward related to the ongoing development of the parterre subdivision and to provide instruction to negotiators regarding the same.

I need a motion first. So motions have been made and seconded. All in favor, please say yes. Any opposed? Any opposed, please say no. All right, we will move to executive session. And Chris, you will not be able to participate in executive session online. So we will see you in the formal meeting.

All right, see you soon.